Fundamental Finances

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Stacks on stacks! You make money, now what will your money make?

In this post I interview Dr. Zachary Stroud, MD, MBA to get some great insights into how to make our money work for us. Zach is extremely passionate about finances/economics and equally passionate on how to make it simple and understandable. (*economics is basically just people interacting, and as a Psychiatrist, he knows people). He also operates TheInvestmentMD.com with tons of free information, no conflict of interest selling/soliciting, just pure helpful honest content. The guy really brings value to the financial conversation. Let’s Begin…

(Me:) Zach, tell me a bit about why you like economics so much?

(Zach): I would say that I prefer finance to economics. I enjoy understanding money and how the benefits of my hard work in medicine can be utilized to my advantage through investing. Economics is interesting because people as a group can behave just as irrationally as an individual. This can create distortions in prices in the investment world. It requires a certain bit of self-reflection when you invest because you have to know where your biases and weaknesses are. I highly recommend Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which talks about some of these biases.

Warren Buffett has stated in the past that you don’t need to be all that smart in terms of investing, you just need to be able to remain calm and keep emotions from ruining investment decisions. As an investor and as a psychiatrist, I wholeheartedly agree with this idea.

Let’s discuss the 3 major concepts we should think about (can be conceptual or pragmatic) when dealing with our investments:

Population Health

Having just driven up to Maine (half the US eastern seaboard) I was exposed to the population at large. While people-watching  at rest stops, traffic jams and city streets, I started thinking about population health and the APTA’s “transforming society” aims.

My first reaction was “Ha, yeah right.” My second reaction was “Hahaha, yeah right.” Now, it’s not that we cannot treat any and all of these individuals within our scope in all movement, pain and return-to-QOL aspects, we certainly can. But “transforming society” is not as simple as treating patients.

Ethics Principle 2D

Code of Ethics: 2D. Physical therapists shall collaborate with patients/clients to empower them in decisions about their health care.

Empower: To give power or authority to; to enable or permit.

It comes down to this quite often. A patient tells me that they will need [Surgery, Meds, Injections] because a medical authority told them they need [Surgery, Meds, Injections]. Caveat: this is true sometimes, in my opinion.

Once this phrase is uttered by a patient an immediate response is made that includes describing patient rights.