BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 51: Using Financial Freedom to Prioritize Family with Crispy Doc

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

Prioritizing Family with Financial Freedom Carlos Fuego is an emergency room doctor with a superpower—the ability to realize that money doesn’t buy happiness and family time is far more important than the status of being a doctor. He realized that... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 51, where we interview Carlos Fuego from KrispyDoc.com. I don't want you to be miserable and let's work together to try and sort of change things so that this works. And so the original plan was let's get out of medicine as quickly as possible. Let's save on steroids and just get out. And that didn't mean we cut back our lifestyle, but it meant that every, like every penny was scrutinized.

It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation, you're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcasts. How's it going, everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I'm really doing fantastic today. Once again, I'm super excited about today's guest. And I kind of feel like I say that all the time. But I really am super excited about every. guest. And today is no exception. Today we interview Carlos Fuego, who is an emergency room doctor

with a superpower. The ability to realize that money doesn't buy happiness and family time is far more important than the status of being a doctor. And he realized that his kids kind of viewed him as a roommate. And his wife was starting to resent the fact that all he did was work. So he took a step back and he's like, you know what? What's really important to me? I don't care about the status of being a doctor, I want to have a good family life. I want to have, you know, my wife on the same playing field. I want to be happy in my everyday life. And on top of that, he felt burnt out in medicine because he was just there all the time. So he discovered that when he pursues happiness, he's just so much happier in general. And when he's happy, he truly enjoys being a doctor.

I love the, I love the episode. I think that he does a really good job of showing like what you can do if you have a high income and you're feeling burnt out and how to avoid the trap that I think a lot of those high income folks fall into. If we go back to a couple episodes to when we interviewed Financial Samurai, which episode number was that? Was that 46? Financial Samurai was episode 46. Yeah, you know, the concept of forecast your misery came up in that episode.

I think in a lot of ways, that's what Carlos did here, is he forecasted his misery and he kind of backed into a lifestyle that's way better and was able to use the math of personal finance to create that for himself. So I think it's just a great example of that. If you're willing to go a little bit of, you know, outside the beaten path and understand the costs to your life of that high, that high income, high stress job, I think this will be a helpful episode for you. Yeah, you know, I know Carlos in real life. And when you meet him, oh, he's a doctor is not the first thing that you not the first impression. He calls himself a, does he call himself a dirt bag? Is that the word he uses? Crisis management. He's not a doctor. He's not an emergency room doctor. He's in crisis management.

He's in crisis management. But he described himself as kind of a dirt bag. Like I would just live in a youth hostel all the time. And that's not how I would describe him. I would describe him as like a grateful dead follower who doesn't smell. She's Scott's too young to remember the Grateful Dead tours of the 1990s. But he's just, he's carefree like the Grateful Dead followers of the 90s. They were carefree. They were like Lucy Goosey, whatever. That's his life because he doesn't stress about money and his job and any other thing that you can stress about. He's like, whatever.

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Carlos Fuego. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going today? It is going great. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited to talk to you. So Carlos, I know about your backstory and you didn't experience a ton of what your

grandparents did because you weren't around yet. It still helped shape you as a person. So can you give us a little bit of history about your grandparents and then how that kind of shaped your whole money story? Sure. So my background is my parents are from Mexico and Cuba. My dad's from Cuba. My mom's from Mexico.

They were born there. But if you go back one or two generations before, depending on how far back in which branch of the family, they all sort of had roots in the old country. And our family's Jewish, which meant that they were usually trying to get away from something. And that's how they ended up in Latin America. The story on my dad's side is basically my great-grandfather was trying to get away from the pogroms, these sort of regular persecutions that happened in the Ukraine. So he decided to

test out the waters by saying, hey, could he make it to some other country? The game plan at that time was get to the U.S. There were very strict limits on the number of Eastern Europeans that could get there. So plan B tended to be, okay, you move to Latin America, you become a citizen of Mexico. And then you come to the U.S. five years later because, hey, at that time, Mexicans could easily cross the border. Go figure how things change. So my great-grandfather gets off the boat in Mexico. He's just taken this transatlantic cruise and kind of has the wife and the kids back home. And he gets off on the shores.

And the story that our family tells is he gets off on the dock, unbeknownst to him, the Mexican Revolution is going on. He sees a guy stabbed on the dock as he's getting off and has not yet touched dry land, turns right back around, goes to the ship captain and says, I will work my way to whatever the next stop is, but you cannot leave me here. This is what I was trying to get away from at home. Well, lo and behold, the next stop was Cuba. And he gets off and he's like, it's a little bit warmer than the Ukraine here.

The water's a little bit nicer than the lakes that I'm used to. So long story short, he becomes a peddler on the docks in Havana. He sends for the family, brings them back. He's used to kind of this life of total deprivation. And so what he does is he scrounges and saves every penny he makes and he puts it into, and you guys will love this, real estate. He buys in the boondocks where there are very few roads, no one's living, but he thinks, hey, I'm going to start growing something. And I want to live this sort of life of the kind of this rural farmer's life. It turns out that he bought land in an area called Binard de Rillo, which is in northern Cuba.

it is this sort of red, beautiful soil that, as luck would have it, turned out to grow tobacco very well. And so he builds up his land holdings and he has a tobacco plantation and then starts to diversify and buys a factory and basically is able to save up and then loses everything when Castro comes to power. So the family story from Castro's side is my dad is sent over early. My uncle was already studying here. and my grandparents were planning on staying. They sort of sent my father and my uncle, who were their only two kids, ahead of time, because the military was conscripting young men of military age, and they were scared.

So that long digression was just to say the family story was basically all about, when you start over again, the only thing you've got is your education. And that was a huge, huge emphasis coming from that side of the family. And the best proof of that is my parents, my aunt and uncle, there were five grandchildren coming from the Cuban side of the family. Five of them went to Stanford. The black sheep went to Yale. Like, education was drilled into us as that is your future. That's the only way you're going to get ahead. And with political instability, that's the only thing you can count on.

So let's move on to your story now. You have this, I mean, obviously your dad has this, I don't want to say weight on his shoulders, but definitely like, oh, okay, my dad sacrificed everything to get me here. I better not slack off. How do you? did that affect you in your growing up in your, like, formative money years? So interesting. My parents were shielders. And they really, because of this emphasis in education, they didn't want us to worry about anything. So we had no idea how to deal with money. We had no idea, frankly, how to deal with cars. We had no idea how to deal with anything. It just wanted us to study and do well. And it wasn't quite like you see those sort of caricatures

of immigrant parents where they're like, no, no, no, you have the freedom of every other student. You could choose what kind of doctor, lawyer, or engineer you want to be. Like, it wasn't that heavy-handed with my parents, maybe more so with my cousins who sort of felt that intensely. For us, I think it was we want you to be the best that you could be. We want you to really blossom. And so the downside of that, you know, the upside is I had growth mindset. I could learn anything.

And if I was going to fail, it was never going to be for lack of effort because there were lots of people who were smarter than me. There were lots of people who caught on quicker. But my work ethic was the one. that was going to carry me to be able to compete with that level of people. And that was what helped. For money, I was totally a doofus. I knew nothing. When we got money for birthdays, we saved it all. My parents had this program that we continue with our kids, where whenever we got a birthday gift, it immediately went to them. Like, there was no talk of like, great, there's a video game I've

been saving for. This is going to college. And so there was always the expectation that we'd go on to higher education. But there was also that thought that you had to save it for the future. You never were sort of living for today. That was part of it. They'd matched. every savings that we got from birthdays and we put it in and deposit it. And so that was the expectation. When I got to school, I had no idea what I was doing. I'd started a job in high school, teaching Sunday school and continued that in college. And so I was making money to help save. I'd gotten maybe some partial scholarships to help offset the costs. I was very lucky that my parents, because of this emphasis on education, they had said, we want you to have a debt-free education.

And we will do whatever it takes to do that for you. And, you know, of course, being oblivious, I didn't realize what a huge gift that was until the tail end of that, where I was like, wow, that's a lot that they've offered. So what happened when you graduate college, right? Yes. You've got all the savings. And it sounds like you graduate at least undergrad debt-free, right? I did. All the savings went.

It still cost as much proportional to other schools as it does now. And it's interesting kind of going through the whole Phi Kool-Aid to be like, wow, there's a lot of people that question the value of that education. And, you know, reasonably so. But I go through, I'm debt-free. The savings had all been spent on college, but I went straight through to med school next. And so at that time I was looking at, I'd just gone to this really expensive private undergrad school. I was looking at the choice of public or private mid-school. And the biggest decision for that was I wanted to be where I could have the support of the people that were going to get me through because I knew it was going to be tough.

So financial considerations were a factor because at that point, I was slowly starting to get like, oh, there's a big difference in cost. So I went to UC San Francisco, which is a state school for us. And it was a fantastic education. I remember when we were protesting outside because they were going to raise tuition to, you know, from $9 to $13,000 a year. So you can imagine a paleolithic period of tuition that this must have been. That was a huge win. And again, my parents were there and they said, we will do this. I did work jobs. They were minor jobs like teaching anatomy on the side. but I tried to supplement the income, but in med school, really, you don't have a lot of time for a lot else. Okay.

So you graduate med school debt free as well, right? Huge. Yeah, huge win. When do you start making money? What kind of does your financial position look like kind of following when you start getting maybe your residency and then into the higher paying? What do you kind of do with the advantageous position you got to start with? So great question.

The answer was I didn't know. So I did what I usually do, which is I said, Hey, dad, you know, like I'm pretty much still a college student at heart. I'm kind of innately a dirt bag. My wife likes a kid that, you know, I'd be perfectly happy living my life in a youth hostel with a shared bathroom. And she's probably right. So I was every bit that person at that time. So I said, dad, I've got way more money than I know what to do with. What do I do with it? And he's like, you just take it and you stick it in your retirement that's offered through internship into an S&P 500 fund. So this was 1999. And I don't know if you've ever looked at the sort of gradual growth curve of the S&P. and P500, it goes up until about 1999 and then it dips down. And it's kind of like this deep

incisor v shape where it doesn't really get back to what it should have been until almost a decade later. So those first years where I had money, I was oblivious. I would just, you know, my dad said that was probably a reasonable thing to do. So I deposited the money and I didn't pay any attention to it. I want to jump in here and say, if you are investing for retirement, put it in, do like Carlos did, put it in, and then, and don't ever look at it again. We've had some weeks, the past few weeks, they've been some volatility in the stock market.

And I see all these posts on Facebook from people like four months ago, oh, I'm doing great in the stock market. It's so awesome. I'm amazing. I'm wonderful. And then like two weeks ago, oh, my God, what do I do? Nothing. Do nothing.

Did you take any money out of the stock market during that deep V shape? I was completely oblivious. It was never a better time to be stupid and ignorant. And I completely just, you know, had a. on autopilot. There was a way to set it up. So I did that an internship. I moved to L.A. for for residency, and I did exactly the same thing. And I just saved as much as I could. At that time, I don't know if I was even aware of like broth IRAs, which I would have qualified for. So I was probably putting it into some less favorable but still tax favored

setup. But it was, you know, you put it all in. You got the statements in the mail. You brought that collection to the nice lady who looked about your age at H&R Block once a year. and that was all I knew of money. And, you know, I could still eat the food I liked because I was working strange hours. It's not like I was big on social expenses. I remember I was invited to one birthday party of a friend who'd been a trader on the Pacific Stock Exchange. And like my idea of a birthday party was like, okay, well, I'll all, you know, chip in and get his burrito. And it turned it to be in Venice Beach, this gentrified part of Venice Beach where it was like a foody place. And I swear, I looked at the menu and it like, I was like, it dawned on me. This is,

is going to be a $100 meal plus what I have to chip in for my friend. I was sweating bullets. And it's not that I didn't have the money. It's that I couldn't conceive of that level of spending and think of it as normal. I remember I was like, wow, I've just blown like whatever I was planning on saving for this, ate ramen for the rest of the week or the rest of the month or whatever it was. And swore to myself, like, these are the parties that whenever I get invited to in the future, I'm going to say, I'm so sorry, I can't make it for dinner. I would love to join you and buy you a beer afterwards. And I deliberately avoided them just because that was not my programming. I couldn't feel comfortable doing that. I relate to that so much. I love that. I just, I made a note to Scott. I love that he's a

doctor worrying about a $100 meal. But you know what? That's what gets you to early retirement, not going and spending $100 at every meal every time you go out because that's what gets you to retirement at, you know, 85. I like we still to this day, my wife and I, we've realized that the way that we do best going out with friends is when we can name the venue, because we do have some foodie friends who are really big, and LA's got a lot of temptation. And so we'll say, hey, have you tried this great new Didy Ethiopian place, this fantastically interesting ramen house that just opened up that's authentic or the Cuban place, which happens to be located near a Taiwanese bakery? And we've started to frame things in such an interesting way that our foodie friends were like,

well, I wanted to go to the celebrity chef place. We'll be like, no, I've never tried Zimbabwe. We in food. Let's do that. That sounds awesome. That's like, you're the only friend who will go with me. So we've carved out a niche where, like, our Ritzy friends, like, they'll come dumpster dive with us and it works well. That's a really good tip, though. Like, you define the location. You're steering somebody away. They'll probably still go to that celebrity chef thing, just not with you. And that's okay, because that's not what interests you. I went out to dinner with my husband and we went to Morton Steakhouse, which is a nice steak. house, this was a thousand years ago when dinner was only $135 for a couple. But afterwards, we looked at each other and we're like, that was really delicious. But that wasn't in my

Libyan taste buds any better than Outback Steak House, which is 50 bucks. So let's not go back. And, you know, not a slam on Mortons. It was really delicious. I bet if I went back now as a more refined adult, I would probably appreciate it more. I just don't want to spend $135 on dinner. I think our equivalent is we have like the annual hospital gala, right? And you like are kind of expected to go. And I just don't look at the bill because it hurts too much to look. But, you know, for a while, I go with my wife and say, look, our friends are going. This will be our once a year expenditure. We'll go. And we like jokingly call it Dr. Prom because everyone gets dressed up. You know, you see people all glitzed out. We decided like we certainly want to do our part for the community

and for the hospital, but we really don't need to go to Dr. Prom. Like the cost benefit doesn't work out for us. And there's the night after Dr. Prom, there's this, like, free party that a bunch of docs throw not as ritzie, not as nice, but really, like, everyone's elegant. Everyone has free food. So we've started to go to like the, you know, frugal Dr. Prom night after party and told our friends, hey, you know, we can't make it this year to that one. I'm so sorry. But we will be at the one right after if you want to come hang with us there. So that's become our like alternative to Dr. Prom venue. In 1999 is when you graduated and got your residency, right? Yes.

When did you get your first kind of like, I don't know what the full-time doctor position was the term? So you're an attending physician, sort of a historical term. So when I became an attending physician, so I actually was a glutton for punishment. And when I graduated, I had these great experiences. In med school, I spent a summer working in Argentina and sort of getting some clinical experience in a hospital there. In Spanish is my first language.

So I had a great time there. Then in med school, I also was selected for this dean's scholarship. to go spend two months in Beijing, China, and set in hospitals there. So I had this real interest in travel and sort of spending time internationally with medicine in residency. I kind of built on that. I spent some time in Nairobi, Kenya, spent some time in Bali, actually, at a clinic there. And I was like, maybe this is my career.

Maybe what I do, you know, at the time I wasn't dating anyone. I thought maybe what I do is I'm this free-floating balloon and I go around traveling and doing humanitarian work. Lord knows I don't spend that much. So it's not like I need to get this baranteed in. income. So I actually did a fellowship in international emergency medicine for a couple of years. So even though I was a fully certified attending physician, I was still making a fellow salary, got my MPH for two years, spent two years in Boston, and was teaching there and spending

a lot of time abroad, the vast majority of it, about six months of those two years over a lot of smaller trips spent in Ethiopia. So that was where I spent my time. Now, that was not a lot of money because I was basically making a slightly glorified resident salary. So how much were you making and how much were you stock to saving during this period? Okay. So when I was a resident, I was probably making in the mid-40s. And if that, whatever I didn't spend was going just straight to savings. When I was in fellowship, same deal. I was making actually more probably on the order of, I want to say, 55 to 6.

maybe for those two years. And so I finished fellowship and ended up with about $80,000 in savings the vast majority in tax protected spaces. And it was just accidental. Again, it was putting it into the S&P 500 fund at wherever I had that and not really looking at it. Would you say that your travel and what you were kind of able to do with the fellowship and go around with all these different places was in part due to the fact that you had not adopted a lifestyle that maybe some of the other doctors had begun to adopt? I think that was part of it. Definitely being a dirt bag is a big part of like just saving money. But I think the bigger part probably, if I'm honest with myself, is I had this head start because my parents gave me a debt-free education, which is a gift that I

want to give my kids. I had probably a five to seven-year head start on anyone around me who was going to have to take that much time to get rid of their debt. And so I could say, oh, lucky me. I'm, you know, the king of the universe or whatever the saying is because I basically could piddle around and I didn't need the money. There was no interest accruing that I was going to pay for those years of piddling. There are lots of people who can't say that. So yes, having a low burn lifestyle helped, but it was really that advantage that I could explore that. Got it. Okay. You mentioned just a moment ago that you want to give your kids a debt-free education as well. Do you think that's a good thing to give them this debt-free education. I don't want to saddle my children with this horrible

debt. And when they, by the time they're in college, it's going to be, I don't know, $80 million a minute or whatever. So it's going to be pretty hefty should they not go to a state school. But I want them to be part of the process of, you know, hey, you need to pick something that isn't super expensive. You know, you're going to get a great education at a state school. You're going to get a great education at a private school, but you're going to pay so much more for that private school education. Do you think if they know that you're going to foot the bill, they'll just choose whatever they want? Or I guess you could make them part of the conversation. I definitely make them part of the conversation all the time.

And I go back and forth about this. So our cousins who still live in Mexico, one of their kids, when he was in college, you know, comes back his freshman year and he tells his mom and dad, you know, guys, I'm really torn. I'm thinking I really like music, but I also like philosophy. So maybe I'll major in one and minor in the other. and they look at each other and they have the same baggage that my parents had. You know, their generation before theirs was basically destroyed in the Holocaust. Like it was their job to make up for lost time. And their kids were supposed to be like the embodiment of like our family is back and

we're successful. So they had this sit down come to Moses moment where they're like, hey, guys, you are going to be able to graduate with a degree in economics or engineering, which you will then leverage into a very high-paying job that will sustain you independently. And then at the end of the day, you can philosophize or play your piano or whatever it is that interests you, but that is not a degree that's going to get you to be able to sustain yourself. And don't look at us because we're not doing outpatient economic care. And so I've started to have these conversations with my kids, interestingly, where, you know, I was talking with my daughter and like a lot of kids who just started the fifth grade. She's a really talented artist and she loves nothing more than to draw.

And, you know, when people were asking her for a long time, what do you want to be? I want to be an artist. And of course, like as dad with like all of the, you know, immigrant baggage in the background setting off flares, I'm like, well, let's talk about something, kiddo. Like how many of your friends' parents are artists? And she would like, well, one, I'm like, okay, where do we normally see artists? And she's like, well, we see artists kind of at the art walk on the beach. Okay. How many of our neighbors are artists? And she was like, well, I don't really know any. What do our neighbors do? And she's like, well, you know, there's that guy who's an engineer. And there's that guy who's like a high-end real estate agent and there's that guy. Oh, yeah, no,

they're both doctors. There's those folks. And I didn't have to say it. And I feel a little bit guilty, right? Because like, am I bludgeoning her dreams away? I hope not. We do have this talk of, like, you know, there's rainbows and unicorns and I don't want to deprive my children of their childhood. But I do want them to walk in eyes wide open. I want them to say, like, teaching is a noble career. And my mother was a kindergarten teacher for 35 plus years and loved work every day that she went in. It's also hard and not remunerated the same way that engineering or being a physician is. And so we talked a little bit about that. And it was interesting because the other day someone asked her in front of me, but I was off to the side. She didn't see me. Like, what do you

want to be? And she said, you know, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll go into education. I like art, but I don't think I'm going to pursue that as a career. And I was like, well, either I'm the biggest a hole there ever was, or there's some reality that's sinking in and maybe she'll ask it a little bit earlier than everyone else. Let's go with reality sinking it. You were traveling the world. What brought you home? So I was kind of this free-floating helium balloon in the world. And I was like, I'm going to just try and see, like, I had these pseudo-academic aspirations where I really like to teach. And I'm sort of big nerd by just my nature. And so I thought, like maybe I can do academic teaching and meld that with a career in international medicine.

So go do this fellowship for two years. I went out there and at the time that I left for it happened to get into this relationship with an East Coast girl from Jersey who moved out to Boston with me. We didn't move in together, fortunately, but we moved out there together. The relationship didn't work out. So I am near the end of fellowship with about six months left and just like heartbroken. And I knew when I went out there, that was going to be kind of a short-term thing. I wanted to explore great places to be young and alive. Boston was one of them. I had a great experience. I have no regrets. But the best part of all was that about six months before I'm leaving, I'm out of that funk. And for whatever reason, I snap out. And I think, you know, in six months,

I plan to be back in California. I'm an unrepentant Californian and considered the promised land despite the toxic financial scenario here. And my family's out here. So I said, look, in my mind, I could either already be back or there's maybe a handful of people that I've met that I've met, really would like to get to know. Top of the list was my wife. What was your financial position when you moved to California? What was your kind of earnings? How much did you accumulate at that point? So it was the 80,000 at the end of fellowship. That was four years of residency plus two years of fellowship, which was a prolonged path for the emergency room. I came out. My wife at that time, she had a condo. She is a little older than I am. And so she was living in adults' life. I was

living still a student life. So she sold her condo, happened again by dumb luck to be sort of the peak of the market right before the bubble burst. A few months later, I think, for that section of Boston, and a few years later for that country as a whole. And so we had this amount of money that we were sitting on. And we figured we'd go live in L.A. We rented an apartment that was less dumpy than the other apartment. But it was a young place. We were close to the beach. And it was like perfect to be goofy in love. And we thought we'd rent for a year, find a place and buy. And then what happened was prices kept climbing, right? It's 2005, we move out. Prices are skyrocketing. I'm getting nervous. I'm also feeling a little bit ants in the pants because I've never owned a place. And there's this disease

that all doctors get, like it infects them when they're in medical school, which is that as soon as I get my first paycheck, I need to buy a house. So I was feeling that very acutely in a hot market in Southern California. And my wife, to her credit, is more picky than I am. We had like the downpainment set aside. She said, you know what, waiting a little longer served me well for a husband. I want to wait for the right deal. So let's find something that meets all our needs rather than just, you know, because you want a garden, we should buy the first thing we see. And that helped because we waited and we waited. And she was picky and I was burning to buy something. And then 2008 happened. And suddenly things that had not been in our price range dropped down. We were able to get a great deal on a nice house, which I'm talking to you from,

but which was my biggest financial mistake. So let's go back a second. So you had 80K. Yes. When you moved to California, it seems like a big life event. Yes. Your wife is bringing how much in?

Significantly more because she had just sold her condo. So in terms of savings, I probably had a comparable amount in my retirement, if not even a little bit more since I've been pretty aggressive early, more so than she had. In terms of the amount that she got from her condo sale, that was like going to be our down payment for our house. And that was a huge win for us.

Okay. And then your new situation in California, what does that look like? So we both started working at community hospitals. We were both making, I'd say, probably the average nationwide salary for emergency docs. Working hard had those experiences where that was a dock salary for the first time for me and for her. And we just saved it. We maximized our retirement savings because of the requirements of my work. So emergency docs tend to work as independent contractors. My work required me to form a corporation. So my wife and I incorporated. jointly. And basically our salaries would pass through the corporation. We were then able to put sock away money in a profit-sharing 401k deal. And so we were able to sock away significant amounts.

We were probably saving in excess of 100K a year. During those years where we had this, you know, by our salaries, very low cost housing compared to what we could afford, living like students, walking to the beach and working like dogs. Awesome. And what year was, what year did this begin, this period where you begin? probably fall of 2005. Fall of 2005. Awesome. And then when did you discover financial independence? So that came much later. I had like little inklings of it. You know, there's like the, in the movie, you see a flash of something and someone's kind of recognizing that there's this

bigger thing out there, but they just choose not to see it because, you know, I had all kinds of excuses. Right. When I was a med student, I was too busy. I was learning. When I was in residency, I was too busy. I was learning how to be a doctor and save lives. And then when I was doctoring, Like at that point, you know, I was too busy saving lives. Money is kind of vulgar. You don't think about that. We didn't talk about it at home, certainly. And then I was married and not married, but I was living with this fantastic woman and goofy in love. And like, I'd much rather spend the time being goofy in love when I wasn't working. So I had every excuse why I just wasn't going to think about that. You know, the incorporation, basically I'm at work like, what do you do

with a paycheck and one of the other docs in the lounge says, well, you should go see my husband's sailing buddy. He's a financial advisor and, you know, he got us 18% last year. I was like, okay. So I made an appointment with him and I'm wearing my, you know, flip flops or sandals and shorts and maybe an untouched shirt and the guy's looking businessy in his snazy suit. And he seems nice and we like him. He's charismatic. And ultimately, you know, I'm asking him all these questions that I think might be useful, but I don't really know. And he says, look, I'm taking a much bigger risk with you than you are with me. Most of my clients have a million dollars or more in assets, and you guys basically have peanuts. So if you want me, I'm here for you,

and I'm happy to take that chance on you because I believe that eventually you'll get a decent net worth. And in exchange for which these early years, like, I'm the one who's doing a lot more work than is really going to be warranted by the amount that you're going to pay me for an assets under management structure. And I said, you know, I like his honesty. He struck me as an ethical, upstanding citizen. We went with him. And then every year we'd meet and he would use a lot of jargon. And I'd walk out of the meeting and look at my wife and I'd be like, boy, I got about 50% of that. And she'd say, I got about 25.

So you're doing better than I am. And we both look at each other with relief. Like, boy, I'm glad we've got a smart guy like that looking out for our interests. Because, boy, I don't understand that. And it sounds really complicated. And in the back of my mind, I was thinking, like, at this point, now our daughter was born a couple years after we were married. And I'm thinking, like, I don't want to be the guy who screws this up. what I wanted was plausible deniability. I wanted to say, if it all goes to hell in a handbasket,

it wasn't my fault. We had this smart guy who was doing it for us. And we had the best people on the job we could have. And then a couple of things, there was the New Yorker article on Mr. Money Moustache that came out. And I read that and I was so hungry for that. Oh, God. Like read that article, went to the website within a week, probably within three days. I'd read the entire website. And I was, this was my financial conversion. Like I was born again. And this happened come at the perfect time. So I mentioned buying this house. At the time we were buying this house, I was going through my first doctor lawsuit. And they're horrible, horrible affairs. Eventually, you get the perspective to realize it's about the money. Your insurance has it and someone wants

it. And they've got a hard life for a variety of reasons. And so you start to not take it personally. But the first time you get that, I mean, you went into medicine because you care about people and you gave up all your 20s to do this. And someone's telling you that you didn't do your best? Like, how dare they? It gets at the core of your being and why you did this. So you feel wretched and you feel betrayed by these people that you went out to help. And you've got this bunker mentality that they're all out to get you. And we were trying to get a loan for this house. And like, we had a huge down payment. Basically, we put down a 50% down payment on a house in Southern California. That's ridiculous. And it happened to be a great time to buy. And essentially,

we were being turned down for a loan because I said, well, I don't know, that lawsuit. And finally, my attorney, my malpractice attorney, got on the phone and called these people at the loan originator and they said, okay, we're going to give it to you. But I felt like how is it that this career that I dedicated my life to could potentially jeopardize my family's ability to have a place to live? We also at that time, my wife was pregnant with our son. Like I had all of this like the just horror of going through a physician lawsuit, the stress of not being able to buy a home and it was going to be my fault. I happened to be a period where our group was, was understaffed. And so instead of working 12 shifts a month, I was working 15. And that just,

it sounds like a small numerical difference. That's the difference between your kids thinking of you as a renter at an Airbnb and your kids feeling like you're present for them. There's a difference between your wife feeling like you're part of the team and you're helping with the mental load at home and your wife just being resentful of the fact that your job's taking away. And my wife, she has the same job. She gets it better than anyone and she was still resentful. So it was a horrible time. And I read this and I was like, this is it. This is what I need. I need to do this. And I need to get out as soon as possible because this is horrible. I don't like my life. I sat down. I went through, what are my priorities? What's going on here? And how did I diverge from them? And I realized,

okay, where am I spending my time? Well, my work schedule comes first. And all the other parts of life, they go after that. My kids come next. My wife, unfortunately, is coming after my kids instead of them being at least on an equal playing field. There's the basics of like what happens so the house doesn't go down in flames. There was not disappointing others at this time, mind you, we've got kids and the grandparents, they want access. So we calculated that in my daughter's first year of life, one out of every six days would spend with a family member visiting, whether it was my wife's or my parents. So we were doing a lot to help other people, but we weren't really doing a lot to kind of take care of ourselves. And so I saw financial independence was the answer. And now, again, I'd been oblivious.

and we'd been savers, and that helped. We got our house, and that helped because that was always hovering in the back of my mind, like, what's this pain going to look like? How much am I going to owe? Because that's how long I'm going to have to be in this job that's making me miserable. That was always at the back of my mind, particularly at that time when I was pretty miserable and was feeling burnt out, hence the name, Krispy Doc. But Krispy Doc is also like, hey, fire makes you crispy.

Like, that was the whole idea. Hey, this kind of exposure is a good thing. Read the article, read Mr. Money Mustache. That sends me down all other wormholes, mad fiant, J.L. Collins, a go curry cracker, all these, like, you know, the incredible same cast of lovable characters that you guys have interviewed makes me happy to share a stage where they've been. And so I was like, this is great. I can do this. And my wife looked at me the way like your partner or the person who knows you the best in the world would have looked at you,

if you'd have said, guess what? I am becoming a Hari Krishna. She was like, we used to share, we used to have this shared reality, and it seems like you're not a part of that, and I love you and trust enough that you will return to it one day. And so I was able to do a couple of things. One of them was, like, within six months, I was reading a ton of books, and I basically took half of our assets and moved them out of Merrill Lynch into betterment because I was like, oh, my God, you know, the robo advisor was like this sexy new thing, and I was going to go down an order of magnitude from what I was paying the advisor. I was so excited. And then another six months, And I was like, yeah, the Robo Advisor was a mistake because this was all on the road to do it yourself portfolio

management. So I broke up with my advisor who I still like and who I think is an ethical, upstanding person. But I just thought if his kids or my kids were going to get the money I was working for, I'd rather it be mine. I like that. I like that comment a lot. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop.

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or are even just starting to look at it and thinking, oh, maybe that would be cool, but is the sunk cost of you just said you gave up your 20s to become a doctor? How do you reconcile the fact that you gave up your 20s to earn this position? And then how do you reconcile that with giving up this job completely, which is totally not the norm and you're now going to have to convince everybody or used to be a doctor and I didn't lose my license due to malpractice. I just decided to quit because I wanted to be financially independent. Like, how do you come to terms with that? So for me, I think there were two things that probably helped.

One of them was like I was kind of born 40. Like, you know how there's the 16-year-old kids that are like, I want to drink this weekend. And then there's a 16-year-old kid who's like, you know, I want to get a fake ID because I want to get into the clubs. And then there's like the one 16-year-old kid, you know, think the breakfast club who's like, I got a fake ID because I want to vote.

Like I was that third kid. I was a Dungeons and Dragons kid. I like to think about the world. And, you know, that was what gave me pleasure. And like my high school self was probably, I was a floater. I had friends with the smart kids, was in a lot of classes with them. I was also friends with like the girls who dressed in Ann Taylor and were feeling really prestigious about dating guys from City College when they were 16 and also, you know, an occasional football player where I'd go have lunch with those guys. And so I had like this sort of random set of friends. So I felt like an outsider to begin with. So I didn't really need to feel like.

an insider. Part of the reason I'd like to emergency medicine is it's kind of a misfit specialty. Like, yes, you have these folks who are like, I like to beat my chest in the mountains and rock climb, but you also have folks who are like, I like to help people in jail with their health. And I like to hike the Pacific Crest Trail for three months at a time. And I like to play punk rock music. And like those were the people that I connected with. Wow, those were my people because like they didn't fit in any other, you know, they were square pegs and round holes. So I felt okay about that. I also felt like I didn't have the doctor with a capital D complex. Like there's a lot of people where that's their sense of self and their sense of worth.

And so they like to walk into a room and immediately have the prestige that comes with that. And my best example would be I had a roommate in med school who, when we were in our first year, where you don't do anything remotely clinical. The only time you were in scrubs was for anatomy lab so that your regular clothes didn't smell a formaldehyde. he got an extra set of scrubs and he got a pager. Nobody needs a pager as a first year med student. And he would say, hey, could you please page me at like 1 p.m. because there's this really cute girl who works at the optical store.

And I'm going to be planning on being in front of her in my scrubs with my pager at that time. Like I really want to make a good impression. So I page him and, you know, whatever. And he was like really hanging on to that. My equivalent was when I was doing the online dating, which was just starting out at that time, I didn't list that I was a doctor because I wouldn't want anyone who that would be what they'd be attracted to. I was in crisis management instead of emergency medicine because I figured, you know, most people are going to conclude that that's a social worker. So only someone who really

wants to meet me would go for that. So I didn't feel like I had to be just a doctor. That is brilliant crisis management. You are managing crises. And yeah, I mean, is anybody going to feel misled that you didn't say you were a doctor? No, but is somebody going to feel misled when you say you're a doctor and then you're not a surgeon making nine figures a year or whatever surgeons make because they clicked on you because you were a doctor. And, you know, that's a really good way to weed people out. My husband was talking to his boss and his boss said, oh, you'll never get a girl with, you know, driving that car. He was driving like an eagle talent, which is not a sexy car, but he's the only person dating somebody and everybody else in the office with their BMWs and

they're just having problem after problem with all these girls that keeps cycling through their lives because they're only dating them because they have a BMW. Yeah. You get a lot of that in medicine. You do get a lot of like trophy folks. So I drive a Kia Rondo, which car and driver, I believe the direct quote was, it's as sexy as a washing machine. So you said when you first started this that your wife, that you were crazy. Did she eventually come around or does she still think you're nuts?

You know, she still thinks I'm a little nutty. Like I was telling about my thin con friends and how, you know, it ranged from like, people who I'm sure she would get along with fantastically to people, basically variants of like the Saturday Night Live guy living in a van by the river. And I'm like, I love these people both like of the full spectrum. They are just fantastic. And she's like, maybe we'll go out with the set that's not living by the river. And I think part of it is we ran through the numbers and she ultimately saw how unhappy I was. And she is a phenomenal partner and said, look, I've got your back and I trust you. And so if you say, you can manage our investments and we should take them away from this advisor, like, I trust you.

I don't want you to be miserable and let's like work together to try and sort of change things so that this works. And so the original plan was let's get out of medicine as quickly as possible. Let's save on steroids and just get out. And that didn't mean we cut back our lifestyle, but it meant that every like every penny was scrutinized. You know, we changed our phone plans. We traveled to see family for a few years there. We did things that were, I'd say, more just deliberate and thoughtful than they'd been before. And again, we had these forgiving doctor salaries that were great. So my wife in that time period, when we started having kids, our oldest is now 11, she transitioned out of clinical medicine. She still does it once a week and started building a business that has worked nicely because it's got all the things you want with a family. It's flexible. It's autonomous. So now she actually helps people get into med school and residency and does this consulting. And that earns more than her clinical salary. But she was saying all of long, like, we can afford this, you know, and if worse comes to worse, we just will save less so that you don't have to be miserable while you figure out what your next act is going to be.

And an interesting thing happened when I dialed back the medicine. So part of the things where we started to change the institution, right? Docs do things because they've always done them. And I started to look at what's the biggest aggravation and how do I stop it? The biggest aggravation at the time is I was working way too much. So I worked with my group to change the policy so that we could work significantly less. So now I'm working six shifts a month. And two, weird thing happened. One weird thing was, I suddenly liked my job a lot. Like, I had been dying to get out of this and I couldn't wait to leave it behind and never look back. And doing less of it and doing it slower and more humanly, like, made me into a human being again. And the other thing was

all these priorities that had sort of been peripheral, right? You have your actual life and your ideal life. And the Venn diagrams used to be like tangents. They barely touched. And suddenly they overlapped a lot more. And so I was getting to have lunch with my wife on the days when I wasn't working, like, every day at home. Good food that we made here. But it was just nice to have that check-in time. And like the kids, suddenly I was the dad that volunteered at school, right? Like all the moms are like, oh, that's the dad who always volunteers in class. Like, it was great to be that dad.

That's the kind of dad. Like I sort of am a touchy-feely new age guy. So that made me happy. I got to do things for self-maintenance. Like I got into sea kayaking and kayak surfing and, you know, I guess more just. physical maintenance things that I've been ignoring and other strange things. Tonight, after this podcast, I'm hosting a game night here where three guys who I love dearly are coming over and we're going to geek out on the sort of adult equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons game called

Puerto Rico. But it's kind of cool because I'll tell you something and I'll warn you now, Scott, you need to start working on this so it doesn't happen to you because it happens to a lot of people. Guys don't have friends at this age. In your mid-40s, guys are kind of isolated creatures where we like go window our little hobbit holes and, you know, our only friends are the people that we casually contact at work. And I've got these really wonderful friends. I take walks with them during the week. Like we find time, that's a rare, rare luxury. My life is great right now. So I want to keep doing this. And the cool thing is like, hey, it's a doctor's salary. So six shifts a month. That's unbelievably generous. Like we frontloaded our savings. And now I just have to keep working and not

touch that. And the beauty of it is, I really like what I do. I can also do medicine that doesn't pay. For example, I'm on the bioethics committee. I get to, like, hold grandma's hand as she decides what to do with grandpa and we go through what he'd want to do. That takes hours of my time on a regular basis every month. I love that. That's the part of medicine that I went into to do. Doesn't pay me a penny. I don't need it. So I don't care. I get to do it anyway. That's a beautiful thing. So that's where this is exciting. Yeah, I think that's fantastic. I mean, what it sounds like is you had basic financial sense. you weren't being frivolous for a long period of time, which set you up for when you discovered FI

to begin and make those changes that the fine Tumans that you need to do, get comfortable with the math, and really have a kind of a quick path towards making a, you're able to get some of those, the benefits of that lifestyle pretty quickly. Can we go through the math of how things were prior to and after your discovery of FI? What was your kind of wealth position? How was that allocated more specifically? And then what did that change look like? What does your savings rate kind of increased to and how did you reallocate? Sure. So in terms of our asset allocation before I went down this path, I have to say, I was ignorant of it, to be totally honest. It was, well, the advisor says we should do this. So, okay. So I had no clue. And what happened was when I

started switching things, I became acutely aware. You know, I looked at some of the stocks that we were in. He was generally an ethical guy. And I would call him on things like, hey, you know, I really am not a believer in hedge funds. Like, I'd be reading and I'd be like, God forbid, he puts us and that. And he'd say, well, that's why I avoid them. Great. Like, he passed a lot of the sniff test, but then I'd find an occasional fund that, you know, he had a genius manager who was going to beat the market, and it was a 2% expense ratio. And I just, like, again, I was sweating bullets. So when we switched half our stuff over to Betterment, it was kind of their allocation, a lot of low-cost ETFs. We had to liquidate my holdings at Merrill. So there was a big tax hit that year just because they

didn't accept in-kind transfers, although around that time because the stock market had taken a hit, it wasn't as big as it might have been at a different time. We switched over from Betterment, then I moved that eventually to Vanguard and moved our Merrill Holdings to Vanguard. So now my asset allocation is probably about 80% equities, 20% bonds. The bonds are probably split half and half between Vanguard total bond index, Admiral shares, and they're either municipal funds or TIPS funds, depending on which account it's in. And then there's, of the other 80%, 10%, in the Vanguard re-admiral shares, about probably 30%, so probably another 20% in international, and then the balance in the total stock market index fund, VTSAX.

And in terms of the wealth, so we were working really hard to front load our savings. So we went from saving just over a touch over 100K in the profit-sharing trust. We found an actuary because we were a corporation, we were able to do defined benefits plan. And the defined benefits plan, since I was in my mid-40s and my date of retirement was going to be 50, I had a lot of making up to do, which meant I was able to jackboost that sucker like crazy and had a big year sort of basically front-loading that for one year where we lived off our taxable, put everything we could into the profit-sharing trust and the defined benefits plan. On top of that, we both contribute to backdoor Roth IRAs, mine and my spouse,

we have a high deductible health plan contributes to an HSA. Basically, just to chime in real quick, it sounds like you were basically able to set up because you were a corporation, some ways to shelter in the equivalent of a 401K, you know, a tax deferred plan, tens or maybe even close to six figures in pre-tax retirement contributions. Is that what you're kind of getting at here? Yes, sorry.

Thank you for summarizing that much more concisely. Yeah. No, I just, I think that some people listening might not be familiar with that. a lot of people are getting paid a wage income. This is a concept that I think might be new. But because your corporation, you're able to shelter a lot of that by talking to your account and setting up a system that appropriately allowed you to set up ways, basically to, it's a little complicated.

There's a number of ways to do it around the number of employees that are at your company and all that kind of stuff. But you were able to set one up that, I assume, allowed you to set aside a very large amount of money. And that was all pre-taxed. That's correct. That's correct. Yeah.

So we did that. our taxable has more or less stayed the same because we lived off it for the year and a half or so that we were trying to really jack up our savings in the tax deferred space. And then we basically, now we're on this glide path, which is really nice, where my wife has her business. It's like a third child because it took a lot of attention when it was young, but now it's automated and it works really well with our family. My work is like really fun right now. And every year I look at it and think sort of what's the one aggravation that I can try and subtract? You know, For me right now, it's probably been night shifts.

And so we're testing, basically, I'm working with my group to test a pilot program to say, hey, is there a fair way that's win-win where, you know, the young, hungry, indefatigable docks can take on nights in exchange for which we pay them an extra premium. And let's find a fair way where they feel fairly treated and rewarded at a time when they, you know, really don't get the fatigue and value the income. And I might be able to get out of something that makes my life. a little hard right now with my physiology or burnout or what have you. And like, I feel like if I could do that, I could do this job for a long time to come. And it's a great job because like I can still,

this last summer, we traveled for five weeks with our kids. That's amazing. No doctor gets to do this, Scott. Like nobody you know has taken a three week vacation as a physician because you just can't do that. You don't have that flexibility. We do. And it's fantastic because that's one of my dreams. That's one of the things that I really wanted to make happen that I talked about with my wife talked about with the kids and they were all on board. What are your assumptions around passive income? And how does your wife's business play into your overall position in terms of how you're thinking about your financial future for your family? My wife really likes what she does. And between you and I, I see, you know, if I had to call it 10 years time, she's going to drop clinical medicine, but keep this job because she likes this job. It makes her feel good. It plays to her expertise. She loves her clients. It's kind of like the residence that we use. to mentor once upon a time where she can give them really good advice and help them sort of take things to the next level. And that's a huge comfort to me. She's a workaholic too. So I think this

is a productive way to channel what would otherwise be nervous energy that wouldn't have an outlet. I like to think of myself as the VP of leisure for our family. I plan vacations. I make sure, like, there was a time where we actually started having meetings to she and I. And I'd say, you know what, we're going to have to talk about all of these things that are popping up in your mind at a scheduled time because right now it's a Pacific sunset. We're walking on the street. I need you to be present with me. And that worked really well for us. So passive income, I think we don't have real estate holdings. We probably, do I have fantasies? Yes. So being in Southern California, a significant portion of our equity is tied up in our house. I don't even count that

in my net worth because I don't think that's an easily liquidated investment. But when our youngest is out of the house and in college, I'm looking to get my wife to say, hey, that's the year that we should live abroad for three to six months. We should rent a nice place in some area that we'd always wanted to live, like, I don't know, maybe the South, maybe New York, maybe the Northwest, find the nicest time of year to live in those places, and just go try a bunch of things on for size and see what feels good, and then spend maybe three to six months here in our home community, but in a rental that's right-sized because I would like to ultimately be able to persuade her to sell this house and get a much smaller house or even just rent and be nomadic for a while.

And I like, you know, her point is, well, the kids will want to come home. My point is, oh, like if we say, hey, kids, we're flying you out to Portugal for a break. Like, they'll be more than happy with that. They don't need to come home and see their friends. They'll come to Portugal. Yeah, I would do that. Remind me again what your wife does. I know she's a doctor.

Is she an emergency med doctor? and then you said she has the second job. She is. She basically started a consulting business where, so she was an associate residency director at her program. She's got this beautiful educational pedigree that, like, makes most immigrant parents mouth salivate because they're like, that's what I want for my kid. And she also really likes mentoring young people who are rising up,

who want to go into medicine or go into, you know, sort of higher levels of medicine. And when you're within faculty position, that's kind of. of the least well-compensated most workload of all the faculty members. She really wanted to keep that element of mentorship. And so she started this business helping people editing their personal statements, editing their CVs, editing their applications and tightening them up, going through mock interviews to help them get into med school and residency. And that's taken off. It's been, you know, a decade plus, but it's taken off nicely. And now that business that she built exceeds her clinical income from medicine. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's a big deal. So,

that plays in, Scott, to your question, I don't have a rental property that's going to be paying me and cash flowing, but I anticipate that that business is not going to go away for the next probably 15 to 20 years. And if we can use that business to pay our day-to-day expenses, then I think we can just leave our nesting to grow unperturbed. And that's going to set us up for financial independence and probably fatfire. I think it's fantastic. What your peers that are also working with at the hospital. you know, maybe they have the same sort of tenure. Are any of them starting to find that the job is really grinding on them or they're not, it's getting frustrating and they just don't have the

same options as you because of their failure maybe to produce a similar outcome? Yes. I think, you know, part of it is our financial advisor to his credit when we told them, hey, you know, we found a house and we're going to make a bid, he looked at me and I told them like, look, I want to be retired by age 45 or at least I want to have the option. And he looked at me and he said, look, I'm not going to laugh because if any of my clients could do this, like you'd be the guy, but where you're moving to, like, that's not the norm. And your budget will increase with that move. And it's funny because, of course, those have been prophetic words where my wife and I will look at each other and we'll say, you know, he said it was going to be like this. When there's a big plumbing problem, when there's, you know, we're hosting Thanksgiving and there's sewage filling onto the side of the road because one of our pipes burst with the connection to the main pipe drainage.

So their lifestyle has probably inflated to what many doctors feel like is the obligation, right? You work all these years and probably most of your readers are the vast majority who've read the millionaire next door. Doctors are under accumulators of wealth because we feel the need to have these visible, showy ways of spending our money. So, like, I find little misfits that work for me. So, like, there's a guy who is probably one of my closest friends in the group or one of my closer friends in the group.

I went to a thrift store and I found like a two. $200 marmot jacket that was in a size that was too big for me but would fit him. And I bought it for him and I gave it to him. And this is the same guy who grew up like basically collecting seashells on the shore in Hawaii. And he loved this. He was like, this is great. I used your jacket on my camping trip. Like that's the greatest thing ever. And I had no shame at all telling him it was 10 bucks, man. It was 10 bucks. So I'm this kind of frugal weirdo. Like they've already sort of pegged me as like, that's the guy who's really, you know, wants to be hands-on with his kids. I think they kind of write me off. And in part, like, it gives them permission to be like, well, he's just weird.

Like, no one's really like him, right? But when there are young people that join the group, people my age, I can't really reach. And unless they reach out to me, it's not going to happen. Because they've got, you know, feeds of them. Like, this is when we took the Disney cruise. And like, Disney cruises are great. I'm sure. Not my cup of tea. But like, if they're happy, I'm not going to criticize. It's personal, the personal and finance. But it's just not my half. And so when I hear them and some of them have different situations, they're debt. I have one doc in my group who recently, we were at a party and he and his wife, who are both physicians, were like, boy, we are so happy. We just made this milestone. We collectively now only have a half million

dollars that we owe in debt. That's crazy, but that's the reality of young doctors today. You get a two-doctor couple. Like, that's horrible. And that's the norm for a lot of people. So I wouldn't say that like I'm in a position to judge them or say and somehow they don't have those options because their situations were very different than mine, right? I got a debt-free education. I'm in a very different boat. I got a huge gift. But yes, do a lot of them grow into their income before they grow out of their debt? Yes, do a lot of them spend lavishly? Absolutely. And it's a lot of societal cues. And so when there's a new doc that joins my group, I usually say, hey, look, if you want to talk about what to do with your first paycheck, you know my email. I'm happy to pay for a coffee.

talk about what to do. And, you know, I leave that door open to a lot of people to have taken me up on it. One of them is like texting me every two to three days being like, I just read this book. Oh, my God, this is amazing. Like I can see it working in his mind and I feel like, oh, I've converted another one to my Hari Krishna fire religion. He's going to be great, right? There's another one who's young, single woman who like, we sat down and we went through her debt and we talked about what it would take, what her payments would look like, how much she should save to kill it and how soon. She was like so appreciative and so grateful, but I'm batting probably a hundred at best on my best days. A lot of people don't want to hear it. Timing's wrong.

They're just not open to it. And I wouldn't have been either, right? That's the stuff where I looked at my wife. She looked at me and we're like, we're so glad we don't have to deal with this. The truth is, it's not that hard. Just don't make the moron mistakes that you learn after you've already made them, unfortunately in medicine, in your investments. Like doctors collectively, you'll appreciate this guy. We are like the group of people who continue to buy the Chinese fruit juice company well after everyone has found out what it means. And it's just because we just don't course correct. We don't think about that. So we have this huge bullseye. And it's for a good reason. We do stupid stuff with our money. We've been doing it for years. And so, yes, a lot of my colleagues

would probably fall into that. I don't think I'd blame them for it. But I let them know that the lifelines open if they're interested to talk about it. I'm going to take acceptance. with everything you just said. You made it sound like only doctors do this. I got news for you, Carlos. It's every single person on the planet. Anybody who has a dime, they spend it. That's like, you are a frugal weirdo. I'm a frugal weirdo. Scott's, are you that frugal, Scott? You're a weirdo for sure. I'm, I'm pretty frugal. I still live in my house hack. Yeah. There's no, there's no. Scott, if my sisters were younger, man, I'd have some date set up with you. Okay. I don't feel that much older than you, but I look at you and I'm like, oh, such a shame upon him.

Like, that's a kid who's got his head on, right? Like, that's someone that I'd love to introduce, right? Yes. Scott has a very lovely girlfriend. Oh, then I will back. It's okay. Yeah, right. Yeah, no, this is not just for doctors, you know, I think doctors and lawyers and, you know,

insert high paid profession here will do this. It's just easier to spend a lot more money when you have a lot more money coming in. So, you know, doctors don't live in, you know, dumpy little houses. They live in nice houses because that's what you do when you have a lot of money. So the fact that you're leaving the store open and introducing yourselves to all the new, I don't know the name, residence interns, fellows, attendings, obviously, I'm not a doctor. But introducing yourselves and, hey, if you ever want to talk about finances, I'd love to talk to you, you know, that's a really nice thing.

It took me a long time to realize that you can't just beat people over the head. Yes, we're right. We're right about everything when it comes to money. I'm only kind of joking. But you can't tell somebody who doesn't want to hear anything about this. And just leaving the door open is really one of the best ways to do it. I love that. I love that idea. I'm going to throw out a challenge to everybody here. If you are in a position of not authority necessarily, but if you're in a position to talk to people about this, just put it out there a little bit. Hey, if you ever want to talk finances, I'd love to talk about it with you. Although, yeah, earlier in my life, I would not have been receptive either. Okay, so this was fantastic. Thank you so much, Carlos. Do you have any last words of wisdom for our listeners about taking the leap or starting their financial journey before we transition to our famous four? No, I think a lot of its timing.

Again, like when I met my wife, I was just ready. I was ready and she was the right person and I'm so lucky, you know? And I think a lot of it's like that with your financial education. Like, you have to make a certain number of mistakes before you're kind of prime and ready for the message. And then it has to be put out in front of you, you know, and it might be serendipity or it might be a good friend who notices, hey, you know, you're looking like you're a little short-tempered at work today.

Do you want to talk about that or you want to grab a coffee? And like, I think we feel a lot more powerless than we are in medicine especially. Like there's this whole, we've always done it this way. And when I started to say, hey, look, I'm feeling a little burnt. Like, I think I need to cut back. Like, there were some people who said, I think what you need to do is get out of medicine, because you can't do it the way we've always done it, which is. medicine has to have suffering in it. Otherwise, it's not the job that we took on. And that was not my

experience, actually. When I suffer less, I give much better patient care. I'm much more fun to be around, frankly. I'm able to think more clearly and be a much stronger advocate for my patient. So, no, like, life doesn't have to be about suffering and there doesn't have to be martyrdom inherent in it. And I think that was a huge revelation for me. And I think getting a grip on your personal finances, pursuing financial independence, like that's the key. That's this tool that you get where suddenly you have all this power. You have the power to walk away from stuff that's toxic or unpleasant. You have the power to make your life into the idealized version of it

that you always thought was going to be elusive and escaped. So that was the big turning point for me. And I would love it if the people who are listening sort of take that to heart. I love it. I have one more thing before we get to The Famous Four. I will say that medicine sometimes does change. You used to use cocaine. as what, a pain reliever or doctors used to prescribe smoking cigarettes to lose weight.

And didn't you do something with leeches? Like, that's pretty gross. And you guys don't do that anymore. So, you know, medicine can change too. Medicine can definitely change too. I'll definitely grant you that. Okay. It is now time for our famous four.

These are the same five questions that we ask every one of our guests, four questions and a command. The first question is, what is your favorite finance book? So I'm going to say it's a tie between three of them. There are three books that I think, at least for docs or other sort of comparable earning professionals, like this is what I call the Holy Trinity of Personal Finance for doctors. The first one's going to be William Bernstein, a book called The Four Pillars of Investing. He talks about how basically you need to know investment theory, the history of investing,

the psychology of investing, and the business of investing. And if you can master those things, you're going to do great. and has the added bonus of actually being written by a guy who is a neurologist and chemistry PhD, and then got interested in finance, did a deep dive on it. Basically now he runs a boutique advisory firm where you need to have $25 million or more to invest with him. But he's brilliant. And these books are like the way to offer the same advice to the unwashed masses like you

and me. So it's so nice of him to offer that. And he's just really into it. And he's got this kind of wry erudite humor. The second would be the Boglehead's Guide to Investing, which I think is just a fantastic introduction and makes it not scary and not painful. And then the third would be the white coat investor by Jim Dolly, who's a fellow emergency physician and just a brilliant guy, you know, a doctor who basically felt ripped off and the way that he turned his life around financially and sort of made that information available to everyone. He's just an inspiration to every physician finance blogger out there. I've actually never read any of those three books.

So I got to go check some of that. Absolutely. What is your biggest money mistake? I think you touched on this briefly. So we bought more house than we need it. When we were buying a house, there's people who buy a house for 90% of their life. And then there's people who buy the house to be ready for that 10%. And again, I said during that first year of my daughter's life, one out of every six days was spent with a visiting family member from out of town. That we thought that was going to be normal. And we extrapolated that. And so we bought a house that could accommodate out of town visitors. And we probably have a third more house than we need. When I think of what that money could have been doing for us over these last, what, nine, ten years, it hurts a little bit. Now, I'm happy where we live. We bought a turnkey place at a great time where it was just dumb luck. The house has become more to our taste because there was a flood. So that was an excuse with the insurance settlement to remodel a little bit. And so now the house really reflects what our tastes are. So it's hard to kind of say, well, let's sell this and get a fixer-upper. We don't have the fortitude that Mindy and Carl do to flip, live in, and move on.

And so I, you know, my fantasy is maybe when the kids are older, we can sell this right size or even rent and let that money work for us. But having said that, it's a beautiful place in Pacific coastal California. Like, we get a lot of pleasure. If you assume that your house is a consumption item, I think we get a lot of pleasure for what we consume. It just, when I think of the ways that money could be working for us, that's my one regret. Well, and I have a comment about that because when you did buy it at such a great price, what year did you buy your house? 2007, eight? 2009. So I'm assuming you got it at a significant

discount. What could you sell it for now versus what can you buy? Like, how much would you pay to get a right-sized house? You're going to pay more for the right-sized house than you did for this current house. That's the problem. I think we could probably get, I would say, easily a third or more above what we paid for the house if we were to put it on the market today. And it's been upgraded. So the bathrooms and the kitchens and everything are kind of nice and contemporary. But we couldn't buy a house that was as nice if we then took some, not all of that money and looked to find a right-sized house because the right-sized houses have all gone up to. So it's not a fair comparison. It's a little bit of a straw man comparison. I think we're here for the foreseeable future. And once the kids are out,

I'm going to start working my little magic on my wife and saying, hey, imagine if we could be living in a really nice rental condo, walkable to everything we need. You wouldn't even need a car. How great would that be? So we'll see. I'm hitting the same problem in that I bought my house and it's so low priced and now it's it's appreciated so much that the next house I get is going to be a dump that I'm going to buy for a lot more and I'm not excited about it. Okay, what is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Probably when it comes to finance, don't underestimate your abilities. And that's sort of a double-edged short. Part of it is like if you're someone who has gotten through this show and probably read some blogs, like you can

absolutely navigate a three-fund lazy portfolio with minimum expense, you can run your own financial house. You can do it cheaper, you can do it better than the other people out there. It's really scary to folks. And physicians in particular, I know I want my guy or I want my woman to be taken care of that for me because, like, that's pretty scary stuff. And I don't want to be at fault if I screw this up. So that's one thing. I think the flip side of that is, once you start to go down that rabbit hole is, you know, don't get overly enamored of the first good-looking robo advisor that comes around. Again, I feel like once you get this interested, it's just a matter of time before you become a do-it-yourself investor. I hopped into bed with Betterment when they were

the young, sexy thing on the scene. I was so tempted. Oh, my God, they're going to text Lost Harvest for me. Talk dirty to me, right? It was so beautiful. And that that flamed, that did flametering. That flame out, okay? There came a point where suddenly I realized, you know what, it's just in the end of the day, like, I could do this better than they could. And so don't hop into bed with every attractive investor option that you see because you can handle this, just give it enough time to build up the confidence to do that. That's what I'd say.

I love that, almost as much as Mindy, I think. That is the best line that I've heard on any episode of this podcast ever. I'm so glad. If I made you smile, Mindy, I feel good. Oh, my goodness. What is your, is it going on the same token here? What's your favorite joke to tell at parties? So, God, I knew this was coming, and I knew it was coming from someone who appreciates dad jokes.

So a little qualification. So my son is eight years old. And last year for the variety show at school, we call it variety because it's not a talent show. I'll tell you that. We. We were talking like, what do you want to do? And he's like, I don't know. And I said, why don't you do comedy? Like, you seem to have a reasonable timing. So of course, my parents who are like just discount shoppers like I am, the type of gifts that they give, they'd given like 1958's greatest

book of jokes to my son who just ate it up and loved it. So like, let's go check out the joke book. So I'm going to steal this one from his repertoire. So a lady is walking a hippo down the sidewalk on a leash. And this beat cop sees her in his turf. And he walks over. He says, lady, you can't have that hippo here. You got to take that hippo to the zoo. She says, no problem, officer. I'll do that. Next day comes around the beat, cops walk in his beat. And he sees the same lady with the same hippo on the same leash walking down his sidewalk. And he says, lady, I thought I told you to take this hippo to the zoo. And she looks at him and says, oh, I did, officer. Today we're going to the movies. Nice. I love it. I need to read this book.

You may be the only other person who is interested in reading this funny. But my son will be thrilled to have you over for a play date for what it's worth. I got a short story about a hippo. It's not really a joke, but I have a little fear of hippos because apparently when I was about two years old, my mom took me to the zoo and went to the hippo. And the hippo turns around, that's his way from everyone, lifts its tail. And everyone runs for cover, including my mom. and I get a full frontal

of hippo number three, whatever that is. Number three. And I don't have any memory of this, but I still to this day, you know, I have a little aversion to hippos. That sounds awful. That sounds so bad. Okay.

So my mom loves to tell that story. And she has a better job. That's well. Poor little Scotty. Oh, a little Scott. Okay, so we had friends over this weekend. and Bree, who is 10, I think, Brie gave me this joke.

How do you get an elephant to sit in a tree? I don't know. Please. Plant a seed underneath him and wait 100 years. So I told Bree that I would tell that story, I would tell her joke on my podcast. I will let her know to listen. Hi, Bree.

And Dan. Well, would you like to make a joke about trunks and elephants and trees? You go right ahead, Scott. I'm not that fast. I can't come up with with it right now. Okay, we've asked our four questions. Now here's our command. Tell us where people can find out more about you. Thank you for the invitation. I am at crispy dock.com, as in burntout doctor, crispy doc, all one word.com. I tweet at at KrispyDock blog because apparently there was another burnt out doctor who just took at KrispyDoc before I could. So at KrispyDock blog. And then on Facebook, as you've been alluding to. Since I am anonymous, my Facebook name is Carlos

Fuego, sort of a nod to my Latin heritage and my love of fire. And I'm an administrator on the Physicians on Fire Facebook group. And you can find me there. Awesome. Carlos, thank you so much for your time today. This was really, really, really interesting. And I really appreciate you joining us. This was a blast. Thank you both very much for having me. I'm really grateful. Okay. Have a good day. Thank you. All right. That was Carlos from KrispyDoc.com.

Indy, what did you think? Scott, I really loved his comment. Talk dirty to me about money. Ooh, that made me laugh harder than I have laughed in a very long time. I really like Carlos's story. I love that he didn't get trapped by all the high dollars that were coming his way and could see that, hey, there's got to be something more. And he's just a really good example of making

small tweaks makes a big difference in your life. Yeah, I agree. And I think he's a good example also of someone who is extraordinarily intelligent and hardworking. And once he kind of discovered the concept of Phi, his ability to go after that and practically apply the learnings that he got from all these different sources and really recreate his life in a positive way has been pretty astounding. And the speed at which he's been able to do that. And I think that that's also another kind of lesson, I think, to take away is like, hey,

If you're listening to this, you're really capable as well. Apply these things and figure out how to go back into what you want and go after aggressively. And you can make kind of radical changes very quickly even if you think you're stuck in your current situation. Yeah. Maybe you're not able to save $100,000 a year. That doesn't mean you can't save anything. Can you save $10 a day?

Can you save $100 a week? Can you say $5 a week? The money that you can save will compound and grow exponentially, but you have to do something with it. Yeah, in order to move toward financial freedom, you got to have a level, you got to use leverage in one of four areas. You got to earn a lot. You got to spend very little. You got to invest aggressively or you got to create assets, right? And if you're not, and you have to be able to do one of those. If you have no time and no money coming in, no income and no time, something needs to change, right? And you got to find a way to leverage

things, right? You know, he created more time because he was earning a high income, right? And and was saving. How do you create more income if you have more time? Yep. You know, in the beginning of this episode, you referenced episode 46 with the financial samurai. And I think he is the one who says, if the amount of money that you're saving every month isn't hurting, you're not saving enough. So what's the amount of money that you would have to save for it to hurt? And think about that. And, you know, maybe back off a little bit, maybe step up into it. But write down your goals. That's one thing that Carlos said too. Write down your goals. and my goals aren't aligning with what I'm doing right now.

My goals are I want to spend more time with my family, but my job comes first. So let me figure out a way that my job doesn't come first. Yep, love it. Love it. Okay, so shall we get out of here, Scott? Let's get out of here. From episode 51 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast,

this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, and we are out of here stat. That's a doc joke.