MacKenzie agrees with Klaas that doctors can rest easy knowing their incomes from patient-care are recession-proof. But doctors don’t have employer co-sponsored pension plans to fall back on, and “they do want to retire some day,” he added.
Indeed, doctors do have many economic advantages that the average Canadian doesn’t have. The one-payer system is recession-proof; Canadians get sick, and because of medicare don’t think almost at all about the cost of a doctor visit. Also, the overall Canadian population is getting older, and its collective health will worsen with age.
In short, doctors, if they do want to increase their income, can earn more revenue in their chosen career, unlike retirees in some industries. As Dr. Hugi observed, “Doctors certainly aren’t going to be thrown out on the street starving.”
Dartmouth, N.S.-based hospitalist Dr. Chris Childs is 68 and has not yet retired. He’s worked for more than 30 years as an independent family physician in the province. In recent years he’s worked part-time in a local psychiatric hospital, and admitted in a recent interview he doesn’t have a firm retirement date. Now he plans to keep his shoulder to the medical grindstone “for the foreseeable future.”
“I had thought of it being sometime this year when my present job—or part of it—will end,” says Dr. Childs. “However, there are other job possibilities. I enjoy what I do and it makes sense not to be depleting my savings when the markets are so depressed.”
He says, “Amazingly, the pay (from the psychiatric hospital) has been an improvement on my GP earnings,” so he’s in the uncommon position of increasing his RRSP contributions, despite his age and recent stock-market events.
Dr. Childs says he is concerned about the state of his portfolio, which “has dropped by about 25%. Throughout last summer and fall I took a moderately optimistic view of the markets and made a few (new) investments, all of which have done badly despite them being in ‘good’ companies. Now, having been bitten, I am feeling much more cautious. But, I do think we are at or close to the moment when it makes sense to re-enter the market.”
He added, “I have delayed my retirement at least partly because of the financial crisis but we (he and his wife) haven’t changed our lifestyle as, fortunately, my income is unaffected so far. In any case we have never been ‘high rollers.’” Observing that Nova Scotia family physicians earn relatively depressed incomes and that “only the ones seeing large numbers of patients made the sort of incomes doctors are popularly supposed to make,” he says he expected “these aging family doctors will just keep working as long as they need to or can.”
The fortunes of young doctors, too, have been affected. Dr. Sarah Giles, who completed family medicine residency only a few years ago and now does locums in northwestern Ontario and the Northwest Territories, is one such young doctor.
While the financial imbroglio has left her worried about her own investments, Dr. Giles still contributes to her RRSPs, and is considering jumping into the housing market, since prices have come off their historic highs. She observed that while she only looks at her investment statements when she receives her monthly paper statement in the mail, older physicians she knows scrutinize their portfolios daily online.
These older physicians, she says, “are looking to delay retirement.”
Purtzki recommends medical practitioners who are despondent over their investments should look no further than their patients for solace. Doctors would be surprised “to find out that many retirees are happy to have $200,000 in the bank.”
Dr. Simon Bryant, a Canmore, Alta., family physician, was very philosophical about losing “a few hundred virtual dollars” on his investments. “There is as much oxygen in the world, as much fertile ground, as much fresh water,” and then he added, with a wink to the business world, “and as much manufacturing and transport capacity.”
Matthew Sylvain is a staff writer for the Medical Post
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