ABOUT THE AUTHOR ADVISORY BOARD

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "ABOUT THE AUTHOR ADVISORY BOARD"

Beatrix Young
5 years ago
Views:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR onald Jay Korn is a New York-based financial writer with par- expertise in taxes, investments, real estate, financial plan- Dticular ning, retirement planning, estate planning, life

3 ABOUT THE AUTHOR onald Jay Korn is a New York-based financial writer with par- expertise in taxes, investments, real estate, financial plan- Dticular ning, retirement planning, estate planning, life and health insurance. He has authored seven books on financial topics and is a regular contributor to Financial Planning, Black Enterprise, Tax Hotline and Bottom Line/Personal. He is a former Contributing Editor of Physicians Financial News. ADVISORY BOARD Joel Blau, CFP, President, MEDIQUS Asset Advisors, Chicago, Ill. David Foster CPA, CFP, Foster & Motley, Cincinnati, Ohio Seymour Goldberg, JD, CPA, Goldberg & Goldberg, Melville, N.Y. Cheryl R. Holland, CFP, President, Abacus Planning Group, Columbia, S.C. Ed Slott, CPA, E. Slott & Company, Rockville Centre, N.Y. EDITOR Noreen Perrotta DESIGN DIRECTOR Gary DeFazio ART/PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Dushan G. Lukic PUBLISHER Jeannette Brandofino MARKETING DIRECTOR Linda Zani Thomas Doctor s Digest (ISSN ), May/June 2005, Volume 1, Number 3. Published bimonthly by Brandofino Communications, LLC, 12 Spruce Park, Syosset, NY For general subscription information & paid subscriptions circulation@doctorsdigest.net. Doctor s Digest is available on a paid subscription basis at the following annual rate: $54 (Foreign $108). Single copy price: $12. To order send check or money order payment to: Doctor's Digest, 12 Spruce Park, Syosset, NY 11791, Attn: Circulation Department (be sure to indicate title of issue, shipping address and phone number). Visit our Website at For Advertising Sales & Editorial call or write sales@doctorsdigest.net or editorial@doctorsdigest.net. Postage paid at Mechanicsburg, PA Copyright 2005 and published by Brandofino Communications, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information-retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher. DOCTOR S DIGEST and the split diagonal, two toned publication cover are trademarks of Brandofino Communications, LLC. B R A N D O F I N O C O M M U N I C A T I O N S L L C

Proofing Your Practice, at a March 31st conference on patient safety. Dr.

4 Introduction DWe are overwhelmed with the response we re getting from you, our readers, to the first two issues of Doctor s Digest. Dr. Ranjit Singh, associate director of the Patient Safety Research Center at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, State University of New York at Buffalo, featured our first edition, Error Proofing Your Practice, at a March 31st conference on patient safety. Dr. Lucian Leape of Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the IOM panel that produced the seminal 1999 Institute of Medicine study on medical errors, called Error Proofing Your Practice a tour de force and said it captured the important issues in patient safety in a way that will be accessible to practicing physicians. In our continuing efforts to give you the information you need, we surveyed practicing physicians on their responses to Error Proofing Your Practice. We were gratified to learn that 79% had an overall favorable impression of Doctor s Digest; 76% considered it credible; 68% said it was relevant, and 51% said it provided information that was new to them. We thank all of you who have helped us so far and pledge to continue to seek your input as we move forward in our mission to bring you comprehensive in-depth solutions to your practice management problems. This issue of Doctor s Digest takes on the number one topic identified by physicians in our early research as being high priority: retirement planning. Shrewd physicians understand that in order to maintain their lifestyles into retirement, they must begin accumulating funds decades before they intend to stop working. Sponsoring a retirement program in a medical practice not only gives physicians a tax-efficient vehicle for saving, it provides a valued fringe benefit to staff members that helps attract and retain the best employees. This edition of Doctor s Digest helps physicians determine which type of retirement plan is best for their individual circumstances. Finally, we invite you to share your thoughts with your colleagues on practice management issues through Doctor s Dialog, a message board provided by Doctor s Digest to facilitate discussion among physicians. Log on to and click on Doctor s Dialog. You can ask colleagues for advice, share your tips or simply vent Doctor s Dialog is your place. ear Doctor: Jeannette Brandofino Publisher publisher@doctorsdigest.net

5 S ponsoring a qualified retirement plan in your medical practice offers many benefits to physicians, their practices and employees. For the doctor, a retirement plan offers a tax shelter for current income and a tax-advantaged vehicle for accumulating the vast sums that will be required to finance an active and fulfilling retirement. For the practice, a retirement program helps attract and retain the qualified people needed to provide highquality care to patients. And employees also will enjoy tax advantages while working toward their long-term savings goals. This edition of Doctor s Digest offers detailed explanations of the various types of retirement plans. The right one for your practice will depend on several factors, such as the number of employees, the ages of the physicians and the staff, the profitability of the practice and how much you need to save. Once you decide on the type of plan to sponsor, you ll need to determine how to invest the funds, bearing in mind the fiduciary obligation you have to your employees. You also need to know how to manage your own assets, should you decide to roll them over into an IRA. Finally, there s the question of succession who should take over your practice once you cease working. Doctor's Digest provides information and advice on all these aspects of retirement planning. Author Donald Jay Korn interviewed numerous professionals in the fields of law, accounting and financial planning. He drew on the expertise of the advisory board: Joel Blau, CFP, president of MEDIQUS Asset Advisors, a leading financial adviser to the medical community; David Foster, CPA, CFP, an expert in retirement plan distributions; Seymour Goldberg, JD, CPA, a former IRS agent who specializes in advising clients on IRAs and qualified retirement plans; Cheryl R. Holland, CFP, a fee-only financial planner who's been named among the top financial advisers by Worth magazine and Medical Economics, and Ed Slott, CPA, a nationally recognized tax, estate planning and IRA expert. We hope this edition of Doctor s Digest helps answer your questions on retirement planning. Let us know what you think by logging on to and clicking on Feedback. Your input is important to us.

6 Contents Retirement Planning Chapter 1 Planning Ahead Key to Secure Retirement 8 Chapter 2 Picking the Right Plan for Your Practice 28 Chapter 3 Investing for Yourself and Your Employees 58 Chapter 4 Making the Most of IRA Rollovers 84 Chapter 5 Exit Strategies: Planning for Practice Succession 110 Resources For More Information 125

B R A N D O F I N O C O M M U N I C A T I O N S I N C.

B R A N D O F I N O C O M M U N I C A T I O N S I N C. ABOUT THE AUTHOR onald Jay Korn is a New York-based financial writer with par- expertise in investments, real estate, financial planning, Dticular taxes and insurance. He has authored seven books on financial