MtoM #37 - The Veterinarian 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 37, the Millionaire Veterinarian. Getting quality disability and life insurance should be the first financial chore for a doctor to complete. Most docs don't have the ideal policy for their gender, specialty, state or health status. And one in seven doctors get disabled at some point during their career. Because these policies can only be purchased through brokers, we put together a list of vetted agents who are experienced with working with the specific needs of medical professionals and who have your best interest at heart. If you have questions about insurance and what kind of policies would be the best fit for you, check out our insurance recommended list@whitecoatinvestor.com insurance and feel the peace of mind that comes with knowing you have the optimal policy in place. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Welcome back to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. This is the short version of the White Coat Investor podcast where we just have a guest on who has accomplished a financial milestone, whatever that might be. It might be paying off debt, it might be achieving a net worth milestone or becoming financially independent. Whatever your milestone is, we want to celebrate it with you and use it to inspire other listeners to do the same thing you have done. Today we have a special guest that I'd like to get on. He is a veterinarian and a millionaire. Let's get him on the call. Okay, we have Jason here with us. Jason, what is your profession and how far out of school are you?

My wife and I are veterinarians, just general practitioners. And we are about seven and a half years out of school.

And what is your approximate net worth?

Depending on how you define it, somewhere between 2 and 4 million at this point. Big variation based on how you would value our practice as a business.

That's always the most variable part, isn't it?

Right. Yep. And there's a lot of corporations out there that are paying pretty high multiples right now. So depending on what you could negotiate, it could be that upper range or lower range or somewhere in between.

Awesome. Well, either way, congratulations. That's pretty awesome. What's the rest of it? That's not in the practice. What's that divided up into?

Yeah, so we're about 20% in cash. Majority of that is in business accounts. For cash flow, about 10% is in our retirement accounts, and then about 20% is in real estate, which is about half home equity, half business Real estate, property.

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

So most of that time, we were somewhere in the 120 to 150,000 per year range combined. That was where we were paying off student loans. And then when we bought our practice, that was where we landed. So since buying the practice, we've had a bump up. So since then, as we're kind of getting our feet wet and growing things, we've been more in that probably 250 to 300,000 range.

And do you remember when you hit millionaire status, how long ago was that?

It would have been shortly after buying the practice with what we paid for versus the value as it grew quickly. So it was probably around four, four and a half years from graduation.

And what would you say were your secrets to success? How did you guys become so wealthy so quickly?

I think the biggest two aspects were targeting debt aggressively and then business ownership. We chose early on to basically live on one of our incomes while throwing the rest at student loans and our debt, and got that retired pretty quickly. And then being business owners has made the biggest difference with the rest of growing our net worth, increasing our income, and giving us some of the flexibility.

What do you think your net worth was when you came out of school?

We were around 200,000 in the hole. Our loans were around $210,000, and we had a little bit in the bank in the savings account.

That's pretty good, actually, for two people coming out of veterinarian school, isn't it? That's well below average, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I was very fortunate. I married well my wife, while neither of us got help with our student loans or schooling and tuition. She was from a dairy farm originally, and her whole life was made to work on the farm. She didn't get paid, but her parents continually put on a savings account for her, basically in place of wages that she would have had if she'd been able to work off the farm. And so going into vet school, her plan was to avoid taking out all unsubsidized loans throughout the four years. That changed when they changed the rules and decided that graduate and professional schools were no longer eligible for subsidized. And so that altered our plan. But when it's all said and done, I had around 170,000 of that and she had around 40.

Yeah, I remember that year. That was 2012. They made that change. All right, so we know about her upbringing. What was your upbringing like and how did that affect how you manage money?

Yeah, I was from upper end of the lower class spectrum probably. My dad was a farmer and a truck driver. My mom was always an office associate secretary somewhere in that realm. Never had large incomes. My dad was very frugal and never really spent on anything. My mom tended to spend just about anything she ever got. And so I saw both extremes. When my parents got divorced, I definitely inherited more of the desire to spend bug, but saw kind of the negative impact that had on stress levels and family. And so coming through school and then eventually during vet school and after, got really interested in personal finance and launched in and that's how I found your podcast and blog.

So do you guys have any kids?

Yeah, we have four kids. The oldest is five, so had four and four and a half years. We originally planned on waiting until we were done with student loans for that, but a couple years out of school we just decided that it wasn't worth. It would never be the perfect time.

That's right. So how have you guys balanced your financial success with being parents?

I think the biggest aspects have just been recognizing that kids are as expensive as you want them to be. There's a lot of things that family and friends and that either do with their kids or tell us that we should be doing with ours that we just decided are not priorities for us. And we haven't traveled, we haven't gotten toys, we haven't done a lot of the stuff I think even your typical middle income families do. But I hope that as the kids grow in age they'll recognize why we haven't had those things and that as they start to be able to appreciate them, we'll be able to do more in that realm also.

Now you guys sound like you're pretty anti debt. Do you have any debt at all in the practice or in your investment properties or.

We do. We still have a large portion of our mortgage debt and then our business loan is still decently large. But we are attacking both of those pretty aggressively and we're set to have those paid off in the next couple years.

Now what advice do you have for those who are a little bit behind you? Veterinarian is staring at their 100,000, 200,000 plus in loans, wondering if they're ever going to be able to build any wealth. Looking at a job paying $70,000 coming out. What advice do you have for them if they want to get to where you are?

For veterinarians specifically, I think the best thing would be trying to catch them before they take out those loans. There's different school options that can vary widely Some of the island schools in particular have just astronomical price tags with them. And while the incomes of vets have definitely increased over the last few years, it seems like it's at a unsustainable level right now, even though we're still just a fraction of the human counterparts. So I think figuring out a plan early and sticking to it is the biggest thing for vets. What we tend to come out with and expect to maintain is similar to the MDS resident level. And so if you don't pursue something like practice ownership, it's going to require dedication and commitment, even if that means you're going for the 2025 year ultimate forgiveness and tax bomb at the end of that.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Congratulations on your success. I know there are a lot of veterinarians out there who will find it inspiring and it's really awesome what you guys have done, so congratulations.

Thanks, Dr. Daly.

Well, I thought that was particularly inspiring. Right. A lot of people might not even consider a veterinarian to be a high income professional. Obviously they have gotten their income up, but it wasn't all that high initially. And I tell people to live like a resident, like that's some sort of a hardship. Well, that's the typical salary for a veterinarian. Listening to a story like that probably makes some of the those human physicians out there listening to this podcast wonder, why can't I do that when I'm starting to add an income that is twice or three times as high as what those veterinarians are starting at? And I think that's exactly the right question. I think the very best thing somebody can do is go read a fire blog by somebody that's not a doctor. Now, no offense to the physician on fire, right, but it's relatively easy to fire as a physician, you know, particularly a well paid physician like an anesthesiologist. It is a whole lot more work and sacrifice when you're making $40,000 or $50,000 a year. But there are people out there that are doing it. And when you read about the sacrifices that they're making and how they're living to do it, it makes everything I spend just look like I'm just hemorrhaging money left and right. And so I think it's pretty awesome sometimes to realize that not everybody enjoys those physician like incomes and yet they can still be financially successful with good discipline and financial literacy. Getting quality disability and life insurance should be the first financial chore for a doctor to complete. Most docs don't have the ideal policy for their gender, specialty, state or health status, and one in seven doctors get disabled at some point during their career. Because these policies can only be purchased through brokers, we put together a list of vetted agents who are experienced with working with the specific needs of medical professionals and who have your best interest at heart. If you have questions about insurance and what kind of policies would be the best fit for you, check out our insurance recommended list@whitecoatinvestor.com insurance and feel the peace of mind that comes with knowing you have the optimal policy in place. You can do this and the white coat investor can help. Keep your head up. Shoulders back. You've got this. We can help. We'll see you next time on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. 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.