Why I'm Sponsoring the Taranaki Medical Foundation Golf Day?

February 2026 | Luis Silva, Founder of MoneyPlan

I'll be sponsoring the Taranaki Medical Foundation Golf Day, and I wanted to take a moment to explain why this matters to me, both professionally and personally.

The Foundation does critical work supporting medical education and research in our region. As someone who's built a practice around serving health professionals exclusively, I've seen firsthand the dedication you bring to your work. Supporting the Foundation is a small way to give back to a community that gives so much to all of us.

But there's another reason this sponsorship feels particularly meaningful. In my years working with doctors, dentists, specialists, and practice owners, I keep hearing the same story over and over again.

The Pattern I Keep Seeing

"I'm earning good money. But I still don't feel like I have a clear plan."

If you're a health professional, you've probably felt this way at some point. You're bringing in a solid income, sometimes a very good income. You might even have a financial adviser. But there's this nagging sense that something isn't quite right. That you should be further ahead than you are. That the financial advice you're getting doesn't quite fit your situation.

Here's what I've learned: you're not imagining it.

The problem isn't your income. It's not even your spending (though that's often what gets blamed). The real issue is that standard financial advice wasn't designed for people like you.

Why Health Professionals Are Different

Most financial advisors work with clients who have relatively straightforward financial lives:

• Regular salary deposited fortnightly

• Simple tax situation (PAYE)

• Maybe some KiwiSaver

• Perhaps a rental property

That's not you.

Your financial situation looks more like this:

The Reality of Health Professional Finances

• Multiple income streams with different tax treatments: Private work, ACC income, salaried hospital work, maybe teaching or research grants—each taxed differently and arriving on different schedules.

  
  

• Complex ownership structures: Are you holding assets personally? Through a trust? Via your practice? Each has significant tax and liability implications that generic advice can't address.

  
  

• Practice ownership considerations: Whether you're buying into a practice, bringing in partners, or planning your exit, these are multi-hundred-thousand-dollar decisions that require specialized knowledge.

  
  

• Late career start, compressed earning years: You spent your 20s in training while your peers were already building wealth. You have less time to reach financial independence, but different risk tolerance than the standard advice assumes.

  
  

• Professional-specific risks: Malpractice considerations, disability that could end your career, ACC dependencies—these aren't risks the typical financial plan accounts for.

  
  

• Irregular cash flow: Your income might spike one quarter and drop the next. Standard "save 15% of every paycheck" advice doesn't work when your paycheck varies by 40%

  
  

When I talk to health professionals about their finances, these aren't edge cases or unusual complications. This is your normal.

But to most financial advisers, this level of complexity is beyond their usual scope. They might be excellent at what they do, but they're working from a playbook designed for a different game.

What Does Specialised Planning Actually Look Like?

I realise I've spent most of this post talking about problems. Let me give you a sense of what the solution looks like in practice.

When you work with a financial planner who specializes in health professionals, here's what changes:

1. Your Practice is Part of the Plan

Your practice isn't separate from your personal financial plan—it's integral to it. We look at practice structure, ownership, and transition planning as core components of your wealth strategy.

2. Irregular Income Gets Proper Treatment

Instead of trying to force your variable income into a standard budgeting framework, we build strategies that work with your cash flow patterns. You'll know how much you can safely withdraw, even when monthly revenue fluctuates.

3. Tax Planning is Sophisticated

Rather than simple "save more in KiwiSaver" advice, you get strategic guidance on how to structure income, when to retain earnings in the practice, how to optimize distributions, and when different tax structures make sense.

4. Protection Planning is Comprehensive

Your insurance coverage accounts for your specific professional risks, practice ownership stake, buy-sell agreements, and the gap between ACC and your actual needs.

5. Investment Strategy Fits Your Reality

Your investment approach accounts for irregular cash flow, high income but limited time, and the need to build wealth efficiently in compressed earning years.

6. You Get Real Clarity

Perhaps most importantly, you finally get clear answers to questions like:

• Am I on track to retire when I want to?

• How much can I afford to spend without jeopardizing my goals?

• What's the optimal way to structure my practice ownership?

• How do I protect my family if something happens to me?

• Should I be doing something different with my investments?

• 
  

The Golf Day Connection

So why sponsor the Golf Day?

Because supporting medical education and research in Taranaki aligns with what I do every day: helping health professionals build the financial security that lets them focus on what they do best: taking care of patients.

When you're financially organised, when you have a clear plan, when you're not constantly worried about money despite earning a good income, you can bring your full attention to your practice. You can make career decisions based on what's right for you, not just what pays the bills. You can actually enjoy the life you've worked so hard to build.

That's what I'm trying to help create, one health professional at a time.

If You're Attending the Golf Day

and if it seems like specialised planning might be worth exploring, we can arrange a proper conversation.

If you're not attending but curious whether this approach might help your situation, I'm offering complimentary discovery sessions to health professionals.

www.moneyplan.co.nz

A Final Thought

You spent years developing specialised expertise in your field. You wouldn't trust a general practitioner to perform neurosurgery. The same principle applies to financial planning.

Complex situations require specialised knowledge. Your finances deserve the same level of expertise you bring to your own work.

If you've been feeling like your current financial situation doesn't quite add up, despite having good income, despite working with an adviser, despite doing "all the right things", it's not because something's wrong with you.

It's because you need advice that actually understands health professionals.

That's what I'm here to provide.

About Luis Silva: Luis is the founder of MoneyPlan, a fee-only financial planning practice serving health professionals across New Zealand. Since 2015, he has specialised exclusively in helping doctors, dentists, specialists, and practice owners navigate the unique financial complexities of healthcare careers. He operates on a fiduciary basis with no commissions or product sales.

Want to explore whether specialised financial planning might benefit your situation? Visit moneyplan.co.nz.