Week 1 - Welcome to Personal Financial Success!
by drip.vet | Sep 9, 2022 | Personal Financial Success | 5 comments
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Introduction to Personal Financial Success
The theme of this course is to help you develop a plan and path for your finances and give you the necessary skills to begin the journey of accomplishing your goals. And that is exactly the point, Personal Financial Success is here for you, your success and your wellness.
Many veterinarians are struggling with debt, anxiety, and depression. Many report unhappiness with their lives and careers. Some veterinarians have struggled with depression, and some have succumbed.
This bothers us deeply, and this call for help is what inspired drip.vet to create this course. We want to help. We know that at least in part, financial distress is an issue that leads to unhappiness, anxiety, and depression.
The information needed for veterinarians to lead happy and healthy lives exists. We just need to disseminate it in a useful and easy-to-digest way. Veterinarians that are well, both financially and professionally, are out there, we need to learn from them.
This course allows veterinarians that have gone on before you and learned the difficult lessons to guide you through the tough spots. Mostly, we want to show you that a great career and a well-balanced life is very possible with a little planning and work. Many veterinarians care about you and your well-being. We are all here for you.
Don’t get us wrong, financial success is not about making lots of money, driving luxury cars or living in a mansion. Financial wellness and true financial success are about comfort, control, and peace of mind. It’s about planning and controlling student debt. It’s about having the knowledge to make wise financial decisions. It’s about controlling your finances and not letting them control you!
We’re thrilled to guide you down the path to financial wellness. This is a journey and this mindset cannot be learned in a weekend or an hour long seminar. Your own personal financial success is a step-by-step process, but one that we’ll make as easy and comfortable as possible, so you don’t have to blaze your own trail. It’s well worth the effort.
What is drip teaching methodology?
You may wonder, why can’t we just get this over with in a few class sessions? Why do we have to spread this material out? These are valid questions and there are solid answers.
We believe in coming right down the middle and telling you exactly what is happening in this course. Drip Teaching and Learning Methodology is very effective at conveying complex materials without getting “lost in the weeds.” Also, it’s good for presenting materials that aren’t particularly interesting to the learner. In this case, we are guessing that financial skills aren’t exactly why you went to veterinary school. However, we and many people in the profession know that a better job has to be done to help veterinarians manage their finances, particularly their educational debt. This is our attempt to help you easily learn about financial topics and gain healthy habits around your financial wellness.
Drip teaching is about delivering small pieces of information consistently and repetitively. That’s where we got our name, drip.vet, and our main focus is making learning easier. We have tried to make the materials simple to understand, use real-life relevant stories and provide a seamless experience with email distribution. We encourage you to start the habit of viewing the materials when they are sent, to best use drip learning methodology to your advantage. At any time you can go back to learn about a topic you are particularly interested in.
Why is your financial success and wellness important?
You may have heard that many veterinarians are facing a serious debt crisis. You also may have heard that many veterinarians are unhappy with their chosen profession, in terms of their job and career satisfaction, finances, compassion fatigue and overall health and well being.
Studies show that 24.5% of male and 36.7% of female veterinarians have experienced depressive episodes since graduation, which is approximately 1.5 times the prevalence in U.S. adults. While many veterinarians have left the profession; others have died by suicide.
Recent veterinary graduates report delaying relationships and starting a family, as well as vacations, travel and recreation, because of the uncertainty of their financial future and significant amount of debt.
These are the stark facts that we are dealing with, and quite honestly, they have motivated us to strive to do something about this problem. We want you to be happy and satisfied with the career decision that you have made.
Remember, there are many veterinarians that are extremely successful - in life, in their career and in their finances. Many veterinarians are thankful to be members of this profession. What is the difference that separates these divergent groups within our profession?
We see no underlying correlation in their grades, skill level in practice, career path choice, gender, geographic region or any other similar factors. In my experience dealing with many veterinarians of all backgrounds and ages, it is their plan that makes all the difference in the world. Veterinarians that create a plan, both financially and for their career path, tend to feel more in control of their destiny and finances.
In this course, we don’t define success as every veterinarian driving a luxury car and living in a mansion. Success is having a plan, being in control of your financial future and being comfortable as well. Success is understanding your financial picture and reducing the anxiety related to it. People with a financial plan are less stressed and more happy. A plan determines your financial attitude.
Success is not letting debt control your life. This can be achieved if you start early, create a plan and work towards your goals.
A Look at the Why
In life, in school courses, during surgeries, etc. it’s wise to pause and ask yourself, “Why”? Why am I doing this? What are my reasons? I can’t help you with pharmacology or parasitology, but I can help you with the reasoning behind Personal Financial Success.
It is about your empowerment and wellness. Realize that you can master your personal finances and control your financial world. Like most things in life, it just takes active thought, planning and a little work.
To say it another way, there is nothing in financial success that is overly complex. If you can understand how renal tubules work you can understand personal finance. Secondly, major shifts in thinking take time to complete. That’s why this course is spread out using the drip delivery system. You are unwinding years of “I’m not a financial person” and “That’s for the CPAs, MBAs, and CFPs” and “I just want to be a veterinarian to take care of animals.”
Those aren’t false statements, we’re just adding “Only I’m in full control of my financial state” and that takes time and energy. We are still facing a major crisis in the profession of veterinary medicine. As a whole, veterinarians still have unsustainable debt-to-income ratios, above average unhappiness, and an above average risk of depression and suicide. Personal Financial Success is a direct counter to those problems. We, more than anything else, don’t want you to fall into that cycle. We strongly believe that if you can control your career and finances, your personal risk of financial despair, depression and suicide will significantly decrease. We want you to be a part of the solution, not the problem, in veterinary medicine.
The why is all about you, your success and your personal contentment. As you know, personal financial success is not about you becoming uber wealthy, but is defined as your peace of mind, comfort and being in control of your finances. We want you to be happy with your decision to join the veterinary profession. We want you to be well, in mind, body, spirit and finance!
Most importantly, you have to answer the “Why” for yourself. Why is your Personal Financial Success important? Paint the picture in your mind of your financial wellbeing. Now, can you start to envision the path to getting there? Next week we’ll work toward those goals together!
Your Guides for the Journey and Course Details
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