WCI #390: WCICON24 Columnist Panel Discussion

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.

Hello WCI listeners. I'm still taking some time off to rest and recover from my accident, but don't worry, I'll be back in a few weeks. Until then, enjoy this episode from the Podcast Archives this episode is brought to you by SoFi helping medical professionals like US bank borrow and invest to achieve financial wellness SoFi offers up to 4.6% APY on their savings accounts as well as an investment platform, financial planning and student loan refinancing featuring an exclusive rate discount for med professionals and $100 a month payments for residents. Check out all that Sofi offers@whitecoatinvestor.com SoFi loans originated by SoFi Bank NA NMLS 696891 advisory services by SoFi Wealth LLC. The brokerage product is offered by SoFi Securities LLC. Remember Finra SIPC investing comes with risk, including risk of loss. Additional terms and conditions may apply all.

Right, this next session we talked about is going to be with some of our columnists, but I first want to just bring to your attention all of.

The different ways that you can experience the content of wci. Being a part of the WCI team.

Is such an honor. I just do this one little event all year. I know, but I get to sit there with this team that creates content all year long in so many different facets and so many different channels.

It blows me away.

And what is also incredible that you're going to see today is they bring so many other contributors as well. But if you don't know already, WCI has a very popular podcast.

They actually, we actually have two of them.

We also have the courses like I mentioned, but one of my favorites is.

The newsletter and the blog.

We have so many different voices on there, so many different ways that you.

Can join this conversation.

This is such a great opportunity to.

Really discuss the solutions to the money problems and with other White Coat investors everywhere.

So we really invite you to be.

A part of that.

Follow, subscribe, download and join that conversation of wti.

So so without further ado though, we thought we would give you an in person experience with a bunch of these content contributors.

So please welcome to the stage with.

Me Mr. Jim Dowley and his team of columnists.

Welcome to one of my favorite parts of this conference. We've been thinking about how to do this and planning how to do this now for a year and we're gonna have some fun. I've got some pre selected questions we're gonna talk about first and then we're gonna open it up to the audience and I'm gonna start throwing this thing around. Then you're gonna start throwing this thing around. All right. This is called the catch box and it's very soft. Okay. I mean, maybe you can get a corneal abrasion if you take it right in the eye. So keep an eye as this thing gets thrown around. But I don't think I can get it to the ceiling. I think we're okay, but we're pass this around. This thing's actually a microphone and so you can ask your questions into this. And we're going to take live questions from you guys. Here's the rules on the live questions, though. You have to pick one or two of the columnists to direct them to. And none of the questions can be directed at me. Okay, let's get started on this. First of all, a reminder of why we have columnists at the White Coat Investor. And obviously part of it's the backup plan. Right. If I step in front of a bus I the airport on the way home. We need White Coat Investor to be able to keep going. But more importantly, we want a diversification of opinions. We want people from different professions, different specialties, different stages of their life, different genders, different races, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Because we want you to be able to learn finance from somebody that you can relate to. And the truth is, the longer this goes, the less relatable I become. And so we find people you can actually relate to and they write columns. So let's introduce them to each of you. Let's just go down the line here. I want you to tell them what your name is, what your specialty is, and kind of what your niche is when you write your columns.

Thank you. I'm Margaret Curtis. I'm a pediatrician and I write mostly about our family's financial life. I write about being part of a two physician household. And then lately I've become more interested in employment issues facing physicians.

And she has a great Persona. Auntie Marge.

Oh, yeah. I sometimes write as my alter ego, Auntie Marge.

Auntie Marge is very snarky, very salty.

We'll tell you the way it is.

I'm Josh Katzowitz. I'm the content director. I've been with the White Coat Investor for about two and a half years. I'm not a doctor, although I am married to one right over there. And I was a sports writer in journalism for most of my career, and somehow I squeezed my way into this space.

And his column runs about every other Sunday. You may have noticed him, he likes to put the tweet of the week in at the bottom. The money song of the week, that's Josh.

I live to make Jim's eyes twitch a little bit or stomach hurt a little bit. With my content, I think it works.

Hello, I'm Julie Alonso Katsiewicz. I am a child and forensic psychiatrist, probably the newest columnist of all. And my areas are looking at women's and family topics as well as mental wellness and mindset.

My name's Anthony Ellis. I'm a psychiatrist and I write about the transition to retirement that I'm in. And that's why this tie and shirt are probably the only long sleeve shirt tie I still own. And I had to dig them out of the garage to get something to wear.

My name is Tyler Scott. My first professional chapter in my life was as a dentist. And then as a result of physical disability and mental burnout, I made a career change a few years ago. I'm now a certified financial planner, working mostly with physicians and dentists. My niche at the blog is to write about dentistry, about my career transition, and our family finance. I'm married to the podcast producer, the white coat investor, and we have three little girls. So there's a lot of things to write about on the family side as well.

All right, thank you so much. All right, next, I want each of the columnists to talk about their favorite column or maybe their most important column. And they all got this question in advance, and so they submitted them. We're going to start with Julie, whose column is called the Gender Role Reversal. Being the high earner of my Family as a woman, why was that so important or why is that your favorite column?

Yeah, well, I've only written two columns so far, so I had to pick one of the two. But I think it's important because it's a topic that happens, hasn't been covered as much in the physician realm. There are a lot of women physicians that are the primary earner within their. Within their marriage or a partnership. And I think I actually got a lot of really nice supportive comments from both men and women. So I think it was a good topic for me to launch with.

It's quite a unique experience to get a bunch of supportive comments. Okay, let's go now to Tyler. This was a fun column. I really enjoyed this one.

Thank You? Yeah. I chose this because it was both pragmatic and philosophical, and that's the sweet spot I try to hit. So it's pragmatic in as much as if any of you went to Sarah Catherine Gutierrez talk yesterday morning, and she talked about budgeting and cash flow. I just listed how much we made and where every dollar went in 2023, and how we prioritize those cash flow decisions and giving some mechanics of how to make that simple, like Dr. Zadra talked about yesterday. But the philosophical part is, first, I just want to normalize talking about money and doing it with specificity. I think we're better off when we talk about how much we make and how much we spend on cars and how much private school costs. We actually put numbers to those conversations. We, the consumers, are the beneficiaries. So I wanted to be the change I wanted to see in the world. So I listed. Just pulled the curtain back on our finances. And also in my new life of working with physicians and dentists, there's this sense of near happiness that exists for many people with this just chaser of scarcity. What I mean by that is whether someone makes 150,000 or a million dollars, and everyone tells me, and if I could just make 10 or 20% more, then I'd be happy that they've pushed happiness across this financial cognitive horizon that never gets achieved. And if we can create a cash flow plan that is intentional, we can bring that happiness into the present and live in an abundance mindset. And I just want everyone to have a joyful relationship with their money.

The great thing about.com was people want to know numbers. They want to know how much people make. They want to know how much they spend. And it's hard to get people to tell you what they make. I mean, I think Jim maybe used to do that in the past. They no longer do that, but people want that information. So I was editing Tyler's column, and he was saying, here's how much I make. Here's how much my wife makes. I was like, did you talk to your wife about this before? And he said, yeah. And then I was like, let me ask his wife to make sure that she's cool with it. So it was. But again, that's like the idea of I had a problem with you being open. I wanted to make sure it was cool. And you're like, I have an open book. And I'm like, are you sure?

Did anything bad happen from telling the world what you make and how you spend your money?

I Keep finding over and over in my life, the more I lead with vulnerability and honesty and authenticity, those things are meted back to me tenfold. And no, it's been universally positive.

All right, up next, Margaret wrote a very adventurous post called From Maine to Ukraine. A physician finds meaning in a war zone. Why was that so meaningful or important or just your favorite?

It was all those things. So I wrote about my husband's volunteer work doing medical work in Ukraine in the last two years. And I wrote it because I was proud of him and I wanted to tell people about what he'd done and maybe lay out a pathway that other people could do things that are similar. And I enjoyed writing it because it was much more of a narrative arc than we're used to seeing in columns. It's less bullet pointy. And because it was a good reminder to his work, was a good reminder to me of how lucky we are to do this job that pays us well and gives us good security and career opportunities, but also gives us the opportunity to do really amazing things in the world. And there aren't many careers that let you do that. So that's why I chose this one.

Very cool. Thank you. Okay, next up is Tony. Functional longevity. What use is retirement if you can't move and think?

Yes. Well, it's the truth. I thought that having been on a geriatric psychiatry unit and running it for 11 years, I saw all the ways that the brain can go bad. And I saw lots of people who were pushing off retirement with this. One more year, one more year, one more year. And then they would retire and they would have health problems and they couldn't do what they wanted to with their money, and their bucket list shrank right up. And so the reason I wrote that article is because I, I use that in my life. That is it. Drop down to part time, retire early, spend some money between 60 and 70, because you don't know how things are going to go. Every time I talk to people, they say, oh, I'm going to live to be 95. My grandma lived to be 95. And I'm like, well, I don't know. You know, I've seen lots of people who thought they, they were all. All the people that I know who passed away, most of them were quite surprised. And so I don't want to be surprised. So I have to make friends with the idea that. In fact, they told me that this week at the conference. They're like, you know, you could dement. Then the other ones told me, you know, you could die. And then you've left this mess for your wife. So anyway, I wrote that because I tried to live that whole idea.

Very nice. All right, let's talk about mine real quick. You skipped me. I skipped you. Oh, I did skip you. Sorry. We gotta go back to Josh.

We butt.

I've been trying to cut Josh out of his columns for a long time. So how's this any different today? All right, here's Josh from fourth year to the real world.

From fourth year to the real world. Yeah. So as a journalist, I love telling stories. I love talking to people, I love interviewing people. The idea behind this was I want to find some fourth year medical students who are just about to graduate into residency, where they are in their financial life, how much student loans they owe, how much they're going to make as residents, what they're going to do. They have a partner who they're going to try and couples match with. And I've found four people who are willing to talk to me. I mean, I gave them pseudonyms, but those aren't their real names. And I kind of try to protect their privacy as much as I can. So I talked to them before they graduated, and then now kind of once a year, I check back in, see how they're doing. And for me, it was like, it was. It's writing stories about these three to four people and what they're doing and how they're thinking about finance. And it's funny because, you know, I'm sure a lot of you are kind of in this WCI philosophy of live like a resident and, you know, don't take, don't do crypto too much. But these people, yeah, these people are not thinking like that. They're like, oh, I'm going to spend because I got the money now. And hey, I just had my third kid and I owe $400,000 in student loans. But hey, we're making it work. So it's really interesting to get them at this young age and kind of hopefully progress over the next five, 10 years maybe and see kind of that story arc and see where they go. Hopefully it'll teach them something. Teach me something, Teach everybody something.

And the group's now second year residents, right?

They're second year residents. Yeah, second year residents.

So it's been fun to follow them along. You can go back and look at the old stuff too, which is cool. All right, so this is the question they made me ask. In fact, Josh is like, we gotta do this one. Josh does a lot of that on the Blog you may have noticed. What is one thing you disagree with when it comes to the WCI philosophy? Live like a resident, invest in index funds, avoid whole life crypto, whatever. What's one thing you disagree with? And we'll start. Let's start with Tyler.

Wonderful. So I say this with some trepidation. I hope no one throws anything from.

The first couple rows.

I, I might slow the roll just slightly on the real estate enthusiasm. And this is born out of working with clients that I work with a lot of like early and mid career physicians. And so I get a pediatrician that's two years as an attending and she's like, yeah, Dr. Dali said if I buy a duplex I can retire when I'm 41. I'm like, okay, so not quite that. And that's not what he said. So my disagreement here is actually a flat, a wholehearted agreement with what Jim mentions, I think very responsibly with the real estate, which is that a good framework to think about when this might be appropriate. Because I think real estate's a great asset class. It provides meaningful diversification and good returns. But it probably makes sense to be an accredited investor two times over before we get there. So if you're married, that means making 400 or 600,000 if you're married, 400,000 if you're single and having a net worth of 2 million or more, excluding the value of your home. That's a nice place to think about starting to include some of these more complicated and potentially risky real estate. The other thing that Jim says that I think is really smart, which is a good litmus test for if you're ready, is when you can read the pro forma and the documents and, or if the investment can go to zero and you can still reach your goals. That's another good way to know when this, this might make sense. So we're actually, I think, in agreement.

Only Tyler could take a question about disagreeing and turn it into actually, I do agree.

Does he think this is like a job interview or something? Greatest weakness.

Tyler, I like you too much.

All right, Margaret, let's go to you next.

So I do largely agree with the philosophy, but I think the, a lot of the advice, especially for earlier career docs, has to be adapted for two physician couples or two high earning income couples or two people with demanding careers, I guess I should say, because it's really different. All those pressures that are on you when you're in training and when you have little kids. It's just like this perfect Storm of busyness means that you can't save as much money. You may not be as aggressive in paying down your debt. You may have to do things like when you're both in training, you may have to do things like get takeout more often, get a better place closer to the hospital. If you have kids, you need a nanny. You have to have reliable childcare. So you're not going to save as much money, you're going to spend more money. That's okay. Knowing that you're going to make up for it later on with these two higher career, higher salaries. So I think there has to be room in that, in the live like a resident advice to accommodate for that possibility because it's happening more and more. Two women, two doctors are two doctor. Couples are more and more common.

All right, Tony, let's have you go next. What are your biggest disagreement?

Right. Well, I agree with the philosophy of the white coat investor. I think the only thing I've ever disagreed on is I thought there was more room under the tent, you know, so here you have doctors and dentists mostly. There's a few other white coat peripheral type of people that aren't doctors or dentists, but they're still healthcare professionals that make a good wage. And at one point in the past, I mentioned something, well, why don't you bring in the white whatevers, the DPTs, the other people that have gone to school for eight years, wear a white coat, do patient care and so forth. And, you know, basically the answer was, well, I'm focused on this group. I know this group. I've worked with this group. And I. I think I have the most to offer this group. And so really, that's probably the only thing we ever disagreed on is I thought there was more room under the tent for other white coat professionals, so to speak, because it helped me a lot. I told Jim today that when I read his book and then kept reading the blog over the past seven years, you know, you wouldn't believe the effect it's had on. Well, you can read my articles.

Okay, Josh, you could go next.

Well, what do you want to talk. What do you think it would be?

Well, from a guy who bought a Tesla on credit. Why don't we start with that?

We talked about that last year. I think somebody asked me today, they said, do you still have the Tesla? And I said, yeah. And they said, you still love it? And I'm like, yeah. So we did buy a Tesla. We financed it, but it was the right decision for us. It was 3% it was 3%. We were having to pay for our kids barn bought mitzvahs. We cash flow it. Fine.

It's fine.

It's not an issue.

So he comes to me and tells me he's gonna write a column about how he bought a Tesla. And I'm like, you didn't finance it?

Didn't.

Did you? You're not going to write that, are you?

Yeah. So when we actually bought the Tesla, I took a picture. I kind of posed in front of the Tesla like that, took a picture and sent it to him. It was really sexy. But the. So that. Yeah, we've. We disagree on that. The other thing that we. And actually Julie and I kind of disagree on this too, is the emphasis on not. If you're. When you're resident, you probably shouldn't buy a house. And I think maybe you feel that same way too, a little bit. We bought a house when she was in residency, the first year residency.

Right.

And it probably wasn't the great time. We bought it in 2005 at kind of the market peak. So in retrospect, it wasn't a great time to buy it. And then in 2008, it lost a lot of its value. But for me, it was. We learned a lot. We were saddled with not great terms on the mortgage. And then when we couldn't feel like we could sell it when we left that city, we became a landlord, which I decided I didn't like doing that either. So there were some good lessons in maybe making the wrong decision. And I think that helped us when we bought another house, that we did make a profit.

When we sold the first house, we.

Held out long enough, like three grand. It was not more than that. Yeah. Do you. Do you disagree? Do you think we shouldn't have bought the house?

I'm not sure. I think there were pros and cons.

All right, Julie.

So I generally agree with a lot of the philosophy, otherwise I wouldn't be here. And I've really abided by a lot of it. But I would say the one thing similar to what Margaret said is the live like a resident. I think you really have to personalize that and individualize that to your own situation. I had moonlighted a lot. Moonlit, not sure what the word is during residency quite a bit. 6. Saved up for a down payment. And I was very fortunate to not have a lot of student loans. Coming out of fellowship. Already had my twins, and so I worked for a year as an attending, saved up a bit more, and we ended up liking the City and the job, making sure about that. And then we did buy the nicest house that we could afford within moderation, within our budget. And we've lived in that house for 12 years now. We're going to have it paid off in the next couple of years. Our kids are going to stay there through high school. And so I think it was worthwhile.

That's the other thing. With a Tesla, I drove the 2003 Camry into the ground.

That's true.

Then 2010 Mazda CX9. I drove that for like 12 years. Don't I deserve a Tesla?

It is a very nice house. I've been to their house, went to visit them in Austin not that long ago. It's dangerous to the deer in the area. It turns out the spikes on the fence is not a good idea. But it's a very nice house. All right. Oh, Josh. It says here I'm supposed to let you ask me a question.

So this site was started in 2011. It was Jim's blog, right? For the most part, for many years. Jim wrote a lot of the. Most of the content, probably, and it was all. He has some guest posts that probably maybe differed a little bit with your philosophy, but it was the philosophy of the white coat investor, which at the time was Jim. Now we've bringing more viewpoints into the world. We're bringing, like Jim said, different genders and different races and different periods of life. And now the blog is maybe not quite as Jim centric as it used to be. And I wanted to know, when you write, when you read something that. Something not something that you agree with necessarily, or something that you wouldn't have written, how do you feel. This is the thing you started. How do you feel when you see something that, like, man, I'm not sure.

I agree with that.

Which happens probably every other Sunday when I write Homes.

You know, the most interesting part of it is I'm assumed to be far more dogmatic than I actually am. You know, I hear from people, they're like, oh, he says you're never supposed to spend anything. And I'm like, you know, I use a helicopter to go skiing, right? And so I think that's widely misunderstood, that I really don't feel terribly dogmatic about different methods of investing, about how you spend, about how you choose your life. I just want you to do it deliberately, you know, and make a conscious decision when you decide, I'm gonna spend more in this phase of my life or I'm gonna, you know, finance a Tesla or I'm Gonna, you know, dabble in crypto or whatever. Right. I want you to do it. To have the information you need and to make a conscious decision. I'm far less dogmatic, I think, than people make us out. The problem is being dogmatic gets you clicks, right? So you got to live a little.

Bit like this is the way it is.

And then all of a sudden you get a lot of reaction, it spreads on social media and you end up helping a lot of people because they come to the site because of that. So don't assume I'm quite as dogmatic as maybe the online Persona seems to be at times. Okay, let's do the criticism question. Weirdest criticism, worst criticism, whatever you want to say about criticism. When you put your ideas out there into the blogosphere, you're gonna get criticism. It's not a good place for thin skinned people to exist. So why don't we start? Why don't we start? Well, Josh likes criticism a lot, so let's not start with him. Let's start with Mark. We'll go across this.

Okay. I feel like a lot of the really weird criticism has kind of died down over time. Like people got it out of their system, I think. But I was really surprised and I wrote a column last spring. It wasn't my story. It was the story of someone I knew, a colleague who had left a very, very difficult marriage and started over for like $40 in her bank account and no confidence as a mid career pediatrician and kind of built her way back up. And I thought it was this great story and lots of people really seemed to resonate with them. And some people just got like all up in their feelings about this article. Like they were mad, mad, mad, mad. They thought I was making statements about marriage or about, you know, it was just a referendum on whether or not she should have left her marriage. And totally caught me by surprise. Totally caught me by surprise.

Another one that was interesting with yours, the one that was showed about the Ukraine call.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which caught me by surprise.

Usually.

I know, I think we know what's gonna get some criticism, what's not. But I was surprised with. There was a lot of pro Russia sentiment.

Yeah, I think that was from like one bot, I don't think.

Yeah, but.

And that was.

And that was a lot. It was a busy bot.

Cause it took a lot of.

Well, it was a slow day in Moldova that day and they had nothing better to do. So that one was easy. I was like, yeah, I don't even need to respond to that.

But, yeah, but when that happened. So when this woman, this anonymous woman, told you her. Their personal story and then people criticized, how did you feel about that?

I felt very protective of her because I talked with her a lot, and there were things I left out of the column because I didn't think they were germane to her financial status or because I really wanted to protect her privacy. She was very nervous about doing this. So there are things I left out. So, again, this criticism, first of all, I was like, you kind of missed the whole point of that column. It wasn't about should she have left this marriage or not. It was about how did she start over, having thought her whole life that she was no good at money, and how'd she figure it out? And so they missed the point. And then I felt very protective and very upset that people would write things and she didn't read the columns, and I told, you know, she didn't read the comments. So I felt very protective of her, much more than I think I would have of myself with myself. I would have been like, fine, it's. You know, you can disagree with me, but, yeah, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't like it. Didn't like it.

All right. Josh writes columns purposely to try to get criticism. I'm curious what your favorite criticism is.

My favorite criticism. Well, can I. Can I just. Why don't you skip me? Go. Go to somebody else and I'll.

We'll come to you last.

We'll come to you.

Probably got a lot more opportunities to think through this. All right, Julie, let's go to you next.

Well, as I said, I've only written two columns, and I really didn't get a lot of criticism, thankfully. But I will say with the second column, I wrote about making a selective extravagance justifying spending a lot on something that's meaningful to you, which I actually felt like Jim's talk last year really helped me work through that because I have trouble spending large amounts on things as well. But I tried to preempt the criticism in that by having a little disclaimer in the first paragraph about. This is not an article about whether or not you should throw a wedding or a big family reunion or whatever it's about. If that's meaningful for you, how do you pay for that? And then how do you get into the mindset and justify that to yourself?

Very nice, Tony. Favorite or worst criticism?

Well, the only criticism I get generally is when I put things down that aren't smart, and then you come in and Say.

Some of the worst criticism that we get, it comes from Jim.

It is actually from Jim. And so it's mostly. Yeah, I'm not sure that that makes good sense or so, for example, if I gave my equities over to an assets under management company and said, okay, I want hands off for a while because I don't want to think about my accounts and I don't want to look at them for a long time. Jim made a good point that you don't have to pay 1.125% for that service, that you could get that service for less money if you feel you need the service, and that they ought to offer something more than just stock picking, since it doesn't work. And so. And so I was like, well, I am paying them a decent chunk for stock picking. And then over time now I've been convinced that I should give them the boot. And so that sometimes it's not criticism. It's kind of, you know, advice to really kind of come back to what, you know, what he was talking about during that keynote in the index funds. And so sometimes I kind of buck against the entire, you know, phenomenon, thinking that I'm Warren Buffett or something, and it mostly doesn't work out that well. So. And I also, I guess a couple of criticisms they come across. There'll be some. Some odd characters that come in there. You think they give themselves. They give themselves odd screen names. You know, their screen. You can always tell if it's going to be something odd because their screen name will be something or something. And. And then you're like, what is this guy talking about? And luckily they filter. They filter those. And if you. If you don't have something reasonable to say, this is probably part a lot of the reason I like the blog. If you come in there and are just doing foolishness, they'll tell you. Either Jim will tell you or somebody else will tell you, or that person's Screechy mcbeeches will disappear. And I'm like, good, let's get that out of here. You know, but so I'm not. I haven't got that much criticism. It's mostly been, are you sure this is what you want to do?

It's Scoochy McBoochie.

Yeah, that guy.

And I'm curious if Scooche McBoochie is here, because that would be hilarious.

And would they admit it?

I think not. Scoochy, where you at, buddy?

All right, Tyler. Worst or favorite criticism?

Most of my criticism comes from Josh that I'm too nice and don't garner enough criticism.

He is so nice.

Right.

I mean, just radiates it.

But I did wear it as a badge of honor that in the comments section, I did eventually get my first ad hominem attack comment deleted. And I've been seeing those for years. And so I felt like I arrived, got one of those. And that was in my column about disability and my experience going through filing a personal loan occupation, long term disability claim. And there was some sentiment in there. At some point someone said, why don't you just take opioids and go to work like the rest of us? Which was a fascinating observation. And it's scoochy. Yeah. But in that same column, this wasn't criticism, but the part that maybe like, hurt me the most in anything I wrote was there was this sort of like, celebration energy that I was disabled. And I know where that comes from. They weren't happy that I was hurt, but it was from Dennis mostly being like, dude, you won the long term disability lottery.

That's so sick.

You get paid and you don't have to do dentistry.

Oh, you did it.

That's the best. And that I think reveals the burnout and some of the problematic stuff going on in dentistry. That and what hurt me, like, I wasn't offended by it, but, like, my disability is real and it makes me emotional. Almost say that out loud. Like, I spent 60 minutes in the tub this morning at 7am in really hot water so I could like walk down here today, and it hurts. And the. This notion that that somehow is worth it was complicated to unpack because I am very grateful for that safety net of income that has allowed me to make this transition. And I would give it all back to be able to play and lean over and have tea time with my girls and not have it hurt.

Good thing he's sitting next to two psychiatrists.

He is.

Thank you. Well said, Tyler. Well said. All right, well, I guess I gotta share some criticism and I get a lot of criticism. So I just picked the most recent criticism. This is from last week. We had a couple of our columnists, none of the ones here on the podcast, talk about some of the side gigs, some of the interesting stuff they're doing out there, you know, medically related stuff. So we had one person who talked about how she's doing some medical legal work and sells a course to teach you how to do that. And we had Ricky Rossella came on and talks about how he takes a bunch of medical surveys. And then we had Dan Smith Come on and talk about this IV clinic thing he's doing to rehydrate people so they don't have to go to the er. Well, Reddit didn't like that I did that interview. They really didn't like it. So this guy who calls himself Giant Gaping Butthole puts a thread up on Reddit saying, what is WCI promoting? A snake oil salesman providing overpriced IV fluid replenishment. Okay, well number one, I mean, we didn't even get paid, right? It's just like I thought this was interesting. I thought you'd like to hear about it. Giant Gaping Butthole did not share that sentiment. And later in the thread, this guy who calls himself Reasonable Bluejay, I didn't think he was very reasonable at all. Says you're a sellout, a rich sellout, and I guess that's the point, but a sellout nonetheless. Classic leech. Go away now to your island and leave us alone. So it's fun living an online life, but you got to remember, as Taryn said this morning, it's not about you. It's not about you. I don't know what's going on in reasonable Blue jays life. He's an emergency doc. I looked up a couple of old posts. I'm like, who is this guy? He's an emergency doc. Came out of residency about the same time as me. And I'm like, boy, you really hate those night shifts. You got to get rid of those.

Yeah, to be fair, Jim got pretty nasty with him too, right? It was not a one way street. It went back and forth. It's weird because Giant Gaping Butthole usually is pretty calm and reserves surprising. Must really struck a chord. Can I tell microse you forget me again?

Oh, I forgot you didn't want to go.

I gave you a chance.

You asked to be asked.

I said come back to me.

All right, we're back. Let's let Josh do this.

Last year we do these annual surveys every year and just to say, hey, what do you like about White co investor? What do you want to see more of? What can we do to improve the product? So we sometimes get called out by name. I get called out by name saying I don't like Katzowitz's stuff. I think it's a waste. You know, his money, song of the week stuff sucks. All this, all this stuff. But last year somebody had said, if I have to read one more of his posts, I'm gonna stop reading the site. And I thought that was hilarious. It was so funny. Like this Person may have been here since 2011. And because I wrote a post he didn't like, he's like, forget it, I'm done. Done. White coat investor. I thought that was so funny.

That's power.

The ability to not just take what's useful and leave the rest among some people is pretty amazing, isn't it? All right, well, we've got about 26 minutes left, so let's do this. We're going to take some questions from the audience, see what happens. Okay, here's the rules again. You got to specify who you want the question to go to. We're not going to have all six people answer your questions and I can't be one of the people you specify. All right, I'll chime in occasionally, maybe, but all right. So you can ask any question you want and we'll take it. And this is being streamed to the Internet. All the people out there in virtual land, thank you for coming, by the way. We hope you can make it in person next year. But let's take a question. So all you gotta do is raise your hand. I'll throw this to you. It's pretty soft, I promise. So if you don't catch it, it won't kill the person next to you. But, you know, don't let it break your glasses or something. Who's got a question they want to ask to some of the columnists? Let's start right here.

Oh, geez, you almost didn't off the ceiling out that time.

Thanks for taking my question.

This is for Tyler.

You're a young person.

I think you look like the youngest.

On the panel, so that's great. Seriously, there's lots of young millennials.

He's got gray in his beard, man. Turning on that gray. So we don't talk much here about crypto and other things like that, but I'm interested for you.

What percentage of the portfolio do you.

Think should be allocated to? Bronze, specifically.

Bronze? Yes. So I'm a boring investor. Personally. I've got a three fund portfolio and target date funds where I can. But I advise other young people that ask me and I'm just so young. So thank you for.

That.

I think 5% of a portfolio can be allocated to alternative investments in this way. So whether that's crypto or commodities specific precious metal that makes you happy, that's appropriate. It's not gonna completely derail your long term goals if that does go to zero. And then the other agreement I try to make with my clients is like, okay, if you're gonna go all in on dogecoin. Cause that's just your.

Sure.

Then let's do that with 5%. And if it hits and if it turns into 15% of your portfolio, let's agree to sell back to the 5% position, put those gains to work so they can be realized and actualized in your plan, and then you can keep that 5% for kicks and giggles.

All right, who remembers bronze funds? Raise your hand if you remember bronze funds. Very few people. This is an Inside joke from 2021, where our moderator, our host, didn't really have a lot of financial training and that question came in and she thought there were. She was supposed to ask one of our. I think it was Alan Roth was the financial advisor. What do you think about bronze funds? And it's supposed to be bond funds, right? So the whole conference just took it and ran with it. Well, from this year, everyone's going to remember, you know, the metal falling from the ceiling. But, you know, that year everybody remembered bronze funds, so. All right, raise your hand if you've got a question and we'll throw the. We'll throw the box to you. So keep your heads up so we don't hit anybody in the head. WCI Podcaster Listener since the last year and a half. And I knew that you started in 2011, which is the most change in your position since 2011 through 2024. Now, are you asking this to the columnist or me? Because the rules are you gotta ask.

Any one of you.

All right, so we're gonna talk about changes, changes in your positions over time. Who's had the biggest change or what's one change you've had in your. In your position over time.

I bought my 2020 Honda Odyssey van with cash.

You want to keep writing combs?

I can try to answer that. So in the last, I would say seven, eight years, we've gone from having, I would call him, a financial manager who charges assets under management to doing entirely our own investments, from having just generic managed mutual funds to only index funds. We sold a house, so we're. Instead of having two mortgages, we have one. I think those are the three biggest changes. But those are some pretty big changes. That's what my family has done in the last seven, eight years.

Yeah. The most recent portfolio change I had is I dropped, you know, some certain index funds like VBR and viov. Instead of getting my small value tilt with that, I recently changed to the Avantis Small Value etf. There's a couple of columns on it this year that you may have seen that that was a pretty significant change. My portfolio doesn't change very much, but that was pretty significant change this year. All right, raise your hand if you got a question. We'll throw the catch box to you. We got somebody back there that might take two throws, depending on how good your arm is, but throw it back. Heads up, everybody. Between these two. Oh, you made it about the bounce. Very nice.

Nice job.

Very nice.

Very nice throw. So this question is for Auntie Marge. And I went to your talk the other day about contracts, and I wanted.

To hear a little more about the.

Indemnity clauses, and if it has the words hold harmless. Can you kind of summarize again why that's.

Why that's very bad and why we should avoid that?

Because I think a lot of people.

Don'T know about that, and I wanted.

To get a little more info.

Yeah. Thank you. So if I were to go full anti Marge, I would have to work myself up into, like, a rage. And in my head, she has a Scottish accent, but I won't do that. Maybe I should have said that part. So hold harmless or indemnity clauses are this clause that can get snuck into contracts. Many people have them and don't realize them. You need to know about them. Indemnity clause means that you accept liability from all other parties in case there's a lawsuit. You accept liability from other parties onto yourself. So if you and your hospital get sued for malpractice, the hospital can sign a settlement, and then you have to pay their settlement as well as their legal fees, and your malpractice insurance will not cover you. So several organizations, the American College of Emergency Physicians, has come up with a blanket statement saying physicians should never sign indemnity clauses. And I don't know how many of us know that these even exist. But if you're not sure, you should go check your contract and see if it's in there, because it's like a ticking time bomb. Because we all know we can get sued for trivial reasons, and it can really be ruinous, rare, but it does happen.

Very nice. All right, let's take a question from the online folks. Thanks for being there, by the way. I know we can't quite get the box to you, but we'll take your question anyway. And this will be a lightning round question, so we'll go all the way across the panel. We just want to hear what your favorite money or investing app or software is. Name one or two.

I am still mourning the loss of Mint, as maybe many of you Are. That was my longest relationship and now it's gone. I've been really pleased as I've switched tracking my spending to Monarch. Monarch Money has been a good app. I'm only three or four months in, but I was able to bring my old mint history with me. It has a great platform for tracking my net worth, organizing my transactions. So far, I've been really happy with Monarch.

Okay. Let me remind you how a lightning round works. You don't get to plug your affiliate deals here or anything rapid fire favorite one or two apps or software.

So I used to use something called personalcapital.com now it's called empower.com and I have all my investments there, and I can keep track of things that way. And so that's the main way I keep track of my investments and net worth. And I use something called Rocket Money to make sure I don't have subscriptions lying around that I forgot about. And it also tracks all of your expenses. And I like those two.

We also have used Personal Capital slash Empower for many years. We have a shared account with a shared password. That's where we are in the relationship at this point.

But big stuff.

Big stuff.

But no, I like it because you can visualize all your spending, your income, your investment, and I track our credit card transactions. Just look them over and it's all in one place.

Yeah, I mean, I would go say the same Empower. And I was not necessarily. Before I became more financially literate, I was not a person who was. Julie was the one who was taking care of our finances. And thanks to, we don't have a affiliate deal with Empower, do we? I don't think we do. Okay. Thanks to Empower, I'm able to track the credit cards. So it's not. Now, it used to be, Josh, what is this $50 charge? Why you spend $160 on this? Now I can be like, julie, why'd you spend $400 on this? So it's been nice to track credit cards and, you know, our investments and stuff. So, yeah, definitely. Empower.

Okay. Your job now is to go to Empower and get an affiliate deal. So we monetize what you just said. All right, Margaret.

We also use Empower. Although I'd like to hear your experience. Maybe you talk later. Because I feel like it is not as good since it switched from Personal Capital to Empower. I feel like there's glitches in it now. So I still use an Excel spreadsheet. And the other thing, we just started using Is we started using a password manager because we realized between my husband and I and different accounts and trying to keep track of passwords that you have to change so often, and we were just wasting our time. So we now finally got a password manager so we can share passwords and they get updated in real time.

But haven't all password managers been hacked at some point or another?

Like, but hasn't every. I mean, banks can get hacked. It's all out there now.

It's all out there, right?

It's all out there. I mean, you might. What's that? We used first password. Oh, sorry. One password. Number one password.

That's my password.

Also. They do not monetize. I don't have a deal with them. I would be open to one, but I don't have one. That was. I just did, like, a Consumer Reports best password manager. There's risk in all of these. I mean, there's risk in having online banking, but what are you going to do? You're going to have gold bullion under your pillow, Josh? Is that what you do?

Don't tempt him. He might. He'll write a column about it. The store in the back of the Tesla. So Microsoft Excel LastPass. I just feel like if you don't know how to use a spreadsheet, you have no business managing your own money. I mean, the basic spreadsheet functions you really need to learn how to use or you need to go hire a financial advisor because it's just critical to the process of running your portfolio. All right, let's do another crowd question. Let's get the box moving. Raise your hand if you got a question.

Yeah, it's wonderful.

Questions here.

There we go. We got one there. That was easy. Okay, Josh, question for you. It isn't financial. I'm a music lover. How do you go through the process.

Of coming up with a song for the blog? Is that one minute before you write it? Is it during the time of writing it?

Is it two weeks before?

No.

So for those who don't know, in a lot of my columns, I have the main column, the main focus of the column. And then just because I think it's fun, I do a Money Song of the week, which is like finding a song that talks about money or finance or wellness or whatever, and then put a little YouTube embed in there. I think it's fun. The Money Song of the week mostly is music that I like. And it depends if something's happened in the news. Like when Tina Turner died, I was like, well, I Should I should do the money song of the week on Tina Turner. And I found, I found a Tina, a Tina Turner song that, that where she was talking about. I think it was called Money Inc. Or Money Something. Sometimes when I go to a lot of shows, go to concerts. So if I go see a band and they have find a money song, I'll do that. But it's. And then, but because I'm mostly like a punk metal rock kind of guy, I feel like I need to expand for that. So I'll do, I'll throw some hip hop in there, some country. Yeah, it's just kind of a. Whatever. It just suits me in the moment.

And yeah, but he's a secret Swifty and he did put a Taylor Swift song in there the week that I.

Bought Taylor Swift tickets that says.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I'm not secret swifty yet.

He's out.

All right, raise your hand if you got a question. Let's get the box moving, see if we can make a big throw this time. Who can you find that's the furthest away from you?

Uh, oh.

Tim Tebow, is that you? Okay, so I'm approaching retirement and my question is to Tony and possibly Tyler. What if any adjustment to your asset allocation should you make to account for sequence of return risk?

You're closer than I am.

That's an actual financial question. I mean I think that some people are going to think it's strange, but I like to keep over a year's worth of money available, even two years worth of money available because I'm still doing part time work so I'm still getting some income. If it disappeared and the stock market say had a huge drop like it has, you know what, every three years or every four years or something, then I don't have to sell anything and I don't have to go look for another job if I am tooling back even further. So I, I have more cash. That's how come I could buy that car, man. I have more cash sitting there because I'm currently being paid 5% on the cash. So it works great right now to have, you know, a lot of money available in case, I don't know, something goes wrong, so to speak. So that, that's a difference. You Normally people have like 2, 3, 4 something even 1%, almost no money in cash. All their money's working. But now I think probably if you ask people they've got some money in cash because they're getting five and a half percent on CDs and they're getting 5% in high yield savings and or 4.75%. So I have more money in cash right now as I've gone into the semi retired mode, because I'm always worried something could go wrong and I could, I mean, I could lose the income and then I don't really want to go find another one at that point, probably because I'm so close to finishing up.

Yeah. What Tony's referring to is there's the buckets strategy, which Christine Benz has talked about, and Jim's written a really good piece that you can set a certain amount of cash aside, a year or two years, whatever helps you sleep at night, and then you've got a different bucket for the sort of interim period and then you've got your third bucket, mostly in equities, so that you've got longevity. And that is functional. The simplified, the easy button there is to adjust your asset allocation. And other people smarter than both of us have thought about this. And that's where the glide path on a Target Date fund comes from.

Right.

So it's not hard for me. I can look at the 2050 Target Date Fund. That's about the year I turned 65. And I can follow Vanguard's thoughts about what a rational balance and how that equity to bond ratio should shift as I age so I don't have to be smarter than they are. And I'm really grateful for that.

All right, let's take a question from the online audience. This one's about divorce. Really? They said there's so much push for one spouse, one house, one spouse. You've all heard it before. Sometimes it just doesn't work out, though. What's your best advice for financially working through a divorce? And since you guys just answered, let's have you two give your answers to this. Margaret, best financial advice for someone going through a divorce. And then, Josh, you'll be next.

Julie can answer.

Thankfully, I have not been through a divorce. I certainly have friends who have. I would say the advice I've given them is, first of all, take care of yourself and your kids first. Take care of the emotional stuff. The money stuff is that's really secondary. Don't get bogged down in fighting over every little thing. It's not worth it. You want to get out and get on the other side and start over again. And don't get so caught up in one asset like I gotta have the house and that. You just lose sight of everything else in the process. I guess that's my advice. But, yeah, thankfully, haven't been through it.

Well, I'll talk, I guess, more from a professional perspective. I've also not had a divorce, but I've had a lot of patients that have gone through divorces and some friends as well. And it's an extremely stressful experience and can be very traumatic if it gets contentious. But I will say, I think getting some. Some support for yourself and for your kids and also knowing, I think, within the relationship, is it salvageable or not? You know, would. Would counseling or therapy help the situation? Obviously, if there's abuse or other addiction or other things going on, can that person get treatment? Is it possible to work through this, or is it better to cut ties at this point and move forward with your life, even if it's financially difficult in the short term, at least from patients I've talked to and friends in the long term, they're often happier when they're out of that situation.

And can I just add one thing on that? I just want to validate that divorce is not always a tragic thing. My mom has been married four times in my lifetime, my dad three times, and I am such a beneficiary of those divorces. I'm an only child. I have no siblings. And there can be a narrative sometimes that it is going to lead to familial catastrophe. And I am so much better off for having been raised, even though in split households where there isn't contention and anger and dissension. And so I just want to validate that. As I'm approaching 40, about 53% of my friends are divorced. And anyway, it's okay. And financially, this doesn't help with that question, but we always recommend people consider a prenup before marriage. We talk about how getting married without a prenup would be like practicing medicine without malpractice insurance. You never expect something to go wrong, but you're sure glad you have that if it happens. So the questionnaire has my empathy and my support.

One of the biggest surprises I've had about divorce is I always thought, oh, you cut your assets in half, you cut your income in half. This is going to be catastrophic for you. I'm surprised how many people I've run into who are like, this is great. Yeah, I lost half my assets. Yeah, I lost half my income, but I threw out 90% of the spending. And so it's not always bad financially. You now have 100% of the control of the finances going forward, and you can make the changes it takes to still be financially successful.

All right, one of the most controversial posts columns that we've run in the last couple years was from a columnist, Joy Eberhard, the master, who wrote I got divorced to save money on taxes. So it goes both ways.

Yeah, we certainly got a lot of criticism on that one. All right, we got the catch box here. Let's have a question from the catch box.

Hi there. My question is for Josh, as someone who can offer a fresh and different perspective coming from your career, as someone who's a non medical professional, what do you see as the blind spots for physicians when it comes to finance?

I think it's. For me it was, it can be similar to what I was going through was that you don't know what you don't know. Like I said before, Julie was the one who kind of was the one who was in charge of our finances. And I really, I didn't get serious about it until 2000. It was like a New Year's resolution for 2020 that I was like, I really need to like figure out what the hell's going on like with our. Not, not with our finances, but just in general. So I could at least support Julian. We can have rational conversations about what we're doing. So it was a matter of not knowing what I don't know, but then it was a matter of where do I find the information? And she actually turned me onto the White Coat Investor. I didn't know about the White Coat Investor until she had been following it for the last several years and then she told me about it and then I ended up getting a job here and then I gave her a job. So it all worked out great. But I had to put a lot of research and time and listening to podcasts and reading books and we, we had always, we had watched Susie Orman for, for many years when, when she was a resident. So there was a little bit of that background. But I guess, I guess it's, it's being. I know doctors, a lot of doctors are type A types and there's so much knowledge they have in their, with their lives. But I guess it's being, maybe being humble too about what you don't know and really taking the time to learn what you don't know and always keep learning. I mean, I'm lucky that my job that I get to learn about finance every single day. I'm forced to read his stuff, which most of the time is pretty good. So I have to constantly to learn. And so obviously most people are not going to be doing it for eight hours a day or Six hours a day or whatever it is. But just to keep, to have that mindset of I need to keep learning because there's always more stuff to learn.

All right, let's toss the box. Who's got a question? Let's try to go down there. Can we get it there? It's going to stand up for this.

This is a good toss.

Oh, that was perfect.

Another connection.

The athleticism in this group is crazy.

Thank you.

So, Jim, you have had Ramit Sethi on your show and he talks about my rich life. And I just wanted to know we all start off as living like residents and then we go down this rabbit hole where, you know, we think about every single dollar, where it's going. So how do you transition from living like a resident to now working on living your rich life? And I wanted to see if every one of the panelists can give us an example of what they now consider the rich life as going from starting off on the white coat investor through the years and what that done to your daily life.

Thank you. So talking a little bit about a splurge maybe. What, what you don't worry about the money you spend on anymore? Maybe. Tyler, you want to start?

Yeah. Travel for us to, to we set aside in our Future expense bucket $25,000 a year for travel, which is just a number that was, would be incomprehensible to me 15 years ago. And you know, this year we're going to Iceland for 10 days and Hawaii with the kids and we're here and we're going to Lake Powell. And the fact that I can travel in the way I want, I just feel so, so rich. It's tremendous.

Well, I could say before I really learned a lot more about investing, I just took my money and threw it in the 401k and put it in some mutual funds. And I didn't have side gig and I didn't have the knowledge that I needed to take advantage of all the tax advantage accounts. And since I changed my way of being with regard to that, got the side gig, flooded all those accounts, I, I mean, I, I think that you get to a point where you could actually, even if your portfolio made nothing, you can divide it by say 25 and it, you can live on that money. That's before Social Security and that happens for most doctors and probably most of the WCI audience somewhere in there between 50 and 60 or years old. So. And now like Tyler said, we spend our most extravagant spending is on travel. And so to me, the rich life is not Having to worry about money. If you have a year or two of expenses in a bucket, it's not going to be very worrisome. And if you can travel wherever you want to go, and then it just becomes trying to stay healthy enough to be able to do the things that you have on the bucket list, which is. They brought that up many times during all these presentations. Don't put it off. Don't put it off until you're 70 or 80. Do it as soon as you can reasonably so that you don't end up missing out on a lot of your bucket list.

So, yeah, all right, let's stop that one here so we can make sure we get to another one. You know, one of my big splurges now, my daughter gives me a hard time because I now have a diesel truck, which I really enjoy, by the way. And diesel costs a buck more than gasoline, right? So every time she's like, ha, ha, dad, my gas is cheaper because she has an allowance now, has to buy her own gas. And I don't care. I don't care. All right, let's toss the box.

Hi, I'm Jonaqui. This week so far, the wellness portions have been super important. So this is to my psychiatrist and anybody who's willing to be vulnerable on the panel, I think maybe just making it transparent and saying it outright that physicians in therapy, going to a psychiatrist, how important that is, and that actually is not negatively impacting us. I go to therapy, it changed my life, and it actually made me able to deal with my finances because I think financial trauma is real. And so if we're going to talk about wellness, I think instead of having it taboo and saying, let's meditate and do these things. A lot of these things come down to, are you seeing a therapist? Are you seeing a psychiatrist? Are you really doing the work in order to be there for your families and deal with your finances? So this is to anybody on the panel who is working willing to speak openly about that.

Julie, I think it's your field of expertise. Any comments on therapy for doctors?

I feel like I've seen a shift and hopefully Tony agrees. Since I graduated from residency in 2010, 2011, that I do feel like that's more talked about and more accepted. I feel like some of the stigma has decreased at least, and I know a lot of friends and colleagues that do talk about being in therapy. The benefits of therapy and therapy does not have to be lifelong or long term. You can go to therapy for a defined period of time, and you Know, once you meet your therapy goals or have the coping skills that you need, you can terminate successfully and use those things going forward. I think beyond therapy, too, all the other wellness things are really important. You know, exercise, sleep, nutrition. I mean, really, those are the foundation social engagement for health and wellness.

Tony, anything to add to that?

Well, when my wife and I were not yet married, we were planning the marriage, and we were dragging our feet a bit and not getting things done towards the marriage. And the ceremony was coming up sooner than it seemed. And I asked her, I said, maybe we should go to some type of premarital counseling, go and talk to someone about why we're dragging our feet a little bit. And we did, and we went. And it was an ACSW who was trained classically in therapy. And we saw her part of it because she had the best rate, you know, those doctors. So we paid her fee. And I came to where I was thinking, if you don't go into the therapy, come back out with some questions and some homework and maybe even a few tears, then you're not getting your dollars worth. And so we went for about 20 sessions, and we stopped dragging our feet and got married. And we've been married 30 some years. So I think it's a good.

Yeah, congratulations. I think there's actually a lot of docs in therapy, so we don't have to report it to the medical board or the hospital credentialing committee. We call it coaching. A lot of us get in coaching. A lot of us get in therapy. And there's a lot of overlap in all of that. In fact, when you talk to financial advisors, a lot of them will tell you, you know, 50% of what I'm doing is couples therapy, you know, because it really is. It's just getting them all on the same page. All right, can I really quick.

There are resources out there. Like, my county medical society offers free therapy by vetted therapists. They have like five or six on their panel. And it's free and confidential. It's all funded by donations by the physician, by the state medical, State medical association and the county medical association. So those kind of resources may be out there and they may be available. Very confidential and at no cost as well.

Very helpful. All right, well, let's give the columnist a big round of applause. All right, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, SOFI is helping medical professionals like U.S. bank, borrow and invest to achieve financial wellness. Whether you're a resident or close to retirement, SOFI offers medical professionals exclusive rates and services to help you get your money right. Visit their dedicated page to see all that SoFi has to offer at whitecoatinvestor.com SoFi one more time. That's whitecoatinvestor.com sofi loans originated by SoFi Bank NA NMLS 696891 Advisory Services by SoFi Wealth, LLC. The brokerage product is offered by SoFi Securities, LLC. Member Finra SIPC. Investing comes with risk, including risk of loss. Additional terms and conditions may apply.

The hosts of the White Coat Investor are not licensed accountants, attorneys, or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.