But even someone right out of school should be putting away a meaningful amount. An essential part of retirement planning is setting up a tax- qualified retirement plan for your practice. But it's not enough just to set up the plan and then maintain it year after year. You have to monitor it, to make sure it's the plan that best meets your needs. That's because there are different types of retirement plans out there, and each one benefits a different type of doctor.
Some plans are better for solos, others better for doctors in a group.
Some are better where doctors are older than their staff, others where they're not. This means that a retirement plan that meets your goals perfectly one year may not be the best thing for you even just a few years later. Also, you've got to be careful that you're not getting a plan that works well with other people's practices but not with yours. These are essentially profit sharing plans where the employees have the option of making their own deductible contributions. And yet, as popular as these are, they're rarely going to the the best choice for a solo podiatrist.