WCI #180: More Physician Millionaires

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 180 more physician millionaires. Love what you hear on the podcast. Looking for more great white Coat Investor content? Head over to our YouTube channel where you can watch video recordings of our podcast, short snippets of financial tips explained succinctly by me and others, and deep dives into topics for more in depth learning. You can even learn all about real estate with webinars from our real estate partners. Check out all this and more@YouTube.com thewhitecoatinvestor you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Thanks for what you do. Medicine's not easy. We getting tiring. I was talking to one of my partners the other day who told me, you know, a year ago I thought I was going to work another five or 10 years, but now I'm meeting with my financial planner and asking if I have enough to retire. Is she just sick of dealing with the COVID restrictions and wearing a mask all the time and being worried about bringing something home to her family? You know, it's wearing on all of us. And so thanks for being on the front lines and taking care of that. Our quote of the day today comes from Charlie Ellis who said, for most investment managers, portfolio management is neither an art nor a science. It is instead an unusual problem in engineering. And I agree with that. I think there's a lot of truth to that. It's all about a problem and solving that problem with enough you know that it would your plan will pass a stress test in the event that you know it ends up having more asked of it than you originally thought. I want to mention something that I don't think I've ever really talked about on the podcast before. A lot of you don't read the blog, but there's this great blog out there called the White Coat Investor. It's been there since 2011. It's starting in May of 2011. I've been posting blog posts on this blog for the last nine and a half years. Essentially every question I ever get asked by physicians and other high income investors about personal finance and investing has been answered in a blog post on the blog. And there are some subjects that lend themselves well to a podcast. Podcasts are great for inspiration, they're great for specific questions. But to really dive into the meat of a topic, there's nothing that really beats a good blog post because you can put charts and graphs and links and all kinds of stuff in it. So I would encourage you to take a look at the blog from time to time. And I did tell this to people on the forum and in the Facebook group as well. Take a look at the blog. There's a lot of great information on the blog, and I'm surprised how few people who, you know, enjoy the white coat investor in other venues have never really spent much time on the blog. So check out the blog sometime. You can find it@whitecoatinvestor.com classic blog. There's basically six things going up there a week, two of which are original posts by me, one of which is an older post by me that's been updated. And then of course, we have a guest post each week, we have a post from the WCI network. And of course we have the podcast show notes that are published every Thursday. Be sure to check those out. All right. You may recall that our first episode of 2020 was a physician millionaires episode. It was wonderful, got rave reviews. People loved it. They loved hearing from these successful doctors and what they did to become successful. We got just a little bit of flack about it, however, because I think all but one of the physician millionaires were men. We didn't specifically ask for men, but that's just how the volunteers came in. And so we decided, hey, why don't we do an episode that's all or mostly women. And so we put out a call a few months ago to have women physician millionaires contact us, and we would interview them and get their interviews on the podcast. Today's episode is the compilation of this. Cindy's been working hard on this for the last couple of months, lining up all these interviews, and we've been putting it all together. So thank you to the podcast team for doing all this, but I think you're really going to enjoy the episode. We talk not only about the same stuff we talked about last time, how people became millionaires, what their mindset is, what their money is invested in, et cetera, how they spend. But we also talked about a few things that are a bit more specific. We got into a few more family issues. We also talked about what it was like to have a career as a high earner that was also a woman and be able to build wealth by doing that, and whether gender held you back in that pursuit or not. So I think it's a Great series of episodes. I think we have seven women physician millionaires. Actually, they're not all physicians. We have seven women high income earning millionaires. And we're going to get into those interviews now. I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. All right, our guest on the podcast today is a millionaire, a women physician millionaire who's going to share her story with us. A she's wanted to stay anonymous today, so we're going to leave her name out of it. But welcome to the White Coat Investor podcast.

Thank you for having me.

What's your specialty and how far are you out of training?

I'm an OB GYN generalist and I've been practicing for 16 years.

And what's your approximate net worth?

Approximately 3.6 million.

Okay, and what's that divided up into? How much is house, how much is in your rental properties, how much in investment accounts, etc.

Yeah, great. So you know, about 100k in cash, we have 1.3 plus million in retirement and we have about 2.94 in real estate that's divided up in our personal home, a rental home, and then I guess a second rental home that houses my mother and we help to fund that house for her.

And what's been your range of income throughout your career?

Yeah, so this was interesting. I had to go back and actually look for it. So first of all, I came out of residency pregnant with twins and because of that I immediately that first year took maternity leave. I do have a higher income spouse who is a physician assistant, but that year we made 170,000 total together. And then while I had young kids, children, I only worked part time. So my income for that first six years combined with my husband was only around 200,000, so it was not high at all. And I kind of focused on being a mom and parent. And then about eight years ago, I started doing more administrative work in my time separated from my clinical practice and my wage increased from about 250 to our highest year of 660.

Awesome. So how long did it take? I mean, now you're a multimillionaire, right? You've done very well and congratulations on your success. How long did it take you to become a millionaire to get that first million in net worth?

I have no idea. I wasn't tracking it at the time and it really wasn't until more recently that we realized what our net worth was.

So at some point in there you crossed the line, but no idea which year it was, huh?

I would imagine it was eight Years.

What do you attribute this to? What were your secrets to success? How did you become so wealthy?

You know, I think maxing our retirement accounts out every single year, we just always made that our initial priority. We always made sure we had enough money to be able to do that. And I think we also got really lucky in real estate, and that was pure luck and not skill at all. I do think that one of our pitfalls was having a financial advisor and not having one that was good for us or really understanding. And it wasn't until the last few years that I started to really feel like I needed to understand it better. And that was one of our biggest pitfalls. So learning from you and all of that was key to us. More recently.

Do you remember when you came out of training, what your net worth was? I mean, most doctors, it's pretty negative. Do you have any idea what yours was when you came out of training?

Yeah, it was definitely negative. I had taken out $140,000 in med student loans, and by that time I got out, it was 220 or so. My husband's mom had passed away and so we had received just under, I think $100,000 of inheritance at that time. So it might have only been a negative 140 ish at that point, but it was definitely in the negative when we got out.

Well, I think you answered the question I was going to ask you next, which is whether your parents paid for medical school, which is no, and whether you received an inheritance, which is actually yes, although it certainly didn't make you a millionaire to inherit it.

Right. So what's interesting is, no, my, my parents did not pay for my medical school education, but my father did something unusual, or what I think was, is kind of unusual to pay for four children's undergraduate education. He is actually a dermatologist. And he went ahead when he got out into practice and he was very successful his first year, going from a military practice making $10,000 a year back in the late 60s, early 70s, to making about $100,000 his first year in private practice. And he bought all of his equipment in his office, his tables and lasers and all of that, and then he gifted it to his four children. What's interesting is four years later my parents got a divorce and he left. But he sold his practice to somebody. And part of the practice agreement was that this person would pay the payments to his children's college fund basically monthly until the equipment was paid off. And that paid for four undergraduate education for my three brothers.

And I That's a pretty unique way to pay for college. I'm not sure I've heard of that one before. How much debt do you have?

Currently we have about $750,000 in debt. It's my primary home, and then the home that my mother is in and that we have, our rental is completely paid off.

What advice do you have for those who are a decade or two behind you and wondering, hey, can I, as a woman physician, become a millionaire still? What advice do you have for them?

Yeah, I think, number one, maxing out the retirement account. I think always kind of paying yourself first before you do anything else. I think, you know, following the principles you had. You know, we had our student loans paid off within three years of coming out of residency, which was key. I think following your principles was low cost. Index funds is huge. Like I said, I think one of our biggest mistakes was having a financial advisor that was not really working in our best interest during a really good bull market, and we suffered from that. I do think we made some mistakes along the way in that we purchased homes in residency and purchased a home before we ever got to my first job. We got super lucky in that we made money on that house and residency, and I happened to get one job and stick with it for the 16 years. But in hindsight, I can see that that probably wasn't the wisest choice. We just got really lucky that it worked out for us.

Well, I'm glad it did. Congratulations on your success and thank you for your willingness to come on the podcast.

Sure.

I appreciate you having me, and thank you for all you do.

All right, our next guest, the White Coat Investor, will also be remaining anonymous, but welcome to to the White Coat Investor podcast.

Thank you.

What's your specialty and how far are you out of training?

I'm an emergency medicine physician, and I'm about 12 years out of training.

And what's your approximate net worth and what is it divided into?

Probably depending on the market, it's right around six and a half million. Tried to calculate this out. Probably maybe 15% in our home, 15 to 20% is cash and bonds. We keep a lot in cash and the rest is in the market.

And what's your range of income been throughout your career?

So this has fluctuated. Probably when I started two hundreds, and then it just depends on the year because, you know, we're 100% RVU, but so I fluctuate between 300 to 500.

And you mentioned an hour. Uh, is there a spouse or partner that's also contributing to that income, or is that all income you're earning?

Yeah, no, so that's my income. That was just my income earning. So I, I, you know, started around 200 when I first came out of residency, and now I'm probably like in the 400 range. Sometimes more, sometimes less. That's why I said 300 to 500. I have a husband, um, and so his income was not what I included in there, but so he also kind of fluctuates. But I guess when I was starting, he probably made in the mid-1100s. And now he probably makes about the same as me.

How long did it take you guys to become millionaires out of training?

You know, it's hard to say because I never actually knew I was a millionaire until I was already a millionaire. So I'm always amazed at the kids that are listening to your podcast as residents and med students that they already are even thinking about this. But I would say maybe about five years out of residency. The first time that I was able to track down like that, we started charting our net worth and whatnot. We were already millionaires. So I would say maybe five years out of residency, I was a millionaire.

Now, obviously the high income helped. You had a dual high income family, but what were your secrets to success other than that, do you think? How did you become so wealthy? Because there's lots of people with high incomes that never build much wealth.

Yeah, no, it's. It's not one thing I'd have to say, man, I really try to think about there's so many things that make you where you are. One is if you have a partner choosing the right partner, because making the money, it's not your money, It's a combined pot. So you're not on the same page on how you save or spend or your value system that can really help you or hurt you. In my case, I happen to be lucky that I had a partner that had similar spending habits and value systems. So that helps. Coming out like in 2008, right after the market dropped. And being here for the last 12 years is just dumb luck, but that helps because if you're in a bull market, it doesn't take a lot to just put your money in and let it sit and see the benefits of compound interest. I mean, I think somebody that came out maybe five or ten years before that may not have said the same thing.

Yeah, we certainly had an interesting time in 2008. We already had some savings by that time to lose some money in.

Right. But not enough to. Enough to Teach you, but not enough to hurt you.

Exactly.

And then really the rest of the time has just been dumb luck. And then things that we weren't even thinking about, which is kind of geographical, I guess geographical arbitrage is what you guys call it. But you know, we moved to Texas to be near family, but that helped because there's no income, it's a relatively decent cost of living area. And I came out at a time when emergency medicine was in high demand so I could come out and make a ton of money easily and have a ton of job available options. And so that really helped me. Those are things that you don't think about, but they make a significant difference. And my co residents or friends that have lived in other areas, whether it be like Colorado, Chicago or whatnot, they work just as hard as me, if not harder, and don't make anywhere near as much money. So kind of where you choose to work plus what you choose to do makes a huge difference. And just the aversion to debt. I mean, we both are really conservative in how we spend and that's kind of something you can teach, but it's something that you have a natural tendency towards.

Speaking of debt, what was your net worth when you came out of training? Do you remember?

Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, I didn't come out in the negatives because I had actually worked for a couple years before I went back to residency in med school. And you know, I had a husband that was working during that time, but we didn't have a ton of money. I'd say including all of our debt in terms of like med school debt, college debt and our mortgage, we probably had a net worth of maybe 2 or 300,000.

And how long did it take you to pay off those loans, do you remember? Did you pay them off very quickly or drag them out for a while?

I paid them off within five years, but I didn't have the significant amount of med school loans or college loans that, you know, a lot of people had. I walked out of medical school and residency and with my loans being like 80,000, which was I think pretty significant number for 2008, but nothing compared to what people have now. But even compared to my co residents, you know, I had plenty of friends that had more debt than that. We probably could have paid it off pretty quickly, but we kind of would, we paid the minimum and then we would pay chunks and so we finished paying everything off at the five year mark. When we looked at our finances and realized it was stupid to Carry the debt. When we had all this money we weren't aware of.

Do you have any debt now?

None. We have our house paid off. If we buy something, it's, you know, because we have the money to buy it. We don't carry any debt, but we're extremely conservative and we keep like a higher amount in cash than anybody recommends.

Did you get any help from your parents? Did they pay for your school? Or do you get any kind of an inheritance or anything?

No, absolutely poor. I was actually born in another country. I'm immigrant. Came here when I was a baby. Parents didn't finish college. I took out like, loans, got plenty of scholarships.

Now, you mentioned before we started recording that you have three kids. How did you balance being a mom and becoming a millionaire?

I don't know that one or the other is really related. So I think that's kind of a funny question. I think being a mother or a woman puts in extra obstacles because you're balancing more balls in the air. But being a mom or a woman doesn't prevent you from being a millionaire. You just have a lot more on your radar and you have to kind of do more trade offs.

Did you ever feel like it was either a big benefit or a big obstacle at work to you becoming a millionaire? The fact that you were a woman.

Physician, I mean, it always provides more obstacles. I mean, I came down to Texas and in the groups that I've worked, sometimes I was the only woman in the entire group. Which sounds funny because it's not like I came out in the dark ages. I came out in 2008, but I remember going to one of my job interviews and people kept coming up to me and being like, you're, you're applying for the physician job. And I finally looked at the, the head of the group who was like touring me and he was like, oh, I got some news for you. We don't have any women in the group. And I was shocked because I, you know, I mean, I had a residency where we were almost 50, 50. And so I hadn't even thought about the fact that I might go into groups where I was the only woman. But it actually happened more often than not because one of my goals, I guess early on was just to kind of chase the money and, you know, if there was a position that was available that was relatively high paying, I would consider working there. And it was usually me and 10 other guys doing that same thing. So you just, you know, you may be the only woman. There's a lot of funny obstacles to being a woman and being wealthy that, you know are in every field, including emergency medicine. I mean, your salary is less, which seems silly because people would say, well, how can you make less if everybody makes the same an hour and it's a shift job? But you do, because if you're 100% RVUs, there are certain shifts that are more, much more profitable shifts, and somehow all the men in the group got those shifts.

So the schedule, scheduling wasn't equitable.

Never. It's never equitable. So, you know, the men, certain men would get most of those shifts, or, you know, everybody that had a set schedule seemed to be one of the guys. And they are. Set schedule was a nice schedule and a profitable schedule. And, you know, most of the medical directors of all of the groups are mentioned, and when certain committees are up, they will just kind of overlook you. And so there's always more obstacles to being anything as a woman, but you learn to balance it. I think having a good support structure is important. I mean, I think any woman would say that it's important who you have on the sidelines helping you in making those balances.

Now, you mentioned that you're an immigrant. How did that upbringing affect the way you manage your money? Do you think that's why you're so conservative and why you keep so much getting cash?

Maybe.

I mean, I think that it's pretty funny because a lot of your podcast folks have been like, kind of like those immigrants that become wealthy, or I just. Maybe I hear more of them. I think that it gives you that natural drive which is harder to have. I mean, I don't know, when you look at your own kids, if you see you worry about their own drive compared to yours, depending on your upbringing versus how much money you have now. But. So I think you have a lot more drive when you know less, because there's just a lot more to shoot for. You're not trying to be comfortable where you are. You want more than you have. But, you know, there's also obstacles. I mean, I didn't have a parent that taught me about investing or retirement incomes or anything else to do besides go to school and make money one day. And so you definitely have the drive, but you don't have the toolbox. And you have to kind of go out and learn that whole toolbox if you're going to get there.

Well, you can obviously pass that toolbox onto your children. Do you think you can pass the drive onto your children? And how are you trying to do that?

Yeah. So that is a Lot harder because as you get more comfortable, they see it, and so they just aren't around it. And also, you know, their environment is different than yours. I mean, I grew up with parents that worked all the time and we never had money. And they don't see that same kind of situation. We try to teach them, like, the toolbox ways. I mean, like our probably kind of what you did. We actually live significantly more conservative than most of our peers in terms of neighbors and whatnot. So I don't even think that they have any idea how much money we actually have. We don't drive fancy cars. We naturally aren't interested in, like, super nice purses or jewelry or those kind of things. Our two biggest expenses are probably vacations and the fact that we put them in private school. But besides that, they don't really see the wealth around them. And so that helps because they are modeling. You know, they still worry about buying a pair of shoes, and I just let them worry about the cost of it instead of telling them, you know, you can afford that pair of shoes. But, you know, with my older one, we this past year, you know, started paying him to do our expenses so he could see it. So we don't. We don't show him how much income we had, but we let him manage, like, the paperwork, like the receipts, and just kind of categorize all the different expenses into business expenses and personal and whatnot, just to kind of learn how to be organized with his money. And then this past year, we started a retirement account for him. And so we sat down and we let him kind of play with it, thinking I could teach him a lesson. Like, let's say I paid him like 5,000. I put that in his retirement account. And I told him, okay, so 4,000 of it has to go into, you know, like an S&P 500 or some conservative account. And then you get 1,000 to pick a stock so that in the long run, he could see kind of the difference between playing with a fraction of it or not. And so I said, pick three stocks and we'll kind of help you decide, and we won't stop you. And we'll let you pick a stock and see the difference in which one it does. Unfortunately, he picked Tesla.

He's had a heck of a year, hasn't he?

Yes.

And so.

So it wasn't the teaching moment that I thought it was going to be, because I thought I was going to be able to show him that something that he had heard of may not do as well as just the S&P 500. But he's more than made money off of his two little stocks of Tesla that he bought. But obviously, in the long run, hopefully he'll be able to look back and see that lesson.

Awesome. So if someone's 15 years behind you, they're a med student, they're a dental student, they're an undergraduate, they're an intern, what advice do you have for them? They want to become like you. What would you tell them?

Gosh, so many things. I mean, first of all, don't underestimate compounding interest. It's not even something I even thought above. I was lucky because my first job out of residency, we were forced into like a 100% kind of retirement match.

So.

So, you know, the max that you can put in a 401k is, I don't know, like 15 or 12,000 or whatnot. But they would employee match it with your money to the max of the 54,000, which you normally wouldn't do unless you were an independent contractor. But it looked like they were company matching it, but they were matching it with your own money. But so since I got out, for the first five years that I was at that group, I was putting in the max not because I may have done it on my own, but because, you know, that was part of being in the group and so doing that and then I guess continuing, continuing that when I became an independent contractor and just kind of did my own sep ira. I mean, honestly, if you think about it and you just put the numbers in, if you put in even just the minimum requirement, which is 50,000, and you let that ride for a dozen years, you'd be a millionaire, you know, at a very. Even if you don't put in 8%. I mean, I did this just to see, you know, if you put in 4 or 5%, you have a million dollars in retire and that's really the minimum that you could do as a physician if you weren't saving anything else. We happened to be super savers for a really long time without even being aware of it. Like, we didn't say, okay, we're going to save 40% or 50% of our salary. We just lived on what we had always lived on and didn't let. We kind of buried our head in the sand maybe because we had young kids and didn't spend a ton of money for the first five years. And so after a while you just have a ton of money and so you have to invest some of it. And so that kind of helps. So really just compound interest and doing what you're supposed to do in terms of spending less money and trusting that it will all work out. It just takes time. So if you're looking at it every year, you're not going to see it jump a ton. But once you look at it in 10 years, there's a significant jump that you can make. Some other things, you know, you don't have to do it all. I mean, I know that a lot of people are super into like real estate investing or having like a side business like you do and thinking that they're never going to be a millionaire if they're not running a profitable website and podcast and side business or if they don't have five to 10 rental properties. But that's not true. I mean, I only own one property, which is my home. I have side jobs, but they're not side gigs like you have. And you can really just do it with saving and investing and living below your means. All that other stuff is kind of frosting or just the extra that you don't need to get there, but so you don't feel like have to do that. I mean, there's been plenty of times where I felt like, oh, maybe I should get into real estate or you know, loans online or X, Y and Z. But it just never felt right to us. You know, we didn't want to do that stuff. And so to know you can do it is important. I mean, on a side note though, I think that it's important to have a plan B. That's something that I think somebody coming out doesn't think think about. Like I've always had a job and then kind of a side job, whether it be just shifts at another group or, you know, telemedicine job or just something else. That is something that has been in the long run, a really smart thing to have. I came to Texas when the market was very hot and then got to ride that way for several years. But in the last several years, I.

Think probably for most people around the.

Country, emergency medicine is getting hit in terms of like contract groups and what kind of job you could have and how much they're willing to pay you. And I think that if you don't have a plan B in terms of how much you're saving or just something else, that's not all. In your primary job, it's a lot harder to walk away or to pick up the pieces if your group loses its contract or, or you lose your job. And that's something that I have The I've seen firsthand is like groups have like lost their contracts in town or people have jobs that they don't want.

To go to anymore.

And so I think having a plan B or a side gig, whether it be something small or just something else you do, is crucial, especially in the.

Market we are in.

I mean I don't think that you can assume that being a physician is 100% recession free as you can see now with COVID or that you're always going to have a job.

Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that and congratulations on your success. You've done very well for yourself and really not even quite at mid career yet. So you've done great and congratulations on that and thank you for coming on the WCI podcast.

Oh, thank you.

All right, our next guest on the White Coat Investor podcast is also going to remain anonymous. But welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Dr. Dali, I appreciate you having me.

What is your specialty and how far are you out of training?

I'm a dermatologist and I'm four years out of training now.

And what's your approximate net worth?

So this was kind of fun actually to calculate. I didn't realize we're at nearly $1.5 million.

Congratulations. It's a lot more I had than I had four years out of training.

I know, right? Yeah, that actually kind of blew my mind. But I divided it all up. My husband, this is my husband and I together. So we've got 237 in Roth IRAs, 278 in TSP, 44 in a Solo 401K, 168 in a brokerage account, 192 in private equity real estate. You're going to kill me. 120 in whole life.

I thought you were going to say bitcoin.

No, I did not see Bitcoin. However, comma, I do have whole life.

Ah, 120 in there. And then our real estate after mortgages is about 360 ish. And then in cash we're sitting on about 90.

And is your husband a doc as well?

He is not. He's active duty military.

Okay, so between the two of you, what's been your range of income throughout your career?

Yeah, you know, I was thinking about that. I think my take home when I first graduated from college as an Ensign was about 2,000amonth, maybe a little bit more. So I started as an 01 in 2000 and that's what I remember making a take home when I started my career initially.

And what's the highest year the two of you have had, income wise.

So right now my W2 from being active duty military is sitting around 125, which is very low for my specialty. And then with my side gigs and moonlighting together, I think we were at 3:50 this year. Obviously I work a lot.

That sounds like a lot of moonlighting.

A lot of moonlighting and a lot of side gigging. But we're chasing financial freedom and I.

Have energy, so we're going for it.

Cool. How long did it take you to become a millionaire?

We crossed it around age 40. 39 to 40 is when we crossed it, but that was when we really started looking to see what our true net worth was.

So this, this is impressive that you've become very wealthy. What would you say were your secrets to success in becoming wealthy?

So I think I had three secrets to success. I think the first was that I grew up in a not great home situation. I had an alcoholic father and that was a bit of a superpower because it allowed me to realize how I didn't want to end up. My other secret was in public school I learned the magic of compound interest. So I was encouraged to start early. And then my third secret was starting early. I started investing when I was 16 years old. I started TSP when I was 22, which was 20 years ago when we were capped at $7,000 a year to start.

And.

And I've just been kind of chipping away at it. But because I've had that time, my money has really grown. So I would encourage anybody to do all they can to start early and always pay yourself first.

So you're very unique among doctors. Most doctors basically don't have any savings until at least they're a resident, if not the time they become an attending. But you started very young actually, and maybe it wasn't much money at the time, but it had a lot of time for college compound interest to work on it. What do you suppose your net worth was when you came out of training?

That's a good question. I think we were probably around 7 to 800. But I think you have to remember, I should say, you should know that I'm non traditional. Prior to going to medical school, I had a career in the Navy where I completed an entire service obligation prior to going to medical school. So I didn't matriculate to medical school until I was 30 years old. So I also had my all of my 20s to work and save, which did made a huge difference for us.

Which you clearly didn't Blow all that savings paying for medical school?

No, I did a military scholarship. Well, actually take that back. I did a program where I used my GI bill to pay for medical school and I took a salary and benefits while in medical school.

That's a pretty great way to pay for medical school for those who are eligible for it.

Yeah, I would say the best way to do it, if anybody is a veteran, would be to use your GI bill, pay for medical school, go to a yellow ribbon school, do all you can to save, stay out of debt and live your dream.

I'm guessing based on what you said that your parents didn't help pay for any of your school and you haven't received any sort of significant inheritance, is that right?

That is correct.

And how much debt do you have currently? You mentioned you had some on some real estate.

Yeah, that's it. Real estate debt. That's another thing, this whole, I guess, financial awakening. I had always been good about saving and I'd always been good about, you know, paying myself first and doing all of that stuff. But the real eye opener came on this where I had to get a car, my car died. I drive all my cars into the ground and I was so angry that I couldn't stroke the check for the car. And after that we really, we had done well with money, but we decided to really buckle down and really, really start saving. I mean, right now our savings rates well in excess of 50, 60%. And we got, you know, kind of on the every dollar budget. Found out that we had given ourselves a raise by just tracking money and we are completely debt free with the exception of some real estate debt.

Awesome, I like the way you phrase that. Gave yourself a raise by actually tracking where your money was going. And it feels that way, doesn't it?

Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. I couldn't believe it when we really started tracking it. I was like, oh my God, what are we doing doing? And you know, we, we, like I said, we buckled down and everything was paid off within like three or four months because we were, we were mindful about it and intentional.

Now you mentioned before we started recording that you have an 8 year old and a fur baby. How do you balance being a mom and becoming a millionaire?

For me, I don't think that that's something that's impossible to do. I would say that intern year was really hard. My husband was deployed my entire intern year. That was, that was very, very, very difficult. I nearly didn't make it. You know, I would wake up, walk the dog, get my kid to the 24 hour daycare that was thankfully provided by the military. Go round, you know, maybe stay overnight, go get my kid. That was really, really hard. And then as a resident, I was at a great program, but not necessarily a family friendly one. And I had a live in nanny, which was really challenging. My husband was on his XO tour, executive officer tour, like second in command tour, and that was the most challenging time. I really had a difficult time and I nearly didn't make it through my first year of residency. Other than that though, I mean, things are great. You know, I have a really supportive husband, you know, we have nannies, we make it work, you know, And I'm also very fortunate. I'm in a very, I don't want to say lifestyle friendly specialty, but I'm not in the hospital all night multiple times a week. I'm very, very fortunate for that.

How do you think being a female physician helped you or hurt you in your journey to becoming a millionaire?

I'm really fortunate because I've been in the military my whole adult life. So no matter what, everything's transparent and everything's equal. So all the pay tables are out. You're paid based on your location, you're not paid based on where you're from, what you negotiate, et cetera, et cetera.

You mentioned earlier your upbringing was maybe a little bit rough. How do you think that affected how you manage your money? You mentioned earlier that, you know, you certainly wanted to be independent on your own, never having to rely on anybody else for your money. Any other ways that your upbringing affected you?

So I think my, my grandparents were really frugal and they actually ended up dying as millionaires. And I think that I saw the value of hard work, consistent saving. They never wanted for anything and we never wanted for anything. But I think they led by such a remarkable example. So I think that that was really good. And I think it also too made me really cognizant when I was choosing a husband, somebody who had similar values with regards to goals for money. And I would encourage everybody to really be mindful of that. That's important to have somebody who thinks the same way you do about money and has similar goals and is willing to go on the journey together with you.

And how are you passing that on to your kids?

It's kind of funny. My daughter is always like, when I was on a Dave Ramsey kick, she was always like, are we listening to the money guy again? You know, but we do try to talk about the value of money and we talk about, you know, saving. And if you want something, you've got.

To go to work.

And even now with the COVID pandemic, you know, the public schools are staying closed, so we've put my daughter in private school. So we've talked about, you know, what that means and how mommy and daddy have to work more in order to be able to provide that for her. So I think that that's good. I think you just do all you can to, you know, lead by example. You don't have debt. You talk about working hard. You talk about saving money for things. I think that that's all stuff that your kid hears. And they have a lot of respect.

For any advice you have for those who are a decade or two behind you and want to get where you're at.

Yeah. So I would say, so it all depends right, on where you start. I would tell anybody that's getting ready to go to medical school, choose a way to, I would say, pay for it. Like, if you have a cheaper option, take the cheaper option. Do not saddle yourself with the loans. I have so many classmates that are sitting on 350 grand in loans at 6.8% interest, and they're just. They're not going to get there from here. It's just. It's not possible. I have another friend who made payments through her residency, and she's gained 100 grand in interest loans. And, you know, in eight years, it's just not manageable. So I would tell anyone that would listen, try to find an affordable medical school. I would tell everyone that would listen also, be on a budget and get out of debt. Get out of debt because it's such a freeing feeling to be free of debt. And then the other thing, this is where I kind of, I guess, part with the Dave Ramsey crowd. And I agree more with you, Dr. Dali, is, you know, right away, do all you can do, at least fill that back door Roth. You know, try and do what you can for 401 s. Anything you can to save and pay yourself first. That is among the most important things you could ever do for your financial success. Because you can tell by looking at me. It's like, oh, man, you know, I. You know, I. I'm underpaid, you know, relatively for what I do. And I've got, you know, this huge whole life policy, and I've made so many mistakes. I've bought, like, three new cars. I've done all these bad things, but you can still get there if you're persistent with it and you really make A concerted effort to just kind of chip away at it and do the right thing on a regular basis. That's what I would say.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing your story and being willing to come on the podcast.

Yeah, you bet. Dr. Dali, thanks for having me. I really appreciate all you do.

You're very welcome. Okay, our next guest on the White Coat Investor podcast also wants to stay anonymous, but welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

What is your specialty and how far are you out of training?

I am a radiologist, diagnostic radiologist, and I'm about 10 years out of training.

And what is your approximate net worth?

It's about $1,900,000.

$1,900,000. And how is that divided up? How much in real estate and bank accounts and retirement accounts, et cetera?

Yeah, sure. It's about 1.3 million in investments, and about two thirds of that is in retirement accounts, about one third in a taxable account. We have a small hsa, a small emergency fund, and then our primary home is worth about $600,000, and that's almost paid off. We're actually paying that off probably this week or next week.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And then we also have. My husband has another home that he brought into the marriage that one of his family members lives in and that still has a mortgage.

Okay. And is your husband working?

He is, yeah. He's in finance, and he works or right now from home. We're both kind of working a lot.

From home, but, yeah, finance and a doctor. And what was your range of income throughout your career?

When I started, I made about $250,000, and then it ramped up pretty quickly over the next few years to around 450. And then since then, probably around 500, depending on bonuses. And then my husband makes them 100. So together we make about 600.

And how long did it take you to become a millionaire? You're at 1.9 now. So how far were you out of training when you hit millionaire status? Any idea?

I honestly don't know. Unfortunately, I didn't really pay much attention to money or my spending until more recently.

That's a common theme on this episode, it turns out.

Yeah, I think before I had kids, I was just working, and I had a high salary, and I never had to pay attention because I had enough money for anything I wanted to do. So I was spending a lot more than I should have been just because the money was there. And then after having our second child, I was in my maternity leave, and she required to be held pretty much all the time. So I was just, like, holding her through naps and looking online at stuff, and I discovered this fire movement, and I started reading and learning everything I could. And that's when we really started tracking things. And I think by then we probably already hit that mark.

And what do you think were your secrets to success? How did you become so wealthy? I mean, obviously you had a pretty high income, which certainly didn't hurt.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, because again, I was not being so frugal. It's not like I was spending frivolously or, you know, in a crazy manner. But if I had been tracking that and really spending more intentionally on what I. What really mattered to me, I think we would have been a lot further along than we are now. You know, now, especially with paying off this mortgage, we're going to be at the point where we can really start to just stock away a lot more money. Or I might decide to go part time.

But at the same time, I mean, you've done quite a few things right. I mean, sure, you make $600,000 a year now, which is obviously a substantial income, but you didn't always make that. And you are next week anyway, you'll be totally debt free, only 10 years out of training.

True. I still have student loans, but they're at, like, they're at 1.6% and it's only $150,000. So I actually never intended to pay those off early. At this point, we may start to think about it just because we have no other debt, so to speak. But it's never something that bothered me because the interest rate was so low and the payment is so low. But yeah, I mean, we. We bought a house that was much less than we could probably, you know, cash flow, things like that. We don't. We actually don't spend a lot of money on things. Having kids actually, you know, having little kids at least I think has saved us some money in some ways, because, you know, it's not like we're taking a lot of trips or going out to eat a lot of things like that.

So do you remember what your net worth was when you came out of training 10 years ago? Was it negative?

Yeah, it was negative due to the med school loans. I think they were about 200 when I came out, so it was about negative 200.

And did your parents pay for any of your schooling, or have you received any kind of an inheritance, or is this all pretty much from your earning and saving and investing?

They paid for my undergraduate they did not pay for medical school and no inheritance.

So really the only help was that the property, whatever the home equity and the property was that your husband brought into the marriage.

Yes, correct.

Your mom, you mentioned, how do you balance being a mom and becoming a physician millionaire?

I think honestly, you know, because we. I'm a little bit older, we had kids later in life, so, you know, I think we didn't have to struggle through those early years of, like, childcare and, you know, work and things like that. We were just able to kind of build our wealth more and then having kids, you know, later on in that process. I think that helped a bit in that regard.

Do you think or how do you think being a physician millionaire, a female physician millionaire, helped you or hurt you in your journey toward wealth?

I don't think being a female did anything. I think I'd never really noticed any difference in how I was treated. You know, I was lucky to join a practice where it's very equitable and transparent. There's no differences in salaries or anything like that. So I don't really see any detriment or benefit to it.

And tell us about your upbringing. Did that affect how you manage money at all?

You know, I was brought up in a house that, you know, my parents are very conservative with their money. You know, my dad retired it at around 60 with a sizable net worth. He always invested, you know, 15 to 20% of his income into the markets. And we, you know, we didn't take a lot of family trips. We went to the beach, you know, maybe once the summer, that kind of thing. Consumer debt was not something that he. He had, and it's something that was drilled into us from an early age not to have that. You know, you could have a mortgage and, you know, some student loans, that kind of thing, but no other real debt, so to speak of. So I think that helped a lot.

Sounds like your kids are still pretty young. I don't know if you've tried teaching them anything about money yet, have you?

Just a little bit. The older one, he's almost four, so he's. He knows a little bit. He actually asked us the other day something about bank accounts, and we were like, where'd you learn about bank accounts? But he, you know, with him, we kind of just describe, like, you know, money is something that we need for the things, you know, that we need to buy our house, to pay for our food, our clothes. And, you know, if he asks for a new toy or something like that, we tell him, well, when you have money to pay for that, we'll have to think about whether that's something we're going to spend our money on and just kind of just general early introduction to things like that, I have to really sit down and think about how I want to handle that more in the future.

All right, most important question. What advice do you have for those who are a decade or two behind you and want to be where you're at?

Yeah, I think a few things for me, something I wish I had done more, is to pay attention to where my money was going. I think it can be a little overwhelming to learn about, you know, finances and investing, but there are so many great resources these days, you know, like your blog and many others, and I think it's much more understandable. So I think, you know, if I could go back into med school and residency to find a few resources that you like and start learning about it then. And that way when you come out and all of a sudden you have this big paycheck, you kind of have more of a plan for that money. The second would to be very intentional about your spending, like, know what you truly enjoy spending money on and what you don't. You know, early on, I was buying all these clothes, and I don't even know why. You know, it was just money was flying out the door, and it really doesn't bring me any joy or happiness whatsoever. You know, I'd rather spend money on other things like travel and food. So to know that about yourself and just kind of spend the money on those things and skip the rest. And the third would be to try your best to choose a partner whose values around money are in line with yours. My husband and I never argue about money because we almost always agree about it. If we don't agree, we're not that far apart. And I think it's something that's very important to have that alignment. If you don't, I think it can cause a lot of issues and impact your net worth.

Awesome. Well, congratulations on your success, and thank you for coming on the podcast.

Sure.

Thank you.

All right, our next guest on the White Coat Investor podcast is Jessica. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

All right, what is your specialty, and how far are you out of training?

I am a general adult psychiatrist, and I'm 13 years out of training. I finished in 2007.

And what's your approximate net worth?

As of today, about a million and a half.

And how is that divided up? How much is home equity? How much is investments? How Much is cash, et cetera.

About two thirds of it are in tax deferred IRAs from previous jobs rollovers and current 401k options. And about a third is in different type of real estate investments and a little bit is in HSA and cash.

Okay, and do you own a house as well or no?

No. I sold my home and moved from Chicago to Kentucky about a year ago.

And currently renting there.

That's correct.

Okay, and what's been your range of income throughout your career?

I started off with a part time employee job that paid me $75,000 and the rest of my time was in private practice. So first year, maybe 125. And currently with all bonuses, I make about 280,000.

And how long did it take you to become a millionaire?

10 years from the time I graduated residency until 2017.

And family picture? Married, partner, children?

Married, no kids.

Okay. And is your partner working?

Yes, he's an actuary.

So probably not quite the same income as you've made over the years.

Not quite. He makes a decent salary, but not quite the position salary.

What was your net worth when you came out of training, if you remember?

Oh, pretty low. I owed about $120,000 in student loans from medical school and took out the doctor loan right away and bought a condo in Chicago. Once we moved from Kentucky to Chicago, that cost about a third of a million.

So what were your secrets to success? I mean, how did you become so wealthy?

The large portion of what we have now is basically from maxing out our 401k, 403 tax deferred, employer retirement accounts, Whatever we had offered to us, we did start to max those out pretty early on. And so that is really the only way we got to the million dollars other than a little bit of equity and a condo that we bought about the right time in 2010 and sold in 2017.

Why? Why did you choose to max those out?

To be honest, because my husband told me we had to.

So he was the driving force?

Absolutely. I really, you know, I got lucky because I bit stereotypical for women, but I think there's a lot of couples who. The man often takes care of finances. That's a generalization. That's not true across the board, but for me it was definitely true. And I remember when I came out of school, he said, hey, Jess, you need to max out this retirement fund. I said, no, I need clothes, I need cars, I need other things. And he said, no, no, we're going to do this. Explained it to me. I said, okay. And honestly, at first it hurt, but once you don't see the money and you're take home, you forget about it.

I suspect an actuary is pretty good at running the numbers on this sort of thing. That compound interest is not a foreign concept at all.

No. He is a whiz. He is a whiz. Yes.

So did you get any help from your parents? Did they pay for school? Or have you received an inheritance? Or was this all from your earning?

My parents did pay for undergrad, which was very helpful. But it was very clear from early on that any graduate school will be on my own. So I did finance my entire education and they're still alive. There's no contribution from them at this point.

And how much debt do you guys have currently?

We own one rental property and we have about $70,000 mortgage on that.

Now you mentioned before we started recording that something unique about you is that you were already a millionaire before you kind of became enlightened on these concepts. Explain a little bit more about that.

That's true. I have a bit of a story there. So I remember one day that we were in Chicago, we were thinking about selling our condo with dead set on getting a single family home, which in Chicago was not a cheap option. So we decided to go ahead and sell the condo. And at some point, looking at the equity, my husband said, you know, I think we have about a million dollars. I said, I had no idea what you're talking about. I don't see any million dollars in the bank. I was completely ignorant of what was going on in terms of our, our account, I'm sorry to say, but it's true. And then we bought the million dollar house, which was by far the worst mistake we ever made, and that was in 2017. About a year later, my husband started becoming interested in the fire movement and he started listening to Biggerpockets, which is a real estate podcast. And he read Rich Dad, Poor dad, and just a fire lit up in him and he thought, we're going to get into real estate. And so I read Rich Dad, Poor dad, and it was really just life changing for me. It got me interested in finance. I found your book, your first book. I read both of your books at this point and, and I read a couple other books like the Millionaire Next Door, Simple Path to Wealth. I read the tax book that you recommend by Mike Piper. I did our taxes the next year. And from there I sort of woke up and I looked at our budget, I looked at what we were paying in the mortgage. I Looked at what we were paying the dog walker, the housekeeper, how much we were spending going out, and I wasn't interested in doing that anymore. So we made huge changes. We decided to move back to Kentucky where we were both born and raised, and we sold our house. We lost quite a bit of money when it's all told with all the transaction cost and the cost to furnish the house. And we downsized. We're now living in the 1100 square foot apartment and we changed our savings rate from 2017 from 13% currently to 58%.

Wow, you're clearly highly motivated for something. You mentioned the fire movement. Is that your goal? Are you looking to retire very early or what? What's, what's the big motivation behind all these changes?

I'm interested in the five part, the financially independent part. My husband may change careers and he and I both want to get to a place where we don't have to worry about the money piece much more.

And so as you move along toward this goal, how have you or how do you plan to reach financial independence relatively early and becoming a millionaire and.

So forth moving forward? One of the great things about moving to Kentucky is I was changed from 100% clinical care into most administrative role. And it's been awesome. It's been almost like a new career and it's been very energizing. So it's been pretty exciting times in the last year, year and a half for us.

What do you think about being a female physician and how that either helped you or hurt you in your journey to become a millionaire?

I thought about that and, you know, I think in terms of missed opportunities, there may be some I'm not aware of. But I do have one story from early on when I was joining a private practice, it was an LLC owned by one psychiatrist and I was joining with another male counterpart. And he took both of us to dinner, but separately. And when he took the male counterpart, my colleague, to dinner, he basically said, I'm going to groom you to take over the practice. I'm going to give you the keys to the kingdom. And he took me to dinner and didn't mention any of that. And I think that had a lot to do with my gender. So looking back at that and I'm wondering what else I missed out on because my female. That's the only story I really have that stands out.

Now, you mentioned your. You were very much wanting to buy clothes and cars and things like that. Was there anything in your upbringing that affected how you viewed money at that time? Before Kind of your awakening.

I was raised in a small town, rural Kentucky, by two parents who. Wonderful parents, a lot of love. But money was always a bit of an issue. I mean, we were provided for, had everything we could want. But I think that watching some of the stress that went on in the family when it comes to finances, I decided I really wanted a solid career, something that would provide fairly well. I don't think I was extremely materialistic. It's just with that delayed gratification of medicine, by the time I got out, I wasn't really interested in saving. I was wanting to go to all the nice restaurants and chicken Chicago and buy a new car and a new condo, and we did a lot of that. So I feel really fortunate that we are where we are because we did make quite a few mistakes.

Well, the fun thing about medicine is that you can make quite a few mistakes and still be okay in the end, as long as you figure it out eventually. And so I hope the listeners who hear these stories are inspired by them and realize that, you know, you don't have to be perfect to be successful financially as a doctor. You can. You can make a lot of mistakes and still be okay in the end.

There's one more piece I want to mention. I came out with about $120,000 in loans, which these days is very small, but for me it seemed like a lot. And I got almost all these loans were paid by taking jobs that qualified for loan repayment programs. I didn't even know that when I took the job. So twice I accidentally fell into jobs where I later found out loan forgiveness was an option.

Yeah, probably a good tip there to pay attention to that benefit. Especially for a young physician, that's a major, major benefit. So what advice do you have for those who are a decade or two behind you? They want to be where you're at in a decade or two. What would you tell them?

Have your financial awakening before you leave med school. Know what you're getting into? Read a couple books. It's really not that hard, the amount of time you're going to spend in your training learning about medicine. You know, a very small fraction of that can be spent reading a couple books, educating yourself, and then starting to save early. Max out your retirement accounts and make sure you live like a resident for a few years. I wish I'd done that. If I had done that, I would be much farther ahead than where we are now.

Well, congratulations on your success. It's wonderful to hear your story, and thank you for coming on the Podcast.

Thank you so much.

Okay, our next guest is a little bit unique. We're going to let her stay anonymous, but tell us first of all about your career and education and what you do or did for a living.

Yeah, thanks. So I am one of your token non medicine listeners. So my bachelor's and master's degrees are in engineering. I graduated in 2004 with my BS in Chemical Engineering and then I joined the workforce right away and I got my Master's in 2009 in management science and engineering while working full time and going to school part time. So the bulk of my career has been spent in the aerospace industry, followed by a short stint at one of the tech giants.

Awesome. Thanks for sharing and thanks for being one of the non Dr. Listeners out there. We do have a fair percentage when I do surveys. It's about 10%, so it's not zero, but it's definitely a minority in our listenership. So what is your approximate net worth at this point?

My network with my husband is a little over $3 million.

Okay, and is your husband, is he an earner? Does he work?

He is still working, yep. He's an engineer just like me.

Okay, it's two engineers. And how's your net worth divided up?

We have about 2.6 in investments in cash, mostly investments, and about 400 in home equity. So if you break the investments down, it's about a 6040 split, stock to bonds, and then within each of the stock and bond category we're about 6040 total US market and then total international.

So a fairly broadly diversified index fund portfolio.

It sounds like that is the goal.

And what's been your range of income throughout your career?

So I looked at the Social Security website for this and apparently I started out first year of college making 54k and then my highest paying year was 269 and my career average was 134.

Similar numbers for your husband.

A little bit higher, but similar.

And how long did it take you to become a millionaire?

So I started working in 2005, we got married in 2009 and right about that time, personal net worth was 100k. And then together we crossed that 1 million mark in 2014. So that was nine years.

That's pretty quick. That's pretty good.

Well, engineers don't start out with a tremendous amount of college debt.

Yeah, that helps. And a two engineer household is pretty similar to a one physician household as far as income goes.

It is, yeah.

And so nine years, that's pretty good, I think. And I think there's a lot of lessons there for our listenership, no matter what they do for a living. To take from that, what were your secrets to success? How did you become so wealthy so quickly?

I gotta say, so wealthy, that still sounds strange even though I know it's true. So it's a combo of three things. So luck, hard work, and education. And I'll expand on that just a little bit. So I'll say luck. I was fortunate to be born to married, middle class, college educated parents. I grew up in the Bay Area, I'm white, I speak English as my first language. I'm not physically or mentally disabled in any way. That's just purely second factor was hard work. Like a lot of your listeners, I worked hard in school. I was fortunate to get a full ride scholarship to my local junior college. So my first two years of college, I was actually making $500 a semester to go to school. We had some really good local universities in the Bay Area, so I went to some local universities and got my engineering degrees by working my butt off. And then the third factor I'll say is education, and I mean financial education. So for some reason when I started working, I just got this itch to read about personal finance. And I'd go online in my breaks at work and I'd browse the Internet looking for stuff. And I'd read Michelle Singletary's column in the Washington Post and all the standard stuff about pay down debt and invest 15% of your income, blah, blah, blah. And then I found myself thinking, all right, I'm doing that now. What am I just supposed to spend all this extra money on designer handbags or something? So I kept searching and then I found my way to get rich slowly, which led me to Mr. Money Mustache. And then you can kind of say that the rest is history. I think I had been looking for something without even realizing it was there. So that shockingly simple math behind early retirements really just kind of clicked things into focus for me. It's like, okay, I'm not saving just because it's a nice thing for an adult to do because we're responsible. There's actually a reason for that. You know, I can have this goal in mind of what I really want to do in my life. So that led me to all the usual things. The Boglehead Wiki, the Go Curry cracker, mad scientist, Michael Kisses, all of those great. So that all that education financially helped me figure out, you know, okay, what do I do with this extra money that we're earning?

It sounds like this became a little bit of a hobby for you?

Absolutely. Yep. It's really my side path.

It's the best paid hobby out there, isn't it?

It is so much fun. I can totally nerd out on this.

Yeah, that's. That's pretty remarkable. Pretty awesome. And the interesting thing about, you know, that I see on a lot of people that become successful is they, they start going, what do I do with all this extra money? And when I talk to people who aren't successful, it's, I don't have any extra money. So what was the difference there in your mindset? Do you think you were naturally frugal or did you learn that at some point or what happened?

I had to learn it. I got lucky. I married a naturally frugal, frugal person. But me, I'm not naturally frugal. I think it took my brain a while to mature and kind of get it. I probably wasn't until my early 20s that I started to really figure out how to save and why to save and that whole concept of delayed gratification. So I guess there's hope for people. If you're not good with money yet, you can certainly learn it later on. I think part of it was just I started out with an engineering salary and so I had wiggle room in my budget. You know, I had this extra money because I was fortunate enough to start out earning 54k instead of, you know, 30k like some people do. So I had this extra money and it didn't seem to make me happy to, you know, buy the fancy clothes and buy the name brand purses. You know, I tried that for a little bit and was like, okay, you know, that's fine, but that doesn't really do it for me. So maybe there's something else I can do with my money.

Do you hear that residence? She said she made 54K. That's about what you make, right? And she referred to that as having lots of extra money. It's really a mindset thing that you can see here. So let's talk about help from your parents. Did they pay for your school or did you get any sort of an inheritance or anything like that that contributed to this?

I had some college savings. So my parents did help with college with the savings as well as from their current income. I also helped with my own savings that I'd earned from working in junior college and then I had summer internships. So I set some of that money aside for college. So I helped, but they footed the.

Bulk of it no inheritance, though. They're still living.

No inheritance? No.

How much debt do you have currently?

We've got a mortgage. It's about 680.

You said you're in the Bay Area?

That's correct, yeah.

That sounds pretty familiar to a lot of Bay Area stories I hear. So are you a mom?

Yes, I got three kids, actually.

And how do you balance that, being a mom and becoming a millionaire? How do you find balance in your life doing those two things?

Oh, boy. So I think those in the trenches know, you know, being a parent is a hard job. It's like the hardest thing I've done so far. So we were fortunate that we were pretty well established both financially and career wise by the time our first kid came along. You know, we also lived in California, which is, relatively speaking for the US Good about parental leave policies and things like that. So we both worked for good employers that had decent leave policies. My husband and I really split things equally. So in many ways, you know, my situation was about as good as you can get in this country, you know. But I'll say, despite that, it's. It's still hard. There's just no way around it. You know, you make time for kids in life and you make time for work and that means that, you know, there isn't much left for personal time, certainly. I know that's very true for families right now, you know, having lost childcare and all of that.

How do you teach your kids about money?

Well, my oldest just turned 6, so we are just starting on this path, trying to talk about the concept of earning money. And money is used to buy things and money as a finite resource, so just conversations about that. And then we're trying to teach her by having her, for example, earn gold, you know, plastic gold coins for good behavior. And then she can exchange these gold coins for certain treats if she's earned up enough. And recently she expressed desire for a certain toy that really gets her excited. So we say, okay, we're going to put a price for that. That's going to cost you 20 gold coins. And how many do you have right now? You've got 11. Okay, so how many do you need to earn and to kind of teach her the value of money and making those trade offs between using their gold coins to buy this toy versus exchanging it for the treat of being allowed to watch a movie, for example.

How do you think being a female engineer helped or hurt you or maybe had no effect on you becoming a millionaire?

It's really interesting. Engineering is interesting. Being different from medicine. So I think with medicine, you're at least in med school, you're getting close to parity between males and females in school.

And then actually a little more popular now among women. There's more women in med school than men.

Okay.

Yeah. So then as time goes on, you're going to see that reflected in the workforce now, contrast to engineering. So women really have never crossed 20% for learning engineering degrees. And that's actually been on a slight decline since the early 2000s. And then the number of women in the engineering workforce also tends to decline over time. So being a woman in engineering has always meant that I've been in the minority. And that's, you know, not necessarily good or bad or ugly. Just is, you know, that's just always meant that I've stood out. And in aerospace in particular, when I started working, it skewed much older in the average age. So I stood out by both being a woman and being younger. I wouldn't say it hurt me because I worked for a good company in a good, you know, in a good location, but it did. It was something that kind of carried on my shoulder all the time. You know, if you speak up in the. In a meeting, you're not just speaking for yourself. You're kind of, in some sense, representing all of, you know, womankind when you're the only one in the room.

It must be very lonely to have to speak for half of humanity.

It can really put the spotlight on. Make you think twice before you open your mouth. I did make some deliberate career moves to make sure that I was placing myself in organizations that I knew were going to be friendly to women and who had leaders who were going to be supportive and could mentor me in my career path. So there were organizations that I. I avoided in organizations that I deliberately made moves to go into to make sure that I was in a supportive work environment.

And what advice do you have for those who are a decade or two behind you? They want to be financially successful and they're just starting their career out. What would you tell them?

Save early, save often. There's so much good advice out there, and a lot of it is just the basics. Save early, save often. Look cast in, dispense. But what I think really moved the needle for me was daydreaming and figuring out what is it that I really want. Put that goal front and center and think about that when I'm making decisions about my money. So it's not just saving because my mother told me to. It's saving because I'VE got this cool thing that I want. And so it's more important for me to achieve that cool thing than to whatever it is in the moment to buy that nice thing or go out to that nice restaurant.

Do you mind sharing some of your cool things that motivated you to do that?

Well, my number one thing for a long time has been to retire as early as possible. And so that was a real driving force. And once I got my husband on board, then that provided a context, a framework in which we can make decisions about, for example, how much house do we want to buy, where do we want to live, what kind of school do we want to send our kids to to. So it's when we identified that as our number one priority, all the other things on how could we spend our money sort of fell into place.

Thank you. Very helpful. Well, thank you so much for coming on the White Coat Investor podcast. I think it's great to get a voice that isn't a position on here sometimes and I appreciate you sharing your story. Congratulations on your success.

Thanks so much. Thanks for your time.

All right, our next guest on the White Coat Investor podcast is another woman physician millionaire. Welcome to the White Coat Investor Podcast.

Thank you for having me.

What's your specialty and how far are you out of training?

So I am a radiation oncologist and I am 15 years out of training.

And what's your approximate net worth?

Total net worth is just under 7 million.

And what's that divided up into?

So that is primarily investments. I live very modestly, so I have one home and that home is, I should say that home was paid, I paid about $500,000 for that home and it's worth about $1 million. But the rest of it is all investments.

So it's retirement accounts and taxable investing accounts invested in mutual funds. Or is it investment properties or is it Bitcoin or what are the investments?

Nope.

So it's investment accounts and I do have a financial advisor and currently my asset allocation is 70, 30.

Okay, so stock and bond index, mutual funds mostly.

That's right. Yep.

And what's been your range of income throughout your career?

So I was a low income earner initially. So the first four years of my post training work life was, was really low. So on the order of about a hundred thousand then for a good solid decade worked my tail off and earned a lot more than that. And so I was able to save really well and pay off my house and pay off any school debts that I had. And I've taken a backseat in the last. Since 2014. So now the last nearly six years where I'm working, but I work on my own terms and I'm back to making about $100,000.

Are you married, single, Single? Single. Okay, so it's all your income, it sounds like. And what was your very best year? Did you ever have a seven figure year?

I had a single seven figure year. One year.

And do you remember what your net worth was when you came out of training?

Very negative. Yep. So I was lucky with my undergrad. I had to pay for one year of undergrad, and that was with partial scholarships. But then I got a nice pre med scholarship and paid for the rest of my undergrad education. Med school was all loans. My parents helped me a little bit, but, you know, they didn't have very much, so they tried to help whatever they could. So my net worth when I finished was about minus 300k.

And how long did it take you to go from minus 300 to millionaire status?

One million. I'd say probably five years.

Five years. Okay.

Yeah.

And what were your secrets to success? I mean, how did you become so wealthy?

I think a combination of just really, really hard work and being super motivated to not have debt. I lived a really lean life. I know there's a lot of comments in a lot of your writings and other financial podcasts where they talk about living like a resident. And I have to say I still do that even to this day.

Yeah, it's amazing how much wealth you can grow when you live like the average American. But earn like a doctor, huh?

Yeah.

Okay, you mentioned your parents helped a little bit with your schooling. Did you receive any sort of inheritance or other windfall?

No, no windfalls.

And how much debt do you have currently? Zero. And what advice do you have for those who are a decade or two behind you?

So I would say, you know, I'm not the most financially savvy person, so to ask me about my investments and things is. Is not my strength. And that's one thing that I would strongly encourage everyone to learn more about, particularly women. And I say that to single out a sex simply because I leaned a lot on my father growing up. And in our household, I saw it modeled where my dad took care of all the finances in the home and my mom paid the bills, she kind of balanced the checkbook, but at the end of the day, she was never really given an opportunity to learn about those things. And so that wasn't modeled for me when I signed my paperwork for loans for the first year of Undergrad and then going forward for med school. My dad walked me through all of it. I couldn't even tell you what the terms of those loans were or really even what I was signing up for, which is really terrible. So I think it's really important at some point that people at least know what their options are. What are you signing up for? And I think also in starting my job and my career, that that carried through again and I leaned on others, which, which is really not proud moments for me. And so I've just begun my financial education in the last year, I would say maybe even a little longer. But I don't claim to really have enough knowledge, but my real goal is to get rid of my financial advisor. But right now they're kind of there as a crutch for me.

But you know what's interesting is you've demonstrated that you don't have to be a hobbyist in order to be very successful. You know, I mean, a lot of the people I run into that are, you know, multimillionaires, et cetera, they, they're just really into finance. They learned all this stuff and they, you know, they work hard too and they save a lot of money, but they, they're really into it, you know, and they aren't using financial advisors. But what you've demonstrated is that you don't have to know everything about it. You can use a financial advisor as long as you're getting good advice at a reasonable price and still be very successful.

Yeah. And so I think I know a little bit. And so I would say the only thing that has been helpful for me, even without that language is I do understand a little bit about asset allocation. And so I was a little more risky as I was younger, but now at 45, you know, pulling back. And I've got two children, they're 11 and 13. So I'm mindful of what I want them to learn. I'm mindful of dollars, an inheritance that I'd like to pass to them and leave a family legacy and save for their education, et cetera.

You mentioned you had a few low earnings years and I suspect that might be part of the answer to my next question, which is how did you balance being a mom and becoming a millionaire?

So in those low earning years, in the beginning I didn't have children yet, so kids came along a little bit later. Yeah. So for those years it really wasn't an issue. So it's more time allocation, I'd say, than dollars. So in the beginning, in my really in my highest earning years was when I had the children. And that's so crazy, but we just weren't ready. It just didn't happen when I was in my early years, so it happened a little bit later. So the busiest years of my life and my toughest years working were also the time that we had kids. So yeah, not easy, that's for sure. But I was really lucky. I had family that moved close to me. My parents were here and and so had some extra help that way, which I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

What are you doing now to teach those kids about money?

So now we read, we read a lot. And I'm not a believer in giving them allowances. For me there's just certain duties that we have at home and certain responsibilities that come with being part of a family and living in a home together. And so there's expected responsibilities that the kids do, but I don't pay them for such. So what I'm teaching them is doing my best to teach them about saving and spending and what that means and what it really just means to live below your means always. And more importantly, my father always taught us, you know, you never have too little to give. And so charitable giving is a, is a big part of our family philosophy and we sit down every year and talk about charities that are family's interested in and the kids are interested in and giving too. And so trying to include them in those conversations.

And you mentioned earlier that you're kind of anti debt. Do you have any debt at all now? No, none at all. How far were you out of training, do you think, when you became debt free?

Pretty close to probably year six, I would say. I was going to say five, but took a little bit longer I would say to pay off a few things. So between years five and six.

And that includes your student loans and your mortgage and everything.

That's right.

Very nice. How do you think being a female physician helped or hurt you in your journey to becoming a millionaire?

For me personally, it hasn't really had any impact. I haven't been held back in any way. I haven't lost opportunities, at least that I'm aware of that have impacted me in any way. So I would say other than my own personal issues of being a female in my family and not taking on the role of learning finances, it really hasn't impacted my career or my earnings at all.

So I didn't necessarily close any doors, but didn't really open any doors either.

That's right, yeah.

Very nice. Well Very nice. Do you have any other advice for those who are, you know, 15 years behind you and want to get to where you are, want to be 45 years old and be worth almost $7 million? I mean, what would you tell that person?

I really think that the piece of advice I would give is don't be afraid of finances. It's okay to talk about finances. For me, I had in my mind that money and finances and earnings are bad things, and we're to be altruistic all the time and not consider what we're earning or what our worth should be and what our value to others is. And don't shortchange yourself. I think super important. Start reading whatever you can as early as you can and just continue to live modestly. Delayed gratification, unfortunately, is what many, as many of us think of, and certainly we're in that place. But I don't know that, that it's necessarily beneficial to start living large so early.

Awesome. Well, congratulations on your success and thank you for being willing to come on the podcast.

I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

All right. I hope you really enjoyed that episode. I found it fascinating to talk to all these successful people, you know, many of whom are very wealthy, certainly in the top 1 or 2% of physicians. It's interesting if you go and look at the data, it's a pretty small percentage of physicians in their 60s that are worth more than $5 million. It's not very many at all. And so it's awesome to kind of concentrate them and learn from them and see what has worked in their lives. Almost as a rule, they don't like debt much. As a rule, they don't seem to be really big on spending a lot of money. Some spend more than others, but their spending is not a huge part of their life. And it's also noteworthy that their investments vary quite a bit. Whether they use an advisor or not varies quite a bit. And those don't seem to be the really most important things. The most important thing, of course, is mindset. How much you make, how much that you save, and that you invest it in some sort of reasonable way. And so I hope you took that message away from this episode. Love what you hear on the podcast. Looking for more great white coat investor content? Head over to our YouTube channel where you can watch video recordings of our podcast, short snippets of financial tips explained succinctly by me and others, and deep dives into topics for more in depth learning. You can even learn all about real estate with webinars from our real estate partners. Check out all this and more@YouTube.com thewhitecodeinvestor you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Thanks to those of you who have been leaving us five star reviews. That really does help get the word out about the podcast and and help us share it with others. Our most recent review came in from Damp Mungbeans who said so much valuable content. Jim's podcast is really outstanding and I've learned so much by being a listener I can't recommend it highly enough. WCI blog is also outstanding. I'm amazed at most of the questions I've had along the way have already been answered in one of his blog posts. 5 stars. So thank you very much Damp among beans for that and I appreciate you also promoting the blog because I want you as a podcast listener when you have split specific questions. That blog's available all the time. It's just in time education and we try to keep it updated as best we can. Obviously over the years it's hard to keep 2000 blog posts updated at all times, but we try to do the best we can and have that be a great resource for you. At any rate, we better wrap this up. It's already been a long episode. I'll see you next week. Keep your head up, your shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. Stay safe out there.

My dad, your host, Dr. Dahl, is.

A practicing emergency physician, blogger, author and podcaster.

He is not a licensed accountant, attorney or financial advisor. So this podcast is for your entertainment.

And information only and should not be.

Considered official personalized financial advice.