WCI #111: Investing in Airbnb Rentals with David Draghinas

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011. Here's your host, Dr. Jim Dali. This is White Coat Investor podcast 111 investing in Airbnb rentals with David Draginis. Did you know that the White Coat Investor not only has a podcast and a blog, but 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. Thanks for what you do. By the way, medicine is not an easy job. It is not an easy way to earn money. It is not even a short road to wealth. It's a very long road to wealth and so thank you for doing that. As we're going to learn in today's podcast, there are shorter roads to becoming wealthy. And, and so those who have sacrificed their 20s, sometimes half their 30s, to learn how to be a doctor, to learn how to heal and to, you know, relieve discomfort and reassure people. It's noble work. So thank you for doing it. White Coat Investor Con 20 WCI Con 20 is coming up. It is going to be March 12th through 14th, 2020 in Las Vegas. It's at the Paris Hotel, but registration for this fine event is going to open on Monday, July 8th at 7pm Mountain time. So put that on your calendar. I don't know how long it's going to take to fill this conference. The last one filled in six days. The next day we had 180 people on the waiting list and we're making it bigger this year. It's about twice the size and so there'll be room for more people, but I think it's going to fill at least as fast. We've got at least twice as many people reading and listening. Remember back then we just started the podcast. We didn't even have the Facebook group that now has 22,000 people in it. I mean, this thing's probably going to fill pretty quickly. I don't know if that's going to be weeks or days or hours or minutes. I'm kind of hoping it's at least days so that nobody that really wants to come doesn't at least get a chance for a couple of days to sign up for it. But if you really want to, make sure you get in there, put an alarm in your phone for 7pm mountain time on July 8th so you can sign up. There will be more information on the conference published in a blog post that morning. The full agenda at that point should be ready for publishing. It's going to offer continuing medical education education credit and continuing dental education credit. We've got some fantastic speakers lined up. Some of the big names you might have heard of include Rick Ferry. Morgan Housel is going to come. We're going to have Phil DeMuth, we're going to have Paul Merriman, we're going to have Harry Sit. We're going to have all the big names in the position finance community. If they've got a big Facebook group or a podcast, they're probably coming. So if you want to meet these people, if you want to meet people that are on this journey with you, if you're a beginner, there's going to be stuff for you. If you're a very advanced investor, there's going to be stuff for you. It's going to be a great time for everybody. So WC Icon 20 signups on July 8th. We've been doing more and more Facebook Live events in that Facebook group as well. You'll see these from time to time. Sometimes I do it by myself, sometimes I do it with a sponsor. It's a little bit though, like, kind of like the podcast with the questions, except we're doing it in real time, you know, no preparation whatsoever. You literally type in a comment and that's your question and I do my best to answer it with no preparation. So it's kind of fun to do this live. If you like the podcast, you may want to check some of those out. We're trying to put them on YouTube as well, which should make an easy way for you to listen to it in your car. If you're looking for more white coat investor content that you can listen to on your commute today, we've got a very special guest we're going to bring on here. It's anesthesiologist David Draghinas. Let's get him on the phone and talk to you. All right, today on the White Coat Investor Podcast, we have a special guest, David Draghinas, who I met actually a couple of years ago at the Physician, Blogger and Podcaster Meetup at fincon. He's an anesthesiologist in Texas, but is probably best known, at least in the circles that you travel in, for his podcast, Doctors Unbound. Welcome to the podcast, David.

Hey, Jim. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be on the podcast and share a little bit about myself and the podcast and anything else with your listeners.

Yeah. So we've got some interesting stuff to go over today. Not only are we going to talk a little bit about David, we're going to talk about Doctors Unbound and some of the cool stuff he's been doing over there, as well as podcasting in general as a, you know, passion project and a side hustle. But also we're going to get into something unique that he's been doing with Airbnb, which I've actually had a number of people ask about for the podcast and ask about coming on and talking about their various experiences with it. So I thought David would be a great person to bring on and talk about that. But first, let's get to know him a little bit better. Can you tell us a little bit about your family growing up and about your upbringing?

Sure. So I grew up in Southern California. I am the son of immigrants from Romania. So the backstory is that my father was a pastor in communist Romania, and he immigrated out of there. Kind of a harrowing story to begin to kind of get out of the communist country. But he did that in the 70, was able to make his way into the United States, Chicago, initially, and it took about two years for him to be able to apply and get all the paperwork done and get my mom political asylum, religious asylum, and be able to get her into this country. And then myself and my younger brother, Dennis, we were born here in the States, and my dad hated the cold. He hated the Chicago winters. And as soon as he made it over to California and figured out that he could wear shorts in the summer, he's like, honey, I'm sold. We're moving to California. And so that's where I grew up most of my life in California. That's where I did most of my schooling and training. But as I was finishing my Navy practice, or, excuse me, I took a Navy scholarship in medical school. We can get into that a little bit, but we Moved our way over to Texas, and that's where I currently reside.

Speaking of your education and training, let's get a little bit more into detail there. Where did you go to school? Where did you train? What was that like?

Yeah, so I was mostly a USC lifer, University of Southern California, and so had a scholarship to go there for undergrad. Did an undergrad in biomedical engineering. Was not one of those folks that knew right away that I wanted to go to medical school. Initially, I thought I was going to work in the biotech industry. So I got into college, was a biomedical engineer, got into some research, and realized that if I really was going to do anything kind of significant in that space, I'd have to get a PhD. And kind of talking to some of the PhDs in the labs and stuff like that, I realized that that was probably not what I wanted to. Interestingly enough, there was a neurologist in my lab and he was doing some research with these, what they would call trinucleotide repeat expansion diseases. And so I got to do some research with him. And what was really cool is he kind of became a mentor for me. And he started talking to me about medical school and how interesting it was and how there was a specialty for every kind of personality. And so he got me on the path of thinking about medical school. Sure enough, third, fourth year, took the MCATs and went to medical school. Left for one year to Michigan. I figured I needed to get out at least for one year, so had a real winter for one year as I did my internship in Ann Arbor. Great college town, but that was about enough winters for me. And then. And then I. Then I came back to usc, to LA county, usc, where I finished my residency in anesthesiology.

Okay, and tell us about your practice so far. I mean, you had military commitment. Was it HPSP that paid for your schooling?

That's right, I did hpsp. And, you know, so to backtrack, I. You know, my medical school is also at usc. Fine education, but very expensive private education. And so back then, I was looking at probably about $50,000 a year, you know, when you figured living, you know, moderate living expenses and things like that. And at that point, I did not know what specialty that I was going to go into. And I did not want to make a specialty choice based on income. And so I thought, you know, here's. Here's this opportunity I get to give back to my country. You know, being an immigrant and understanding what this country meant to my family and the opportunity that I've had because my dad was able to come to this country, I thought this would be a great way for me to kind of give back and get my education paid for. Because who knows, maybe I like pediatrics. And you know, unfortunately, pediatrics is not a, you know, generally a very well paid specialty. So yeah, I did that scholarship and that paid for three years of my training. And then once I finished that, I went down to San Diego and I served back active duty time in San Diego at the big naval medical center down there.

So your time in the military, good experience, bad experience, mixed experience.

Overall, I would say it was a good experience. And the parts that were great were the people that I got to work with, you know, the anesthesiologists, the surgeons, you know, the people that were doing the day to day work that I got to interact with were phenomenal. The other part that was really great was the people that we were taking care of, whether that was, you know, the active duty soldiers that we were taking care of, whether it was their kids or their spouses, their family members, that part was really awesome. The part that was not so awesome, and I'm curious to hear your experience too, was dealing with a big bureaucracy. And big Navy is a big bureaucracy. So things like figuring out if your pay is done right, some of the back and forth that goes on with deployment, stuff like that is just, you know, any big organization, you're kind of going to have that. And that part was, was not so fun.

And did you deploy?

I did. I knew I would have at least one deployment. I owed, you know, I owed three years active duty. Ended up doing about three and a half because of the way that the Navy pays you. And I had one deployment. I got to deploy to Iraq. This was back in 2009. I deployed with Marines and I was there for about six.

And what was that experience like?

You know, it's never fun to, to deploy into a war zone and be, you know, in Iraq, you know, in the sand, 118 degree weather for most of the summer. But, you know, you make the best of it. And I think if there's a, you know, if there's a silver lining, if there's, if you know, there's something positive to look at, it's, hey, you know, I survived out here for six months in this little metal box. If you can do that, then you can get through most of anything and you realize how good you have it when you come back home for sure.

Okay, so you got out of the military and you moved to Texas. Tell us about your practice there now.

Sure. So I'm pretty fortunate in that I work with an amazing group of anesthesiologists here in Texas. And so my group's called Metropolitan Anesthesia Consultants. We're a group of about 100 anesthesiologists now. It was about 50 when I joined, and we're a private practice, kind of three throughout the metroplex. And I just grew. I just work with a great, great group of anesthesiologists. Very helpful, help each other out. So I feel very blessed to be a part of this group.

All right, let's. Let's turn the page a little bit, and let's talk about podcasting. Your podcast is called Doctors Unbound for listeners. You can find that the same place you found this podcast. I'm sure, you know, it's. It's anywhere you can download your podcast, whether that's itunes or wherever. Why did you start Doctors Unbound? Tell us a little bit about the origin of that.

Sure. So the idea for it probably was several years before the actual execution. And that's why I'm one of these people that just tries to motivate and encourage doctors to, if you've got something you're thinking about doing, shoot, go ahead and do it, just because it was a long time just thinking about it and having various excuses for not getting it done. But basically it was a podcast where I was scratching my own itch. You know, I knew that there were doctors out there doing really interesting things that were outside of clinical medicine. I was aware of your blog, and so, you know, you were one of the people that kind of came to mind. As, you know, it would be really great if I could talk to people like Jim Dali, people who are doing other interesting things, whether it's in leadership, whether it's investing. And I said, if I've got a podcast and I can record this, I'm probably more likely to get their time. I'm sure there's other people who would want to listen to this and, you know, learn from it. And so, you know, I think that if we can learn from each other, tell these stories. And also kind of the other idea is, you know, there's a lot of burnout in the physician community. There's some people feel like maybe the respect of physicians has kind of gone down a little bit. And I just wanted to have, you know, this podcast out there that was something that was positive and uplifting and, you know, you know, showed physicians in a great light. So those were kind of all the different things that went into it.

So what can listeners expect on your podcast? I mean, what's the content mostly?

Sure. So the contest, the content usually revolves around topics, you know, outside of medicine. But there's, you know, I've taken some, some liberty there. And so if it's like I said, I'm my own avatar. So if there's a topic that I think might be interesting to a physician audience, then, you know, if I find an expert in that area, I'll have them on. So, for example, you know, first of all, thank you. I've had you on the podcast back when I was just starting and I had no track record. So I really am very appreciative that you would take out time out of your busy schedule to do that. So beyond yourself, beyond. I think I've got every member of the White Coat Network on, even when some of them were anonymous. But I've had people on that are, for example, U.S. congressmen. Andy Harris is a U.S. congressman out of Maryland. And so being able to have him come on and talk about, hey, you know, what are the things that he's doing on a national level that are affecting health care policy? You know, politics has gotten very divided in our country over the last couple election cycles. And I'm not pushing a particular, particular party or particular idea, but I do think that physicians who are very highly trained, typically care about what's going on in our country. Like, hey, you know, let's get these physicians out there, regardless of party, and get them more involved in politics so that we can affect not only healthcare policy, but, you know, obviously other aspects of running our country. So, so people like that, people that are CEOs of healthcare and, you know, different types of startups that have to deal with either medicine or the healthcare space, people like that, that I can pick their minds and we can go through what is a day like in the life of a cmo, that is CMO of a billion dollar international company. Stuff like that I find really, really interesting and I'm thankful to be able to bring those kinds of stories to physicians.

So I think you've explained pretty well what you like about podcasting. What do you dislike about it? You've been going now, what, a year and a half or so? Maybe a little more. What do you not like about podcasting?

Sure. So the part that I like is really cool to me is preparing for an interview where I get to research a guest and sort of figure out that roadmap of the interview and then actual talking to the person and what I found is that I'll usually find at least two or three nuggets that kind of stay with me from each person that I interview. What I don't like is all the stuff that I've now offloaded to help. So all the post production stuff that you don't see, so the editing of the podcast, the preparing the show notes, all of that kind of stuff, I have found somebody that has more time that can do it better than I can. That frees me up to grow the podcast and to be better prepared for the folks that I'm going to be talking to.

So what's the worst experience you've had podcasting, other than me not sending you these questions until late last night?

You know, there hasn't been any really bad experiences. I will tell you that. For me, I hate not sticking to a commitment. So there's been a couple instances where because, you know, urgent cases have come up at work, I'm really kind of cutting it close or may have to reschedule an interview. And so for me, that's been kind of the toughest part is, you know, having to call somebody up, you know, kind of last minute and say, hey, you know, I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna miss our scheduled time here just because I don't. I'm on the road, I'm not at home, I can't do it. So those are kind of the things. But as far as actual interviewing people, I can learn from just about anybody. So those have largely gone pretty well.

How do you select your guests?

Sure. So like I mentioned earlier, I'm somewhat of my own avatar since I'm a physician. Since I'm interested in these topics, I'll kind of research different topic ideas. And so I'm interested in things like social media and branding. I'm interested in things like leadership investing. So these are kind of some of the broader topics and I'll look for experts in that space. Now, I will say that as the podcast has gotten more popular, and I'm sure you get a ton of this, I get people reaching out to me. And so now my job kind of switches a little bit. I can be a little bit more selective. And what I'm trying to do is think about is this topic, is this an idea, something that my audience would find interesting, would find valuable. And so that is kind of how I look at it and how I.

Do the selection process and how big is it? I mean, how many downloads are you seeing per episode?

It's not something that I share kind of regularly. But I'll say that in a given month, and my podcast is weekly, we're seeing in the 48,000 range for downloads. And the thing that's been cool is that it has started from scratch. I started with no email list, no following anything like that, and it has just slowly built up over time, and that's been with no paid advertising or anything like that. So I'm happy that people that discover it really find it useful, get a lot of positive feedback that they're enjoying it, and then people kind of binge the episodes. But I don't know, I've been thinking about maybe doing some paid outreach and stuff like that to kind of make it grow faster, but I haven't made any decisions just yet.

It's kind of the dirty secret of online entrepreneurship. You only have to build the audience once, and then you can change it to different formats. Start a podcast, start a blog, start a YouTube channel. In some respects, a certain portion of the audience is portable, and we'll check out the other format as well. And oftentimes they prefer the other format. They just didn't realize you had it. I totally agree with you that it's way harder to build from scratch than to be a blogger that starts a podcast or a podcaster that starts a blog, et cetera. It's just way easier to do the second and third and fourth thing.

Sure.

So, I mean, podcasts and blogs, they tend to start out as a passion project and sometimes become a side hustle. Which one do you view yours as? And do you think blog or podcasting is a good side hustle? I mean, a way to create another significant income?

Sure. So from the. I remember meeting you actually for the very first time at that fincon conference, and one of the first questions you asked me was like, you know, is this a hobby or is this a business? And I wasn't sure how to answer you, just because in my mind, the intention was always to be able to make this sustainable business operation. However, I also knew, having done some other projects online, that that would be a long process and I wasn't taking anything for granted. So, like I said, building it from scratch without an email list, it's. It's a long haul. So I think if anybody gets into the space, you know, if you're thinking that, you know, you're just going to put together some podcasts, put them out there, and the downloads are just going to come and you're going to be able to monetize, you've got Another thing coming, you know, it's going to be a lot more work than that. However, it is possible. With podcasting, it's a little bit trickier. You know, with blogs, you, you know, you probably have certain ad rates depending on your content, and it's a little bit more set in stone. I went to the last Podcast Movement conference, and one of the things that I really wanted to figure out is how to value an audience that's niche, like mine. And I will tell you that nobody there gave me a very good audit, gave me a very good answer. There are some, you, some, some information out there on, you know, so. So one of the big things, as I'm sure you know, Jim, is the CPM model. So that is the cost per 1000 dot downloads. However, that is for a more generic audience, you know, and when you're dealing with a physician audience, it's a little bit different. And so what I've had to figure out over probably the last six months or so is how to figure out what that value is. And I'm figuring it out. I've got a few sponsors that are coming on board. I've had one earlier. I've got another one that's coming on board here probably next month. But it is a thing where you have to be kind of the trailblazer and figure it out. And it's a little bit of trial and error and stuff like that. So if that's something that is interesting to you and you're willing to kind of go down that path, I would say it's definitely monetizable. But don't expect it to be easy.

Nor do you expect it to monetize anything, like your physician day job, at least for a number of years.

Absolutely, absolutely. And it's like one of those things where, you know, we talk about passive income and, and passive income is kind of the holy grail. Right. But what people don't realize is in order to get to that point of where it becomes passive, you've put in a lot of time up front with no guarantee that that work will ever be paid off.

Oh, this becomes passive at some point. That sounds great. I'm looking forward to that.

Right. Well, I mean, like I said, more passive. I mean, you're still developing content, et cetera, et cetera. But the idea that you can put up a blog post and a year or two down the road, if it's evergreen content, it can still generate clicks and gener income for sure.

I totally agree with you. In fact, every page of the blog is actually a little self encapsulated business of its own and obviously some of them are better than others. Now, about the same time you started podcasting, NI Darko started his docs outside the box. What do you see as the main differences between your podcast and Knees?

Sure. So NI Darko was actually an inspiration for me and he was also a little bit of a kick in the pants. And what I mean by that is, like I mentioned earlier, I had this idea for what became Doctors Unbound years ago. And for whatever reasons, being busy with work, small kids, I just hadn't taken, you know, taken charge and executed. And then I came across Knee's podcast and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. And you know, somebody else is doing this. So NI started a little bit before me. He's got something like over 100, I think, episodes right now. I'm just a little bit under. I'm somewhere, I think in between 85 and 90 right now, depending on when this episode will air. You know, I'll be close to 100. And I think if you look at both of our podcasts, I don't think we've shared more than 10 guests. I'm guessing somewhere in that range. So there's obviously some similarity in the podcast. But, you know, the things that we're interested in, we're going to be selecting different guests. Even if we had the same guest. The questions that NI's going to come up with and the questions that I'm going to come up with are going to be, you know, kind of a different angle. So, you know, it's something where I'm glad Nee's out there. I'm glad he's doing what he's doing. He brings his own style and personality to his show and he's got a great show. And so I don't see it as competition. I see it as like, as something that's validating the marketplace. And I'm not trying to be like him, I'm just trying to be like me. And hopefully I find an audience that likes my style and the way I interview guests and what I'm all about. So I love his podcast. I think it's awesome. Yeah, it's been an inspiration for me. I just kind of don't worry about it in that sense. I just kind of do what I think that would be interesting for me and my audience.

You know, it's interesting. A lot of people assume there's a lot of competition in these sorts of enterprises. And the truth of the matter is blogging and podcasting is far more collaborative than it is competitive. I think a lot of people don't realize that people will read more than one blog, they will listen to more than one podcast. In fact, a lot of people tell me, man, why don't you do more than one a week? Well, I'm not doing more than one week. I can tell you that right now. If you need more content, here's some other great podcasts, you know, and so I think a lot of people just don't realize that. How collaborative it is behind the scenes.

Yeah, for sure. And I found that definitely from, like I said, even from earlier, from yourself, from Physician on Fire, coming on my podcast very early.

The ultimate collaborator, by the way.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. I don't think I had even launched, and I sent out an email to him and said, hey, I'm launching this thing. Would you be on? And he was gracious and said yes, even. Even before I'd launched. So how awesome is that? But I found that to be true. You know, I went to Podcast Movement last year and there was maybe six or seven us physician podcasters and we had dinner together and NI Darko was there, and Kerry from Hippocratic Hustle was there and Taylor Branagh from Happy Doc and Dr. Money Matters was there. So we, we just had a nice collaborative dinner. We talked about the things, you know, we. That we're doing. We kind of shared information because, you know, if we all do well, everybody's going to do better together.

So what is the deal with anesthesiologists doing blogs and podcasts anyway? I mean, I've got three anesthesiologist WCI network blogging part. I don't see this from the other road specialties and not even emergency medicine, which I would think would be set up perfectly for it.

Yeah, I was fascinated about that too, because just recently brought on the physician philosopher. And I met Jimmy at fincon as well, and I interviewed him, I think, before he came out. And so they're all physician on fire, passive income M.D. they're all anesthesiologists. And I don't know, I don't know what it is about people that choose our specialty if we're wired a certain way, if we just kind of like technology and have other passions. But I do notice it among some of my colleagues too. We just kind of like to do these other things, I guess.

So have you been discovered at work yet? Very many friends or colleagues that have figured out what you're doing on the.

Side you know, it was interesting. I had that experience a couple months ago where I was in a hospital and I had just finished a case, and I was just kind of running some paperwork to a different part of the hospital, and I come up to this workstation and this physician who I hadn't met before, he said, excuse me. He's like, this might sound like a weird question. He's like, but do you have a podcast? And that was the first time that somebody who didn't know me kind of discovered me at work. It was a little bit surreal. It was really kind of cool. And I didn't have a pressing case coming up, so I just kind of sat down and we had about a 20 or 30 minute talk about the podcast and what he was doing and what I was doing. And I found that we're very similar. We have very similar, similar interests. He's got smaller children, I've got smaller children. The things we want out of life. There was so much in common there, and it was really cool. It was really cool to have that experience. You know, without the podcast, this person, I probably would have walked by and they wouldn't have said hello. So now I've got somebody who, when I see him in the hospital, you know, just sit down and we'll chat about 15 minutes, what he's up to, what I'm up to. So it's been really awesome.

Now you talk a lot on the podcast about helping docs get to the next rung of success. What do you mean by that? What's the next rung?

Yeah, I think it depends on the person, and that's why I like to cover different topics on the podcast. And some people, you know, might be interested in leadership, for example, and how do they work their way up into physician leadership, whether that's in a hospital or some other organization. So having somebody on the podcast who has done that, who's talked about it, can start giving people pointers and help them kind of get there a little bit faster. What, what I'm starting to grow now is I've realized that the podcast is a little bit one way, and I would love to grow a community where people can have a little bit more interaction, whether it's with me or whether. Whether it's with the other folks that have been guests on the show. So it seems like everybody's on Facebook, you know, these days. So I've recently created a group called Doctors Unbound vip. And it's just a place for. It's not exclusive to physicians, but it's Just a place where physicians mostly can get in there. And you know, if I've got one of these experts that's an expert on leadership or social media or whatever, if people got question, you know, we can, we can pose those questions and have kind of the experts and kind of other people in the group who have experience in that area chime in. And so, you know, I'm a big believer that whatever you're trying to accomplish, if you find the people that are doing it and doing it well, if you can get mentored by them, it's gonna shortcut your path to success and help you avoid a lot of the mistakes. And so that's, that's kind of what, what I see it as. That's one of the kind of missions or goals of the podcast.

Cool. Let's move into a little bit more financial topics here. We're supposed to be doing a financial podcast here.

Sure.

So. So on your podcast you've interviewed a lot of people that I would refer to as kind of real estate types, you know, people that maybe eschew both retirement accounts and perhaps even traditional investments like mutual funds. After interviewing all these people, what's your take on that? Do you think it's smart to go all in on real estate and alternative investments? Are they best avoided or is a mix appropriate?

Yeah. So part of that is me exploring these questions for myself, to be quite honest with you, because I grew up, you know, with that immigrant family. Like my parents were not, you know, not really stock market investors, but they always felt like, you know, if they've got a, you know, real estate, have a rental or two that can cash flow and kind of provide for them, you know, that was a safe and solid investment for them. So I wonder, you know, if my own views are colored by my upbringing and they probably are. So I've always had this interest in real estate probably because of the upbringing, probably because I feel like I can control the investment a little bit better. However, you know, there's, you know, there's also these tax advantaged accounts. So I've been trying to figure all that out in my own head for myself and then figuring if I put all this out there, then hopefully it makes sense for other people. So for myself, I still contribute to these tax advantaged accounts currently. However, I am a big believer in real estate and we may talk about it recently, in the last couple years, I've discovered short term rentals and that has kind of turbocharged things for us as far as our path of financial independence, cash flow, et Cetera. So I'm actually in a point right now where, where I'm kind of reconsidering everything and some of the information is still out. My wife will qualify for 2018 as a real estate professional status because she manages our Airbnb portfolio. And I'm just curious to see exactly how big of an effect it's going to have on our taxes. I think it's going to have a pretty big effect. So to kind of answer your question, I still invest in some of these tax advantaged accounts, but I probably lean more heavily on real estate than others because I've acquired sort of that knowledge and skill set. And the reason I've been able to is because it's been interesting to me. And so for me, I haven't seen it really as much as a lot of work to do because I found it interesting.

So how far away do you think you guys are from financial independence?

I think it depends a little bit on how you define it. I'll say that I'll give you a little bit of the background. In 2018, we had one property that we converted to Airbnb about the fall of that year. So right around Labor Day or so, we purchased a second property specifically for short term rental. And after having done that for nine months or so, getting a lot more comfortable learning quite a bit in the space, we bought what I would say is a luxury Airbnb property. And both of these properties are within about 10 minutes from my house. So that property has done extremely well. Very great margins on there. And I would say with these two properties, probably for most people in the fire community, they would probably consider us financial independent at this point. To borrow some of the physician on fire terminology, I would consider myself a little bit more of a fat fire kind of person. So I will probably look to pick up a couple more properties to accomplish that. But I would say we're pretty much there by most people's account.

So are you financially independent or have you just changed jobs to being a landlord?

That's a great question.

I'm being the Internet retirement police here.

No, no, no, that's a great question, because I don't want anybody to. Misconceptions. Short term rentals are definitely active real estate. I mean, you are fielding phone calls or not phone calls, but inquiries, you know, on your smartphone, et cetera. It's. There's a reason why you get, you know, professional real estate status from managing an Airbnb. It's. It's certainly active.

And for those who don't Know what that is? That means you put 750 hours or more in during the year on taking care of your real estate investments.

Right. And for most physician, at least physicians that are working full time, you probably don't qualify because I believe one of the qualifications is that this, you can't, you know, this is your sort of full time job or more than half. So if you have another sort of close to full time job, I think it's going to be really hard to prove that. I think where the strategy is really powerful is if you're a physician or other high income individual, where you have a spouse that is either like a stay at home spouse or a spouse that can kind of take over the Airbnb operation. That's the case for us. So my wife, my wife is the one who manages it and she does a fantastic job and we've built our team here locally of people who help us with it. So at this point, yes, you're right in the sense that it's not going to be a passive type of a deal. However, the caveat that I would add to that is for about 20% or so, you can hire a management company to go ahead and then take over the day to day operations for you. So it's pretty easy to become passive. And the other thing I would say is that it offers you a lot of options and flexibility. So the cash flow that one of these rentals spits off is probably close to 10x what a typical long term property would spit off. At least the ones that we've selected. And so with all that extra cash, if you really wanted to, like I could probably.

You're talking the profit or you're just talking the revenue because you've obviously got a lot more expenses.

No, I'm talking the profit. I'm talking about the profit. Yeah. Now obviously some of this is knowing how to select the property, et cetera, et cetera. There's quite a bit that I've learned in the two or three years that I've learned this. I'm talking about the profit. So I could take that if I wanted to. I could take that extra profit and say, okay, I've got a five year Airbnb plan, I'm going to take all this profit and pay off the property in five years. And now I've got a free and clear property and I can long term rent it, etc. Etc. So even if you're not going to do it forever, if you will, it could be a really powerful strategy for somebody to just Pay off a rental earlier and then they can decide whether they still want to Airbnb it or keep it as a long term or it's appreciated and they want to sell it or whatever.

So how many total properties do you have? Two right now.

We've got two right now.

And just managing those two, your wife qualified for real estate professional status?

Absolutely.

I mean, I mean, how many of these can you manage by yourself before you have to hire a management firm?

Well, you know what, some people, interestingly, some people manage it from their, from their smartphone and they're not even in the same city. So there's a couple of pieces that you need to have in place. Right. You need to have a great cleaning crew in place. You probably need to have a handyman in place. I've got an H VAC person, so there's a couple of people who you need to have to build as a team. But all these people, you know, you can contact via your phone and you can actually manage the properties from a different location. I haven't done that yet because, you know, we want to make sure that everything is kind of to our standards and we, we decided that we wanted to start locally and kind of decrease some of the stress, you know, of that. But it is possible to do so.

How does this make you feel about your practice? About going to the hospital, about seeing patients, taking them to the. Or being on call all night, having a long weekend call? How do you feel about that? Knowing that you're doing awfully well, bringing in money, doing real estate on the side. How does that make you feel about your practice?

It actually makes me feel better. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but I've talked to a lot of people who either are financially. That are financially independent through whatever means, and they found that their practice of medicine is more enjoyable when you know that you don't have to do it or you don't have to do it full time, it takes some of that stress off and I think you can actually enjoy your practice a little bit better. I'd be curious to hear your answer, how you feel about your practice now that your blog podcast has been so successful.

It's interesting because it swings back and forth sometimes. I talked to Leif Dahleen, the physician on fire, and what he realized is he expected that he would love medicine more when he was financially independent, and he was surprised to find out that he didn't.

Interesting.

Instead, what he found was rather than being able to not worry about the hassles of contracts and Trying to make sure he's doing well there. The little things started bothering him more. Having to wait for a case to start or maintenance of certification hassles, or the hospital administration getting on him for whatever. Those little things bothered him a lot more once he was financially independent. I can relate to that at times, but for the most part, it's made me enjoy my practice a lot more. I kind of view it as a well paid hobby at this point and go to the hospital for enjoyment. But I'll tell you what, if it's a particularly boring shift or a particularly, you know, busy, grinding shift, there's no doubt. I sit there and go, why am I doing this?

You know, Sure, I can see that.

But for now, you know, it's kind of part of who I am. I view myself as a doc. So at least for the near future, I expect to keep going in and working shifts and seeing patients. I still enjoy it, I think, for the most part. You know, I don't have days like I had when I was in the military where I'd come home and go, I hate my job. You know, I can remember days when I was seeing six patients an hour in basically sick call clinic, you know, in the ER for 12 hours on end. And it wasn't fun, you know, and I don't really have those days at my current job, but there are times when I go, well, you know, I could go do something else for sure.

Yeah, I think, you know, again, I've still worked full time. I give up a few shifts here and there just because, you know, quality of life spending and my kids are really young and so I want to spend as much time as I can with them and stuff like that. But I suspect that I'll be kind of closer to your camp and have similar feelings if I ever decide to dial it back.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit. Nuts and bolts, how you get started. Someone's listening to this and they're like, holy crap, I can punch out of medicine in five years if I just go do Airbnb for a while. What's step one? I mean, you mentioned that your properties are luxury properties. What kind of properties should they be looking for if they want to start an Airbnb?

Sure. So I think it depends a little bit on the person. The way we got started was a little bit backwards, meaning we had the first property already purchased. I became very interested in Airbnb, started reading a ton about it, and then found a tool that is really helpful in assessing a market. So the tool that I used, I'm not an affiliate of it or anything like that. It's about 40 bucks a month. You can cancel at any time. It's called airdna Co. And so they're basically a data aggregator for Airbnb and vrbo. And so you can go on there and, and find a city that you're interested in and find out and see some hard data on, you know, what are the rents, like, what is the, you know, how, how busy are these homes, how, how much are they booked, what kind of revenue are they bringing in and what are the top properties? And then you can kind of, you know, see what it takes to be a top property. So for us, we kind of started backwards in the sense that I knew that I wanted to stay local. And so then it became a matter of validating, you know, is this market one that's amenable to this strategy? And luckily it was. I invested in the tool and found out that, oh my gosh, it's kind of a hidden gem because I'm in a suburb and most people would think that a suburb would not have enough demand, but sure enough, it did. And then after we did it for nine months, I realized that, oh my gosh, there's also demand for, you know, for a luxury type property. So the first property is a nice property. I wouldn't quite call it a luxury. It's just kind of a really nice four bedroom home. And the second one I would classify as more of a luxury property. Again, I copied what was out there. I saw the properties that were on Airbnb. VRBO found one that was the only kind of luxury property there and saw that it was highly booked and it was actually professionally managed by a company. Called up the company and talked to them about how well it was doing and they were very forthcoming with some of the information. And then I realized that I could.

Buy a property, maybe a reason not to use a manager there. They're going to give out all your, all your data.

Well, I tell you, they did and it didn't. It's not like I was lying to them or anything. I seriously was considering using them and wanted to know how they were doing. And they just came forward with a lot of this information. And I realized that I could buy a property for cheaper than what that house was worth with a few more amenities like a pool. That house had a hot tub. My house has a pool and a hot tub and have a few extra features that make it really unique and stand out, out. And we'll make it something that people want. You know, if you're thinking about an area, what you want to do is you to kind of get back to kind of the big overview is, you know, you want to research a market and you want to make sure that there aren't any short term rental regulations that would prevent you from doing this. You don't want to do this kind of, you know, illegally or anything like that. Your best bet is to find a place or a city that has regulations in place because they then that aspect of it is clear. So if there's already Airbnb regulations, then you know what they are. You can totally just know what it is and find a property within that city. And the other thing is you kind of want to know what you want to get into managing an apartment versus managing a small home or a large home. I always wanted to have multiple exit strategies in mind. So when I buy my properties, I want to make sure that I can survive as a long term rental. If Airbnb goes away for whatever reason, can this property at least break even, if not cash flow a little bit as a long term rental? And so that's always one of my backup plans. And so when I buy the property, I wait to find a property that fits that criteria and that gives me a level of security, if you will. So that's kind of the start of it is, is find out a market, do some research and make sure there aren't any regulations that say that you cannot do short term rental in that market. And you know, you can use a tool like air DNA then to kind of drill down and see how profitable it is. And then from there, you know, if you can do some kind of back of the hand calculations or you can get even, you know, crazier than that and put it all in a spreadsheet. But you know, you'll figure out your expenses and then from air DNA you can figure out how much you're expected to make and then you can see the spread there and see if it's worth it. And I would say you have to compare that to a long term rental because if what you're going to be left with is just about as much as a long term rental, then all that extra work is not going to be worth it. So you really kind of have to analyze those things and make sure that that time that you're spending is going to be worth that investment.

So how much did you put down and where did you go for financing?

Sure. So the, the long term or the luxury property that we Just purchased specifically for Airbnb. I actually did a 1031 exchange. And so we can talk about that a little bit if you like. But basically I had a condo from my residency and my time in California. And that condo with gosh, I mean.

So it was a condo in California is worth like 3 million.

I wish, I wish nothing crazy like that, but it did have some equity in it. And because this was like a two bedroom condo in LA where I trained and man, my HOA every month just kept going up and up and I was paying like close to $400 a month just on the HOA. And it was basically eating up all my cash flow. And so I had this property that had a ton of equity in it and it was cash flowing maybe $100 a month or less. And I was like, it's costing me some effort to manage it and it's not really spitting off very much. So why don't I take this equity, now that I have the skill with Airbnb, and use that equity to buy this property? And that' we did. So we did a 1031 exchange. And I will say that was a little bit scary because getting onto a bunch of real estate forums like Bigger Pockets and some other places, I read a lot of horror stories about people placing their money into these 1031 exchange companies and then the money disappearing and not being able to contact that person. So it was a little bit scary. What I did is I asked the escrow office where I did my closing. I had them recommend two or said, give me two or three of these companies that you've worked with that are the best best. And so they gave me that information. I called and I interviewed a couple of these folks. I chose the one that I felt best about and they did a fantastic job. And so we did a 1031 exchange. It lined up really well because there are some rules associated with that. You have to buy the property within, I believe, 180 days. You have to use all of your proceeds unless you get taxed. If you don't, you get taxed on the portion that you don't use. You have to buy a property that is at least as expensive. I believe it has to be just at least a dollar or more exp than the property that you're selling. So there's a few rules that are in place for it.

Or you can even buy two, can't you? If you need to, you can, you.

Can, you can buy several properties. I thought about that. I just thought the complexity level would be Too much, it would get too stressful and I didn't want to be over leveraged. So, you know, you asked about how I bought this. I bought this property and I probably put down like somewhere in the neighborhood of 30, 35% of the value. And so that makes it a little bit easier, especially as far as the monthly payment, all that kind of stuff. But if you look at the cash on cash return, it's still fantastic. But if I did 20% down, then I'd be a little bit more leveraged and my cash on cash return would be better. But I was willing to sacrifice some of that to ease some of the complexity of having to buy multiple properties.

How much did you end up putting down on the other property?

Well, we were in the six figure range. Just to give you some ideas. This property we bought in the 600 range and I put down 30, 35%.

So again, about a third of it.

Yeah.

And then you just go to a, you go to a local bank and just get a standard 30 year mortgage or what did you end up doing for your financing?

Sure, I did a 30 year mortgage because it's an investment property. My interest rate was slightly higher. But I have, you know, I have several relationships. Having been somebody who's interested in real estate, I kind of met with several bankers in the area and I would encourage, I encourage anybody to do this that's either interested in real estate or what have you. What's really neat about it is having direct contact to a vice president of a bank. When you sit down and have coffee with them, they'll tell you the things that they look for. They'll tell you the things that banks are thinking when they lend. For me, it's been really eye opening to have these relationships and be able to sit down with these people even when we're not talking about a deal, when we're just, hey, how are things going for you? How are things going for me? Because these people love having physician clients because they know physicians are high earners and rarely default on their mortgages.

Did the lenders care that you were going to use it for a short term rental?

No. No, they didn't. There's several banks now that you can actually start using your short term rental income. That's a little bit trickier. So for me, as a, you know, this is a great combo for physicians because I relied mostly on my physician income to qualify and also that kind of stuff for folks who are doing this and they don't have that to fall back on more and more Banks now are starting to accept the income from short term rentals as something that's sort of more valid and mainstream. And Airbnb has in their hosts platform something that you can click and they'll give you kind of some of that financial information for your rentals. So that's becoming more and more mainstream. But for me it didn't become an issue as far as getting the financing or anything like that.

Now do you plan to pay these off? Do you plan to refinance and take equity out as equity builds or what's your plan as far as maintaining your leverage?

Yeah, I think right now I'm looking to add more properties. I feel like I have an advantage in my area. I have a knowledge advantage. I have an advantage in pulling off these higher end properties and knowing what people want, want and stuff like that. Right now I'm probably looking at growing to a few more probably in the short term. In the next couple years I probably won't refinance or anything like that. The first property that we haven't talked that much about, the one that we already had, that one is a little bit older. So that one has actually built up some equity since the time we bought it. I am thinking about possibly doing a cash out refinance for that one to fund, fund, you know, my next purchase potentially. So that's kind of the short term plan I'm looking to grow. It's funny is, you know, with the podcast I've actually sat down and talked to some of these doctors and some of them are, they're like, I want to invest with you. So I don't know, like the people have thrown that around. But you know, I'm very cautious with my money. I can't imagine not really ready to.

Manage someone else's yet.

Yeah, that would be a different level of caution. And so to be able to go there, I would really have to do more due diligence. And before I offered something like that again, like be, be extra careful because like I said, I'm super careful with my money. I'd want to be even more careful with somebody else's.

Okay, so what about liability? I mean, you've got a rental property with a pool on it. What have you done to minimize your liability?

Yes, great question. And there are two companies here in the US that I'm aware of right now that do specific insurance for short term rentals. One of them is called cbiz, C, B, I, Z. And the other one is proper insurance, just like the word proper. And I'm with Proper. I contacted both of them. I'm with proper. And it's insurance specifically for an Airbnb rental. And it's funny because they actually will ask you, do you have a pool, do you have a trampoline, do you have a diving board? Even things like do you have bunk beds in your property? So we don't have any bunk beds, we have trundle beds. But it's insurance that is specific for Airbnb and if you're going to do this, I highly recommend that you get that. I was actually surprised, Jim. I thought that it was going to be very expensive or at least there would be a large premium compared to a typical homeowner's insurance policy. And I will tell you that it is nearly the same. So that was a cool little thing to find out is that it's nearly the same. And then obviously you can do some of the other things like carry an umbrella policy. Think about protection, asset protection with llc, et cetera, et cetera.

Does your umbrella policy cover this? Given that it's a going business?

I believe it does. I'll have to go back and double check specifics on it, but I'm with USAA and I think it covers it, but I'll have to double check.

So I assume you've got these in.

LLCs as well in the works. Because for example, the short term, excuse me, the 1031 exchange property. I was talking to a real estate attorney and he's like, well, you can't really put it in an LLC when you're doing a 1031 exchange. So probably at the one year mark, which is coming up soon, we'll do some restructuring to do that, maybe retitle it. Yeah.

Is LLC law pretty favorable in Texas?

I think Texas is great state for property owners and property rights. We talked about the regulations aspect of it earlier. There was a Supreme Court ruling in the Texas Supreme Court in I think it was May of 2018. And what happened is there was an HOA that shut down a short term rental and it went all the way up to the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court court cited with the property owner. And so HOAs cannot in Texas tell you that you cannot do this. So that's a nice benefit about being in Texas. I know there's some legislation at the state level about short term rentals to even limit what cities can say about it. And so Texas has always been a property rights kind of a state. And I think the other aspect of it is, as I'm sure you understand and the listeners understand it ultimately comes down to money. And I know Airbnb and VRBO take out money and they send it to the state. And I'm sure the state wants that money to continue to flow to it. So I expect that probably shortly there'll be some, you know, some laws in place, you know, about that to further protect property owners, but you have to stay current about that. Depending on where you're at. If there's no regulations in place, that's one of the sort of short term risks about it that you need to be aware of.

So what about somebody that's not in a great location? I mean, it sounds like it was pretty important to you to have these properties be local. Let's say somebody lives in a state or a city where this is not a very good idea. Should they do it elsewhere?

You absolutely can.

Or should they find a different way to invest, a different side hustle?

Here's the thing. I think you have to be interested in the concept and the business for it to be worth it to you. The returns right now on Airbnb are really phenomenal. And part of it is this whole share economy thing that has taken off. I think the other part of it is that for the most part, Airbnb is still run by sort of mom and pop operations throughout the city. And what I've noticed, even for really high end rentals, is that people are happy with making a little bit of money and then they don't take the time to learn and grow and, you know, sort of perfect their listing and their home. Just to give you a small example, if you've got an Airbnb, spend 200 or $300 and get professional photography, there's data out there that it'll increase your revenue by like 20 or 30%. Yet I see so many listings and even like high end listings that have, you know, iPhone photography on there. It's ridiculous. So I still think the ability to make outsized profits is there, but you do need to set up a team. And so figuring out who your cleaners are going to be is super, super important. We pay our cleaners very well and we get compliments on how clean our homes are. And that's a huge driver. Airbnb. List it right underneath your picture and Your headline is 98% of people have said this house is clean. That is important. The other thing that people want is for you to respond promptly. You know, so either yourself or somebody on your team, whether you pay for management. For us, it's my wife. She. She's a great communicator, is responding promptly because, you know, stuff is going to happen and you just need to be able to, you know, talk to the guest. I think most people are reasonable and if they see that you're trying to solve their problem, they're. They're going to give you a good review and they're going to be reasonable. Of course you're going to have an unreasonable person here and there. That's true of any business business of, you know, any kind of investment, but it's possible to do. We started locally because we wanted to kind of manage it ourselves and kind of understand the business of it. But I'm in Facebook groups that are for Airbnb and short term rentals and there, you know, 20, 30,000 people in there. And there are certainly a number of people that manage remotely. And so it is possible. You just need to be diligent about setting up that, you know, a good team yourself.

What about flack from the neighbors? Have you gotten any flack from the neighbors that are sick of the revolving door on your rentals?

No. And part of that is because we are very mindful of our neighbors and we will leave cash on the table in order to protect the home and the neighborhood. And so to give you an example, you know that it always surprises me, you've got this six bedroom house that backs up to a golf course. It's got a pool and a hot tub. Just great, great house. And we'll get inquiries from either kids who are finishing prom or even their parents. This will surprise me. Say, hey, my kid's finishing prom. We want to rent the house for them and 12 of their closest friends. And it's like, really? And so we have denied, we've denied requests like that. We have a lot of all throughout our listings, like no parties, stuff like that. And so we screen our tenants very well. My neighbors have our cell phone number. And so, you know, we've got at least one neighbor that has our cell phone number in case of anything. And then the other thing that we invested in, which I think is great for anybody considering this, is exterior cameras, not interior, of course, exterior cameras. And we disclose it in our listing. So pretty much every, you know, every door on the home has a camera on there. And we use Arlo. It's a great camera. The only thing, the only downside to it is that, you know, you got to take it down and charge it every so often because it's not hardwired. It's just one of these wifi type Cameras, but it works very well. And we have every entrance of the home covered, and that helps us to kind of make sure that there isn't a party or anything crazy going on.

Okay, so Airbnb, vrbo, both. How do you choose which company to list with?

Sure. So we are on both of those. So VRBO HomeAway is kind of the other main one. You know, most people probably have heard of Airbnb. Vrbo has a little bit more history. They're very similar, and their calendars sync. So it's very easy to get on both of those listings or on both of those platforms. And we have gotten on both of those platforms, and it was really interesting. The first property that we got was the. I would call, you know, slightly above average but not luxury property. And we were getting probably 70 to 80% bookings through Airbnb and 20 to 30% through VRBO. And that was exact same listing right on Vault. Both of them. This newer, more luxury property, it's kind of flipped. And so that's interesting. I'm not sure exactly why, but we seem to be getting 70 to 80% on VRBO and then 20 to 30% on Airbnb. So get on both of them. You can get on booking.com now and be listed next to the hotels. We haven't done that yet because just from what I've read, it's a little bit clunkier and a little bit more difficult to sync. So I don't want to do it and have to deal with double bookings and people being upset. I want to make sure that I understand the technology and everything is working seamlessly before we get on this. There. The other aspect, which we haven't talked about is we actually bought a domain and we will soon be able to take direct listings on our own site. What I've noticed with doing this and getting a real good understanding of the economy of our area, there are people who come into town for weddings. For example, there's a wedding, really nice wedding venue place in our town. We've had people actually come in for surgery, and they were very thankful that, you know, they came in for surgery for their kids kid, and the whole family needed to stay here for about a week. And they have other siblings that are babies and small kids. And they're like, we tried this in a hotel and it was a nightmare. Thank you so much for your home. You know, we were able to recover in peace. So you get really cool, really cool feedback like that. So we're creating our own website where people will be able to directly book with us. And the plan will be to go to these hospitals, go to these local businesses and say, hey, if. If, you know, if you need somebody, if somebody needs a place to stay, here's our website. And, you know, you don't have to pay the booking fees, and so it'll help them and it'll help us.

So how much are the booking fees? I mean, are they paid by the renter pretty much. Or what percentage of your income are you losing to VRBO or Airbnb?

Sure. So it's paid by both. And I think Airbnb is going through a little bit of a change. And they. They charge the guest and they charge the host as well. And I. And I think it's somewhere in the range of 15% for both of them. And the way they do it is a little bit different. And Airbnb, I think, is in the process of changing it. I don't know if that's because they're going to IPO this year, and they're trying to do certain things. I don't know if it has to do with the. They want to get more guests on the platform, and they feel like they have enough hosts, but it's, you know, with these big platforms, you know, they're always going to do what they think is best for them. So being on multiple platforms and having. Having your own way to take bookings is kind of the next step.

So you've kind of done the classic geographic arbitrage here. You used to live in California and you moved to Texas. We often talk about this in the personal finance world, even among physicians, that this is geographic arbitrage. It's a great way to build your income, build your net worth quickly, move quickly toward financial independence. What's your experience been? What's that meant for your family financially to move from California to Texas?

Well, it's meant a whole lot. And I've got to get credit to my wife because if she was not on board with it, then it never would have happened. But you're right. Both of us had grown up in Southern California, and I was very blessed. And after I finished my residency, my duty assignment was San Diego. So beautiful, San Diego. As I was finishing my Navy time with San Diego and I was moving into private practice practice, I was looking at some of the groups in the area and trying to, you know, and figuring out by talking to some of these anesthesiologists, how much were they working, how much were they making? And I just saw that most of them Even on non call days, were working really, really late. Obviously the cost of living is one of the highest in the country. So, you know, I talked to my wife and I said, hon, you know, we don't have any kids now, but you know, we're looking to start a family. I want to have time for my kids. I want to be able to see them. I'm like, yeah, it's cool to be next to the beach, but I have a feeling that if I'm working till 8 or 9pm every night, I'm probably not going to be going to the beach very often. So luckily she was open to the idea. And the two areas that we talked about were actually Dallas and Denver. We just thought those two, those two cities would be pretty cool. And serendipitously, I learned about the group out here in Dallas. I came and I interviewed. I loved this private practice anesthesia group. And we've been here for about eight years. It's been tremendous, not only obviously for our finances, but also, I think for my, my. I don't know what you would call it, professional, well being, et cetera. Like I said, I work in a great group. I'm able to. We have a very sort of capitalistic system where, you know, if you want to give away call, you typically can give away call because people want to make more. And the way you make more is by taking more call. And so it's a very fair system. And I'm able to give up a little bit of call now that I have three. And just a few days ago we had our fourth.

Kiddo, congratulations on that, by the way.

Thank you. Thank you. So, so that's been awesome to be able to move out here, to be able to afford a piece of property that has a little bit more land so the kids can play out in the backyard and not worry about things. And yeah, it's been fantastic. And you know, the way it's able to happen is if you and your spouse are on the same page. And so I'm very thankful in that, you know, from a financial standpoint and other stuff, we're very compatible. And so, you know, we can talk about these things. Things and talk about the vision. What is the vision for a family? What are we trying to accomplish? And you know, when, you know, when we talk about it in those terms, then, you know, then yeah, okay, this is what we're trying to accomplish. You know, that's why we're doing this. Okay. We're going to make some sacrifices maybe in the short term to get that done. So I think it's very important to have those regularly. You know, we'll. I tell my wife, she mostly runs the business, but sometimes, you know, if, if I've got some free time or, you know, whatever, like, we'll, we'll go see a property together and, you know, whether that's changing the codes on the smart lock, making sure the cleaners did a good job or whatever. And I tell my wife, I'm like, I love working with you. And it's true. Like, I, it's something that I really enjoy is spending that time with her. You know, if we get dinner, we can talk about the properties. The one part that we didn't cover here is that we are actually starting.

And then. Right. And then right off the dinner. Even better.

Yes, you can even. Absolutely, absolutely. But we're also starting to incorporate our kids into it. And so obviously not if we're short on time and we have a same day turnover or something like that, but we're starting to bring them to the properties. And my oldest is finishing kindergarten this year and she already, like, we've already talked about money. She has like three different cash registers for her saving, giving and spending. And we actually had a conversation the other day and I used Airbnb as the example to kind of have her understand, you know, how economics works, because she's like, well, somebody should just give this to me. Somebody, somebody should just give me that. And I was like, well, that's not how it works. I'm like, take our Airbnb house. We keep it clean, we provide a nice place, and there's some people who need a place for a few days and they give us money and we give them this place to rent. And I could see her starting to have the wheels turn and understand. And so for me, part of doing this and having these investment properties is creating a way for them to understand business and investment. And as they get older, heck, maybe, maybe they're going to be doing some.

Cleaning or modeling on the website you're putting up for it, you know.

Exactly. Yes. Yes. My daughter is on my podcasting website, though I haven't, I haven't paid her anything for it just yet. But, you know, I grew up in. My parents, you know, had cleaning jobs. They cleaned restaurants and they cleaned offices. And even as far as, like med school, you know, on, you know, if I had a free weekend and they needed some help, you know, I would go in and I would give them a hand cleaning an office space or what have you. There's there's nothing wrong with, with hard work. There's, there's nothing demeaning about that. And so, so, you know, I hope that we can use this as a way to teach them that too. Teach them some lessons, you know, okay, you, you know, you want some money, okay, you go do that job, that extra job and you'll get some money for that and kind of use that to build, build their financial experience.

What a wonder. What a wonderful thing to be able to do. I could talk to you all day about this, but I think we probably better end this podcast pretty soon. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This is David Dragon Guiness, anesthesiologist, Airbnb guru and host of the podcast Doctors Unbound that you can find at doctorsunbound.com or anywhere else that you download your podcast. David, thank you so much for coming on the White Coat Investor podcast today.

Absolutely, Jim, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. And once again, I'm really appreciative that you came onto my show early on. Kind of took a chance on that and you know, a year and a half later, here we are. Thanks again.

You're very welcome. That was a lot of fun having Dr. Dragnas on here. It's always fun to learn about a new way to invest. It reminds me that, wow, there's so many awesome ways to invest. You don't have to actually do them all though. Just pick the one you like the most. There's a lot of different ways you can become financially independent and that you can develop passive income, but clearly these short term rentals are a method that is working for at least some people. So maybe worth taking a look at and considering if you're interested in doing that sort of sort of a thing. 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 man 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. Remember that signups the registration for the White Coat Investor Con 20 will take place on July 8th beginning at 7:30. I don't know how long it's going to take to fill it, so I'd recommend getting right on there and signing up if you want to come to the Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference, head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We can help. See you next time on the White Coat Investor 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 advice advisor. So this podcast is for your entertainment.

And information only and should not be considered official personalized financial advice.