What order should an ophthalmologist fund retirement accounts?

Why the order is built this way

Each step protects the ones after it. The match is a guaranteed return that no investment choice and no loan rate can match, so it goes first and alone. The first reserve month and the cleared cards keep an emergency from becoming high rate debt that outruns every account's return. Coverage precedes the loan payoff and the investing tiers because the entire structure assumes the income survives, and disability is the event that ends it. An ophthalmologist's income rides on vision and hand control, which is why this specialty sizes that policy with particular care, in the first ninety days. The Roth sits deliberately ahead of expensive debt: $7,500 of space that closes every year and compounds tax free for the whole career is worth more than the interest saved by retiring a 7 percent loan a few months sooner, and the loan, unlike the space, will still be there next year. The reserve is finished before taxable investing because taxable money invested ahead of a finished reserve gets sold at the first emergency, at whatever the market is doing that month.

Inside tier seven, the internal order matters at attending scale. The health savings account is the only triple advantaged account in the code, deductible going in, tax free growth, tax free out for medical costs, which is why it leads. The workplace plan follows to the deferral limit. A governmental 457(b) is additional space rather than an alternative, which the university employed ophthalmologist can stack, worked in its own question on this hub. Mega backdoor contributions, after tax plan contributions converted to Roth, fill whatever room remains under the $72,000 annual additions limit where the plan's design allows them, and they come last inside the tier because they depend on plan features many employers do not offer.

The ophthalmology shapes of the order

The specialty's career shapes run the same order at different speeds. The employed ophthalmologist runs it on a salary with a match, the full eleven steps in sequence across the first years. The group partner runs it with a buy in competing for cash in the early steps, and the buy in is sequenced: the reserve and coverage steps are household protection and come first, the buy in is a business investment and is funded as one, from the steps after coverage, never by raiding the reserve. The owner runs the solo 401(k) version of tier seven and, at the established stage, weighs the cash balance plan that can shelter far more than the deferral limits allow. The contractor, locums or platform, runs the order without a match, which moves the reserve endpoint to the twelve month version and puts the solo 401(k) or SEP decision inside tier seven. One order, four speeds. It does not bend by specialty, by employer, or by enthusiasm.