WCI #242: Avoiding Debt and Giving Back With Michelle Singletary

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 is your host, Dr. Jim Dahli. This is White Coat Investor podcast 242. Avoiding debt and Giving Back with Michelle Singletary. Still not sure what to do with your student loans or overwhelmed with how to tackle that giant debt? In an ever changing political climate? The experts@studentloanadvice.com are here to help guide you through the best options to manage your loans. Our experienced staff have consulted on over $250 million in student loan debt and the average student loanadvice.com client has saved over $190,000. You will receive a customized student loan plan using the principles of the White Coat Investor. Get answers to all of your student loan questions, gain clarity about your financial future, and start down the right path toward financial freedom. Book a consult today@studentloanadvice.com you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Welcome back to the podcast. We're recording this on December 13th. It'll go live on December 23rd. You should be aware that the next day after this goes live, December 24th through January 3rd, we are having a sale of our three main online courses that includes our Financial wellness course. Okay, that's the Fire your Financial advisor course with the CME credit with the additional wellness content in it. It includes our Fire your financial advisor course. This is our flagship course that helps you design your own financial plan. And also the CFE 2021 course, Continuing Financial Education 2021 course. If you buy any of those during that time period, the 24th through the 3rd of January, we will give you CFELAS VEGAS absolutely free. That's another 50 hours of content. It's basically more than doubling your content for most of these courses and so it's really a pretty awesome addition to what you're getting for that.

So check that out.

Whitecoatinvestor.teachable.com look for the bundles there. This will show up as the course bundle. Basically, we're bundling these courses together for that time period and you can get a great deal on it. So if you want to get yourself a Christmas present or you want to get somebody else a Christmas present, this is a great way for you to be able to do so, especially if you waited until the last minute. Well, you can buy this one on Christmas Eve, no problem. All right, let's do our quote of the day. This one is an anonymous quote as far as I know. If you know who said it, I'll give them credit in a later podcast, but it is tend your portfolio as you would a cactus. I think the idea there is to keep your hands off. You don't want to be messing with your portfolio in response to market conditions all the time. You'll end up chasing your tail. All right, I want to make sure I thank you for what you do. It's been a long year with lots of challenges. You know, we had that pandemic come up and right when we thought it was getting better, we had Delta come up and right when we thought maybe it'd be getting better soon, we had Omicron Omicron. However you say it come up and it feels like it's never going to end. I assure you it is going to come to an end eventually, or at least some sort of low level endemic state that we can live with and get back a bit more to our normal lives. Thank you for hanging in there and thanks for what you do. We got a really special guest on today. I'm excited to have her not only on the podcast, but also at WCICON 22. If you have not yet registered for that and want to come, you can do so in person. Registration, I believe goes through January 24th. That was the latest we could push it because we got to have the numbers for the food people so you can register in person up until January 24th. You can register virtually even after the conference starts if you like, but make sure you do that so you can catch this awesome conference. Our guest, Michelle Singletary, will be one of the keynote speakers there, but you can register whitecoatinvestor.com WCICon22 let's get Michelle on the line.

Michelle Singletary is a personal finance columnist for the Washington Post. Her award winning column, the Color of Money, appears twice a week in dozens of newspapers across the country and is syndicated by the Washington Post News Service and Syndicate. She's a frequent contributor to NPR and cnn, has been on the Today show and the Early Show. She even hosted her own TV program for a couple of years. She's authored four books, including the latest what to do with youh Money When Crisis Hits, published earlier this year. She was raised and educated in Baltimore, and lately she's been collecting a lot of awards, including the Eugene Meyer Award, the highest journalistic honor from the Washington Post the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, the organization's highest honor she was also inducted into the hall of Fame for the Society of Professional Journalists, along with names you may be familiar with, such as Wolf Blitzer and Peter Mayer. This year, she won a Gerald Loeb Award for commentary for a series titled Sincerely Michelle. She's also, and perhaps more impressive than all of those awards, the director of Prosperity Partners Ministry, which is a financial program she founded at her church, the First Baptist Church of Glen Arden. Through the ministry, she teaches on various financial aspects and financial topics. As part of this ministry, she and her husband also volunteer to teach financial literacy to prison inmates in various correctional facilities in Maryland. Michelle, welcome to the White Coat Investor podcast.

Oh, thank you for having me.

So let's start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing and how that affects your views on money.

Sure. So I was raised in Baltimore by my grandmother. My parents had some issues and we ended up nearly in foster care, but was rescued by my grandmother and my grandfather. So we, I went to go with, live with her when I was four, and there was five of us total. So I had an older sister who was eight. I had, there was me, I was four, a sister who was three, and twin brothers just about two years old. So that was quite a bit of a giant experience for my grandmother and us. And she was the one who taught me everything I know about money, the basics. She was just unbelievably good with her money, even though my grandfather, although, you know, he was quite sweet man, he had a lot of issues with drinking, and so his paycheck often didn't make it home. And even with that, she was, was able to raise us and provide for us without actually taking the cash payment that, you know, that time we referred to it as welfare from the state. She said, no, you know, I'm going to handle this. Just give me medical coverage for the children. And I got it from here. And I just watched her manage her money in a way that was so impressive. And I, you know, not always happy about the things that she couldn't get us. But now with my own children, I understand why she did what she did, and I just, I'm in awe at what she was able to do with so little.

I'll bet you've used her examples many times in columns over the years, too.

I have, I mean, I have different reoccurring characters in my column. And Big Mama, that's what we called her, is one of those characters because I just wanted people to know that, you know, I didn't come from many. I was abandoned by My parents and, you know, my grandfather was an alcoholic. And yet this woman, if she held a penny, Lincoln would scream. And she just was amazing. And she taught me so much about being grounded. And I'll tell you why that's so important, because I didn't come from any we. She struggled, but she always paid her bills on time. And then as I progressed financially in my career, got married, had kids, she. She had laid such a found. No matter how much money I make, I still live like I'm going through a recession. And that really helps me stay grounded financially. Oftentimes, the more money you make, the more money you spend. And I often find people who are, you know, earn a really good living, you know, six figures, you know, but they are just living paycheck to paycheck. There was a survey that showed that, you know a great deal about like 25% of people who are making over 100 live paycheck to paycheck. And because of how my grandmother raised me, I've been able to sort of avoid the success story where that turns into, you know, a financial tragedy so that you have to work to your 70 or 80, even though you're making good money because you haven't been able to manage it.

Well, yeah, you're preaching. You're preaching to my audience here. You know, I mean, everybody listening to this is either making six figures or soon will be, right? So it's for sure. It's a real problem. A high income does not guarantee a high net worth. For sure.

It is not. And we are trained in this country to focus on our salaries. And so, you know, doctors and people making those signals, they think, oh, this, they've made it. But you talk to them, you know, first of all, they're carrying a lot of student loan debt, and then they often marry another professional who's carrying a lot of debt. And they want to live that life. They've worked really hard and they want to, like, show something for it's to get a bigger house, they get better cars, they would take, you know, vacations, but they forget to the basics. Right. And. And it's understandable why, but it's so key. The more you make, you have to focus on your net worth, not your income.

Exactly. Totally agree with that. Speaking of training, tell us a little bit about yours, about your education and your career up to this point, just so people can get to know you a little bit better.

Sure. So I went to University of Maryland, College park on a full academic scholarship. Studied journalism, radio, television and film. Minored in journalism, in English, and then went to go work full time for the Baltimore Evening sun in Baltimore, my hometown paper. And then a couple of years in, I thought. I actually thought I might switch to the business side of the paper. So I went to Johns Hopkins to get my master's in business because I thought I'd sort of jump ship from, you know, daily journalism. It turns out that, you know, ink runs in my blood and I just didn't want to give it up. So I do have a master's degree. And then I spent, you know, probably the last 30 years, you know, training myself on investing and working with people and budgeting and, you know, how to get out of debt. So I've got, you know, three decades worth of experience in helping people budget and manage and create a legacy for themselves and their family.

You know, a lot of docs have thought about going and getting an mba too. What effect did that have on your career? I mean, I can't imagine you've met a lot of other journalists that have an mba.

Yeah, not very many. That is absolutely true. I mean, traditionally, journalists get their feet wet by just doing the work. You know, working for newspapers, internships, sort of getting in there. You know, here's the thing. I pay cash for my degree and my company's, you know, reimburse me, so I wouldn't have it if I had to go into debt. And honestly, in terms of income booster, it didn't do much to boost my income at all. It's not like they go, oh, you got an MBA or you know, you're going to get a 10% raise. It did boost my knowledge of what it's like to be in business and, and, and economies and things like that. So in that sense, I think it made me a better journalist. But I don't think there's a direct correlation between getting that degree and earning more money. So I always tell people, you know, be very careful what you do if you have to do it with debt. Now, if you just want to do it for the knowledge, which is what I wanted to do, fine, as long as you're not piling on more debt, because you got to do a cost analysis for these kinds of things. And the more education you get, the more education you sometimes want. But you just need to be really careful that you aren't stranding your family with all this debt. I mean, my husband had an MBA as well, an executive mba, but we paid for it out of pocket, you know, no loans. I'm a no loan kind of woman.

And There are a lot of programs where you can get even some graduate degrees without any debt. Certainly plenty of places you can do your undergraduate education without debt. I think it might be a little tough for somebody with no resources whatsoever to do med school, dental school, without at least a contract with the military, etc. But certainly there are MBA programs out there that you can do that with.

There are. There are not as many as when I started, you know, because so many people want to go back and get their degree, so the scholarship money isn't out there. It used to be more employers paid for. That's what happened with me. My husband's employer paid for about two thirds of his degree. We don't find that as often now unless it's directly tied somehow to your job. So it's lot harder for people to find, find money to go to to get an advanced degree without any debt. So unless you want to go to the business side, your doctor, you're like, yeah, I want to go to administration. You know, just think very carefully about that and whether or not you can just get that one job experience without carrying all that debt.

Yeah, exactly. So you've been writing about personal finance for a long time. Years and years and years. What has surprised you the most over the years about personal finance?

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but what continuously surprises me is that so many people have bought into this notion that it takes debt to get ahead, that you should be savvy in using debt and that's how you create wealth. And if you talk to wealthy people, they don't use debt. One of my favorite books, the Millionaire Next Door, and that book is all about how you would not suspect these regular folks to be millionaires because they drive American cars alone. You know, they don't have flashy cars. They have, you know, reasonably priced homes. You just would never expect that. But in America, we have brainwashed people to believe that you can be very savvy in leveraging your financial future. And it just never ceases to amaze me how much debt people have, how much they think, you know, put it on the credit card, let's get a bigger house, even to college, you know, And I get it, you know, especially for doctors and people of profession, because you, you know, you've done this. And so, yeah, you want your kids to have that kind of path. And then they send them to these schools that just, it's. They can't. Even on a doctor's salary, you can't afford this school. But we just think that's what we have to do for our kids to succeed. And I'm here to tell you that you don't. We have three, my husband, I have three children. We have no debt for them for undergraduate nor graduate because we saved the entire time they were growing up, 20 years. And yeah, they went to state schools and got a great education and they're doing extremely well. So it is not true that they have to go to the Ivies or the brand name schools to make it in life. What they'll make in life is a lot of debt.

Yeah, exactly. All right, well, I've been looking through some of your more recent columns and I wanted to ask you about a few of them. The first one was a column about inflation which I just saw a news article in the last couple of days saying it's now at the highest it's been since 1982.

Yeah.

What steps should consumers and investors take in this new environment?

So, you know, one thing that what you always have to do, you'll fall back when things are happening, especially with inflation or you have some sort of income disruption, is to go back to your budget and expenses. That's the first thing. And it sounds so basic, but we have built so many wants into our budget that we don't think, okay, well let's just look back and see what we can cut out. And then, you know, when prices are rising, you have to think about substitution. So maybe you are the person who I've got to have this kind of, you know, whatever it is at the grocery store and you might start looking around for store brand things or perhaps put off major projects. Like right now it's really hard to get things done because of materials, the supply chain issues, which is contributing to inflation. So maybe you decided you wanted to put on a deck. Well, maybe you just wait till next summer till things kind of shake themselves out. So, you know, those are some of the kinds of things that you got to fall back on. And I'm going to tell you this is so true because I work with people in their budgets all year long. We have, I have a year long program that I have with my church and I work with people at all income levels. People are struggling to just pay the light bill and people could like, you know, lots of money, but lots of debt. And it is harder to get people who make more money to pull back when things happen than it is other people. Now you might say that they don't really have a choice, but I have the, I, I'm fussing at people Good people who have good salaries, ton of debt, not a big net worth, they just, they just think that the gravy chain is going to keep coming and it's really hard to get them to look at their budget and cut. And any doctors now know that those high salaries that sort of were automatic now are not necessarily automatic anymore. You know, health care is really expensive and people are trying to figure out how to cut back. So reimbursements are lower, you know, malpractice insurance. I mean, all the things that it takes to do what you do is more, it costs more. And so you got to figure out, okay, if I can't control that, then I've got to control what's coming into my household and what's going out of my household. But that's a hard sell for sure.

How about on the investment side? Do you think it's worth just staying the course with your investment plan or do you think changes ought to be made given that inflation's gone up 4 or 5 points?

Well, the one thing, the smartest thing you can do in an investor is not try to time the market and you turn the market by looking at what's going on and go, okay, I'm going to change it. So inflate is up. I'm going to do something. No, no, no, no. You should have a financial plan that is set based on your risk tolerance, how much savings you have, how much debt you have, you know, when you want to retire and you let that plan roll. And so I know it's heart stopping when the market gets insane and crazy and it's seesawing and roller coastering and you're thinking, well, I got to do some changing. But if your plan is a tight plan, then there's nothing. And I think we learned that lesson during the Great Recession. There are a great many of people and it was heart stopping. I mean, 30 to 50% of a portfolio on paper, lost value. But those folks who stuck it out, who had a plan that says, you know what, I'm not going to need this money for 10, 20, 30 years. I'm going to stick it out, they got back all of those losses and then some, those who left, those are the ones who locked in losses. And the same thing with COVID look what happened in 2020, March 2020, the market just cratered. And people like, ah, but if you had a good plan, and I'm not saying that I didn't, like, want to scream, I did, but I didn't make any moves because we have a Solid plan. My husband and I've been meeting with financial planners. We've got a plan in place. We are not carrying any debt. And we were like, we got this. And what happened? By August 2020, the market went back and has been. Even with the dips it has had towards the end of the year, it's still returning an amazing amount of returns for people. I mean my portfolio is up like 30, 40% even during a pandemic. Same with my husband's portfolio. Now we're a little bit more risky. We're more in equities than most people would be, probably where we are, but we know what we're doing. But if you have a balanced portfolio, you have not seen losses this year at all. And so you gotta not panic and not time the market. So yeah, inflation's up, but you know, when things check out, more people get vaccinated. You know, those vaccination, those Covid cases come down, you know, the supply chain issues subside, the market will do what it does. It'll, you know, return a very decent return for you to live off of in retirement over time, about 8 to 10%, which is going to keep you with inflation. And I know some were thinking, you know, if you, I, I look younger than I am, I hope. But you know, you remember the 70s and hyperinflation and you're thinking we're not going to go back to those days. You know, the Federal Reserve does a great job of managing this thing, the economy. And I don't believe that we're going to see those double digit, you know, inflationary periods like we had in the 70s.

Yeah, some of us are. Would love to see rates go up if you're more of a saver than, than a borrower.

That's right.

Sure. It'd be nice to make more than 0.5% on your savings these days.

That is absolutely right. I mean some savers are like let go for inflation, you know, but we do want to be careful about those cheering on. I mean, obviously I'd like more money in my basic, you know, savings account because that's where I keep my emergency money. But I'm okay with that because that money is there to be there when I need it. So that's not growth money. It's doing its job, which is to just sit there and be there in case something happens.

Yeah, it's the return of your principal, not so much the return on your principal.

That's exactly right. And you need to have those kinds of pots. I always tell people I'M a pot person. Not that kind of pot, but I have different pots. For what? For things for my money to do. And each just like when you're cooking, every pot that you, you know, you have on the stove has a different, you know, meal in it or you know, you've got, you know, maybe your vegetables and your meat and they all sort of do what they're supposed to do and it's the same thing with your money. So I'm not fretting that my money isn't ear anything, my emergency money, because I don't really care. I just want to make sure the principal's there, something happens, my husband loses his job, I lose our job, we get sick. That money is there to take care of us. Now I do care what my investments are doing, my retirement and my non retirement. So I pay attention to that and make sure it's invested the way I want to invest it and it's doing what it needs to do and then I'm, I'm.

Okay, let's talk about that for a minute. What's in your investment portfolio?

Well, I'm gonna say cautionary. You know, I'm an equities kind of gal, so. And, and one of the reasons why is because we, my husband and I were extremely conservative when we first started out investing. We didn't know much, we didn't know what we were doing. We're very scared and so we're kind of trying to making up for those years where we were way too cautious. So probably more than 90% of my money is in equity, but in mutual funds, low cost index mutual funds. I do not, I do not have individual stocks. I'm not smart enough to be sitting here looking at all those financials and trying to figure out what stock. I love low index funds and they have done well by me for my retirement plan, for my non retirement money, for the kids college funds. We put our money into 529 plans for them. And over 20 years we're able to send over all three children to college with no debt and still have some left over to send them to graduate school with no debt. We've had one go through graduate school and she didn't have to borrow and we didn't have to borrow for her. We've now got another one coming behind her. He's thinking about going to grad school, got that money set. My youngest won a pretty good scholarship because she wants to be a teacher. So all that money that we saved for her is still sitting there and we actually Might have to take a penalty because we don't need that money. Typically, the average investor should have a very balanced portfolio, you know, some stocks and bonds, based on their risk tolerance. But that's, that's what I like. I like index funds. It's, it's. It's easier for me to have the diversity that I need by investing that way. And I'm very cautious of costs because lots of times people don't pay attention to what their investments cost them. And that money goes directly, impacts directly your returns.

Well, you're preaching to the choir here. My listeners know I'm a huge fan of index funds, and the vast majority of my portfolio is made up of index funds. You say you're not smart enough to pick stocks. I would argue you're smart enough not to pick stocks. You know?

Yeah. You know, I think that would just make me. I, you know, and listen, I have, I have stocks in my portfolio. So this idea that I have to pick individual stocks, why, if I, if I'm having, you know, the s and P500, I've got stocks. If I'm in Russell, I've got stocks. I've got small cap, I've got mid cap. I've got, you know, stocks and, you know, international companies. And, and so there's a whole group of folks who get paid to manage those index. And, and could I do better with individual. Perhaps. But I could also lose a lot and probably pull my hair out when I see something happening to a particular company. So this way, you do. You have to know yourself. And I know that that's not how I want to invest.

Let's talk about another one of your columns. Recently, the pandemic's been called the she session. Why is that? And what can women do to recover from it?

So we found, obviously, because of how Covid hit and the shutdowns, that it adversely affected more women than men. You know, about a quarter of the job losses were experienced by women. And also because, you know, daycare centers and things like that were shut down. And so women, you know, the kids couldn't go, so they had to either try to figure out how to work from home or quit so they could take care of their children. So we still know in this society more the women take care of the children. And also because so many of the jobs that were lost or impacted were in the service industry, which is predominantly employ women. And so that's what happened. Women were hit very hard and still are because of the pandemic. And so now, as we Try to recover. I don't think I need to tell this crowd how important it is to get more people vaccinated because that really is the key to getting our economy back on track. So if you were in a service related industry, I think a lot of women are now thinking, you know what, I need to have some, some skills that can weather, you know, a storm or I could have skills where I could work at home. Now, obviously we still need service related jobs and people out in the field. You can't do your job at Target from home. But I think a lots of women realize that they needed to do some skill boosting to try to, you know, get through this Covid and on the other side, earn more money and stability for their family.

Yeah, it was amazing how much more it affected people that had to go to work. And that includes doctors. You know, most doctors listening to this podcast remember March and April and May of 2020, and their incomes went down 10, 20, 40%. You know, and all of a sudden elective procedures were canceled. And it turns out your entire practice is elective procedures. You know, like joint replacements.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden your income dries up. Meanwhile, anybody who was working online already, it's like they didn't have a hiccup at all in their income stream.

That's exactly right. Yeah. I felt bad for my dentist because I've been with my one dentist like for, I don't know, was it 30 some years? And I was asking him and he almost had to let. He was able to, which I love him. He saved enough that he could cover people's salaries even though they couldn't come into the office. But he was a week or two away from having to lay off people before things opened back up. And so he was very smart with how he ran his practice. He had a savings for the practice, so he wasn't sort of living up to, you know, living it large with the practice so that he could carry his staff so he didn't have to let them go. And kudos to him for being able to do that.

Yeah. I wonder if a lot of times employees realize, you know, things like that that business owners have done for them and maybe they'd ask about that sort of thing more in job interviews, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is definitely, you know, there's another trend called the great resignation. And people are thinking, you know what, life is way too short. Including people in the medical field. They're like, you know what? I'm in the trenches. You know, your, your people are Coming to you. Some, you know, some vaccinated, some not putting your health at risk. And I did go to get this degree to be this doctor, but this is not worth my life. And so outflux of a lot of people in the medical profession, you know, nurses and people, you know, on the lower end of the pay scale in terms of the medical field. It's been a tough ride for them as well.

Yeah, it sure has. I think anybody who works in a hospital right now understands just how serious the staffing concerns are and how much that resignation is people leaving the field completely, retiring early, being burned out, and how much of it is people switching jobs. There seems like a merry go round in my city with nurses. I think nursing pay has gone up this year, year about 25% because they're just trying to get people in the door and get them to stay there. But what's happening, I think, is the nurses are bouncing around from hospital to hospital and, you know, just trying to get a better job and take advantage of it.

Yeah, and you're right about the early retirement. Lots of people have been retiring early. There's been a great exodus of people in their late 50s saying, I'm done, you know, this. I. I got to live a life. And, you know, it's a hard job, long hours. If people have done themselves well and have saved and invested, they can retire early.

Yeah, I think people are riding a lot of the recent good returns we've had over the last 10 years have been great returns in the markets, and they go, well, maybe I didn't think I was going to be able to retire now, but maybe, maybe I can.

Right.

All right. You've had a couple other columns recently about social media, which is something that fascinates me partly because I make a living online with social media, but just because it's been such a game changer in the world the last few years. But one of your columns was suggesting that people beware of FOMO spending. He called it fear of missing out spending. And the other one was pointing out that debt collectors can now hound you on social media.

That's right.

What are your thoughts about social media? Should we all just abandon it altogether?

You know, back in the day, I sort of thought that I was one of the last adopters thinking, oh, it's this social media stuff. But it's very helpful to people when it's done right. You know, I'm very active on Twitter. That's sort of my platform. I really like Twitter, but getting a little bit into Instagram and TikTok. So I think it can be very helpful to people. You just need to be very careful about it. What you put out, what you take in, it's immediate reaction to everything. So it can be really tough now on the side of debt collectors. So the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is sort of the consumer watchdog under the Trump administration, changed the rules so that it will allow debt collectors to contact you either through text messages, emails, direct messages on your social media platforms. And that could open the door to so much because we do know that debt often is sold and resold and resold and it's not sold with the backup information. So lots of people are being contacted that don't actually owe the debt. And so they put in a rule that says, okay, they can contact you through these other mediums because, you know, many of us, that's how we communicate now. They don't like calling us anymore and we're not answering the phone anyway because it's just a lot of scammers and people. And so people aren't picking the phone up. Now the rule says that if they do contact you through social media, they can't post anything on your page or anything that will allow your friends or family, your contacts, like of LinkedIn to know that they are trying to collect the debt. They have to send you a private message. And in that private message they have to say up front, I am trying to collect a debt from you. They have to say, can't sort of slip into your Facebook and say, hey, when did we go to college back in the day and not say that they're a debt collector. My concern with that is that we're getting so much spam and scam messages through email and text messages and even, you know, in some of our, you know, social media platforms that I think some people will be scammed or scammed schemed into paying debt that they own or to giving up information that could lead to a scam down the road. So what I'm telling people is that if you get it, if you know you owe debt, you get a text message or email or something on your social media platform. Don't respond, don't click on anything, look up that debt collector, make sure it's a legitimate company, independently, Google them, and then contact that company outside of that platform so that you can protect yourself. Because the scammers know, they read the paper too. They, they're online, they know how to craft their scams and schemes to, to flow with the current news. So you just need to be Very, very careful. I don't click on anything. If even if I contacted my bank and I okay, let me just call you independently to make sure. And actually, because I won a low award, it came with a ca. They sent me an email asking me to fill out a W9. I said, I don't know if this is you. So I got out of the email, went to the load website, contacted the person that was in the email, said, did you send me an email? He's like, yeah, that was me, that was me. See? And I knew that that was coming. But I don't trust anything, Nothing. I don't click on anything.

Yeah, that's probably a good policy. You know, clicking on links is a good way not only to get scammed, but to download malware onto your, onto your computer. So you gotta be careful with it for sure. Now I want to talk about a recent series you did. This was an award winning series titled Sincerely Michelle. It explored and explained misconceptions involving race regarding investing, credit scores, homeownership and more. How does the experience of black Americans differ when it comes to personal finance and investing?

Where do I start? So this was a 10 part series and it sort of was born out of a lot of the unrest that happened after George Floyd and then just, you know, the last couple summers. And I don't talk about race a great deal in my column because from my perspective, money is, money is all green. We all have to sort of deal with it. But I just felt compelled to talk about what it's like to be a black American, even what many people would consider a successful black American. And the things that I've had to deal with, even at my level of success, the microaggression. I walk into a room and there's an assumption that I don't know what I'm talking about. Even sometimes when I give a speech, people will come up to me and I know that they mean well and they're saying, oh my gosh, wow. But the level of enthusiasm often makes me feel, well, what did you think? I mean, I've been working for the post for 30 years. I have a master's degree in business. What did you think I was going to do up here? And it's just the actual expectation that you are not going to be excellent. And even working at the Washington Post, when I got there, people were asking behind my back, well, how did she get to the Post? And you know, I got there at a reg, you know, a fairly young age. But I also got there because I had Some expertise in some different areas. And because I heard all this stuff, you know, going on, this was the first column I wrote in the series about affirmative action. I asked my editor at the time, did you hire me because I was black? Just because I was black? And he said, yes.

Wow.

And I just was floored and I started to tear up. And he said, come into my office. And he set me down. And I'm thinking in my head, so all those people were right, that this is just, I'm just some sort of token here. And then he said to me, but, Michelle, I hired you because you're black, because you have a unique experience. You grew up, up with no money. So you have a different perspective that you're bringing to the Washington Post business section as we write about the economy. If you write about personal finance, you understand what it's like not to have. He said, I'm hired you because you have a master's degree in business. I hired you because you're a woman, because you, you know, you grew up in inner city Baltimore. I hired you because you had, at that time, I developed an expertise in bankruptcy. And at that time there were a lot of corporate bankruptcies, and no one on the staff had experience on covering bankruptcy. So he hired me because I had been covering bankruptcies for the Baltimore Evening Sun. And he just went through all of these things. And so I said, why don't you just start there? You know. And he said, but I also. And I said, well, why did you just say, yes, I hired you so back, because he said, I don't want you to run away from your blackness. That is an asset to the Washington Post. And there's nothing wrong with the fact that I wanted diversity on our staff, but you did not take a job from someone else less, you know, more deserving. This was your job to have. And so each part of the series tried to examine a lot of myths as it relates to African Americans. We buy sneakers and all we, you know, we all, we do, you know, we buy all these consumer goods when we should be investing, you know, even one pair of Jordan sneakers or 200 some dollars is not going to send your kid to college. And, you know, and reparations. Why should blacks have be reparated? And, you know, just sort of going through the historical perspective why we still should be talking about slavery. And I was talking to an expert, a historian out of Duke University, a black historian. He talked and I talked about how I got all this pushback. Well, why are you keep talking about slavery? And he Said when you talk about it in the sense of generational, it's not that long ago. And that is absolutely true. I am a direct descendant of enslaved people. My grandmother's grandfather was, was enslaved. And because of all of that happened to her though, that she passed a lot of those things off to me. The fear of financial institutions. And why does she fear them? Because they would take your property, they would burn your town down. And so, you know, just, just. And then, you know, talking about microaggressions, when people say to me, oh, you speak so well. They wouldn't say that to you, Jim. They wouldn't say, jim, you speak so well. They expect you to speak well. You have a podcast, you're a brilliant person. Why would you say that to me? And so I wanted to just sort of open the door to just a conversation, which is why it's called Sincerely Michelle. It's a letter. Don't want to yell at you, don't want you to feel guilty. I just want you understand what is it's like to be black in America. And it is tough even for those who succeed because then they say, well, you made it. Why can't other people make it? I had a whole bunch of people helping me along the way. I had a first time home buyers program to help me buy my first home. I got a scholarship because the Baltimore sun and the Baltimore Evening sun had been peppered with community complaints about how they covered the black community because they didn't have enough black journalists. So all of those things were put into place to help me succeed. I did not do it by myself. And, and when you have all this stuff going on, you just want to explain to why there's so much unrest, why there's still police brutality, why there's still disparity in what I might get paid and someone with the same credentials that I have getting paid more than me because they, a white man or a white woman. And I just wanted to say, listen, this is still going on. This is not in the past. This is still our today. And I just felt it was really, really important. And the response was typical. You know, lots of emails that I couldn't even repeat on air, but then some that were just made me cry because they thought, you know what? I had never thought about it that way, you know, and, and that's why I did the series, for that kind of comment where people's eyes are open. That said, I did not know that that was still going on.

Let's turn the page a little bit. You mentioned the response which I wanted to ask you about, and I guess I'm not surprised to see it was mixed. But we're excited to have you out at what we call wcicon around here. It's the Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference. We are going to be giving away your book. You're one of our keynote speakers at the conference. We're going to be giving away your book, what to do with youh Money When Crisis Hits. A very timely book these days. What, what will people learn from that book?

So when we came up with the title for the book, one of the things that concerned me was people, especially people who are doing well for themselves, will hear say, you know, what to do when a crisis. It thinks, oh, this isn't for me. But this pandemic has showed us that no matter where you are on the economic ladder, you could be impacted, you could lose your job. And we talked about this earlier, you know, some doctors, their practices. So it, you know, it was an equal opportunity, you know, economic downturn. And so I wanted to write a book that says, no matter where you are, you've got to be careful about how you spend your money. And here's how. So a great deal of the book talks about building a legacy and, and, and lessons that I learned from my grandmother. So, you know, learning how when I didn't have any money to. Now that I have money, how do I spend it well, how do I make sure I'm investing well? How do I make sure that I'm not living so far above my means that no matter what my salary is, I can still be broke? And so that's what I want to talk to the audience about. And also just making sure that you're managing and you're getting what you, you want out of the work that you're doing. My husband, I had sort of a legacy plan. We knew that we wanted to send our children to college debt free. We wanted to give that gift to them. We have our wills and estate plan in place so that we want to. My husband loves this express this quote from Warren Buffett. I'm not going to quote it exactly right. He always gets it better than me, but he says, I want to leave my children enough that they do well, but not so much that they don't care, do anything. And so that's where our plan for our children, we're going to leave them some wealth, but not so much so that they can sort of just sit back and go, I got it. And so we train our children from the time they Were little about managing money, not overspending. And they, you know, it's so funny now that they're young adults in their 20s. One of my youngest, she came to me one day and she said, you know, we have a nice house and all that. And her friends came and they were saying, oh, my God, know you. You're rich. And she said, no, I'm not. What are you talking about? She was like, no concept of that. We have no money. She's like, I don't know what you're talking about. My mother doesn't buy us anything and that. And we, we were very intentional about that. They did not live up to our financial potential because we didn't want them to feel as if they were so wealthy that they didn't have to try hard heart that we were going to leave them so much that they'll be okay. And so we made them, you know, work during the summer, and they had to use their money to pay for themselves when they were in college. You know, we didn't do shopping as a form of entertainment. They didn't. If you look in their closet, it's not jammed full of clothes. You know, we were just very. They. They were the last to have video games or anything like that. We were. We're. Re. We're a reading family. So if you. Wait, we. I remember this one time we were at Disney and you know, those long lines. And so I just noticed that all the kids had these PT, whatever, those PlayStation, you know, whatever handheld things. Just a long line of the kids on their phones and things. And I looked at my three children. It was one of my proudest moments. All three of them had a book in their hand and were reading in mind. That's awesome, because we didn't get them cell phones until they were in high school. We didn't get them video games until they were in high school. So they didn't have anything else but to read. And. And they were happy about it. It wasn't like they were like. They were just like, reading their book as we were moving in line. And I tell you, that was just such a proud moment for me. And we didn't. We didn't tell them to bring out their books. We didn't even tell them to bring a book to the park. They just knew that the lines were going to be long. They didn't have any video games, and they brought books to read. And so that's sort of what I want to talk to this audience about, because you tend sometimes lose focus the more money you make. You want to create a legacy that helps other people. You want to create a legacy of giving. So a great deal of our income, 10% of our gross income goes to charity. My husband and I, you know, we give back to the community. We, we are very active in our community in terms of volunteering. My husband and I teach at prisons to teach inmates who are about to be released how to handle their money. And so I just, we just believe. And I guess maybe this is the theme of my, my talk as to who much is given, much is required. And you're at a part of your life where you have the financial resources, the intellectual resources, and the bandwidth to give back beyond just being who you are. I could just say I'm a columnist, syndicate, a columnist for the Washington Post and be done with that. Right. I mean, that's just the top of my field. That's not enough for me. Right. Because it could be gone tomorrow. What else is going to be my legacy? Is it good? I don't want my, you know, obituary. I know this sounds so morbid, but I really do think like this. I don't want to say she was a Washington Post syndicated columnist and that's kind of it. Or I was the, you know, chief or surgeon, or I was a dentist. That can't be all. It can't be. It shouldn't be. It would be. I set my kids to school debt free so that if my kid doesn't want to be a doctor, maybe my kid wants, wants to be a social worker, maybe my kid wants to be a teacher. But we look down on those professions, especially when the more money you make because, you know, they're not going to make a lot of money. But when my youngest said she wanted to be the teacher, I was so happy. I was just like thrilled. And you would think with me, 36 figures. My husband's 36 figures. You know what multimillionaires like, you'd be thinking what really a teacher. But I thought about the people who had an impact in my life, life, and they were always educators. And the fact that my daughter wanted to do that to somebody else. And not only that, she's in special education. I'm so proud. So guess what? I have taught my child how to live off of that salary. And she is probably going to be richer than somebody's mama and daddy who's a doctor, because she knows how to handle that teacher salary. My other kid is a social worker. She's a social worker, therapist. She's not going to make, make the kind of money her dad and I are making. But she's going to make enough that she's on the RA already on the rate the road to be a millionaire. We've already. She's contributing 15% of her income to her retirement plan. She has, she wants to buy her car with cash because we bought her little, you know, used car in high school that she still has. She's had this car for 10 years and she says, Mommy, when I get 30, I want a new car, okay? She wants a high, she wants a, you know, electric car. I said, well, let's you for four years you can save money some so you can pay cash for it. So she's saving it, she's investing it. She's going to have that many. That's to me what this is all about. And I think the whole conference is about financial wellness, you know, health and financial health. And it's not just about the zeros behind that. What are you going to lead to your children, your community and the world from all the things you've been, you've been able to gain. And to me, I want the headline to say that I volunteered in my community, that I sent my kids to college debt free, that I embraced the things that they wanted to do, their calling. And I didn't push them into a stem or push them to be a financial plan or something that I thought would make more money. I listened to them, what do you want to do with your life? And then supported them in that in a way that they can live off of the salary they make.

To whom much is given, much will be required. Can we use that as the title for the talk?

You can. I love it. I was trying to think about what to use, but that's it, you know, because that's really what it's about. We're in a unique position, those of us who have done well for ourselves to make a great deal of difference. And it can't just be about a bigger house, a fancier car, you know, a world trip. Now I'm not saying don't do those things. You know, we have a beautiful home. You know, we, you know, I'm not so into cars, so we don't really care about that. But we take five star vacations. But we also build into our budget as a line item as important as our mortgage tithing to our church. That is paramount to who we are and what we do. We built into our budget not having our kids come out with debt and intentionally raising them in a way that they don't think that they are rich.

You know, it's a funny story you mentioned with your kids friends coming over. I gotta tell you, I had a similar experience. My eldest friends came over to the house for the first time and they drove by the first time. They're like, that can't be the house. Even though it has the address. We've done a renovation now. It's a very nice house. That can't be the house because we've seen her phone and her car.

That's right.

And they had to call her and say, is that your house? And they came back to the house and I, I was like, mission accomplished right there.

That's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, and it's, it. They don't think that way. And they, they are hard workers and they do not like to spend. I mean, we have to beg them to spend. And I just, you know, my husband, I was just a big joke. Like we went overboard. But it's such, it's so cool that there is not about what we have for them. And one of the things I have learned in working with people, especially people who have money, oftentimes their children are not good money managers. Their children are overindulged and over privileged and they don't have a sense of community. And you learned how to do it. You scrimped and saved and maybe even your parents script and saved. But oftentimes you're not passing it on to your children because I get it. People will say things like, I, I want them to have it better than I did. I don't want them to struggle. That is wrong. It's bad. So bad. I want my kids to suffer. And they did, you know, but they, it made them better human beings because they are not. My children are not entitled at all. And I just, if I ever could be immodest about something, that is something I want to be immodest about. They are not entitled at all. They want to get what they want on their own. And I just am so proud of that. And that's what we, that's the legacy we can leave them.

I want to ask you a little more. Our time's getting short, but I want to ask you a little more about this Prosperity Partners ministry. Can you share an experience, an anecdote from teaching financial literacy in prisons and what that's been like?

Yeah, so I've always. Because I was sort of rescued from foster care, I've always had this sense of giving back because so many people stepped in to save me. So even When I was in my early 20s, my first little dog on my own. Because I've been a homeowner since I was about 21, right out of college, a year out of college, I would take my dog and visit nursing homes. It was called Dogs on Wheels. Pets on Wheels was the call. So and they, because they found that nursing home residents, they didn't necessarily respond to volunteers, but when you brought the pets in, they would just brighten up. And so I participated in that program and from that moved on to different other kind of volunteer programs and not. I realized I had a knack for managing money. I learned it from my grandmother. And so I wanted to do something when I moved to the Washington D.C. area. And so at my church I created this ministry. But I also realized that you can't just have like one workshop. It doesn't work that way. People, it takes time for people to change behaviors. And so I wanted to create a program in which we would meet regularly for a very long time. So it's a year long program and every month, month we have a workshop which I teach. It's about a two to three hour workshop about many. And you can imagine like what it could be, four or five hours. I mean people are so enthralled because they hungry for the information. And as an addition to that, which is what's unique about our program is I thought about Alcohol is Anonymous and how they are set up. They have sponsors, so they have people kind of walk along your journey so when you fall, they're there to help you out or to cheer you on. And I wanted something like that with money. And so we have money mentors who walk along with people like help them do their budget, fuss at them when they don't do their budget, fuss at them when they're overspending. And so that's what the ministry is. And so we have created a team of people, we call them senior partners, who walk along and help people. They're not financial experts, they're not like bankers or anything regular people. And the criteria is they were in debt, they got out of debt, they're sa, they weren't savers, now they're savers. And so they help other folks. And then as a part of that, our church also encourages us to have our own, you know, sort of mission program within our ministry. So one of the things that I wanted, I, I was asked to speak at a prison and so I went in to teach a financial class and I just loved it. I mean, think about this population that we've just thrown away. But the fact of the matter is most of them are going to come out and they're not going to come out with skills to handle their money. And honestly, particularly when it comes to African Americans, a lot of them are in there for selling drugs. And why did they sell drugs? And I know that people want to just say, oh, they just wanted to, I don't know, some degenerates of society, but really a lot of times they got into drugs because they were just buying money. They were trying to get money to feed their family like 13 year olds feeding their 8 year old brother or sister. And they wanted things like they saw everybody else had. They wanted nice sneakers, they wanted clothes like they saw other families have. Now that's not a reason why you should do it, obviously. But then they're in prison, we lock them up, we don't give them any skills, Then they come out, it's going to be hard for them to get a job. And when they do get a job, you know, they're going to want more stuff. So I really wanted to create a program to say, listen, you're going to have it harder. So let me teach you how to handle your money so that when you get out, first of all, you don't go back to those habits that got you in there. You don't resort to that to make, make money. Let's figure out how to legitimately make your money and use it in a way that create wealth for yourself and change your legacy. And so my husband and I teamed up and we go inside to institutions. We did before COVID and during COVID we held, you know, zoom classes. And now that things are getting better, we're going to be going back into the institutions. And it's such a worthwhile thing because these are folks that we just want to forget about. And they need help too. And the more we can help them do better, we can help create citizens who will be productive. And if you don't think that, you know, because everybody's crying about, you know, programs for them and why are we giving them money for that? Think of it as selfishly, because if we train them and give them education and give them some resources, they're not going to go back to a life of crime. And that might mean they're not going to steal your car or break into your house. And that's, that's important, right?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Societal benefits there, for sure. And, and, and they actually have to be better at managing money because when they come out, they're going to have that felon status. It's going to be harder for them to make good money. They're going to have to be even better at managing it than Average Joe might.

That's exactly right. Right. That's exactly right. And you know what? My presentations aren't any different. To them, I don't change anything. It's the same thing I teach to the rich people. Or I say people are earning high incomes because they're not rich, they just have high incomes. Yeah, the same lessons.

Yeah, we know. We know about that around here for sure. Speaking of which, we, we got to wrap this up. I promised you 45 minutes. We're pushing an hour here. But you've got the ear of 30 to 40,000 and high income earners, mostly doctors. What else should they know that we haven't talked about already?

We've covered so much. I would say you're so busy doing what you do and you've worked so hard to learn what you do. Take some time to come up with a personal financial plan for yourself. And that is more than just investments. That's more than you know, what's the next house I'm going to get the next Mercedes Benz or whatever. Just at the end of the day, you've earned a good income. What will you have to show for that income? And to me, that's what you should be focused on. That's the difference who's going to remember you when you're gone and how will they remember what you did with those vast resources that you were able to get for yourself? And that means creating a legacy and that means having a plan so too well for yourself. Get the things in life that you enjoy, but also what are you giving back? Because that's also part of being well. Right. And oftentimes when people lose like a lot of weight, they also become like cheerleaders for healthy living. Because then they understand at a level that maybe someone who's never had a weight issue doesn't understand. And I think that's those of us who are earning good money have bought, you know, oftentimes we sort of think, well, I got mine and they need to get theirs and they need to put themselves up on the bootstraps. But just remember that you got there because a whole bunch of people helped you. And that's how I feel. I had a whole bunch of people help me and I want to turn around and do the same for somebody else.

Awesome. Well, it's been great having you on here, Michelle Singletary award winning columnist, best selling author now with her newest book out what to do with youh Money. When crisis hits, you can check that out. Or better yet, come to WCICON 22. We'll give you a free copy. You can hear her keynote talk there. You can still register for this conference. Whitecoatinvestor.com WCICon22 and Michelle, it's been wonderful to have you on here. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

All right.

That was great having Michelle here. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. Great person, great work that she's been doing through her ministry, through her columns, through her books. I think the quality of what she has done really exudes when you hear her speak. And we're looking forward to having her at the conference as well. Still not sure what to do with your student loans? Overwhelmed with how to tackle that giant debt in an ever changing political climate, the experts@studentloanadvice.com are here to help guide you through the best options to manage your loans. Our experienced staff have consulted on over $250 million in student loan debt and the average studentloanavice.com client has saved over $190,000. You will receive a customized student loan plan using the principles of the White Coat Investor. Get answers to all of your student loan questions, gain clarity about your financial future, and start down the right path toward financial freedom. Book a consult today@studentloanadvice.com you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Don't forget about our sale. Go to whitecoatinvestor.teachable.com from now through January 3rd. You can get our online courses there bundled together with an extra course, the CFE Las Vegas course that you get for absolutely free. When you buy one of our online courses in the next week or so, you can obviously still come to the conference. Okay, you can register for that@whitecoatinvestor.com WCICon22 you better hurry if you want to book a room there though. That block is filling up very rapidly and I think we may even have to turn over any unused rooms we didn't use to the hotel soon. So whether you registered or whether you're about to register, make sure you get your room room as soon as you can. Thanks. For those of you who have left us a five star review, our most recent one comes in from Sunday. User. Great podcast for entry into and continuing education in financial literacy. We appreciate that. Keep your head up, your shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. We'll 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 advisor. So this podcast is for your entertainment and information only and should not be considered official, personalized financial advice.