MtoM #71 - Neurologist Millionaire

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 71, Neurologist Millionaire. If you're like most doctors, nobody taught you anything about personal finance or investing during your undergrad, professional school, or residency. Even though your family and perhaps even your business rely on you to be the Chief Financial Officer, you have never been given the tools to succeed. Enroll in WCI Financial Bootcamp, a free educational email series, and learn to convert your high income to wealth. You will learn the basics of investing, saving, insurance, and more. Your high income alone will not lead to financial success, but as always, we want to help you on your financial journey. Go to whitecoatinvestor.com financialbootcamp to sign up today. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. It's great to be back with you today. I love this podcast where we get to celebrate you and your accomplishments and use them to inspire others to be similar to you, to accomplish the same things to become financially and professionally successful. If you'd like to share your story on the podcast, you can apply whitecoatinvestor.commilestones. we would love to have you. We would love to meet you personally and to use your story to inspire others. Now, let's get our guest on the line for this week. Our guest today on the Milestones to millionaire podcast is Dr. Carmela Gonzalez. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Hi, Jim. And thanks for having me.

It's wonderful to have you here. Tell us about your profession and how far you are out of school.

Sure. I am an adult neurologist and I finished residency in 2013 and sleep medicine fellowship in 2014. So I'm about eight years out of fellowship training.

Awesome. And what part of the country are you in?

I actually recently moved to Florida from Ohio.

Awesome. And what's your approximate net worth?

It's $2.3 million.

$2.3 million. You're a multimillionaire. Congratulations. That's pretty awesome.

Thank you.

What do you divide that net worth up into?

Yeah, so I had to look at my spreadsheet here because I really had no idea. But it's about $800,000 in our taxable brokerage account and about almost a million in retirement accounts, which is a mix of 403 BS, 457 S, Roth IRAs, about 140,000 in 529 for two kids, about 400,000 in real estate, and about 20,000 in cash.

Okay, and you're mentioning Some other people, at least vaguely alluding to them. You're married with a couple of kids, is that what I'm hearing here?

Yes, two kids, eight and five years old. They keep me busy.

All right, and what does your spouse do?

So he manages our real estate remotely, but for the most part he's a stay at home dad.

Okay, so real estate and stay at home and you bring home the bacon, it sounds like. As a neurologist, what's been your range of income over the last eight years?

So when I first came out of training, I was making 300,000 a year. And then I think I peaked at around 460, 470,000 about two, three years ago. Now I'm currently working very part time. As I mentioned earlier, I'm only working seven days a month, so I'm making about 280, 300,000 a year.

You know, I look at these surveys every year, right? These Medscape surveys, these Doximity salary surveys that list the average income for a given specialty. And these income numbers you're throwing out are way higher than the average in neurology. How did you get your income so high?

I would say it's really most about geographic arbitrage. When I first came out of training, I was on a J1 visa, which means I had to go to a medically underserved area for three years. And obviously, since it's very hard to recruit doctors there, they pay a lot more. And my quality of life was also really good. I was, you know, I wasn't overworked. The hospital there really valued their physicians, so I was really pretty happy with my job. But, you know, I was in the middle of nowhere with no family. So after I finished my three years there, we moved to Ohio. And again, you know, salaries were higher than normal. And I had some side gigs as well. I was doing some moonlighting. I was speaking for pharma for some point. So it was like a combination of my full time salary as well as some side gigs. Currently I'm only doing locums, which is still, I would consider geo arbitrage, because you're really going to places where they really find it very, very hard to recruit doctors.

Well, neurologists in particular. Right. I mean, I'm in Salt Lake City, which is like a mecca for doctors. Lots of people want to come here and it's still six months to get in to see a neurologist here.

Yes.

You know, it's a highly valued specialty. You can basically fill your practice instantaneously anywhere in the country you go. And so I'm not surprised that you're not having any trouble at all finding Locums work with it.

No, not really. I have recruiters calling me every day, so I guess it's a good problem to have.

Yeah. Yeah, it's good to be wanted. Okay, so your net worth now is like 2.3 million. What was it when you came out of school or when you came out of your fellowship? Do you remember about what your net.

Worth was out of fellowship? Maybe around. I did start saving right out of residency. I actually credit you and your blog. I was reading Your blog around 2009 was when I was an intern, and that's when I really started investing in the stock market because I had no money before then. I had no money as a med student. So when I came out of fellowship, I would say I had a net worth of about maybe 30, $40,000. I don't have any medical student debt, so that's a big, big factor.

Okay, you were positive?

Yes.

You were positive by the time you came out. That's great. So how'd you get through school? Were you on a contract? Did your parents pay for school? Did you get some big inheritance? How'd you get through school without. Without the usual couple hundred thousand dollars in debt?

So I am an international medical graduate, so I went to medical school in the Philippines, where you basically just cash flow it because it's not ridiculously expensive. I think tuition was about $300 a semester. So it's very cheap. And my parents are not rich, so I actually had help from some family members in financing my medical student education. But, you know, came out of it with no debt, thankfully.

Okay, so. And then at some point you decided to, you know, take the usmle, apply to US Residencies. I assume you did your residency here.

Yes.

How'd that process go?

It was nerve wracking because, you know, it's very competitive. You have to get really high USMLE scores, you have to get good letters of recommendations, and you're basically competing with the best of the best around the world. So it was really, really scary. Match day was pretty nerve wracking, but I was very lucky to match into a very good program in Cleveland, Ohio. And I spent five years there as a resident and a fellow. And that's really when my financial journey started, because I never really knew much about the American financial system. I never knew anything about the stock market or ETFs or mutual funds. I didn't even have a credit card when I First moved here, so I was really kind of starting from scratch.

So how'd you learn all that stuff? I mean, a decade ago you didn't know squat. Now you're a multimillionaire. How'd you learn this stuff?

I really just educated myself online. I was a big reader of your blog and I was also a big Bogglehead. So I was reading all the posts at the Bogglehead Wiki and I just really tried to educate myself. I was very interested, I wanted to learn. So I really sought out financial information out there. And I was very glad to have your blog as a resource because. Cause it was really pertinent to what I was going through and the particular challenges that physicians go through as we go through training.

Okay, so you learned. That's clearly one of your secrets to success. But you also must have applied the knowledge as well. What did you do that allowed you to become a multimillionaire? Eight years out of fellowship?

I think it's really. I just like having a simple life. And I got lucky too, that I married a person who shares the same financial principles that I do. We're both savers, me and my husband. And I think what's really helped for me is being intentional, like really identifying what I want to spend my money on and what things I can kind of scrimp on. You know, for example, I would spend a lot of money in travel. You know, travel really brings me joy. It's what I really like to do. So I don't blink at spending a lot of money on a nice trip. But I will, you know, cruise the Target sale aisle for clothes or go to the thrift shop for my kids clothes. So it's just basically picking the things that you want to spend on and then knowing that then you are going to have to save on other things. And that's also what I. What I try to tell my children, that you can have nice things and still save, but you just can't have all the nice things. You can have some nice things, but not all of them. It's about picking and choosing what you really want.

That's such good advice. All right, so you had kind of a unique upbringing. I mean, you're a first generation immigrant. You grew up in the Philippines. How did that upbringing affect how you manage your money today?

I think it really is a big influence in how I spend and how I see money. I grew up, I would say relatively poor. I'm an only child, lived in a big, basically a house that's one room we never Even had running water. So it's very different from living in America, where I remember when I first got my first car, I was a big deal for me because I never had a car until I moved here. And when I turned on the faucet and there was hot running water, I'm like, oh, wow. I never had this in my whole life. So it's a big difference. And I try to impart that to my children as well and tell them that life here in America is really very different and very comfortable compared to the rest of the world, and that we should really be thankful and grateful for being here and knowing what it's like to go without. I think that just makes me more cautious. And really, I tend to be more of a saver. I get a dopamine hit seeing my account balances go up. You know, instead of getting a dopamine hit going shopping, I would rather see my brokerage balance increasing every month. That's really what kind of gives me joy. And same thing with my husband. We kind of have similar upbringing, even though he's an American, you know, he was born and raised in the United States, but his parents also taught him the value of money and hard work and, you know, spending so that you then have the freedom to do the things you enjoy. For me, money is really about having the freedom to spend your time as you want and having basically choices in your life. I would say in my financial journey, one big influence other than you is Vicky Robin. Her book youk Money or your Life really kind of opened my eyes as to time being really our only limited resource, that you can always make more money, but you can never make more time. So we are basically trading our time and energy every day at work for money. And I would rather buy my time back so I can, you know, spend it with my kids, go travel, just hang around in my house the whole day instead of, you know, spending 10, 12 hours a day at work.

Yeah, I love Vicki's stuff. I was on a podcast with her a few years ago, and. And truly, it is your money or your life. I mean, every dollar you have represents some portion of your life that you traded for that money. So it's absolutely good advice. All right. You beat around the bush a little bit about what you invest in. You mentioned you're a boglehead. You mentioned you have some real estate investments. What does your asset allocation actually look like?

I'm pretty aggressive. We're basically 90% stocks, which is mostly ETFs, VTI, VXUS, and then about 10% bonds, which is really more municipal bonds. And I have that on my taxable brokerage account. With real estate, we have mostly multifamily properties, apartment buildings, basically.

And you're not counting that in the 90 10?

No, no.

Okay. And how much of your income do you think you save? What's your savings rate? If you had to guess.

Good question. I would say at the peak, we were probably saving around 30, 40%. Right now, I think we consider ourselves like. And I'm not sure if the term is. If a lot of your listeners are familiar with the term. We consider ourselves like co staffi Meaning if we don't add a single penny to our savings right now, once it grows in the market, we'd still have enough to retire on. So technically, we don't really have to save anymore. We can just let the money grow indefinitely. And when we reach retirement age, we would really have enough to retire on. So right now, I'm really learning how to cut back on the saving and try to enjoy my money more. So we're taking a lot more trips now that I have more time to do so since I'm only working seven days a month. My husband and I just recently joined the boat club here in Florida, which is a first for both of us. So we're trying to enjoy the fruits of our labor now that we've saved a good nest egg. So it's. We're doing that switch so little by little.

Coast fi. You still have to work, but you don't have to save.

Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. All right, so let's take you back a decade. There's somebody that just got here to the US they were smart enough and lucky enough to match into a residency, and they want to be like you in a decade. They want to be a multimillionaire that can work as much or as little as you like and join the boat club and enjoy running water and a car and all that. What advice do you have for that person so they can become like you?

I would say have a plan. You know, identify what your goals are and where you want to be in, you know, five, 10 years and set a plan on how you want to do that. Do you want to tackle your student loans in five years? Do you want to save at least this X amount amount of money in X amount of years and determine how much of your income you would need to save. You know, as you've mentioned many times in the past as doctors, we really have this big shovel because we have this big earning capacity. So our Problem really is not income, it's really saving. So we've really solved half of the equation already. It's just a matter of determining how much you want to save and how you do that. So. So I think it's just a matter of having a plan and identifying what you want to reach. As I've heard before, a goal without a plan is just a wish. So you just want to lay out a detailed plan as to how you get there and just follow it. No matter what the market does, what's in the news, just follow the plan and you'll eventually get there.

Well, Carmela, you're a neurologist, you're a multimillionaire. You've been very successful. Congratulations on that success. Thank you for coming on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast and using your story to. To inspire others to do the same.

Thank you for having me and thank you for educating physicians on their financial journey. You've really helped me a lot, so thank you.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview. I love talking to immigrants. It's such a different mentality when you grow up in a one room home without running water and then all of a sudden you've got a physician income. You look at it in a totally different way than those who might have grown up in the upper middle class. But you can do some pretty awesome stuff with a physician income if you're willing to live on much less than you earn. If you're like most doctors, nobody taught you anything about personal finance or investing during your undergrad, professional school or residency. Even though your family and perhaps even your business rely on you to be the chief financial officer, you have never been given the tools to succeed. Enroll in WCI Financial Bootcamp, a free educational email series, and learn to convert your high income to wealth. You will learn the basics of investing, saving, insurance and more. Your high income alone will not lead to financial success. But as always, we want to help you on your financial journey. Go to whitecoatinvestor.com financialbootcamp to sign up today. You can do this and the white coat investor can help. That's it for this week. You too can become a millionaire. You too can be financially successful. You can, you can get on this track. This is these milestones to Millionaire. If you'd like to share your story along the way, you can apply whitecoatinvestor.commilestones and apply to come on the podcast and we'd love to have you. Until next time, keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help.

The hosts of the White Code Investor Podcast are not licensed accountants, attorneys or financial advisors. This podcast is free 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.