MtoM #27 - Academic Endocrinologist Millionaire

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 27. Did you know that the White Coat Investor not only has a podcast and a blog, but several books that will help you on your way to financial independence. These books cover topics such as asset protection and minimizing your taxes to keep more of your hard earned money. They discuss plans for insurance, housing spending, student loan elimination, investing and estate planning. You can learn how to become a millionaire within five to 10 years of leaving residency and how to invest in a sensible, low cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of a financial advisor. There's even a book geared directly toward medical and dental students so you can start optimizing your finances or early in your professional journey. Find the book that is right for you at the WCI store, at shop.whitecoatinvestor.com or on Amazon. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Now this is the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. We'll bring you on this podcast if you've accomplished any sort of financial milestone, whether that's getting back to broke, becoming a millionaire, becoming financially independent, getting $100,000, paying off student loans, paying off your mortgage, paying off your credit cards, whatever, we'll celebrate it with you and we'll use your experience to inspire your peers to do the same. You can get on by applying simply@whitecoatinvestor.com milestone. But millionaires are sometimes denigrated in our society, right? It's not so popular to be wealthy and yet we expect our physicians and other high income professionals to become wealthy. And so in this episode, these podcasts, we demonstrate that it's not that complicated, but you do have to do a few things to do it. And that really it's something that ought to happen for the vast majority of physicians out there. So let's celebrate with these people, their accomplishments and take lessons from their lives that you can apply in your own. Our millionaire for today's episode is Tyler. Let's bring him on the line. Tyler, welcome to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast.

Thanks for having me, Jim.

So what is your specialty and how far are you out of training?

So I am an academic endocrinologist and I am just about four years out of training.

Four years out of training. Awesome to have you on here already understand you became a millionaire just a few months ago.

Yep, we recently crossed the seven figure threshold.

Congratulations. What's that divided up into?

So we have about $700,000 in investment accounts, split between TSP 401s, Roth IRAs, things like that. We have about $330,000 of home equity and about $80,000 of cash.

Awesome. And what's been your range of income throughout your career?

So when I graduated medical school, started residency, we had a household income of around 150,000. My wife is a pharmacist, and we graduated at the same time, so she got a job right away. And so we had a pretty good income initially. Once I hit fellowship, it was around 200. I was doing some moonlighting, and now as an attending, we make about 340, 350 a year combined.

Congratulations on that. I guess it took you that four or five years out to become a millionaire, since you just reached that milestone, right?

Yep, it was three years and nine months.

Three years and nine months. Awesome. But who's counting, right?

Exactly.

So what's the secret? I mean, this is not typical for an academic endocrinologist to be a millionaire. Three years and nine months, out of residency or out of fellowship, this is not typical at all. So what did you do differently that enabled you to do this?

We just followed your advice. Basically, my wife and I are very much on the same page financially, and I think that was very important. We are very in sync with all of this. During my training, especially in fellowship, I became financially literate. Reading your books, paying attention to this stuff, just educating myself. And then when I had my very first attending paycheck, we had a written plan for it. So day one, 20% of that paycheck was going towards retirement. We had everything divided up. We were ready to hit the ground running when I started my real job. And aside from that, we had a set plan for my student loans. We had a way to get rid of them within five years. And they'll be gone within five years. They'll be gone in about seven months from now.

Awesome. Became a millionaire before you even had them paid off. That's pretty awesome. So take us back to when you walked out of fellowship. What was your net worth at that point?

When I finished fellowship, our net worth was about zero. I was looking back at it. I still had student loans, about 170 of student loans. But we had been accruing assets as well. We had bought a house during residency my intern year, so that had appreciated over six years. And we had Roth IRAs going and my wife's 401k. So we had. Our net worth was about zero. When I finished my Fellowship.

So if you do the math here, you have basically added a quarter million dollars a year to your net worth while earning maybe just a little bit more than a quarter million dollars on average. This is a remarkable accomplishment. What are you living on?

I'd say we just invest. We invest aggressively. We've always owned our own home, and it's appreciated. And that's it. We've always tried to increase our savings rate beyond 20%. We're about 24%. And it's worked.

It's only 24%. It feels like it's about 65%.

I wish. I wish.

But that's great. Obviously, you've had some decent investment returns the last few years as well. That help, but it's still a remarkably short time period. You know, I was on a Reddit thread the other day when people were like, oh, of course those guys did it. You know, this isn't anything to be proud of. It took them 15 years to become millionaires or whatever.

Well.

Well, they can't say anything about your case. I mean, four years to millionairehood as an academic endocrinologist is not. Is very quick. It demonstrates a serious dedication to this goal. So congratulations on that.

Thank you.

Did you have your parents pay for any of your schooling? Or did you guys get any sort of inheritance or. What kind of. Or is this all you.

So my parents paid for my undergraduate. So I took out full loans for medical school, about 220,000. My wife's parents paid for her undergraduate and most of for pharmacy school. She had about 20,000 of pharmacy school debt. We did receive about $40,000 when we graduated school that we used for a down payment on our first house that was leftover educational money from my wife's grandparents. So we did receive a little bit of money and certainly helped with our education, but we still came out with over $200,000 of student loan debt.

So what's the secret? I mean, people are like, how'd these guys do it? How did you do it?

We saved. We had a written plan and saved 20% or over 20%. And then we automated everything. It just happens. Every paycheck, every month, everything's automated. So we don't have to think about it. We have a plan to get rid of my student loans. My employer is actually paying off my student loans for me. So that's how I'm getting rid of my student loans so that that money is freed up from the rest of our investment money. And then I think another big thing is my wife and I aren't afraid to talk about money. You know, personal finance can be a taboo topic, and I love to talk about it. I talk about it with our residents, our fellows, our medical students. I talk about it with my neighbors. We sit and have a drink and talk about it. I think it's, you know, it's a very interesting topic. And being open about it, you know, just helps educate people and helps everyone be successful.

And it's the best paid hobby there is out there, isn't it?

Yes. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

All right, so what about your upbringing? How did your upbringing affect how you think about and manage money?

You know, I think both my wife and I, our parents, you know, talked about money. I was gifted some money from my grandparents for undergraduate. That was in mutual funds. And my parents, you know, so I learned about investments and mutual funds a little bit when I was in high school. I think just that limited exposure really helped. I didn't think a lot about money in undergraduate or medical school during my training. My wife did all of our finance management. I was busy, and she was the one who had investment accounts. Her father started a Roth IRA for her while she was in high school working jobs. So just that exposure. We did have a head start in our knowledge, but it took a lot of education during our training to actually get to where we are now and feel confident to do this ourselves.

How about the next generation? You guys have any kids yet?

Yep, we have two. We have two daughters. They're seven and five. And so a lot of people ask, you know, on your show, you know, how do you teach your kids about money? And we're starting to talk to them just, you know, things cost money when we do stuff that takes money. We have jobs so we can make money. And we went to school and worked hard to get these jobs. So we're starting to introduce those topics and hopefully get them on the right track.

Awesome. And have you found it difficult to balance being a parent as well as being financially successful, or has that come easily for you?

You know, we always stuck with our 20% plus savings rate. That was, you know, we never sacrificed on that. Once I got my job, we did splurge a little bit as soon as I had a bigger income and, you know, we sent. We went to a nicer preschool that we've been really happy with, and then we moved to a nicer school district as well. So we did buy a larger house in a nicer area. But beyond that, we haven't really had to sacrifice much at all with the kids all Right.

So let's find someone that was where you were at five years ago. What advice do you have for that person? They want to become like you are at this point. What advice would you give them?

Educate yourself. You can't emphasize enough how important it is to educate yourself. I tell some of our residents and students, you know, as a physician, you are very intelligent and this is something you can do yourself. With a little bit of work, you know, reading a few books, you know, you can get up to speed and really educate yourself. And once you learn these things, it's not difficult. This is pretty simple stuff. It's pretty simple math that you can follow.

Awesome. Well, congratulations on your success. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your experience with our listeners. I know there are some people out there that will hear this and say, I can do what Tyler did.

Thank you.

And it's true. They can do what Tyler did. All they have to do is follow the steps. You know, work hard as a physician, carve out a big chunk of your money, and eventually, yes, you will be a millionaire. So congratulations to you.

Thank you very much.

Well, I think that's impressive, right? Everyone's always, I'm an academic or I'm in a low paid specialty, or I'm a dentist or I'm a military doc. I can't do it like those anesthesiologists that make six hours. Well, here's an academic that just a few years out of residency is crushing student loans, is already millionaire. Yes. Married to another high income professional, not necessarily another doc, but a pharmacist, but still so quickly to millionairehood. Very, very impressive. The other takeaway, I think you see from their experience, aside from education, the point he made that, you know, this stuff isn't that hard to learn, was that they were on the same page. And when you have two people pulling together toward your financial goals, it's amazing how quickly you can reach them. So pretty awesome example there. Did you know that the White Coat Investor not only has a podcast and a blog, but several books that will help you on your way to financial independence. These books cover topics such as asset protection and minimizing your taxes to keep more of your hard earned money. They discuss plans for insurance, housing spending, student loan elimination, investing and estate planning. You can learn how to become a millionaire within five to 10 years of leaving residency and how to invest in a sensible, low cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of a financial advisor. There's even a book geared directly toward medical and dental students so you can start optimizing your finances early in your professional journey. Find the book that is right for you at the WCI store, at shop.whitecoatinvestor.com or on Amazon. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. If you want to be on the podcast, it's whitecoatinvestor.com milestone. Apply today and we'll use your story to inspire others to do the same. Thank you so much for your time today. My dad, your host, Dr. Daly, 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.