Consider forks in the road on the way to retirement
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
“I wanted to have more time to play and reflect, but I find retirement more stressful than having a nice, steady job because I have to make decisions about where I want to be.”
– Walter Cronkite
“Retirement at 65 is ridiculous. When I was 65, I still had pimples.”
– George Burns
The older I get — keep in mind, I have been writing for OSN for more than 35 years — the more old eye surgeons, really old eye surgeons and retired eye surgeons I have gotten to know. The bulge of boomer-aged patients we now serve is mirrored in the bulge of boomer-aged ophthalmologists.
As any reader older than 60 years knows, it is common to say, “I’m retiring at 65 (or whenever),” and to then not stick to the plan. Lots of things push retirement timing forward and backward:
- The most prominent recent influence, of course, has been the pandemic. Many surgeons with underlying medical conditions or who were within a couple of years of retirement in 2020 accelerated their retirement. Others who had planned to retire around the time the pandemic hit decided to delay their retirement — either they lost a selling opportunity to COVID-19, or they figured, “Why retire? I can’t start traveling anytime soon.”
- The bloom of private equity (PE) firms, competing with one other, is bidding practice values high enough that more peri-retirement docs are taking the leap and selling out now in case the PE market softens.
- Too few surgeons in the last years of their careers have a proper, professionally informed understanding of their personal finances and just where their financial finish line lies. There are so many variables to consider: What are our current and future savings? How will our investments do? What will our living costs be in retirement? And that great imponderable, how long will we live? Being cautious, the majority of eye surgeons do not feel comfortable retiring until they have passed their financial finish line by a healthy margin. So, they more often delay than accelerate retirement.
Beyond a certain age, it is extremely common to change your feelings about retirement on a dime. Your close friend dies (retire now — life is short!). You take a boring vacation (retire later — if this is what retirement is like, forget it!).
I have learned that when a 62-year-old client says he wants to, “Work hard and then retire at 68,” it is often code for, “I’m not quitting until I’m 73.”
That last sentence probably feels a little familiar if you are in your 60s. And it probably feels kind of weird if you are in your 30s. (Don’t worry, your turn is coming.)
Although we focus in this column and in our consulting work on the business of ophthalmology, client conversations are often just as personal as they are commercial. It helps to think of the road to retirement as something that can be broken down to a series of forks in that same road. Here are six common forks to be navigated. As you read through this list, consider these questions, especially if you are in a 10-year or shorter countdown to retirement:
- Which of these forks have you already made a decision on? Is your decision firm?
- Are you stuck or equivocal about any of these forks in the road on the way to retirement?
- Are you skipping over any of these forks because they are too complex or scary?
Retirement questions to consider
1. “What professional goals still remain incomplete, and how do these compare to the personal goals remaining in my life?” Writing and rewriting a bucket list, from the early years in one’s career, is a success habit of the most accomplished surgeons I know. By the time you hit 60-something, chances are your professional goals are largely met, while your personal goals are a bit neglected. Once you reach an epiphany like this, it becomes easier to start pouring more of your remaining hours into your personal life. Of course, for many dedicated providers, their practice life is the most satisfying part of their personal life. If that describes you, don’t start collecting travel brochures, even if that is what every other senior doctor around you is doing. As my dearly departed mentor Dr. Herve Byron used to say, when he was still practicing actively in his late 70s, “We should retire the word ‘retirement.’” Set retirement plans aside and rededicate yourself to your chief passion.
2. “Should I retire early, late or ‘on time’ (whatever ‘on time’ means)?” For some people, this is a natural question to ask. Starting somewhere in their 50s they try on various retirement ages for size. When their investments are up, early retirement is feasible. After divorce, retirement is pushed back again. For others, little thought is given to a specific retirement age. Every year in succession is simply unpacked and enjoyed — until it is not.
3. “Should I work full time and continue surgery until the very end, or taper the days and cases I take on?” I can report that the happiest peri-emeritus clients seem to be those who taper off of doctoring the way a patient is tapered off of a drug regimen. They shift from 5 days to 4 and then 3 over the course of a few years. They shift from Dr. Bold in the operating room to Dr. Cautious in the same time frame. What ends up being best for you may be surprising or completely in keeping with your personality. The most assertive surgeons often like going all-out until the end.
4. “What will it take to be financially prepared for retirement?” Although you would think this is the easiest part of retirement planning, it can be deceptively difficult. Although the basic financial concepts are simple, and all surgeons are way smart, the chief difficulty is not the math, but the emotions surrounding, “How much is enough?” Well before you retire, it is critical to engage your CPA or a qualified fee-based financial planner (not just the 29-year-old Fidelity sales rep who has a personal net worth under $10,000). Although your net worth and funds under management are critical metrics, it is more important to know yourself well enough to gauge your risk tolerance and your resilience in the event of the economic surprises that are looming larger for all of us. And remember that you are probably not just navigating the numbers of retirement by yourself, but likely with a spouse or partner. You will know your personal financial planner is doing a great job when your meetings feel a little bit like couples counseling.
5. “Am I emotionally prepared for retirement?” I love reconnecting with retired former clients. They teach the best lessons about what it is like to do something as intense and rewarding as eye care for 30-plus years and then stop, often cold. About one-third of these retired surgeons are a bit melancholy. They miss the rich social connections and daily validations of their former life. Based on their reports, they were not terribly introspective about retirement before they hung things up; they just quit one day and only then started to figure things out. Happily, about two-thirds of the retired ophthalmologists I have stayed in touch with are content with how and when they left the profession. They feel that way, it seems, in direct proportion to how many years before retirement they started dreaming and planning for the shift.
6. “Do the personal and professional sides of my life all line up?” The broad subject here is succession planning. By the time you leave practice, you (or the colleagues who are staying on after you are gone) have to decide what happens to your patients. In larger group practices, there is little for you to do personally. Partners will decide to hire a replacement doc or divide up your patient base. Administrative staff will shuffle the needed resources. Lawyers will finalize the paperwork. You will have to be more hands-on if you work in a smaller practice. As a soloist, depending on your market, you will have to find a buyer, or you may reach the difficult conclusion that there is no buyer and you will simply close up shop. This is something that you should be able to anticipate years in advance of your retirement and plan for accordingly.
Make wise choices
Ophthalmology is a mostly geriatric profession. You are immersed every clinic day in the stories of your senior patients who will tell you — if you give them the time — how to make wiser choices on the way to your own retirement. Chiefly, you will learn the importance of retiring to something specific (travel, hobbies, volunteer work, new language skills, etc), not just retiring from ophthalmology.
- For more information:
- John B. Pinto is the author of several books on ophthalmic practice management, including John Pinto’s Little Green Book of Ophthalmology: Strategies, Tips, and Pearls to Help You Grow and Manage a Practice of Distinction, UP: Taking Ophthalmic Administrators and Their Management Teams to the Next Level of Skill, Performance, and Career Satisfaction (with Corinne Wohl), Simple: The Inner Game of Ophthalmic Practice Success, and Ophthalmic Leadership: A Practical Guide for Physicians, Administrators, and Teams. Available now for purchase at slackbooks.com. Receive 20% off with promo code PINTO20. He can be reached at 619-223-2233; email: pintoinc@aol.com; website: www.pintoinc.com.
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts