Doc G: Financial Independence's Impact on Health

Welcome to the new retirement podcast. Today we're going to be talking with Doc G, a financially independent, part time physician and current podcaster and author about financial independence, purpose and its impact on health. Doc G and I are both part of the fincon community and as someone who is financially independent and is a doctor and has also made big changes in his life, he brings a really good perspective on our topic. So with that, Doc G, welcome to our show. It's great to have you join us.

Yeah, it's great to be here. I've had you on my show, so now it's great to come onto yours.

Yeah, no, it's good. And I think where I like to start is can you give us quick couple minutes on kind of how you got here, the life journey, how you grew up a little bit and decisions you made and kind of what brought you to this point. And now and then we'll talk about what's next.

So I was your typical physician. My father was a physician when I was little and I was enamored by him. I wanted to be just like him. I always tell people he used to have this thing where he'd bring each one of his boys to work with him when they got old enough. So I was the youngest of three and. And usually when we turned around 10, he would take us to the office and we'd go see patients with him. And I remember watching my older brother go because he was four years older than me. And then I watched my middle brother go and I was getting to that age where I was almost old enough. And then my dad died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. So I was 8 years old at the time and I was just wanted to be just like him. So him dying at that age, it was that age where I idolized him. So this idea of being a doctor was always in my mind. And I can't even go back and remember a time where I didn't think, I'm going to be a doctor. This was just what my trajectory was. In fact, back then I had a learning disability. I had a hard time learning how to read. I was doing coloring books when all my friends were in their first readers. But it was never a question to me. It was never like, oh, he's not going to be smart enough. He's not going to be able to figure it out. I eventually overcame the learning disability, went to high school and college, matriculated and eventually went to medical school. And I never thought much about money or finances. I grew up in a middle class Family. Most things were taken care of for me. My medical school fees and dues, all of that was actually covered by my father's life insurance. So I never really had to worry about being in debt or money. And I didn't even want to think about it. I just wanted to be a physician. And I built a life. I got married, I had kids, I. But sometime in my late 30s, early 40s, I realized that practicing medicine wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. I loved seeing patients, and I love those moments where you felt like you were really helping people. But there were so many other moments that were just frustrating. The paperwork, the fears about Medicare and audits, the fears about legal action against you if you made a mistake, and God forbid, the fears that you did something wrong and hurt someone. So in the backdrop of that, I was lucky enough to be in an incredibly strong financial situation. My parents didn't do a lot to teach me specifically about money by sitting me down and teaching me, but they really modeled great behavior. So they both owned their own companies, they had side hustles, they owned real estate, they saved way more than they ever spent. So I grew up with this great model of what it would be to be financially independent, even though I didn't know what that was. So, on the backdrop of getting tired of my medical practice, feeling burnt out, feeling that maybe I had grown up with this idea of being a physician and it was some of what I really loved, but it wasn't everything. A guy called my office and asked me if I would read his book. And that guy was named Jim Dally and he's the white coat investor, and he wrote a book about investing for high net worth individuals and physicians. And I had had a medical blog at that time, and I had been writing and I had a moderate following, and he wanted to get the word out about his book, and he sent it to me and I read it and he gave me the vocabulary to finally understand my finances. At that point, I had a financial advisor, I had a basic understanding of investing, I even owned my own rental real estate. But I didn't know when enough was enough. I didn't know how to plan for retirement or my future. And I read his book, and within one sitting, it probably took me three or four hours to read it changed my whole life, for one. I knew immediately that I was already financially independent. And if I didn't want to work another day, I could stop right then and there. And the funny thing about that is, as opposed to being jubilant it set me off into a spin of depression and anxiety because all of a sudden, this thing that I based my whole life on, this thing that brought me close to father who had died when I was 8, this thing that I thought was my purpose in life, I could just walk away. And that scared the heck out of me. And the next few years, it took me much deep thought, starting to write a financial blog, eventually podcasting, to realize that it was okay to pull away from this profession that was no longer feeling so good and pursue other passions. And that's what I've been doing.

Wow. So what, when, like, how old were you when you read the book?

So it was 2014, so that was six years ago. I must have been about 40.

Okay. Wow, that's a. That's a pretty amazing story. I mean, and shout out to Jim Jolly for, you know, writing a book that is changing people's lives. And he was, he was on our podcast and it was, as, you know, great guest and super knowledgeable. And I know he had a, you know, he had developed a strong reputation on Bogleheads and, you know, different communities that I think led him into, on his own journey to be, you know, writing and blogging and becoming an author and all the rest of it. Wow, that's. Yeah, I think that's. It's pretty interesting how some people that when they do get to be financially independent, they then have a. The whole different set of challenges that if they haven't thought about in advance, it becomes a problem. Like, our first guest was J.D. roth, and we talked about purpose, and his whole thing is purpose. And it's all tied up with becoming financially independent and making sure you've thought about it in advance, because you haven't. Then you're kind of like, okay, here I am. You know, it was all about you. Like, okay, it was actually all about the journey, not about getting here. Now I'm here, what's next? You know, what am I going to do next? Which I know is your podcast and kind of, you know, how you. How you kind of think about or how you frame up the work that you're doing. So that's pretty cool. One thing you mentioned, you know, in the lead up to this is kind of stealth wealth. And you talk a little bit about your parents and they did their own investing and they were, you know, financially independent. Maybe they didn't call themselves that, but kind of any color on how that, you know, impacted you growing up or now when you look back.

So after my father died, my mom happened to be in business school at the time. She had taken a bunch of years off to bring up the kids, and she was in business school, and she was just about to graduate with an accounting degree. So she started at one of the big accounting firms, worked there for another number of years, and eventually went into business for herself. She met my stepfather, who was a CEO of a large healthcare company. And they were both business people, right? They both owned and ran their own businesses. They believed in real estate, so they bought properties and were landlords. And then my stepdad, who is the CEO of this big healthcare company, also had a passion for coins, so he used to buy and sell pennies, and he had his own little business going on the side. The funny thing about that is altogether between my stepbrother and stepsister, and then us three boys, they were bringing up five kids. So this idea of early retirement I don't even think was a possibility for them. They were thinking about five college educations. They were thinking about me going to medical school. This idea that we'll just stop working or slow down wasn't a possibility. But I have to hand it to them. Both of them really seemed to love their work. So they made lots of money. And so it's really surprising that they didn't also spend a lot of money. Now, granted, they lived in a fairly wealthy suburb of Chicago, and we took some really nice vacations. So it's not like we were hurting. We weren't starving. In fact, I would say that in my childhood, I never really wanted for anything. But as an adult, I go and look back, and they were saving 50 to 75% of their income, probably all throughout those years, even when they were sending us to college. So things just weren't. It wasn't a big part of their life. They didn't buy expensive things. We went on some nice vacations, and we had the luxury of not having to scrounge. But for the amount of money they made, they could have been living much higher on the hog. And so when I grew up thinking things weren't really important to me either, I was much more about ideas. The idea of owning a business was not because you were going to make tons of money. It was the challenge of creating and finding a business that brings wealth and value, but that didn't necessarily always have to be monetary value. So we just didn't live the way our bank accounts look like we should live.

Yeah, well, it is a luxury, though, to have the cognitive freedom to choose what you want or to be able to think. So Freely that, ah, you know, I could start a business or I could do this or could do that. I mean, just as a side story, you know, my. My oldest son is in college and now he's like, you know, asking about, thinking about what should I major in. And my wife and I were just discussing, you know, I've given him this, like, well, I think that you should definitely have some tech minor so you have some hard skill, which would be good to have. And her view is, well, he should do whatever he wants and just learn, you know, explore and whatnot. And, you know, it is a luxury to kind of be able to think this way, you know, versus, like, hey, I gotta come out, I gotta be making serious. I gotta have skills to make money, you know. And I mean, I think either way, you know, he should have his own skills too. You know, something to fall back on. I mean, I do think, like, for instance, for you, you know, you know, you can make money as a doctor. I mean, you do make some money as a doctor, but you've also reached financial independence. I mean, just having that ability changes your life. So I think it is for what it's, you know, just to finish this thought, it's like, it is worth it as a person to have some capability that, you know, you can fall back on in terms of your human capital.

Yeah, I definitely realized the luxuries I had growing up in a stable family where money was available. And I think Jim Dally actually said this to me before. He said, when you don't have oxygen first, just getting oxygen is wealth. Right. But when you've grown up all your life and your oxygen's there, you don't even think about it. I grew up in an environment where I didn't have to think about that basics. And it allowed the luxury for me to acquire some hard skills which will last me for the rest of my life. But also to start with, real solid building blocks. And now when I look at my life and I say I'm 46 years old and I can stop working if I want to, I'm very cognizant of the fact that a lot of work got me to that point, and a lot of it wasn't even mine, was my parents and my upbringing and luck.

Yeah, right. Just to loop back on your mom and stepfather, are they still alive?

They are still alive.

And have they adjusted their quality of life as they. I'm assuming they're retired now or not.

So they're pseudo retired. My mom had some health issues and actually had to Take disability. But she still, for instance, does a lot of the accounting for my business, and she volunteers her time, et cetera. My stepdad stepped away from a CEO position, but then was a consultant for 15, 20 years and still sits on some boards and still does some consulting. But for them, it's more about the joy of the work. Have they increased their lifestyle? Probably not much. I mean, after they didn't have to pay for us kids anymore, they still, again, they go on great vacations and they own more than one house, which they use as opposed to being a rental property. Again, not in a poor house by any means, but they will probably die with lots and lots of money in the bank.

Yeah, that's another way. I did this podcast with Morgan Housel and we talked about there's like $35 trillion. It's a huge amount of money that's piling up with the future generations. The reality is that people with money that retire with money, they tend to keep building it up over time. They don't spend it down. And so then they get more and more of it. They get. They. I mean, you don't. Your expenses don't necessarily stay the same. I mean, when you say you retire at 60, you may have these kind of 10 years of like, hey, I'm cranking, traveling the world, everything's good. And then from 70 to 80, you're like, I'm slowing down a little bit. 80 plus, you know, unless you're some kind of freak, you know, you're not necessarily globetrotting and spending money. You just can't spend it, you know? You know, but anyway, so, yeah, there's going to be this whole hopefully, I mean, it depends how you look at it, but, you know, wave of wealth that gets passed down, and that does change people's perspectives on their lives.

For some people, it's an important message. For young people, it's really the power of compounding. I mean, we talk a lot on our podcast about financial independence, and there's really kind of two ideas about how you get there, right? One idea is you make lots and lots of money very quickly, invest it, crank away for 10, 15 years, save a lot of money, and then you live off the investments. The other way is to find passive income sources, or at least income sources that you're passionate about, and then don't feel like work. And you can start at 22, 23, 24, really young, and consider yourself financially independent. My problem with those people who start young and go after the side hustling and the freelancing and those types of things is you really miss out on the power of compounding. So me as a 20 something year old who went to medical school and started making a lot of money right off the bat, I worked really hard for a good 10 years. Now that I'm at that point where I don't want to work as hard, the money is really working for me. And so the earlier you start compounding, that's why as you were talking about when you get older, as opposed to you spending down or drawing down your wealth, a lot of these people, their wealth just keeps compounding whether they work or not, because there are limits to how much you can spend. But whether you're in the stock market or the real estate market, it just keeps growing.

Yeah, I think it's, I mean, I gotta imagine so for some people listening to the podcast, they're like, yeah, that makes sense to me. But for some people, for most people in this country, they're like, that sounds insane, but I am having, I see this in my life, right? And I live in a high cost living area and there's some wealthier people. There's definitely people that have made the right decisions. Some of them, they cannot spend the money. They make so much money passively, they're just not going to spend. And they're doing it for the love of it. Right. And everything else. There's also people here that might make hundreds of thousands of dollars and they spend every penny and they don't have any money left over, which is insane to think about. But that exists because there's this whole keeping up with the Joneses thing. But unfortunately for many people, they didn't get personal financial education growing up because it's not mandatory. And I do want to talk about this. And the whole financial services world is like, hey, I want to sell you some sweet credit cards. But 21.3% is the average interest rate on credit cards. You know, hey, student loans, I mean, I do think more kids hopefully are much more of like, you know, hey, it's graduating with $100,000 of debt or more is like just a truckload of money. You know, keep that. Don't, don't do it. Go to a two year school, you know, go to community college, you know, for free essentially, and then transfer and then maybe, you know, get out with, you know, $30,000 of debt. Even if you don't have, you know, a lot of money, it's a much more prudent choice versus go hang out in college. And you know, I have $150,000 in debt. I've met people like that, too. And it's. That's got to be daunting, you know, super daunting.

Yeah. I think there's definitely been a lie perpetrated on the American people, and it's that your financial life has to be complicated. And it is true. There are fine. There are complex financial instruments, et cetera, but the majority of dealing with your own financ finances can be fairly straightforward. I didn't say easy. It can be difficult. It can be difficult to save money. It can be difficult to make lots of money. But most of what we really need to do financially is not amazingly hard to understand. And I think we've been sold this idea that it's too complicated and most people can't grasp their own finances.

Right. It does seem to be changing, though. So I'm. I'm optimistic that upcoming generations are going to be much more woke to this situation and making better choices and having less debt and whatnot. I mean, there are. You know, I hang out in some of these communities, like Jewsify and so forth, and you see people telling these inspiring stories of like, oh, yeah, I just paid off all my debt, paid off my car. You know, I figured this out. They had your epiphany of like, hey, I got financially independent, or, hey, I realize this is, like, not the right trajectory I want to be on, and I want to fix this up and. And make. Make changes so. Good. Well, so let's talk a little bit more about kind of your situation and, you know, this whole struggle you had around, you know, figuring out that, like, once you were fi. That, hey, how did that, like, impact your thinking? And do you think you could have done anything better in advance to not kind of, like, get depressed and anxious about, like, what the heck am I doing?

My life, you know, I think I was so in the weeds of building a life that. And I was focused so much on being a physician that I don't know if I was really able to see past my daily life. And so when I looked at my finances and saw that I didn't necessarily have to spend all my time being a physician, it was like a mirage. Disappeared, and there was nothing left in its place. I shouldn't say nothing. I knew that I had passions, but I had always told myself I didn't have enough time to pursue them. So writing for me was always a huge passion. I loved writing. I'd been writing a blog about medicine since 2005. I knew that that was something that in fact, felt more like what I was meant to do than being a physician. But I always figured, well, you can never really make a living that way. And I'm supposed to be a physician anyway, so who's going to really invest the time or public speaking? I liked to do a lot of public speaking. I'm now on a speaker's bureau. But if you had asked me back then, when I was 40 years old and just discovering all this stuff, I don't think I would have ever invested the time or energy. So could I have come to this more gently? I don't know if it was possible. I think it was just where I was. We all have our unique story of where we end up as individuals, and I'm not really even sad that I went through all that with medicine. What medicine brought to my life not only was financial stability, but it gave me a chance to enter people's lives and do something meaningful. And so how could I ever be sad that I spent all these years doctoring? And then it also gave me, like you said, a hard skill which I can use for the rest of my life. And even if I can't go back to doctoring, the organizational skills from having that graduate degree will open doors for me in business and other places if I ever decide I want to work. So I don't think I regret what I did. I don't know if I could have done it more gently. I think I needed to be jarred out of the life I was in. And so reading that book shook me up. And it was a drastic change, but I needed a drastic change. So it's not like I read the book and quit my job the next day. That started a year's period of writing. You know, I started a blog about financial independence, but more than being information for other people, it was also an accountability journal for myself. So I knew that I was financially independent. I knew that my life's purpose and identity had been wrapped up in being a physician, at least to that point, and that I needed to transition, but I didn't yet have the courage or strength to do that.

Right.

And so that actually was the intro into the personal finance financial independence community. I started writing about it, which really helped me clarify my thoughts. And then I started meeting people in this community who gave me a lot of the strength and the wisdom that finally led to me cutting back on being a doctor and pursuing things like the blog and the podcast and doing more public speaking. So I think it happened the way it was supposed to happen.

Yeah, I Think you're raising. An interesting point of which is that I'm seeing out there too. It's like, it's the pursuit of financial independence as this process and transition period, because it doesn't, you know, it takes five, 10, typically 15 years. But I think it gets people so excited because they're like, oh, okay, I'm really working towards this goal. It might take a while, but it's acceptable to work towards it. Right. It's not going to happen overnight. And hopefully during that time frame, you know, it reframes what you're currently doing, gives you something to really work against. And hopefully you think about kind of what, what is going to happen next. But that process is like, is part of it, you know, and it's getting refined because everyone's kind of talking about what is financial independence, how's it going to work, and everything else. Interesting. So for you. So you kind of grew up pretty upper middle class, went to got your degree, you were a doctor for 20, 15 years, something like that, had this epiphany transition period, and now you're podcasting your blogging. Podcasting. Do you feel. But you're still working, right? You work, I think, in hospice, is that right?

Yeah. So what I did is I looked at what I was doing, right? I looked at my outpatient practice, I looked at my hospital work, I looked at my nursing work, and I looked at my hospice work, and I said, what of this has the most value for me? Is there anything here that still adds to my purpose as a person? And so I got rid of nights and I got rid of weekends, and I got rid of annoying, stressful phone calls. And what I was left with was hospice work. So the hospice work I do is more of an administrative role. I lead teams of nurses, chaplains, social workers, and nursing assistants who take care of patients. So as the lead of that team, I am helping them make medical decisions. But I really have none of the stress associated with practice. I'd have no weekends, no calls. I'm a contractor, so I'm not even employed. I'm self employed. And I contract myself out to one company in particular. And so it's allowed me to divorce all those things that were sucking me dry from medicine and leave those things that I felt were still building me up.

Awesome. On the hospice topic. Well, a friend of mine has. I'm knowing some people in my life that are dealing with people that are dying or very sick. You know, what's the. What do you find best about hospice? And when should people contact Reach out to hospice. Like, how does that process go? There's something I don't like. Sorry.

So the way hospice works is you are eligible for hospice through Medicare or through many insurance companies when you have a diagnosis where the life expectancy is six months or less. Typically what we see is someone who has one of a number of diseases, either a type of cancer that's been treated for years and no longer is responding, or someone who's had chronic diseases that are at their end stage, like emphysema or congestive heart failure. Or we see also a lot of people who are at the end stage of dementia. This is the time when people and their families realize that the ongoing medical care is no longer adding to their life. It's causing pain and discomfort. They're ending up in the hospital or getting procedures that aren't particularly making their life expectancy any longer, but are causing pain and suffering. So those are the people who are appropriate. And usually they're referred one of a number of ways. They can be referred by their doctor, or if they're in a hospital, they can be referred by the hospital doctor. Or occasionally we have family members or patients themselves who realize that's where they are in life and go to the Internet and find a hospice in the area and give us a call. It's really meant for people who are six months or less to live. There is a sister, how should I say this? There is an allied practice called palliative care. Palliative care focuses on individuals needs, including pain, suffering, and looks at people as a whole, their psychological, social, as well as physical health that is a little bit larger of a discipline. And so hospice is a small part of palliative care for the last six months of life. But often people who are suffering from chronic diseases or cancers or just from life in general, get palliative care before they end up in hospice.

Great. I appreciate getting the color. I think a lot of people don't understand it. Do you think that a lot of families don't wait too long to reach out or patients wait too long to reach out for hospice? Because there's this whole urge to, like, you know, we can live. You know, no one wants to die, but everyone dies. And, you know, the medicine is constantly amazing us. So people hang on.

There's definitely. We definitely have patients who enter hospice and die within 24 hours or 48 hours. And it really depends on the patient. There are some people who are fighting a valiant fight and still gleaning value out of life and still having those Precious moments with their family members as they're getting closer and closer to the time when they're going to not be able to manage their disease anymore. But those people are still finding great value. And so for them, maybe it makes sense to wait for the last moment. The sad part is when you have people who are so clearly dying and instead of getting really good comfort care, end up in a hospital on a ventilator, getting their blood drawn and getting all sorts of procedures and IVs put in and all these things that probably are not comfortable. And that's how they're going to spend their last moments of life. So my goal always is when death is for sure, when we know that there's nothing we can do to stop it. You have a limited amount of time left. And so some people are really big on trying to increase that amount of time, but that can fall short if you increase that amount of time, but it's miserable time. My goal is to help people who realize that the end of life is near and then take whatever time they have left and make that as high quality as possible. I try to focus more on quality than quantity. Now something amazing seems to happen and there have been studies that have, have borne this out, that in many disease processes, especially when you get towards the end, if you focus more on quality than quantity, in other words, if you stop doing these hyper aggressive things, they actually might live a little bit longer and have a better quality of life. So it's not for everyone. And our goal is not to force people to be interested in hospice if they're not. Our goal is to find people who are interested in it and give them the best care possible and give them the best to help them feel like they're living up until that exact moment they die. We don't want dying to be a process. When dying is a process, it's not very much fun.

Yeah, well. And I know you're not directly involved in the clinical side, but are there any stories that you have heard or seen from hospice that stand out to you? Because it's such a moment in your. I mean, you know, when someone passes away, it's, you know, it can be incredible. A friend of mine is a doctor in Germany and he was telling me when he was younger, he was like, yeah, I had this patient and I was holding their hand and they died when I was right there. And he's like, it was just this moment that was incredible and transformative for him. And you know, I've heard that from some other people.

So there are amazing stories in hospice, and there are too many to tell. One thing, since you mentioned Germany, I'll bring up is we have had the privilege of taking care of a number of Holocaust survivors. And occasionally you'll get a Holocaust survivor and they just don't die. And you go to their bedside, and they're breathing heavy, and you're like, this is it. And then you come back the next morning and they're alive. And they tend to live longer on hospice than other people. And you can't help but wonder if that survival mode, which was so important when they were in, you know, these work camps, somehow became part of their DNA. Right. And so now, how many years later, they're getting towards the end of life, and their bodies just don't stop. Some of them want to die. They're ready, and their bodies just keep going. And it's really quite amazing.

I'm trying to. What is the book about? So Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It's a story about Holocaust people living in Holocaust camps and how they survived. And so much of it was not how physically robust they were, but psychologically, how they learned to deal with it. So it would make sense, I guess, that survivors of that would be so much more psychologically tough than normal people. Yeah.

We have a saying in hospice, you tend to die the way you lived. Right. So if you were a calm, relaxed person in life, you tend to die that way. If you were an anxious, uppity person in life, you tend to d that way. And maybe for Holocaust survivors, they've been survivors forever, and they continue to be survivors even in death.

Yeah. All right, well, that's super interesting, but let's move on from the death zone. So I do want to talk about kind of the healthcare side of this. So one of the things we talk about leading to this is just how financial independence and retirement affects people's health. And as a doctor and as someone who's financially independent, I'd love to kind of hear your take on how does financial independence, either early or in traditional retirement, impact the people that you've met?

So it's funny, if you look up data, there's tons of data that suggests when people retire, their morbidity mortality actually goes up quite a bit. The truth of the matter is my personal experience is stress levels tend to go down. Right. If you do it right, if you're not sitting there worried about your numbers and worried that you have enough, but your stress levels tend to go down. You tend to have more time. So I certainly exercise more and you start focusing. You have time and energy to focus on what a healthy life means to you. So in people who do financial independence, especially people who retire and retire early, you see them start to focus on things like exercise and meditation, and they develop hobbies and they look for more purpose and meaning in life. So I think it can be a very healthy thing. The converse side of that is if you retire early and decide to sit in your underwear and play video games all day and drink lots of alcohol and sleep four hours a night and go out to the bars, it's obviously not going to be healthy for you. But most of the people who are thoughtful enough to shoot for this audacious goal of early retirement are all about maximizing things. So once they stop having to maximize their money, they start thinking about their health, their well being, their happiness. So I think it can have profound effects. Certainly my stress levels went down a lot. My wife tells me when she first met me, she met me while I was in medical school, and she was like, you were really funny and smiling and laughing all the time. She's like, after you went through residency and started practicing medicine, that slowly dissipated. And so it wasn't that I was upset all the time. It wasn't that I was melancholy. But about six months after I pulled back from medicine, she looked at me and she said, your humor is back. She's like, I forgot how funny you used to be before all this happened. And I think that speaks to this idea of stepping away from those things that cause you stress and anxiety. I certainly feel like I'm back to who I was before I went through this process. I was a much softer, kinder person before I went to medical school and especially residency. And it kind of beats it out of you. And I think I've returned a little more to the carefree, happy, silly person than I was before.

That's awesome to hear. I think it's interesting that your spouse, you know, your wife can see that. Right. So there are so few people in your life, in your life, in anyone's life. Right. Your siblings, your parents. Right. Long term, maybe high school friends that see you from inception through these various parts of your life. Your friends from medical school are like, oh, you know, here's Doc G, super serious, stressed out guy, you know? Yeah. And maybe that, who knows, maybe we'll have fancy wearables that are on us. And they're like, hey, Doc G, you're a little grumpier. You should rethink this whole medical school thing.

You know, the funny thing is my kids, right. So I have a 12 and 15 year old and they only knew the post residency dad. Right. They were born after I was practicing, so they didn't really see that side of me. So I think it's very fun for them to see their father maybe a little bit more silly and a little bit, you know, more light hearted than they used to. Remember me when I was always rushing out of the violin concert to answer the phone or when I was missing their practice for whatever reason because I.

Couldn'T be available, huh? Yeah. Have you run into any kind of tests that can help people assess themselves from point to point? Probably there's nothing out there. I mean, this is such a different way of thinking about your life. Right. We're always so in the moment versus looking at how. How has my life and psychology changed over the last three decades, you know, from where I was? Yeah. I mean, and just as a side note, I think that when people depression is such a huge thing in our country, you know, I think a lot of people, they don't recognize that they could be depressed. So hard to see. Right. And they're kind of living with it sounds like, you know, maybe you could have been, you know, diagnosed as partially depressed for a big chunk of your.

Life given how, you know, it's reactive depression and anxiety. And it is so common amongst healthcare givers and physicians that we don't question it anymore. You know, the physician suicide rate is double that of the average population. There have been story after story of physicians who have committed suicide. In my small area, there was a woman who swallowed a bunch of pills and swam out into the middle of Lake Michigan and died. There was a surgeon who got hit by a train. And it was always really suspicious because it's like, you know, he was driving his car and drove right in front of a train. Physician suicide is a huge problem. They are studies that show that most kids go into medical school excited and happy and engaged and by the time they finish fourth year, the depression rate is well over 50%. So it's a real, real issue.

It almost feels like, you know, I have a kid that plays a lot of sports and they give him a, you know, baseline for concussions and then if they get injured, they retest them and stuff like that. It almost feels like it'd be cool to get a baseline on people, on your personality at 20 or whatever in college, and then re baseline you for five years and just say, hey, just so you know, you're looking pretty different or Sounding pretty different than where you were. And it might be worth kind of like assessing yourself, but you have to do it over that kind of super long time frame.

Yeah. The problem in medicine is their vested interests in not addressing these issues. The current system is set up to work for hospitals that have a work shortage. There are not enough physicians. Residents come in and work 30 hour shifts, 36 hour shifts. If you were to pair them back to normal hours, the hospital would have to hire people to come in and do the work. There's a reason why the system is the way it is. It's been built that way. And if you want to just talk about financial issues, there are a number of people who enter third or fourth year medical school, realize that it's not for them. But it's really hard when you're 150, $200,000 in debt to turn down this job that will pay you mid six figures at some point if you just keep going with it. So there's a lot of pressure even if you decide medicine is not for you to stick in the game.

Yeah, yeah, it's hard. I mean, that's the reality for probably most things. I remember being so I just remember being in college and I started getting my systems engineering degree. I got, you know, into my junior year and I'm like, this is so painful and hard, but I'm, I'm already invested this much. I'm gonna finish, you know, and, and I did. And it was, you know, I'm glad I did do that. But I did make different choices. I didn't go into chip design after school, which I think would have been a mistake. You know, I went into more of a software design focused consulting thing, which I think was a better fit for me. Luck into that. And I, and also partway through my career, I actually had something like you. So I, I was, you know, I had a company, we sold it. I decided to go back into a bigger company. I got laid off. And, and then I, but they gave me this outpatient or, sorry, outplacement thing where you could take this personality test and it took this huge personality test and it said you should either be a lawyer or an entrepreneur. I already knew I was like, I had already started companies and like, that's an easy choice, but it's kind of cool to get it validated from a third party perspective that, hey, that you, you know, your, your skills and interests kind of align behind this kind of job. And you know, hopefully we get to a place in the future where people aren't always loaded down with kind of the money concerns and they can figure out what a better fit is for them earlier in their lives and as a result have more fulfilling lives. Yeah.

Or at least find something that doesn't make them depressed and anxious.

Yeah. And do. Yeah. And they'll, and they'll do better work. You know, I mean, you know that, you know, we want to have less people that are cranking away on things they hate and then like, oh, get, they get to. I retired at 65, finishing I just spent 40 years doing something I hated. All right, cool. So just to wrap up the health side. If you go to retire, it can actually be detrimental to your health unless you find something really interesting to do and you get busy on exercising and taking care of your mental health, finding good purpose and all those other good things. Good. So. All right. Well, I think I've covered a lot of what I want to touch on actually. Well, one more area just for you personally in terms of how you're invested. I think it's always interesting for audience to hear how are people doing it? What's the mix?

So I am about one third real estate, 1/3 taxable investments and 1/3 non taxable. So real estate. I own four condos which I rent, so I'm a landlord for them. For my taxable account it is mostly in a total stock market index, VTSAX. But I try to be anywhere around 80% stock in general broad based index funds and then 15% bonds and then something around 5% cash. I think right now I have roughly a full year's worth of cash saved. And then usually for my non taxed 401 IRAs, I have a lot of bonds in those because it's just an easy place to hold bonds. But generally I try to maintain that 80, 15, 5. And I would also mention what other people don't mention is. So we talk about different asset classes, we talk about the business asset class, real estate, we talk about stocks and bonds. But I consider my skills an asset class too. So I have a bankable skill. As we were talking about being a physician, I can contract myself out doing things that I like. So I don't worry as much about being as safe. At some point you could say, well you're working less, you should really do more bonds, less equities. But given the fact that I still have income and that I still have a bankable skill, I put that kind of on the asset side.

Yeah, I think that that is one risk that fire people take if they don't work, you have this huge asset of your human capital that does degrade over time. You can make more money at 40. Probably they're going to make it 70 or 80. So you have to be thoughtful of, like, hey, how you're. How you're using that. So when you look at your life, there's some money coming from passive income, from, like the real estate. There's some money coming from your work. Are you also taking dividends like from. Or income streams from your bond portfolio and stuff like that? Is that kind of the mix?

Yes. So right now, almost as an experiment, I've been really watching how much I'm bringing in from dividends as well as rents to see could I completely exist without ever drawing down just on rental income and dividends? I'm pretty close. The way I look at it now is my wife and I still work. We don't need to. But the fun thing about that is a, I get to do something I like, and baby, I can then be extravagant. Whereas a lot of people like to, for instance, travel hack and have lots of credit cards and save money by doing it that way. I just know that I have this extra income. I can do whatever I want with it. If I want to take a nice big vacation, I don't think twice about it because I think of most of my living expenses already taken care of. Whatever we make in our jobs is just over the top. And because of the nature of compounding, our investments keep growing regardless of what we do.

Yep. How many hours a week do you work to make income or a month?

So technically I have to be in about 12 hours of meetings a week, but I also answer about 10 or 15 text or pages every day. So I don't know if you can put an hour on it, but I have to be somewhere physically 12 hours a week.

Okay, so maybe 30 to 40% of your time is traditional work. Yep. Yeah, that's still, you know, I feel like that's healthy, you know, for folks, and you have a huge amount of control and you're doing what you want. You're clearly happier. Your family can see it. So lots of, lots of good benefits for how you've kind of constructed your life. I think that's so important to hear people's stories about lifestyle design. You know, you are thoughtful, you kind of. You're in control. Right. I think that sense of control is huge for people. It's a huge thing for our audience. You know, they want to feel like they understand their money, they understand their income, their expenses, they Know how the money flows and they can manage certain dials. Like you can manage how much you work, how much you try and take off of passive. You know how much risk you're taking in your portfolio and be comfortable that you're doing all those things. So it's awesome to hear that.

Yeah. And you don't necessarily have to be financially independent. I guess that's one thing that I really did learn is if you're cognizant of these things before financial independence, you can still turn those dials. So if you turn the work dial to a place where you really enjoy it and you're making income from it, you might not need to retire five years early because you might be liking what you do, or you might work five more years, but do it part time so that you can enjoy what you're doing now. Fulfill your sense of purpose and identity, whether that's at work or a hobby or whatever it is, and find a sustainable level of work for maybe longer periods of time. So that's one of the big lessons I kind of learned, is I did it one way. You don't necessarily have to do it my way. You can do it much, much slower and enjoy the process more.

Right. I think that's a great point of view. So very often we're all thinking about like, hey, there's this big milestone in front of me. I'm going to hit that goal. I'll be done. It could be that, hey, you've been working and saving for 15, 20 years, whatever, you've piled up a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe you can make the change you want to make right now to do, you know, I want to be a music producer instead of, you know, working at a big bank or something like that. And you're like, okay, I can actually pull the trigger and try it, see what happens. Or try for a couple years and try for a year and see. See what happens. That, that's. It's definitely a powerful thing because you're going to probably be doing something anyway, so you might as well try to get to doing. At least have the cognitive freedom to think about what you could be doing and maybe taking the risk to like, pull the trigger and give it a whirl, because you can always go back. That was one quick thing on this. I was talking with, you know, this entrepreneur, this guy who's in FinTech. I was at this Twitter FinTech meetup yesterday, which I was like, I'm just gonna go. Some guy invited me up, was in San Francisco. We went to The Press Club, which is fancy drinking establishment in San Francisco. And by the way, side note, this guy, Gavin Baker, who I'm hoping to bring on the podcast at some point, sponsored it. Shout out to him. Thanks for the beers. But anyway, so I was talking with this fintech guy who works for Goldman Sachs, works on the Apple Card product and you know, it was clear that he had the capability and skills to be an entrepreneur. And he's been thinking about it, but hasn't pulled. He's done entrepreneurial things, but he hasn't pulled the trigger to go completely on his own. And I run, I run into this a lot with other entrepreneurs. Like many people, they want to do it, they've been thinking about it. They may have been thinking about it for years and they don't. Some of them, some of them pull the trigger. Many of them keep punting it down the road, you know, and you know, it's it. I think if you can kind of reframe things, you know, you may be more likely to just pull the trigger because there never is a good time. I think this person will actually do it because he's working on the path of financial independence. You know, he's pretty frugal, he already saves a bunch of his income and you know, he's got all the human capital that he needs anyway. Okay, well, look, this has been great. So as we wrap up any kind of key influencers, communities, other podcasts that you love, I mean, I do want to give a shout out. Sorry, I should have said this in the beginning, but to your what's Up Next podcast, which was great to be a guest on and I think your panel format is really cool and you get a lot of good ideas out there and kind of a great give and take for having multiple people on at once, which is got to be hard to do to coordinate all.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's great getting a bunch of people together and having one of those conversations that you could imagine having at a dinner table with a bunch of friends. But your friends happen to be really thoughtful about various financial issues and so we really enjoy it. I have a bunch of podcasts I like. Of course there is new retirement.

Thanks.

I have started working with Joe Salsihai from Stacking Benjamin. So I'm a big fan of the Stacking Benjamin's podcast and Money with Friends. Of course, I'm a big fan of Choose Fi. So if you're in the financial independence world, they are definitely a go to podcast. My friends Matt and Joel do how to Money. I like them quite a bit, and they're just. There's so many other ones. Grant Sabatier does Millennial Money. Coach Carson has a podcast. I mean, there are a lot of great ones out there.

Yep. No, it's awesome. They really are. And they're educating a lot of people. It is kind of amazing, right? Sit here, roll some audio and video and reach thousands or tens of thousands of people, hopefully helping them make good choices. Any other big lessons you'd love to share with our audience on the way out here? Takeaways that you've had from your life to this point.

As you were talking about your friend who was thinking about jumping into entrepreneurship or not being a hospice physician, you see a lot of people at end of life, and so what do people regret on their deathbed? Well, they regret not taking a chance on something they believed in. So speaking to your friend, you live once, and that's what people think about 20 or 30 years or 40 years later when they're on their deathbed. They think about people and they think about those things they always wanted to do but never had the courage. So have the courage now, right?

Yeah, I think that's a huge lesson for people. Another thing that. That I've been thinking about more is, you know, have the confidence to take big risks. It could be starting the company, but also even in whatever you're doing to envision that, hey, you know, it could be bigger than you think. It's going to be. Like, we're starting to think that way about our business, like what we're doing around planning. We're starting to focus more on building a virtual financial advisor. And now we're thinking, you know, we. We really could disrupt the whole space. Maybe it is. You know, I think we used to think, hey, we're going to have our little part of this. But now we're like, we think this whole system needs to get changed in a big way, and it's going to have to come from the outside. One thing I love about the fincon and the FI community is just this movement of people that are trying things in a very different way, that are just like, I'm not coming to you from being inside of Goldman Sachs or Bank of America or Wells Fargo. You know, I'm coming to you as someone who's done this, pulling different switches on my own. It can be done, but you have to kind of take control and do it yourself. So it's been good to kind of hear the stories of people like you that are part of that and contribute to that. All right, well, I think that's it. So I'm going to wrap it up.

Thanks for having me on. This has been a lot of fun.

Yeah, no, I appreciate your time. So thanks, Doc G for being on our show. Thanks, Dotto Robison for being our sound engineer. Anyone listening, thanks for your time and hopefully you found this useful. Our goal at New Retirement is to help anyone plan and manage their retirement so they can make the most of their money and time. And if you've made it this far, I hope you check out Doc G's podcast, what's Up Next? And you can also visit their site at DiverseFi as well. And if you want to find us, we have a Facebook group. Or you can look for us on Twitter. New Retirement Sam.