December went well, better than I expected. I earned a total of $6,887. The majority of this was from my healthcare consulting work, the rest from JustAnswer. I am focusing most of my time and effort on building my health coaching business, so I expect my income to go down for a few months.
Healthcare consulting income – $6,375
2.5 years of healthcare consulting – time flies! It’s been enjoyable, I learned a lot, and made some great friends along the way. I am going to slowly work my way out of this, probably by 2020, and do just enough to stay interested.
Haggling for my hours and my pay is tedious, but the work is always interesting, though not easy. Moving forward, I can stay on as a panel expert, I can continue to dole out my time to specific clients, and I can continue teaching other physicians about healthcare consulting through my Clarity profile.
If you’re interested in getting into healthcare consulting then hit me up on Clarity and I can help you get started. There is always a need for medical experts in this field. It can either be your side income or your full-time job.
For now, I have negotiated a retainer from this company to get a minimum of $3,000/month just to be on call for them and answer any questions they have. Any work I do beyond that will be billed at $75/hour. I will prioritize this work after the work I put into my own business – the medical health coaching business.
There is another company that I do healthcare consulting work for. I act as their medical director for a certain aspect of their business. I’ve helped bring their company from NY to OR and WA. But the work has died down and so I will offer them a similar retainer model as above – if they aren’t interested, I’m comfortable walking away. Replacing me will be rather expensive – I’ve sort of made sure of that. I have a feeling they will go for the retainer model.
JustAnswer work – $477
My JustAnswer work has been very lucrative. I’ve been making money from JA in 3 ways: selling my JA tutorials, consulting for them, and, of course, I’ve been making money as a medical expert on their site. I’ve made nearly $25,000 in 2018 with very little time and effort invested as a medical expert on their site. It’s a low-risk way for me to use my medical expertise – no medication prescribing, no way to get sued.
The December 2018 income was low because I was relying mostly on my consulting income. $477 income = 30 questions. And since most questions only take minutes, I spent very little time on JA in November. The income is also 1 month delayed – I get paid for work in November in December, and so on.
Income taxes
All the work I perform is as a sole proprietor. This means that I am my own business and the above payers are my clients. This allows me to maximize my business deductions on Schedule C of IRS tax forms.
I pay estimated taxes in January, April, June, and September of every year since 2016 when I retired. I keep track of my estimated taxes to state and federal and enter it in the tax software when I go to file taxes.
In 2017, my tax rate was in the 15% range for state, state, and self-employment (medicare, SS). It should be the same this year. So, that’s what I’ll be setting from each of my paychecks for estimated taxes.
I also get to max out a solo 401k to the tune of $18,500. And I still get to contribute to either a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA.
2019 income projection
Ever since 2016, I’ve been able to slowly decrease my income, decrease my tax burden, and maximize my deductions. I will continue doing the same in 2019. The next 1-2 years should have similar income with some consulting work, some work from selling products on this blog, and a small income from my medical health coaching business.
I can’t get too casual about my income, I still have lots of legal fees with California and Washington coming up to fight the medical board investigations.