MtoM #76 - Naturopathic Medicine Physician is Back to Broke

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 76. Naturopathic medicine physicians back to broke. The White Coat Investor is proud to introduce our no Hype Real estate investing course, which will provide the framework for developing further knowledge and experience as you progress in your real estate investing career. We call it an introductory course because there's always more to learn. But this is no short, superficial course. There are over 200 lectures and videos adding up to more than 27 hours of content by over 15 different instructors. We think it just might be the best real estate course on the planet. Continue your wealth building journey today with the no Hype Real estate Investing course@whitecoatinvestor.com courses. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Now, this is the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. It's a little bit different from the regular White Coat Investor podcast. Here on this podcast, we want to celebrate milestones with you. Whatever milestone you've achieved, maybe it's paying off your car or paying off your house or paying off your student loans, or maybe it's becoming a deca millionaire or financially independent or hitting a net worth of $100,000. Whatever your milestone is, we'll celebrate it with you and we'll use it to inspire others to do the same. We've got a really great guest today. Let's get her on the line. Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Natalie. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Tell our listeners what is your profession and how far are you out of school?

I am a naturopathic doctor. I graduated eight years ago, almost eight years to the day. I did a two year residency, so I finished residency six years ago.

Okay, and what part of the country are you on?

I'm on the west coast.

West coast. All right. And today we are celebrating the fact that you are back to broke. So congratulations on that. You know, net worths are changing a lot these days for anybody with any investments. But approximately what's your net worth today?

Net worth is pretty close to zero. If you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago, it was closer to 25,000 net worth. I'm not kidding. So kind of kind of the tumble that's affecting equities has affected that net worth number. For me, I'm pretty much right at zero.

Yeah. Although this won't run until later in July. We're recording this in mid June. And right now the stock market's down about 25%, and lots of other things are down even more than that. So I'm not surprised that lots of people's net worth has taken a hit recently. But tell us about yours. What's it divided up into? Tell us about the debts. Tell us about the assets. What do you have?

So I still have student loan debt. I've got two. $219,770 as of today. Then my assets are about the same. I've got about 18,000 between cash, checking, and savings. Cars worth about 20,000, and my investments are sitting at 176,000. That's divided up between my 401k and my Roth and a taxable account. And that's pretty much it.

And what was your net worth when you came out of school eight years ago? Do you remember?

I do. It was $270,000 of student debt.

200. Negative $270,000. And nothing to your name as far as assets?

Pretty much. Well, I did own my car. I did have ancient Chevy Blazer that I'd paid off. That was it.

And did you build any sort of wealth during your residency?

Not much. I pretty much just was paying zero. I was kind of hoping to go the PSLF route, so I wasn't too worried about starting to make any of those payments. I always put money into a Roth, and they gave us a 403B at the academic center where I trained. So I did start by putting in a couple hundred here, a couple hundred there, but wasn't even maxing out the Roth. Those two years in residency, I was pretty much just living for Taco Tuesday and sharing with roommates and making it to the end of every month.

So this is mostly you've done in the last six years since you got out of residency, you've increased your net worth by close to $300,000. Really?

Yeah.

Which is very impressive. Congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah, my lowest point was actually minus $311,000 at the end of residency.

Wow. So it actually all grew during residency?

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. So it sounds to me like you paid for everything yourself with debt, no parental help for your schooling or any sort of inheritance or anything.

Definitely not during school. Paid for everything with federal student loans. I did get scholarships. I had academic scholarships. I also had a tribal scholarship from my tribe, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, which was, of course, an amazing blessing, but that was it. The rest was me.

And over the last six years or so, what's been your range of income?

I was hired at about $100,000 per year, which is much higher than the average for a naturopathic doc who's getting out of school or getting out of residency. Then that's increased to closer to what family doc average nationwide. So low 2000s in this last year.

Better ratios than the veterinarians with similar debt, it sounds like.

I think so, but I definitely think I'm an outlier. A very different situation that I found myself in than your average naturopathic doctor for sure.

Any tips for other naturopaths as far as increasing income?

I have worked this whole time with medical doctors. They have been my strongest allies. I have been practicing alongside them and helping to take care of the same patients. They really advocated for me when we had a compensation process that really changed compensation for all of the doctors. I was included in that and other people really argued strongly for me to get raises and changes to compensation really came from other doctors more than they came from me advocating for myself. So I would say make allies. Make allies wherever you are and in whatever way you can.

Now, you mentioned public service loan forgiveness earlier. Is that still your plan for your federal student month?

Definitely not. That is no longer on the table for me in private practice. So I definitely decided on a strategy of paying it off. I did get a student loan consultation that helped me to decide what was best to do. So I kind of hung out in income dependent repayment for a while and then I just refinanced last year.

Exciting to be making moves on that. It sounds to me like you've had a pretty good balance between paying down debt and investing. And maybe part of that was that you were thinking about PSLF for a while. I don't know. How did you decide how much to put toward investments and how much to put toward debt really?

Some of it's mathematical and some of it is psychological. I really think that the return that I'm going to get from investing is going to be a lot more than my return from paying down my student loans. And I didn't want to give up that time in the market. I didn't want to get back to broke with nothing to show for it and get back to broke with zero assets. That just seemed really wrong to me given starting my career a little bit later than other people my same age needing to make up for lost time. I just couldn't reconcile only paying the debt down versus investing. So I just decided I needed to invest. I needed to just make that a priority and then pay off the debt with whatever was left over. So part of it sleeping at night, getting rid of the debt is. Seems like a great idea. So not giving up on that goal, but I did kind of hedge my bets paying down debt and investing really at the same time.

Now you've accomplished a very impressive and very difficult milestone. Getting back to broke is one of the hardest milestones to achieve. We have a lot of listeners out there who would love to be broke right now because their NET Worth's, you know, minus 200, 300, 400,000. What were your secrets to success? How did you get back to broke just six years out of your training?

I think a lot of it came from my pay. It came from accepting a position where my pay was going to grow. And that was told to me on the day that I was hired. And I worked that into this. Oh, if I take this job, this is going to help me succeed. That was an important just initial step. But other than that, I'm very consistent. I'm consistent in my habits. I've been using Mint as a budgeting app since 2011, so I don't run up my credit cards or something like that and get myself into trouble. But I have the same kind of consistent habits. I didn't suddenly make more money and then decide to take up heli skiing and rock climbing in New Zealand. I really just like to go hiking and take road trips. And so that kind of lifestyle inflation hasn't really affected me as much as maybe it could have affected other people. And I think that has been a reason that I've saved a lot. And my other kind of unpopular opinion is I think I've been successful by being single because it's something that works for me personally and enables me to make the financial choices that work best for me. And a lot of that is around doing whatever I want, whenever I want to. That's fun. And then saving the rest.

Yeah. No compromises to make when it's just compromising with yourself, huh?

Yeah. And it's not to say that other people don't have the benefit of two incomes working towards their net worth, but I just find that this works for me.

Yeah, pluses and minuses both ways, for sure.

Oh, yeah.

How did you learn to do this? I mean, did your parents teach you about money? Was there anything in your upbringing that affected how you manage your money?

They definitely did. So I was raised by a stockbroker and insurance agent. They gave me a checkbook when I was probably 8 years old, like gave me the family checkbook and had me sit down. And here's how to write a check. Here's, you know, put the stamp on the envelope and go put it in the mailbox. And I was paying the family bills when I was pretty young, and that. That kind of taught me a few things. And then, you know, the day I got a job was the day that they took me down to the credit union and helped me open my account. And here's. Here's how to do it, and here's how to look at your account and balance a checkbook. And that was from a fairly early age, from my teens. So I think those are all experiences that not a lot of people had. I knew how the market was doing that day by the tension around the dinner table. That's just not an experience that everybody has.

All right, let's go back eight years. There's somebody today listening to this podcast. That's where you were at eight years ago. They owe $280,000, $300,000, whatever. They have. Maybe not looking at a $400,000 or $500,000 a year income, and they're wondering, man, how long until I can get back to broke? What advice do you have for them?

I would say definitely look at your student loan balance, because you can't address something that you don't understand and that you don't want to look at. When I was a resident and, you know, talking to my interns, I would ask them, like, hey, do you know your student loan balance? They would say, no, I can't look at it. I'm too. I'm too scared to even know what it is. I said, you just can't operate that way as long as if you know what it is. And you can make a plan. And that could be, wait till it's forgiven, 25 years, but just. Just have a plan. Like, make. Make sure that you know your numbers well enough to do that. And then don't get yourself into trouble. Don't do any of the silly stuff that I know you talk about a lot, but, you know, like, don't get suckered into whole life insurance. Make sure you have a disability policy. You know, get yourself kind of set up for the rest of your working life as you're graduating, because it's a great time to do it. You're never going to be younger. You're never going to kind of have the same rates for those things. So I think just making some kind of plan. And even if your plan changes like mine did, like, I thought I would go for pslf, and then I didn't. I still was Just doing what worked well for me at the time. But I always had a plan, even if it changed.

So what's next for you? What financial goal are we going to be celebrating with you next on the Milestones podcast?

I'd love to get rid of the student debt. I'm still working on it. My goal is to have that done by my 40th birthday. So I have a very, like, clear plan of when and how that's going to happen. So I have an exact date on the calendar for it. That's kind of my number one. I am kind of planning to dip my toe into some real estate. We have, you know, a little family cottage in Michigan, and there's a parcel of land that's for sale right next to it that is just, you know, the perfect, perfect place to buy some land right next to where we already have property. So that's kind of my. My next little foray is finally, finally a little bit of real estate.

Awesome. Well, congratulations, Natalie, on your success. I know others will find it very inspiring, and I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of your story as you move through your financial life. So congratulations and thanks for being on the podcast.

Great. Thank you so much for having me. This is great.

All right. I hope you found that as inspiring as I did. We've had lots of guests on here that frankly, made the whole process sound easy, right? They come out of residency and they're making four or $500,000 and they only had $100,000 in debt, and, you know, their spouse is making $250,000, and they can just hit financial goals really easily, really quickly, et cetera. And sometimes it's good to get on here and get with somebody that reminds you that most people have to work really hard to meet financial goals, like paying off student loans, like getting back to broke, like hitting a net worth of $100,000. It's not easy. It takes a lot of sacrifice and it takes time. There's lots of people listening to this podcast who have an income in the same range as Natalie's. You know, pharmacists, veterinarians, a lot of them have much lower income attorneys and many medical specialties, particularly any those who may not be working full time. Dentists certainly find themselves in that income range a lot of the time as well, and sometimes with even more student loans. So I think there's a lot of people out there that can kind of relate to her situation and hopefully apply the same principles and lessons and discipline that she's had in your own lives. So I hope that was helpful episode for you. The White Coat Investor is proud to introduce our no Hype Real Estate Investing course which will provide the framework for developing further knowledge and experience as you progress in your real estate investing career. We call it an introductory course because there's always more to learn. But this is no short, superficial course. There are over 200 lectures and videos adding up to more than 27 hours of content by over 15 different instructors. We think it just might be the best real estate course on the planet. Continue your wealth building journey today with the no Hype Real Estate Investing course@whitecoatinvestor.com courses. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. If you'd like to come on the podcast, you can just apply whitecoatinvestor.commilestones and we'll see if we can get you on and celebrate your milestone with you. In the meantime, keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. See you next time on the podcast.

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.