Critical Financial Concepts for Canadian Physicians
with guest The Loonie Doctor, Mark Soth, MD
Most physicians spend their early careers assuming that if they work hard and earn well, the financial side will take care of itself. Dr. Mark Soth did too - until it didn't.
Dr. Soth is a mid-career academic ICU physician and the voice behind The Loonie Doctor, a well-known blog helping Canadian physicians and other high-income professionals make sense of their finances. He joins the podcast to talk about what changed his thinking, what he sees physicians getting wrong most often, and what actually moves the needle.
In this episode:
What prompted Dr. Soth to start paying serious attention to his finances after a decade in practice
The difference between delegating and abdicating when it comes to working with a financial advisor
Why trying harder doesn't work in investing and what to focus on instead
The danger of comparing your finances to colleagues
Why perfect is the enemy of good when it comes to financial planning
What physicians should actually look for when working with an advisor
What Changed
For his first several years in practice, Dr. Soth focused almost entirely on medicine. He had a financial advisor, met with them occasionally, and assumed things were generally on track. What shifted was watching his effective tax rate climb significantly as the government introduced fee clawbacks and other changes that reduced what he was actually keeping from his income. That combination of working harder while seeing less of the financial reward prompted him to start paying real attention.
What he found was that financial knowledge gave him options he hadn't realized he had. Physicians who understand their finances tend to have more freedom in how they practice, not just when they retire. They can take on leadership roles, develop new clinical interests, or reduce their hours in certain areas, because they're not financially trapped into a particular way of working.
Delegating vs. Abdicating
One of the most useful distinctions in this episode is the difference between delegating financial decisions to an advisor and abdicating them entirely.
Dr. Soth makes the point that even he has a financial advisor, despite being deeply knowledgeable about personal finance. An advisor can provide an external perspective, help set and track goals, and act as a buffer between you and emotional decisions, particularly in down markets when the instinct to sell everything feels overwhelming.
But an advisor can only work with what you give them. If you hand everything over without any understanding of what you're looking for or what questions to ask, you're abdicating rather than delegating. The difference matters because coming to the table with some baseline knowledge allows for a much more productive relationship.
Some specific things worth knowing: what you're actually invested in, what account types you're using and whether they're working to your advantage, what fees are embedded in your products, and how your advisor is compensated. These aren't advanced questions. They're the basics that most physicians don't know.
Why Trying Harder Doesn't Work in Investing
Physicians are used to a world where being smarter and working harder produces better results. That instinct doesn't transfer to investing. The evidence consistently shows that trying to time the market or pick winning investments doesn't produce better outcomes over time, and advisors who position their value around doing those things are offering something the data doesn't support.
What can be controlled is fees, taxes, and behavior. Keeping investment fees low, investing in a tax-efficient way across the right account types (corporation, RRSP, TFSA), and not making emotional decisions when markets move are the things that actually make a meaningful difference over time.
Dr. Soth also makes the point that the gap between a physician's investment advisor and their accountant is often where opportunities get missed. The advisor may optimize the portfolio without thinking about the tax consequences of withdrawals. The accountant will work with whatever they're handed without proactively flagging how the investment side could be structured differently. Having someone who can see both sides, or at least flag the questions that bridge them, is where a lot of the value lies.
The Danger of Comparing to Colleagues
Physicians spend a lot of time around other high-income professionals, which creates a skewed baseline for what's normal. You see the car in the parking garage. You don't see the debt, the lack of savings, or the financial stress behind it.
Dr. Soth makes the case that personal finance needs to be a one-player game. Your goals, your timeline, and your values should drive your decisions, not what a colleague is saving or spending. He gives a concrete example from his own life: years of expensive resort vacations that the family didn't particularly enjoy, replaced by buying an RV and traveling for eight to nine weeks a year at a fraction of the cost, which turned out to suit them much better.
The point isn't frugality. It's spending in line with what actually matters to you rather than what you think you're supposed to want.
Perfect Is the Enemy of Good
One of the most practical takeaways from this episode is Dr. Soth's framing around the 90% plan. For a high-income incorporated physician, spending within your means, saving enough, and investing in a tax-efficient and fee-efficient way covers roughly 90% of the financial planning battle. The remaining 10% is fine-tuning and optimization that can be added over time.
The worst outcome is doing nothing because you're waiting for a perfect plan. A 90% plan implemented early, with time on your side for compounding, will outperform a more perfect plan started years later. And time is the one variable you can't get back.
Learn More
Dr. Soth's blog, calculators, and resources for physicians at every level of financial knowledge are available at looniedoctor.ca.
If you'd like to talk through how your corporation, investments, and overall financial plan fit together, book a free discovery call to find out if a fee-based plan makes sense for your situation.