MtoM #17 - Nurse Practitioner and Pharmacist Millionaires

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

Here is your host, Dr. Jim Dali.

This is Milestones to Millionaire podcast number 17, a pharmacist and a nurse practitioner. Millionaires, if you'd like to be a guest on this podcast, we'd love to have you. We want to celebrate your financial milestones with you. Whether it's paying off a mortgage, paying off your student loans, achieving a net worth of 100,000, a million or 10 million, we'd love to celebrate it with you. We even have lots of unique stories, like people who've achieved public service loan forgiveness that we want to highlight to our listeners and use to inspire them to do the same things that you have done. If you'd like to be a guest, sign up@whitecoatinvestor.com Milestones.

Do you ever find yourself wishing there was somewhere to go to ask your finance, insurance or investing questions? The White Coat Investor community is a great place to turn. We have a thriving community across all of our social Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and our WCI forum. We've been discussing solutions to your money problems since 2011. Join the Conversation with thousands of other white coat investors. Follow WCI on your favorite social media platform for financial resources tips and strategies. Just head to your platform of choice and search for the White Coat Investor. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help.

All right, we're going to get our guest on the phone here. All right, we have two special guests today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. We have Corey and Cassie. Welcome to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast.

Thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, thank you.

So let's start with you, Cassie. Tell us about what you do and how far you are out of training.

So I'm a nurse practitioner and I graduated six years ago and I've been working a couple different jobs but as a pulmonary nurse practic and then most recently working in lifestyle management.

Cool. And Corey, tell us about you.

I am a pharmacist. I'm a ambulatory care clinical pharmacy specialist. So that's a fancy way of saying I help manage chronic disease, diabetes, hypertension, et cetera, under a scope of practice and I've been out of school for 10 years now.

Awesome. And what milestone are we celebrating with you guys today?

We are, as of a few weeks ago, net worth millionaires.

Awesome. Congratulations on that.

Thank you. Yeah, we're excited to meet it and be able to share it technically as we are now millionaires. On the Millionaire podcast.

That's awesome. So your approximate net worth I guess is about a million, maybe a little more since it's been a few weeks and the markets have been kind lately. Sure, but what's that made up of?

So about 70% of it is investments, both retirement and after tax investments. About 25 ish percent would be our home value and then we have the rest in cash and in some of our property, our non house property, our very expensive 2010 Nissan Chantra and 2004 GMC Yukon. So those all add up to just above a million bucks.

You know your Yukon's. Well, you're older than my Sequoia, so congratulations on that. You still got it running.

We actually sold our 2016 vehicle in November to buy the 04 to get rid of all of our non mortgage debt.

Interesting, interesting. What was it that inspired you so much to get rid of?

That we were tired of paying for a vehicle that didn't suit our needs, that we didn't drive that much since we've both been doing a lot of telework with the COVID situation and yeah, just the real aversion to debt.

Awesome.

Wanting a bigger vehicle with two kids. They're young now, but they're going to get bigger and we'll need more space.

Cool. And I suspect the way you guys build wealth, it won't be long before you upgrade that to something that you paid for with cash.

Right.

Okay, so tell us about your income. What's been your range of income throughout your career? I understand that it's been pretty variable.

Yeah, so I finished my training, my pharmacy school in 2011 and then I did a year of residency, so that was $40,000. And I got a pharmacist job and my range of income has been anywhere from about 105 to 110, up to 145. And as I finished my residency training, Cassie started nurse practitioner school. And so that you worked as a nurse through school as well, part of the way.

And then as a nurse practitioner, I gone from working full time to part time and then my income is fluctuated with that. When we had our kids, I wanted to be home a little bit more. So I've ranged anywhere from 60,000 to close to 100,000 depending on how much I was working.

So what do you guys think your best year was of combined income? How much was that?

I would say probably about gosh, 200, maybe 220 to 220.

Awesome. What's your secret? I mean, that's not a ton of income. You're not that far out of school and yet you're millionaires. What's your secret to success?

I married up. I think that. No, the joking aside is I think we make a really great team. We have our monthly budget meetings to get together, see what we spent, see where our goals are. We are really clear about what our goals are. We set goals. I think we had our financial awakening around 2017 actually was. I think we were doing pretty good until then. And then we made a couple of missteps. We got rid of some whole life policies and got rid of the new car that we bought.

Been there, done that.

Right. But I think our secret has been setting those goals, but also finding what is enjoyable along the journey. And so if the path to being in a better place financially isn't enjoyable, you're not going to do it. But I think we have found a nice balance of things we enjoy to do without breaking the budget to get to where we are.

Have you ever felt deprived?

No.

No, I haven't. It helps that it doesn't take that much. I think, you know, a cup of coffee, a good bar of dark chocolate, some quality time. Doesn't take that much to make us happy.

Sometimes quality time with her husband. So mostly the chocolate.

Sounds like Socrates, right? Who said, you know, he, who is he who wants the least is the richest. I think is paraphrasing what he said, but it's exactly true. All right, so let's go back to when you came out of school, Kassy. What was you guys net worth then? Was there a bunch of student loans? Do you have big negative net worth or were you already positive at that point?

I think when Cassie came out of school in six years ago, we probably were still in our negative net worth. We weren't tracking it nearly as much as we did, as I said a couple years afterwards, because I still probably had about half of my student loans. And she cash flowed most of nurse practitioner school actually. So she only came out with about $10,000 of loan debt. So we were probably at a negative of student loans, probably 60 to 70 of student loans. And then we had purchased our previous house, which was helped a little bit. But unfortunately we weren't as diligent as we were as we are now tracking.

200,000 in the negative probably would be a fair guess with the student loans in the house.

So in reality your net worth has changed 1.2 million in six years.

Yeah.

On an income that was never more than about $200,000.

Correct.

That's pretty remarkable. Basically everything you made in the last six years, you still have.

Yeah, we've really been hard at working, saving, and fortunately the markets have been kind. And the home we purchased two years ago, of course the housing market has gone up and so the value of our house has gone up. But we've been very aggressive of paying down the principal on our mortgage as well, too. Again, that aversion to debt being a big one of our values.

Now, you mentioned that you married up. Did either of you get significant help from your parents, either with school or with an inheritance?

I did not. I worked and paid for school myself.

Yeah. And I had a grandfather that left me a little bit of money for. For college. He lived longer than he planned on. So the money that was going to be left for me, which I mean, thrilled. I had a longer relationship with them. So it helped with a bit of my student loans as well. But it wasn't all of it for sure. And I'm glad to have had the time with them rather than have had that money.

It wasn't a half million dollar inheritance, though.

It was not. We'd have been on this podcast a lot earlier if it was that.

All right. And you mentioned your debt aversion. How much debt do you guys have currently?

$142,000 of mortgage debt.

Just the mortgage. That's it.

Just the mortgage. Yep.

And what advice do you have for those who are, you know, six years behind you, ten years behind you? Want to be where you're at? Want to be six years out of training. Maybe they're not physicians or dentists and they want to be millionaires, too. What advice do you have for them?

Don't get a whole life policy or don't get two whole life policies.

Don't buy a new car.

Yeah. I think, joke jokes aside, I think finding what feels like a rich life to you, and if you can find a rich life that doesn't cost a lot of money, then it's going to be a lot easier for you to save and make that journey enjoyable and not painful. What about you? You're the. You're the smart one.

I think that's, I mean, it sounds, I think, like a broken record in the financial world that you learn how to spend less. There's so many things we spend money on that don't add value to our lives. So just making sure that anything you are spending is really bringing value and so you can cut out what you don't need.

How do you think your upbringing affected the way you guys Manage money.

Now, we both grew up in very middle class, lower middle class families probably. So I think we weren't raised with enough money to think that money could make us happy. So I think that that's definitely a good part of our past.

Yeah, yeah. Both my parents were public school teachers. Cassie's father was in the military. So we weren't raised on extravagant money. But we as parents now we look back on all the fun things we did as kids that our parents did without a lot of money and realized, oh, a lot of the great things we did wasn't because we had a ton of money. It was because we had those great experiences and the time with our families to experience that. And I'll say that within my family there's been some mortgage issues taken on more than you can chew with some people close to me. That has really colored my desire to be rid of even the mortgage debt too.

Speaking of the next generation, how have you guys balanced being parents with careers and becoming millionaires so quickly in life?

You work less part time if you can.

Yeah. Cassie's work less. I think that picking those times to. When we're working, we're working with our kids, we're focused on our kids. I mean they're young, they're three years old and nine months old. So they're not.

So you're not teaching them about money yet then, huh?

The three year old understands that mommy and daddy work so we can buy bananas and apples and if he's yelling at us while we're working, we can't buy bananas and apples for him. So he's getting some basic lessons and money there too. Yeah, I think it's been just really focusing on when you're doing one thing, do it well. I know Cassie's had the opportunity to take on a second part time job and kind of a passion area. I started a speaking business myself so I really focusing and cutting out, it's not like a budget. You cut out the stuff that isn't providing value so you can focus on the stuff that is providing value.

Awesome. Well, Corey and Cassie, congratulations on your success. You've done what a lot of people would love to do. You've become millionaires in really just six years. It's awesome. Thank you for coming on and sharing.

Your story with our listeners.

Well, thank you for having us on and thank you for all the help that you've provided us along the way too. We wouldn't be here without the wonderful advice that you and some of the other other podcasts that books that we've read that have gotten us here.

It's been my pleasure. You're very welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. That was a pretty cool story, right? Not doctors. Nurse practitioner, pharmacist. They can do it, too. Just six years, right. Had some student loans. Not the massive amount that a lot of doctors have, but they had an income that most people would look at as a relatively low income for a doc, even combined in their best year. And if they can become millionaires, you can become millionaires. You notice they're frugal mindset. You notice a little bit of aversion to debt, not uncommon among the millionaires I've talked with. You know, people always talk about using debt to build wealth. But in my experience, the same habits that lead people to pay off their debt quickly also lead them to save a lot of money and invest a lot of money. They tend to just go together. You know, even if the math shows that if you borrow money at a low rate, that and invest it at a higher rate, you'll come out ahead. In my experience, that's just not what people do. The people who are really building wealth also tend to be paying off their debt. It's pretty amazing.

Do you ever find yourself wishing there was somewhere to go to ask your finance, insurance, or investing questions? The white coat investor community is a great place to turn. We have a thriving community across all of our social channels. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and our WCI forum. We've been discussing solutions to your money problems since 2011. Join the Conversation with thousands of other white coat investors. Follow WCI on your favorite social media platform for financial resources, tips and strategies. Just head to your platform of choice and search for the white coat investor. You can do this and the White coat Investor can help.

All right, Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. We'll see you next time on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. If you'd like to be on it, you can apply www.watcodeinvestor.com Milestones. See you next time.

My dad, your host, Dr. Dahl, is a practicing emergency physician, blogger, author and podcaster. He is not a licensed accountant, attorney, or financial advisor. So this podcast is for your entertainment and information only and should not be considered official personalized financial advice.