MtoM #197: Rehab Docs Pays Off Student Loans in 16 Months and Finance 101: Pessimism
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This is the White coat investor podcast milestones to millionaire, celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.

This milestones millionaire podcast number one ninety seven we have dog pays off student loans in sixteen months. One of the most underrated financial moves in medicine is working local tenants who pays significantly more on average. And you can work loops full time or on the side of your full time when you work with compels the number one staff in agency, they cover your housing and travel costs, which on top of fire pay really adds up.

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All right, welcome back to the podcast. Lots of fun stuff on here. A W C. I, we recently finished our scholarship program, which is one of our biggest outreach things that we do. Uh, you can check out those winning essays that were submitted.

There's ten of them that each got almost six thousand dollars cash for winning the contest. Uh, that's also a great way that we can help medical students become more financially literate because they find out about you know, White to investors through this scholarship. But a Better way to make them financially with that is what we call our champions program.

And you can get more information about this, a White could investor that come flash champion. What is the champion program? Is a book give away? We are trying to give a copy of the y code investors guide for students to every single first year medical and dental student in the country.

N P S pharmacy P S can also qualify for this. Uh veteran ans are right. So we are opening the doors this year. Um obviously, the book is written primarily medical students and the student.

But as you know, if you've listening to this podcast for long, there's tones of overlap with everybody and uh and is certainly applicable to a lot of those other professions. But what the champion's program is, is IT is a champion in each first year class OK. What is the champion? E have to do not much.

All they got to do is volunteer to be the champion, right? Give us your mAiling address and we're going to send you enough books to pass out to your entire class. You have to pass them out. You can just put on ebay, all right? You have to pass out if you do and you take a picture with us members, your class and send IT to us will send you some swag as well and so you need to be the champion.

Uh and more importantly, you know what you're doing besides just, you know being the guy who got everybody, uh, free book made of financial litter, you literally saved your classmates millions and millions of dollars IT becoming financial literate early in your career worth and two million dollars, let's say most by that by the number of people in your class, right? We see this one hundred people in your class. We're talking about two hundred million dollars in value you just created.

I've volunteering to be the champion for your class. So please, if nobody y's volunteer yet for your class, why could investigate comes flash champion. I think in past years we've gotten this book out about seventy percent of the first years in the country as far as medical students go.

And um we'd like to beat that this year, I think get a hacks of a lot closer to hundred percent. And we're up right now. These books are totally free, and we cover everything, but we can't afford to send them out.

one. This time, we got to send them out in bulk, and that's why we need to champion pass out. So thank you.

Those of you who are have volunteer and those who who will volunteer, I think this program stays open through like march and don't wait, tell the end of the sooner you get this stuff and pass IT out, the more good that you can do stick around. After the interview, we're going to talk for a minute about pessimism. This is something I blogged about before.

I think I can publish a blog on a few weeks ago, but I think it's a really important subject and uh some is really important to understand out there. So stick around. We'll talk about pessimism and why is the problem our guest today and the milestones podcast as hunter hunter, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, thanks for having me tell .

us a what you do for a living, how far you are out of training and what part of the country you live.

So I graduate from recency and twenty twenty two. Um I currently live in taxes, and I am a criminal position, and I do strickly impatient. We have medicine.

Very cool. And what miles we celebrating with you today?

So I had finally paid off on all my student loans, and just about two months ago was about three hundred and eighty thousand dollars to stock and .

change there 喂喂喂， 喂， 喂喂喂。 You said you left residency in twenty twenty two. You're A P M. In our dog and you paid off three hundred and eighty thousand dollars and student loans .

already yeah um if you hate yourself enough and you work harder enough, you can accomplish very much anything i've learned well.

I mean, I think most of us who've been through residency with a test to that, but you must have had a pretty similar life after residency. Have you ve been working the last couple .

of years a lot so it's kind of funny. So my story is a low unique um when I first graduate from resents y um I took at ten ninety nine position and um and Austin, texas and that job don't really actually came out.

I was essentially just working part time and I was really struggling financially uh for a good while and um uh like my student loan was like a growing so much interest is like outpacing wales actually earning per month so that royal LED up a fire underneath me to like royd get my own paid office in as possible. I switch job. I'm still ten ninety nine and I took a impatient rehab position.

And uh with that job what I had signed on for I took on a little bit more than I initially bargain for. So uh, what happened was is that, uh, there were three full time positions at this impatient uh, rehab center. One of them had quit or at left. And so then I came down to two. And so what ended up happening is that I was having to work every other weekend. I was working eleven days on, three days off, and I did that for about sixteen months, and I was coming a 34， 4， sixteen and twenty five patients every day on taking minimal vacation and pretty much everything I had, whether was my sign on bonus, relocation bonus, I threw everything up my logs.

So how much are you making a month during those sixteen months?

Um quite a bit. Uh so IT won't be unusual if I was making a beauty five thousand dollars a month, that would be a good month but definitely on average probably forty or more.

So this is a five hundred， six hundred, six hundred and fifty thousand dollars come you had for for that period of time. Yeah, which is, which is gotta be what doubled the average for P, M and r at least.

Yeah, correct. yeah. So I knew that this was to be like a narrow window of time for me to take advantage of this. I knew this wasn't going to be something that was forever. So I want to take a vange of that and just really uh, hamper down on the belan situation, especially with my situation, with my first job, I was very dead at verse.

Now you mentioned that the loans were growing rapidly. Uh, is part of this time period was still during the um the student loan holiday where these not federal loans are you just returned the period after .

the holiday ended, after the holiday ended? yes. So that was very helpful. Yeah, I probably saved at least five figures during that time. That was really for me.

Yeah absolutely will tell by your household are you single?

Are you married? Are their kids? Um so I was false. SHE is A A nurse nest. We have one kid on the way, but me paint up my loans that all came from my income alone so and he had offered to help pay IT off but I said, you know, all handle my ones and how you can help uh contribute is like for taping for retirement. And so that's how we kind like divide IT and conquered OK.

And then as far as living expenses, where were those coming from? Where those coming from? Her income or equally both.

So we splay everything essentially like that that the almost.

okay. So I mean, what what your lifestyle looked like over the sixteen months, you basically living like a resident. Did you give yourself some whatever raise? I mean give us give us a sense what you're driving and where you live and how often you got to eat in that kind of stuff?

yes. So um I I still dry my car from high actually, so i've had IT for more than half of my life. I eventually upgrade now that I have more financial means to do so. But um the the car was running, I just need me to get from point a to point b um so I don't really have a strong urgency to no change. My car is send me and then in terms like of our lives, so we eat out occasional ning were very i'm very lucky, my wife he likes to cook um and so he does play out all of the proper shopping SHE does all the cooking so that was a big um help um you will help support me in that end so I was working so much, I was unable to contribute as much in those regards .

so or go on the expensive vacations all .

bit yeah exactly yeah. We I like we would have a family reunions and up a gap and I am very.

Now when I tell people to live like a resident, i'm mostly telling them about how to spend, not how to work. But obviously, you can apply that to working as well and you work hard during those sixteen months. Uh, would you say you're working harder or less hard than you did as a resident?

Oh, good. Yeah, I would. On average, I would say a lot more.

Yeah, I was that point working far more than what I did as a resident. I listen, the P. R. Program was, yeah, now of work. I was doing a has an natural attending .

was far more how long do you think you could work like that without burning out?

That's a really good question so um I did eventually hit a wall burn out um and that was maybe probably around month eleven or twelve where me my colleague who was alteration uh weekends with like we were both game really stressed out like is just like no longer really feasible to do some of the things that I um very thankful for that one. I really like the people I work with. I didn't like the people that I work with.

I don't know if I could have been celebrating in this milestone. So uh, up my C E, O that I work with, you know, I I could always come to him about, uh, problems that we are running into like we're really turned out like we really need petition help and IT wasn't told both of us were on the same page um that they start really hunting down for gain other physician on board to and um thankfully that actually happened. We do have someone that's going be starting on next month. So that's been a big relief.

awesome. You know I am kind of envisioning these conversations you have with your wife, how long you've been married now uh.

we just recently .

got back oh, was relatively reason okay. Uh, and when he found out that this is what your plan was for your student loans, how did that conversation go?

So SHE was very important. Um this was a goal of mine or bike. I had this ambitious that I was one held my strong ones like a mala war.

I had to plan out that I want to be about that free within about five years. That was like my aggressive, uh, go why I want to count and then um I was talking with my spells. Uh SHE was very supportive and he knew like he knew that this also wasn't gone.

Be forever. This was gone be a temporary moment, our lives and that we could really come out financially head once we have this behind us. Um so is very fortunate batch and I both like financially on the same way doing okay.

There's somebody out there just like you were a couple of years ago, maybe three or four years ago, sit on a big, huge pilot student months, maybe as twice the average four hundred thousand dollars. What advice you have to them?

So my advice would be need to create finances.

H need to create some kind of road map to know how to get there, right? So whether that IT could be paying off student, that IT could be, uh, aggressively sapin for retirement or a dow payment for a house, whatever your financial situation might be, you need to figure out some kind of plan on how you can accomplish your goals, right? What kind income you need to make on your cost of living, all those things you should probably start having that calculate out before you graduate from present.

If you're really serious about IT, then the second part, which I would argue a little bit harder because this time self reflection, but I would be determining if your psychological tolerance is one be congruent with your financial goals, right? So if you are like I really want to invest aggressively um for retirement, that's fine. But if you want those people that have texture portfolio every day and you see a drop in three percent, you like, ohh, I can invest now you know, stock market, it's in flames.

You would probably be Better off, you know, just paint off the deck or reevaluating your financial goals. So understand, be really important their goals there. And then like the things that you feel inspiron multiple planning a show or in your book um about living below your means, you either have to make more money or spend less of IT um that's pretty river get your goals there's no easy way about IT .

yeah this is basic math in a lot of ways. Are you what's your next school you're going to working on?

So my next goals are going to be learning to, uh, meet my financial regards of taking for retirement. So I was trying to do both the century at the same time, meeting the bare minimum pressure to make my retirement goals. So that's kind my next thing i'm looking at. So I play with retirement calculators. Mutual times um to figure out uh west strategy and had taken or me those calls .

you guys expect to increase your spending the next few months now that this ah now this goal is met.

Well, since we have a child on the way I do to think that uh, definitely happen for sure. So that was the other motivators that I want to make sure that 买买 自然光 um before we try by a you know by a mortgage and then having a child， I knew I won't be up to baLance that point. All these financial responsibility lies very well and so I just want to focus on one and uh go from there. I love that you .

call a buying a margin instead of buying a house. I think that kind of a lot of people feel, especially if they've got a really big mortgage. Uh, very cool, very cool.

alright. Well, I think the hardest part for you is probably all the hard work you put in. But was there any period of time in that sixteen months when you felt like you've made a big financial sacrifice, you didn't buy something. You wanted to buy something like that if I was particularly difficult.

So I won that. There were a couple times when I had like a really long week um when I was covering for while my colleagues to take vacation and I was covering his senses and my sensors at the same time and importing two weekends back back is like IT was a lot so um I did lurch uh here and there I bought small things um you know keep myself saying um during that time period but for the most far the thing I value more than like material things is the freedom to choose what I want to do in the future so to me having extra time to myself, what I knew that was going be Angus. So like if I look at new job in the future, i'm not looking at like what is the was the um amount of income that I can expect to receive the APP? Like now I can now I can focus on the quality of my life a little bit easier.

Now, do you remember back in medical school when you were borrowing all this money? Was that stressful to you? Do you worry that you this was not gonna pay off at any point that you were making a bad investment by barring fifty plus thousand dollars to paper your education?

I knew I won't be a bad investment. I just knew that I was going to take a lot of work to pay IT off, and that I was going to have to make some sacrifices coming out with and see to set myself up for financial success. I knew I wasn't going to be be able to have everything I wanted, right, coming up residency.

So I knew that was some sacrifices that I was going have to be made. And I was already calculating what I need to do, balls, a student, how to get there. So IT was, IT was a Normal expectation for me.

Marry cool will enter. Congratulations on your success. Thank you for coming on the podcast to share with others and inspire them do the same.

All very proud of you here. W. C. I, congratulations.

Thank you so much. So happy bear.

but I hope you enjoy that interview. It's always fun to have a good interview in this case, uh, I was a good example of living like a resident. Not only did, uh, they spend like a resident, I mean, her income is going toward retirement savings.

He was going toward paying off loans, obviously is let in come there when the C R, A plus say, uh, you know uh, we have doc working basically good jobs but you know what? That's a lot of power you can harness to to take care of your you know financial goals. You can meet them very, very quickly when you're working that hard and spending in that little how and I promise you at the beginning, we are going talk a little bit about businesses and what do mean mean about passengers.

And well, if you read dogs, if you read you know financial media, if you're on financial twitter, tiktok or whatever, um if you go to conferences, you will notice that the pessimist, the people who say things you're going to go badly now or we're in for some rough time soon sound smarter than the optimists. The pessimists have all kinds of great arguments about why things are going to be terrible in the future. And the optimist sounds like polyana.

But the truth is the history of industry. And there's a book with this title, but the history of investment should be titled of the optimists because the optimists win in the long run because there's a lot of people going to work every day trying to make the world Better place, trying to make their own lives Better. And they are gradually improving the world around them, right?

We think, especially during political season, that the world is a terrible place in everything's worse than they used to be. But let's really consider for a minute how things used to be. Let's go back.

Let's just say couple hundred years, right? Couple hundred years ago, the vast majority of people on this planet, including in the united states, lived in poverty. They spend most of their day just getting enough money or food to eat, right once the last time we worried, but I having enough food.

D I don't know care how unsuccessful you are financially. You're probably not worried about food. You can feed yourself just fine.

But that's the way I was two hundred years ago, right? A couple hundred years ago before the invention of really the railroad. Well, I guess the telegraph h right. The fastest to information, or anybody ever traveled for millennia, was the speed of a horse right, that's hit, you know, shifts won't even flower.

And horses, if you need to send them across the world or you need to travel across the world, you know, there might be a different group of people that arrived there when you are done. IT wasn't just a matter of taking years to get there. Half of you died on the way.

And as just the way the world was, things are dramatically Better today. And in most ways, things are dramatically Better than even they were ten years ago. Or twenty years ago or thirty years ago, the world is improving.

And being an optimist when IT comes to investing usually leads to Better returns to Better performance, especially in the long run. Yes, crazy things can happen in the short run, right? Uh, stock market crashes happen and h sometimes a one particular sector of the market is over, been right.

Uh, sometimes even bonds have allows a year like twenty two. But the truth is most of the time your investments increase in value. Most of the time companies pay their dividends and bonds, pay their interest in renters, pay the rent and uh and IT works out pretty well to be an investor.

So don't put too much account into the pessimist. They're usually wrong, especially in the long run. And uh the history of the world and history of the markets is one continual example of just how many times they're been wrong.

We forget their wrong, right on these pessimistic, these permai ars are always saying pessimistic things, and eventually IT seems like they are right because something bad happens, right? But that bad thing goes away any year two, and there's still wrong in the long 人。 So I don't put too much emphasis into what you hear pessima say on social media or in, you know, regular media or in your personal life.

Try to be an optimistic at your life, and you'll find a lot more success in your finances. Earlier we mentioned working low comes with compel, the number one staff in agency. But compel isn't just a little comes agency.

Compel s staff regular, permanent positions across the nation as well. They also offer tea, health, medical missions and more as what makes them you need. They can look at your situation after multiple solutions to build your career, the way you want to meet your financial goals.

And they know their stuff, especially when IT comes time, negotiate contracts, which they're willing to do for you. So whatever career move you're looking for, use the power of compels to build your career your way. Learn more at compels, not come also.

Uh, thanks for those of you out there who are sharing episodes with friends, whether is a milestones episode and you know that person's working on a similar milestones and thanks for sending them a link or if it's you know a regular episode and and you just hear a question that you think applies for them, that's you know the only way to share you know this podcast with people is not just to put in five star reviews that does help and we appreciate those, but just sharing a directly, this is a great deal. How the White co investor community was built was just one y co investor sharing stuff with another one. So send links the that you think your friends would really benefit from.

Maybe we'd listen long term, maybe they just listen to that episode, but in a lot of ways you might save them tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars over the course of their career and they will thank you for IT later, I assure you. Um so thanks for those you who out y're doing that. All right, we come to the end of another great episode.

Thank you so much for listening. We're grateful you here without an audience, there is no podcast. So you're an important part of this deal here. Thank you so much for being here and thank you what you do in your David life. As you know I had quite a few interactions with the um with the medical professional medical professional in the last month and am very grateful for all the cure I ve received that most of your patients are too so thanks for what you do on a day day basis even if nobody told you thank you yet today. See you next time on the podcast if you want to beyond the milestones podcast, you can get on IT right on investment comm slash milestones is where you reply, love to have you on, celebrate your milestones and encourage others to do the same. Thank you so much to see you next time.

The host of the White code investor are not licensed to countless attorneys or financial advisers. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. IT should not be considered professional or personalized financial vice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.