Hi there! I'm a financial planner for therapists! I help therapists navigate every element of their financial lives and make financial decisions with ease and confidence – both in your practice and your personal life.
Start with the basics 🏃♂️💨
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Hello Reader, This time of year, one of the main things I’m doing with clients is reviewing last year’s numbers — and then making a rough estimate of income for the year ahead. And it’s a good reminder of something simple but important. When people think about financial planning, they often imagine sophisticated strategies, advanced investing knowledge, or financial “magic.” Some of that can help. But real progress starts with the basics. It starts with understanding your income. If you’re a W-2 employee, that’s usually straightforward. If you’re self-employed, own a practice, or run a business — it’s often anything but. That’s why I encourage people, especially early in the year, to do just one thing: Make your best guess at what your income will be this year. Not perfect. Not precise. Just a best guess. That estimate becomes the foundation for everything else — taxes, saving, investing, spending, and longer-term planning. How you do this depends on where you are:
The goal isn’t a perfect plan. It’s simply more clarity than you had before. Once you start, the next steps tend to reveal themselves — often in the form of questions. And that’s okay. As I was recently reminded: you can’t fail at learning or discovering. So here’s the invitation: Spend five minutes making a best guess. Open the easiest report. Take the path of least resistance. Write something down. That’s enough for today. And if you get stuck or aren’t sure what comes next, feel free to hit reply and let me know. That’s part of why this newsletter exists. Best, |
David W. Frank
Hi there! I'm a financial planner for therapists! I help therapists navigate every element of their financial lives and make financial decisions with ease and confidence – both in your practice and your personal life.
Hello Reader, I like to think I pay pretty close attention to things like inflation. But it floored me recently when I found out inflation over the last six years has been 28%. I’ll repeat that for everyone in the back. 28%. Yup, that’s correct. Not a typo. You can check it out for yourself here. That’s kind of nuts. We tend to think of inflation as background noise — a little high one year, a little low the next, mostly irrelevant to the actual decisions we’re making. But 28% over six years...
Hello Reader, Two things I genuinely enjoy in my free time (which may say something about me): reading Buddhist books… and listening to investing podcasts. Recently, those two worlds collided in a way that really stuck with me. I’ve been re-reading The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chödrön. One of the core ideas she explores is that we often try to escape discomfort — and that doing so isn’t all that wise. It isn’t that the things we use to distract ourselves are inherently bad. It’s that they...
Hi Reader, If you’re a practice owner (or self-employed in any way), I’m guessing this sounds familiar: “I don’t really have time for a conference.” “The money feels hard to justify.” “I’m not sure the ROI is actually there.” I have that same reaction all the time. Getting on a plane. ✈️ Staying in a hotel. 🏨 Stepping away from work that already feels endless. 😥 It almost never feels like the right time. And yet — some of the most meaningful insights I’ve had about my business never would...