Financial Planner Becomes a Millionaire - MtoM Podcast #201

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast Milestones to Millionaire Celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom. This is Milestones to Millionaire Podcast Number 201 Financial Planner Becomes a Millionaire Resolve is the number one rated physician contract team, reviewing 1000 plus physician contracts every year. They empower physicians with location specific compensation data which leads to unparalleled leverage during the physician contract negotiation process if physician contract lawyers included can negotiate on your behalf, alleviating the stress that can go along with reviewing complex legal terms. Flat rate pricing and flexible schedules are designed for a physician's schedule. Use code WHITECOAT10 for 10% off at whitecoatinvestor.com resolve welcome back to the podcast. I hope you enjoy these podcasts. If you want to come on them, that is actually possible. These podcasts are mostly about you, right? We want to highlight what you've accomplished, celebrate your financial milestones with you. Whether that's getting back to broke or whether that's becoming a DECA millionaire, I don't care. We'll celebrate it with you and use it to inspire others to do the same. You can apply to come on this podcast@whitecoatinvestor.com Milestones I also want to make sure all the first year medical, dental and other professional students are aware of our Champions Program. What is the White Coat Investor Champions Program? It's a book giveaway. I wrote a book a few years ago, not really to sell, although we sell a few of them, called the White Coat Investor's Guide for Students. I wrote that book with the intention of giving it away and it's actually a pretty thick book. It's my thickest book because the second half of it is basically just a guide to financial literacy. Like all these financial literacy terms you need to know. That's what the second half is. But the first half is a financial primer for professional students and it will take you pretty far into residency as well. It's a great book, put a lot of time and effort into it, but I wrote it to give it away. How do we give it away? Through this Champions Program. We're trying to give a copy of this book to every first year medical and dental student in the country. And if you're a pharmacist or some other high income professional, we'll give it to your class too. You just got to sign up as a champion. Okay, so you go to whitecoatinvestor.com WCI Champions and you can sign up for our Champions program. You're basically just giving us your mailing address and we make sure you're actually enrolled in school and you know, first year. And we'll send you as many books as we need for you to give out to all the first years in your, in your program. We'd send these out individually if we could. It's just too expensive. We can't be shipping one book at a time to, you know, 100,000 people every year. It's just not going to work. Not 100,000, I guess there's not that many. There's 20 or 30,000 of you though. We can't send it out to you. 20 or thousand, 30,000 at a time. We got to send them out 100 at a time. So we're going to mail you a box or two of books for you to pass out to your class. If you'll do that, you'll take a picture with a few of them. Then we'll, you know, we'll, we'll see and send you some WI swag, WCI swag to go with it. That's all the Champions program is. It's a book giveaway. And we got a whole bunch of people that have signed up already. But there's plenty of medical and dental student first year classes that do not have a representative yet, do not have a WCI champion to pass these books out. If nobody's handed you a book yet, your class doesn't have a champion. Okay, Please volunteer to be the champion. Please forward this or give this information to any first years, you know, so that there will be a champion in every class. And we can make doctors financially literate from the very beginning of their careers. And we'll have a heck of a lot better healthcare system. We'll get better care from them. It's all good for the rest of us if this happens. Okay? They're not all going to fire after two years, right? We're still going to have plenty of doctors out there. They're just going to be better doctors because they're going to be financially literate doctors. All right, we got a great interview today. Not a doctor today. We got a little bit of a different professional today. We got a financial planner, which is kind of fun. They also have to build wealth and take care of their family and have a future. But, but stick around afterward. We're going to talk about a common problem for those of us here in Utah. Maybe not in a lot of other states, but in Utah and other places where education is not that expensive. There are a lot of overfunded 529s out there. Especially after the market run up the last five, 10, 15 years. And we'll talk a little bit about what you can do with those. Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Gary. Gary, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Jim. Happy to be here.

Let's introduce you to the audience. To start with, why don't you tell us how far you are out of school, what you do for a living, and what part of the country you live in.

Sure. So I am. Let's see, I graduated college in 2010. I'm dating myself, but I am a right in this middle line millennial. What I do for a living is I'm a financial planner. So I've been doing that since pretty much a year after college. Got my certified financial planning designation about eight years ago, and my master's in financial planning about two years before that. And I am out in sunny California.

Okay. So relatively high cost of living area.

Very much so. We're very cognizant of that each and every day when we see our paycheck and see those state taxes come out.

Yeah, I bet. Okay. And tell us what milestone we're celebrating today.

So I am over 1.35 million as of today.

Very cool. You're a millionaire.

Yes. Happy to claim that.

Congratulations.

Very proud of you.

It's no small feat. And when I was 10 years out of college, I don't think I was a millionaire yet. So you're right where I was now. Granted, I spent a little bit of time in school after college, but so did you. You said you had a master's, so it's a little bit similar road there. All right, well, tell us what I mean. You know how this works. You're a planner. So let's go the assets and the liabilities, and let's see what it looks like.

Of course. So since I submitted my application and as of this interview, we went into escrow on a home and closed. So we are homeowners now, but that we're not really including any equity with any equity there. Cash as of today is about $300,000. Investment portfolio is about $800,000, including 401 s, Roth IRAs, rollover IRAs, and then have about $50,000 in a whole life insurance policy, about $50,000 in a retirement annuity from a previous employer, and that's about it.

Okay, and you mentioned in your application some alternative investments. Something interesting and juicy we can talk about today, or you just own a little bit of bitcoin or something.

You know, those alternative investments really was Just me picking stocks where that's not, you know, following the whole way of index funds. I had some alternative investments. So I invest in REITs, real estate investment trust that I find really attractive. So I'm really interested in commercial properties. There's some commercial property owners that have these really cool lifestyle centers and I invested with them and that's generated a little bit of income.

Okay, very cool. But overall, you're 13, 14 years out of school, you're a millionaire. 1.35 million. And that's pretty awesome. Now you've been planning most of that time. So as our guests on this podcast go, you're in a very high percentile as far as financial literacy goes right from the beginning of your career. How did that feel to you to kind of start out before you even really made very much money and already be relatively financially literate? Did you see that as a huge advantage in your wealth building process?

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, for me, you know, I grew up in a relatively very middle class neighborhood where there was the haves and the have nots and, and you saw some people who had money and what their life was like. And being a young teenager, I said I want a life like that. And those individuals parents worked in the finance industry, whether mortgage, real estate, financial advising, investment banking. So that's kind of what I thought would lead you to prosperity. So I love reading.

All the poor kids parents were doctors or what?

No, no, no, My parents are also in healthcare. Well, my mother is, but. But no, not at all. The poor, the poor ones were the ones that maybe just partied through life and then they just, you know, now maybe just, I don't know what they, what they did, but they weren't making those, you know, making new pools in their backyard. So. So for me, like I loved reading books and as soon as I graduated college, you know, I was like, I'm not going to change my major. I was going to go into dental school. I said I'm not going into debt. And I decided to be a financial advisor. So I just consumed and read books and you know, led me to write my own book that I published four years ago and just, you know, generate that interest and make sure I know what I'm doing. But knowing what the right thing is to do was a huge advantage because I was young enough to take advantage of Roth IRAs and start investing early and get into a high yield savings account and build my credit and not take on debt.

So absolutely, we got to go back to that bit about dental School for a second. How interested were you in dental school? Were you like, I really want to be a dentist, but I can't because I don't have the money and I'm not going to borrow it.

So, Jim, I took my dat. That's how serious I was about it. I got admitted to two schools, and I had a revelation with a few mentors of mine, and they said one was a very close friend of mine who's also a dentist. And he looked at me and he said, you know, if you were my son, I would tell you not to go.

Wow.

So that told me, okay. You know, I wasn't really interested in going to school anymore other than what I was really interested in, which is finance. So that kind of, you know, paved the path for me.

Any regrets, looking back, that you didn't become a dentist?

Not at all. You know, as I go to the dentist more often and talk to my dentist friends, a lot of them are not very happy because not only are they having to deal with patients who are difficult, they also have to deal with their staff who are difficult or don't show up to work or, you know, Medicare billing and all that kind of stuff. So it's something that I wouldn't have enjoyed.

Well, I had my daughter into the pediatric dentist yesterday. So all of you dentists out there, thank you so much for what you do. As you can see, there are people that, you know, they weren't willing to take on the debt that you've taken on and the financial challenges and management challenges you have. And so we're very grateful that there are trained dentists out there to take care of us in our moment of need.

Absolutely.

All right, well, tell us about why you were successful. I mean, you know, in a decade out of school, you're a millionaire, your wealth is growing rapidly. Why were you successful? What have you done right? And maybe if you've made any mistakes, mention those.

Oh, yes, definitely have made mistakes. And I. Maybe I should start off with those. So I talk a little bit about these in my book Financial fives, but the three biggest mistakes that I made. One, I graduated college in 2010. Well, 2010 was a very memorable time. Right. It was a great recession, and I was not smart enough to say, I'm going to buy a fixed Rubber House for $80,000, and, you know, it's just going to go up and up and up. Now, my parents were wise enough to buy a house, and I helped them with that, but I did not buy real estate, and I really regret it. Because that was a prime time to buy real estate, especially in California, where now your value would have maybe tripled. The other mistake that I made was, you know, I really did enjoy writing. As I mentioned, I wrote a book. But, you know, back 10 years ago, YouTube and Instagram are in their infancy. And I had a lot of thoughts to share and, you know, and I put it all into the book. But there's some financial influencers that are basically spewing the same things I said are very basic things that look like they make a lot of money. So I went dismiss social media as much as the younger generation is embracing it.

And then if it makes you feel any better, the vast majority of people that try to go out there and do this sort of thing don't actually have any financial success.

Oh, that's good to hear.

Not have missed out on as much as you think.

You know, you just see these YouTubers saying, yeah, I make $400,000 a year at Fincon. People tell they make all this money. So I'm like, damn, I really missed out.

Yeah, well, there's only one person on the stage and there's 400 in the audience. And that kind of tells you what.

You need to see. You're right. You're 100% right. And mistake number three was probably leaving my money in cash for too long. So I started investing in the stock market in 2010, and in 2015, I took a big chunk out because I thought, oh, the market's gone up so much, there's gotta be a correction, right? Markets go up and down. Hasn't gone down much. And I left it out of CA. I left it in cash for about 3 years. Not all of it, but a large, large part of it, which is kind of the reason I had a lot of cash to begin with.

As a market timing move, you were waiting for the market to drop.

I fell into the hole that we as financial advisors tell our clients not to do, which is time the market. And I was doing it myself. And that was a big mistake because the market has continued to go gangbusters since then. And cash, as we know, prior to the pandemic was not paying very good interest because interest rates were so low. So those are probably my three mistakes.

Although two of those, you know, are retrospectoscope mistakes. You know, you look back and you're like, oh, I wish I did that. Well, we all wish we bought Bitcoin in 2011, right? I mean, come on. Right? So true. Let's talk about what you did right yes.

So what I did right was I was very fortunate. You know, I graduated college without any debt. I got some scholarships, I graduated early. My parents are very grateful to give me a chunk of money. In the beginning it was only $30,000, but they're like, this is what you get for college. Good luck. And so I was, I was able to graduate without any debt, which was big. And I was able to live at home for several years while I established my career. So having no housing costs, no student loan payments. Right. Allowed me to take risks within my career that maybe some people are not able to take and, you know, go on. I started a full commission career when I started in financial planning. You know, so you're in a recession, you have some kid that is a bio major in the suburbs, and you have no warm market. And I, I didn't, I didn't fail. I did really well. And so that's what compelled me to continue to pursue financial planning as a career. So, you know, reading these books and just reading these blogs and, you know, in the early days and they talk about index funds and Roth IRAs and not going into debt, the very first book I read was Ramit Sadi's I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. So because of that book, I started looking at high Yield savings accounts and, and Roth IRAs and not taking on debt. So by doing very simple things and living below your means over time, it's not that hard to get yourself in a position like this.

Yeah, it's amazing when you are living below your means that money's got to go somewhere. Right. And everybody can argue about the right way to do it, but the truth is, anybody who's living sufficiently far below their means that there's a lot of that money does. Well, eventually it does.

Yeah. Give it time.

Getting that part right really goes a long way. All right, well, there's somebody out there that's like you were, you know, 10, 12 years ago, they're starting their career, maybe they're in financial services, maybe they're in something else and they want to be successful. What advice do you have for them?

You know, my advice is just really spend some time getting to know yourself. You know, what do you want out of your life? Try to visualize your life 10 years out. Maybe write a letter to yourself, write down your goals, because society and especially social media these days maybe tells you what your life should look like. And you don't want to live a life like that. You want to live a life that's true to yourself. So beyond the basics of, you know, don't take on debt, don't rely on your credit card, you know, build your credit, also build your, your self worth and your in your network, right? So network, get to know people, find a mentor, you know, do as many informational interviews as you can so you can find a career that you really enjoy and that is worthwhile of your time. And just try to just get to know yourself and get to learn as much as you can.

Very cool. Good advice. Now you've mentioned several times you seem to be pretty debt averse. You don't like debt, it had an impact on your career choice. What debts have you had in your life and how did you manage them?

Well, as of two weeks ago, I've never had any debt. Now we have a mortgage, but I've never even my cars, I always bought them cash. And I thought to myself, if I cannot afford this car, I'm not going to buy it. And I was very fortunate to. You know, when I, when I was living at home, I accumulated some money. So the very first car I bought was my dream car, which is a Infiniti G35. Love that car. And it was $14,000. And you know, living at home for a year, if you can't say $14,000, then you're doing something wrong. And so I was able to buy that car cash. And then, you know, what I did was I used to just flip cars. So next year sell that car for the same price or more, find another car at a good deal. So I did that for a couple of years, but really just the debt to me was I never wanted to owe anybody something in case I lost my job or in case something happened, right? So I just learned from whether it's cultural preferences or just this, the people I was around, debt is bad. Only get into debt if one, it's for education, two, it's for a house, or three, it's for a business, otherwise try to avoid it.

Yeah, now you just got a mortgage. Someone that's been debt averse your whole life, you just got a mortgage. Tell us what kind of mortgage you got and what your plans are with it.

So we got a 30 year conventional and it was a 10 year arm. So we were able to negotiate some pretty significant lender credits. And being the conscious spender that I am, I thought, okay, we're going to buy a house right now. I don't want to do this. The new rules now where you have to pay your realtor if you're a buyer's agent. The seller's not compelled to pay for it. Well, I went out this summer and I got my real estate license because I wanted to get that money myself rather than having to pay that money. So we were able to negotiate a couple of things. And yes. So now we have a 30 year fixed mortgage at about 5.55%.

Very cool. And what are your plans? Are you going to carry it for 30 years?

No. I'm hoping as any other homeowner, that there's an opportunity to refinance. And we'll see. I mean, in a couple of years, maybe this won't be the house for us and we'll pivot, but for now, that's where we are.

Very cool. All right, well, congratulations on becoming a millionaire. Thank you so much for being willing to come on the podcast and inspire others to do the same. And best of luck with your career and your finances.

Absolutely. Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me on.

Okay. I hope you enjoyed that interview. As you know, everybody needs to build wealth. Everybody needs some financial security. And whether you're a financial planner, whether you are a doctor, whether you are a nurse practitioner, whether you are, whatever, you need to build some financial literacy, some financial discipline, and put it together and grow some wealth so you can take care of yourself in your later years, so you can take care of those that you care about and that are relying on you. Maybe support some of your favorite charities, leave some money behind to your heirs, hopefully some of your favorite people as well. This is worth paying attention to. Okay. Please don't just ignore your money. This is the biggest problem for doctors with finances is they just don't pay any attention at all. Right? And the natural thing happens. What is the natural thing for a doctor? The natural thing for a doctor is you spend it. All right? It's amazing. It's not that hard to spend two or three or four or $500,000. You add in a little private school tuition, a couple of car payments and a big mortg, and now you got to pay off $350,000 in student loans, and all of a sudden it's gone. There's nothing going toward your future. You've got to carve out money and put it toward your future. My general Recommendation is about 20% for attending physicians. 20% of your growth needs to go toward paying for retirement. If you're saving for college or something else, that's in addition to that. That's quite a bit of money. You still have lots to live on. You can have a very nice life on 80% of what a doctor makes. But you've got to carve that out or you're just not going to get to a place you want to be at financially later in your life. Now, I promised you at the beginning of the episode, we're going to talk about overfunded 529s. I gave a talk the other day to some internists, hospitalists here in Utah, a lot of friends of mine, and it was fun to talk to them. But I added a section to the talk because this is so common in Utah. You know, we've got schools here. Snow College is a small college. Here in our state, the tuition is $4,000, right? Some are other state universities, Utah State, 6 or $7,000. Brigham Young University, 6 or $7,000 a year in tuition. Our flagship state university, the University of Utah. Everyone's mad right now because tuition has gone up to $12,000. Right. School here is just pretty cheap. And there are other states like this. I've talked to some of you out there. I think Alabama is relatively inexpensive and some other states have relatively cheap schools. And if your kids end up going to these sorts of schools and you saved a gazillion dollars in their 529, you're going to have an overfunded 529. I started putting more money in our 529s a few years ago because our oldest told me she thought she was going to be a doctor. And I'm like, well, she's certainly capable of being a doctor. And so I started putting the maximum amount in there every year for a few years. And since I was giving it to her, I figured I had to give it to the other kids. So we put a whole bunch of money into 529s over three or four or five years a few years ago. And now they've all got six figure 529s. Well, the oldest is at an inexpensive school. The second oldest is only applying to inexpensive school. The sophomore is saying he's probably going to do the same thing, right? And the youngest is nine years old, also with a six figure 529. By the time she gets to school, there's going to be plenty of money in there. So we have an overfunded 529 problem. And I know a lot of you out there do too. Now, if somebody goes to med school or dental school, that might not be the case, right? You're going to burn through your 529 and probably then some, and they may end up borrowing some money. As well. But if you've really been deliberate about saving for 529s, you started early or you were putting a lot of money in there, especially with the way the US stock market's performed in the last five, 10, 15 years, you probably have a lot of money in there. And they may get to the end of school, especially if you leave it invested aggressively all 15 or 18 years or whatever until they started school and another four or five or six or eight years while they're in school. There might be quite a bit of money there at the end, left over. What can you do with it? Well, number one, you can change the beneficiary to another kid. Right. Of the same generation. It can be their sibling, it can be a cousin, that sort of thing. You can just change the beneficiary. You can even change the beneficiary to yourself and go spend it on a cooking class in Italy. Anything that actually qualifies. And you got to check the list of institutions that qualify. Right. Your cooking class in Italy might not count, but you can look into it. Taking flying lessons probably counts, those sorts of things. It's a relatively broad what you can use a 529 to pay for as far as education goes. But that's one option. I think for a lot of people, the option they're choosing is what we're going to do in our family. We're just going to change the beneficiary to their kids. Now none of my kids have kids and by the time they have a kid, it might be another 10 years from now. And by the time that kid gets to college, It'll be another 18 years after that. That's 28 more years for that money to compound. How many times is that money going to double in 28 years? Probably three times. Right. So it might be 8x what's in there now. Right. And that's pretty cool to think that maybe I've already saved up for the next generation and who knows, maybe the generation after that. So that's fun that you can have this. Changing beneficiaries, it's not a trust, right. But it can be a multi generational education kind of a plan. Years ago, people would set up trusts, education trusts, and to try to provide for the education of a few generations in the future. You maybe don't have to do that anymore. You can probably do that just with a 529. As long as the people of each generation play along and they do the right thing and make sure the money's invested reasonably and keep changing the beneficiary to the next generation. That is an option. Another thing you can always do with the 529 is technically your money. You can pull the money out. You can just take the money out and spend it on a sailboat, spend it on whatever. That is an option. Now, there are some downsides to doing that. The main one is that most withdrawals that you're using on education from a 529 come out totally tax free. No state tax, no federal tax. It's a great benefit if you pull it out and buy a sailboat with it. You actually do have to pay tax. And you don't pay tax at qualified dividend rates or long term capital gains rates. You pay them at ordinary income tax rates. So if your marginal tax rate is 37%, that's what you're paying on those withdrawals plus 10%, there's a 10% penalty. That's not the end of the world, right? I mean, you did get tax protected growth for 5, 10, 15, 25 years, whatever. And you can pull that money out and, you know, pay the taxes on it and spend it on whatever you want. It's not the end of the world. Another cool thing that came out of the Secure Act 2.0 is a Roth IRA rollover option. And if the money's been in the account for 15 years, you can roll it into the beneficiary's Roth IRA. There are some limits on it. The first limit is you can never roll over more than a total of $35,000. So if you have a six figure leftover 529, this isn't going to work for you. But if you got, you know, $17,000 left over, this is going to work great for you. Secondly, this takes the place of that beneficiary's annual contribution, right? You can't put $7,000 from your earnings in there and roll over $7,000 from a 529. It's one of the other. You only get to make one contribution. But basically you can use 529 money to do it and you don't have to pay taxes on it when you do that. So this money that you put in there grew tax free for years and years and years and years. Now it's in a Roth ira. It can continue to grow tax free. So you can't put, it takes the place of a regular contribution. So you can't put more in there than the contribution amount for 2024. That's $7,000 for someone under 50. So you put $7,000 in there this year. Well, okay, what about the other 28,000? Well, next year you can put in $7,000 or $7,500 or whatever it goes up to. Okay, well, so it's going to take you five or six or seven years to get as much as you can get into that ira. But it might help a kid that's really trying to establish themselves in their 20s and doesn't have money to save for retirement. This is a good way to save for retirement. You can tell them if you don't blow it on college, you can use it for your ira. It's kind of a cool feature. It's not going to take care of a dramatically overfunded 529, but it's a nice option to have. So those are kind of your options when it comes to a 529. You can change the beneficiary. You can just pull the money out and spend it. You can do a Roth IRA rollover and who knows, maybe Congress and the IRS will come up with something else you can do with it in the future. But for now, those are the main options. As you can see, it's not the end of the world if you have an overfunded 529. But you don't have to have an overfunded 529, right? You don't have to pay for all of college out of a 529. Most of you listening to this are high income people and you're probably still working while your kids are in college and you're probably still a high earner. You can cash flow a lot of that, right? If you cash flow $15,000 a year and you pull $15,000 a year out of the 529 and that's how you pay for college. You don't need a huge 529. You don't need a 6 fig 6 figure 529 to pay for that. If you save up 30 or 40 or $50,000, that's going to go a long way toward their college, especially when it's combined with your cash flow. And that way, hopefully you can empty out the 529. You don't have to worry about this issue anyway, but I hope that's all helpful to you. Some of you out there know that we started 529s for our nieces and nephews years ago and we actually have had a match for them. If they put their earned money into it, we would match it 200% so if they earn 500 bucks and put it in their 529, we'd put $1,000 of our money in there. And at this point, I think I've got seven or eight of them now in college withdrawing from their 529s. You know, they tell me, hey, Uncle Jim, I need, you know, $532, and I venmo them $532 and pull $532 out of their 529 into my bank account. And that's pretty fun. But if they have any money left over in their 529s, what I'm probably doing is just making them the owner of the 529 rather than me being the owner and them the beneficiary. They can be the beneficiary and their owner. And now it's their problem. They can do whatever they want with it. They want to pull it out and pay taxes and a 10% penalty on it. They can knock themselves out. I view it as their money. So lots of options for what you can do with an overfunded 529 plan. But they are a great way to save for college. I mean, oftentimes you get a state tax break. It all grows tax free. While it's in there, it comes out tax free when used for education. You can use it for just about everything school related except transportation. Right. You can't buy a car with it. You can't pay for your parking pass, you can't pay for a bus pass with it. But just about everything else goes. And they're pretty cool. All right. Our sponsor for this episode is Resolve, the number one rated physician contract team. Reviewing 1000 plus physician contracts every year, they empower physicians with location specific compensation data, which leads to unparalleled leverage during the physician contract negotiation process. A physician contract lawyer is included and can negotiate on your behalf, alleviating the stress and go along with reviewing complex legal terms. Flat rate pricing and flexible schedules are designed for a physician's schedule. Use code WHITECOAT10 for 10% off@Whitecoatinvestor.com Resolve. All right, thanks so much for being a member of the white coat investor community. Without you, it's kind of silly to have a podcast. We definitely need an audience and we're grateful you're here. Thank you for the hard work you do every day. Please keep your head up and your shoulders back. You've got this. We're here to help you. We'll see you next time on the Milestones to Millionaire 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.