Communications Pro Hits Quarter Million Dollars - MtoM Podcast #185

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast Milestones to Millionaire Celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.

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Is Milestones to Millionaire podcast number 185 Communications Pro hits a quarter million dollars Southern Impression Homes takes owning rental property to the next level with their innovative 2.0 approach focusing solely on new construction investment properties. Single family homes, duplexes and quads in high growth markets of Florida. Handle every aspect of the process with expertise and efficiency including financing, insurance and property management. To learn more about Build to rent, visit whitecoatinvestor.com southernimpressionhomes or call 904-831-8058. We are currently in the early bird period for WCICON 25. This is a Physician, Wellness and Financial Literacy conference. You get the cheapest price you can get by saving $300 off. From now through September 10th, you can sign up@wcievents.com not many doctors have people to discuss financial challenges with. People who can relate to having student loans hanging over your heads, paying what seems like too much to the tax man, or feeling burned out, or doing something that you've wanted to do since, well, you were a kid. I found that spending time with those who truly understand is one of the most important parts of the Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference. I hope you'll join us February 26th through March 1st, 2025 outside of San Antonio, Texas. Don't miss out on our lowest price. You can save $300 on registration till September 10th. This is truly my favorite event of the year. I know I'm a little biased, but I love hearing about your successes and challenges during breaks, dinners and all the fun wellness activities in person face to face. I just like meeting you guys. It drives our content for the next year. It drives my motivation to keep pursuing this mission of helping doctors and other high income professionals get their financial ducks in a row. But at WC Icon, you surround yourself with people who actually get it. You talk with the physician finance leaders you've followed for years. You'll learn a lot and you'll have an incredible time. The biggest threat to your career and your finances is not disability. It's not some sort of turf war within medicine. It's not changing tax codes. It's burnout. And this conference is the closest thing you can get to buying burnout insurance. Hill Country, Texas is a perfect destination to get away for a break from medicine and new this year, we're excited to offer 20% off your partner's conference registration. Over 150 attendees signed up on the spot at the end of last year's conference. I promise this is the best use of your CME funds. Go. Go to WCI events for all the details and take advantage of the early bird sale. All right, we got a great interview today. It is not a doctor, med student, dental student, et cetera. It's somebody else. Let's get them on the line. And I think you'll like this interview. Our guest on the Milestones podcast today is Spencer. Spencer, welcome to the podcast.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jim, why don't you tell us what you do for a living, what part of the country you're in and how far you are out of school.

Yeah, so I work in communications and media relations for a trade organization up in Washington, D.C. just outside of D.C. and I've been out of school for about three and a half years now.

Three and a half years, that's what a bachelor's degree, a master's. What do you get to do that?

Yeah, out of a bachelor's degree.

Okay, so three and a half years out of college and in a pretty expensive area of the country. And you hit a milestone recently. Tell us what milestone you recently achieved.

Yeah, I hit a 250,000 net worth as well as a $100,000 retirement savings goal.

Awesome, awesome. Three and a half years out. I mean, when I was three and a half years out of college, I was, let's see, 27. I was still in med school. I had a net worth of zero at best. Most doctors at that point have a net worth of -300,000. You already have a quarter million dollars. Congratulations. That's awesome.

Thank you. Thank you.

So what's your income been average over the last three or four years?

So I've definitely had quite the range of income. My main 9 to 5 full time job is pretty stable at about 75,000. But I have lots of sources of income that wildly differ over the last couple years. And that's coming from reselling toys and vinyl, mostly online, as well as sports betting and a couple other random things here and there. But those usually come out to about 25 to 30k over the last couple years, but a little higher this year, shooting for close to 125,000.

Okay, so low six figures is basically what you make. You can't drop something like horse betting on this podcast without providing details. You're actually keeping track of your horse betting and year ahead.

Yeah. So it's just general sports betting. Yes, I am ahead. There's.

Oh, sports betting. I thought you said horse betting. Sorry.

There's definitely a couple horse bets in there. But in Virginia we're lucky to have a numerous amounts of sports bets, of sports books that give lots of options, kind of like playing the market and definitely been successful over that. Keep very good track of it and treat it just like another investment.

Cool. I think we had somebody on here once that was kind of a professional poker player too. And it's always super interesting to me because you know, it seems like the odds and that sort of a thing are not with you. But every now and then somebody's really good at it, I guess. Okay, well tell us about your how you did this. I mean most people coming out, they start making money and they go get a car loan is the first thing they do. Coming out of college you didn't do that. Obviously you done something pretty special here because you've only made about 400 ish thousand dollars and you've got a quarter million dollars already. So you are not spending all your income. Tell us what you're doing with it.

Yeah, so mostly, mostly saving as much as I can through my job. I maxed out my 401k contribution to maximize the match for my company. I maximize my Roth IRA every year as well. And I really rely on my side hustles and non full time job to pay for my cost of living and try to put the majority of my salary into my retirement accounts and other investments and keep some of the cash. So I guess my strategy really there is to try to really grind on the side hustles and ebay and Amazon selling and sports betting whatever else I can so I can really focus on putting my full salary into savings and keep that money growing.

Is there a partner, a spouse, any kids in the picture? Is it just you?

It's just me in the picture. But I definitely have to put a huge thanks to my dad, Randall Dobkin. He's a huge fan of the show. One of the big reasons I applied to come on and I have to say a big thank you for just him instilling that financial wisdom in me as a young kid and teaching me the real power of that compound interest and really started investing a little bit of money as a kid that I made selling fruit right off my trees or whatever I could and he, he really taught me how to save wisely and that that's really helped me out to this point. Just saving as a kid even.

What are the odds that you are an employee 10 years from now versus working for yourself?

I'd Say pretty low. Honestly, I'm very big self starter. I definitely love working in an environment with like a team, you know, with organizational goals and stuff that I do have my full time job, but I really am interested by the self starter mentality. Trying lots of different things. Over the last few years I've had some skills that I never thought I'd pick up. I dabbled in crypto and NFTs back in 20, 21, 22 and that was definitely a nice boost as well to help me get to where I am. And I really think just once I find that one thing that really does interest me and keep me happy, but also makes me money, that most likely move to that. But for now I'm definitely enjoying, you know, working in a traditional office job.

You actually made money in NFTs?

I did and it was something that I had to keep very good track of to check myself. I was very fortunate to fall into a group of people that were nice enough to educate me on that and it's something I still follow a little bit. But since the rise a few years ago, it's definitely been a much more volatile market and I kept my investments a little safer. But it was definitely a fun thing to learn about and get some experience.

All right, so what did your dad do to get you interested in this finance stuff? To get you, you know, understanding the benefits of compound interest and how powerful that is when you start in your 20s?

I think he just showed me some of the strategies he's used throughout his life with very traditional investing techniques, nothing extremely volatile.

He wasn't into the sports betting in the NFTs.

He's come around to it after seeing the success and being careful and mature about investing in those types of things and definitely told me at a young age it's, it's important to, you know, take a couple more risks at a time when I can. But really just showing me how successful he's been and keeping me updated with, with new news about markets, I can put my money in different financial vehicles I could be a part of. And it's, it's really just him showing me that if I want to have certain things and protections later in life, that a little work now can really go a long way. And I think that message has just resonated with me. You know, I have plenty of fun now. I spend money, but saving it is also going to really protect that life I would like to have later. Later down the line.

All right, well, let's break down your net worth. I mean, you said you had $100,000 in retirement accounts. What's the other $150,000 and is there any debt?

So I'm debt free. Very thankful to have had my parents pay for school, which really got me to a great place. Very thankful for that. I'm actually up to about 120,000 in retirement right now. I have about 50,000 in brokerage accounts and other investments, index funds, a little bit of crypto in there, about 25,000 in sportsbooks to keep growing that profit there as well as I'd say the rest is probably the 50,000 in cash, which is cash and property, which includes my one car, as well as some of the inventory that I have for my reselling business.

Cool. That's pretty awesome, man. What a fun story. And you know, I think a lot of people listening to this, a lot of people listening to this are like your dad, right? They're, they're 40s, 50s, whatever, and they'd love to pass tips along to their kids to have their kids be interested in finances. And so I think your story probably really resonates to a lot of them in that respect. I don't know how many, you know, 24 year olds, 25 year olds we have listening to this, and I suspect most of them that are, are probably pre meds or in depth dental school or medical school or something like that. Let's assume there are a few people out there like you and they want to have the success you've had. What recommendation would you give to them?

Yeah, I'd say just, you know, educating yourself and learning about all kinds of ways to invest your money, you know, savings tips. I, I really was able to watch, you know, how much, like I said before, how my dad has invested over the years, as well as just how he saves, where he saves money. But I think the biggest thing is probably just educating yourself and learning about your options. There's lots of things that you could just jump right into, whether it's investing or buying a car, picking a new apartment. But it's definitely something that if you know all of your options, it really gives you that step up. I think it really just gives you an opportunity to make your own decisions and not just follow with what's in the news, what's going on, what are most people investing in. Just really being able to spread out your options and pick what's right for you and your situation. And I think that just having that knowledge as a young person from my dad, from the Internet, it's just gave me the options to choose what my right path was.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome to have the accumulated knowledge of the history of the world sitting on a device in your pocket, isn't it? It's amazing what you can learn from the Internet.

It really is.

You know, one other thing we ought to talk about. You're living in dc, you said?

Yeah.

Tell us about how you've dealt with being in a high cost of living area and still managing to build wealth on what a lot of people that listen to this show would say is not all that high of an income. Tell us how you've managed to build wealth so quickly despite being in an expensive place.

Yeah, I really think I definitely lucked out. When I moved originally was during the pandemic, so I did get a little bit of a cheaper rent as they were trying to bring people in. But I say aside from that, I cook most of all of my meals. Helps definitely save some money. I use public transportation when I can to use the Metro to go in and out of D.C. and Virginia and Maryland and really just cutting corners where it's not affecting my quality of life, but something that I can save. You know, like I said, the power of compound, interesting compound interest. It's, you know, if I could save $5 here, $10 there, it really adds up. And I just, I think if you're really thinking about it and keeping it on mind without letting go your quality of life or having fun, it really does add up without focusing too much on saving as much as possible rather than just finding ways to save a little here, a little there really does add up.

What are you renting? Are you in a one bedroom apartment with no roommates or what kind of place are you in?

So I did just move into a one bedroom apartment which it's a little more expensive but for the last few years I have had two roommates so that, that definitely helped with the cost. You know, I had pretty much a full area to myself and everything, so it wasn't really sacrificing that quality of life like I was saying, but it was definitely helping me save quite a bit.

Very cool.

Very cool.

Well Spencer, you've done fantastically. You're on a great pathway. You are not afraid to try stuff and fail and, and succeed and see what works. And I love it. I love your open trying things and wish you the best as you continue forward in your financial journey. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast and inspiring others to also reach their net worth milestones.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me all right.

It's always fun to see people doing stuff. You know, there's like dogma, right? Doctrine, whatever you want to call it, the WCI way or the Bogleheads way, you don't have to follow that to come on this podcast. We want to hear what you're actually doing. I don't care if you're putting some of your money in NFTs or going down to the track and betting it or. Or whatever. We want to hear about your successes and use it to inspire others to do the same. Everybody's got a different pathway, right? I mean, I certainly was not worth a quarter million dollars in my mid-20s. It is not common for those of us who went to medical school to have that sort of a net worth. We end up with a bigger shovel later, and done right, we certainly catch up. But it's a different pathway, and we're all on a different pathway. In the last two days, I've recorded like four or five of these episodes, and they're just dramatically different. Right. We had an orthopedist that's already at $3 million, like three years out, and we had pediatrician that took seven years to pay off student loans. Right? It's just a wide variety, even within the house of medicine, and especially when you get outside of the house of medicine of our pathways to success. And that's okay. This is a single player game. It's you against your goals. So pay attention to what you value, what your goals are, not how somebody else is doing. If you want to come on and share your experience, we'd love to have you. Whitecoatinvestor.com Milestones is where you apply to come on the show. Now we need to talk about something. I'm recording this on August 2nd. It's going to run. It's not going to run for 24 days, so three and a half weeks. And so this might be totally out of date, what I'm about to say by then, but I think it's a good example anyway. The big news this morning, bouncing around all the websites, you know, the Dow's dropped like 1,000 points in the last couple of days because the jobs report came in less than people thought it was going to be. Now everyone's like, oh, recession's going to happen. This is terrible. The Fed waited too long to cut interest rates. And maybe that's true, maybe it's not, I don't know. But the market's pricing in. I think a majority of people think the Fed's going to cut rates by half a percent rather than just a quarter percent at their next meeting because of this jobs report. Right. The Fed's got this mandate to control inflation and to try to get as high of employment as you can get. And that dual mandate is obviously in conflict. And they're always constantly trying to thread the needle between those two things. But maybe they did wait too long. But the consequences of this jobs report are that bonds have gone up dramatically in value and stocks have gone down dramatically in value. And this is kind of classic market behavior. When the economy is supposed to do surprisingly well, stocks go up, bonds go down. When the market does surprisingly badly, vice versa. But as I look at what's been going on in the markets, I look at, you know, I just put in these common ETFs to get a quick look at the markets. Into Google, like vti, right? The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. I put that in. I look at a chart for the last month or so, and I see that it peaked at $279 a share today. As I read this, it is $262 a share. What's that down about 5%, 5% in the last couple of weeks. So if you used to be, you know, had all your money in US Stocks and used to have a million dollars, you now have $950,000. You've lost 50 grand. And so that's a very real loss. You know, it's these people that say it's not a loss until you sell. It's bogus. It's a loss. Right. Just like it was a gain a few days ago. If I look at, if I look at bonds, I see that their price nadered. Back in April, the Total Bond Market Index Fund nadered at about $70 a share, 70 and a half dollars a share. And today it's up to $74 a share, which is the highest it's been, oh, it looks like since about 2022 when they started cutting interest rates. And so stocks down, bonds up. This happens. This is what markets do. What should you do with that information? Nothing. You should do nothing with it. You're not trying to time the markets. This is not how you make money. It's all about time in the market, not timing the market. I generally only look at my investments probably on average every couple of months. And I'm trying to look to see where new money needs to be invested. If I wasn't putting new money in, I don't know, I might only look twice a year. That's how long term investing Works. I always find it interesting. I have people write me up that send me emails or whatever about their investing technique. And frequently it's this massively time consuming thing. I got them sending me articles they read every day on their favorite asset class. And I'm like, you're reading articles every day on your favorite asset class? This is way too much time. I am not interested in doing that. If you're spending hours a day on your investing, you got to ask yourself, is that really what you want to spend your life doing? You only get one life, so it's okay to have a set it and forget it portfolio and look at it every few weeks or every few months or whatever. That's perfectly fine. It's a totally reasonable way to invest. And the beautiful thing about it is it helps prevent a lot of behavioral errors. Right? People who watch the markets too often are much more likely to do damage than good. I think it was Warren Buffet that said, you know, the best attitude toward your investments is benign neglect bordering on sloth.

Right?

Being lazy in this thing is counterintuitively beneficial to your money. Activity is not rewarded when it comes to investing. Patience is rewarded. A long term mindset is rewarded. Your biggest enemy is you. So watch out for that person in the mirror. They're the person most likely to trash your investing plan. Be careful when markets become volatile, when things seem to change. And don't do anything crazy. Now, remember how bonds work too, right? Everyone's all that owns bonds. Oh, I'm excited. My bonds did really good this month. They're up 3.6% or whatever. That's not necessarily a good thing. Long term, you actually want all else being equal, inflation being equal, all else being equal, you actually want higher interest rates. If you're a bond investor, okay? Now when rates go up, you're behind for a period of time. That period of time is equal to the duration of your bonds, your bond fund or whatever, right? So if it's got a duration of four years, interest rates go up, you're behind for four years, and after that, you're ahead any period of time longer than the duration. So that's a good thing. Higher interest rates are a good thing for bond investors, okay? When they go down, yes, your bonds are now worth more, but. But you're also reinvesting money at lower yields, right? And you're getting a lower yield on the bonds that you do own. So you can have more principal and less return, or you can have less principal and more return. That's really the option. So don't get too excited or too depressed when things go up and down. It works out for you either way. Just keep stuffing those investment accounts full and you will be surprised how much wealth you can accumulate in not that long of a time period. Focus on your own good investing behavior. Your good financial behavior. Work hard, have a reasonable investing plan and stick with it and you'll reach your financial goals and you'll win this game. Remember, the game is you against your goals. It's not you against anybody else. All right, Our sponsor today is Southern Impression Homes. They're taking owning rental property to the next level with the innovative 2.0 approach focusing solely on new construction investment properties, single family homes, duplexes and quads in high growth markets of Florida. They handle every aspect of the process with expertise and efficiency including financing, insurance and property management. Learn more about Build to rent, visit www.whitecoatinvestor.com, southernimpressionhomes or call 904-831-8058. All right, this is the end of another great episode. Hope you enjoyed it. We certainly enjoyed making it and wish you well out there in WCI land. Whether you're going to work or coming home or had a hard day, thanks for what you're doing. You can take care of this finance stuff. It's not the most important thing in your life. We totally get that. But it can be a big source of worry and we're here to help take that away. See you next time on the podcast. The hosts of the White Coat Investor are not licensed accountants, attorneys or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.