MtoM #216: Two Doc Couple Gets Back to Broke While Raising Kids in New York City and Finance 101: Mortgages

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 216. Two doc couple gets back to Broke while raising Kids in New York City Are you ready to take control of your financial future through investments that you can personalize to your specific goals? Laxone Real Estate specializes in helping high income professionals, including physicians, achieve financial freedom through private multifamily real estate investments. With over 13 years of experience, a $375 million portfolio and 1600 plus units under management, Black Swan offers unique opportunities that put investors first. They operate with no GP level fees ever structure virtually unheard of in the industry. Led by physician Dr. Elaine Stoggeberg and supported by a vertically integrated team, Black Swan assures hands on management and a proven track record of strong, stable returns. Learn more about their investor aligned approach@whitecoatinvestor.com BlackSwan all right, welcome back to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. This is a podcast driven by you. We want to celebrate your milestones with you and use them to inspire others to do the same. You can apply to come on this podcast@whitecoatinvestor.com as a reminder, something going on right now through April 8th is $100 off our newest online course. This is our continuing financial education 2025 course. This is good for CME. I think it's 17 credit hours of CME. We build this thing using the content from WCICON every year and all you need to use is the code CME CFE100. If you go to whitecoatinvestor.com CFE and use discount code CFE100 we'll give you another hundred bucks. Off the course you can enjoy keynotes on lessons from Early Financial Independence, what the Dying can Teach Us about Money and life, and Understanding the Financial advice industry, and 35 plus other hours of stuff from finance and wellness experts. This is the latest, most up to date stuff from the conference that literally just ended a few weeks before I recorded this. Whether you're interested in boosting your personal wellness, fine tuning your financial plan, investigating tax reduction strategies, living a more intentional life, or planning for retirement, this CME eligible course has got something for everyone. Whitecoatinvestor.com CFE and it's 100 bucks off until April 8th using discount code CFO CFE 100 all right, we got a great interview. This is a two doc couple. I think you're really going to love it. Stick around. Afterward we're going to talk for a Few minutes about mortgages. Our guests today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast are going to remain anonymous, but we have a two dot couple here. Let's have each of you introduce yourselves separately. Just talking about, you know, where you're at in your career path and what you do for a living and what part of the country you're in. Sure.

So I guess I'll start. And first of all, Dr. Dali, thank you for having us. Longtime fan, first time doing the recording with you. So I am still in training. I am PGY9 at this point, but I have three more months to go with my fellowship. I'm in a medicine subspecialty like procedural specialty and we are in the New York metro area.

And let's hear a little bit from your wife.

Hello. I am currently in primary care. I am five years out of training still with my first job working in a big health system in one of their community clinics.

Okay, and you guys have been together for how long?

Wow.

Medical school.

Since medical school. Okay, so you've been together the whole time. One of you got out of training because the training was a lot shorter, right?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay, very cool. And tell us what we're celebrating today. What have you accomplished?

We're back to broke.

That's pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. Which is particularly impressive when you mention how much student loans you had when you came out of medical school. What did you guys owe in student loans altogether?

Oh, so my portion was I think a little bit over $400,000. Maybe like $410,000. And my wife is pretty similar.

Okay, so $800,000 plus. And I imagine given the time period, it's probably grown a bit in the time. What was the most you ever, ever owed in student loans?

Oh, well, today, so I'm on the payee program, almost 550 by this point. My wife is, she's on the repay program, but I think hers is like 440 at this point.

Okay, so you're both going for public service loan forgiveness.

That's the plan, yeah.

Pretty awesome. So you've still got all the student loans basically, or even more than you owed when you came out of training. But you're still back to broke, which means you've been putting a lot of money away somewhere else. In the meantime, if you can offset a million dollars in student loans, tell us about that. What are your other assets?

So we have about 600 retirement accounts, all stock. It's S&P, 500 and some small cap, some REIT and some international as well. We Have a good chunk of saving. We are saving for a down payment, so hopefully we'll use that in the next two years or so.

Very cool. So about a million dollars in assets and about a million dollars in debt?

Yeah, a little over a million. Yeah.

Very cool. All right, what's your income been over the last nine years or so? What's it ranged from low and high?

I started out in residency, 2016. I think it was 56,000.

Okay.

I was in a low income area for residency, so I think it was like mid fives in residency. And then when I had my first job, it was probably like 200.

All right. And maybe in the last couple of years, all combined, what do you think the two of you have been making? 300,000, something like that? 400,000?

Yeah, a little north of 300,000. So my fellowship is about 100,000 right now, pre tax, of course. My wife is 225 pre tax.

Okay, so really, your incomes range from 100 to 320, 330 or so over the last nine years. And yet somewhere along the line, you managed to squirrel away a million dollars out of that. I mean, just doing the math in my head, right? You haven't made that much more than a million dollars. Right. You've made, you know, 1.5 or something, 1.8 maybe in that time period, and you've still got a million dollars of it left. So that suggests to me that saving was pretty important to you guys, that you carved a big chunk of your income out and are using it to build wealth. Any idea what your savings rate has been over the last few years?

Yeah, so, like, we really started keeping track in, like, 2022 and 2023, and 2024 is when we actually have data. So we saved about 21% from 2024 and then 24% from 2023.

Okay. So that's not crazy. I mean, that's kind of the range we tell most attending physicians to save. And that's really what your family's been, you know, I mean, one of you is obviously still in training, but one of you is an attending physician. So that's kind of, you know, textbook white coat investors doing that. And yet you still, you know, with her only five years out, really not even quite five years out, have already got a million dollars in assets, so that's pretty awesome. What. What do you think enabled you guys to do that?

I think a lot of it is just really like paying yourself first. So when she first became an attending in 2020, we kind of like had a few months where we just tracked our spending and then we didn't really, like, look to see, like where we can cut back and everything. And then we saved whatever's left over. And then from there we kind of talked about it. It's like, all right, well, like, what kind of long term stuff that we're trying to save for. So we're moving away from New York. We're gonna need another car. So we've been saving for that for a little bit every month. We're saving for down payment as well. So just little by little, like, kind of like what you mentioned, like watching Pink dry.

Yeah. And I want to add that this is also while having three children.

Yeah, that's a little bit of a complication, isn't it?

Yeah. So, yeah, it's really interesting. And that's why we wanted to do this podcast and we really want to encourage the listeners to basically show that. Here we are as a dual physician couple, one of us still in training. We're in a high cost of living area. We have a new family. We do not have family in the area to help. So a lot of our spending is on child care. We do not have a house. But we are very, very intentional with our savings and asset allocation. And just by squirreling away all these years and just being really intentional about it, we were able to go back to broke.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Tell us about the parental leave you guys experienced.

So legally I'm allowed to take parental leaves, but because I'm in a procedural specialty and I'm finishing up my training, there really is a balance, like trying to figure out what is best for me professionally and what is necessary at home. So we actually had this problem extensively. We ended up deciding, you know what, let's just throw money at a problem. So we hired a full time nanny. It's costing us quite a bit, but that's what's necessary to finish training.

Yes. So he was unable to basically not take leave. He only used his vacation days to help out when he can. And I was able to do my 12 weeks and work it out with my job to do intermittent leave. So, you know, the frenzy of, you know, running from work to daycare to home, all of that, but I didn't use any extra time. It's just what, whatever I had allowed. But I didn't take any break. I was mostly full time.

Yeah. But nine, nine months total for three kids, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

And is that paid maternity leave or was it unpaid?

Paid.

It was paid. Very cool.

Very cool.

And give me a sense. What does it cost to have a nanny? What does child care cost in a high cost of living area like yours or a two doc couple?

So when the younger ones are in daycare, it's 552 a week per child and a 10% discount for siblings. So childcare is actually our biggest experience.

Okay, so four grand a month, essentially. And now you've got a nanny.

Yeah.

So she's here for the month. And we're actually. Because I landed a job on the opposite side of the coast already, so we're gonna be moving back, like, closer to family. So my wife and the kids are gonna head back first probably like towards the end of April.

Okay, very cool. To have done all this in a high cost of living area while starting a family. I mean, that's. That's no joke. I remember after we had our third kid, we were, like, tapped out. We're done going from man to man to zone coverage was just too much for us. And we just hit the pause button after that. We've got a caboose about six years later when we finally recovered from that experience. But it's no joke. And to meet your financial goals as well, tell us about some of the challenges.

Right.

I mean, you're having to balance. You don't want to, you know, hurt your family, you don't want to hurt your marriage, you don't want to hurt your career, but you also want to start getting ahead financially. Tell us about some of those hard decisions you had to make along the way.

One of the things that was tough was, like, really, like, figuring out, like, where we wanted to, like, where our goals are in terms of our financial goals. For example, like, we like to eat out, we like to travel, and we, like, had to be intentionally, like, carve out some money for that. So what we did is, like, actually, my wife has been doing a lot of sacrifice in this area. We live in an area where there's a little extra room for the kids in a safe area. But the compromise is that she has an hour commute in the morning, our commute come back. Because of that, we're able to save something on rent, and we're able to go on pretty often trips recently. So I think it's really, like being intentional on where we spend the money and trying to figure out what makes us happy.

Yeah, I was going to say it really tests the marriage when we want to also grow our assets as well. And we took a lot of tips from the podcast and from other advice Columns as well, such as we really carve out time to work it out as a couple and talk about our finances. Some conversations can be heated.

You guys had a disagreement.

Really?

I can't believe it. That never happens in marriage.

Yeah. You know, things said like, you're crazy. How could you? What about my happiness? Mostly for me. But, yeah, it really tests the marriage. But also, it helps us really communicate honestly with each other and be very, very realistic. So I'm really happy that we were able to reach a compromise. But, you know, also when you make the right compromise, you don't feel like you're compromising in a sense of, you know, we're not pinching pennies. Right. We. We do take trips. And I, you know, as someone that's living in New York, is just. I would like to spend money on trips rather than a extravagant apartment. Right. So that's the sacrifice we make. But I'm more than happy to do that. Like, I would rather deal with a longer commute, but we want to go to Hawaii.

Yeah. Clearly the ideal is to, you know, spend your money on what you care about most. There's no doubt about that.

Exactly.

But now you got two people, and they don't always care about the same things equally. And what have you learned about fighting fairly when it comes to. When it comes to, you know, financial disagreements?

I don't know if it's fair. Yeah. You know, the best. I think the best marriage advice I got was don't keep score. Right. There's no. There's no such thing as fair. You just, you know, you love that person and you. You make a work and. But you always have. Like, we. We do take time to do it. Like, also a marriage check in as well, in addition to our finances. So I was like, oh, you know, how are we doing in this relationship? Checking the status. Because a lot of times, you know, he's in a procedural specialty, coming home late. Right. We don't have the bandwidth anymore to communicate. So it's really important to take time out, you know, as, you know, either for date night or, you know, when. When we have the parents to babysit and just take a moment to reevaluate, you know, our relationship, our finances and things like that. And I think. And we do that on a very regular basis, which I really appreciate.

Now, public service loan forgiveness is a big part of your financial life. I mean, within the next year or two, your net worth may go up by a million dollars. And now we've got a new administration in place. There's Lots of talk about forgiveness not being as politically popular as maybe it was a couple of years ago. Changes to the Income Driven Repayment programs. What have your thoughts been the last couple of months knowing that so much of your plan relies on this federal program?

You know, if I were to do it again, I'd probably be a little more intentional on like how much I borrowed. You know, like 10 years ago, this felt like Monopoly money to me. I would say, like I probably had a good chance for a scholarship, but I didn't even bother to ask at the time. So just reason being is I thought it's like, you know, PSLF is going to work out, it's not going to be a problem, yada yada yada. But at this point I feel like we have a pretty decent saving rate and if we have to redirect our savings somewhere, we could. So it's going to work out somehow. But of course, like, one way is going to be cheaper than another, so we're keeping a close eye on it and we'll see what happens.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you're almost surely still going to receive it, given how far you are into the program. I expect you to be grandfathered in. You may have to change the ibr, you know, new IBR instead of pay and repay. I wouldn't be surprised by that at all. But IBR and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, they went through Congress. It takes an act of Congress to change those. And while I guess that's possible, Congress could change the rules, that would be extremely unusual historically to change the rules on people that really ought to be grandfathered into the program. But I know there's lots of worry out there about this these days.

Oh yeah, I like. So I actually just recertified like, Well, I tried to recertify like back in like end of January. Nothing went through. So my last payment of like 300 is in March next month. So supposedly I'm gonna pay like 5,000. So I'm trying to work that out. But like right now there's a five hour wait for like all the mobile phone calls.

So yeah, it would help if they, you know, didn't lay off half of the Department of Education. But you know, such is life, I suppose. Okay, there's somebody else out there like you guys were five or 10 years ago, high cost of living area, maybe a two doc couple. Maybe they want to get a family started. What advice do you have for them?

So we did not have a specific number goal in mind, so we did not know that you Know, in five years, we could go back to broke. I think that as a couple who was just starting to navigate the, you know, more complex finances, we were just like, we made our goals very, very simple, as in, max out the retirement, have a savings rate. That's all we started with in the beginning. And slowly, year after year, you know, it created this great, like, snowball effect. A very slow snowball. But our foundation got stronger and stronger. Our assets became more and more. And with that, we were able to add on to our fan, like, oh, let's say for a house. Oh, let's say for a car. We might not have, you know, have the conditions now, but it is far later. Even though we have a lot of debt, we have the earning potential. We're not afraid to still spend money on ourselves, but at the same time, continue building on that foundation even when, you know, money's out, going out the window with child care. So just little goes a long way.

Yeah, I mean, I echo that. Like, really, like just taking the baby step to, like, kind of automate our saving. I think that really helped. So I'm looking back at our numbers, like, really, like, we're. Our Net Worth, like two years ago was like negative 400,000 with the student loan and everything. And now, like, over the last two years, we went up by about half a million without, like, doing anything. Really, like, extraordinary.

Well, I mean, the stock market certainly helped provide you a tailwind for the last couple of years, for sure, but.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I think also it's like communicating with significant other, trying to figure out what is important to what's him or her and be on the same page as much as we can.

Yeah, and that didn't happen in a day, you know. Yeah, there was a lot of heated discussion, so. But like I said, just as long as you make time for it, you know, communication is free. So as long as you communicate with your partner, you're able to together achieve a financial goal.

Very cool. I appreciate you saying that. Right. Because sometimes you listen to these podcasts and everything's, you know, pure bliss. Everybody always agrees. And, you know, that's not the way real life is. Right? Real life people are different and they have, you know, different thoughts and ideas and priorities, etc. Well, congratulations to both of you on your success. Getting back to broke with one of you still in training and living in a high cost of area and raising three kids now is no small accomplishment. You should be very proud of yourselves. We're proud of you and thank you so Much for coming on the podcast and being willing to inspire others to do the same.

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Thank you for having us.

Okay. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. I thought that was a lot of fun. The best part about it is that they weren't afraid to mention they've disagreed about stuff over the years. They've been at this for a decade now. And they didn't always agree on everything. Right. I think for a little while in that household, my name was probably a cuss word. But that happens sometimes as people are trying to figure out how they want to live their financial lives. And it is, I always say, personal finance is a single player game. It's you against your goals. That's not entirely true. It's a two player game. You're not playing against each other, you're playing with each other. And you've really got to play with each other to be successful in this endeavor. And two people working together, especially when both of them are physicians, even though, you know, they got the hassles of being a doc, one of them's still in training. And of course they've got to spend a whole bunch of money on childcare. You know, it's hard. But they've also got two big shovels and hopefully a million dollar PSLF bonus coming within the next few years. And so they may get pretty far ahead there. All right, I mentioned at the top I was gonna talk a little bit about mortgages. It's kind of mortgage season, right? If you've ever bought or sold a home, it was probably between March and June. That's just when doctors tend to buy homes whether you're in residency or not in residency. And I'm not gonna get into the fact that I think most residents ought to at least consider renting. The truth is, most of you aren't going to, no matter what I tell you. So let's be smart. Whether you're a resident or you're an attending about how you pay for that home. There are mortgages out there called doctor mortgages or physician mortgages. And the point of these mortgages is that they trust you a little more than a typical person because of your high stable income. So you can kind of get a pretty sweet deal on a mortgage. It's not necessarily lower interest rate and lower fees, but without putting 20% down, you can get out of paying the insurance that protects the lender from you defaulting. This is just a cost to most people when they buy a home and don't put 20% down for you. If you get a physician mortgage or doctor mortgage. And it's available to a few other professions as well. You don't have to pay that insurance. So that's the benefit. You can also close without actually having pay stubs. You can just have an employment contract and a lot of times even just an independent contractor kind of contract is enough for you to close in that home. Now a lot of times it makes sense to make sure you like the job and the job likes you before you buy a home. That might take six months or 12 months after you move there. And that's okay. It's okay to move to a new city and rent for a while. When we moved to Salt Lake, we rented for about six months and so we knew exactly what homes were worth. We'd looked at every home for sale in a two mile radius area, the place we were interested in living. We knew what they were worth. More than the people selling the homes, more than our realtor knew what they were worth. It just gave us a lot of time. We could be patient and we could be a little bit strategic about what home we bought and how much we paid for it. And because of that, we got a pretty darn good deal in a house we're still very happy with 15 years later. So don't be in a rush that you feel like you gotta fly in three days. Buy a house. You don't have to do that. You can rent, you don't have to rent an apartment. You can rent a house. There's houses for rent just about everywhere you want to go. You can rent a house for six months or a year, even if you got to pay a little bit more for it because it's a month to month contract, so you can get out of it in six months. But make sure the job's going to work out. Make sure you have a stable family situation, a stable professional situation, because you need to be in a home three to five plus years to work out well for you financially. You need it to appreciate enough to cover the transaction costs. And that takes time, right? I mean, some home prices have gone nuts in the last few years and it hasn't required that much time for it to appreciate enough to cover the transaction costs. But traditionally, on average over the decades, it typically takes three to five years for that to happen. So be very careful out there buying homes that you think you're going to be in less than that time period and make sure it's highly likely that you're going to be there for that sort of a time period for it to work out well financially. Now we've got a list of not only physician but regular mortgage lenders. You can find whitecoat investor.com just go to the recommended tab and you'll see it there and they can help you see what's available in your state where you're buying and get the best deal you can on a mortgage. Remember though, you are dating the mortgage, right? You're marrying the house, you're dating the mortgage. If rates go down, you can refinance that mortgage in a year or two or five and hopefully get a lower interest rate than the initial one you purchased it with. Even this home that we moved into in 2010, we refinanced it twice and got lower interest rates before we paid it off. We paid it off after seven or eight years in the house, but we refinanced it twice before then. You marry the house, you date the mortgage. Today's sponsor, Black Swan Real Estate offers accredited investors access to private multifamily real estate investments with an investor first model. Unlike most firms, Black Swan collects no GP level fees and takes no profit until investors receive a full return of capital. Their physician led team brings a hands on approach to managing their $375 million portfolio, ensuring every asset is optimized for cash flow, appreciation and tax advantages. With a track record of meeting and exceeding return targets, Black Swan Real Estate provides stability and growth for long term wealth building. Discover more@whitecoatinvestor.com BlackSwan thanks for being part of the White Coat Investor community. I'm sorry those of you who had a rough day at work today, hopefully it will be better tomorrow. Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We're here to help. 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.