March 19, 2025 • 46 mins
'Catching Up to FI' founder and co-host, Bill Yount, appeared as a guest on the EverydayFI podcast with host Meghan Combs. The show explores the lives and stories of everyday people in the financial independence community so Bill opens up about his FI journey as a late starter. He of course represents our Catching Up to FI community. He had a lot to say so this is a two-parter and will be aired over the next two Wednesday episodes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome back to Catching Up to FI.
I'm your co host, Jackie Cummings Koski.
And for this special episode, we'resharing Bill's guest appearance on the
Everyday FI podcast with Megan Combs.
The show explores the lives andstories of everyday people in the
financial independence community.
So Bill opens up about hisFI journey as a late starter.
(00:24):
And even I learned somenew things about him.
So you want to tune in for this.
He of course represents our Catching up toFI community, but Bill had a lot to say.
So this is a two part episode and willbe aired over the next two Wednesdays.
So let's listen in on part one.
(00:47):
Welcome to Catching Up to FI, apodcast on mindset, money, and life
for late starters of any age on theirjourney to financial independence.
I'm Bill and I'm a late starter.
I'm Jackie, and I'm also a latestarter and we're your host.
We're here to help you on yourjourney to financial independence,
no matter where you're starting.
We're going to talk to experts,other late starters, and explore
(01:08):
topics related to our mission.
Join us as we catch up to FI together.
Welcome to everyday five, thepodcast that explores the lives and
stories of everyday people in thefinancial independence community.
Today on the show, I'm chatting withBill, whose voice you all may recognize.
This is another one of my five friendswho I talked to for a pretty long time.
(01:31):
So you're getting two parts.
Again, in part one, we talk aboutbalancing being an ER doctor with
podcasting, plus the fallacy that.
Doctors are rich and shouldshow it in their lifestyle.
Bill also shares how he accomplishedgraduating from med school
with zero student loan debt.
And then some other topics wetouch on are gender equity.
(01:52):
Worthiness and financial trauma.
Hey everyone.
Thanks for listening today.
I am with my friend, Bill.
Bill, how are you doing?
And why don't you introduceyourself to our audience?
Yeah, Megan, I'm Billy out and it'sa pleasure for us to be on your show.
Thank you for inviting me.
I'm a practicing emergency physician,but that's not my real love.
(02:13):
Actually, my real loveis my wife and my kids.
I have twin boys.
We live in Knoxville, Tennessee,and I am just like you, a podcaster.
I have a podcast called catching up tofi, which is catching up to financial
independence for late starters on thejourney to financial independence.
And, you know, it's been.
(02:35):
Microjoy in my life has turnedinto a bit of a macro joy.
It's grown and I feelthe love for my audience.
So I'm sure you do too.
Yeah, I do.
I love my audience, which is probably abig part of your audience too, because we
talked about your show on here a coupleof times, or several times we've talked
about your show, because there's so manypeople get on here and they feel like
(02:56):
they are behind when it comes to Phi,because I feel like when you are looking
at the traditional FI path, It's all thesepeople who are 30 or 35 who have already
retired, and if you found the FI movementwhen you're 35, then you feel behind.
I interviewed somebody just a coupledays ago and his episode will come out
(03:16):
before yours, Alan, and he found FI at48 and then he retired in four years.
I believe, or I think he founded itmaybe 46, but anyway, he retired in four
years after finding the five movement,which was just incredible to me.
But I think a lot of people can really Youknow, benefit from the idea of catching
(03:37):
up to fi because what is it called?
Comparison is the thief of joy.
And so comparing yourself tothese young ins who've retired
at 30 is, is rough sometimes.
So I thank you for doing that.
You talk about FOMO.
And I definitely had FOMO in myfifties because my contemporaries in
the five movement were all retiringin their fifties, and there's kind of
(04:00):
like three versions of late starter.
You've got the people in their thirtiesthat feel like they're late, but they're
really starting mostly on time, butthe sense of starting late could be
overwhelming, you know, and the FOMOinvolved in like, I didn't do anything
for 10 years, and now I'm startingat zero or a negative net worth.
How am I going to catch up to five?
Well, then you have the 40 somethingsand the 50 somethings, the 40
(04:22):
somethings are still in time.
No, it's generally, if you canget yourself to a 30 to 50 percent
savings rate, you're going tohave a 10 to 15 year journey.
And you want to start that 10to 15 year journey as soon as
possible, because you're goingto find you'll bump into burnout.
We just did a show on burnout andyou want to try and reach five on
(04:43):
the crossover point before burnout.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we were just talking aboutburnout before we hit record and
it's one of those things that burnouteven launches people into financial
independence and retiring early.
I know that there wasAmanda on my podcast.
She had a job that was so toxicthat her burnout was so strong
(05:06):
that she was like, I'm done.
You know what?
I can do this now.
I'm done.
I, I Don't need to be here anymore.
And she had that runway and it was,it was a beautiful story to hear that
because burnout is so, is so real.
Speaking of burnout, how do youbalance being podcaster who has almost
a million downloads and a doctor?
(05:28):
You're an ER doctor too, right?
Like not the, you know, work nine tofive types, like the actual ones who
were, you know, in the thick of it.
How do you do that?
Yeah, we're on the front line.
I remember being on the front lineduring COVID and I never got COVID
oddly enough, even though I was inthe face of it for a long time, but
around, yeah, this all started, didit start, it started in end of 2022
(05:54):
with Becky Heptig, my first co host.
And we launched in February of 2023.
And we were just going to experiment.
We're going to do 10 episodes forfun as a little hobby experiment.
And then very quickly.
It turned into something where we, ouraudience kind of expected to hear from us.
We felt sort of the obligation tokeep producing content on a regular
(06:17):
basis, which is very important fora podcast or a show like we do.
So, yeah, we launched and quickly,you know, because we had a community.
Of foundation before we launched, weknew all the people in the space and
we found a niche that was unique asfar as I know, where the only ones in
(06:39):
the niche, it kind of took off and youmentioned almost a million downloads.
Yeah, we're at three quarters of amillion, but we figure we'll be at a
million by mid year next year, which is.
Unbelievable I never thought I'd betalking to a million people in my life
but the question you ask was how do Ibalance this with my day job fortunately
or unfortunately my day job is nightsweekends holidays a very variable
(07:03):
schedule where I'm often not at workwhen people are doing their nine to
fives so it does give me the freedom.
Do you have days off during the weekin entirety to focus on this, but
the recovery from work, which I wastalking to my wife about earlier today,
but when you're 59, like I am, it cantake me a day to recover from a shift.
(07:23):
And you don't count that into paidtime, but it functionally reduces your
hourly rate because you become a zombieafter night shifts that I did recently.
So even though I work 10 shifts a month,12 hour shifts, it probably takes up 15.
18 days of my life because of therecovery periods, if you really
count for that, but part of myrecovery is working on the show.
(07:47):
I have a partner.
You can't do this alone.
I mean, you're in a solo game and Idon't know how you do it, but I have
Jackie Cummins Koski helping me.
I have Diana Falk helping me.
I have Fritz Bessard helping me.
Fritz is our virtual assistant.
That's.
Edits the shows.
I did that for the first 40 episodes.
And, you know, between preppingrecording and editing the shows,
(08:09):
that was, people don't realizehow much work goes into this.
You do, but that was probably15 to 20 hours a week.
If you counted reading the book in orderto talk to the guests and then four hours
to edit it and all the rigmarole that'sassociated with it, it was a lot of fun
and it was good to learn the mechanics,but at a certain point it got to where.
(08:30):
We couldn't grow and I was gettingstressed out, burned out and overwhelmed.
And I decided to startpaying for production.
Having a virtual assistant is agreat benefit, but then there's
a cost associated with it, right?
And there are costs both in time andmoney and in producing a podcast.
It's a relatively low entry cost, butif you hire a virtual assistant, even
(08:51):
though Fritz is only 10 an hour inthe Philippines, which I find amazing.
So for four episodes,I pay like 250 bucks.
And then just recently We startedmonetizing in order to cover costs.
People think you makemoney doing podcasts.
Well, that really isn't the case either.
You're really lucky if you cover yourcosts and then maybe have enough money
(09:12):
to go to a conference like FinConI went to a couple of weeks ago.
So I have the time and I havethe passion, but I have help.
Diana does our social media,which is a rabbit hole.
I don't want to go down.
And Jackie keeps me organized.
I'm sort of the CEO, visionary, a networkor community guy for our organization.
And we have an organization.
(09:33):
I can't believe I'm running in someways a non profit small business.
Yeah, you're the talent ofthe non profit small business.
Oh,
credit to Jackie too.
She brings a lot of chutzpah to the show.
She's also, A numbers personbecause she has her CFP or
certified financial planner.
So I can be the visionary and talkabout the emotion and she can be the
(09:55):
math So we have a math and emotion,salt and pepper type podcast.
Yeah.
It's one of those things where shegives you kind of the expertise.
I don't have that yet.
It
gives me street cred.
She gives you street cred.
Exactly.
With that CFP.
Yeah, I don't have that yet.
I try to make it known that I just Googlestuff and listen to a lot of podcasts.
(10:18):
I have no actual credentials whatsoever,unless you count a master's degree
in art history or credential, notso much when it comes to money.
So Your job as a doctor.
I want to talk about that a littlebit more because, you know, of course,
our community has specific contentcreators for, you know, FI life as a as
(10:40):
a medical professional and especiallywith nurses and then doctors as well.
But I'd like to hear fromyour perspective how.
You approach FI maybe differentlyas a doctor and with your schedule
than maybe somebody who has like aregular nine to five W 2 type of job.
What would you say arethe differences there?
Well, there's some big onesbecause what does doctor bespeak?
(11:03):
It bespeaks rich life.
People see doctors and maybewhat they drive and where they
live and they think, Oh, wow.
He makes a million dollars.
Well, that's not actuallythe case for most doctors.
I'm a frontline guy.
I'm basically a primary care guy.
I'm on the lower end of reimbursement,but you know, I live like a very poor
student for my twenties through medschool and residency back in the day.
(11:26):
I think I made 25, 000 a year.
As a resident and got a 1, 000 a yearraise until I was finished with residency.
And then I got my first big boypaycheck, which was somewhere
under 200, 000 back in 1996, andI didn't know what to do with it.
I had not learned to partition apaycheck and I'd had all this delayed
(11:49):
gratification and I came out of residencywith 30, 000 of credit card debt
because I deserve the vacations thatI took that weren't within my budget.
I deserve the new car, didn'tget the new house right away,
but that was soon to follow.
I didn't have a largely negative networth, thankfully, because I didn't
have student loans, but I lived paycheckto paycheck for probably 20 years.
(12:15):
You know, from early thirties to about50, we spent first and saved last.
I would save what wasleft over at tax time.
And I thought I was doing well.
I didn't know what anet worth statement was.
I didn't know what a balance sheet was.
I didn't know how to trackmy expenses or budget.
And I was a very literate healthcareprofessional, but financially completely.
(12:41):
Illiterate.
So five was different for me.
I didn't even know whatfinancial independence was.
I thought the world would take careof me when I reached retirement.
It seems so far away.
It seemed like, oh, Ican save later for that.
I don't need to now because Ineed all these new great things.
And we had twins and there wereall the expenses with that.
We also struggled with developmentalchallenges and one of our kids.
(13:04):
So we went down this rabbit hole ofthe funnel of life, as I call it, and
we got sucked into the wind tunnel.
And since money wasn't top of mindwhere it probably should have been, it
became the last thing we thought about.
And that's not the way to do it.
As I know now, it's a languagethat everybody has to learn.
(13:25):
It's a critical languagethat the whole world speaks.
Well, not actually they don't, butwe want the whole world to speak.
So we live the rich doctor life, theexpensive vacations, the expensive cars.
We built a house and youtalked about burnout.
Well, in 2008, we hadrehabbed our house and.
(13:48):
The great financial crisis occurredand we were upside down on our house.
So we were, I call itthe trifecta of mistakes.
We were house poor, we were saving last,we hit this bull market and we sold.
Or then we hit the bottom of themarket and we sold out of equities
and out of fear into a fixed income.
(14:09):
And so we missed out on a large part,maybe two thirds of the bull market
thereafter, because we weren't savingaggressively into a growing market.
And we woke up, Oh, itwas about 2015, 2016.
When I turned 50, I got sued in myfield, which is an inevitability.
And I'd managed to make itthat long without getting sued.
(14:32):
But between getting sued and waking upthat we weren't financial ready, our kids
were getting ready to exit the house.
Luckily, we managed to save forand be able to pay for college.
So that was not a burden that wedidn't manage to save for ourselves.
The kids always came first.
And then the wake up was amajor sort of breakdown burnout
(14:53):
session where professionally.
Financially, personally, it all collided.
It was like having a majorhealth crisis and no analysis.
Paralysis was where it started.
Shame, regret, remorse.
These are all feelings that peoplehave, whether they're 30, 40, 50, and
they feel like they're a late starter.
(15:16):
I've heard other conversations beforetalk about how medical professionals have
a tendency to be quote bad with money.
Why do you think that is?
And do you agree with that?
I absolutely agree.
It's getting better first because JimDolly of the White Coat Investor is
on a mission to solve this problem.
But I think generally high incomeprofessionals will go through all
(15:40):
of their school without knowinghow to manage money, having
had never had classes on money.
And you would think in med schoolwhen You're going to have physicians
opening a small business and takingon business debt that they would teach
you how to manage a medical business.
They would think that that's partof your medical training, but
no, everything is science basedand it just was not an issue.
(16:02):
The only financial training we hadwas a Northwest mutual rep comes
to you and gives you a lectureand then offers to be your quote.
Financial advisor and quote after that.
And we fell into that trap.
We fell into the trap of asalesman that gave us a sales
lecture on financial advising.
And as we know, that's notadvising it's salesmanship.
And so we bought a whole life policy.
(16:24):
We did that and we boughtdisability insurance that wasn't
worth much through them as well.
And we stayed with them for a whileuntil we went into a private bank,
another mistake where we had a bankmanaging our money, because that's
what we thought we were supposed todo, because that's what my in laws did.
(16:44):
So we weren't educating ourselvesand making intentional choices
with our money and who advised us.
We were just backing into itbased on what other people were
doing without thinking about it.
We were unconscious.
And doctors are unconscious.
They suffer from thatdelayed gratification.
And, you know, you hear the storiesabout the doctor's wife, for example,
(17:07):
a nonworking spouse that wantsto live the rich doctor's life.
And this exists.
It absolutely exists.
And Jim Dolley says, if you havesix figures of debt, 250, 000
being maybe the average debt thata med student comes out with.
You've got to live like a residentin deprivation for five more
years and pay off that debt.
And people don't get that message.
(17:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's one thing I want totalk about with you because you
said you didn't have student loans.
But before we do that, it makesme curious why this is such a
generalization for medical professionalswhen it's not so much with other
people because other people don'tget financial education either.
I'm an art historian.
I didn't get financial education,but I'm not categorized.
(17:52):
As bad with money, why do youthink doctors just get lumped
into this generalization?
Is it maybe there's an expectationthat because you have a lot of money,
you're gonna be good with money.
What do you think?
Well, it's more money, more problems.
And then I think doctors are notoriousfor having a target on their backs.
This is where I can make money.
You get sold this.
(18:12):
Bill of goods from a salesman and you'regoing to put their kids through college
with a 1 percent AUM fee rather thanput your own kids through college.
The doctors aren't the only ones targeted.
I think lawyers are and accountantsare MBAs are you see people who've
been through accounting or amaster's in business and they're
terrible with money to you see CEOs.
(18:35):
That are terrible with money and it'sreally more money, more problems.
You can make bigger mistakes with moremoney because a bank will sell you
any loan because what do doctors do?
They pay their debts, but youcan't afford something if you can
only afford the payment and that'show they want you to look at it.
You got to be able to afford the thing.
No, Jim Dolley says, buy your cars incash, you know, because a car for a doctor
(18:58):
is generally about one month's salary.
So why can't they, shouldn't they,when we leased cars and the, you
know, that's the worst thing to do.
So it's not just doctors, but Ithink we're the sort of the avatar.
For somebody who's highly educated, butin medicine, but poorly educated in money.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
(19:18):
And yeah, I guess people aren'tlooking at art historians and
thinking they have a lot of money.
So, okay, so you got totell us how did you skirt by
without getting student loans?
That's incredible.
I still am paying my student loans off.
I'm gonna be paying themoff till I'm like 45.
How did you do that?
Well, I didn't, it was one of the bestfinancial decisions I ever made one of
the early in life was to go to my stateschool and in North Carolina, I went
(19:44):
to UNC and I had gone undergrad to Dukewhere I had a bunch of scholarships.
And some help from my parents, so Ididn't have any loans from undergrad
because of, you know, I leveragedacademics and I love there's leverage
that also with medical school, butyou're not going to believe nobody does.
I'll just have you guess at whatthe tuition was for my first
(20:05):
semester of med school in 1988
at UNC.
Okay.
250.
How much did you say?
250.
Wow, you're the closestanybody's ever come.
It was 500.
It's good.
My dad used to brag about that.
He went to law school and he'slike, I only paid 500 for mine.
And so I just guess lower.
(20:27):
It was, it was 500 and about athousand, 1, 500 a semester by the end.
So the only cost to going to medschool for me was the cost of living.
And that's why I didn't have student debt.
Yeah, I think that just hurteverybody's heart who is a millennial
or younger, even Gen X, I think, too.
Ooh, yeah, I paid about 80, 000 for mine.
(20:51):
And that's medical school too, right?
You didn't have to pay anystudent loans for that?
All of it?
No, it was all the package deal.
I actually had no student loans,and that was because of scholarship.
And low cost of that education, it'sno longer the same because they're not
subsidizing, the state isn't subsidizingmedical education like they did back then.
(21:13):
It's a completely different ballgame.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Okay, so, so luck and timing of birthis why you don't have student loans.
Good to know.
And also you're very smart, obviously.
What made you want to be a doctor?
My dad was a doctor.
So I heard that languagearound the house all the time.
(21:34):
I was good at science.
It was tangible.
It was a defined path.
And I don't know what I would have donewith just a bachelor's launching into
the world and trying to find my way.
That was scary to me.
And, you know, with medicine, you know,the hoops you have to jump through.
You just have to jump high enough.
If you're willing to do the work, putin the grind, you will get to the end.
(21:57):
I tried not to do it for a while.
I had a very big passion for theGerman language in college and a
very big passion for studying abroad.
The best times I had inschool when I was in Germany.
I spent six months on a work studyprogram in college in Hamburg, Germany.
After college, I was fortunateto participate in the Fulbright
Fellowship for a year teachingEnglish in Bielefeld, Germany.
(22:20):
The last summer of my life after the firstyear of med school, that's what I refer
to as the last summer, because it's true.
Last time I had severalmonths off, I went to Rostock.
East Germany at the time when the wall wasstill up, that was in the summer of 1989.
If you can believe that I lived withGerman medical students, Eastern medical
students over there, made a bunch offriends, wrote in their ambulances,
(22:44):
did sort of a social sciences projectand a few months, a month or so
after I came back, the wall fell.
And all my friends in East Germanywent to the East side of the wall,
which was not graffitied, chippedoff a piece and sent it to me.
I still have those pieces downstairsin a drawer of the East German wall.
(23:04):
So I'm very proud of being apart of that living history.
You know, all the pre med stuff.
That was just mechanics, the softersciences of speaking German fluently
and living over there and making friendsover there were much more important to
me and I, but for not wanting to do the400 level courses in German, I might have
ended up, you know, teaching German or,you know, as a professor in college, but
(23:28):
that wasn't to be, it became a hobby ora passion that still lives with me today.
Why didn't you pursue theGerman language teacher path?
It was the senior level courses.
I just didn't want to write the papers.
That's it.
Yeah.
It's amazing how small thingslike that can kind of turn
the boat in a certain way.
(23:49):
When I was getting my degrees, I couldn't.
Pass a certain math class very easilywithout having like tutoring and
remedial makeup classes that I hadalready Tested out of in high school.
And so I just decided not to go withthat major I was double majoring in
art history and in business and I waslike, you know I'm just not gonna do a
business major because I can't pass thisclass But I don't know where I would
(24:12):
have been today if I had actually had abusiness major on top of my art Degree.
I think I probably would have beensomewhere completely different.
So it's just funny how thosedecisions that seem so small
probably made a big difference.
I can't regret it.
I love where I am now.
I feel the same way.
I wish I'd have done an MBA andspend an extra year in med school
doing that because what that wouldhave done for me is give me an out.
(24:36):
From medicine, which, you know, would havehelped with burnout to have an out, but to
be able to move laterally or vertically,but what people don't realize is I'm in an
emergency position, but that's what I am.
I can't go be a radiologist.
I can't go be a lot of other specialtiesis you can't go backwards to go forwards.
You're down a dead end.
(24:57):
Basically, unless you go intoadministration in your own
field, and there are other sidehustles and things you can do.
I don't want to dissuade people fromthis, but at any rate, you feel trapped
in your own profession without speakinganother language like business would have
launched me potentially into other arenas.
I, you know, I wish I'dhave done that as well.
(25:18):
Yeah.
And that actually leadsme to a question I have.
What made you want to be an ER doctor?
Was that originally when you startedschooling, that's what you wanted to be?
Or did you find that path later?
At the time I entered residency,going into ER was sexy.
It was very sexy.
It was just before the show ER cameout and there was a big brain drain
(25:42):
going into ER because you had to,it was prior to emergency medicine
residencies and I'm a second generationemergency medicine residency.
My mentors were the first generationand that was about in the 1970s.
Before that.
You'd get moonlighters, you'd get asurgeon, you get a dermatologist, you
get a radiologist that moonlit in the ER.
It was an afterthought profession, butwhat people didn't realize was it was a
(26:05):
specialty that required a huge breadth ofknowledge with the ability to deal with
chaotic, uncontrolled situations and lifethreatening illness, as well as primary
care that required specialty training.
So it was sexy.
It was.
In the mainstream media as being sexy.
(26:27):
My dad was a doctor, but he was aninternist, rheumatologist, allergist.
So in the very cerebral side ofinternal medicine, and I wanted to be
as far away from that as I could be ina way I wanted to have my own arena.
And I like making swiftdecisions that make a difference.
(26:50):
I was not sort of one of those people thatneeded a lot of time to make decisions.
But what you don't have in emergencymedicine is any longitudinal
relationship with the patient.
Oftentimes you're not remembered atall, unless you make a mistake, then
absolutely people will remember you.
You get very little gratitude.
(27:12):
For the 99.
9 percent of things you do right.
But if you get a complaintor make a mistake, that's all
you're going to hear about.
I refer to us as the ghosts of medicine.
Maybe kind of like an anesthesiologistwhere you're going to be asleep and
you don't remember them, but, butwe can make critical differences in
people's lives, but, you know, sadlyenough, we're not often remembered.
(27:32):
I've never been to an ER before enough onwhat I do remember my anesthesiologist.
So when I got my foot surgery,because he was at the top of my
head and I was actually awake.
So maybe this is why.
And I remember talking to himand we were talking about.
Our diets.
And at the time I was vegetarian andhe was like, Oh, I really like steak.
(27:54):
And I got really upset because Iwas under the anesthesia and I was
like, I can't believe you eat meat.
And he was just laughingat me the whole time.
You're a reformed vegetarian.
You eat meat now.
Did you go, did you go back?
So I eat fish because I have a B12deficiency, even with eating fish
and eggs, I still have a deficiency.
So, but yeah, it's justreally hard for me to eat.
(28:16):
Animals, because I just, they're so cute.
I can't, I don't begrudge anybody elsetheir meat, but it's very hard for me to.
My nieces are that way.
I certainly understand.
Yeah.
I'm, my partner eats steak.
He eats not, not like a lot, buthe'll eat steak and stuff like that.
So if I go up to Europe, I will trythings that are meat because I feel like
(28:39):
they're Meat industry is a little bitmore, I guess, better for the environment
and the animals themselves, like theyjust treat them with more respect.
So I feel a little bit better aboutit, but I won't order a meat dish.
I'll just try somebody else's meat dish.
What you're doing is being conscious.
What you're doing is being intentional.
Yeah.
When we talk about money, thoseare two terms that are pivotal.
(29:03):
You know, you've got to.
Think twice, do I really need this thingor do I just want to put it aside, sit
with it for a day and oftentimes youdon't want it again and you've got to
consciously make healthy decisions, youknow, making decisions about what you
eat, what's your food intake, what's yourfinancial intake, your monetary diet and
how do you manage that, you know, I'm.
(29:25):
A little overweight nowcause I'm not exercising.
So my food diet isn't greatand I'm working on that, but my
monetary diet's doing pretty well.
We're 80 percent of the wayto fi and in the next three
or four years we'll be there.
And I'm seeing the light at the end ofthe tunnel and looking forward to it.
Congrats,
(29:47):
it is amazing how many parallelsthere are between diets and
your finances and like a budget.
And I was speaking with one of myother people, I interviewed Abhishek,
I believe it was episode, I want tosay 18 again, I'll link that in the
show notes, but we were talking aboutthe fact that when it comes to diet
(30:07):
for myself, it's very hard for mesometimes to see it as benefiting me.
But when it.
Matters to something outside ofme, like those animals, then I
will make the decision not todo it or not eat it because it's
negatively affecting something else.
So for instance, if I were to get pregnantand my doctor was like, it's going to
(30:29):
be so much better if you eat this kindof healthy diet with leafy greens, I'm
going to do it because I'm doing it forthat baby, but I find it very interesting
that I'm not to the point where I do itfor myself and I think it's very similar.
For me with money, I wantto be intentional about my
spending, but I will just like.
(30:49):
Spend, spend, spend, spend,spend when it's just me.
But then if I have to consider somebodyelse in a financial capacity, I will
bend over backwards to make thatwork for them or help them with it.
For instance, if somebody at work,you know, asks me, you know, where
should I be intentional about my money?
I can tell them exactly how to do itthinking through all of their scenarios.
(31:13):
But for some reason, I can't seemto perfectly do it for myself.
So.
I probably need to talkto my therapist about it.
That's a very important statement,really, because it's about an endoskeleton
versus an exoskeleton, and we tend notto work on our endoskeletons, which are
the internal skeletons that hold us upfor our self esteem, our self worth, and
(31:35):
focusing on our self care is the termpeople use these days, and I used an
exoskeleton, all the external stimuli,you know, all the dopamine hits to hold
myself up and keep me erect, so to speak.
And you need to work from the insideout and we are emotional beings.
We have limbic systems.
We have reptilian brains and you know,just like recently, you know, you can
(31:59):
read about lump sum versus dollar costaveraging and you can read about it
and understand that 75 percent of thetime a lump sum is going to do better.
And then I ended up having a lumpsum not too long ago when a real
estate investment exited and itwas burning a hole in my pocket.
I felt the need to getit back in the market.
And I knew that.
Lump summing, it was goingto be the way to do it.
(32:21):
And I lump summed half of itjust before that 10 percent
correction we had last August.
Now, just before, and I was like, if Ihad to just waited two or three days,
or if I did dollar cost average, I did,you know, a quarter of it each time.
And now I have a plan for the next timethis happens, it's going to be a four
month dollar cost average experience.
And because it was a significantnumber, it was a six figure number.
(32:44):
And just to watch it drop 10%.
The day after I lumpsummed it in was hard.
It was really hard and Iwas in a hurry to do it.
And you should never hurryto make money decisions.
And it's funny because when you look atthe math, when it comes to lump sum, the
math shows that putting it in immediately60 percent of the time is going to be the
(33:07):
best decision, but because you have this.
Experience of where it wasn't the bestnow, even though the math is still the
same, you're altering your future decisionbased on that, because it's emotional.
And it's so funny that you said thatbecause my mom, for instance, she
(33:28):
did, I think, a rollover of some kindwhere she had to sell some investments
to roll it over into a differentaccount because the investments
didn't, you know, in kind transfer.
And she waited.
To buy and it wasn't purposeful.
It was just that she just didn't thinkabout it when it rolled over and then
the market shot up after the election.
(33:48):
We are recording this on November 13th.
So the election was last week and she'slike, Oh, my God, I can't believe I didn't
put it in right before the election.
I'm so stupid.
I'm gonna wait.
Until it goes back down.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.
It's like, don't do that.
Don't do that.
Do that.
I was like, that's timing the market.
And she was like, I know, I knowyou're not supposed to time the market,
(34:09):
but I really don't want to put it inright now because it feels so high.
So it doesn't matter what you know.
Your lizard brain, like you said,is going to take over sometimes.
And I think that when we admit that toourselves, that money is not just math.
It's not even close to just math.
It's very emotional.
(34:29):
If we admit that, then we cantake steps to circumvent those
emotions and have plans for,like you said, now that you know.
How you feel about lump sum investing.
Now you're like, every time I get alump sum, this is what I'm going to do.
And this is going to be my plan.
And you're kind of taking your emotionsout of it by giving yourself that plan.
(34:52):
So it's really smart.
Well, you give yourself an opportunity.
I mean, I'm not spreading itover a long period of time.
It'd be four months.
It's a hybrid solution.
It's functionally a four month lump sum.
But say, for example,I make my first lump.
And then by the time I'm making my secondinvestment, the market dropped 10%.
Well, I'm going to throw it all in.
(35:13):
It just gives you the opportunity to, youknow, buy the dip, so to speak, and do
a little bit of market timing, which isa minor alteration of your plan that's
emotionally based, and it may go downagain more, but you know, discipline
is hard to maintain in the heat ofbattle and money definitely carries so
much emotion with it that it's hard tomaintain discipline, like rebalancing.
(35:36):
As the market drops and as you seeit's going because the market can be
irrational longer than you can be solvent.
It's funny that you say that becauseone topic that's been coming up a
lot is the idea of VT, SAX and Chillversus the Efficient Frontier or the
Paul Merriman portfolio In my mind.
(36:01):
I actually find doing what Paul Merrimandoes and the efficient frontier less
ideal for somebody like me, because ifI have to go in and do anything to my
investments, even if it's only once a yearfor an hour, if I have to do anything.
Like rebalance.
I'm probably gonna mess with it too much.
I like to mess with stuff.
(36:22):
I actually had the Paul Merrimanportfolio for I think a year and I
just kept messing with it and I waslike, no, I can't do this because
I'm probably screwing up my returns.
I'm just going to beteeth, sacks and chill.
That's probably not going to be thesame for everybody, but I don't know
if you've heard that fidelity studythat they did like back in 2013 where
they kind of looked at, okay, who areour top performers of Of investors.
(36:46):
And it was people who's, who were eitherdead or their accounts were like, no
longer active people who did the best.
Cause they didn't, they didn't touch it.
No, my sister, she wasn't dead,but she clicked the aggressive box
on her retirement portfolio as acollege professor back 20 years ago.
(37:07):
And only recently did she surface and shedidn't have a lot of financial literacy.
She just knew that she needed tosay, max it out and check aggressive.
That was all she needed to know.
And yes, it was in a bunch of funds, maybesome that were higher costs, maybe some
that were active by end of the day, 20years later, she's a multimillionaire.
And then now she wants to mess with us.
I'd be careful.
(37:28):
You need to simplify it.
Don't mess with it.
You're you don't mess with your success.
I was in a Paul Merriman portfolio when Iread his stuff and the 10 funds for life.
And when you shave off and add basispoints to your return, yes, it's going
to make a big difference over time.
He has some smaller versions of itbefore funds for life, two funds
(37:50):
for life, where you can get kindof the same effect, but he's a.
Huge small cap value fan.
And that's a hard one to buy intobecause of its underperformance
over the last two decades.
It's a long cycle time.
And if you're going to do that, I thinkyou got to do it when you're young.
You got to start it when you're youngand go 50 percent S and P 500 and
(38:11):
50 percent small cap value as yourBTSA X and chill because they're
the least correlated of the equity.
So yes, if you're goingto do it, do it young.
And stick with it and downshift yoursmall cap value and upshift your S&
P 500 and add bonds when you're 20years into your investing history.
And you're planning to fire, it's notmore complicated than that, but right
(38:33):
now I have a bit of a hybrid approach.
I diversify my bondsaccording to some buckets.
I look at time segmenting.
So I'll have a cash bucket.
That's a years of expenses.
I have a short term bond fund.
That's another.
Year or two of expenses.
Then I have an intermediate termbond fund that runs for about
another three or four years.
(38:53):
So in bonds now at my age, 59, I'm a75, 25, but it's 5 percent cash, 25,
20 percent bonds, and that gives mea five year runway for the markets
to do whatever they want to do.
And as far as my main equity holding,it's VT. As opposed to VTI and I use
all ETFs because of their efficienciesand I custodian them all with Fidelity.
(39:18):
I buy Vanguard products at Fidelity,the best of both worlds in my mind,
took me a while to get there, butI was with Vanguard until they sold
their solo 401k business to a census.
And when that was going to migrateto a census, I was looking at
having three different custodians.
I'm like, I got to simplify this becauseI believe in the KISS principle and
(39:39):
that's where VTSAX and CHILL comes from.
Now, in reality, I buy thetotal world because I believe
in the world economic engine.
It's been a little hard to watch latelybecause since the election, we've seen
international kind of tank a littlebit and then domestic do better.
So they've gone and divergent.
Fashions in the short term.
And I'm like, huh, I wish I was all VTI,but you know, you can feel that, but you
(40:04):
got to stay the course with your plan.
And I do tilt towards us in my taxableaccount with being predominantly VTI.
So I, I am not totally passivebecause totally passive would
be by the whole world and chill.
You're not really passive when you'rebuying the U S and chill, because you've
made a bet on the U S stock marketover the world, so a pure passive.
(40:28):
Person would buy thewhole world and chill.
Yeah, I'm not purely passive.
I guess, I guess I just reallyresonated with JL Collins.
And I was like, I likethis good one and done.
Everything I have is either some formof total stock market, or if it's not
available, then an S and P 500, andthat's good enough for me, I don't
really want to do more than that.
(40:48):
I don't care enough.
I just want my money to grow.
I wish I could do that now, but I'm ata risk tolerance level at my age where
I just, you know, I missed out on the ahundred percent stock era of life that
time that season had passed for me.
And, you know, if I were to get to anet worth that tolerated it, I could
(41:09):
do a reverse glide path and increase myequity holdings as I age, because I have
enough money to tolerate a drop of 30%.
If my nest egg that I need is 70percent of what I have, then I
could be a hundred percent stocksor 60 percent of what I have.
Then you could be a hundred percentstocks because you take it off
the top and you're still fine.
(41:29):
Yeah, for sure.
Can you explain the KISS principle?
Oh, it's keep it simple, stupid.
Oh,
I've had everybody in the audienceis like, uh, duh, keep it simple.
Good to know.
I mean, it, it, it takes outfriction from the equation.
You know, when I had the Paul Merrimanportfolio, yeah, I was in there tweaking
(41:51):
things, I was forward rebalancing.
Where should I put it?
Okay.
And I'm always looking at it and thenyou're going to do things that you regret.
When you have too many moving parts,now Joe saw, see, hi, he'll say
you're VTS X and chill till you haveabout a hundred thousand dollars.
And then you need to get morecomplicated because it helps to
have asset classes that are allmoving in different directions.
(42:13):
And there's something to be said for that.
You know, Paul Merriman wrote thebook, part of the 12, 1 million
decisions you can make it's true.
When you add basis points of return,you're going to grow your money faster.
Yeah.
And I think that's, what'ssuch a challenge for me.
Cause I'm like, okay, do Iwant to grow my money faster?
But.
(42:34):
You're not going to grow up faster ifyou keep touching it, which is what I do.
And like I said, that's why I tried it.
And then I saw myself touching it all thetime and I was like, Nope, Nope, Nope.
And I kept comparing it also tothe VT Saxon chill portfolio.
And I was like, I am not performing aswell because it's, you know, it was a
short, short period of time and it'sonly a year, but I don't know, I just
(42:56):
couldn't, I couldn't stand having to.
To do that all the time.
And I was like, I'm just going to
do a thing.
If you're not going to be dead and watchyour portfolio grow, you got to play dead.
Play dead.
Yeah, I'm playing dead.
Exactly.
Before we move on to the next topic, Ihave to have the obligatory disclaimer
that neither one of us is a financialplanner or financial professional, so
(43:18):
take everything we say with a grainof salt, and if your portfolio goes
down, it's neither of our faults.
Well, everybody's got to havetheir philosophy and tactics, and
everybody's a little bit different.
If there was only one way toinvest, You know, if we were all
VTSX and chillin in the world,it probably wouldn't do as well.
(43:40):
Yeah, we probably wouldn'thave billionaires either.
If there's only one way to invest, right?
So, anyway, that's a whole other topic.
Alright, that's it for part one with Bill.
Make sure to tune innext week for part two.
See you then.
Thanks for listening tothe everyday five podcast.
If you're loving the show, hereare some things you can do.
Number one, subscribe in yourfavorite podcast player and share the
(44:03):
show with your friends and family.
Number two, please leave a review.
I'm always looking forways to improve the show.
Number three, check outmy website, everyday fi.
com Where you can listen to all theepisodes and leave comments for myself
and the guest number four, if you'reinterested in sharing your own financial
independence story, you could find asubmission form at everyday dash five.
(44:27):
com slash podcast.
And finally, number five, join my Patreonmembership for only 5 a month at patreon.
com slash everyday five podcast.
This is a one woman show,so every little bit counts.
See you next time as we continue togo down the path to financial freedom.
Welcome back to Catching Up to FI.
I'm your co host, Jackie Cummings Koski.
And for this special episode, we'resharing Bill's guest appearance on the
Everyday FI podcast with Megan Combs.
The show explores the lives andstories of everyday people in the
financial independence community.
So Bill opens up about hisFI journey as a late starter.
(00:24):
And even I learned somenew things about him.
So you want to tune in for this.
He of course represents our Catching up toFI community, but Bill had a lot to say.
So this is a two part episode and willbe aired over the next two Wednesdays.
So let's listen in on part one.
(00:47):
Welcome to Catching Up to FI, apodcast on mindset, money, and life
for late starters of any age on theirjourney to financial independence.
I'm Bill and I'm a late starter.
I'm Jackie, and I'm also a latestarter and we're your host.
We're here to help you on yourjourney to financial independence,
no matter where you're starting.
We're going to talk to experts,other late starters, and explore
(01:08):
topics related to our mission.
Join us as we catch up to FI together.
Welcome to everyday five, thepodcast that explores the lives and
stories of everyday people in thefinancial independence community.
Today on the show, I'm chatting withBill, whose voice you all may recognize.
This is another one of my five friendswho I talked to for a pretty long time.
(01:31):
So you're getting two parts.
Again, in part one, we talk aboutbalancing being an ER doctor with
podcasting, plus the fallacy that.
Doctors are rich and shouldshow it in their lifestyle.
Bill also shares how he accomplishedgraduating from med school
with zero student loan debt.
And then some other topics wetouch on are gender equity.
(01:52):
Worthiness and financial trauma.
Hey everyone.
Thanks for listening today.
I am with my friend, Bill.
Bill, how are you doing?
And why don't you introduceyourself to our audience?
Yeah, Megan, I'm Billy out and it'sa pleasure for us to be on your show.
Thank you for inviting me.
I'm a practicing emergency physician,but that's not my real love.
(02:13):
Actually, my real loveis my wife and my kids.
I have twin boys.
We live in Knoxville, Tennessee,and I am just like you, a podcaster.
I have a podcast called catching up tofi, which is catching up to financial
independence for late starters on thejourney to financial independence.
And, you know, it's been.
(02:35):
Microjoy in my life has turnedinto a bit of a macro joy.
It's grown and I feelthe love for my audience.
So I'm sure you do too.
Yeah, I do.
I love my audience, which is probably abig part of your audience too, because we
talked about your show on here a coupleof times, or several times we've talked
about your show, because there's so manypeople get on here and they feel like
(02:56):
they are behind when it comes to Phi,because I feel like when you are looking
at the traditional FI path, It's all thesepeople who are 30 or 35 who have already
retired, and if you found the FI movementwhen you're 35, then you feel behind.
I interviewed somebody just a coupledays ago and his episode will come out
(03:16):
before yours, Alan, and he found FI at48 and then he retired in four years.
I believe, or I think he founded itmaybe 46, but anyway, he retired in four
years after finding the five movement,which was just incredible to me.
But I think a lot of people can really Youknow, benefit from the idea of catching
(03:37):
up to fi because what is it called?
Comparison is the thief of joy.
And so comparing yourself tothese young ins who've retired
at 30 is, is rough sometimes.
So I thank you for doing that.
You talk about FOMO.
And I definitely had FOMO in myfifties because my contemporaries in
the five movement were all retiringin their fifties, and there's kind of
(04:00):
like three versions of late starter.
You've got the people in their thirtiesthat feel like they're late, but they're
really starting mostly on time, butthe sense of starting late could be
overwhelming, you know, and the FOMOinvolved in like, I didn't do anything
for 10 years, and now I'm startingat zero or a negative net worth.
How am I going to catch up to five?
Well, then you have the 40 somethingsand the 50 somethings, the 40
(04:22):
somethings are still in time.
No, it's generally, if you canget yourself to a 30 to 50 percent
savings rate, you're going tohave a 10 to 15 year journey.
And you want to start that 10to 15 year journey as soon as
possible, because you're goingto find you'll bump into burnout.
We just did a show on burnout andyou want to try and reach five on
(04:43):
the crossover point before burnout.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we were just talking aboutburnout before we hit record and
it's one of those things that burnouteven launches people into financial
independence and retiring early.
I know that there wasAmanda on my podcast.
She had a job that was so toxicthat her burnout was so strong
(05:06):
that she was like, I'm done.
You know what?
I can do this now.
I'm done.
I, I Don't need to be here anymore.
And she had that runway and it was,it was a beautiful story to hear that
because burnout is so, is so real.
Speaking of burnout, how do youbalance being podcaster who has almost
a million downloads and a doctor?
(05:28):
You're an ER doctor too, right?
Like not the, you know, work nine tofive types, like the actual ones who
were, you know, in the thick of it.
How do you do that?
Yeah, we're on the front line.
I remember being on the front lineduring COVID and I never got COVID
oddly enough, even though I was inthe face of it for a long time, but
around, yeah, this all started, didit start, it started in end of 2022
(05:54):
with Becky Heptig, my first co host.
And we launched in February of 2023.
And we were just going to experiment.
We're going to do 10 episodes forfun as a little hobby experiment.
And then very quickly.
It turned into something where we, ouraudience kind of expected to hear from us.
We felt sort of the obligation tokeep producing content on a regular
(06:17):
basis, which is very important fora podcast or a show like we do.
So, yeah, we launched and quickly,you know, because we had a community.
Of foundation before we launched, weknew all the people in the space and
we found a niche that was unique asfar as I know, where the only ones in
(06:39):
the niche, it kind of took off and youmentioned almost a million downloads.
Yeah, we're at three quarters of amillion, but we figure we'll be at a
million by mid year next year, which is.
Unbelievable I never thought I'd betalking to a million people in my life
but the question you ask was how do Ibalance this with my day job fortunately
or unfortunately my day job is nightsweekends holidays a very variable
(07:03):
schedule where I'm often not at workwhen people are doing their nine to
fives so it does give me the freedom.
Do you have days off during the weekin entirety to focus on this, but
the recovery from work, which I wastalking to my wife about earlier today,
but when you're 59, like I am, it cantake me a day to recover from a shift.
(07:23):
And you don't count that into paidtime, but it functionally reduces your
hourly rate because you become a zombieafter night shifts that I did recently.
So even though I work 10 shifts a month,12 hour shifts, it probably takes up 15.
18 days of my life because of therecovery periods, if you really
count for that, but part of myrecovery is working on the show.
(07:47):
I have a partner.
You can't do this alone.
I mean, you're in a solo game and Idon't know how you do it, but I have
Jackie Cummins Koski helping me.
I have Diana Falk helping me.
I have Fritz Bessard helping me.
Fritz is our virtual assistant.
That's.
Edits the shows.
I did that for the first 40 episodes.
And, you know, between preppingrecording and editing the shows,
(08:09):
that was, people don't realizehow much work goes into this.
You do, but that was probably15 to 20 hours a week.
If you counted reading the book in orderto talk to the guests and then four hours
to edit it and all the rigmarole that'sassociated with it, it was a lot of fun
and it was good to learn the mechanics,but at a certain point it got to where.
(08:30):
We couldn't grow and I was gettingstressed out, burned out and overwhelmed.
And I decided to startpaying for production.
Having a virtual assistant is agreat benefit, but then there's
a cost associated with it, right?
And there are costs both in time andmoney and in producing a podcast.
It's a relatively low entry cost, butif you hire a virtual assistant, even
(08:51):
though Fritz is only 10 an hour inthe Philippines, which I find amazing.
So for four episodes,I pay like 250 bucks.
And then just recently We startedmonetizing in order to cover costs.
People think you makemoney doing podcasts.
Well, that really isn't the case either.
You're really lucky if you cover yourcosts and then maybe have enough money
(09:12):
to go to a conference like FinConI went to a couple of weeks ago.
So I have the time and I havethe passion, but I have help.
Diana does our social media,which is a rabbit hole.
I don't want to go down.
And Jackie keeps me organized.
I'm sort of the CEO, visionary, a networkor community guy for our organization.
And we have an organization.
(09:33):
I can't believe I'm running in someways a non profit small business.
Yeah, you're the talent ofthe non profit small business.
Oh,
credit to Jackie too.
She brings a lot of chutzpah to the show.
She's also, A numbers personbecause she has her CFP or
certified financial planner.
So I can be the visionary and talkabout the emotion and she can be the
(09:55):
math So we have a math and emotion,salt and pepper type podcast.
Yeah.
It's one of those things where shegives you kind of the expertise.
I don't have that yet.
It
gives me street cred.
She gives you street cred.
Exactly.
With that CFP.
Yeah, I don't have that yet.
I try to make it known that I just Googlestuff and listen to a lot of podcasts.
(10:18):
I have no actual credentials whatsoever,unless you count a master's degree
in art history or credential, notso much when it comes to money.
So Your job as a doctor.
I want to talk about that a littlebit more because, you know, of course,
our community has specific contentcreators for, you know, FI life as a as
(10:40):
a medical professional and especiallywith nurses and then doctors as well.
But I'd like to hear fromyour perspective how.
You approach FI maybe differentlyas a doctor and with your schedule
than maybe somebody who has like aregular nine to five W 2 type of job.
What would you say arethe differences there?
Well, there's some big onesbecause what does doctor bespeak?
(11:03):
It bespeaks rich life.
People see doctors and maybewhat they drive and where they
live and they think, Oh, wow.
He makes a million dollars.
Well, that's not actuallythe case for most doctors.
I'm a frontline guy.
I'm basically a primary care guy.
I'm on the lower end of reimbursement,but you know, I live like a very poor
student for my twenties through medschool and residency back in the day.
(11:26):
I think I made 25, 000 a year.
As a resident and got a 1, 000 a yearraise until I was finished with residency.
And then I got my first big boypaycheck, which was somewhere
under 200, 000 back in 1996, andI didn't know what to do with it.
I had not learned to partition apaycheck and I'd had all this delayed
(11:49):
gratification and I came out of residencywith 30, 000 of credit card debt
because I deserve the vacations thatI took that weren't within my budget.
I deserve the new car, didn'tget the new house right away,
but that was soon to follow.
I didn't have a largely negative networth, thankfully, because I didn't
have student loans, but I lived paycheckto paycheck for probably 20 years.
(12:15):
You know, from early thirties to about50, we spent first and saved last.
I would save what wasleft over at tax time.
And I thought I was doing well.
I didn't know what anet worth statement was.
I didn't know what a balance sheet was.
I didn't know how to trackmy expenses or budget.
And I was a very literate healthcareprofessional, but financially completely.
(12:41):
Illiterate.
So five was different for me.
I didn't even know whatfinancial independence was.
I thought the world would take careof me when I reached retirement.
It seems so far away.
It seemed like, oh, Ican save later for that.
I don't need to now because Ineed all these new great things.
And we had twins and there wereall the expenses with that.
We also struggled with developmentalchallenges and one of our kids.
(13:04):
So we went down this rabbit hole ofthe funnel of life, as I call it, and
we got sucked into the wind tunnel.
And since money wasn't top of mindwhere it probably should have been, it
became the last thing we thought about.
And that's not the way to do it.
As I know now, it's a languagethat everybody has to learn.
(13:25):
It's a critical languagethat the whole world speaks.
Well, not actually they don't, butwe want the whole world to speak.
So we live the rich doctor life, theexpensive vacations, the expensive cars.
We built a house and youtalked about burnout.
Well, in 2008, we hadrehabbed our house and.
(13:48):
The great financial crisis occurredand we were upside down on our house.
So we were, I call itthe trifecta of mistakes.
We were house poor, we were saving last,we hit this bull market and we sold.
Or then we hit the bottom of themarket and we sold out of equities
and out of fear into a fixed income.
(14:09):
And so we missed out on a large part,maybe two thirds of the bull market
thereafter, because we weren't savingaggressively into a growing market.
And we woke up, Oh, itwas about 2015, 2016.
When I turned 50, I got sued in myfield, which is an inevitability.
And I'd managed to make itthat long without getting sued.
(14:32):
But between getting sued and waking upthat we weren't financial ready, our kids
were getting ready to exit the house.
Luckily, we managed to save forand be able to pay for college.
So that was not a burden that wedidn't manage to save for ourselves.
The kids always came first.
And then the wake up was amajor sort of breakdown burnout
(14:53):
session where professionally.
Financially, personally, it all collided.
It was like having a majorhealth crisis and no analysis.
Paralysis was where it started.
Shame, regret, remorse.
These are all feelings that peoplehave, whether they're 30, 40, 50, and
they feel like they're a late starter.
(15:16):
I've heard other conversations beforetalk about how medical professionals have
a tendency to be quote bad with money.
Why do you think that is?
And do you agree with that?
I absolutely agree.
It's getting better first because JimDolly of the White Coat Investor is
on a mission to solve this problem.
But I think generally high incomeprofessionals will go through all
(15:40):
of their school without knowinghow to manage money, having
had never had classes on money.
And you would think in med schoolwhen You're going to have physicians
opening a small business and takingon business debt that they would teach
you how to manage a medical business.
They would think that that's partof your medical training, but
no, everything is science basedand it just was not an issue.
(16:02):
The only financial training we hadwas a Northwest mutual rep comes
to you and gives you a lectureand then offers to be your quote.
Financial advisor and quote after that.
And we fell into that trap.
We fell into the trap of asalesman that gave us a sales
lecture on financial advising.
And as we know, that's notadvising it's salesmanship.
And so we bought a whole life policy.
(16:24):
We did that and we boughtdisability insurance that wasn't
worth much through them as well.
And we stayed with them for a whileuntil we went into a private bank,
another mistake where we had a bankmanaging our money, because that's
what we thought we were supposed todo, because that's what my in laws did.
(16:44):
So we weren't educating ourselvesand making intentional choices
with our money and who advised us.
We were just backing into itbased on what other people were
doing without thinking about it.
We were unconscious.
And doctors are unconscious.
They suffer from thatdelayed gratification.
And, you know, you hear the storiesabout the doctor's wife, for example,
(17:07):
a nonworking spouse that wantsto live the rich doctor's life.
And this exists.
It absolutely exists.
And Jim Dolley says, if you havesix figures of debt, 250, 000
being maybe the average debt thata med student comes out with.
You've got to live like a residentin deprivation for five more
years and pay off that debt.
And people don't get that message.
(17:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's one thing I want totalk about with you because you
said you didn't have student loans.
But before we do that, it makesme curious why this is such a
generalization for medical professionalswhen it's not so much with other
people because other people don'tget financial education either.
I'm an art historian.
I didn't get financial education,but I'm not categorized.
(17:52):
As bad with money, why do youthink doctors just get lumped
into this generalization?
Is it maybe there's an expectationthat because you have a lot of money,
you're gonna be good with money.
What do you think?
Well, it's more money, more problems.
And then I think doctors are notoriousfor having a target on their backs.
This is where I can make money.
You get sold this.
(18:12):
Bill of goods from a salesman and you'regoing to put their kids through college
with a 1 percent AUM fee rather thanput your own kids through college.
The doctors aren't the only ones targeted.
I think lawyers are and accountantsare MBAs are you see people who've
been through accounting or amaster's in business and they're
terrible with money to you see CEOs.
(18:35):
That are terrible with money and it'sreally more money, more problems.
You can make bigger mistakes with moremoney because a bank will sell you
any loan because what do doctors do?
They pay their debts, but youcan't afford something if you can
only afford the payment and that'show they want you to look at it.
You got to be able to afford the thing.
No, Jim Dolley says, buy your cars incash, you know, because a car for a doctor
(18:58):
is generally about one month's salary.
So why can't they, shouldn't they,when we leased cars and the, you
know, that's the worst thing to do.
So it's not just doctors, but Ithink we're the sort of the avatar.
For somebody who's highly educated, butin medicine, but poorly educated in money.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
(19:18):
And yeah, I guess people aren'tlooking at art historians and
thinking they have a lot of money.
So, okay, so you got totell us how did you skirt by
without getting student loans?
That's incredible.
I still am paying my student loans off.
I'm gonna be paying themoff till I'm like 45.
How did you do that?
Well, I didn't, it was one of the bestfinancial decisions I ever made one of
the early in life was to go to my stateschool and in North Carolina, I went
(19:44):
to UNC and I had gone undergrad to Dukewhere I had a bunch of scholarships.
And some help from my parents, so Ididn't have any loans from undergrad
because of, you know, I leveragedacademics and I love there's leverage
that also with medical school, butyou're not going to believe nobody does.
I'll just have you guess at whatthe tuition was for my first
(20:05):
semester of med school in 1988
at UNC.
Okay.
250.
How much did you say?
250.
Wow, you're the closestanybody's ever come.
It was 500.
It's good.
My dad used to brag about that.
He went to law school and he'slike, I only paid 500 for mine.
And so I just guess lower.
(20:27):
It was, it was 500 and about athousand, 1, 500 a semester by the end.
So the only cost to going to medschool for me was the cost of living.
And that's why I didn't have student debt.
Yeah, I think that just hurteverybody's heart who is a millennial
or younger, even Gen X, I think, too.
Ooh, yeah, I paid about 80, 000 for mine.
(20:51):
And that's medical school too, right?
You didn't have to pay anystudent loans for that?
All of it?
No, it was all the package deal.
I actually had no student loans,and that was because of scholarship.
And low cost of that education, it'sno longer the same because they're not
subsidizing, the state isn't subsidizingmedical education like they did back then.
(21:13):
It's a completely different ballgame.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Okay, so, so luck and timing of birthis why you don't have student loans.
Good to know.
And also you're very smart, obviously.
What made you want to be a doctor?
My dad was a doctor.
So I heard that languagearound the house all the time.
(21:34):
I was good at science.
It was tangible.
It was a defined path.
And I don't know what I would have donewith just a bachelor's launching into
the world and trying to find my way.
That was scary to me.
And, you know, with medicine, you know,the hoops you have to jump through.
You just have to jump high enough.
If you're willing to do the work, putin the grind, you will get to the end.
(21:57):
I tried not to do it for a while.
I had a very big passion for theGerman language in college and a
very big passion for studying abroad.
The best times I had inschool when I was in Germany.
I spent six months on a work studyprogram in college in Hamburg, Germany.
After college, I was fortunateto participate in the Fulbright
Fellowship for a year teachingEnglish in Bielefeld, Germany.
(22:20):
The last summer of my life after the firstyear of med school, that's what I refer
to as the last summer, because it's true.
Last time I had severalmonths off, I went to Rostock.
East Germany at the time when the wall wasstill up, that was in the summer of 1989.
If you can believe that I lived withGerman medical students, Eastern medical
students over there, made a bunch offriends, wrote in their ambulances,
(22:44):
did sort of a social sciences projectand a few months, a month or so
after I came back, the wall fell.
And all my friends in East Germanywent to the East side of the wall,
which was not graffitied, chippedoff a piece and sent it to me.
I still have those pieces downstairsin a drawer of the East German wall.
(23:04):
So I'm very proud of being apart of that living history.
You know, all the pre med stuff.
That was just mechanics, the softersciences of speaking German fluently
and living over there and making friendsover there were much more important to
me and I, but for not wanting to do the400 level courses in German, I might have
ended up, you know, teaching German or,you know, as a professor in college, but
(23:28):
that wasn't to be, it became a hobby ora passion that still lives with me today.
Why didn't you pursue theGerman language teacher path?
It was the senior level courses.
I just didn't want to write the papers.
That's it.
Yeah.
It's amazing how small thingslike that can kind of turn
the boat in a certain way.
(23:49):
When I was getting my degrees, I couldn't.
Pass a certain math class very easilywithout having like tutoring and
remedial makeup classes that I hadalready Tested out of in high school.
And so I just decided not to go withthat major I was double majoring in
art history and in business and I waslike, you know I'm just not gonna do a
business major because I can't pass thisclass But I don't know where I would
(24:12):
have been today if I had actually had abusiness major on top of my art Degree.
I think I probably would have beensomewhere completely different.
So it's just funny how thosedecisions that seem so small
probably made a big difference.
I can't regret it.
I love where I am now.
I feel the same way.
I wish I'd have done an MBA andspend an extra year in med school
doing that because what that wouldhave done for me is give me an out.
(24:36):
From medicine, which, you know, would havehelped with burnout to have an out, but to
be able to move laterally or vertically,but what people don't realize is I'm in an
emergency position, but that's what I am.
I can't go be a radiologist.
I can't go be a lot of other specialtiesis you can't go backwards to go forwards.
You're down a dead end.
(24:57):
Basically, unless you go intoadministration in your own
field, and there are other sidehustles and things you can do.
I don't want to dissuade people fromthis, but at any rate, you feel trapped
in your own profession without speakinganother language like business would have
launched me potentially into other arenas.
I, you know, I wish I'dhave done that as well.
(25:18):
Yeah.
And that actually leadsme to a question I have.
What made you want to be an ER doctor?
Was that originally when you startedschooling, that's what you wanted to be?
Or did you find that path later?
At the time I entered residency,going into ER was sexy.
It was very sexy.
It was just before the show ER cameout and there was a big brain drain
(25:42):
going into ER because you had to,it was prior to emergency medicine
residencies and I'm a second generationemergency medicine residency.
My mentors were the first generationand that was about in the 1970s.
Before that.
You'd get moonlighters, you'd get asurgeon, you get a dermatologist, you
get a radiologist that moonlit in the ER.
It was an afterthought profession, butwhat people didn't realize was it was a
(26:05):
specialty that required a huge breadth ofknowledge with the ability to deal with
chaotic, uncontrolled situations and lifethreatening illness, as well as primary
care that required specialty training.
So it was sexy.
It was.
In the mainstream media as being sexy.
(26:27):
My dad was a doctor, but he was aninternist, rheumatologist, allergist.
So in the very cerebral side ofinternal medicine, and I wanted to be
as far away from that as I could be ina way I wanted to have my own arena.
And I like making swiftdecisions that make a difference.
(26:50):
I was not sort of one of those people thatneeded a lot of time to make decisions.
But what you don't have in emergencymedicine is any longitudinal
relationship with the patient.
Oftentimes you're not remembered atall, unless you make a mistake, then
absolutely people will remember you.
You get very little gratitude.
(27:12):
For the 99.
9 percent of things you do right.
But if you get a complaintor make a mistake, that's all
you're going to hear about.
I refer to us as the ghosts of medicine.
Maybe kind of like an anesthesiologistwhere you're going to be asleep and
you don't remember them, but, butwe can make critical differences in
people's lives, but, you know, sadlyenough, we're not often remembered.
(27:32):
I've never been to an ER before enough onwhat I do remember my anesthesiologist.
So when I got my foot surgery,because he was at the top of my
head and I was actually awake.
So maybe this is why.
And I remember talking to himand we were talking about.
Our diets.
And at the time I was vegetarian andhe was like, Oh, I really like steak.
(27:54):
And I got really upset because Iwas under the anesthesia and I was
like, I can't believe you eat meat.
And he was just laughingat me the whole time.
You're a reformed vegetarian.
You eat meat now.
Did you go, did you go back?
So I eat fish because I have a B12deficiency, even with eating fish
and eggs, I still have a deficiency.
So, but yeah, it's justreally hard for me to eat.
(28:16):
Animals, because I just, they're so cute.
I can't, I don't begrudge anybody elsetheir meat, but it's very hard for me to.
My nieces are that way.
I certainly understand.
Yeah.
I'm, my partner eats steak.
He eats not, not like a lot, buthe'll eat steak and stuff like that.
So if I go up to Europe, I will trythings that are meat because I feel like
(28:39):
they're Meat industry is a little bitmore, I guess, better for the environment
and the animals themselves, like theyjust treat them with more respect.
So I feel a little bit better aboutit, but I won't order a meat dish.
I'll just try somebody else's meat dish.
What you're doing is being conscious.
What you're doing is being intentional.
Yeah.
When we talk about money, thoseare two terms that are pivotal.
(29:03):
You know, you've got to.
Think twice, do I really need this thingor do I just want to put it aside, sit
with it for a day and oftentimes youdon't want it again and you've got to
consciously make healthy decisions, youknow, making decisions about what you
eat, what's your food intake, what's yourfinancial intake, your monetary diet and
how do you manage that, you know, I'm.
(29:25):
A little overweight nowcause I'm not exercising.
So my food diet isn't greatand I'm working on that, but my
monetary diet's doing pretty well.
We're 80 percent of the wayto fi and in the next three
or four years we'll be there.
And I'm seeing the light at the end ofthe tunnel and looking forward to it.
Congrats,
(29:47):
it is amazing how many parallelsthere are between diets and
your finances and like a budget.
And I was speaking with one of myother people, I interviewed Abhishek,
I believe it was episode, I want tosay 18 again, I'll link that in the
show notes, but we were talking aboutthe fact that when it comes to diet
(30:07):
for myself, it's very hard for mesometimes to see it as benefiting me.
But when it.
Matters to something outside ofme, like those animals, then I
will make the decision not todo it or not eat it because it's
negatively affecting something else.
So for instance, if I were to get pregnantand my doctor was like, it's going to
(30:29):
be so much better if you eat this kindof healthy diet with leafy greens, I'm
going to do it because I'm doing it forthat baby, but I find it very interesting
that I'm not to the point where I do itfor myself and I think it's very similar.
For me with money, I wantto be intentional about my
spending, but I will just like.
(30:49):
Spend, spend, spend, spend,spend when it's just me.
But then if I have to consider somebodyelse in a financial capacity, I will
bend over backwards to make thatwork for them or help them with it.
For instance, if somebody at work,you know, asks me, you know, where
should I be intentional about my money?
I can tell them exactly how to do itthinking through all of their scenarios.
(31:13):
But for some reason, I can't seemto perfectly do it for myself.
So.
I probably need to talkto my therapist about it.
That's a very important statement,really, because it's about an endoskeleton
versus an exoskeleton, and we tend notto work on our endoskeletons, which are
the internal skeletons that hold us upfor our self esteem, our self worth, and
(31:35):
focusing on our self care is the termpeople use these days, and I used an
exoskeleton, all the external stimuli,you know, all the dopamine hits to hold
myself up and keep me erect, so to speak.
And you need to work from the insideout and we are emotional beings.
We have limbic systems.
We have reptilian brains and you know,just like recently, you know, you can
(31:59):
read about lump sum versus dollar costaveraging and you can read about it
and understand that 75 percent of thetime a lump sum is going to do better.
And then I ended up having a lumpsum not too long ago when a real
estate investment exited and itwas burning a hole in my pocket.
I felt the need to getit back in the market.
And I knew that.
Lump summing, it was goingto be the way to do it.
(32:21):
And I lump summed half of itjust before that 10 percent
correction we had last August.
Now, just before, and I was like, if Ihad to just waited two or three days,
or if I did dollar cost average, I did,you know, a quarter of it each time.
And now I have a plan for the next timethis happens, it's going to be a four
month dollar cost average experience.
And because it was a significantnumber, it was a six figure number.
(32:44):
And just to watch it drop 10%.
The day after I lumpsummed it in was hard.
It was really hard and Iwas in a hurry to do it.
And you should never hurryto make money decisions.
And it's funny because when you look atthe math, when it comes to lump sum, the
math shows that putting it in immediately60 percent of the time is going to be the
(33:07):
best decision, but because you have this.
Experience of where it wasn't the bestnow, even though the math is still the
same, you're altering your future decisionbased on that, because it's emotional.
And it's so funny that you said thatbecause my mom, for instance, she
(33:28):
did, I think, a rollover of some kindwhere she had to sell some investments
to roll it over into a differentaccount because the investments
didn't, you know, in kind transfer.
And she waited.
To buy and it wasn't purposeful.
It was just that she just didn't thinkabout it when it rolled over and then
the market shot up after the election.
(33:48):
We are recording this on November 13th.
So the election was last week and she'slike, Oh, my God, I can't believe I didn't
put it in right before the election.
I'm so stupid.
I'm gonna wait.
Until it goes back down.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.
It's like, don't do that.
Don't do that.
Do that.
I was like, that's timing the market.
And she was like, I know, I knowyou're not supposed to time the market,
(34:09):
but I really don't want to put it inright now because it feels so high.
So it doesn't matter what you know.
Your lizard brain, like you said,is going to take over sometimes.
And I think that when we admit that toourselves, that money is not just math.
It's not even close to just math.
It's very emotional.
(34:29):
If we admit that, then we cantake steps to circumvent those
emotions and have plans for,like you said, now that you know.
How you feel about lump sum investing.
Now you're like, every time I get alump sum, this is what I'm going to do.
And this is going to be my plan.
And you're kind of taking your emotionsout of it by giving yourself that plan.
(34:52):
So it's really smart.
Well, you give yourself an opportunity.
I mean, I'm not spreading itover a long period of time.
It'd be four months.
It's a hybrid solution.
It's functionally a four month lump sum.
But say, for example,I make my first lump.
And then by the time I'm making my secondinvestment, the market dropped 10%.
Well, I'm going to throw it all in.
(35:13):
It just gives you the opportunity to, youknow, buy the dip, so to speak, and do
a little bit of market timing, which isa minor alteration of your plan that's
emotionally based, and it may go downagain more, but you know, discipline
is hard to maintain in the heat ofbattle and money definitely carries so
much emotion with it that it's hard tomaintain discipline, like rebalancing.
(35:36):
As the market drops and as you seeit's going because the market can be
irrational longer than you can be solvent.
It's funny that you say that becauseone topic that's been coming up a
lot is the idea of VT, SAX and Chillversus the Efficient Frontier or the
Paul Merriman portfolio In my mind.
(36:01):
I actually find doing what Paul Merrimandoes and the efficient frontier less
ideal for somebody like me, because ifI have to go in and do anything to my
investments, even if it's only once a yearfor an hour, if I have to do anything.
Like rebalance.
I'm probably gonna mess with it too much.
I like to mess with stuff.
(36:22):
I actually had the Paul Merrimanportfolio for I think a year and I
just kept messing with it and I waslike, no, I can't do this because
I'm probably screwing up my returns.
I'm just going to beteeth, sacks and chill.
That's probably not going to be thesame for everybody, but I don't know
if you've heard that fidelity studythat they did like back in 2013 where
they kind of looked at, okay, who areour top performers of Of investors.
(36:46):
And it was people who's, who were eitherdead or their accounts were like, no
longer active people who did the best.
Cause they didn't, they didn't touch it.
No, my sister, she wasn't dead,but she clicked the aggressive box
on her retirement portfolio as acollege professor back 20 years ago.
(37:07):
And only recently did she surface and shedidn't have a lot of financial literacy.
She just knew that she needed tosay, max it out and check aggressive.
That was all she needed to know.
And yes, it was in a bunch of funds, maybesome that were higher costs, maybe some
that were active by end of the day, 20years later, she's a multimillionaire.
And then now she wants to mess with us.
I'd be careful.
(37:28):
You need to simplify it.
Don't mess with it.
You're you don't mess with your success.
I was in a Paul Merriman portfolio when Iread his stuff and the 10 funds for life.
And when you shave off and add basispoints to your return, yes, it's going
to make a big difference over time.
He has some smaller versions of itbefore funds for life, two funds
(37:50):
for life, where you can get kindof the same effect, but he's a.
Huge small cap value fan.
And that's a hard one to buy intobecause of its underperformance
over the last two decades.
It's a long cycle time.
And if you're going to do that, I thinkyou got to do it when you're young.
You got to start it when you're youngand go 50 percent S and P 500 and
(38:11):
50 percent small cap value as yourBTSA X and chill because they're
the least correlated of the equity.
So yes, if you're goingto do it, do it young.
And stick with it and downshift yoursmall cap value and upshift your S&
P 500 and add bonds when you're 20years into your investing history.
And you're planning to fire, it's notmore complicated than that, but right
(38:33):
now I have a bit of a hybrid approach.
I diversify my bondsaccording to some buckets.
I look at time segmenting.
So I'll have a cash bucket.
That's a years of expenses.
I have a short term bond fund.
That's another.
Year or two of expenses.
Then I have an intermediate termbond fund that runs for about
another three or four years.
(38:53):
So in bonds now at my age, 59, I'm a75, 25, but it's 5 percent cash, 25,
20 percent bonds, and that gives mea five year runway for the markets
to do whatever they want to do.
And as far as my main equity holding,it's VT. As opposed to VTI and I use
all ETFs because of their efficienciesand I custodian them all with Fidelity.
(39:18):
I buy Vanguard products at Fidelity,the best of both worlds in my mind,
took me a while to get there, butI was with Vanguard until they sold
their solo 401k business to a census.
And when that was going to migrateto a census, I was looking at
having three different custodians.
I'm like, I got to simplify this becauseI believe in the KISS principle and
(39:39):
that's where VTSAX and CHILL comes from.
Now, in reality, I buy thetotal world because I believe
in the world economic engine.
It's been a little hard to watch latelybecause since the election, we've seen
international kind of tank a littlebit and then domestic do better.
So they've gone and divergent.
Fashions in the short term.
And I'm like, huh, I wish I was all VTI,but you know, you can feel that, but you
(40:04):
got to stay the course with your plan.
And I do tilt towards us in my taxableaccount with being predominantly VTI.
So I, I am not totally passivebecause totally passive would
be by the whole world and chill.
You're not really passive when you'rebuying the U S and chill, because you've
made a bet on the U S stock marketover the world, so a pure passive.
(40:28):
Person would buy thewhole world and chill.
Yeah, I'm not purely passive.
I guess, I guess I just reallyresonated with JL Collins.
And I was like, I likethis good one and done.
Everything I have is either some formof total stock market, or if it's not
available, then an S and P 500, andthat's good enough for me, I don't
really want to do more than that.
(40:48):
I don't care enough.
I just want my money to grow.
I wish I could do that now, but I'm ata risk tolerance level at my age where
I just, you know, I missed out on the ahundred percent stock era of life that
time that season had passed for me.
And, you know, if I were to get to anet worth that tolerated it, I could
(41:09):
do a reverse glide path and increase myequity holdings as I age, because I have
enough money to tolerate a drop of 30%.
If my nest egg that I need is 70percent of what I have, then I
could be a hundred percent stocksor 60 percent of what I have.
Then you could be a hundred percentstocks because you take it off
the top and you're still fine.
(41:29):
Yeah, for sure.
Can you explain the KISS principle?
Oh, it's keep it simple, stupid.
Oh,
I've had everybody in the audienceis like, uh, duh, keep it simple.
Good to know.
I mean, it, it, it takes outfriction from the equation.
You know, when I had the Paul Merrimanportfolio, yeah, I was in there tweaking
(41:51):
things, I was forward rebalancing.
Where should I put it?
Okay.
And I'm always looking at it and thenyou're going to do things that you regret.
When you have too many moving parts,now Joe saw, see, hi, he'll say
you're VTS X and chill till you haveabout a hundred thousand dollars.
And then you need to get morecomplicated because it helps to
have asset classes that are allmoving in different directions.
(42:13):
And there's something to be said for that.
You know, Paul Merriman wrote thebook, part of the 12, 1 million
decisions you can make it's true.
When you add basis points of return,you're going to grow your money faster.
Yeah.
And I think that's, what'ssuch a challenge for me.
Cause I'm like, okay, do Iwant to grow my money faster?
But.
(42:34):
You're not going to grow up faster ifyou keep touching it, which is what I do.
And like I said, that's why I tried it.
And then I saw myself touching it all thetime and I was like, Nope, Nope, Nope.
And I kept comparing it also tothe VT Saxon chill portfolio.
And I was like, I am not performing aswell because it's, you know, it was a
short, short period of time and it'sonly a year, but I don't know, I just
(42:56):
couldn't, I couldn't stand having to.
To do that all the time.
And I was like, I'm just going to
do a thing.
If you're not going to be dead and watchyour portfolio grow, you got to play dead.
Play dead.
Yeah, I'm playing dead.
Exactly.
Before we move on to the next topic, Ihave to have the obligatory disclaimer
that neither one of us is a financialplanner or financial professional, so
(43:18):
take everything we say with a grainof salt, and if your portfolio goes
down, it's neither of our faults.
Well, everybody's got to havetheir philosophy and tactics, and
everybody's a little bit different.
If there was only one way toinvest, You know, if we were all
VTSX and chillin in the world,it probably wouldn't do as well.
(43:40):
Yeah, we probably wouldn'thave billionaires either.
If there's only one way to invest, right?
So, anyway, that's a whole other topic.
Alright, that's it for part one with Bill.
Make sure to tune innext week for part two.
See you then.
Thanks for listening tothe everyday five podcast.
If you're loving the show, hereare some things you can do.
Number one, subscribe in yourfavorite podcast player and share the
(44:03):
show with your friends and family.
Number two, please leave a review.
I'm always looking forways to improve the show.
Number three, check outmy website, everyday fi.
com Where you can listen to all theepisodes and leave comments for myself
and the guest number four, if you'reinterested in sharing your own financial
independence story, you could find asubmission form at everyday dash five.
(44:27):
com slash podcast.
And finally, number five, join my Patreonmembership for only 5 a month at patreon.
com slash everyday five podcast.
This is a one woman show,so every little bit counts.
See you next time as we continue togo down the path to financial freedom.
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