MtoM #46 - Dual Physician 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 46 position millionaires. Still not sure what to do with your student loans? Overwhelmed with how to tackle that giant debt in an ever changing political climate, the experts@studentloanadvice.com are here to help guide you through the best options to manage your loans. Our experienced staff have consulted on over $250 million in student loan debt, and the average studentloanadvice.com client has saved over $190,000. You will receive a customized student loan plan using the principles of the White Coat Investor. Get answers to all of your student loan questions, gain clarity about your financial future, and start down the right path toward financial freedom. Put book a consult today@studentloanadvice.com you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Don't forget that we've got a course sale going right now. It runs from 24th December through January 3rd. You can buy our financial wellness course, our flagship Fire your Financial Advisor course, or the CFE 2021 course. And if you buy any of those, you get the CFE 2020 thrown in for free. A that's another 50 hours of content, additional continuing medical education credit, all for the same price. In fact, you might even be able to use that to buy Fire your financial advisor using your CME funds because you get this CME providing course with it. So check that out. That goes through the third. You can just go to whitecoatinvestor.teachable.com It'll show up there as a course bundle and get it today. That goes through January 3rd. If you're interested in getting a financial plan in Texas together for the new year, or you just want to do some continuing financial education, lots of options there. Those three main courses we have being bundled together with an extra course completely for free. All right, we got a couple of docs that have done some great things and we're going to get, I don't know, one or both of them on the podcast. Let's see. Let's get them on the line and find out. Thanks for coming on the podcast and thanks for what you do. You're a pediatrician currently practicing full time or part time?

Full time.

Full time. And you're married to a critical care doc, as I understand it. And you guys have a recent milestone that you hit. You became millionaires. Congratulations on that.

Thank you very much.

So how far are you out of training at this point?

We are six years out of training.

Six years out of training. Okay, and what's your approximate net worth right now?

Including our primary home, we're at 2 million.

And what's that divided up into?

It is approximately 7, 800 in our pensions and brokerages, and a lot of it. The rest is in real estate.

And your range of income throughout your career?

Our first full year as attendings, we together made 600,000 and now we are making about a million year.

Congratulations on your success. That's pretty awesome. So you told me before we started recording that your trip, your pathway is a little different from most, that you didn't exactly hit the ground running when you came out of residency, that financial literacy came a little bit later for you. Can you tell us the story?

Yeah, sure. So unlike a lot of your guests on your podcast, who I'm very envious, we had a lot of financial literacy very early. We in our residency had no financial education. I remember very well. My husband was like, I keep hearing about this Roth ira. I think we should do it. I'm like, no, we'll just wait until after we make decent money. We don't have money right now. So we totally did not do Roth IRAs. And then when we finished residency, we totally inflated our lifestyle. My husband got his BMW. We rented 3200amonth in a nice condo. We traveled the world, lots of international trips, thinking, you know, we deserve it. We put our life on hold for a long time. And so for about two years, we had no sense of saving. We were not maxing out my husband's pension. And then. So it wasn't until two years after residency when we went through IVF and got pregnant. And then the sense of, oh, my God, there's someone else we need to start saving money for. I started becoming more conscious, and then that's when I picked up the white coat investor. And that totally changed my whole mindset and we started down this path.

Awesome. It's funny how when you look around the table and there's other mouths to feed, how much more important stability and income and savings become, isn't it?

Yeah.

Now I understand that you are the one in the couple more interested in finances and money. How did those first conversations go? I mean, you've read this financial book and you're all excited about it, and now you gotta go to your partner and have this discussion about maybe changing your lifestyle. How did that discussion go?

You know, when you have a relationship, there's Polar opposites. I'm the go getter. I'm the doer. My husband is the critical care. Very calm, laid back. So we balance each other very well. So every time I have these conversations with my husband, he's like, okay, do whatever you think is right. Whatever is best for us. I trust you. And so, you know, a lot of our financial milestones, you know, all the decisions, I absolutely run it by him, and I explain everything to him, and then he trusts me wholeheartedly, and so it works out. So a lot of our conversations are pretty easy. We're on the same page. In residency, he was actually managing our finances, so I didn't know where our money was going. And that was a problem because I was a spender. And then when he started fellowship, he got too busy, and he said, you know, you need to take over the finances. I was like, okay, sure. Then I started the spreadsheet. Then I started seeing our credit card, where the money was going, but I didn't know where it was really going. And I curved my spending a little bit, but then that's kind of a little bit where it started. But, you know, with my husband, he's been totally trusting, and I'm very blessed to have a great partner in all of this.

So what was that like when you first looked at your credit cards? That sounds like an interesting experience to me, as someone that's kind of always been, you know, paying attention to it.

You know, in residency, we were making 50, 60,000 a year. I mean, in total together, that was like 100, 120,000, which is a pretty decent income, but yet I couldn't do Roth IRAs. You know, I was like, we can't do 5,000 each a year. And I think once I started looking at our spreadsheets and looking at the actual charges on the credit cards, I was like, did I really need that bag? Did I really need that? I don't even remember what I was spending my money on in residency and the first two years of attending. But, yeah, I mean, lessons learned. We move on. Yeah.

Speaking of lessons, I think an important lesson that maybe we can use for our audience. You know, when I add up the average income of a pediatrician and the average income of an intensivist, it does not equal your income. It equals about half of your income.

Yeah.

Can you give us any tips on increasing your clinical income?

My pediatric income is a little bit higher than average because I'm in private practice, and so there's a lot of perks to private practice and having A higher income is one of them. So I do encourage listeners who are thinking of making that jump into private practice. There are a lot of benefits and hardships to it, but this is one of them. My husband, I mean, I'm not sure about his income. He just in his field and where we live, that's what he and his partner is average. And we're just lucky that that's what they make here.

Awesome. Well, congratulations to you on that. That obviously helps to build wealth and helps pay off debt, helps to accomplish all your financial goals when you can get your income up. And you know, I often tell people that, you know, most people in the world overestimate the difficulty of doubling their income. And even in, you know, maybe that isn't quite as true in medicine as it is everywhere else in the world, but I think there's still plenty of room for people to increase their income in medicine.

Yeah, I think for my husband was getting good at billing, was probably as experienced as the years went by and that's probably what helped us his income as well.

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about debt in your lives. Did you have a negative net worth when you guys came out of school?

Yeah, so when we finished, we were about a negative 150 from school loans.

All together.

Together, yeah.

That's pretty good though, considering you got two medical educations out of it, correct?

Yeah, we went to our state school here, which helped. And one of the mistakes I did in med school just I used the residency and relocation loan that you can get in your fourth year to help pay for our wedding. So that was like a 30,000 loan. Things that you would have wouldn't have done if I had some financial literacy. So it could have been a lot less than that.

I bet it was a nice day though.

It was.

So there's no inheritance here. It doesn't sound like, and it doesn't necessarily sound like your parents paid for all your schooling or anything like that. Is this most of this money just from you guys earnings or how much help did you get?

So our parents did help us a little bit with our college and med school tuition, but, you know, we still had to take a good chunk of loans to pay for the rest. And then after that everything else was.

Usually now you had a run in with a financial advisor that maybe wasn't the best. Tell us a little bit about that.

So in 2017, when I started becoming more financially literate, every year, every month you put money into pensions. And so I started paying more attention to our pensions and so my husband's pension, he didn't know anything. And so I started inquiring, like how much money is in his account, how's it been performing, what are they invested in? And the advisor couldn't really tell us. He couldn't tell us how much was in there, he couldn't tell us the performance. And it was very red flaggy for me. And I didn't. And I was young, I was like, is this how all financial advisors are? And the more I talk to people, the more I realize like, this is not right, this is not how it's supposed to be. And so it took me a while to convince my husband that we needed to separate from this financial advisor because we just weren't getting the information, like, no one is going to watch your money more than you. That was something that I had to learn. And I was asking about our money and this guy couldn't tell us what our money was doing. And it was very frustrating. And so we divorced from that financial advisor and we split, moved his plan over and then come to find out when his partnership did a big revamp in their pension plans. The other partners that stayed with him had like no growth over 10 years, unfortunately. And so they did a whole big change too. And so I'm glad we got out when we did. But just because you are a physician and you have a financial advisor, don't think that your money is safe and that it's growing. Don't assume that be on top of it. Ask them the questions, look at the numbers yourself, because it might not be true.

So did you end up hiring a real financial advisor or do you end up becoming a do it yourself investor?

No, I'm actually one of those people that finds value in financial advisors. So we do have amazing, great financial advisors right now who help us. We still, we pick the funds now that are in his pension plan, but with their help as well. So it's still a lot better than what we experienced before. And there's growth. I think that's the most important thing. Good growth, awesome.

Now you guys are parents of at least one. Just one kid right now, correct?

One son? Yes.

So how did you balance being a parent? I mean, clearly it provided some motivation for financial success, but there's a balance there. How did you balance being a parent with also becoming a millionaire?

You know, we're very lucky that my husband's schedule as an intensivist allows him to have a decent amount of time to be with our son. And then being in private practice also allows you the flexibility to be with your. With your children. So those two combined, I'm very blessed that we actually get to spend a good amount of time, if not together. At least one of us is with our son. And I think, you know, I chose to go into private practice. My son, my husband chose to go into a career where he would only work, you know, 14, 15, 16 shifts a month, just so that we could have time for family.

Now you, you say only. That sounds like a full time schedule to me.

Yeah, but it is. We both work really, really hard.

Yeah, for sure.

Private practice. It's, you know, if he has something in school, I can take off the morning, or if I need to be somewhere for him, I could just tell my girls, just rearrange my schedule for me. And I'm very lucky. Cause I know that's something that a lot of us working parents struggle with.

Yeah, for sure. All right, so let's go back six, eight years. There's somebody that's just like you in residency. Maybe just found out that you know what's going on, the credit cards, and they want to be like you. They want to be a multimillionaire in six or eight years. What advice do you have for them?

I would like for these young doctors who are in residency to not fall in the trap of thinking that they don't have to learn financial literacy at a young age. You should. Absolutely. And I really do feel like financial education should be part of every residency curriculum. So please, please, please don't take that for granted. Time is on your side and take the time to learn about it and start investing early. For those that are on the older side, like ourselves, who are already in residency, I would like to. Or, excuse me, in attending hood and still don't feel like they have their bearings in the financial world, it's never too late. Just surround yourself and be very open with talking about finances with others. There's a lot of taboo about being open about finances, but that's the only way you're going to learn is by seeing and hearing what other people are doing. And I think once we got over that hurdle in our mindset that we can't talk about money, once we did and we started seeing what other people were doing, it opened up a lot of doors, stores for us, like real estate. That's a big one for us.

Awesome. Well, congratulations to you. Congrats on all your success. Thank you for coming on and sharing your story so openly. Doing so does help remove that taboo in medicine to talking about money, that it's okay to be financially successful and you can still be a good doctor and a good parent while doing so. And I think that's an important message to get out there. So thank you so much for coming on the Milestones podcast.

Thank you for having me.

A lot of lessons from that one. One is you're a physician. Even if you didn't do it perfectly in the beginning, even if you weren't perfect in residency or even first few years out of residency, you've still got that physician income. And you can apply that at any time to becoming financially successful. Whether you are 2 years out of training, 10 years out of training, 20 years out of training, you still have that massive tool in your tool chest of your physician income. And you can use that to pay off debt. You can use that to, you know, to build wealth to reach your financial goals, to give massively to organizations that you care about. So don't be afraid to do that. Number two, boy, a high income sure makes it easier. So do what you can to get your income up. Don't just play defense, also play offense. You know, don't be afraid to negotiate contracts. Don't be afraid to go into private practice. Don't be afraid to buy into a surgical center or to buy into other opportunities like that. Many doctors count as their best investment some sort of side business that they're involved personally in. So don't be afraid to take on those risks. And when you have your financial ducks in a row, you can afford to take on those risks. And lastly, just realize that even just being a run of the mill clinic doc, you can still have lots of financial success just by carving out a significant portion of that and investing it in some reasonable way. Still not sure what to do with your student loans? Overwhelmed with how to tackle that giant debt in an ever changing political climate, the experts@studentloanadvice.com are here to help guide you through the best options to manage your loans. Our experienced staff have consulted on over $250 million in student loan debt and the average studentloanadvice.com client has saved over $190,000. You will receive a customized student loan plan using the principles of the White Coat Investor. Get answers to all of your student loan questions, gain clarity about your financial future, and start down the right path toward financial freedom. Book a consult today@studentloanadvice.com you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help Appreciate you listening to the Milestones podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it. This year as much as we have. This is our last episode for the year. We have recorded 446 of these, which is pretty amazing and an amazing tribute to Cindy as the podcast producer for lining all of you up. It's been wonderful to get to meet all of you as guests this year. I'm looking forward to a whole new crop in 2022. Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We'll see you next time on the White Coat Investor and 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.