Financial Literacy in Healthcare Workers - My QIP

 

Hey all

Why such a dry topic? Well this dry topic has annoyed me like my dry scalp in winters.

Post residency, I had a decent salary in hand and didn't know what to do. I had just come out of a bad health crisis, so party was the last thing I'd do. 

I sat down and navigated money management . Its been about a year and I am still exploring things.

When I would go upto my colleagues to ask about their savings and investment strategies , I noticed something interesting. 

Gender bias.

Like a curious kid in the world of finance I would bombard them with questions.I found something interesting gender wise .

Honestly majority of the doctors were unaware about where there investments are going.

Male doctors acted like they got things figured out by Investing in the traditional real estate , mutual funds ( Suggested by their friends or CAs) , in worst scenarios Fixed Deposits. There was no logic why a certain mutual fund was picked , why a certain stock was picked . It was mostly based on a "recommendation" even if they understood nothing about it . No wonder word of mouth has its own value.

But they were trying to figure out. ( I liked the hustler spirit).

Female Doctors mostly handed over their finances to their spouse or fathers. They believed they could handle it better. The same people who said My life My rules it was disappointing to see My Money , somebody elses rule.

It is surprising because these are the people who don't purchase clothes of their parents choice , take a stand for their preferred speciality  blindly Investing money anywhere! Why don't you take that risk?

Turning Point

There was a instance where I sat down to discuss finance with a senior female consultant. It came to her surprise that a lady doctor is asking about it. She told me invest in PPF and some mutual funds your CA suggests you'll save taxes. She had money but didn't trust people enough to invest in real estate. Stocks who understands?

I said I do invest in stocks , I have a decent idea about it. She was surprised, she congratulated me.  But comeon it's not THAT difficult. If you can crack the extremely competitive exams , what is this?

That was a turning point. It did shook me. 

But I could be pretty late , but is this not a reality most of our colleagues are facing over decades now?

Plan of action

In emergency, we not only treat the acute symptoms, we go to the root cause of it. The root cause of them not doing it themselves was they were not literate enough . They were overbooked to schedule learning finance in their hectic schedule.

So , one night at 3 am , I have done my bit and created a page for doctor and healthcare workers and decided to create financial literacy about stocks , mutual funds , NFTs and cryptocurrency. Its like a little quality improvement project in my head. 

I try to simplify finance as much as I can for them to understand.

I did face challenges where people found it difficult to understand my jargon. I kept working on it , now it's somewhere between easy to moderate. 

Some would ask stock recommendation , cryptocurrency recommendation . It took me sometime to explain that I could only educate you about the basics. Your money , your research and deligence , your risk.

Here are the links to my Instagram project.

Motto of Doctor of all trades 

Adulting 

 

I honestly believe if healthcare workers can take decisions of life and death everyday innumerable times. Investing is just another thing.

In 2 months , there is a community of 600 people on Instagram 75% of whom are doctors. I thought there would be more women than men , but the numbers were 45:55 surprising me.

I know the Quality Improvement Project in my head is pretty tedious and will not get me anything. But making more financially literate doctors , less debt ridden doctors is another level of satisfaction. It kind of improves their quality of life. 

Those who wish to join me can join this link on Instagram : 

Doctorofalltrades

P.S. The thoughts projected in the blog are totally mine and can be subjective. You might have come across doctors who handle their finance like pro. The doctors I've interviewed where between age bracket of 25-40 years of age.

So far so much!