I'd like to take advantage of the collective acumen of on Freelance MD to discuss retirement strategies; stocks, real-estate, trusts... Anyone want to share their own thoughts?

Douglass:

Thanks for stopping by and starting a thread. Hope you enjoy the resources on this site.

Your question is a very broad one, but I'll give you some random thoughts:

1. While you always hear the idea to start investing early, many physicians I've met don't listen to that advice--even ones who make $500k+ in income. It turns out that saving is FAR MORE important than investment returns. I'll explain this in future posts.

2. Invest in things you know and skip the rest. If you don't understand something, don't invest in it. A great example of this is physicians who invest in real estate and other "side businesses" without really having expertise in that area. In other words if you're going to invest your hard earned money, you better know what you're doing. I know many physicians who've been burned by direct real estate investing because they thought of it as a "side" business without really understanding it. I admit that I don't know much about direct real estate investing and so I never invested in it.

3. Most individual investors suffer from overconfidence--including physicians. After all if we got in to medical school and finished residency, we can certainly pick the winning stocks right? Not so fast. The competition for finding the winning stocks is incredibly intense, far more competitive than getting accepted into medical school. Instead of trying to beat the market, own the market.

Those are just some random thoughts to get started. Hope to have some helpful posts to you and the rest of the community. Thanks.

Another important key is to avoid insurance agents who masquerade as advisors. The number of docs who have been suckered into insurance as an investment is amazing.