WCI #62: An Interview with Vagabond MD

This is the White Coat Investor podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011. Here's your host, Dr. Jim Dahli. Welcome to Podcast 62, an interview with Vagabond, Maryland.

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Our quote of the day today comes from Maya Angelou who said, you can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you. Before we get into our interview today, things that I want to mention to you. We've just started a new Facebook Group. Now everybody learns differently. You probably prefer podcasts, for instance, in learning financial information while other people like blogs or perhaps emailed newsletters or maybe even videocasts. But for those who like Facebook and like Facebook groups, we've started a new group called White Coat Investors and it's great for those who enjoy this sort of a medium on social media. It's a private group so you can actually talk about, you know, your personal questions as well as ask for recommendations and feel comfortable giving your true opinion about a particular financial professional, for instance, because it's not available on the search engines and it's just available to those who are members of the group. So check that out today. If you're into Facebook, White Coat Investors is the name of the group you do have to apply. You don't have to be a doctor, but you do have to be a high income professional and you can't be a financial professional. So check that out today. Now let's get into our interview. All right, today on the White Coat Investor Podcast we have a special guest, Robert, also known as Vagabond, Maryland, from the White Coat Investor Forum as well as numerous social media places and on the blog comments is with us here today. Welcome to the podcast, Robert.

Thank you very much, Jim. I'm very happy and honored to be here.

Now this is an honor to have him here. He's one of the most prolific members of the White Coat Investor forum. And the way he ended up on the podcast was actually a number of foreign members wanted him here. They asked me to go out and get him on the podcast because they wanted to learn more about him and more about some of what he has to say to physicians out there looking for financial advice and looking to secure their financial future.

First, I want to address why I was asked to be on the podcast. And I think it's a cruel joke. I'm not sure if it's on you or on me. And maybe by the end of this we'll figure that out. But that said, I recently had the opportunity to read your upbringing, your origin story. And as I was reading and I was think that this, you know, your story is, has nothing in common with mine. And then maybe think a little more that, you know, most docs do really have a unique story and how they got to where they are. There are some common threads and paths, obviously, but I grew up in the Northeast. My father was an orthodontist. We lived in an upper middle class neighborhood and I went to a private school for high school. And this is where my story's a little different than many. Directly from high school. I was accepted into medical school in a six year BSMD program at the University of Miami. So I know I was reading your story, taking the MCATs. Maybe there's some stress with that. We actually had to take the MCATs, but it was purely a record keeping exercise. I couldn't tell you what my score was. I don't remember what the sections were. There was absolutely no preparation involved. We had to maintain a grade point average over two years of college. We do some summer courses to make up for, you know, to accumulate the credits required. But then we went to medical school. So I started medical school. I think I just turned 20 when I started medical school with a bunch of other people in my program. Now I had a, at that point, your regular four year medical student. But then I did something else a little bit different. I knew I wanted to be in academics or I thought I did at that time. And after my third year of medical school, after a buddy of mine had done this the year before, I applied for a research fellowship through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the nih. So I ended up taking two years. It was a one year program, but I opted for a second year. So I ended up taking two years out during medical school to do bench research at the nih. And then I came back to medical school and I graduated with a class full of people I really didn't know anybody out of because all of my friends from the first three years had all moved on to residencies. So that's sort of how I became a doctor.

What do you think about that approach? I mean, you basically took two years of undergraduate and swapped them for a couple of years at the nih. Do you think in retrospect that that was a great way to train a doctor or do you think that was perhaps had some disadvantages compared to the traditional pathway?

Well, that wasn't the plan from the outset. The plan was to be in a six year BSMD program and I think there are advant and some of them are financial. In fact, all of us were given a half tuition scholarship at the University of Miami at the time. If I mention how much that's worth, people will chuckle because it's such a low number. But at the time it's what half of private university tuition was. And you also are eliminating two years of college and the expenses that go with that. So that is somewhat advantageous. That said, over the years, colleagues and friends whose kids have been interested in going to medicine and have asked my opinion of that pathway and I personally don't like it. I started with 17 people in my class at the University of Miami as a first year college student and by the end of six years I think eight had completed medical school on time. A couple never even made it to medical school. A couple had problems in medical school. I just don't think it's an optimal pathway. I think there's a lot of growth and maturation and rounding that occurs in college. And to be honest, the kind of person that gets accepted into this program probably needs the maturation and well, roundedness that you get at college more than maybe the average student. So I'm not a huge fan of it. There is a very big program in the state where I live right now and a lot of my colleagues are products of a six year BSMD program and they continue to attract students to that. The University of Miami program changed to, I believe it's an eight year program where you get the commitment to get into the medical school from high school, but I think you have to go through maybe a couple more hoops.

What's the advantage to the medical school to offer an acceptance to a 17.

Year old I think it's perhaps more of an advantage to the college. I think you're going to be creating spots for students with higher SA2 scores than what we're typically coming. And it also draws people to their honors program in general. So a lot of people would apply to the 6 year BSMD program, not get in and be offered a spot in the honors program, which came with the same scholarship, et cetera. So it drew some positive attention to the university.

Yeah, I know at 17, I certainly wasn't ready to make that sort of a commitment. So I suppose for those that are, and there certainly are people that have wanted to be a doctor their entire life, I guess it would work out well. But it's certainly a different pathway than most people are taking. Do you have any idea how many programs like that there are in the country?

I don't know. I think they've gone away from them in general. I know we have one in my home state currently that's a six year program. When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, there was a program affiliated with Penn State that was a five year program. Could you believe that? Five years college and med school. Although I guess in other countries that's sort of how it's done. So maybe it's not that unusual. There may be a handful left. I really haven't kept up with it, to be honest.

Yeah. Something to be said for not finishing your training at 35 or 40 though, you know.

Yeah, no, I agree for sure.

So after medical school, what happened then?

After medical school, I matched at a top radiology program in the Midwest and I really intended to become an academic neuroradiologist. My research at the NIH was in neurosciences. I actually worked with a Nobel laureate. I published a bunch of papers. I really enjoyed it a lot. I didn't want to do bench research. I knew that. But I did like the academic environment and I really thought I was going to become an academic neuroradiologist. But it turned out at the time, you know, a lot of decisions are made and you don't realize that, I think based on, you know, finding mentors and identifying with people who are maybe where you want to be or how you would like to be. And to be honest, when I was a resident, the really cool attendings in radiology were the eventual radiology attendings. And those guys were. I mean, everybody in the hospital relied on them and great reputations and they were big personalities and I was really drawn to that. And the neuroradiology attendings didn't have the same charisma, and they weren't perhaps as strong mentors. So I was drawn away from neuroradiology and towards intervention radiology. So I stayed on and did my fifth year, which was an interventional radiology fellowship. Unfortunately, at the time, even though I wanted to be an academic, it was very tight job market. It was the mid-90s. Radiology seems to have a very cyclical job market with big ups and downswings. And at the time, there was really nothing in town for me in academia along the way. When I was a third year resident, I met my wife. She wasn't my wife when I met her, obviously, but I met my wife and. And we had our courtship and we got married towards the end of my fellowship and she had a pretty solid job in the town we live in and her parents were here. So we decided we wanted to stay here. We broke all the rules and we bought a house when I was a fellow and I broke a lot more house rules. Maybe we'll get to that a little later. But. So I was offered a job in a community hospital with a great reputation to be their second interventional radiologist. And I took it. And for most of the last 22 years, that's where I've been.

What did your father, the orthodontist, think about your career as an interventional radiologist?

Well, I'm glad you asked, actually, because I wanted to be an orthodontist and he steered me away from it. We had a lot of family friends growing up that were physicians, and I think he always looked up to them as really the people with gravitas and people with respect. And I think he always felt he may have played second fiddle to them in some way. I never thought of it that way, but he always steered me away from orthodontics and dentistry and towards medicine. And again, along the way, I did pick up some physician mentors that were family friends, and I think they also courted me in that direction.

That's interesting, because every time I talk to doctors, they're like, I should have been an orthodontist. Every time I talk to a physician, that's what they say. So it's interesting to hear that maybe it goes the other way too, a little bit.

It actually does. And we've had the conversation since. And I think he has a little bit of regret that I didn't do orthodontics. We could have practiced together with a lot of possible things that could have happened, but, you know, it doesn't matter. We went the way you know, I went my way and I did fine. And, you know, no regrets about the way things turned out.

Yeah, I'm sure he's very proud. Let's change a little bit. I mean, this is a financial podcast. We're supposed to talk about financial stuff. Let's talk a little bit about your financial life and where you're at with your financial life. You mentioned there'd been some housing mistakes, maybe where you didn't follow the rules. Let's talk about some of the mistakes you've made, some of the successes you've had and, and where that brings you to now 22 years out of residency.

Okay. Well, I should say that, and I've heard this expression first on the forum, that I was born on third base because I didn't have to pay for my education. It was all paid for by my, by my family. And in fact, at the end of that NIH fellowship, I competed for and won a scholarship. So I ended up graduating from medical school with maybe 10 or $15,000 in my pocket, which was, even then, not the rule. I think back in the day when I was in medical school, there were a lot of my fellow students who had their families paying for their medical school, at least a bigger part of it. I think that's not as realistic today as it was 25 or so years ago. So I came into residency with a surplus. I really didn't save a whole lot of money as a resident. I did a little bit of investing in mutual funds. There was a core group of people that would talk about it a fair amount. I remember, you know, just random attendings and residents. We'd be talking about Morningstar and Vanguard Wellesley. For some reason, that was like a favorite. I don't know why. It was probably not the right choice for most of us, but there was some conversation and I did gravitate toward those conversations. But I didn't really start to study the financial aspect of being a doctor until I finished residency. I would say the two biggest financial mistakes that I made were, and the first one is very embarrassing. I probably told this story on the forum or elsewhere, but at the end of residency, my car was kind of given out, but it was a five year old Saturn. And to be honest, I really didn't want it anymore. So I was looking for an excuse. And now I just signed a contract and I was excited about it. I was going to get a new car and I was going to get a BMW and I was really going to go all out. And I ended up looking at Cars and decided, you know, I don't like the BMW as much. I think I'll get a Volvo, which is a little bit of an unusual choice too, for a guy in his early 30s, but, you know, whatever. So I bought this red Volvo turbo. It was super fast, super slick. And I had the car delivered to me before I received my first paycheck. So obviously I was financing it. Really a stupid thing to do. I would have never done that today. But again, I think sometimes you make mistakes and you learn from them. I think a lot of it is perhaps learning from the mistakes, not. Not making them again. I have a colleague who once said, you know what? You don't have to keep hitting your head against the wall to realize you don't like hitting your head against the wall. And I think there is some crude wisdom in that. So that was probably the one embarrassing financial mistake. And I remember, like the first year or two going to the group meetings and we'd have go to a restaurant afterwards and leaving the restaurant, and I had the nicest car of the. Of the practice for a while, which was very embarrassing for me because I was in a practice with radiologists that have been in practice for 10 or 20 or 30 years, and they're driving Buicks, and I'm driving this fancy European car. I was, you know, very embarrassed for a period of time.

That's interesting that you felt embarrassed. What was your mindset that you were embarrassed by that? Tell us a little bit about that.

I thought it was showy, and I don't know what I was really trying to accomplish with getting a fancy European car at that point. It turns out that was the most expensive car that I've ever purchased. And it was just silly. And I don't know. I think a lot of it is the. We talk about it all the time, you've talked about it extensively, is sort of the delayed gratification. And I think when you come out of residency and training or fellowship, whenever you come out, you, to some extent, you feel like a coiled spring. You've built up all this want, I want this, I want that. And you're just ready to explode. And I think you really have to temper that, particularly if you're coming out with, you know, now kids are coming out with hundreds of thousand dollars worth of debt. I think it's even more critical to get things right early on. I had, you know, I had a reasonable cushion. I didn't have any debt other than a. A reasonable mortgage at that time. And it didn't sink me but if I kept making mistakes like that, it certainly could have.

Yeah, for sure. It's almost more so the pattern and the mindset than it is the actual purchase. Especially when it's something like a car, you know, a set of nice skis or something like that, you can actually probably afford that. But it's the mindset you fall into that you end up, you know, the next thing is the house that costs too much and the kids in the private schools you can't afford and all that kind of stuff. And some people just never recover. I'm amazed how many emails I get from doctors making $200,000 a year or more that are living literally hand to mouth. They just can't wait for the next paycheck to come in. And I'm always surprised by that, but I guess I shouldn't be.

After a while, right after I bought the car, I read two books. I finished around the time the Millionaire Next Door came out. And that's obviously a personal finance classic. And I probably heard a radio show about it, bought the book, and I probably read it in like one night or two nights. It really was a page turner for me, really made me feel stupid about the car. I remember there was like a Dr. North, Dr. South comparison and I was the bad doctor, whichever that was. And the other book was a very fundamental book and a classic at the time. I don't think it's. I know it's been updated, but I don't think it's mentioned as the must reads. But it was Jane Bryant Quinn's Making the most of your Money. I think that's the title of it. Do you know that book, Jim?

I haven't read that one, but I have seen it and I agree it probably qualifies as a classic. I've seen a lot of people mention it over the years. Not recently, but years ago. It was pretty commonly recommended.

It's not the page turner that the Millionaire Next Door was, but it had a lot of wisdom and it was pretty, you know, it was probably a lot, in a lot of ways, a lot like the White Coat Investor book, but just tailored to everybody. It covered everything, was very comprehensive.

So you read through those books and then how did that change things?

Well, I think it made me realize that, you know, if I keep up the behavior with the car and those sorts of things, that we're going to be in trouble. And then the next series of, I don't know if I would consider them financial mistakes. They certainly didn't hurt me, but they could have I was at my job for two years and I had this itch to move away. And we were recruited to a job on the west coast in the Northwest. And I took the job and I was very excited. I'd always wanted to live in the Northwest. And we sold our house in one day. And then we, at the same time we bought a house there, renovated and moved in. And I remember my first day of work, it was probably around the 9th or 10th of July. I came back and I told my wife, who was just starting her own job search, that I don't think this is going to work out. And at the two month point I gave notice and I needed three months notice. So I was gone before Christmas. I started in July, I was gone before Christmas and they were not able to fill my job in the Midwest. So I was able to come right back to my job. So we had to sell the house in the Northwest that we had just done some improvements. And we ended up also starting the adoption process which required us, essentially didn't require us, but it kind of pushed us to buy a house. So in a period of about nine months, I owned three different houses. I didn't own them all at one time, and there may have been a little bit of overlap, but it turns out that we got very lucky. We sold our house quickly in the Midwest. We bought a nice house in a nice area. At that time, Microsoft money was awash in the Northwest and our house was gobbled up and we ended up probably turning a small profit on it in the Northwest. And then we bought a house here that we've lived in ever since. So I think there was a little bit of instability there. You know, moving to a new job, buying a house, obviously a big no, no, I would certainly not recommend doing that. I wouldn't do it again. I know that was part of the recruitment process at the time. I don't know if that's still the case with Dr. Recruitment, but places where I looked at jobs elsewhere, there was often at least a drive around with a real estate agent. So I think it was part of the recruitment process. I think they try to get you to maybe envision what your ideal life could be when you joined a practice. Just guessing that could have been a financial disaster. It ended up turning out all right, but you know, again, not, you know, it's something I would not recommend doing or would not do it again that way if I had to.

Certainly something that a lot of doctors have been caught in there. So since then you've been in one House. That sounds like it's probably worked out well for you financially.

Yeah, that's been fine. We. I'm starting to hate my house. Some of this conversation has recently spilled into the forum because I. I'm not very handy with doing things and I feel like I'm always playing whack a mole with whatever thing happens to come up du jour. We had the plumber here fixing two things yesterday, and I asked my wife, who met with him if he could also take care of the ants in the bathroom and maybe throw some grass down in the backyard. We just happen to have a live worker in the house to do stuff, and I was hoping to get everything done, but I think that's one of the things that I think as a young person coming out of training, you feel the pressure to buy a house, establish roots. Home ownership is a marathon. It's a long slog, and I wouldn't rush into it. You know, as a young person, you'll have plenty of time to live in that house. You'll get to fix and paint every room, replace every appliance, maybe a couple round trips. I've already done two round trips on two air conditioners and two furnaces since we lived here. It's just there's always something to do. We have an older house that was built in 1934, and it's a great neighborhood, great school district, all that stuff. But it's just a lot of work. And I feel like it's. At some days I feel like I'm carrying the weight of my house on me. And it's, it's, it's. It can be a burden over time. So in terms of financially, it worked out well after I did the flurry of all the turnover, the houses. We've been in one house now for. We're in our 20th year and we're not likely going to move out of here until perhaps my daughter, who's a rising junior in high school, leaves. And then we'll think about maybe reducing our footprint, maybe moving out of the area. We'll just have to see.

Yeah. Now, sounds like you have been investing for most of your career. Tell me about that, how your investments have changed over the years, if they have, and what that's been like to be an investor over now a couple of decades plus.

Well, I think I've really been interested in investing since I was a resident and fellow and I had a partner in my group that was really interested in value investing. He received some of the periodicals of the time. He was a Real big Warren Buffett fan before everybody was. And he took me under his wing as well. Now. The investing climate 22 or so years ago was a lot different than it is now. The emphasis on low cost and index funds. It was just starting, I think when I first bought the Vanguard Index 500 fund, it was VFINX and the expense ratio was about 0.4%. 40 basis points. And now if you mention 40 basis points to the white coat investor community, people are gassed. That's virtually criminal or outlandish. But that was low cost investing back in the day. I also was involved in a online community at AOL called Sage. It was a mutual fund education site. And I became one of the community leaders and we had discussions about mutual funds and it was primarily about actively managed mutual funds. We would interview managers. It was actually pretty fun and interesting. But that was the investing climate of the day. So that's what I was investing. And I was investing in actively managed mutual funds for the most part, occasionally buying some stocks. I got caught up in the tech boom early in my career. I kind of graduated right into it. And I actually have an upcoming article on the Physician on Fire site about my first two bear markets and how I emotionally handled them and how did I change my investment process. So don't have to necessarily talk about all those things here. I think I that'll be out there later this summer. But over the years I've gotten more into low cost. For a while, our group moved our retirement plan to an AUM model using an advisor that is affiliated with or excuse me, Larry Swedro of Boglehead's Forum fame is one of the principals of this firm and it's local here and we use that firm. So we're really into all the small value and cutting tail risks and all the DFA funds in particular. And I used that advisor for my retirement plan and also my personal assets for a period of time. And what I noticed over time, I started to shunt my taxable stuff back to Vanguard. I was kind of like cheating on them. And once I realized I was doing that, it was time to move along. I've read a lot of investing books over the years and one of my favorite authors is Phil DeMuth. You're probably familiar with him. And one of the great lines in one of his books was an investment advisor is a fellow who lands on your lap. And once you find him on your lap, you have a tough time getting him off your lap. And I think there is some truth to that. It's a relationship. And they do a very good job of building that relationship with you. And it's almost like a divorce of sorts of. Or at least a breakup when you try to leave an advisor. So about five or six years ago, I started to detach from the advisor and got a little more involved in my investments again. And to be honest, that's when I rediscovered or discovered the White Coat Investor. It was probably on the Bogleheads forum I saw you posting. I probably found a link to one of your or one of your blog posts and I started reading and that's probably where we first started interacting, either on the Bogleheads forum itself or on your blogs in the comments section.

So what did you think about that? What was that like when you first came in contact with the White Coat Investor?

Well, actually, I was very impressed. I thought, you know, I probably was probably 20, 13, 14. I really think some of your earliest work with it, occasionally you link to. It's much more foundational and fabulous. And I thought that, boy, I wish I had something like this. When I was coming out of training, I kind of wandered around from one thing to the next and actively managed funds. And I was trading stocks for a while with advisors. And not that any of those things is necessarily wrong, but clearly I didn't really find the right path or right mentor for me. And I think, to be honest, I think the White Coat Investor, you individually and the White Coat Investor itself as an enterprise has become a virtual mentor for me in my financial life.

You know, it's really interesting. A lot of people call me the White Coat Investor, but that was never really the intent of the blog. When I titled the blog, I looked at the White Coat Investors being the audience of the blog rather than the writer of the blog. And so I've always found that interesting when people call me that. I suppose it's natural, but, you know, I look at it as the White Coat investors are those that are out there reading it. So that's.

That's interesting. I never thought or heard that until this moment.

So, yeah, now you, you're kind of a fixture on the. On the forum. You've helped thousands of people on the forum, it seems like, over the last few years. Tell us about the White Coat Investor Forum, what you like and dislike about it and why you spend time there.

Well, I really like the forum a lot. I think it's a great opportunity to crowdsource information for docs, things that you really can't find anywhere. I mean, anybody who listens to the podcast who hasn't gone over there really should check it out. For one thing, I think it's a very friendly forum. Not all forums are friendly. Some are harsh, some are very negative. Cirmo comes to. To mind in the latter category. It's really a very friendly forum and if you come and you ask a question, you'll get, you'll get some answers and you'll get multiple answers. And to be honest, you know, sometimes I like the white coat investor party line answer and sometimes I disagree with that. You and I had a little bit of a disagreement, a friendly one, of course, over the, you know, what, what are the causes of burnout? And you know, I think there are some of the, some, some of the questions have multiple answers. But if you need a fact check, like how to do your backdoor Roth IRA or this is what I'm being offered contractually by a group, those sorts of questions, I don't know there's a better place to ask those questions, to be honest, because you have at any one time probably hundreds, you know, the readership more than I do because you have the stats, but probably hundreds of doctors potentially looking at your question and giving you an answer. It may not be the right answer or the right answer for you, but it is an answer. And I think the quality of the information is generally very good. I've not really seen a whole lot that I would consider to be frankly wrong. I think sometimes opinions can be nuanced, obviously, or people can have one opinion or the other. Sometimes, you know, different personal philosophies get involved. But, you know, you ask a question, you get a lot of, a lot of answers. You get a lot of eyeballs of experienced people and interested people taking part in it.

Yeah, I think those are excellent descriptions of the benefits of a forum. And I've got a confession to make. Right. Everybody likes their financial information in a different format. A lot of the people listening to this prefer podcasts, for instance. Other people read blogs and, you know, still other people prefer books. Well, kind of my preferred format for learning stuff of is a forum. I like forums. I'm a member of eight or ten forums that I regularly visit, you know, on all kinds of different subjects. If I take up a new hobby, I find a forum for it online somewhere. And so I really like forums. I can learn a lot there from the back and forth. And, and I agree that sometimes some of the most useful discussions are the ones that don't have a right answer, where people are having a disagreement. Especially if you can find two or three, you know, well informed, educated opinions on it that differ. Those are the threads where you really learn a lot, I think. And so I'm a big fan of forums. Obviously, the White Coat Investor forum is only a tiny chunk of what we do here at the White Coat Investor. But I think it's, you know, if I was wandering in, that's probably where I would end up, just because I prefer that. I really didn't read a lot of blogs before I started blogging myself, but I did spend thousands and thousands of hours on forums.

Right. I think perhaps you in part built your reputation on that Bogleheads forum, which is a terrific forum for financial information. And I'm like you, I tend to gravitate towards forums in my areas of interest, whatever they happen to be at the moment. And if I really want to learn about something quickly, I think a high quality forum can move you up the learning curve. Curve very quickly.

Yeah, for sure. They're great resources. Now, you came out to see us in Park City. You came to the White Coat Investor Conference. One of the lucky few that signed up quickly, it turned out.

Yeah.

After it filled in six days. But tell us about your experience there. What was that like?

Oh, I had a great time. I would say that you probably, I think you probably already published the feedback from the questionnaire afterwards. A survey. But I think everybody had a great time. I think one of the things I enjoy. There's a couple things I really liked. First of all, I've made some friends on the forum. I'm going to give a couple shout outs, but I'll probably miss a couple too. So I'm sorry about that, but my, my friend Hatton, my friend Zaphod, my friend Neurodoc, my friend Nachos, Wally World. And I'm gonna stop because I'm gonna start missing people. Oh, Tooth Carpenter. Anyways, I got to meet some of the people that I had interacted with on the forum and that was great. I really enjoyed hanging out with them. We went for dinner. I think we, we had a. A bunch of us left early on Saturday night right after the lectures because weather was coming in. And I remember we were driving down to, to part to Salt Lake from Park City and I think we were laughing in the car the entire time. I don't remember what we were laughing about. We were joking around. We were just having a blast. And I think we really, I think meeting these people in person really enhanced our online friendships that had started on the forum. So that was really great. Now the quality of the forum was also. The presentations were also terrific. I think, obviously, you're a great speaker. I don't know, and I mentioned this earlier, but you and I met three or four years ago when you were in my town for a paid presentation. And I'm going to tell the story. I remember you when you got up to talk, you said something like, this might be part of your routine. You said, you know, I'm not a very good speaker. And then you went on to give probably the best lecture. And I'm not talking about the content, but just the delivery, the way you walk the room, the way you timed it, pasted it was fabulous. I mean, you could have been talking about toy trains or something, and I would have been riveted. So anyways, you know, you're well known to be a speaker. You gave. Gave us some content that really hadn't been out there yet, and that was terrific. I really enjoyed Jonathan Clements and Bill Bernstein in person. Again, nothing, you know, nothing new, but to really hear it directly from them, it really was very impactful. I enjoyed getting to meet the physician on fire in person. I've had a little bit of a connection with him online in the background. I've done a few guest blogs for him, and like I said, I have another one coming up later this summer. So I enjoyed getting to meet him in person. And his unmasking, that was sort of fun, too. And one thing that struck me, and a couple of us talked about this. When I go to a medical meeting, I'm usually going to a meeting of either my specialty or my subspecialty. I don't think I've ever really gone to a meeting of people of all different specialties and different ages where the meeting was not around the medicine, but around the common interest. But we were all doctors, and if you think about it, that doesn't really happen that way very often. People were super friendly, and I got to meet a lot of people. I always talked to the people on either side of me who were sitting next to me and got to know them. It was really. I think everybody really was very, you know, in the mood for meeting people. There was something about the chemistry there that was just. Just great. I mean, you can't predict that that's gonna happen. Obviously, you can't buy that, but it really happened. It was kind of magical in a way. And, you know, I'm looking forward to the next conference, whenever that is. I hope I help I get my application in time.

Yeah, I think it's going to fill Pretty quick once people saw how quickly the last one filled. But it's interesting when you look at the feedback from that meeting, and it was nearly universally positive. I think we had one person that didn't recommend it to their peers. So it ended up being something like 99.5%, you know, recommended to their peers, glad I came, etc. Haven't figured out who that one person was, but maybe they just felt like it was too unanimous, I don't know. But people came to it for all kinds of different reasons. You know, there are people that were very advanced, like yourself financially, that, you know, kind of know this stuff that can listen to a Bill Bernstein talk and have nothing new in it. You know, that's a pretty rare doc actually, though, when you look at a cross section of physicians across the country. And then we had people that had literally never really read a financial book and just thought, you know what, it's time to get this stuff in order. I like conferences, so I'm going to go to a conference and it's a great chance to go to Park City and maybe go skiing too. And so what surprised me was just how wide the spectrum was in expertise. And so I was very happy to see that the presenters, you know, ranged from pretty advanced material, like some of the, you know, tax saving tips from Mike Piper to, you know, some of the more basic kind of financial planning stuff, like the stuff Sarah Catherine Gutierrez did that she walks new clients through. And so I think there was something for everybody there, and I hope not just the material, you know, the information was useful to people, but also kind of the inspiration.

Yeah, yeah, the camaraderie was terrific. And I think, you know, people, you know, people were influencers of each other in a positive way. I just want to tell you about one story. I've a little bit of a big mouth on your forum, as you know, and there are people who read who don't post, and there are probably a lot of people, and maybe the people posting are tip of the iceberg. I think in general that's the case for forums. There tend to be more readers than active posters. But one of the attendees, you probably would not know this specifically sought me out because my burnout story is out there in other venues. And he wanted to meet me and talk to me about it. And he came to the meeting because his wife signed him up. She thought he needed to go and learn about burnout. He was in great financial condition. We had a nice talk for maybe about an hour after one of the sessions. And you know, he just wanted to learn more about burnout and, you know, where his financial picture fits in that. And we had a great conversation and a little bit of a follow up. And, you know, it was great being able to, you know, just help people casually like that too.

Yeah, that was certainly one of the most enjoyable parts for me. I mean, it felt like I was kind of on for three days straight, just talking the whole time. I'm glad my voice held out to the end, but I'll bet I must have shaken almost everybody's hand that attended. It was really great to meet everybody personally.

The book signing thing was a great idea too, because it was, you know, great to have an opportunity to meet all those people and get our pictures taken if we wanted or however we wanted to be met. It was a lot of fun. Everything was great. I don't think there's anything I could say that I didn't like about it, except that it wasn't long enough. To be honest. I would have liked another day just because we were having so much fun.

Yeah, we definitely got that message. I think if, and it sounds like we probably will do this again. I think it's going to be three days instead of two. So I think most people felt that way about it as well. Well, let's shift tactics here a little bit. You are well known to, you know, have pretty good head as far as finances go. And the answers you give on the forum, for instance, are very comprehensive. I mean, you're submitting guest posts to some of the most widely read blogs in the physician blogosphere. So if you will, you're a bit of an authority when it comes to physician financial topics. So if you had 10 minutes with every physician in the country listening, what would you teach them about personal finance and investing?

Well, I might take this in a different direction, if you don't mind, because I've sort of done this with my new colleagues in my practice and I think that we recently hired three people out of training and then a fourth from another practice. He hasn't started yet. But I approach them with the fact that they're responsible for their financial lives and I'd like to be a resource for them if they have any questions. And I gave them each your book and I suggested that they read it. And if you have any questions or if you want to read more, I can suggest more books to read. But I think impressing upon people that nobody is more responsible or more interested in your financial life than you are, and there are a whole lot of people who are interested in getting a piece of that financial life. And that may not be always in your best interest. In fact, a lot of time it's not in your best interest. So I think it's really critical to learn about, about the things that you're going to need to deal with. If you're paying off loans, you need to become a virtual expert on paying off your loans. If you're buying a house, you need to know a lot about not only the market where you're buying your house, but mortgage is and what's best for you. If you're going to take a job and sign a contract, you better learn about what are the pitfalls of physician contracts. So on and on, all these aspects of your professional life that have nothing to do with the medicine they taught you in school or in training, you really have to become not necessarily an expert, but an authority. And at least know you have to be at the top of the game of how it applies to you because there are some people who are going to try to. Who are going to try to get between you and your money in ways that are not to your advantage.

Yeah, certainly that warning has been a big part of the message I passed out of the white coat investor report over the years. So what do you think the reception is as you're talking to these young docs? Do any of them come back and talk to you about finances? Do you think any of them actually read the book or what kind of feedback do you get?

Yeah, it's interesting because there have been three completely different responses and I don't know for sure if any of them could be listening to this podcast. And it's possible that one would be. Well, one of them read it like over weekends and came back with a list of questions for me and we ended up meeting for breakfast or brunch or whatever and had a meal. I took him out and we. He asked me his questions, we went through them. I gave him some more resources. And I'm trying not to answer questions directly, but giving additional resources because a lot of the questions don't have a straight answer, like should I do the Roth 401K or the Pre Tax 401K, those sorts of things. You know, it's not as if it were straightforward. Every time one answer is correct answer, I would give it, but instead I would send an article of either yours or Physician on Fire or somebody who's credible, maybe a couple articles so they could read about it and see the pros and cons of the various approaches. So anyways, one of the guys, very interested. We've had a lot of conversations in person, by text, super interested, super engaged, he'll be fine. The second one eventually read the book. I also sent links to Bernstein's, if I can book to them after the conference, because he was offering it to attendees for free. I believe that was extended to anybody who wants it, wants to download it that weekend. And he actually read the second book, the Bernstein book, which I was surprised because he didn't seem that interested at first. And he's come to me occasionally with a question or two, and I'll give him the information that he wants or lead him to the information that he wants. And the third, I don't, you know, the third person did not read the book and is not interested. I think that person has a family member who's cpa, and I think that's how that person is handling their finances.

Lots of different approaches there.

Yeah, we had somebody who's super interested, engaged, somebody who's kind of medium interest in the. And the third person is not that old.

I like your approach of teaching a man to fish rather than just giving him a fish.

Well, it's that there's a couple of things, too. And for one thing, these are associates in our practice. And I don't want to vicariously create some kind of fiduciary relationship or something along those lines to put me or them in a bad position. But really they need to learn what the issues are and to understand it. And just getting the answer. It's like in medical school, just getting the answer isn't always the best approach. I think finding out how to find the answer and what answer works for you, because many of these questions are not completely black and white, and over time they might change. So the answer today as a single person, as an associate, might be different from the answer five years from now when there's a couple kids in the picture and a wife and a house or whatever. So I think learning the underpinnings of the issue are important because things change. Tax laws change, too, and that might change the issue. Answer.

Yeah, that's exactly right. The answers do change over time. Kind of like medicine that way, I suppose. 50% of what you learned in medical school is wrong. You just don't know which 50%.

Right, exactly.

Now you're mid to mid to maybe even late career. Now what. As you look around at your colleagues that are about the same age, about the same distance out of training, what mistakes do you see them making?

I think that it's mostly the mistakes that you talk about and others talk about in personal finance circles. The big house in general, luxury items. You know, I don't think any individual thing is a problem, but I think when you stack them all up, it becomes a problem. And, you know, I think you've said it in various ways. Yeah, you can have a big house, but maybe you can't have private schools then. Or, yeah, you can go to private schools, but then, you know, maybe not so much jewelry. Whatever the luxury items are. I think, I think you've said it as you can have anything but not everything. And I think there are a lot of people that try to do not everything, but as much as they can in terms of consumables. And I think, you know, I think I've been guilty of that at times in my life. Not so much in recent years, as my wife would tell you, become a little more Spartan. But I think, you know, I think people are looking for ways to. To be happy, to feel gratified. You know, medicine in a long career can be quite a slog and you get beaten down a lot and you're looking for ways to make yourself feel better. And I think for some people, the. Maybe the dopamine rush of a car or a piece of jewelry or, or some other item like that, even though we all know it's transient, you get your fix so you can get through the moment.

You mentioned you have become more spartan recently. Do you think that's an effect of you kind of moving away from a financial advisor and doing things on your own and maybe engaging a little bit more in the blogosphere and the personal finance community online?

I think that's part of it. I think it may be a little bit of a maturation process too, learning that having stuff is not making me happy. In fact, I've gone the other way and I think that having too much stuff is making me unhappy. When my desk is cluttered, I'm unhappy. If I go to my closet and I have so many shirts I can't pick one out to wear, that makes me unhappy. So I'm not going all gung ho minimalist, but I am starting to think about ways to remove. Remove items from my life and, you know, value experiences over those. At one point, actually, I literally traded. I was driving, this is about seven or eight years ago, I was driving a BMW convertible and ended up literally trading it for a trip to Paris. One for one. I didn't obviously go to the dealer. I sold the car and I took that Exact pot of money and took the family to Paris. And to be honest, I never really liked the car. This is the conversation that everybody has in retrospect. I worried about the car. I didn't want it to get scratched. I didn't want it to get dinged. I was worried about where I parked it. I wouldn't take it certain places. And the car was sort of, you know, it was supposed to be something that brought me pleasure or joy in some fashion, and it mostly brought me anxiety. So, car goes away, get a Prius. I was very happy with that Prius. My daughter drives that now. And I took the money that I got from selling the car and took the family to Paris. And we, you know, anytime I think of Paris and that trip, it's only fond memories. I loved the trip. I would love to do it again sometime. It's just a blast.

You know, it's interesting you mentioned that, you know, that hassle with the car about, you know, worrying about dinging it up and that kind of thing. I can really relate to that. The first thing I ever bought that was brand new, you know, as far as a large purchase item was that boat I bought in 2015. And. And we beat on this boat, right? We take it camping. So you load it full of camping gear and load it full of canyoneering gear and that kind of stuff. And, you know, we are definitely not rubbing it with a diaper in the garage. But I often have to remind myself, this is what I bought it for. I bought it to beat it up, I bought it to use it. And I expect it to depreciate. I expect it to be worth nothing when I'm done with it. You know, this is a consumable item, but I think that's really hard to do when you shell out a lot of money for something that's really shiny and is brand new. Especially when you've never had something like that in your life before.

It really is. And in fact, the Prius, I really enjoy driving a lot. My kids would make fun of me. I don't know what it's like in Salt Lake, but around here there's nothing less cool than getting dropped off in a Prius. I think maybe on the west coast it's a little different, but it was. My kids would really razz me about it. It was a bright blue Prius and they would have me, in fact, drop them off maybe a block before school so their friends didn't see them getting out of the Prius.

Wow, it's that bad to get out of a Prius out there.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. Well, anyways, my daughter is driving that now and she's sucking it up. I think she's hoping to maybe good behavior, she'll get an upgrade down the road, which if she's listening to this, she won't.

It reminds me of that movie from a few years back where the suspected killer was driving a Prius. I can't remember what the movie was about, but the cops just couldn't believe the getaway car was a Prius. But.

Right, right.

At any rate, let's turn to the other end of the career and think about somebody that's maybe considering medical school. And what do you think? Is becoming a doctor still worth it? And does that change at a certain level of debt?

I think if you really want to be a doctor, really want to be a doctor to do doctor work, it's your calling. I think that you should still go for it. I think that if you want to become a doctor because it's a nice lifestyle and it's a respectable profession and you can make a decent amount of money, I think if that's a big part of the motivation, I think you should really think hard before going down that path because I think it's harder than ever to be a doctor in this environment, financial issues aside. So I think it's got to be more than just about the money to see it through. That said, I think there's never been a better time to do other things with your MD degree. I think there's a lot of opportunity in industry and actual bench research or clinical research obviously, but just in industry and technical writing and marketing, being a medical director for an insurance company, there's tons of things you can do with an MD degree that aren't quite the, the doctoring that you and I talk about when we talk about being a doctor. So I think there, you know, I think if you really want to be a doctor or really know that you're going to use your MD degree to do something that you need to have an MD degree for, that's great. I think if you, if your image is that old high status profession where you're treated with respect, you and I both know that's not the case anymore. And you know, the financial renumeration, it's just not what it once was. I think the investment in the career reward to investment ratio is just not what it once was. And if that's your real motivation for being a doctor, if you look into your heart and that's what it is, then I think you really should think about doing something else.

Now, there are some students that are looking at these ratios of finishing their training, particularly dentists and dental specialists, where they're looking at three to four times what their eventual maximum salary is going to be in debt in order to reach that salary. Is there any point there where you think it's just too much, it's not worth it?

I think that I don't think there is a particular tipping point, but certainly as the ratio gets higher and I really haven't thought about it a whole lot to try to come up with an actual number, but certainly as the investment gets higher and the remuneration is stable or maybe has downward pressure, I think it becomes a bad deal at some point. And I think the problem really is that you don't know how it's going to turn out when you're going in. If you go into dental school and become an orthodontist and are making high six figures a year, it's all going to work out as you talked about on the recent podcast with Dr. Maru. But you don't know that that's necessarily going to be you. That might be what you want to do, but maybe you don't get the grades or you don't like orthodontics, it turns out, or whatever it is. And maybe you're a general dentist now working for some company because you need to live in some city and you're making $120,000 a year as a general dentist and you know, it just might not be that great a deal. And going into it, you don't know what the outcome is really going to be like. You only have so much influence on that.

Well, as we get toward the end here, we probably ought to start wrapping up, but I wanted to give you a chance to, if there's anything else you think our listeners ought to know or that you'd like to tell them to give you a chance to say your piece to them.

I didn't want the listeners to think that my entire career was buying houses and cars and making a lot of financial mistakes. And although I certainly did make some financial mistakes over the years and we talked about them, I think the one thing that leads to financial success that a physician can have is that just continuing to save and invest throughout the entire career. And I've been doing this now for 22 years. And despite all that has gone on in my life, I was able to able to maximize my retirement space for myself and my wife. And additionally put money away in savings and taxable investment accounts every single month. And that happened no matter what was going on in our lives, whether we were buying a house or adopting a child or taking a big trip. What came first was putting away the money for the future. The other thing that I would like to add is that I just want to physicians, particularly early career physicians, to realize that their views of the world, of their career, of themselves, will change over time. And that has a lot of financial implications. At some point you might not like your job as much as you do today, and at some point, maybe after that, you might like it more than you ever did. But I think the key is to prepare financially for those changes in how you view yourself, both personally and professionally over the long course of a career.

Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Robert, AKA Vagabond MD And I wanted to personally thank you for the service you have rendered to your fellow physicians and other high income professionals on the forum. I literally cannot answer all the questions that people have out there and so forum members have taken a huge burden off my shoulders to answer many of them and to lead people to water. You know, you can't always make the horse drink, but you can always lead them to water. And I appreciate you doing that. So thank you very much.

Oh, thanks for having me again, Jim. Appreciate it.

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