Can't Manage Your Finances? You May Have a Disease

Not many people know that I, in addition to being a family physician, am also a certified financial planning physician (FPP). We FPPs seek to merge the best of medicine with the best of financial planning. Our approach to financial planning is the wave of the future, because we have discovered the true reason why physicians and other highincome individuals are often in failing financial health. It's not because they are undisciplined or need more advice; it's because they actually have biomedical problems, potentially financially-fatal diseases that need to be treated.

We have discovered the following medical conditions that impact finances, and are working on treatments:

• Minimal resistance to sales associates (MRSA) is the real etiology of overspending by physicians and their spouses. The collective effect of sales associates within ever-growing retail establishments in America is as damaging to your financial health as staph aureus is to your biological health. Our human immune systems are not adequate to withstand the attack of such potent pathogens. Mild forms of the disease cause us to purchase lattes and designer clothing. More severe forms weaken us to the point where we buy fancy cars, boats, and jewelry. We’re working on a variant of Antabuse that makes you nauseated when you walk by a store, but also have hope in new forms of gentamycin that are activated by the bad karma of a sales pitch; causing loss of hearing…the sales pitch literally falls on deaf ears.
• Parental stimulating hormone (PSH) is just like thyroid stimulating hormone. PSH is produced in the anterior pituitary gland. Its purpose is to stabilize the neurological system as it is challenged by the demands of one's offspring. A deficiency leads to the inability to say "no" to children. In mild cases, the offspring acquire iPods and cell phones. In more serious cases, they acquire automobiles and go to Cancun for spring break. In the most advanced cases, they cause severe anemia of the retirement fund. We've treated this disease with a drug that causes spasms of the paraspinal muscles, giving the parent a firmer backbone. We also have an analog of the hormone, but it tends to break down in the highly acidic stomach of the parent.

As you can imagine, our organization is having difficulty competing with all the other disease groups out there soliciting money. If we don't get a grant soon, we may have to resort to soliciting and marketing, which wouldn't be good for your financial health, would it?

Louis L. Constan, a family practice physician in Saginaw, Mich, is the editor of the Saginaw County Medical Society Bulletin and Michigan Family Practice. He welcomes questions or comments at 3350 Shattuck Road, Saginaw, MI 48603, 989-792-1899, or louisconstan @hotmail.com.