Locum tenens work offers physicians the opportunity for increased earning potential and schedule flexibility. It also comes with some unique considerations because most locum tenens physicians act as independent contractors rather than full-time employees. But with the right information, dealing with locum tenens finances can become an opportunity rather than a burden.
In collaboration with a panel of certified financial planners from Personal Choice Financial, we recently hosted the webinar Finances of Locum Tenens: Taxes, Benefits, and Beyond. Watch the full webinar below or keep reading for a summary of the key takeaways.
What benefits do locum physicians receive?
While locum physicians work as independent contractors and are responsible for arranging their own healthcare coverage and retirement planning, they also receive some important benefits when working with a reputable staffing agency. These usually include:
Medical malpractice insurance: Physicians are covered by a staffing agency’s policy while on assignment. Coverage types and duration may differ between agencies — Weatherby Healthcare always includes lifetime tail coverage for every assignment.
Licensing, credentialing, and privileging assistance: Well-established locums agencies will often have relationships with licensing boards and facilities throughout the country, and they can help expedite the process of completing the necessary paperwork.
Travel and housing: Locums agencies handle these expenses, though an agency that goes above and beyond will also arrange extra details like rental cars. You’ll typically stay in a hotel for shorter assignments, and potentially in an apartment, condo, or home for longer assignments.
What benefits do you need to arrange on your own?
Retirement and investments
Self-employment gives you options when saving for retirement, and in some cases higher contribution limits than are available to full-time employees. Popular choices among locum tenens physicians include:
Individual retirement accounts (IRAs): Traditional and Roth IRAs are among the most popular retirement accounts for locum physicians. Traditional IRAs use tax-deductible contributions and taxable distributions, whereas Roth IRAs use after-tax contributions with tax exemptions for qualified distributions.
Simplified employee pension (SEP) IRA: Designed for self-employed individuals, SEP IRAs have higher contribution limits, with tax-deductible contributions and taxable distributions.
Solo 401(k): Intended for self-employed individuals with no employees, a solo 401(k) allows contributions from both an employee and an employer. As a locum tenens physician, you can make tax-deductible contributions in both roles.
Defined benefit plans: These plans are more complex and usually require a financial advisor to set up, but they can be an excellent option if you’d prefer a fixed income stream after retirement.
Contribution limits, tax benefits, and other details vary depending on several factors. A financial advisor can help you determine the best options for your individual circumstances.
Health insurance
While arranging your own medical, dental, and disability coverage requires a little more work upfront, it also means you can choose the coverage that best suits your needs. Locum physicians exploring health insurance options should keep these tips in mind:
Look into your spouse’s or partner’s benefit plan: Your significant other may be able to cover you via a family plan, with significant cost savings versus purchasing your own coverage.
Enroll in COBRA as a short-term solution: For physicians transitioning from a permanent position to locums work, COBRA can help prevent any gaps in health coverage.
Browse the insurance exchange: A plethora of options are available at HealthCare.gov, and any insurance premiums you pay as a self-employed locum physician are tax-deductible.
American Medical Association healthcare plans: If you’re a member of the AMA, you’ll have access to insurance plans tailored to physicians and their families.
Consult an independent insurance agent: They’ll be able to answer your questions and guide you toward a healthcare plan that makes the most sense for your lifestyle.
Do I need a business entity to work locums?
The business entity you choose affects how you’ll file your taxes and determines certain legal liabilities. There are many factors to consider, and meeting with an expert is the best way to make an informed decision.
Preparing to do business as a locum physician
No matter the business structure you end up using, there are a few steps you should take to prepare for work as an independent contractor:
Get a federal Employer Identification Number (EIN): Apply for EIN.
Separate your finances: Open a dedicated bank account and credit card for your business, so it’s not intertwined with your personal finances.
Plan ahead for taxes: Self-employed locum physicians need to pay estimated taxes quarterly, so don’t wait until the last minute to talk to a tax professional.
Keep detailed records: Hang on to all your receipts (the IRS doesn’t accept credit card statements) and consider using bookkeeping software to stay organized.
Does forming a business entity reduce my liability?
Forming a corporation does not protect physicians from malpractice claims. However, it can protect your personal assets from other types of lawsuits that can arise while doing business.
What are my options for forming a business?
Several types of business entities are available, each with their own benefits and tax implications. Some of the most popular options for locum tenens physicians include:
Sole proprietorship: This is the “default” option for people who do not set up another business entity. It makes sense for many physicians, especially those who also have a W-2 job. There’s no extra liability protection, and you’ll report your income and expenses via your personal taxes.
Limited liability company (LLC): LLCs separate the business from the individual. While there are no major benefits for locum physicians compared to a sole proprietorship, many people choose this structure anyway to help them stay organized.
S corporation: An S corp is an excellent choice for high earners who work locums full time. You’ll act as an owner/employee and receive a W-2 salary from your own business entity. Any profits beyond your salary become a business distribution to the owner, which can offer tax savings.
Your income, the state(s) where you work locums, and your desired level of liability protection will all be factors in determining the best tax entity option for you. Meeting with a financial advisor or accountant is the best way to ensure your choice aligns with your goals and needs.
How do taxes work for locum tenens physicians?
Locum tenens physicians are 1099 contract employees, which means they’re responsible for paying their own taxes. While your chosen business entity determines some specifics of your tax situation, there are a few basics you should know before meeting with a tax professional.
Estimated quarterly payments
Because self-employed physicians don’t have taxes withheld from their paychecks by an employer, the IRS mandates you make quarterly payments based on your estimated income. These payments are generally due on the 15th of April, June, September, and January.
In addition to federal income taxes, you’ll also need to pay self-employment taxes, which cover your share of Medicare and Social Security tax. You’ll also be responsible for paying income taxes in your home state and any state in which you’ve worked. Each state has its own tax laws, so locum physicians who work in multiple locations should consult with an expert to make sure they fully understand their tax obligations.
Tax deductions for locum physicians
Locum tenens physicians have a variety of opportunities to lower their tax bill with qualified deductions, including:
- Retirement contributions
- Health insurance premiums
- Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions
- Home office expenses
- Unreimbursed expenses like phone bills, vehicle mileage, meals, workwear, conference fees, parking, and tolls
Be diligent about keeping receipts — the IRS will not accept credit card statements for deductions. Your records should go back a minimum of three years, though seven years is even better.
Additional tax strategies for locum physicians
Income shifting: Certain business structures may allow you to “hire” your spouse or child to help with saving for retirement or for future education expenses.
Medical reimbursement plans (MERPs): These can make your business eligible to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses or insurance premiums.
Primary care preceptor initiatives: To help address the shortage of physicians, these incentivize current physicians to help train new PCPs.
Rural care tax credits: Rural areas often have severely limited access to care, and these encourage physicians to work where they’re needed most.
For any physician who works locum tenens, consulting with a tax strategist or CPA is the best way to ensure you’re making the most of your status as an independent contractor.
Keep more of what you earn: Watch this webinar on locum tax strategies
Choose a locum tenens agency that puts you first
Whether you’re interested in working locums as your full-time career or you’re looking to supplement your income, a great locums agency can be a valuable asset in accomplishing your financial goals.
When you work locums with Weatherby, you’ll be paired with a personal consultant who gets to know you as a professional and an individual. They’ll deliver hand-picked assignments that match how, where, and when you like to work, and offer guidance toward achieving the career you’ve always wanted.
Connect with a Weatherby consultant today, and get started on the path to greater flexibility and financial freedom.
Full transcript of webinar:
Madison Wood: Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming. We’re just going to give it a few more minutes as we wait for people to join. We’ll get started shortly.
Alright everyone, we are going to go ahead and get started. I just want to welcome you all to today’s webinar, the finances of locum tenens, taxes, benefits, and beyond. At Weatherby Healthcare we know that working locum tenens can be a huge financial advantage to physicians but harnessing its full benefits can take a little bit of additional knowledge and planning. And so that is why we’re so excited to have experts from Personal Choice Financial with us here today. Personal Choice Financial is an advice only, fee only, institution that’s been around since 1991, but began working with new physicians when its founder’s son graduated as a neurologist with his own host of medical school debt and financial goals. So, the work that they do definitely has a personal touch. And with that we’re really happy to welcome the founder and CEO of Personal Choice Financial, Chris Hansen, as well as the director of Financial Planning, Ben Dobler, and Senior Advisor, Robert Hansen, as our speakers today. And with that I’ll hand you guys off to them.
Robert: Perfect. Well, thank you for the introduction, Madison, and thank you Weatherby for setting all of this up for today. We’re super excited to have the opportunity to talk with you all, and really, just want to make sure we’re using all the time we have to really help give everybody here a better foot forward as they get ready for your first locums position. So, there’s a lot to go through. I know personal finance for locum tenens, it’s a big topic. We tried to break it down into chronological order and really try to focus on, here’s what you need to do, and kind of what comes first and what comes next. So please, at any point if you have any questions, definitely toss them into the Q&A. Love to help out and answer any questions we can along the way. But again, just thank you all for being here, and with that I’m going to pass it over to Chris to jump in on the contract side to start with.
Chris: One of the things as Robert had mentioned is we’re trying to do this in chronological order. It just seemed like the most appropriate way to present the material. So, the first thing we want you to think about is, what should I do before I actually sign a contract with any individual hospital or any locums agency? Typically, you want to do this first, because you don’t want to set up payments, contracts, and so forth, under one entity, under your own name or something else, and then find out later, I should have done this a different way, and now I’ve got to go get with HR and everybody and redo everything. So, we want to go through, and we’ll talk you through all the different entities. We’re going to go over them quickly at first, and then we’ll come back and talk through how do you set each one of these up, what is the most appropriate setup for different people, and how you would make that decision.
So, first of all, there’s really three things. There are three entities you can choose from when setting up for a locums role. The first one is the simplest, that’s a sole proprietor. There’s very little you have to do as a sole proprietor tax-wise. There’s no entity that you need to set up. Tax-wise, everything that you earn as a locums physician, if you’re set up as a sole proprietor, flows through to your personal taxes on your schedule C. So, there’s no special tax return, no professional tax returns. There might be some increase in the cost of getting your taxes done, but it’s not going to be that substantial. The next level is a Limited Liability Company or a Professional Limited Liability company, and the difference between those two really boils down to what does your state want you to set up. And again, we’ll talk about that in a little bit more detail as we talk about setting up LLCs. LLCs do offer some benefits over the sole proprietorship. One of the things that people – oftentimes we’ll hear conversations with people of, I can either set up a sole proprietorship or I can set up an LLC, and then choose to be taxed as an S Corp. People tend to not realize you can set up an LLC or a PLLC and still be taxed as a sole proprietor. There are some benefits to doing this, and we’ll talk about those also. There are some benefits to doing that, but you get all of the same if you set up the LLC and choose to be taxed as a sole proprietor. You get all the simplicity that comes with being just a sole proprietor so from that perspective, it’s very nice. Again, one of the things it does allow is for you to set up as an S Corp and we’ll talk in a little bit more detail in a minute on that. The last option is to actually incorporate, that’s actually setting up a C Corp. A lot of people think there’s a difference between an S Corp and a C Corp, there’s really not. An S Corp is just a C Corp with an S designation. It’s just a check box talking about how you want to be taxed and how you want the cash flow to work. But with incorporating as a C Corp, and then choosing S Corp, pass through for your taxes is extremely complicated. If you’ve ever looked into setting up a corporation, you have to have a board, you have to have annual meetings, you have to have an operating agreement. You’re going to spend quite a bit of money on legal fees to get it set up properly, get it registered properly. You’re going to have to file professional tax returns, business tax returns which are going to be extremely expensive. So, we tend to tell people – I’ve never seen a case, we’ve seen some older ones when it used to make sense to do this, but I’ve never seen a case that we believe it actually made sense to go through the process of actually setting up an S Corporation to do business. We always recommend almost always sole proprietor or if you want a couple of the benefits and your state is good with it, setting up as an LLC. So, one of the things we will do is we’ll not really talk about the C Corp and the S Corp as entities of themselves anymore going through this.
If you do choose to set up as a sole proprietor. And again, we’ll get you guys the slides and we’ve also got a list of references that people can go through and read a lot more detail. There’s only so much we’re going to be able to get through in an hour here. But if you choose to go as a sole proprietor, and again, this really works for most people pretty easily. This is one of the best options up to about a $400,000 income, and that’s one of the main things that might tend you toward, maybe I want to set up a different entity. If you’re going to set up a sole proprietorship, you do want to check and make sure, is there anything in your county or city or so forth that you do need to register. So that’s just a quick call, check online and so forth to make sure there’s nothing there. They’re usually not that onerous for any local requirements. You do not need an EIN, employment income tax number, but we recommend you go get one. You can get it very easily from the IRS and it does a couple of things for you. One, you’re not giving everybody your social security number. So, you get this EIN, you can use this EIN later if you choose to go to an LLC or something in the future, you can keep using this EIN. But we do recommend, and we’ll give you the links and so forth, that you do set up an EIN for your sole proprietorship, and you use that for your payments, your checking accounts, and so forth. You will need one for a solo 401k and we’ll get into retirement structures and so forth and what to do with your retirement accounts, but I can tell you in advance, the answer to that, as far as we’re concerned, is very, very clearly, everybody working independently should be setting up a solo 401k unless, under very, very rare circumstances, would there be a better answer than that. So, everybody should be planning on setting up a solo 401k. Open a checking account, use your new EIN for that checking account. Set up bookkeeping; you want to keep your books clear and separate from your personal expenses. We generally recommend QuickBooks online. There’ll be a link, and we’ll send the link with a lot of other references and so forth. This one just goes to Nolo’s 50 State guide, and they will take you through what you need to do in pretty much every single state to set up a sole proprietorship.
The next one is a limited liability company or a professional limited liability company. When you make the decision on whether you want to go through the hassle of setting up an LLC, keep in mind that your LLC can change over the years as you progress in your career as a physician. The average time people work as a locums physician is around five years. There’s a good chance this LLC is going to serve a larger function than just your five years as a locums physician. So, as you’re looking at what you want it to do for you, keep in mind that might change in the future. The biggest thing on this slide, the most important statement here is, every state is different. If you look at Ohio, where we’re from, we’re in Cincinnati; Ohio has very, very low requirements on an LLC. You pick a name, you register with the Secretary of State, and you tell them who your agent is. You’re done. I think it costs maybe a hundred bucks. They don’t care if you ever come back to the website again other than to remove the LLC if you ever shut it down. There’s no ongoing requirements, there’s no ongoing filing fees or anything else. It’s extremely simple. You don’t have to set up your articles of incorporation or anything else; they don’t want any of that. Other states, Massachusetts, a lot of other states, it can get very complicated. It can cost a thousand dollars a year just to stay registered. So, you want to check your state and see how difficult that is to do, and we’ll provide some of that also.
Other things that you do get from an LLC, you do get some limits on your liability outside of malpractice. This is not going to help in any way, shape, or form with any kind of malpractice liability, but it does provide you some opportunity of – I’m in another state, I’ve rented a car, I got in a wreck, I hurt somebody on my way to work. Okay, that was a work event, that was work related. They would go after your LLC, not after your personal assets. There are some ways that it does give you limited liability. And again, it’s right in the name. That’s why this entity was created. If you really are worried about liability, we always tell people the absolute best way to limit your liability is to get an umbrella policy on your personal insurance. You can get a million dollar umbrella policy, usually around $250-$300 per 1 million. It’s by far the cheapest, simplest way to really limit liability. If you ever ended up within your LLC, a partner, a PLLC – and again, all of this is state specific – a PLLC will limit you from malpractice of another partner. Again, not going to have anything to do with when you’re actually working as locums, but if you bring on a partner or something later, that could be very nice. The other thing people choose to do an LLC, as long as they’ve got a relatively simple state to work in, you can name your entity. You don’t have to go in and just say, I’m Joe Smith, LLC. You can go in and I’m Rocky Mountain Surgical. Whatever you want to be, as long as the name is available, you can pick a name and work under that company name.
And again, one of the big ones, it allows you that flexibility, like we said, in the tax status. You can choose to either be taxed as a sole proprietor or as an S Corp. If you do choose, again, pretty much the same checklist, check any local or city requirements, choose a name, make sure to go to the Secretary of State, make sure the name is available, and so forth. You will need to create articles of incorporation; it’s very easy to do for an LLC. You can get those, pretty much boilerplate, online. Get an EIN; this is a different EIN from the sole proprietorship. But again, it’s the same website, and so forth. Set up your checking account in the name of and with the EIN of your new LLC. And again, set up your bookkeeping.
And again, here are a couple – and don’t worry about grabbing these. We’ll send these out, and we’ll also send a PDF with all the different links. All 50 Secretary of State, we’ll send you a list of those. Professional limited liabilities, Nolo’s guide to setting those up. And of course, I forgot to mention, you can set up an LLC or PLLC in every state except, of course, California. So, that one would have to be different in California. You can work as a sole proprietor in California, you do not have to set up any other entity to work in California.
So, if you do go in and say, I’m going to set up an LLC and I want to be taxed as an S Corp. Why would you do that? What’s your purpose of setting up a little bit more complicated entity and a much more complicated tax structure? Answer to that is, you’re trying to save money. The only reason you would do any of these, typically, is one, if it’s simple enough. Again, with the LLC you can set that up. But the whole basis of this is, how can I reduce my taxes? Can this help me to reduce my taxes? So, as you look at that and say, well, where am I going to be better off today on my taxes? Am I going to be better off as a sole proprietor or an LLC, taxed as a sole proprietor, or am I going to be better off as an LLC and choosing to be taxed as an S Corp. Typically that’s going to come down to, what can you get your taxable income to. Right now, because of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act in 2018, as a sole proprietor, when they lowered the corporate tax to 25% or 20% – I forget exactly which one it was – they wanted to make working as a sole proprietor somewhere on even with these new business tax rules and the new business tax brackets. So, they started what we call a qualified business income, also known as a 199A. What happens with that is you can actually take about 20% of your taxable income and you get to write that off of your taxes. So, if you’re single and you have a $300,000 income or revenue that’s coming in as a locum’s physician. If you’re putting $66,000 in solo 401k, paying for your disability, paying for your health insurance, paying for your life insurance, paying for your accounting and so forth, out of that you’re going to be probably under $200,000 when all that’s said and done, and also your portion of self-employment taxes that Ben’s going to talk about a little bit more later. So even at $300,000, you’re not going to get phased out of this, more than likely. And there are other things you can do to get your income down if it’s a little bit higher than that. So, you’re going to get that 20% off of your income on approximately the $182,000. That’s a forty-some thousand dollar deduction and you’re going to save in a 24% tax bracket. You’re going to save 24% of that. That ends up being, as I recall, I don’t remember the exact numbers on that, but that’s what you stand to save there.
An issue with this is it is part of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. and it is supposed to roll back out after 2025, so this could go away after two more years. So then, if you look at that and say, how do I compare that to what if I set up as an S Corp? What if I set up my LLC and choose to be taxed as an S Corp? The only thing you’re going to save if you set up as an S Corp is you can save on what’s called payroll taxes. When you’re paying both sides of social security and Medicare that all comes from your income now, you don’t have an employer to pay those taxes for you. Once you get past the Medicare base rate, which is, I think, and Ben correct me if I’m too far off, it’s 160 some thousand this year. Once you get past that, and anybody here is generally going to have a hard time convincing the IRS they’re making less than that if they’re working as a full-time physician. So, if you look at that and say everything above that social security base rate, I’m going to pay 2.9% on my Medicare taxes on top of that. So, if I go take my income and I say I’m going to split my income into two different pieces. I’m going to have my salary that I’m taking out, and then I’m going to have a business distribution that I’m going to take out. Whatever I take out as a business distribution is not subject to the Medicare taxes. So, I’m going to save basically 3% on my income that I separate from my reasonable salary. And again, the word reasonable here is, you have to pick a salary that the IRS says is reasonable. So, if you look at this and say, if I set up – and I’m using the QBI – the QBI is worth – as long as I’m not phased out on my income, which is 182 to 232 if I’m single, 364 to 464 if I’m married filing jointly. The QBI is worth about 5% to you on anything you’ve got within that range, so it’s worth about 5% on all of your income that’s within the range. If I set up and I try to save payroll taxes with an S Corp, I’m going to save just under 3% on everything above that range. Now, if you look at that and say, so for every 100,000 that I set as a business distribution as opposed to a reasonable salary, I’m going to save $3,000. I would say, if you’ve got $100,000, if you’re in the range of I’m phased out of the single, I can’t get my income below the $232,000. I’m making $250,000 to $300,000; if I take $100,000 of that and call that a distribution as opposed to salary one, I need to justify that with the IRS if they ever come knocking out my door, and it’s going to save me about $3,000. You’re going to spend every bit of $3,000 setting up your LLC, you’re getting taxed in S Corp and paying for your annual S Corp filing that goes along with your personal taxes. So, your first $100,000, I’m going to say you’re going to lose most of that to fees so unless you’re well above $400,000, I don’t think at this point in time, especially since you’ve got such a good deduction on the QBI and so forth, and taxed as a sole proprietor, it generally does not make sense to set up to be taxed as an S Corp.
This is just another way of showing that just as you go up the range from simpler and the sole proprietorship, you do not need to incorporate. You generally don’t have to tell anybody you’ve done it. And again, you’re going to save self-employment tax. It’s got the largest potential QBI. LLC, Professional LLC, you do need to file with the state. LLC with an S Corp, you need to file with the state, and you need to tell the IRS what you’re doing. So again, it’s just much more complicated to set up as a PLLC or an LLC taxed as an S Corp.
Again, we’ll send you these out. There’s just a lot of different articles, White Coat Investor, and so forth on when does it make sense, how do you save taxes on the different entities. How much? There’s a lot of discussions as you can imagine out there on what is a reasonable salary. So, here’s just a couple of, here’s the IRS’s definition, how they look at it and so forth, and a couple of the articles that may be helpful to get you there and make you more comfortable with the choice you make. That’s it for what I’ve got on setting up your entity before you sign a contract. If there are any questions that we need to address first, we can do that, or we can jump right in and Ben can start talking about the benefits.
Ben: Yeah, let’s jump right in on the benefits, Chris, but we’ll take some questions at the end. We’ll definitely leave some time for that. So, Chris, if you want to unshare then I will share on my end here. Perfect. Thank you. Alright.
So, what we want to talk about now is setting up your benefits. So typically, as a W2 employee, you’re going to have, if you think about it, kind of three different categories of benefits. You’re going to have insurance that protects your income if something were to happen to you; that’s going to be disability and life insurance at the top. You’re going to have a second kind of insurance that’s going to protect you from any big expenses, kind of help you cost share those with an insurance company so you’re not having to deal with those all by yourself; that’s kind of the health insurance and malpractice as a physician. And then thirdly, we’re going to go through setting up your retirement plans. Chris mentioned the sole 401k a little bit. Obviously as a self-employed physician, as a locum physician, you’re not going to have any 401k or 403b or anything like that through your employer so that’s something you can set up, and that actually lets you put in more money than the typical physician so we’ll get into that as well.
So, jumping into these one by one, starting with disability. Really, there’s five companies that you want to look for. Berkshire Hathaway owns Guardians so we kind of lump them together, and then Emeritus, Standard, Ohio National, and Principal. These are the five that have what’s called own occupation. So, what that means is if something were to happen to you, and you did not have own occupation coverage, they could limit your benefits and force you to work for a job that you’re qualified for but it’s really not your specialty, it’s not what you’ve trained for all these years as a physician. So, to really get that fully covered based on what you can do to the fullest of your abilities and your occupation as a physician, you want to make sure you have one of these few companies. Typically, we point people towards an independent agent who’s going to evaluate between these and not just sell one of them, but will sell any of these five depending on what’s most appropriate for you. So, definitely look out for what provider you choose. Read the contract; these things do get fairly complicated. This is something if you don’t have already, you can actually set this up now even before you start working as a locums physician, if you’re not doing that yet, and start that private policy up. If you have group coverage now, you could probably increase that once that drops off and you have more opportunity to add that disability income.
Jumping into life insurance, kind of unlike disability – disability is something we feel that every physician should have just in case something were to happen to you to replace that income for you for the rest of your life. Life insurance is just the opposite, right? It’s for someone else. So, you need to ask yourself, is there someone else in my life, children, spouse, being the most common examples, but could be someone else who’s depending on you, who, if you were to die would need that income to be replaced and some type of benefit. So, typically, I would recommend that you look at a private policy. When you do look at those there’s two broad types, term versus permanent policies. Generally, term is going to be the cheaper one. That’s typically what we’re going to recommend. That means just like it sounds like, you’ve got a certain term, maybe 10, 20, or 30 years, that your policy will pay benefits if you die in that timeframe. And if you live beyond that timeframe you don’t get anything. Because of that, they tend to be very affordable. You can get a lot of coverage for typically only a few 100 or a couple of $1,000. A permanent policy, typically, that’s what you’re going to see with maybe a whole life, universal life something that’s marketed as kind of a hybrid investment solution as well as an insurance policy. We typically steer people away from that. It is a lot more expensive and you’re not going to see the type of investment returns that you might see if you just invested in a low cost stock market type funds.
And that kind of leads to how much do you need? That really depends on your situation. We like to use a spreadsheet for this; there’s a lot of different ways you can think about it, but just think about who’s going to need your income replaced if you were to pass away, and what do they need? Is there a mortgage that needs to be paid off? If you do have student loans, those might be discharged if you pass away. Anything else that might factor into that conversation, and just having that with anyone else that might be involved, your spouse, your significant other, your kids, anyone else that might be in that conversation.
So that kind of gets into the second category I mentioned. What do you do if you have a really big expense and it’s beyond your typical emergency fund, something you might cover out of pocket? So, one of those is going to be health insurance, right? Obviously, you know, like none of us do, how bad things can get and what could happen to you, and how expensive that could be. So, with not having health insurance through an employer, you’re going to have to come up with your own coverage for health insurance. Really, three different options. The Health Savings Account is another solution to help with this but you are going to be paying for a lot of this out of pocket. Actually, the marketplace, that’s healthcare.gov, some states are going to have a different website for that, so that again, does vary by state. New York and California, I think both have their own. There’s a professional organization potentially that you might be able to get health insurance through, that would potentially be a good option. I know there’s one for psychiatrists, but I don’t think every specialty has one. And then Cobra. So, if you’re just off of a job where you had health insurance, maybe you’re recently out of fellowship or a previous W2 job, you might be able to extend that coverage through Cobra for up to about a year and a half or so, but you will eventually need to replace that with something else if you stay locums long term. Health Savings Account, this is really, it’s not a different type of plan, it’s just a different opportunity to save you some money. If you are paying for a lot of these expenses out of pocket, certain types of plans in any of these categories might be what’s called high deductible plans. That means that you can actually save on your taxes by putting away money into a Health Savings Account, and that will allow you to at least get a tax benefit for those expenses if you have a lot of out of pocket for medical.
That kind of gets the other type of insurance for cost sharing. Obviously, big expenses, we don’t want to happen, but sometimes they do, malpractice insurance. Weatherby does offer this. What they offer is called a claims made policy. So, this is a policy, as it sounds like, if there is a claim that is made within the period of time that that policy is in force, the policy will pay out. That opposite side of that is occurrence base where those will provide coverage for anything that occurred while the policy was in effect. So, if you think about this, what happens if something happens when I’m no longer working for Weatherby and that’s when a claim is filed. That’s where they’re going to have a tail coverage. So, this is, I believe, optional with Weatherby that they’ll provide that. I think it’s even for the rest of your life. So, if you get that claims made policy, make sure you have that tail coverage as well, if you need it. The alternative, it’s not on this slide, but something called nose coverage. If you transition into a new job after you’re working Weatherby and locums, and they provide malpractice, they might have a nose coverage that covers what you did at Weatherby previously in lieu of that tail coverage so it’s on the front end instead of the back; that’s why it has that nose in the name.
So next, we want to dive into retirement plans. There’s a lot of controversy about this. You’ve probably seen a lot of different things on the internet. We just wanted to distill this down a little bit to what types of things you can set up as a locums physician. So, there’s a few pieces to this. Obviously, one piece is, how do you invest them once you get those set up? We’re not going to get into that piece as much but we do want to focus on the logistics of setting these up, on the tax consequences, and just how to think about these. So, first question you want to look at is, do I want to save on a pretax or a post-tax basis? And then what types of plans? There’s defined contribution plans and then there’s defined benefit plans or hybrid plans. So, we’ll kind of get into these. But first just want to throw this out there as quick definition of pre-tax and post-tax. Again, there’s a lot of different things on the internet out there that might define these differently but ultimately, what a pretax plan is, you contribute to that before you pay taxes. So that’s kind of like Chris was saying with some of the solo 401k, the HSA I mentioned. You are getting a deduction up front when you put that money in, and then you pay taxes down the road when you take it out. The opposite end of that would be a Roth or post tax contribution. So, for that type of contribution, like a Roth IRA would be the most common, you contribute after you pay taxes, there’s no deduction upfront, but then when that grows and you take that out of the account, it is tax free. So, you might wonder, we always get this question, which one is better? It really depends on your situation. And in particular, what are your tax rates now versus what are your tax rates going to be down the road in retirement? If your tax rates are higher today, that’s the left side of this here, you’re going to want to go more into the pretax side. Why? Because you’re going to get more of those tax savings now and then down the road you’ll pay a lower tax rate when you take that money out. But if the opposite is true, if your taxes are going to be higher in retirement, you’re going to want to prioritize Roth contributions as much as possible so that you pay those taxes when your rates are lower now, and then when you take that money out down the road, you don’t have any taxes. So, when you look at this it’s easy to oversimplify this just thinking about your marginal tax rate. What you want to think about is how much income you’re going to have in retirement. Depending on how aggressively you’re saving, you might have a lot of taxable income in retirement that you might need to reduce with some Roth contributions. Another thing you want to look at is, are there any other types of phase outs? Chris mentioned the QBI phase out for that qualified business income deduction. There’s other things like child tax credits and and income surtaxes, all types of other things you want to keep in mind that are all going to factor into what your tax is today. If you pump money into a pre-tax account, that might reduce a whole bunch of those all at once.
So going into the nuts and bolts of which types of accounts starting here with IRAs, so individual retirement accounts. Typically, people are thinking of IRAs or Roth IRAs. As a self-employed locums physician, you can actually do a few different types. The typical, you might think of conventional or traditional IRA, that is only going to be about 6,500 per year. Now it’s 7,000 going into next year, but not a whole lot of money. Simple IRAs, you can do more that is designed for self-employed. And then the SEP IRAs, you can do up to $66,000 per year. Now, that is limited to a percentage of your income so not everyone’s going to be able to do that much, but you can see, depending on the type of IRA you choose, you could put a lot of money into them. The problem is, as we kind of have here on the bottom, all of these are pre-tax IRAs; they’re all going to limit your ability to do something that’s called a Backdoor Roth IRA. Backdoor Roth IRA is just another way to get money into a Roth IRA by doing a conversion instead of a contribution to that Roth IRA. And so, the problem you’re going to run into here if you do any of these traditional IRAs as a contribution, as a savings option, when you go to convert that to Roth when you do a backdoor strategy, the IRS is going to say, you’re converting part of every IRA you have, and they’re going to tax you accordingly. So, you’re not going to get a tax free back to Roth IRA unless you do something else other than these different types of IRAs for your main savings plan.
That kind of gets you to what Chris was mentioning earlier, the solo 401k. We do recommend that just about everyone opens one of these. As long as you have any self-employment income you can open and fund a solo 401k. You are going to need an EIN, that tax ID number that Chris mentioned, and you can do up to $66,000 into this just like you could with the best version on the previous slide, that SEP IRA. The nice thing about these, it’s a combination of two types of contributions, so you are both an employee and an employer and that means you can actually make not only that SEP IRA contribution percentage, which is about 20%, you can also contribute up to about $23,000 as an employee. They’re all part of that same limit, but it allows you to maximize this, even if you have a slightly lower income level. The downside of this, it is kind of a pain. There’s not really an easy way to do it because any custodian you set this up with they’re going to want to make sure that you distinguish and you tell them what’s an employee, what’s an employer contribution so they can put it on the statements correctly. Only one we don’t recommend typically, for this, is Vanguard. We love Vanguard, they have a lot of great funds, but they have restrictions around what types of other accounts you can roll into a 401k. If you have an old 403b, an old IRA, something like that, you might want to put all these into your solo 401k. That’s another great use for those. And so, that’s probably where you’re going to want to look at something like Fidelity, Schwab; there’s a lot of different custodians where you can set these up, and those are not going to interfere with the Backdoor Roth IRA as we were just talking about. This other type of plan is not something that’s going to be useful for everyone, but a cash balance plan. This is another type of pretax savings option. It is more expensive so typically; it’s only going to make sense when you have enough income that it’s going to make sense to set that up and front those costs. A little bit similar to what Chris was talking about with the S Corporation. You might have some savings that you can get on the tax side, but you’ve also got some costs, some additional administrative costs to hire administrators and make this plan really work. And this does have a guaranteed rate of return. Really what it is, is the plan will force you to choose different types of bonds that perform a certain way, and they will tell you how much you can contribute to that plan in order to maintain those returns of the bonds. So, it’s not really an investment decision, it’s more of a tax and long term planning and savings decision if your income is at the level where that cost makes sense for you.
I wanted to give you kind of a quick summary. We design these for everyone just to show you what priority it makes the most sense to save depending on your situation. This is a very generic version so definitely feel free to take this, adapt it as you need to for your situation, and see what makes sense. First thing, before you think about saving too much else, you do want to think about any high interest debt to pay off here. You might think, well, what amounts are high interest? Typically, we’re looking at above 6% here. Credit cards, personal loans would be the main example. Mortgages sometimes are going to be over 6%. Those are there longer term so you can refinance them down the road. Sometimes student loans are going to fit into this just depending on your situation. But really, anything that’s going to eat into any returns you could get if you were to save, you might want to focus on paying down that debt instead. From there we look at prioritizing the tax savings as well as the lower cost plans so sole 401k is going to make a lot of sense as we mentioned. A cash balance plan might make sense depending on your income. That Backdoor Roth IRA, that’s a great way to make sure you get some on the Roth bucket, you don’t end up with everything in pretax. And then from there, maybe looking at taxable investments, lower interest debt, things like that. Now, if you are lucky enough to have a part time W2 job, maybe some of the year as well; that would give you even more opportunities. You’ll want to look carefully at how do these contribution limits fit together? You might be able to do some into a solo 401k, some into a 403b or a 457, if you have those other options. It’s just going to depend on your situation.
Quickly jumping into the tax this year, this is a bit that gets a bit more complicated. On the Federal side you’ve got the Social Security and Medicare taxes. So, this is the payroll taxes Chris was mentioning. Social security is 12.4%. When you’re an employee you pay half of that, your employer pays half, but when you’re self-employed you pay both sides, so this is a pretty hefty percent. Good news is only up to about $160,000 so anything above that is only going to be subject to Medicare, and then possibly additional Medicare at those higher income levels. Biggest problem we see people run into on the tax front is there’s no withholding taken out of your income so you really need to figure out how do I make these estimated tax payments. Typically, they’re going to be quarterly. You’ve got the months here, they’re typically due on the fifteenth. Just make sure you get those in whether you pay them by check or pay them online. And you can estimate your income factor in these payroll or self-employment taxes and make sure you’re covering all those basis throughout the year so you don’t come up with a surprise tax bill and a penalty at the end of the year. That’s the Federal side, state and local is going to be fairly similar without that social security and Medicare side. This is going to vary a lot by your state and city, depending on where you live and where you work. Not every state and city are going to have taxes. If you do live and work in different states, you are going to have to think about both of those. Sometimes if you work in a neighboring state that’s just right next door they might waive their tax, and only your resident state is going to tax you. That would be called tax reciprocity at the state level. More commonly what happens is you’re going to be taxed by the state you work in, and then if you live in a different state they might give you a credit to help offset part of that. But you’re going to have to think about both or all the states if you work in a few different ones and pay those taxes quarterly as well.
So, that kind of wraps things up a bit. Quickly jumping through the final slides here. On the budget, we typically have people break it down into three categories. If this works for you, typically these percentages are a good rough guideline, and so we just have some amounts here. If you had a $300,000 salary, that would be about $105,000 taxes, $75,000 savings, and then that would leave about $120,000 for living expenses. So, if you’re starting a new role, especially as a locums physician, it’s easy to look at that salary, that income number and think of all the things that allows you to do. Do make sure you use that and you take advantage and enjoy that money, but also leave some space for taxes and savings in that bucket as well.
That kind of brings us to the end here. If you do still have any questions, we’re going to try and go into questions for I think about 10 or 15 minutes here and take as many as we can. Anything else we don’t get to; we do have a blog. We put out some things we hope are helpful. It’s at financialrounds.com so you can go on there, read anything else on there, and post in the comments with any other questions. Or you can send us an email, we’re just hello@personalchoicefinancial.com or feel free to give us a call as well. But for the end here, I’ll turn it over to Chris and Rob and we’ll take some questions.
Robert: Before I jump into some of the questions, I did want to again just thank everybody for sending some of the questions over. We tried to answer a few as we went so definitely look in the answer section on some of those, but did save some because I just think it makes a lot of sense to talk through some of these together. One of the things I did want to just reiterate before we jump into them is that whole kind of thinking of your cash flow, your attending salary, and how it factors in. It’s again, if you’ve ever heard on White Coat Investor where they say live like a resident. It’s because you can quickly lose sight of, okay, I have this new attending salary, I am making more money. Now I bought a new house, now I bought a new car. How am I going to afford all of the taxes that are due, saving for retirement all these other things? So, it is a kind of simplified way of saying, don’t forget about these other areas of your life that you do need to factor into the equation. So, thanks again, Ben, for jumping in on that.
So, jumping into some of the questions, Ben, I’ve got one to kind of lead off with you. First, it’s a tax question on the list of can we hire our family members to save taxes.
Ben: I love starting with the tax questions. The short answer is, yes, you absolutely can. There are a lot of benefits to doing that. Sometimes it allows them to set up a retirement plan, contribute to an IRA or a Roth IRA, or something like that. The big caveat there is they do need to be actually working for you in some business capacity. So as a locums physician, you might have to be looking at hiring them for helping you with your bookkeeping, possibly some type of administrative work. As long as they’re doing some type of substantial work that is really traced back to your business, yes, you absolutely can.
Robert: Perfect. We are getting a handful of questions regarding the LLC versus PLLC, setting them up in their state where they live compared to where they work. So, if you or Chris could kind of just give some quick advice on if they have additional questions on what type of entity to set up and what’s best for their practice, what would you typically recommend?
Ben: I’ll jump in quickly on this one. We are not experts, unfortunately, in every state’s LLC requirements so it’s definitely something you want to check with your state. Feel free to check with an attorney as well; they typically have a good idea of those things. But you’re not necessarily going to need – if you work in a few different states, you don’t need an LLC that’s different for each of those states. You just need to make sure that what you have is compliant with every one of them. So sometimes, like Chris was saying, you might need a PLLC, I think there’s a medical corporation as well version of that. Just make sure it’s compliant, it’s filed within those states as needed, but you still might only need one entity ultimately. Chris, anything you want to add there?
Chris: PLLC versus LLC is strictly what state are you in. It’s absolutely, if you’re a physician – and again, those Nolo guides and so forth do a very good job of, okay, you’re in North Carolina, it’s a PLLC. You’re in Ohio, it’s, whatever it is. There’s not a lot of difference between the two generally. The PLLCs do reference more often the licensing and so forth, and that’s where a lot of the difference is. Okay, if I’m in one state – we’ve done this with clients before – you want to generally pick your home state for setting up your LLC or your PLLC. Again, it’s one or the other; it’s not going to be a choice for you in whatever state that is, and then check the licensing requirements for the other states that you’re working in and make sure licensing wise and everything else, I’m okay with my LLC from this other state. But you should be able to use one LLC, whichever one that is, for all of your roles, except, of course, California. You can work as a sole proprietor in California, but you cannot work as an LLC or PLLC in California. You have to set up their entity, or again, just stay as a sole proprietor.
Robert: Another tax question from Kevin. Can health insurance premiums be paid pretax?
Ben: Yes, is the short answer. It’s called the self-employed health insurance deduction. The main requirement for that other than, of course, being self-employed is that you don’t have access to any other coverage through a W2 job at the same time. As long as that’s you, whether you get health insurance through Cobra, through the marketplace, through a professional association, anywhere you get insurance, you absolutely can write off and deduct your premiums, so make sure you track those for your tax preparation. Great question.
Robert: I got a good question from FR as well, and I do want to clarify this one just so it doesn’t look like we’re sitting here talking badly about Vanguard. But wanted us to clarify why we don’t recommend Vanguard for individual 401k.
Ben: Yeah, so it is worth comparing. If you’re looking at setting up a solo 401k, a lot of different providers have a free option, but they’re going to be restricted in different ways. So, one of the main limitations for Vanguard is that they do not allow you to roll in an old plan. If you have an old IRA or you have an old 401k, 403b, 457, some other type of retirement plan, most of the time you’re going to want to consolidate that into your new solo 401k just to make your life easier. Vanguard, unfortunately, does not allow that, so that’s just one restriction you’re going to run into. Otherwise, it’s a great plan; Vanguard funds are great. Even if you end up going to Fidelity or Schwab, I think you should not have many issues getting Vanguard funds there if that is important to you. So definitely nothing against Vanguard, just a restriction with their 401k offering specifically, that we wanted people to be aware of.
Robert: Yep, and it really is not just the ability to save money. One of the best uses of a solo 401k is almost like a catch-all account where you can roll in your old 401k’s or future old 401k’s, so we even have a lot of W2 physicians that if they do a little bit of 1099 work and it spits into their plan, we do recommend, let’s open up a solo 401k, let’s fund a little bit into it, just so it’s there for when they switch roles, leave jobs, they can kind of roll all their old plans right into that solo, and they don’t have 10 to 20 different retirement plans they got to track down when they’re getting ready to retire. So, it is just a great account to have for that, and that is definitely a limitation with Vanguard.
Robert: An anonymous question. [Audio cut out] who work a certain number of hours weekly to qualify for disability insurance?
Chris: We recommend working with Larry Keller. If you’ve ever been on White Coat, you’ll see him on there. He’s with a physician – I can’t remember the name of his company. But anyway, yes, generally right around 30 hours a week or less, you’re going to have a very hard time getting disability insurance because they don’t know what a partial disability is if you’re working less than 30 hours. So, if anything less than 30, it’s going to be very difficult to get disability. Now, if you’re working less than 30 hours in locums, but you’ve also got a W2 job, and as long as you’re working full time between both jobs, you can put them together and then look at total income and so forth. But if you’re working total less than 30 hours a week you’re going to have trouble getting disability.
Robert: Can you explain Backdoor Roths in more detail?
Ben: Yes, I kind of skirted by that a little bit. The main thing to watch out for, which is really what I was mentioning earlier, is not having any pre-tax IRA balances. But if you’re looking at doing it back to Roth, basically, the way you’re going to want to do it is you’re going to make an IRA contribution. That is not something you would deduct on your taxes so it’s an after tax IRA contribution. A little bit in between the pretax and the Roth, it’s just an IRA contribution you do not deduct. From there, you can convert that into a Roth IRA, and so then because you didn’t take a deduction upfront, that conversion is tax free and so, you’re effectively getting money into a Roth IRA in a little bit of a roundabout way with a contribution and then a conversion. Two steps, instead of just putting it in directly. Why would anyone do that? The main reason is Roth IRAs have an income phase out so if you’re above that income phase out, it’s about $200,000 if you file jointly and you’re married. I think it’s about $140,000 if you file single. If you file separately and you’re married, it’s only $10,000 so that’s a trap we see a lot of people run into. But if you’re above any of those phase outs, you’re not going to be able to put money into a Roth IRA directly, you are going to need to do this backdoor method and the catch there is not having any pre-tax IRA balances, or that is going to cause issues when you do that.
Robert: Perfect. For quarterly tax payments, do you recommend making state and city tax estimated payments the same way for federal?
Ben: Typically, I’m not sure what they have in mind with the same way. Typically for Federal, you have a few different options of just logistically how you pay them. There’s a nice website that the IRA has, surprisingly; you can mail them checks. With state and city, it’s really going to come down to that state or that city and their requirements. Typically for state, you can make them in a very similar process through a state website if you want to do them online. Cities, a lot of times you might have to mail in checks. Now, the other side of this is if the liability is small enough or you just have enough money right at tax filing, you want to take care of this ahead of time, you don’t necessarily have to make them quarterly. You have to make them at least quarterly but if you want to pay them all upfront as one payment in quarter one and just take care of the state or that city for the year, that’s totally fine. You just don’t want to pay it all on the back end or the IRS is going to say, what about those last three quarters? And then you owe a penalty.
Robert: Perfect. If you have both locums income and W2 income, do you recommend that employees contribute the maximum to their solo 401k, or also a combination of maybe the retirement plan that’s available through the W2 role. How do you balance that?
Ben: Yeah, this is where it’s going to get complicated, and just very much, you’re going to want to look at your plans and then coordinate the contribution rules that the IRS has. So, if the investment options are better in your work plans than your 401k, typically with a solo 401k you’re going to have a lot more investment flexibility so you might be able to get better options at a solo 401k. The other side of this though is there might be employer matches, things like that. You want to make sure you get on the employee side as a W2 employee and make sure you’re taking advantage of those. But you’re going to want to look at the rules and detail of how all these contributions are counted together. Remember a solo 401k, you’ve got employer and employee contributions. Sometimes you might be able to do your employee contributions through your W2 job through that 401k or that 403b, and then just make your employer contributions on the solo 401k and just don’t make employee solo 401k contributions if you’re maxing out that other plan. So, there’s different strategies like that. A lot of different rules around those limits to be aware of, but you absolutely can and often will want to coordinate them together.
Robert: So, we are coming up on time in a few minutes so I did want to grab, and we’ll try to answer everything we can, and definitely work with you, Madison, on any questions we can answer after. But there’s a few people that were asking if we can just go over QBI again, how it’s used, what it means, and so forth.
Ben: I know Chris mentioned a bit about this. Chris, did you want to go into it more or do you want me to go into it more?
Chris: No, I figure I kind of gave my version. It might help to give your version. It’ll be different from mine.
Ben: Sure. Yeah, so as Chris was mentioning, there was a law a few years back that established this new deduction that if you have business income, so if you’re a locums physician, you’ll get a 1099, you’re considered self-employed, that is business income, you can deduct up to 20% of that if you qualify. So, depending on how high your income is in your specialty and with that gig that you have as a locums physician, you might not qualify. Chris had those income phase out limits on the previous slide. But if you do qualify, you want to make sure you can get the most of that. It is up to that 20% deduction so that is a deduction that what that means is up to 20% of your income, at the most, you could not have to pay taxes on. It doesn’t mean you’re going to save 20% in taxes, it means you’re going to save 20% of your income at your tax rate. Let’s say you’re in the 24% tax bracket. That’s going to be about a 4 and a half percent tax savings for that deduction. And the problem with setting up an S Corporation or an LLC that you filed at S election, is that not all of your income will be eligible anymore. If you’re a sole proprietor, up to all of your income could be eligible for that as business income. If you’re an S Corporation, then part of your income is wages as an employee. Only half of that, maybe, is actually going to be income eligible as business income for that QBI deduction. So, it really is something you want to keep in mind. Look at your income, and where those phase outs are, and if you are going to be doing a sole proprietorship, that’s really your best shot and maximizing that. At least while it’s here until 2026 is when it might go away. If you do an S Corporation, just be aware, you might lose some or all of that deduction.
Robert: Will Weatherby share all of our slides after the presentation?
Madison Wood: Absolutely. Yes. You guys will all be receiving an email with the recording of this webinar which will include the slides. There will be a landing page where we can add additional resources as well. And so, if Personal Choice Financial would like to finish any of these questions after the show, we’ll be sure to post them there. If anybody feels like they haven’t had their questions answered, there will be an opportunity to see those questions answered potentially.
Chris: Some of these questions are very long answers.
Robert: Madison, do we still have some more time to knock out maybe a couple more or what do you think’s best?
Madison Wood: Absolutely. You guys are free to continue answering questions as long as you’d like, maybe an additional 5 or 10 minutes if you guys have the time. If not, we can wrap up. I know some people are already dropping off, but looks like we still have 102 participants.
Ben: Let’s take three more questions.
Robert: I wanted to – there’s a few of them that definitely –
Chris: I can grab one. There’s one from FR again. It says, can you have more than one individual 401k account linked to the same EIN number at two different brokerages. You absolutely can, but it’s the contribution limits and so forth. You can’t contribute above and beyond the $22,500 and the $66,000 total to all of your 401k’s combined. But you can have as many accounts as you want in as many places as you want.
Robert: If your 1099 income is sufficient to fully fund the $66,000 to your solo 401k is that above and beyond a Roth or other tax advantaged investment accounts or is $66,000 the total cap for all combined accounts?
Ben: Yeah, I’ll take that one. The Roth, I’m not sure which type of Roth they mean. Probably they’re thinking of a Roth IRA. Yes, you absolutely can do a Backdoor Roth IRA, or a direct Roth IRA if you qualify in addition to that $66,000. Now, the other side of that is, you can actually do a Roth 401k as well for part of that, depending on this is something that is going to vary between 401k provider on the solo front, but some of them will allow you to do that employee portion, that $23,000 as a Roth 401k in addition to your Roth IRA that you might be able to do. And then you could do up to the $66,000 just on the 401k side, about another $44,000 there with pretax, but not with Roth for that employer contribution.
Robert: Great. So, there were a few questions, too, on just where to connect with and maybe seek out advice along the way. I just sent a response but I did want to reiterate again, financial rounds.com is our website. We try to put out a lot of blog posts and content just to give as much advice as possible. And our phone number and email is right on the site as well if you do have any questions and want to reach out to us. White Coat Investor is also a great resource. Right on their site they have a tab that has recommended, and they list out recommended tax services. That is physician specific, recommended financial advisors that are physicians specific. And again, with the complexities of locum tenens you do want someone who specializes in working with physicians. Just great resources to reach out to and connect with people on a legal, accounting, advice, personal finance, anything you might have along the way.
Ben: I think that’s a good one to end on. Thanks for doing that one at the end, Rob.
Robert: Well, thank you all. I just want to take a second and thank everybody again for the time today. We’ll try to capture as many questions as we can and sent over some answers to Madison along the way. But again, thank you all for being here and giving us the time to chat with you.
Madison Wood: Thank you so much everyone from Personal Choice Financial and everyone who attended today. Have a great evening.
