Financial lecture - question for non US citizens

[Eimaise]

Hey everyone. I am a PGY-3 and I am giving a financial literacy lecture I made later this week to a residency program in my hospital. I gave the same lecture a month ago to my own residency program and it was very well received. I noticed that my residency has no foreign grads or non-us citizen IMG's in it who are doing residency here, but this other program I am giving the lecture to this week does have a decent number of foreign grads and non-us citizens in it.

My question is, is there anything I should bear in mind with this audience? I am truly ignorant of whether non US citizens have access to the same types of tax protected investment accounts (e.g. 401Ks, Roth IRA's, etc.). I am assuming they do. Any difference with taxes, etc? I just want to make sure there's no big items I am missing when speaking to this audience.

Thanks.

 

 

[Craigy]

IMO you'd need to become fairly sophisticated in this to really render advice.  Best advice would be for non-citizens to consult their CPA.

[The White Coat Investor]

They have fewer student loans is the main thing. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same UNLESS they plan to ever go live back in their native country. Then it gets pretty complicated figuring out what happens with taxes and retirement accounts and stuff.

[Peds]

sounds like the wrong audience for this talk.

[Eimaise]

Thanks for the helpful info WCI.

As regards the audience, it's about 15 to 20 or so of the 100 residents in the program who are not US citizens. The rest are all from the US and will likely be staying here. So I think this is a pretty good audience.

Either way, I go over a lot of basic WCI principles about saving, living like a resident, etc. I refer people to the book and website for further reading too so I think it's useful.

[adventure]

Sometimes family structures/relationships may be stronger part of the culture in this part of the audience. In addition to your note above, conversations about identifying goals are certainly worthwhile.

[jfoxcpacfp]

Many countries have a tax treaty with the US. To understand the tax implications, they need to be familiar with their country's tax treaty. Yes, non-citizens have access to the same type of tax-protected accounts that citizens do, as long as they are reporting and paying taxes on their income in the US. The difficulty is that their native countries likely won't recognize the same tax benefits so if they move back home, Roth distributions may be taxable, for example. Later, they also need to work with a CPA who is familiar with non-citizen taxes. Maybe not so necessary until attending-hood.

Sometimes, foreign residents have foreign income, such as a piece of rental property in their home country. The tax treaty will state how to deal with that. Typically, if they pay taxes in one country, they get a credit or deduction in the other country.

[pistolpete]

I'm a non US citizen and I have access to everything that a US citizen does: Roth IRA, 401k, 457b, etc. all that matters is that you have US source income.

[jz]

If their parents die in the foreign country,   the US will tax any inheritance they receive, AS IF THE ESTATE WERE IN THE US.  My friend, an internist, and her sister each  paid $250,000 plus professional fees,  when their father left an estate in South Africa.

[q-school]

It's fascinating to me that residency time is devoted to this. There are tons of in my mind more pertinent topics. Further if time is going to be devoted, with all due respect, why not bring in someone with more experienced?

If you guys/gals want to do this on your own time, that would seem to me more appropriate for your level of experience.

Is there cme for this?

[Miss Bonnie MD]

q-school wrote:

It’s fascinating to me that residency time is devoted to this. There are tons of in my mind more pertinent topics. Further if time is going to be devoted, with all due respect, why not bring in someone with more experienced?

If you guys/gals want to do this on your own time, that would seem to me more appropriate for your level of experience.

Is there cme for this?

Click to expand...

I just do a 1 hr lecture for my residents once a year. Not that much time - usually during lunch anyway. After the lecture, then they usually just come to me with individual questions if they want to take things further. Some of them now have Roth IRAs!

This year, since I actually made some money from my blog, I ordered a case of the WCI book for my residents as well.

[q-school]

It may be that I'm not familiar with how education is done, but to me it is preferable to have an attending do the teaching rather than the residents. Kudos to you.

I still personally feel that it is a stretch to include personal finances as part of educational curriculum of a training program. I realize I stand alone. Jmo. Ymmv.

[Eimaise]

q-school wrote:

It may be that I’m not familiar with how education is done, but to me it is preferable to have an attending do the teaching rather than the residents. Kudos to you.

I still personally feel that it is a stretch to include personal finances as part of educational curriculum of a training program. I realize I stand alone. Jmo. Ymmv.

Click to expand...

I hear ya. But the problem is this type of education is not getting done in my institution much if it at all. I hope it's a timely and pertinent little talk. It's 1 hour long. We get hundreds of hours a year of education on medical topics and basically 0 hours on financial matters.

We got a lecture last year (a small handful of us) from a NW mutual salesman, that wasn't that helpful and I want to try and help change the culture of financial literacy in my hospital.

You mention attendings should be giving the financial lectures -- why not residents? I've been here 2.5 years with no attendings showing interest in this kind of thing. Also, you may be interested to know that my talk is actually specifically intended FOR residents (it's actually even titled that way). Interestingly enough, several attendings who came to my talk last month said they found it helpful.

Thanks to the WCI and Bogleheads, I have been able to get a good financial education over the last 4 years and I feel there's a lot of good stuff to share.

[q-school]

Generally, my feeling is in this context the educational materials should be proofed by attending a when given by residents or alternately presented by the appropriate expert.

If there is not an attending with the experience to do so, and it is perceived to be something that can be learned without formal education, still the attending should be assigned to be responsible for supervising the educational material. Or another topic could be selected. If you guys want to meet on your own time to share war experiences that's fine.

It is my opinion that a couple years of thinking about ones own finances likely qualifies one as expert enough to give multiple lectures on the topic, but I suppose we all have to start somewhere. Being an attending offers some credibility about their ability to scrutinize information and present it in an organized fashion at least. And my opinion was not regarding financial lectures, to be clear but all formal lectures. I'm not surprised there are no attendings interested--as it is not an area which they are responsible for education you in.

It's just my opinion. I favor more formal education and certification than diy approach. I have a financial advisor. I have variable life insurance. I own individual stocks. I have huge emergency fund. I have a mortgage which I have not paid off. I'm comfortable with my decisions. More than one way to skin a cat. But some of these decisions take years to feel comfortable making, and even know after decades I'm not sure were the optimal decisions. Over the years my feelings about risk and security have changed dramatically. I value disability insurance differently. My wants and desires have changed. The things that I think you can universally recommend to people are quite limited--spend less than you make unless you have other sources of wealth. And that even presumes early financial independence is a goal-- which it clearly isn't for a lot of physicians. . Beyond that, there are going to be lots of nuances.

By way of disclosure on this board I frequently stand alone. I wish you luck as you prepare. Hopefully steer away from topics that in your own words you are truly ignorant of. I'm skipping the WCI cme meeting basically because I don't think there are relevant experts in the areas I would be interested in.

Fwiw I agree with you that it is an extremely important issue. Yes I remember trying to figure out this and a bunch of other issues when I was at that point in my life. Job search, contract negotiation, benefits, billing, Emr, etc.
it was hard.

Have a good evening.