WCI #83: Teaching Personal Finance to Students and Residents with Jason Mizell

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 White Coat Investor podcast number 83, teaching personal finance to Students and Residents with Jason Meisel.

Did you know that the White Coat Investor not only has a podcast and a blog, but several books that will help you on your way to financial independence? These books cover topics such as asset protection and minimizing your taxes to keep more of your hard earned money. They discuss plans for insurance, housing spending, student loan elimination, investing and estate planning. You can learn how to become a millionaire within five to 10 years of leaving residency and how to invest in a sensible, low cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of a financial advisor. There's even a book geared directly toward medical and dental students so you can start optimizing your finances early in your professional journey. Find the book that is right for you at the WCI store, at shop.whitecoatinvestor.com or on Amazon. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help.

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Yeah, that's correct.

All right. And we're excited to have him on here today because he is a pioneer in the academic community for promoting physician financial literacy. We'll get into all kinds of cool stuff that he's done about it literally later in the show. I know some of you know about his work through academic circles, and I know it's been mentioned on the blog over the years. And also he actually got up on stage for a few minutes at the White Coat Investor Conference last March and talked about his work. But it's a pleasure to have you here, Dr. Meisel.

Thank you. It's a pleasure being here. I really appreciate it.

First, let's, let's get to know you a little bit better. Can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing and your family?

Yeah, sure. So I grew up in a very small country town, farming town, northwest Louisiana. My high school had 55 students in my graduating class, which was the largest graduating class ever from my school. So very, very small. We didn't really have neighbors. It was just people who lived across the pasture kind of thing, you know, so it wasn't anything that was very big. But I went to Louisiana Tech for undergraduate with plans for the most part to go into medicine. But I'd also considered about the possibility of actually going into the ministry and becoming like a pastor and so as I went through medical or I went through college, I took all the biology classes and then took the mcat and thought, well, if I. If I do well enough on the mcat to get into med school, I will, and if I don't do that well, then apparently God has other plans and so I'll going to the ministry and that kind of thing. So that was really my plans. An undergraduate, my family was not very well off. We grew up fairly modest. My mom didn't work, but my dad worked offshore for. In the Gulf for the oil field. And I had what I needed, but nothing really extravagant. We never took vacations except just to go see, you know, family on the holidays. My, My home was a mobile home. And the first time I ever actually lived in a house without wheels was whenever my wife and I got married, you know, so we didn't, we didn't have a whole lot. It was pretty much mobile homes my entire growing up. But. But things were fine. It was, it was a good place to be, a nice, nice country town. And my, My first job was driving through watermelon patches shooting crows for $5 an hour. So that was kind of job you have and where I grew up. So. So just a fun little place to grow up.

That's awesome. Shooting crows off the watermelon. That's great.

Yeah. $5 an hour.

I wonder if, if this other job option as a minister contributed a little bit to your missionary zeal that I see you doing now with physician financial literacy.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's really the goal of all of it is just to serve and love people and really to. To glorify God doing it. And so I tell people, even now when I get ready to operate on them, that I'm loving on them by cutting on them, which is kind of a bizarre job. But that's what I tell them, because it is. It's all just a way, no matter what I do, it's all just with the undercurrent of wanting just to love people and just, you know, be able to do what God's called me to do, which is just take care of people. So whether it's telling them about their money and trying to help them prepare for their future or surgery or actually, you know, standing in a pulpit somewhere, it's. It all has the same underlying motivation.

That's pretty awesome. I'm trying to come up with a great joke about how the fact that you're a colorectal surgeon, but I couldn't think of anything appropriate.

So yeah, that happens a lot. It's hard sometimes with my profession.

So you had a very different upbringing than I did. I mean, I very much had a middle class upbringing, for sure. It wasn't upper middle class by any means, but it was middle class, without a doubt. My father was an engineer. And, you know, we. We didn't live in any mobile homes. But you kind of grew up lower class. I mean, if you're living in mobile homes in most cities in this country, you were, you know, working class for sure. How do you think that affected your attitudes and skills that you were taught about money at home growing up?

So I felt like what I learned a lot of really. I guess maybe it was two things. One was to be comfortable with what I have and knowing that it doesn't take a whole lot, really, to get by. And that's. That's been hard for me as a parent to convey that without putting my kids in the position that I was in, because it's a forced, learned sort of thing, you know, like, if I. If my parents could have given me more, I think they would have.

Yeah. You can't really do it artificially, can you?

Right, right. It's very difficult. And so I learned to be. To be comfortable with what I had. And then I was able to really get a better idea of what I need and what I didn't need. And then the value to really work for something when I did need it or really, really wanted it and not very much was given to me outside of my basic needs, which were totally taken care of. But if there was something else I wanted, then I kind of had to work for it. And so that. That, again, is a challenge as a parent. Try to instill that. But I think it did help a lot for now that whenever we do have more money that it's still. I'm able to still keep that perspective by default and really have a better idea of really what we need as a family and what's a gift and a luxury.

Yeah, it must have been tough wanting a new pair of pants and having to think about how many crows you're gonna have to kill to get them.

Yeah, a good pair of pants is about 30 crows.

All right, well, let's talk a little bit about your career first. Tell us about your schooling, training, and your career as a surgeon so far.

So undergrad was Louisiana Tech, and then I went on straight from there into med school at lsu, did med school and then stayed on there for surgery, training for five years at LSU in Shreveport and then matched into colorectal, which I was kind of all over the map for a while about that. I didn't know if I was gonna do general surgery or whatever, but ultimately decided on colorectal. So we were in Dallas for one year and then got recruited to come here to Little Rock. And we had never, never been here before. I did not interview here as a medical student. So this was a very new area for me, although it's not very far off from where I grew up. Just unexplored area for me. And so we like it a lot. We've been here now, we've got here in 2010 and I've been here ever since here at the academic medical center, which is the only one here for the state. So I need training programs for the most part. I'll run through here. And that was. Once I was about halfway through my fellowship, I realized I really wanted to take a more active role in education and teaching and training. And so ultimately decided on an academic institution.

Very cool. No surprise to me that you're an academic because you're an excellent teacher.

Oh, thanks. I appreciate that.

Let's get a little bit personal to start with and you know, share as much as you feel comfortable with. But tell us about your own financial life. You know, how far are you out of training, do you still have student loans? How far are you away from financial independence? What kind of accounts do you invest in, what's your savings rate, what's your asset allocation, etc.

Okay, so like I said, we finished up, my wife and I finished up in 2010 fellowship. She was a high school English teacher. Whenever we, whenever I was in med school and then residency. Once we had our second child, she did not go back into teaching. And so that was, I think I was a third year resident at that point. So I would moonlight as a resident to, you know, basically cover a weekend or, you know, some random times during the week to help cover her salary, which wasn't hard as a teacher salary. But once we, we got here, Arkansas has a nice retirement plan. They, you know, being a state institution and a nonprofit. So we have a 403B and a 457 and they have a decent match, which is incentive to, you know, to come here because not many people want to just routinely come to Arkansas and so they have to have some, some benefits and so cost of living here is good. And we, we bought a house when we first moved here because we had two kids and my mother in law lives with us and so she was, she was with Us at the time. And then we've since bought another house, sold our original one and moved to no because we now have four kids and so just needed some extra space. But having the retirement plans here, you know, I match those or I max those out, which is a, even as a academic, which we don't make as much as in private practice, it's still able to max out those retirement accounts. That's a nice benefit of being in academics, able to put more, you know, pre tax stuff away. But I do have some after tax accounts. Our student loans or my student loans are at 2.8% so I don't have a big drive to put a lot of money into those. I pay extra on them, but I'm trying to make sure I max out all my other accounts and things like that. But our, our financial, I guess plan is a little different than most. I would say it's a little atypical. Like we, my wife and I, as I mentioned earlier, really feel like this job and the salary that I get is really God's blessing. And even money is a tool to, to love on people. And so we, that's really what we do. Like we give quite a bit to charity, more so than I think a lot of people would recommend. Like, like when I originally talked to our financial planner, Sarah Catherine, who you had on the podcast not too long ago, she sort of made a chart for us whenever I met with her a long time ago for the first time. And we were sort of out of her range of what should be given to charity. But that's really what we want to do and, and we do a lot of hosting events. Like my wife loves to have people over to our house, whether it's friends from school or friends from church or whatever. And so we do have a fair amount of money given to those things. So I never know what God's going to ask us to do. And so I don't have a good plan on when I would say we would become financially independent. I think we're doing well and we are saving a lot and we don't really have a lot of random expenses that just luxury items. Our cars are paid off and things like that. So we don't, we don't have a lot of fancy, fancy things, but I don't think we are as financially set as we could be based on the salary of a surgeon. But it's just because we give a lot of it away and spend a lot on people and our house and doing things. And so I feel like what I did. What I don't want to do is to save a lot of money on the front end and miss a lot of opportunities along the way to, you know, to take care of people and have fun with them and to bless them through. Through our job and stuff like that. So I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, for sure. It's. It's awesome how you're finding a balance there between now and later. I know that's hard for a lot of people that really get into personal finance and they just, you know, gobble it up and eat it and eat, sleep, drink personal finance and. And then every time you buy something, you're looking at it going, wow, that's another 30 days of working, you know, at the end of my career. And that's, you know, I don't want to go out with my friends tonight because, you know, that means I got to work longer. It's going to take me four hours to make that money, you know, or whatever, you know, and so I think it's true, you know, you can't take it with you when you go. You got to find a balance. You do have to save something, but you don't have to be financially independent at 40 to be financially successful. And I think a lot of people sometimes lose that and lose that balance. So it's important to have it.

Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like my wife has to frequently remind me that I am falling into that mindset, you know, because I do get ultra conservative. Particularly when you're. When you're teaching it and you're standing up in front of students and residents, encouraging them to be smart and have a budget and this and that. Knowing in the back of my mind that sometimes I'm not doing what I'm preaching, but it's just because I feel like that's maybe what, you know, where we are and what we want to do. And like you said, everybody has their. Their own priorities. And so we just try to make sure we find that balance. But it is a. It is a struggle to not be uber conservative and to try to hoard it, you know, but to give it away and have the right heart whenever you're doing it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a. Maybe we ought to get into that a little bit more. I mean, it sounds like you give away more than most doctors. And what do you think that does to your attitude toward money?

I think it helps not hold on too tightly, because when I give, I have to trust that God's going to take care of us and that the Individual that is receiving the money clearly needs it more than we do. And so it helps me not become a scrooge and not be, you know, too much of a hoarder, but it helps keep their priorities. And what I hope and pray is that it would do the same for our kids and help them to see, regardless of how much they end up making that really the goal at really any class of socioeconomic status can be to continue to use money to help take care of others. And so one of the biggest things that I try to do, whether it's through our church or whatever, I try to show our kids when we are giving, so they recognize it, because I think kids sometimes aren't clued in. And so I don't tell them to be bragging, but I say, look, this is what we're doing. This is why we work and things like that. And so I hope it's life lessons for them as well as they go along to see why we do what we do. And it's not just to hoard it for a life of seashells on the beach whenever we're 75 now.

You've developed an academic interest in personal finance. Why? Well, how did you get into that? How is that becoming your niche? I mean, in all of colorectal surgery, you settled on personal finance.

Yeah, yeah. That's about as far off as people can imagine, you know, but it's funny, when I started here, the second day or so that I started after fellowship, they brought me my CPT and my ICD9 books, and I didn't have a clue what the use of those books was and what they were for and how to, you know, how that translated into billing and coding. And I really had this moment of feeling extremely unprepared for a big part of my job. And at an academic hospital, I wanted to make sure that I taught my residents and students surgery, but also want to make sure that I prepared them for the life after surgery, which I felt like I wasn't. Wasn't very well prepared for. And so I sort of took this vow of I will not teach students with the deficits that I had as I was a student resident. And so it just started me on this course of filling this gap. And what I noticed as I settled in here in Arkansas was that there were a few people on staff who were very qualified. And so what I initially was, was really more the organizer of people who were very talented. One guy had a CFP and had a business, but he was also a surgical oncologist. So I roped him in. And then another guy really knew more about the healthcare side of things. So I brought him in and created this curriculum with a few other individuals and just organized it, talked to my chairman and got permission to have a certain time each month to teach it. And so it really. A lot of pieces fell in place with some resources already being available, but nobody had just taken the initiative to create the curriculum. And. And so we had an educator here in the department that helped me structure it a little bit to determine how well we were actually teaching. And that was that first paper that I wrote back in. I guess it came out in 2013, but it was on the course that we implemented in 2012 to help residents with their finances, on the business side and practice side of things. And then we would also give them lectures once a month in the evening, which was more personal finance. And so every month they would get two lectures, one during our grand rounds hour about business and their practice, and then one later on that month. You know, we'd usually give them dinner or something and we would teach them about personal finance. And we just saw a lot of excitement in that in the residence and somebody beginning to teach them about things they had never thought of. And nobody ever really just significantly taken the time to invest in them and teach them those. Those different facts. So that was how it all started.

Now, you started in one residency program, and it was just the surgery residency, and then you expanded it at a certain point to the medical school. Tell us about what it took to get it into the medical school curriculum.

Okay. So that curriculum went on full force for the surgery residents for a couple years. And what I noticed was that as the residents, as I would survey them, I noticed that a lot of them had already made a lot of bad decisions, even as first, second, third year residents, whether it was credit card debt or buying a big house or buying a big new fancy car on a modest resident salary. And so I realized that there were problems that had already happened and I needed to catch them earlier and prevent that before it occurred. And he was also a fourth year medical student at the time who had an interest in business and came to me and said, hey, would you be willing to take some of these topics you're teaching the residents and make them for students? And so he and I kind of collaborated, and I came up with a more extensive curriculum and broadened it and generalized it to medical students. And as I thought about their curriculum, I thought that the best time to offer it would be in the spring of their fourth year as they're really pretty much done with everything and their brains are sort of checked out on cruise control and all of their big expenses are done for the most part as far as interviews and their time. And so they're just basically on vacation for about four months and say, well, let me do it then. And that way they've got a little more skin in the game too. So that whenever I can say, look, you're going to be filling out information about your insurance, your health insurance or your retirement plan in about three months whenever you move to your new institution. And so you really need to know this, you need to understand how it affects your taxes and how. And so there's so much buy in from them during that spring of their fourth year and they're able to focus on it too. They're not having to study basic science anymore. They're able to actually focus on money in a guilt free sort of way. They don't have to worry about, oh, I can't listen to what you're saying because I've got to go finish studying more biochem or whatever. So it's a nice blend and the students have loved it, they've gobbled it up and I've been. This spring will be the fifth year of doing that course.

Now when I came out and spoke as a guest lecturer, that was what, the second year? First time I came? Yeah, yeah. So I think this is brilliant, the location and the way this course is run. Right, it's run and I'll tell you why. Right. It's like you mentioned, it's in the second half of your Ms. 4 year, so it's the perfect timing, it's just in time. Training. Right. I mean granted it's. You're not getting to tell them to don't take out a bunch of student loans. But the truth is there's not a lot of difference you can make there once you've chosen your medical school anyway and. But it's just in time. So as soon as they start, you know, earning money come July 1, they've just recently been given all this information. So I think that's really great about it. I love that it's optional in that, you know, you didn't have to convince anybody that this is something that had to be put into the curriculum. And yet despite it being optional, what percentage of the class has taken it now?

Well, we started off the first year was about half of the class and so we have about 160 students each class and now the last three years we've consistently run about 125 out of the 160. So it's about 80% of the students.

80% of them are coming voluntarily, you know, and then you run it in the evenings, which is pretty awesome, because then spouses and partners can come and, you know, it's a little bit less formal, and you can get some, you know, people coming in from the community to help teach it and that sort of stuff. And so I just think it's been super successful. So much so that when I have people ask about this, how should we get this kind of curriculum into a medical school? I tell them, do it like you do. Do it as an optional class at the, you know, toward the end of the fourth year. And whether you string it out over, you know, months or whether you do it every night for two weeks, you know, I think it's just a great, great way to run the class. And just wish somebody had given me that in medical school. Of course, if they did, there might not be a white coat investor, but, you know, still, you know, wouldn't it be great if there was one of those run in every medical school in the country? That'd be pretty awesome. I think that would allow me to step away from the white coat investor because it just wouldn't be needed anymore. You know, It'd be great.

Yeah. I feel like the students have really been very, very receptive to it. And one thing, the first couple years, I didn't require attendance, and so I was afraid that once I started doing that, that people wouldn't show up because they were really just taking it because it was a sort of a freeloader kind of class where they got a couple hours credit. But once I started requiring attendance, the enrollment actually went up. Like, they continue to come, even though they know they can't just not show up and still get credit. And so they do participate, and they ask good questions, and they. They really are very engaged. And so it makes it fun. And now our speakers. Now we've got a pretty good lineup of speakers that are engaging as well. And so it's a fun time. And I also send out to all of the residency programs, to all the residents, and let them know that it's being taught, because a lot of them don't know. I've never had it because they came from other medical schools. And so I have a lot of other residents that show up from random, different departments that will come to the talks that are of interest to them, whether it's, you know, planning for retirement or you know, college savings for your kids or budgeting or whatever. So we do extend it beyond just the medical students. It's not like a closed enrollment, so we have a lot of other elected people that show up as well.

Now how many hours total is the class?

It takes about 20 hours to cover all the content, but they get two hours worth of credit. They have to have about 30 hours to graduate. There's in year and this counts as two hours, but the course is actually 20 content hours.

Okay, and can you give listeners some idea of what's covered in the course?

Yeah, sure. So, so we, it's about 60% personal finance, about 40% what I call business, but really that's more like practice management stuff. So we, I give two hours of, of talks on billing and coding and then we have somebody that'll come talk about updates in healthcare, what's happened in the last year. And we talk about starting your practice and grading a practice, like practice metrics. And if you were, how would you compare this private practice to that private practice or whatever? So those are sort of the practice side of it. But then we do things like insurance like auto and home and disability insurance. We do budgeting. Sarah Catherine comes for a couple hours and talks about budgeting and debt reduction. One of the things I really like is our student loan people come and I tell all the students beforehand they have to bring their computers and already do all their log on information. So we have one to one and a half hours just devoted to student loans. And so students come, they log into their account and they go through and they really see the effects of what repay versus pay versus IBR and different things. And they leave that lecture knowing exactly what they should do and when they should do it. You know, whenever they start looking at their student loans and, and we can talk to them about public service loan forgiveness and things like that. So it helps them leave these lectures with a plan and they're not having all these concerns and worries, but they can finish up knowing, okay, I've got it set, I know I'm supposed to do, I'm not having to rely on myself or go find something randomly on the Internet. But we've got people that tell them what they need to know and we talk about taxes and estate planning and stuff like that. So those are the general topics.

Now you've published on this topic. This isn't the easiest topic to, you know, certainly get CME credit for at a conference. I know that having tried to run my own, you know, it's maybe not as respected in, in the academic fields as some other more medical, more, you know, more health specific topics. What tell us about the process of publishing on personal finance and investing and how you were able to do that and any difficulties you might run into there.

Yeah, so that, that you're right. That has been difficult because the, the niche for undergraduate publications for finance education is a very small niche. And if you try to go toward an educational journal, that's difficult because they're going to have a lot of very strong educational rigor to try to grade your paper. And this course is not a very rigorous educational sort of course. We have a lot of freedom and we have general objectives for the talks. But a lot of times the talks will take a different turn. Students will start asking questions and they'll get all off track. But it's fine with me. I don't care. I just want them to learn what they want to learn and get their questions answered. So being very specific with the content is hard. And so you can, it can look sort of educationally not so sound, but then it's not a surgery thing anymore. So I can't do my surgical education journals and undergraduate journals like Medical Teacher and some of the other ones, Teaching and Learning and Medicine, things like that, those are pretty strong journals. And it's hard to get published in there. And so it's been hard to find places to land these papers. So what I typically do is there have been a lot of studies showing the need, but there have not been very many papers showing the fix. And so what I've done is when I try to find journals that have published papers on the need, and I'll say, hey, look, this is my curriculum that I did and this is the fix for that problem that you mentioned last year in that other paper by so and so and so that's actually what I did to publish the last four years of this curriculum that'll, it'll come out in January, being printed January, but that journal was the Journal of Graduate Medical Medical Practice Management. And so that's kind of a weird journal to be published in educational curricula in. But, but that's where it landed. And because they had had several papers that said, you know, this is a big need. And so it's, it's been a little tricky. But I think what a lot of people have done is set the stage over the last particularly year to two years. So I think it probably will be a little easier going forward for other people that may want to publish information on their curriculum because there's definitely more of a documented need than there was when I started doing this in 2012.

Now, what journal was that first paper published in?

It was a surgical education journal, Journal of Surgical Education, jsc. And so that because that one was surgery specific, it was Surgery residents. But then now this new one is more broad, general medical practice management. So for a lot of other disciplines, you know, they pediatrics or whatever they there are most disciplines have an education journal that will be able to be published in, but when you try to broaden it out to all medical students, it gets a little more tricky.

Very cool. We'll put a link to that journal and that article in the podcast Notes, so be sure to check that out if you want to see it. Okay. So, I mean, you're publishing on it. Is this now your main academic niche or is this kind of a secondary niche for you?

Yeah, I would say it's my main one for academics. I mean, I'm pretty involved in our colorectal society. And oddly enough, it's been an interesting blend there as I like last year I was on the program committee for our national colorectal meeting. So I'm doing a lot of stuff there in basic science and, and then clinical science for colorectal and surgery. But because I was on the program committee, I offered it up to the president, to the chair about doing a financial planning for the colorectal surgeon. And they said, sure, we've never had that at our national meeting. So I was able to have an hour and a half of time at our national meeting. And so people are beginning to notice me a little bit, even in my clinical arena for talking about practice management. I'm going this weekend to a Resident and Fellows colorectal course and talking about personal finance. And so I'm getting a few of those calls now. But as far as publications, yeah, it really is. And we're doing more and more things here, an honors and finance track and an interest group and stuff to really become even more invested here in our, you know, here at uams. But yeah, as far as publications go, it's really my main focus. And this paper coming out, I'm really glad to finally get it out of four years of data so that can really show that what we've been doing is really leading to measurable behavioral changes, because we've had a lot of those as well.

It's wonderful to see the topic hit in these big national meetings. Just earlier this month, I was at the American College of Emergency Physicians Scientific assembly, which is the biggest meeting in our space specialty and gave it. I gave a 25 minute lecture and then was part of an hour long lecture on. On finance. And so it's great to see it. I mean, obviously it's never going to be a main topic there and it shouldn't be, but it's nice to see it in a big meeting, you know, having an hour or two dedicated to it doesn't seem like too much to ask to me. So that's great.

Very well attended. I mean they. People, it's so rarely talked about. We had a lot of people at the talk and it went really well and got a lot of good questions and, and that's really where, as you know, you start getting questions where you realize, wow, this, there are people that are really in a bad place, you know, with their personal finances and they really just need some help, you know, and some, some good guidance and just made some bad decisions. And that's really where your eyes get opened quite a bit to the current status of things.

Yeah. So you're, I mean, you're a published author on this now. Do you feel like you're an expert on physician finances? And why or why not?

I would say, I'd say no as far as an expert. I mean, I read articles that you guys write and so many other really good bloggers out there and it doesn't take long. I feel like sometimes to get in over my head and I learn something every time I read these articles. And so I really feel like I had thought at one point about starting a blog and things, but I really feel like my niche is the education side of it and delivering the content and the assessment of it. And so that's really where I've tried to focus. And so I wouldn't say, I mean, I don't have a master's in education or anything, so even my ability per se to develop educational content is not amazing. But I feel like one of the things that I do well is I try to have a fairly jargon free lecture every time because even though the people that we're talking to are so smart, I mean, they're med students and residents and faculty, they just have so much potential and such good brains. Everybody just assumes that they know everything there is to know about finance just because they're smart people. And so they say a lot of fancy terms that get us lost. And so when I give talks, I really try to make sure that I give them very basic and make sure that the learner is really able to leave there with a good grasp of Finance rather than going to a lecture where they hear a lot of terms that are totally over their head, but they just have never been exposed to them, so they don't know them. So I wouldn't say I'm a finance expert, but I feel like I've got a decent grasp on the current status of where learners are. And I'm trying to do as much as I can to try to help meet them where they are and bring them up to speed.

So what do you have planned for the future?

Well, right now I'm working on getting our, like I said, we have finance interest group that we started here and that's for what we did is we expanded that to our college of nursing and our college of our dental school and our physical therapy or sorry, our physician assistant group here and trying to incorporate the topics that we give to other disciplines, interprofessional education. And so I'm working on establishing that like we have this weird investment game that we came up with and came up with like a hundred thousand hypothetical dollars. And so we've got this competition going on where we are teaching the students and about investing and what that means and what it looks like. And right now I think I'm in like 8th place on my rate of return. But.

Hopefully nobody goes, you know, double leveraged Bitcoin. You know, that's, that's the problem with those contests. They're so short. It's almost like rolling the dice, you know.

Yeah, but the interest group has been fun so we're getting that going and we've started this honors and finance track where incoming first year medical students can enter into it. And I've got this whole curriculum for them for each four of the four years. And when they graduate, they'll have honors in finance on their diploma so that they can show that they've put in some time. And there's a lot of projects and objectives and things associated with that track. And so, so really just future plans are developing that track a little more fully the interest group and then getting the paper out was huge. But what I've done is taken the next step beyond that. And I have all the data right now, but I haven't crunched it yet. But ultimately what I want to do is I've surveyed about 150 of our. I've got 150 responses on our alumni and previous graduates from UAMS. And then I'm breaking them out into two groups. The ones that took my business course and the ones that did not. And I'm trying to now measure and see whether or not the course has like made a real difference in their financial status and see if the ones took the course are saving more or have less debt or less credit card debt or whatever. And so I have that information, I'd like to publish it because really behavioral change is really the goal of any education, you know. And so if I can show that. Right. Really educating the students on this finance stuff really helps them become less stressed and more financially stable, then that's really where the heart of the issue is. Because the resident wellness piece and early faculty wellness is so clutch. So that's what I'm trying to prove now that it's discovery, if it's making a difference.

That sounds like a tricky study. Lots of confounding variables that.

Yes, it is, it is. And that's, that's the caveat with all this is, you know, you've kind of looked at a self selected group of students who are really interested in finance and are probably going to therefore be better at it. So is it just because they're interested and read about it more or did the course actually make a difference or whatever? So that's, there are some confounding factors there, but just trying to see if what we're doing is making some improvements and if so, where.

Yeah, it's great, great to get the data out there even if everyone's going to scream correlation is not causation.

So absolutely, you know, it's coming.

Yeah. So what advice do you have for another academic doc at another institution who wants to either start a curriculum or publish on this topic?

Yeah, so for academic folks, it's, it's been really great. Like it's been a nice niche and it's so still under underdeveloped and an untapped market that there's still a lot of room there and huge, huge need. And so I had a chairman and a, a college of medicine that's been very friendly towards me and given me a lot of room to develop this. And there are, there are other universities, unfortunately they just don't give their faculty that kind of exposure and ability. And so. But still though, even with that, I would say just do what you can. I mean a little education and a little lecture here and there is better than nothing. So don't get too frustrated or overwhelmed if you're not able to come up with a 20 hour course. I mean mine started pretty, pretty small and then it developed into what it is and I had to start somewhere and I utilized the resources around me and so what I, in the back of my mind I was thinking, well, I have to be an expert in all these different areas and make sure that I know the answer to all these student questions. But really what I did is I found the people who were really good experts and allowed them to be the ones to give the time talks. And I just helped organize them and encourage them and show our college of medicine that it was unbiased and clear and really kind of paved the way. But you don't have to be an expert, you don't have to come up with a monster, huge curriculum to start off. You just start chipping away. And as you are able to show that your learners are enjoying it and they're learning and they're supportive, then you can take that to administration, say, look, I've got people here, they really need it, they want it. And you can use your learners to drive the influence with administration and start breaking down walls and you just make yourself available. I sent an email to our medicine department recently, said, hey, I've been giving talks on business of medicine. Are you interested? So they said, sure. And so I've got that lined up. And so you do have to throw yourself out there a little bit. And I've lectured to pretty much every residency program on campus now about it and I'm starting to get asked back, you know, from year to year. And so you just learn. Every time I give a talk, I learn more and constantly read what you guys write and stuff like that. So it's, it's really just aim small, miss small, and then just see what, what doors open and kind of go from there.

So yeah, the thing I love about what you're doing is that it's actually financially viable for you. To give lectures to other residency programs at your institution is very easy for you to do. You know, you've kind of got the lecture already prepared. Maybe you have to look over it a little bit. You don't have to travel far to give it. You know, you don't have to take a bunch of clinical time off. It's very easy to do. Whereas trying to bring somebody like me from Utah to Arkansas to give a talk and you start going, man, I'm missing a day of work here. I'm going to miss a day tomorrow traveling back, maybe a day preparing the lecture. You know, you got to pay me, you know, some four figure amount to make it even cover my clinical time to come out there and do it. But if there was one person like you at every academic institution in the country, you know, this, this gets out there very, very quickly. And so I think that's pretty awesome. And I don't think it's that hard to do. There's certainly somebody interested in it at every one of those institutions. So I just want to support those who are, you know, considering doing this sort of thing. As you can see, you don't have to be an expert. And the first time you end your lecture and go to questions, you'll realize, oh, my goodness, I've got this.

You're right.

Just because the questions are such a basic level, you're worried you're going to be interacting with people that are leaving comments on the White Coat Investor blog, but you're not. You're interacting with people that have never read a finance book whatsoever. You know, they don't follow a blog. They don't, you know, their questions are very, very basic. And so you really don't have to be a complete expert to make a big difference in a lot of people's lives.

Yeah, you're exactly right. And your point about it being very financially viable is totally correct. I mean, in an academic institution, I don't, I don't know anything about writing, you know, big grants or, you know, doing basic science research or setting up a lab. But when I came to my chairman and said, you know, what I wanted to do, it cost nothing, you know, except for the audio video to record the lectures. And so for an early academic career, it was able to get going very quickly. And so that was. That was great. And so even now, my Business of Medicine course is still very, very low cost. And my speakers are all volunteer their time because they, they like it, it looks good on their resumes. And they know that potentially downstream, whenever, you know, a resident or early faculty needs to set up a Will and Trust, then they'll email me, which happens now pretty often. They say, hey, who's that lady that gave us the talk on will and Trust? And so then I'll, you know, kick it back to them. And so they know that's a possibility, but they, they give the talks for free. And so unless you have a guest speaker, you can get people from your community that usually will just of the, you know, goodness of their heart, will just volunteer their time. And so it's. It's easy to get it going. So that's. That's really nice.

Very cool. Well, it's been wonderful having you on. Our time's starting to get a little bit short, so I think we probably ought to wrap this up. Is there anything else. Now that you've got the year of. I don't know how many people are going to Download this podcast. 10 or 15,000 people. You've got 10 or 15,000 people out there interested in physician personal finance and investing. What is your message to them?

Well, it's such a huge need, I would say just continue up the good fight. I mean, there's so many good resources now with blogs and things that are supportive of us on the academic side just to get going and to be kind and considerate to the students or residents, knowing that this is a huge need that is kind of taboo and people don't like to talk about, but to still fight in there and get them and let them know that you're trying to help them navigate these early, very scary waters. Because it's like I said, such a huge need that you can do a lot of good with not a whole lot of effort. Because so many of these residents and medical students are really quite scared and they're in a bad financial place and can use a lot of help. And so I have made a lot of good resident and student friends because they come to me and really have some, some scary concerns and they're able just to, you know, give them some advice, put their mind at ease and give them a plan. And it's, it's huge for them on a personal wellness basis or standpoint. It's, it's great. So keep up the good, good work and just fight the good fight. It's. It's fun.

Dr. Jason Meisel, thank you so much for what you're doing and for being on the White Coat Investor podcast.

Thank you for the opportunity. It's been fun. I appreciate it.

Wasn't that wonderful having Jason on? He's such a saint in this realm, right? I mean, here I am going, I don't want to do this unless I can make a buck doing it. He's doing it basically for free. You know, he's out there educating hundreds and hundreds of people and trying to help them get a fair shake on Wall Street. So I think it's wonderful that what he's been doing. Make sure you're following us on your social media of choice, whatever that might be, whether it's YouTube or Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. If you follow along, you'll get this critical information in whatever format you desire. Or you can just follow us along right here on the podcast if you like. Please do go to itunes and give us a five star rating though. That helps others to actually find the podcast and to be able to, you know, get this information so they can apply it in their lives.

Did you know that the White Coat Investor not only has a podcast and a blog, but several books that will help you on your way to financial independence? These books cover topics such as asset protection and minimizing your taxes to keep more of your hard earned money. They discuss plans for insurance, housing spending, student loan elimination, investing and estate planning. You can learn how to become a millionaire within five to 10 years of leaving residency and how to invest in a sensible, low cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of a financial advisor. There's even a book geared directly toward medical and dental students so you can start optimizing your finances right early in your professional journey. Find the book that is right for you at the WCI store, at shop.whitecoatinvestor.com or on Amazon. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help.

Head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We can help. See you next time on the White Coat Investor Podcast. My dad, your host, Dr. Dahlia, is a practicing emergency physician, blogger, author and podcaster. He is not a licensed accountant, attorney or financial advisor. So this podcast is for your entertainment and information only and should not be considered official personalized financial advice.