WCI #347: How To Live a Regret Free Life with Jordan Grumet

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.

This is White Coat Investor podcast number 347 living a regret free life. If you're finding our podcast informative and helpful, we would encourage you to sign up for our monthly newsletter. It is totally free to and includes useful, actionable information not available on the regular blog posts or this podcast. It's almost like being in a secret club. The kind of club that can boost your knowledge and enhance your wealth at the same time with no strings attached. Sign up today@whitecoatinvestor.com Newsletter. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. All right, welcome back to the White Coat Investor Podcast. We have got a great episode. We're recording this shortly after Thanksgiving, although it's not going to run till almost New Year's. But I hope you've had a great holiday season. Ours has been good and will continue.

To be good between now and when.

You hear this, I think but it's an exciting time of year, a time of reflection, a time of being, hopefully with those you care about most.

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Be thinking about what next year might look like.

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Whitecoatinvestor.Com courses will get you there. All right, enough of that. Our quote of the day comes from Seth Godin.

It's one of my favorite quotes.

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from.

And I love that one.

Okay, we've got a great guest today.

We're bringing back Dr. Jordan Grummett and.

He'S a great interviewee.

If you don't know Dr. Grummett, he.

Has done some work as Doc G I think initially. What was he calling his podcast? He was calling it what's Up Next? And he subsequently rebranded that as Earn.

And Invest, I think is what it is.

EarnInvest.com. great guy, great doc. On his website he says, I was an internal medicine physician in private practice when I discovered the personal finance community through a book called the White Coat Investor. Since then, I left clinical practice to pursue my passion for deep conversations about money and life. It's not entirely true. He still practices.

He's a hospice doc for 10 to 15 hours a week.

But let's get him on the line here and talk about what he's been doing lately and some of the things.

We can learn from him about living a regret free life.

Our guest today on the White Coat Investor Podcast is a repeat guest. This is Dr. Jordan Grummet. Jordan, welcome back to the White Coat Investor Podcast.

Thank you for having me. I think last time I went by Doc G, so now the real name is out.

Oh.

Oh, well, the big reveal. Here we go.

So, Doc G, the big reveal on the White Coat Investor.

Yes. Yeah.

You may know him from the what's Up Next? Podcast, which has been rebranded as Earn and Invest. You can get information about that@earinvest.com that's where Jordan has been podcasting these days, but he's been involved in a lot of stuff. I saw him recently at the Bogleheads Conference. I think it was Christine Benz who was interviewing there, as I recall.

Yeah.

And he also has a book out, which is pretty awesome as well. You know, I was gonna have the book in front of me, but my wife loves this book. In fact, I was gonna make her do this interview, but she got called to Arizona on short notice for her grandmother who recently passed.

Basically woke up with a stroke a few days before we recorded this, took.

The book with her to Arizona. And so I don't have it in front of me like I was planning to for this podcast interview. I was just texting her a few minutes ago. I'm like, where's the book? I can't find it. And she took it with her. But this book is called Taking a Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building wealth, and Living a regret free Life. And it's been a great seller. I understand. It's got four and a half stars, 318 reviews already. The foreword is by Vicki Robin, who we had on the podcast not that long ago. Jordan, congratulations on publishing such a well received book.

Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure to kind of Take all I've been thinking about all these years between medicine and personal finance, and put it together in one place.

Yeah, pretty awesome.

So what was it that motivated you.

To write a book?

I mean, this is a big step.

For a lot of people.

And the fascinating thing about writing a book, of course, is that once it's.

Published, everyone assumes you're an expert.

It doesn't matter how much you've blogged or podcasted or practiced or whatever. Boy, you got a book even if it's self published, and all of a.

Sudden everyone thinks you're an expert.

But tell us about the motivation to write the book.

The truth is, I think I've always been a writer. In fact, when I look at my career, I became a doctor, I think partially because my father died when I was 8 years old and I wanted to be just like him. And somewhere in my 8 year old brain I told myself that if I just became a doctor like he was, it would somehow relieve me from any responsibility. Cause little kids think everything going around and happening to them happens because of them. And so I set off to be a doctor, but I found myself writing even as a teenager. Then once I was a practicing physician, I had a medical blog. In fact, that's how you and I originally interacted. But I would always fit it into these nooks and crannies of time because I never thought it was that serious of a thing. It was always, well, being a doctor is what you do for a living, but you can write as a hobby. And once I learned about financial independence and realized that I could pull away from being a doctor because I was quite burned out, I had to really reassess who am I and what's important to me. And I realized that writing was incredibly important to me. It was a big part of my.

Identity that I had been submerging so long because I spent all my time trying to be a doctor, something that wasn't fitting me. So being an author was something that really was one of those deeply important things to me that I wasn't addressing in my life until I got my finances in order.

So tell, tell us a little bit.

What, what is your life right now? What do you do for a living or with your days?

Tell, tell us what you do.

So I was at the point in medicine where I was working very full time. I had my own practice, I was running a business, I was seeing 20 to 30 patients a day. I was going to hospitals and nursing homes as well as seeing patients in the office. And I was at the cusp of burning out. And that's actually when you sent me your book back in 2014, the white coat Investor, and you wanted me to review it from my medical blog. And as I read it, I had this epiphany that, actually, I was doing a pretty good job when it came to the money. In fact, I was pretty much financially independent. And I was really, really excited for a moment, until I realized that this idea of stepping away from medicine, something that I was really craving because I was getting burned out from doing it, caused me a huge amount of anxiety and panic because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or who I was. So that was 2014. Right now, we're in 2023. The next bunch of years, I had to slowly change my life. I wasn't ready to walk away from medicine, even though I could financially. But what I did is I started subtracting out those things I didn't like about my practice. So I owned my own concierge practice, and I was getting calls on nights and weekends and running to people's houses on Saturday mornings. So the first thing I did is I got rid of my practice, and I did just nursing homework and hospice work. Eventually, I got rid of the nursing homework, and I was left with hospice work. And I really loved doing hospice work. I realized I would do that even if I wasn't being paid for it. And so I continued to subtract. I got rid of nights, I got rid of weekends. I got rid of being an employee and just started being a contractor. So I created the job that I wanted that was most fulfilling to me, and it ended up being about 10 or 15 hours a week.

So that left a huge amount of time available where I didn't need to.

Necessarily be making money. But I did have to decide what purpose looks like in my life. At that point, I got very interested in personal finance.

So in the process of doing all.

This, I started a financial blog and eventually a financial podcast. And while I was having all these.

Deeper conversations and still treating my hospice patients, it really gave me the idea about writing this book about what the dying could teach us about money and life, because I was finding some of those more difficult, deeper answers to the financial questions, actually from my hospice patients.

I could find out from podcasters and.

Entrepreneurs and real estate people and other successful doctors. They could all teach me how to save, how to earn and invest. But when it came to why we should be doing this or what purpose looks like in our life, I actually found that my Dying patients, when they would express their regrets, the things they didn't have the energy or courage or time to do, that really hit home in a lot of my financial conversations. And that's what the book really became, is how can I take all these valuable lessons from the dying and bring them to us, the living? And we're crushing it when it comes to our finances. We're paying off our debt, we're building up our net worth, we're building businesses, we're doing all these wonderful things, but sometimes we do those things as opposed to start really looking at what we want out of life and who we are. So the question is how to do it all together, in concert or in harmony. And that's kind of what led me to what I do now, which is.

I podcast, I write, I do as.

Much public speaking as I can, and I do a little bit of hospice work, about 10 or 15 hours a week.

This is important for me, right?

I'm probably five years from after being.

Financially independent, so I have this existential.

Crisis every month, right, of what I'm going to do with my life because I don't need to work anymore for.

Money, and yet I find work fulfilling. And so I don't just have one job, I got two, you know, and so I think it's really important what.

You'Re doing, but let's divide it up a little bit. I want to spend most of our.

Time today talking about how to live.

A regret free life. But before we get there, this is.

Mostly a financial podcast. I want you to pretend I'm a doc who has maybe just heard about financial independence and this concept, and you've got five minutes to teach me about financial independence, what I ought to know, what its benefits are, how I get there, et cetera. What would you tell me?

I'd say they're pretty much three big ideas, and they're in this book, and I think they're very straightforward. The first and foremost is before we even think of money, we should think about purpose and identity. Money is a tool. So what are we going to use that tool for? Let's think about who we want to be and what we want to do. Once we start that process, we don't need all the answers, but we at least have some inkling, some idea of where this is all leading to. Once we have an idea of purpose and identity, the next step then is to build a financial framework around that. I think we should all go for financial independence, this idea that we have enough money, we where we can do what we want in life without worrying about making money to support us further, because we already have that taken care of. And there are really a few main pathways to get there. The way I did is I front loaded the sacrifice, worked really, really hard, saved up as much money as possible, got to a high net worth, and then use that net worth and I can live off the income from it. That's one way. Another way is passive income and side hustles. Maybe you can set up things like real estate or some types of side hustles that pay your monthly needs, right? You make enough money so that you can pay for what you need to do each month, and in a sense, you're financially independent much quicker. You may have to continue those side hustles or continue having that passive income for longer periods of time, but it's there for you. And last but not least, the third way to financial independence is really what I call the passion play. It's do something you're incredibly passionate about, and if you happen to make enough money to cover your needs doing that, you're pretty much financially independent from day one. Of course you're going to have to risk mitigate. You're going to need all the right insurances and all those kind of things. But there are really three good ways to get there. If you know what your purpose and identity are, you can then start building your path to financial independence through one of these three pathways. And then the last step is to help you decide. Do I spend now or do I save for later? I mean, that is a huge existential question we have. Should we yolo, you only live once. Let's go have those big vacations and do those important things now. Or should we defer gratification because we want to have a nice long retirement, not have to work? And so since we never really know how to really parse out which one.

Of those we should do, I tell people you should ask yourself one major question. What scares you more?

Are you afraid that you are going.

To die young and die wealthy? Or are you afraid you're going to live long and run out of money?

I think that's the best proxy for.

Asking you, when are you going to die? Because we don't know. But what scares you most? If you're afraid that you're going to.

Die young, then go out and spend.

A little more money, save a little bit less, and realize you might have to work longer, but you're going to be loving that life you're living. On the other hand, if you're like me. And you're afraid you're going to live.

Long and run out of money, it's okay.

Maybe you grind it out and save a little bit of more money. Do a little less YOLO right now, and then retire early and do a lot more YOLO later. So that's what I'd say.

Three ideas.

Figure out your purpose identity. After that, build a financial framework around it. And last but not least, ask yourself that important question to decide how much you should spend today versus deferring gratification for tomorrow.

But Dr. Grummett, what if I don't.

Know what my purpose is?

I mean, I thought it was medicine, but now that I'm 40, I'm not so sure.

I think that's something that a lot of people have anxiety about. In fact, it's called purpose anxiety. And we find that about 91% of people have it at some point in their life. So here's the beauty of this and what I also learned from the dying. In hospice, we do something called the life review. It's this idea that once we make sure a patient's symptoms are covered and maybe we get them into the right place, whether they're going to die at home or in a nursing home or where have you, the next thing we start doing is talking about some of their existential crises. And we often can do something called a life review. This can be done by a doctor or a nurse or social worker or chaplain, but it's a structured series of questions where we ask people the important things about their lives. What was important when they were younger? What were some of their biggest accomplishments? What were their biggest failures? What were those important relationships they had? What do they hope to do for whatever little bit of life they have left? What would they like to accomplish in the next few weeks? All these big, huge questions throughout their lifetime, we ask them. And then people really get to focus on who they were and who they want to be. And so that's a pretty long process. But what I always tell people is there's pretty much a one sentence life review. And that is, if you found out you were going to die tomorrow, what would you regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do? And so I love to pose that question as a starter in how we think about purpose. If you can ask yourself that question, it removes all the lenses that are put on us. The lens of society, the lens of.

Our family, all the things we're told we should do.

Being told you're going to die soon allows you to drop all that and.

Decide who you want to be.

So I think that the Life Review is a really good starting point. There are a bunch of other techniques.

And actually, in my next book, which.

Is going to be called the Purpose Code, which is coming out in January 2025, I actually go into a lot.

Of detail about how we connect with our sense of purpose.

So the Life Review is one. Another is to think about our childhood wishes and dreams. A lot of times as we grow.

Older, we're told by adults, or even.

By ourselves, that that's not kind of.

What you do to make money or that's not what you do to build a life. But you know who really understands purpose? Little kids. Little kids know exactly what they want to do. They're not worried about how much money they're going to make. But we lose that sometimes as we grow older.

So I remember talking to someone who had this exact question, and I gave.

Her a series of Life Review questions. And about two months later, she wrote me by email. And the topic of the email was horses. And what she realized after doing her Life Review. Some of her happiest childhood moments were when she was riding horses, because she used to compete and do this when she was little. And then she went to college and she got busy in corporate America, and she lived in the city, and there was no place to stable the horses and et cetera, et cetera. And she really fell away from this thing that really felt purposeful and loving for her. And doing this Life Review helped her remember that. And so then she could start to try to incorporate that back into her life and see if that helped her find a sense of purpose. Your sense of purpose can be big or it can be small. You can have one sense of purpose or many. It can change over time. But the important thing is that you enjoy doing these things, and they help make you feel fulfilled. And so that's kind of a bunch of different ways to start looking into that.

You think it's possible to spend too much time thinking about purpose doing life reviews.

I feel like it sometimes makes me anxious that I'm thinking, man, I'm already 48. My life's at least half over, you know, I'm two thirds dead. And, you know, and maybe that detracts.

From my quality of life in some ways.

I think it's definitely easy to get overly anxious, and I think we have to take some of that anxiety and fear away. Part of the problem is people really think purpose has to be what I call big P purpose. What I mean by Big P purpose is you have to change the world or you have to do something outlandish like make a billion dollars or you have to cure cancer. And so all of those things are so difficult. And a lot of times we don't even feel agency to get to those places. Places. So it makes us feel real anxious. What I tell people is what about little P purpose? And what that is are the things we just enjoy doing regardless of the goal. So as opposed to making it this big anxiety causing issue, what if we started thinking about just the stuff we love to do, what feels fulfilling for us in the moment? Strangely enough, I don't really think you find purpose. I think you create it. But you do have to figure out what some of these anchors are for you. So if you can find what those anchors are, you can then build a life of purpose around them. And the anchors don't have to be that big. For me, one of my anchors was hospice. Okay, that's a big life changing thing. But you know what? Exercise is an anchor for me. So I build time around doing exercise every day. Reading is an anchor for me, so I build time around that. I was thinking about my own childhood and realized I love sports and specifically I love baseball cards. I used to collect them as a kid. So I'm thinking about making that an anchor and maybe I'll get back into that or maybe I'll get interested again in antiquities or I used to love searching for old things like whether it's coins or stamps or baseball cards. So if we take some of that.

Stress and anxiety away from it and.

Make people realize it doesn't have to be this big outsized thing, the question.

Is, what lights you up?

And if we can figure out what lights you up, you can start engaging in those activities. And even more importantly, the bigger thing is when you engage in those activities.

You tend to form communities around them and you tend to touch the other people around you. And so I just think we can kind of pull some of that anxiety away and start thinking more about how do we want to use our time, because time is so precious, we can't control it, we can't buy it, we can't trade for it. It passes no matter what we do. So how can we start kind of filling those time periods we have with much more enjoyable stuff?

We've talked about financial independence and how.

Purpose plays into that. Let's turn the page a little bit toward wealth.

And forgive me, I'm going to share.

A little bit of a personal story. This last week or so we spent Thanksgiving down in Vegas, and when a lot of people think of Vegas, they think of the Strip and gambling and shows or whatever, you know, Sin City.

When I think of Vegas, I think of it as an outdoors person's paradise, right? So we went down there to go hiking and mountain biking and rock climbing and those sorts of things and took the whole family.

So there's five of us down there.

And we, you know, spent some of the time doing very inexpensive stuff, at least for us.

To go climbing for us is very cheap because we'd have all the gear. I've already got a Parks Pass and it's basically free other than the gasoline.

And other things that were more expensive.

You know, we went out to a three course restaurant dinner for Thanksgiving and then went to a Cirque du Soleil show that evening. It was a very expensive evening.

But when we got back from the.

Trip, we got back late Saturday night.

And Sunday morning my wife gets this.

Call from family members saying, you know, Grandma's basically woken up unresponsive and we're taking her to the er and she gets there and they intubate her so they can do the workup and they do the scans that you'd expect and find big, huge stroke. And this isn't necessarily terrible news. She's been dealing with ever worsening dementia over the last few years and is getting to the point where it's bad, where you start talking about memory care and those sorts of things. It may be in a lot of.

Ways a blessing, but the first thing.

I said to Katie was, you should go.

And to me, this has demonstrated wealth in a lot of ways, right? It's Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. It's probably the most expensive day of the year to fly, right? And we don't have to worry about the money of buying an airplane ticket, whatever it costs. You know, we got a flyer private down there. We can afford to do that.

So the wealth financially was there, but.

Also a certain amount of time and flexibility. We can look at our schedule for.

The next few days that Sunday morning and saying, yeah, we can do this.

With just one of us here. You know, we can get to the.

Kids to where they need to be. For the most part, you know, your job mostly allows you to work remotely. She's our chief product officer.

And you can do this time wise and flexibility wise, you've got the freedom.

The financial freedom to be able to go and be there with your family at this terrible moment.

And then finally, the third aspect of.

Wealth that this really brought up for.

Us was relationships because I couldn't quite handle everything. Like the next morning I had a shift in the ER at 6am and there are six times a month when I have to be somewhere very specific.

Doing a very specific thing.

And I didn't know how I was.

Going to get our 8 year old to school that morning because she catches the bus at about 8:30 that morning, long after I've left the bus, the shift. But she, you know, we have a lot of neighbors around and friends and families and other kids that catch that bus. No problem at all. We had our teenager drop her off on her way to school and she hung out with someone else for an hour and a half before catching her bus with her friends.

So three aspects of wealth there, the financial aspect, the freedom and time, as well as the relationships were three aspects.

Of wealth that allowed us that opportunity for Katie. And she was able to be with her grandmother, stayed all with her Sunday night and she was there late Monday night when she finally passed. And a lot of people just don't have those opportunities. And so it was very illustrative to me of what wealth really is.

But when you talk about building wealth.

In your book and on your podcast.

What does wealth mean to you?

Well, so just as you were talking about, wealth is a series of tools that lets us live a good life. And I think we often make the mistake of thinking that money is the only tool. Right. So material wealth, and it is a great tool. Just as you were saying, you found out about a family member in need or that was dying and you could pay whatever it took to get Katie on the plane to make sure she could see her. That's material wealth. That is one of those tools. But the mistake we often make is saying it's the only tool. We have so many other tools and you mentioned a few of them our time. Right. So there are times in our life, there are seasons in our life where we have more time or less time, and that time is a huge tool. It's a form of wealth. We have our communities, we have the people who support us, we have our relationships, the people we love. We have our youth when we're young, actually our youth is a tool. For instance, we might not have a mortgage, we might not have a family. So that tool we can use to spend our time doing other things. We have tons of these tools. And to me, wealth is accruing these different types of tools and then using them to live the life you want to live. And so sometimes you're going to have a lot of that material, tool, money, and you can leverage that to live the life you want to live, to be there at a family member's bed as they're sick. You can use it to go on big vacations, to do things you want. But there are going to be other times, other seasons in your life when you don't have those things, and you're going to use your other tools. Maybe it's your free time, maybe it's your communities, maybe it's your relationships, maybe it's your skills. And so I think the truly wealthy people out there understand that these tools.

Are there to live the life you.

Want to live and realize that regardless of where that one tool, the money.

Is, you can use those other tools.

So they tend to live purposeful lives when they have very little money, and they tend to live purposeful lives when.

They have a lot of money.

But I don't want to be Pollyanna about it. You are 100% correct. If you guys didn't have money, it's possible you couldn't have afforded to get.

Her on the plane to see her loved one. That would have been, in a sense, a tragedy. But when we look at what that.

Trip actually means, what we realize is.

That the true wealth was in her relationship with her family member, not in making that last trip to be with her as she died. That is a huge benefit, and we want to be there with the people we love when they die. But the true wealth that your wife and you have is that strong relationship with your family. And that transcends the money. It transcends making that last trip. It's what you built over a lifetime.

Excellent points.

All right, so you're a hospice doc. You get to talk to people.

You know, Katie's grandma, in this case, you would have had to talk to her a few days before, maybe a couple of years, before the dementia set in really badly. But, you know, you get to talk.

To these people at the end of their lives. What do they regret?

Well, I'll tell you the first thing that they don't regret because it's easier to go in that direction. They generally don't regret that they don't have enough money, and they generally don't regret that they didn't work more nights or weekends. What they do regret is a lot more personal, but we can categorize it. They regret that they never had the energy or courage or time to do the things that were most important to them. And a lot of the time, they either never thought about what was most important to them, or let society dictate what was most important to them, or let their jobs or their career path get in the way of doing those important things. And so this I hear over and over again, although the details are different. For one person it might have been writing a book for. For another person, it might have been climbing Mount Everest. For another person, it might have been not repairing that relationship that went awry decades ago. The point is there's a gap between the person they are and the person they want to be. And they never got in the arena and fought the valiant fight to become that person. And that's where the regrets really lie. And I think that's where the message about money really comes in, is money is a great tool. But you don't want the lack of money be the reason that you don't make that valiant effort while you don't try to close that gap. Because there's never going to be enough money. There's never ever enough money. When we look at people and we ask how much is enough, it's always double what they have.

It's so true. I just looked at a survey yesterday.

And the average American, I think, has a net worth of $750,000. And the amount they think they need to be happy is 1.2 moon. Yeah.

And the truth of the matter is, whereas there probably is enough money and we miscalculate, there never will be enough time. Our life on this earth is finite and that time is passing quickly. So we don't really have a lot of time to sit here and ignore those things that are important to us. So that's what the regrets really center around, is what was important to you that you didn't pursue because you let everything else get in the way of it. And I'll tell you, after seeing many.

Many, many people on their deathbeds, a.

Lot of us have these things and a lot of us ignore them. And so it's really a good wake up call that your time is finite.

And we have to stop letting all these other mirages, all these big things that get in the way that really.

Aren'T important to us, but we think they're important to us and we let them get in the way. So for some people, that's net worth, right? Money becomes a huge mirage and we forget that it's just a tool to.

Help us do what we want to.

Do and it becomes the goal unto itself and then causes problems.

But it's not just money. It's often our jobs or our place in society or being an influencer or whatever it is that we think is important. But ultimately, when we look back on our deathbeds, we're like, yeah, that wasn't nearly as important as I thought it was.

As you talk to people, do you feel like most people have regrets or that most people don't?

I would say that most people probably do have regrets, but it is not uncommon to find very peaceful people at the end of life. So is it 50, 50, 60, 40? I couldn't give you the exact numbers, but I'd say more than not have regrets. But we tend to die the way we lived. And so people often ask me, how do you, like, die a good death? And I say, well, the best way to die a good death is to live a good life. And so you really have to focus on these things early. And there are some people who really do. I mean, I've had plenty of people who look up and say, I'm ready.

It's time.

And those are people who tended to live in the moment enough to realize what was important to them and come to terms with those things. But it's a rare person who, as a young person, really looks at their life and says, okay, if I were to die tomorrow, what things do I need accomplished? And let's start working on those now. And I think it should be less rare. I think we should spend a lot.

More time thinking about those things today.

You know, we always hear that you should be in the moment, live in the moment, and of course, that's good advice, and we should all try to do that. It's not that easy, though, especially for.

Those of us who are planners.

You know, we're always thinking about the future and what am I going to be doing tonight instead of what I'm doing right now? And how do you live in the moment better?

So I think it's a matter of knowing who you are, right? So there's some people who live in the moment all the time, right? The people who, like, are yolo to the maximum. And those people, they kind of know that they should be deferring gratification a little bit more. And then there's the ultra planners who never let loose and never have fun. And they kind of know, maybe I should actually go and enjoy myself a little more. I think that big question staring at.

Us really helps is I think all of us need to look at our lives and say, if I was given a death sentence today and I had days, weeks, or months, would I feel like I accomplished what I needed to accomplish. And if you are an ultimate long term planner, asking that question can be very off putting, but very important because at some point you have to realize that while I am planning for tomorrow, tomorrow is not guaranteed and I at least have to spend some time being the person I am today. So, you know, I think it's Buddhist philosophy, they talk about memento mori, this idea of carrying the idea that you're going to die with you during your everyday events. And so I think that's really helpful, especially for the really long term planners to carry a little memento mori with them and realize that, yes, we all want to plan for the future. We all want to have a nice long retirement where we have plenty of money. But that can't be at the expense of enjoying yourself today because we don't know how many days we have.

Momenta mori sounds like a spell out of Harry Potter.

It may also be for all I know.

So you wrote this book. What's your favorite part of the book?

What's my favorite part of the book? No one's ever asked me that question. That's a good question. I really like the end and because in the end I get to really sum up kind of everything together. And what I say at the end is, I've said many times in the book that we are dying from the day we're born. Yet it's also important to know that we're living up until the moment we die. And so what I really want, people, is to learn how to have a good life. And the way to do that again is to realize that since we don't know how much time we have left, we have to learn how to live both today and tomorrow. So living for today is really building that sense of purpose and identity. And the living for tomorrow is then building a financial framework around that. And that can support you maybe for decades and decades into the future. We really have to do both.

Let's turn religious for just a moment. There are three big questions in religion. Where we came from, why we're here, where we're going.

How does this change these subjects we've been talking about? For those who believe there's an afterlife.

Versus those who do not, I don't.

Think it changes at all. I mean, in a sense, yes, I guess if you're deeply into religion and you feel like the things I do here on earth are going to build for me a more beautiful afterlife, et cetera, then yes, it's gonna change how you act and what you do and how you use your money. And time. But I would argue that for you, then that is purpose. So the way I integrate religion and faith into my framework about purpose, identity, and then building your financial framework is, for many people, religion becomes a big part of that purpose. And if that's the case, that's totally fine. So what you want to do then is you want to try to build a life in which you can spend a lot of your time living up to the precepts of that faith, which.

Is so important to you.

Going to services, meeting people, being part of that community, doing good. That is a proxy for purpose.

And you can then use that and build it into your financial framework.

But does it change how we feel about dying and getting our lives in.

Order and doing the things that are important to us?

I don't think so. I mean, it's that big question. We don't know what happens after you die. It may be, poof, you're gone.

Or it may be that you have a rich afterlife afterwards.

I think in both cases, you're served.

If you live a good life, both today and in the future, regardless. So I think you can't lose if you kind of follow some of these precepts.

You know, I had somebody refer to me as middle aged this year for the first time. That's the first time that's happened to me.

Darn them.

I guess I am. I'm 48 years old. You're not much older than me. As you look back over the financial decisions you've made and the career decisions you've made, what regrets do you have right now, looking back, the mistakes you've made and regrets you have about how you've lived your life to this point.

So the truth of the matter is, I don't have a lot of regrets. Part of that is a big part of happiness for me is finding meaning in my past. So a lot of times I will look at my past mistakes or my past hardships, and instead of looking at them kind of under that victim lens, I often look at them under that hero lens. So all those hard things that I went through, all those mistakes that I made, I tend to look at them as I was able to overcome those. And they taught me about life and got me to where I am today. So because I kind of have that outlook, I don't tend to regret a lot. The other thing is, in writing this book and dealing with hospice, I really spend a lot of time thinking about just that question. If I found out that I had a short period of time left in life, what would I want to do? I'll tell you, I would have really regretted not writing this book. So writing a book and traditionally publishing a book was one of those big things I would have regretted if I hadn't finally got in touch enough with my sense of purpose and identity to do what for me was very courageous work. Because I had a lot of fear about putting myself out there, a lot of fear about not getting a book deal, a lot of worries that I wouldn't be good enough. So for me, that would have been, I think, a huge regret that I've thankfully been able to overcome because I've become very, very clear about what's important to me. But if I had continued on that life trajectory that I was on before and never come to some of these important ideas, I think that would have.

Been a big one.

Do you think that that lesson that.

You'Re applying now to your life, looking at the past, to look at yourself as a hero rather than a victim, can that be applied to us at the end of life as well?

I certainly think it can. So again, to me, happiness is meaning and purpose, right? So meaning is the past.

It's how we are cognizantly thinking about what we've been through.

And so those who look at their.

Past with a sense of victimhood have.

A lot of trouble being happy today.

And certainly have a lot of trouble feeling like the future is going to be positive and good. So the first thing we need is a sense of meaning that feels heroic. Purpose is all about the present and the future, and it's much more action oriented, right? So when we're talking about meaning, we're talking about cognition. When we're talking about purpose, we're talking about action. So when we get to the end of the life, we have a lot less time, so we don't have as much action. Most of our sense of happiness is probably going to be based on meaning and not necessarily purpose. Although I will tell you, some of the people I've seen die kind of the best and happiest deaths. They tend to have a sense of purpose up until they die, right? Maybe it's waking up the next morning to see a grandchild. Maybe it's catching that last Cubs game, whatever it was that really spoke to their soul. That doesn't just stop when you're told that you are dying. And so if you're lucky enough to have some of these passions in the sense of purpose, you get to wake up every morning looking forward to something, feeling that sense of action and purpose up until the day you die. But it is true. As your days get less and less, it's really that sense of meaning that I think brings happiness. And that gets all back to that lens in which you look at your past.

We had a guest on here recently, Stacy Taniguchi, and one of the things he teaches is that you should live a life such that you would be.

Willing to live this life over and.

Over and over again for eternity. What do you think about that advice?

Oh, I love it. I love it. And again, this gets back to how you interpret your past. So if you look at your past as if it was horrible and I'd never do that again, it's really hard to think about your future and present and feel good about it. But I look at all those foibles, those stumbles, the things I did badly, even the death of my father, and I think, what a gift that it brought me here to today where I could write this book that meant so much to me, where we can have these great conversations where I can do something like go to the Bogleheads conference and meet all these fantastic people and have these amazing conversations. What a gift. I would do it all over again. It's the same answer to what would you change if you had to do it all over again? And I'll tell you, even though I made tons of mistakes, I can't imagine being where I am today. Unless I had those falls, like unless I had those foibles, how would I have learned what I've learned today? So I love that. I think that's a fantastic way of.

Looking at your life.

Jordan, our time is short, but this.

Will be listened to by 30,000 something people, mostly doctors.

Is there anything we haven't talked about.

Today that you feel like they should know?

No, I think that really sums it all up. Maybe the one thing I'd add is, you know, go easy on yourself. Like we are our own hardest critics and it actually stops us from doing the things we really want to do. So you are where you are at this point, no matter how bad it was, because that's what you needed to go through to get to today. But today is now the time to.

Start doing what you want to do.

So stop being so hard on yourself, stop lamenting all the things that didn't work in the past and realize that you're sense of meaning, your sense of being who you are today comes from looking heroically at that past and then.

Building the future you want.

And so go easy on yourself. Realize that you had to go through.

What you went through to be where you are today.

All right, Dr. Jordan Grummett, blogger, author, podcaster, public speaker and guru, thanks so.

Much for being on the White Coat Investor podcast.

As always, thank you so much for having me.

All right.

I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. It's always fun to talk to somebody who's thinking about issues that are important to me. We're actually going to be giving away a few copies of his book, but they're going to be given away as part of a promotion with our few group. This is the financially empowered women group and if you are interested in joining that group, yes, you have to be a woman if you're interested in joining that group. You can sign up for that and have a chance at winning those.

So by participating in the activities there, we'll be giving away a few copies of Jordan's book for the rest of you.

Or if you just can't wait to.

Get it, you can pick that up on Amazon. We'll have a link in the show notes.

All right, don't forget about our buy one get one free course sale. Remember, if you buy fire your financial advisor financial wellness, our no hype real estate investing or a Continuing Financial Education 23, you will get CFE 22 thrown in absolutely for free from now through the 4th of January. This has got to be maybe our biggest sale of the year. So if you've been holding off on buying one of these courses that you know you need to take, you need a written financial plan. That's fire your financial advisor. You're interested in real estate. That's no hype real estate investing or you're just looking to get some more financial information using your CME money. That's CFE 23. Check that out. Whitecoatinvestor.com courses thanks so much for what you do. Your work is important. That's why they pay you so much for it. But with that high pay comes high stress and sometimes a thankless job. And it can be hard at times. I still practice. I know I have bad shifts just like you have bad days at work. And sometimes it's just nice to hear.

A thank you, isn't it?

All right, well, we've come to the end.

But I do always thank you for.

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