INTRODUCTION

This is the White Coat Investor podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high-income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is White Coat Investor podcast number 318 – Questions from locum docs.

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Wow, that's a pretty good rate. 4.8%. I think that's just slightly better than the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund as paying as I'm recording this. Obviously by the time you hear this rates change. If you're listening to this a year from now, it might not still be the same rate, but wow, that's quite a commitment to be competitive with the great money market funds that Vanguard is putting out there. Pretty awesome.

Hey, I also want to make sure you know about a special page we have at the White Coat Investor that we call our retirement accounts page. You can find it at whitecoatinvestor.com/retirementaccounts. But if you were looking for resources to help you to set up a retirement plan at your practice, this is where you go to get help.

We have a list of vetted companies there that have done this for many White Coat Investors that you can find on that page. In addition, you'll find a list of self-directed individual 401(k) and IRA providers. We also have a list of the regular solo 401(k) plan providers that you've heard of, ranging from Vanguard to E-Trade, as well as our recommended HSA providers.

So, if you're not sure who we recommend for all of those resources, those are all found on one page. It's called whitecoatinvestor.com/retirementaccounts, and you can find it under the recommended tab at whitecoatinvestor.com.

All right, how's that for an ad that's not an ad? Welcome back to the podcast. I missed you guys. I was working hard last week in the ER, not doing a lot of White Coat Investor stuff. I had a lot of shifts. I think it was spring break for half the group. They're in a different district than the district I'm in. And so, I ended up working a whole bunch of my shifts last week for the month and it was work. A lot of people came in. It was hopping most of those entire shifts.

I know you're out there doing the same thing, working hard and I'm grateful for it. Every time I call a consultant that knows something about medicine that I don't know or can do something that I can't do, I remember how grateful I am for docs like you out there. So, thanks if nobody's told you that recently.

Okay, let's get into your questions. You got a lot of great questions today. A lot of stuff from people who are locums docs, but not everything. So, let's get into your questions. I think the first one comes from Caitlin on the Speak Pipe. Let's take a listen.

PSA FOR GETTING DISABILITY INSURANCE WITH MEDICAL CONDITION 

Caitlin:
Hey, Dr. Dahle. I don't have a question but did want to share a mini milestone and PSA for anyone involved in medical education. I followed your advice and tried to get disability insurance during my intern year, but was unfortunately told that I would never qualify for disability insurance because I have type one diabetes.

Fortunately, my residency program partnered with one of the big five to offer a guaranteed standard issue plan with no medical underwriting, a unisex rate, and all the recommended riders.

Now, as a PGY-3, I just signed for my disability insurance policy and it's honestly a huge relief knowing that I have own occupation coverage and it removed some of the urgency that I felt to achieve financial independence as quickly as possible because now I know that I have a backup if God forbid anything should happen.

I'm super grateful to my program for offering the policy and wanted to encourage anyone who's involved in medical education to try and arrange something similar for their own trainees.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, that was less a question than a public service announcement, but it was really useful. A few things I want to comment on there. First of all, get disability insurance. If you're not financially independent, go get disability insurance unless there's no way you can get it, go get it. But you might be surprised.

The process when you have a problem is going to an independent agent and talking to them about the problem and then they shop you around informally, you're not actually applying for disability insurance. They're calling up principal and they're calling up guardian going, “Hey, I got somebody with rheumatoid arthritis. They were on methotrexate two years ago. Now they're fine.” Whatever. And seeing if they'll give coverage before you apply. So it's not a surprise. That's the way you do it when you have any sort of a medical problem.

Guaranteed standard issue is another option for a lot of people. Typically to get them, you got to be in a big institution though. You got to be in residency, you got to be faculty there, etc. But we have a blog post about this. You can find this at whitecoatinvestor.com/guaranteed-standard-issue-disability-insurance. It talks all about GSI insurance. Guaranteed standard disability.

Basically these are insurance policies you can get even if you have diabetes or some other medical problem. But the real gold in this post, I mean it's a good post, don't get me wrong. The real gold in the post is in the comments below it where a bunch of agents from all over the country that have a GSI contract with a given institution give you their name and the institution so you can find your institution there and find out who's the agent and go see that person.

So if you're in this situation, that's the post you should go to. If you can't remember all that, just search GSI on the WCI site and you will find that post. But definitely a great way to get disability insurance for a lot of people that can't otherwise get it.

All right, next question. Oh, before we get to this one, we got a scholarship. We're giving money away. If you are interested in having money, you should apply for the scholarship. It's literally a check. I write you a check and we send it to you. Last year it was like $7,000 or something to each of the 10 winners and you can use it for whatever you want.

In order to qualify though, you got to be in school, professional school. Brick-and-mortar professional school. Most applicants are physicians and dentists. There's a few other categories that you can apply in. Most of the winners end up being, again, physicians and dentists. A couple different categories this year that you can apply in. We're also going to try not to give it to anybody that already has a full ride scholarship this year. That's a new requirement we've got. If you're interested in that, it's whitecoatinvestor.com/scholarship.

But what we really need, we're going to get 800 people that apply for this, no matter how much I publicize it. What we really need though, are people to judge it. Because we as White Coat Investor staff do not judge this scholarship. The audience does. And so, each year we need 40, 50, 60, 70 judges to help us wade through these scholarship essays. And they're all only thousand words long and you only get sent like 10 of them. So your commitment is to read 10 essays of a thousand words and help us choose the winners.

You got to be available during September to do it. And it's helpful if you can be available for the whole month of September. So if you're going to the Grand Canyon for half of September, you're going to be in Antarctica or something, maybe don't apply.

But otherwise please email [email protected], put Volunteer Judge in the email and we'll get you signed up. You can't be a resident, you can't be a student and be a judge. You got to be either a practicing professional or you got to be retiree.

Okay, the next question is from Nicole. We're going to talk about I bonds.

I BONDS IN 2023 QUESTION

Nicole:
Hi, I’m Nicole from Michigan and I have a question on I bonds for 2023. At the beginning of 2022, it seemed pretty intuitive to just go ahead and do I bonds because the rates were so high.

With those rates coming down and how long you're locked in for five years without losing some interest, would you still be investing in I bonds right now at 6.89% through April 30th, 2023?

I'm also kind of playing into this CD rates being so high right now in the mid 4%-ish range. Would you still be investing in I bonds or maybe considering putting some money in CDs because it's so high as part of the more conservative part of your portfolio? What do you think?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. Well, you're absolutely asking the right questions. You're thinking the right way about I bonds and about CDs. These are the safe assets in your portfolio. CDs, bonds, money market funds, EE savings bonds, I savings bonds, TIPS. These are all the sort of things that are in the safe money portion of your portfolio. Now obviously nothing is 100% safe, but these are far safer assets than stocks or real estate. So, you're thinking about them the right way.

What you put that money in, let's be honest, it doesn't matter all that much. You just need to come up with a plan, stick with it. For many of us, it's a pretty small part of our portfolio. In my case it's only 20% total that goes into these safe assets. The rest is in risky assets, 60% in stocks and 20% in real estate.

I'm only messing with 20% of my portfolio here. So, I try not to make it too complicated. I just split mine 50/50 down the middle, half of it is indexed to inflation, the other half is not. And that's the approach we've taken and that seems to work pretty well for us.

On the inflation side, we've got TIPS, whether in a fund or bought directly at Treasury Direct and we have I bonds, which we started buying a couple of years ago. And obviously you can't get that many in your portfolio because each person can only buy $10,000 a year of them. So it's hard, if you want to invest a million dollars into them, you just can't. We started doing that a couple years ago. We've continued doing that. I did it this year in January, just like I did a backdoor Roth IRA.

On the other side of our portfolios are nominal bonds. In our case we've maxed out my TSP from my military service with the G fund and the rest is basically a municipal bond fund.

Now, a CD I would put on the nominal side. I bonds I would put on the inflation index side, but you can argue back and forth all the time of whether I bonds are better to buy right now or TIPS are better to buy right now. And then three months from now, the answer may be completely different.

Clearly with inflation coming down, the I bond rate is not going to be as good as it was last year. Last year was the best investment out there. It was almost 10% with basically no risk of loss. Is it going to be that good this year? No. Is inflation still going to be above average? I think so. I think you can count on getting a decent return for another year or two from them.

But even if it goes beyond there, remember what happens with I bonds. If inflation spikes its ugly head again eight years from now and you still own these I bonds, that rate goes back up and you've already got not just the $10,000 you can buy that year, you got all these ones you've been buying each year since whose rate also goes up.

So, I think it's okay to invest in I bonds. I would not bounce around so much where you're trying to jump from one thing to another all the time. Just follow your long-term plan. If you like I bonds and their investment characteristics, then add those every year to your portfolio. If you don't, it's okay. They're not mandatory.

Remember how they work though. You can't sell them for a year after you buy them. And if you sell them between the end of the first year and the end of the fifth year, you lose three months of interest. So there is a little bit of a penalty to not holding onto them for five years. But even when you add that in, it might still make sense to sell them after two or three years.

If you're bouncing around really looking for the very best yields and you're like, “Okay, now CDs are a little bit better than what I'm getting in I bonds, I'm going to sell the I bonds and get CDs”, that's reasonable to do. I don't watch that closely. It just doesn't matter that much to me. And so, I think it is fine what you're doing, but I'm continuing to just invest in I bonds every year with a relatively small portion of my portfolio. I hope that's helpful.

All right, the next question is from Paul. He's a locum doc so let's take this question.

MISSED DEADLINE TO SET UP SOLO 401(K)

Paul:
Hi Dr. Dahle. My name is Paul. I want to thank you for all the help that you've gave us with sharing all this information for the past over 10 years. Here's a question. I'm a 1099 earner with the locum agency. I missed the deadline to set up my solo 401(k) plan for 2022. I want to set up a SEP IRA so that I can make the contribution before tax day, later on roll over that SEP IRA to a solo 401(k) all with Vanguard for myself so that I can comply with the Roth IRA pro-rata rule. Am I missing anything here? Thanks.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Fantastic question. Well done on thinking about your retirement accounts. I kind of wish you thought about it a little bit earlier. It is easier to set it up earlier in the calendar year than it is to do now. As I'm recording this podcast, it's April 17th, so tomorrow's tax day, maybe you filed an extension to give yourself more time. But chances are I think you've either already found the answer to this question or done something else.

Here's the deal. I used to recommend for people who didn't start the solo 401(k) before the end of the calendar year that they do a SEP IRA. Because you can open a SEP IRA very quickly, the day you pay your taxes. Basically a Vanguard, Fidelity or whatever and make that contribution and put it on the taxes and get that tax deduction. And then you had until the end of the year to start a solo 401(k) and roll your SEP IRA in there without getting prorated at the end of the year on your backdoor Roth IRA contribution.

Now I know that was a lot of big words for a lot of you out there and unfortunately it'd take me about 20 minutes to go through explanation of all of those words. But the bottom line is if you're self-employed, you want to have a retirement account and the best one is a solo 401(k). But traditionally that has been hard to set up if you don't do it by October or so of the calendar year.

Well, Secure Act 2.0 changed the rules. So, the 401(k)s that you start after the calendar year have always been able to get employer contributions, but now they can get employee contributions too. But that's starting for tax year 2023. This question is about tax year 2022. So, you do have to do the SEP IRA this year and then start a solo 401(k) and roll the SEP IRA in there.

But you understand it just fine. You're just looking for confirmation that what you're doing is right and it is and will work just fine. But for those in future years, know that you can now have a little more time to really use the solo 401(k) after the end of the calendar year but before your tax day.

Our quote of the day today comes from Jeff Steiner who said “A budget is the most powerful and cheapest skill you can use to manage your finances.” And that is very true. Thank you Dr. Steiner for that, and for your book.

SOLO 401(K) AND ESTIMATED QUARTERLY TAX PAYMENT QUESTION 

Here's a question from Matthew.

Matthew:
Hi Jim, this is Matt in Minnesota. I have a quick question about 1099 income. I'm a W2 employee in the highest tax bracket in a high tax state. I maxed out all my tax deferred space in my retirement accounts and this year I started doing some consulting that I anticipate will probably bring us low to mid five figures sum.

Traditionally I've heard you talk about opening a solo 401(k) for a contribution of up to 20% as an employer contribution, however, on a recent podcast you mentioned something about customizing the solo 401(k) plan to allow for a mega backdoor Roth contribution of the full after tax amount.

Can you talk a little bit more about that and sort of the implications of that and the cost involved with setting up that plan, and when it's worth it from a perspective of how much you're making?

And alternatively, for a first year with 1099 income, how do you determine estimated quarterly payments or a safe harbor? And is it safe to simply determine the tax at the end of the year if there is no preexisting 1099 income from prior years? Thanks for any of your input. It'd be very helpful to have some of your insight.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, lots of questions there. The first one though is best answered by if you go to whitecoatinvestor.com/retirementaccounts, you'll see a list of providers. There's a list of people that set up 401(k)s and other retirement plans for your practice, you and your employees.

There is a list of self-directed and customized solo 401(k) providers and there's a list of cookie cutter standard solo 401(k) providers. The cookie cutter ones, the Vanguards, the Fidelitys, etc, they're not customized. They're not self-directed. You can't invest them in Bitcoin and gold and real estate and syndications and that sort of stuff. You have to have a customized self-directed one for that. And I say customized and self-directed. Those don't necessarily have to go together, but they usually do.

Is that worth doing? Well, one big advantage of having a customized one is you can have the rules put in it that allow you to do a mega backdoor Roth IRA. And at your level of 1099 income, that makes a big difference in how much you can contribute.

Let's say you make $50,000 in 1099 income. If you do that as a regular employer contribution, you can only put in $10,000. It's 20% of your net self-employment income. But if you did it as a mega backdoor Roth IRA contribution, you could put in all $50,000. So that's the benefit. Yeah, it's going to cost you something, it's going to cost you a few hundred dollars to set that up. It's going to cost you a few hundred dollars a year to keep it going, but you got to defer $50,000. That's a lot more than $10,000. As someone in your situation, it may be worth doing, that's where you would go to set that up.

The other question was about quarterly estimated payments. And the way to think about this is to keep in mind that there are two separate things going on. One is you have to pay taxes. And it's a certain amount each year. You really don't figure out exactly what it is, but it's supposed to be a pay as you go system. You pay taxes along as you go and then come April you settle up with whatever your tax bill actually is. And you might have to write a check, you might get a tax refund.

And that's totally separate. The amount of tax that you owe is totally separate from what you pay as you go along. From what's withheld and from what you make as quarterly estimated payments. Those are not the same amounts. That's why you have to settle up every April 15th.

And so, what you're doing here with quarterly estimated payments is you're recognizing that you have additional income for which nobody is withholding tax for you. It's supposed to be a pay as go system. If you don't pay as you go, you could get penalized. Now you don't get thrown in jail or something, you just got to pay some interest on it. It's not a big deal. But if you want to avoid doing that, you pay as you go.

So, what the first thing people do when they have a little bit of 1099 income is they just increase how much is withheld at their W2 job. If you make $8,000 in 1099 work, you can do that and you can cover the tax bill, no problem. But if you make $250,000 at your 1099 gig, that's not going to work. You can't withhold enough from that W2 gig to cover that tax bill.

And so, what you have to do is start making quarterly estimated payments and this is really hard. It's hard to get them right. It's fine if you don't get it right because you're going to settle up next April 15th. If you didn't pay enough, you'll pay a little bit of interest. Not a big deal but it does cost you some interest you didn't have to pay as long as you have the tax money.

The bigger problem for doctors is they don't set anything aside for taxes. So, when you're making 1099 money, you ought to assume that something like 25% or 30% of that is going to go to the tax man. So, if you have to, take that out and set it in a separate savings account so it's there come April 15th, so you can actually pay the taxes or so it's there when you make your quarterly estimated payments.

But the easy way to make quarterly estimated payments is take a guess at what you think you're going to owe for the year divided by four, send that in each quarter and remember that it's not like real quarters. It's on April 15th and then two months later on June 15th, then three months later in September 15th and then four months later on January 15th. The hard one for me is always June 15th because I've only had two months to save up for it. But that's when you send those in.

You're trying to get in the safe harbor. If you're in the safe harbor, you don't have to pay any interest or penalties or anything for underpaying as you go along. And the easiest way to be in the safe harbor if you're all 1099 is to figure out what your tax bill was last year, multiply it by 110%. This is for high earners. You only have to multiply it by 100% if you're not a higher earner and then divided by four and pay that each quarter.

But if you have W2 income and you also have this 1099 income, it's really hard. You're guessing. And the only way to know for sure is project out your taxes and know what your income is going to be. And lots of us don't.

This is incredibly difficult for me every year. I'm trying to guess what to do for my quarterly estimates. Last year I totally missed and so I have this massive tax refund coming. I have basically loaned hundreds of thousands of dollars to the government that I should not have done so.

And so, sometimes you just blow it. It is just not that easy. I didn't know what I was going to make, I didn't know the business was going to do. I didn't know about some investments that were going to pay off. I didn't know about some income that was going to be pushed.

I guessed on how much my quarterlies were going to be. I paid way too much in quarterlies. And so, I'm getting a whole bunch of it back. And that's fine. I gave the government an interest free loan. It's not the end of the world, but it's ideal not to do that if you can avoid it.

And so, do the best you can. The first year they do give you a little bit of leniency, but I wouldn't count on that. I'd try to comply with the law. Just remember the basic principles you have to pay taxes. It's a pay as you go system for the feds. Not all states are that way. Utah isn't that way. But for the feds it's a pay as you go system. So if you're making any significant amount, and I'd say significance is more than $20,000 in 1099 income, plan to start making quarterly estimated payments.

LOCUMS WITH A FAMILY QUESTION

Okay, let's take a question from Randall.

Randall:
Hi Dr. Dahle. I have a couple of questions about Locums. They're kind of separate, so I'll ask them in two separate Speak Pipes. I am an anesthesiology resident and I'm strongly considering doing locums when I graduate, at least for a few years.

I know you've had a few people on the podcast that have done locums for a while, but I feel like most if not all of them have been single when they were doing it. Whereas I am married, have one young child and hopefully will have more on the way.

I was just wondering if there was anybody who could come on and talk about their experiences or if you anecdotally have second-hand experiences from people that have done this as a family and what sort of things I might be missing that would be ramifications of moving that often on family life.

We are planning to probably homeschool my kids at least when they're younger for a little while. So, I don't think that part would be impacted as much. I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, that's a call for a guest on the podcast. You guys know how to apply for that. Go to whitecoatinvestor.com. Under the “About” page you'll see podcast guest policy. That's where you can apply to be a podcast guest if you were in that situation.

I don't know very many people in that situation. I think it's pretty rare. And so, I'm going to guess we're not going to get a guest. I'm just going to ramble about it and give you my thoughts about it.

Here's the deal. This works fine for people who are married, particularly just after they get married. I've met a lot of people, doctors, physical therapists, whatever, who did this for a few years after they got married, after they came out of school, whatever, had a great time. Went to New Zealand, went to Alaska, practiced in Canada, whatever. They just did all kinds of cool stuff.

I also know people who have done it at the beginning of their career, including anesthesiologists that have done it like you're doing. They get out there, they make tons of money, they're getting their living expenses paid. They've got a spouse, maybe a young kid, and they do this for a few years and then kind of settle down after a while.

But this is your life. You get to create it. And the thing that forces most families to settle down a bit is kids in school. And when kids are in school, it's hard to move around a bunch and to be world travelers, particularly as you get into high school and get involved in high school kind of activities and they have AP tests and things that are just harder to miss.

And so, while we haven't done this, we've settled down basically, when we moved into our current house, our oldest was six years old, she's now in college. I think this is a traditional path that most people do is kind of what we're on.

But you can do whatever you want. And if you're willing to homeschool and you can travel the world, you're not limited just to being in the US even. You could go all over the place and have a great time. So, it's up to you and your family what you're willing to do.

But I bet you go do this for a while and then kind of feel like settling down a little bit. And that's fine.

Go have an adventure, it'll be great. You can get paid a little bit more often doing locums. They'll cover a lot of your living expenses. A one year old doesn't care where he or she lives. And if you and your spouse want to get out and do something cool for a while, go for it. Maybe it lasts 10 years, maybe it lasts 15 years. Maybe you do it for your entire career. I have no idea, but I think it can be done. I just don't think there's very many people doing it.

Most locums peoples are singles at the beginning of their careers. I think there's plenty at toward the end of their career. They just want a little more control over how much they're working. And then I think people occasionally do it sabbatical, like during the career when they lose a job or something like that.

But deliberately doing it with a family for your whole career, I think you're in fairly rare company. But I wouldn't let that discourage you from doing it if that's what you want. This is a very doable thing. And what's the point of financial freedom if you can't live the life you want?

Okay, before we get to your other question, Randall, I want to make sure people know about an income opportunity we have out there. It's basically doing surveys for money. They want your opinion and they'll pay you for it. You can go to whitecoatinvestor.com/paidsurveys and get yourself some of that 1099 income we're talking about.

One of our columnists makes like $30,000 a year on medical surveys. Now it's easier in some specialties than others. They really want your opinion. Apparently if you're a neurologist and an oncologist and a rheumatologist and somebody that prescribes expensive medications. I don't think there's quite as much demand for emergency docs on those surveys but there's no reason you can't try.

We've got a list of companies that offer that. I just signed up for all of them on that page. We took one off recently. We've got a few complaints about it and we do that when we vet companies. But there's still five companies on that list and people seem happy, they're getting paid, they're making money and you can do them while you're sitting on the train on your way home from work or whatever. But check that out. whitecoatinvestor.com/paidsurveys. And yes, there are some opportunities even for residents and fellows to do those.

S CORP FOR LOCUMS WORKERS QUESTION

All right, Randall, let's take your other question.

Randall:
Hi, Dr. Dahle. This is my second question about locums. For people who do locums, I'm just wondering what the best way to structure their career is. I know that there are places like Locums Story and I think there's another one that also endorses WCI that just help physicians find jobs. And I assume that you're a 1099 contractor for those companies when you do that.

That makes sense to me starting out. I wonder for people who end up doing locums for a long time and kind of know how to navigate it themselves, if it would make more sense to cut out the middleman and if so, if being a sole proprietorship or an S Corp would be helpful in some way for taxes.

I know that S Corp get a discount on the Medicare tax, but I was recently listening to your podcast, I think 303, where you mentioned that if you're just looking to save on taxes and you're running your savings essentially in investments through a corporation that you can end up getting them double taxed once in the corporation and once when you take them out. So, I guess I'm a little unclear when doing a corporation is helpful and when it might actually be hurtful. Thanks.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. Remember when you're getting paid on a 1099, you're in business for yourself. You're an independent contractor. You do not have an employer, you have a company that your company contracts with. Whether your company is a sole proprietorship, whether it's a partnership, whether it's an LLC, whether it's an S Corp, whether it's a C Corp, you're in business for yourself.

And I think that's the way most locum gigs are set up. Some might bring you on and have you be a W2 employee at that hospital, but typically you're going to be contracting and it's going to be the hospital paying you.

I don't know, maybe it goes through the locums company, either way, you're going to be getting a 1099 most of the time. That means you get to select your own health insurance. It means you get to select your own retirement plans. It means you get to be in control. It's generally a good thing. You just got to make sure you're getting paid adequately.

Obviously if you're going from a W2 job to a 1099 job and they pay exactly the same, that W2 job is paying half your payroll taxes for you and giving me a 401(k) match, you just took a step down in pay if you're paying for all that yourself. So, you got to compare apples to apples there anytime you make those comparisons.

But what should you do? Well, you mentioned you're an anesthesiologist and you're only going to be doing locums. So, probably all your pay is going to be 1099. You're probably going to be making $400,000, $500,000, or $600,000. I'm guessing. That is enough 1099 income, enough self-employment income that an S Corp is probably going to be worthwhile for you.

And let's say you're making $600,000. The way you do this is you'd say, “Well, my salary's going to be $300,000. We'll call the other $300,000 distribution from the S Corp.” And what that saves you is the Medicare tax on that $300,000 you call distribution. This might save you close to $10,000 a year in taxes.

That's the point of the S Corp. You're not running your investments through it. It sounds like you've got confused between somebody trying to do something else with a corporation that probably didn't make any sense. But for a doctor that's got this sort of self-employment income, this sort of thing often makes sense. So, go ahead and take a look at that. That is probably something you will want to do as a 1099 anesthesiologist is form an S Corp.

I hope that's helpful to you in navigating your plans. It's pretty exciting. I'm looking forward to hearing from you in a few years and hear about the adventures you've been having.

All right. I think this is Tim in Salt Lake City. It used to be Tim in San Francisco. All right, we got Tim back. Let's see what Tim's got to say. He's not liking this house he's got in Salt Lake apparently. Let's find out why.

HOW TO DECIDE WHAT TASKS TO PAY FOR AROUND THE HOUSE QUESTION

Tim:
Hi Jim. This is Tim in Salt Lake City. My family and I are fortunate enough to have been able to afford to buy a house here recently in Salt Lake City. We followed your advice of waiting till our situation was really stable. Our kids are in school and so we're excited to be homeowners, but I got to admit, I'm not a big fan so far of the tasks associated with upkeep. My wife and I are both physicians and we're quite busy. Time is at a premium.

Do you have any tips on how to balance the convenience and ease of getting little tasks done around the house, repairs, shoveling sidewalks, cleaning versus the money that it takes to get those things done? Do you try to get three quotes for things? Do you get references from neighbors? Do you like Yelp? I'm trying to navigate this and figure out how to make things both as economical and efficient as possible. Thanks.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Tim, this was not a normal winter. Alta got 877 inches of snow so far this year. It's probably even more today. We're probably over 900 inches of snow at the ski resort a few miles from my town. We normally don't have to shovel this much, I promise. Get yourself a snowblower. I swear it's usually not this bad.

But yeah, it's a good question. All of us start going, “What's my time worth? How can I buy some more of it?” And we start looking at these tasks and maybe it's mowing the lawn. Maybe it's cleaning up leaves. Maybe it's shoveling snow, maybe it's cleaning the house. And then there are things that we don't know how to do. Maybe we need to hire a handyman to do something or a plumber or an HVAC person or whatever.

The nice thing about the little things is that they're repetitive. So, if you're getting crummy service, you fire the person, you move onto another one and it's no big deal. If you don't like the way they're shoveling your driveway, you tell them, “Fix it or I'm getting someone new.” They don't fix it, you get someone new. And so, I think that's fine.

You'll often get a better price if you use somebody that's already coming into the neighborhood to do work. If your neighbors are getting their driveways plowed, I ask who they're using because you'll probably get a better deal from that person because they're already in the neighborhood. Same thing with lawn care. You'll often get a discount if they can come and do two yards right next to each other because they don't have to put the lawnmowers back in the truck in between the two jobs. It's just easier for them so you get a better deal.

Yeah, talk to your neighbors and see who they're using. But otherwise you can just Google things up. Google your area and snow removal and see who comes up and try somebody out. And if they're terrible, you fire them, move on to somebody else.

It's a little different when you want work done kind of as a one-time deal. Now you need your furnace replaced or something. Now I think when you get into the talking to your contractor friends, you are going to be looking at Yelp reviews. You're going to be doing these sorts of things to determine what to do with regard to who to fire.

And the general rule is pick three and take the middle bid because the person bidding the least is not going to do very good work and the person bidding the most is ripping you off. But I think it's good to have three people come by and just pick the one you feel most comfortable with, whether it's the lowest bid or the highest bid or whatever. But I think that's a good way to do those sorts of contractors.

But there are all kinds of things. The more creative you get, the more you can outsource. You can get virtual assistants that can do all kinds of stuff. There are laundry services, there are meal prep services. You can have a chef come in, you can have a nanny or an au pair.

Lots of docs have somebody coming in and cleaning their house. We've done that. Keep in mind you still have to pick it up. We had one once that fired us because we weren't very good at picking it up. It took us a while. It took us till the second one to really train ourselves to pick up the house before they came over. But we've got somebody great now that comes in a couple of times a month and cleans the house and saves us from that chore.

But you can hire just about anything you want out. It's just a matter of your time and your money and your comfort level really. A lot of people aren't comfortable having other people in their home. But that's all up to you. Anyway I hope you enjoyed the winter. It was pretty spectacular if you're a skier.

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INTRODUCTION

This is the White Coat Investor podcast Milestones to Millionaire – Celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is Milestones to Millionaire podcast number 121 – A couple writes their financial plan.

The sponsor of this episode, 37th Parallel is a private multi-family acquisitions and asset management firm based in Richmond, Virginia. Since 2008, they've completed close to 1 billion in multi-family transactions with a 100% profitable track record for their clients.

They provide a vertically integrated investment platform fund and single asset investments for high-net-worth family office and institutional investors seeking tax advantaged income and equity growth.

They specialize in class A, B apartment communities in demographically strong markets in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. Learn more about 37th Parallel and the special investment discounts available only to White Coat Investors at whitecoatinvestor.com/37parallel.

Welcome back to the podcast. We'd love to have you on this podcast. You can sign up to be on it at whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones, and we will celebrate with you any financial milestone you have accomplished and use it to inspire others to do the same.

We've got a new milestone we've never had on the podcast today. And after we do that, I'm going to talk for a little bit about 401(k)s and maybe some things you didn't know about your 401(k). But let's get into our interview to start with.

GUEST INTERVIEW

Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Adam. Welcome to the show, Adam.

Adam:
Yeah, thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Tell us what milestone you recently accomplished.

Adam:
Yeah, the milestone that I recently accomplished was we, my wife and I put together a financial plan, which included firing our financial advisor.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Cool. That's exciting. All right. Well, let's get a little bit of background information. Tell us what you do for a living.

Adam:
Yeah. I'm not a provider. I work in healthcare, but I sell software to hospitals and my wife works in pediatrics. So, she's a pediatric provider.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, where are you at in life? How far are you out of your schooling and how far is she out of residency and where are you guys at?

Adam:
Yeah. We live in the Upper Midwest and she is done with school and she was done with her residency as of 2016. So, we've been out for a few years. I've basically worked since undergraduate, but yeah, been working full-time post-residency since 2016.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, very cool. This is 2023 now, and we're talking about your milestone being getting a financial plan in place, and this is now six, seven years in. Tell us what life was like for you guys financially in 2016, 2017, 2018?

Adam:
I think 2016, 2017, 2018 there was a lot of change. She was coming out of residency and her earnings obviously grew quite substantially. Mine did as well at the same time. So we were moving states, we were starting to plan for our family and purchasing a new house and getting more familiar with our new community. I think there was a lot of big investments that were long-term and I think it started conversations that we were having to get more serious about our financial planning.

And I had always been a listener and reader of your blog and your material, but I can say that I probably wasn't great at applying a lot of the principles, just understanding it at a surface level. But then as kind of time went on and just in the last year or two I got more serious about it as far as formalizing what we want to do with our finances, both now and in the future and putting that into a formal plan.

But to answer your question, 2016, 2017, 2018, a lot of change. But then prior to that in residency, we were just kind of staying afloat. We had a pretty low cost of living. We didn't have any children. My wife was working a lot in her residency. I was working and then going to school to get my MBA at night.

So, we were just working a lot and then just spending pretty minimally. We were still enjoying our life and having vacations, but then I think once we came into a lot more earnings and having bigger life decisions, some of those more financial planning topics seem to come up more frequently.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Do you think you were making a bunch of mistakes when you first came out, or do you feel like you were doing okay, you were doing pretty good?

Adam:
Somewhere in the middle. As I've gotten more and more educated on when you should be funding a Roth IRA and for example, my wife is on the public service loan of forgiveness program, thinking about how deferral of payments to start. Some of those things that were small kind of added up, but I don't think anything that was catastrophic that made me feel like we were making a lot of mistakes per se.

But I think things that we could have if we would've understood a little bit better, could have optimized our situation. And I think there's always the opportunity if you're looking back hindsight is 2020 where you can potentially make decisions that would've made you better off now. But I feel that we did pretty well throughout that time period, but there always was opportunities to make it a little bit better.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, she is almost seven years out of a three year residency. She's got to be getting pretty close to PSLF, isn't she?

Adam:
Yes, we are. Yeah, we’re counting the months. We're about six, seven months away. And obviously the last few years, we've benefited quite greatly from payments being paused.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Oh yeah, it's been huge for you. That's been huge for you guys. That's been awesome. And how much did she owe when she came out? Do you remember?

Adam:
I don't remember the exact figure. It was around $200,000. And that's grown to about $250,000, but then obviously hasn't grown the last few years.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Very cool. Okay, something happened a year ago or so where you decided to get serious. You decided you were going to take the Fire Your Financial Advisor course from White Coat Investor. You actually fired your financial advisor. What was the instigating incident here that caused you to get serious enough to say, “Yeah, I need to be one of that 50% of White Coat Investors that actually has a written financial plan?”

Adam:
Yeah, I don’t know if there was one particular moment. I think a couple things maybe cumulatively came together to make us decide that we want to do it. One of the things is I started to learn and understand more about the fee structure around different funds, mutual funds, the expense ratios, as well as how financial advisors are paid. I started to look at our portfolio a little bit more and realize that probably weren't getting a very good deal.

There was also an incident a few years ago where the company our advisor worked for traditionally operated under a broker dealer model where we were paying fees whenever a fund was purchased. And then that model changed to an asset under management fee structure.

I felt like we kind of were getting double charged because we had to pay a fee when it was a brokerage model and then all of a sudden now we're paying fees for the assets they technically had already paid fees for but are currently under management.

As I started to think more about that and then just the expense ratio of some of the funds and some of the teachings that you've put out and books that we've read as far as you got to keep what you don't pay, and that continues to grow, especially with the impact of compound interest and things like that. It just determined that, okay, it's time to do that. I actually purchased the course, the Fire Your Financial Advisor course, and sat on it for probably four or five, six months. I couldn't get myself to do it. And I think because it's a lot of work, especially when you have free time and the weather is nice, sometimes there's other things that I want to be doing.

And ironically, I actually did most of our plan when we were on vacation. I'm one of those crazy people that get up really early and my wife, especially on vacation, she might want to sleep in a little bit more. And it worked out great because we were in a very tropical location and I was able to get up for two or three hours before she did and have a beautiful backdrop in sunrise and listen to all of the different courses and start to put together thoughts and ideas around our plan.

I kind of work best when I'm able to focus a lot of my energy on one task and get it done in a shorter period of time. I don't work very well if I have to do something for five minutes and then come back to it two or three days later and do it for five more minutes. Sometimes that works for people. It doesn't work as well for me.

So, this vacation where I had basically a week of these huge blocks of time where I wasn't working and I wasn't tied up with other obligations was just perfect that I was able to get kind of the plan basically built and then my wife and I were able to review it. But yeah, in some kind of that led us to get in on paper and abiding by it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
For those of you who don’t know what we're talking about, we have an online course called Fire Your Financial Advisor. If you go to whitecoatinvestor.com and you go into the courses tab, you'll see it there.

We actually have two versions of it. One doesn't come with cME, but it's a little bit cheaper. That's the Fire Your Financial Advisor course. And then there's another version that includes eight hours of wellness material that qualifies for CME. So you can use your CME funds or you can buy it as a business expense. That's called Financial Wellness and Burnout Prevention for Medical Professions. It also includes the entire Fire Your Financial Advisor course.

Okay. So, it sounds like you did this in the morning and then at a certain point you had to incorporate your wife into this plan. Tell us about those conversations and how they went.

Adam:
Yeah. I think that's really important and I'm definitely the one who manages the finances of our family. It kind of divvy up our responsibilities and it's something that I enjoy and have gravitated towards.

But looking back on it, I probably wish I would've involved her earlier on in the process. She was obviously aware of what I was doing, but actually showing her the plan and some of the things I put in there came at the very end. And I feel pretty comfortable saying that I'm sure at times she kind of felt like it was my plan that I was presenting to her when I wished maybe looking back on it, we would've been able to work on it a little bit more together.

But I do think it's just critically important to get kind of that spouse buy-in to your financial plan because not only was she able to review it and provide her feedback, but there were a lot of comments that she made that made us revise the plan.

I probably gravitate more towards a saver and maybe she's a little bit more of a spender, and I think we're able to find a knight's balance between the middle. Some things that she really prioritizes as far as how she wants to use our money. It's good I think to get another person's perspective on a plan, especially when it's impacting both people in the family.

So, yeah, definitely it was a good exercise to go through with her. And then now we review it on an annual basis. And I think it also provides her a better understanding of what our money is doing and where it's at. By me managing our finances I always worry someday that if I'm not around, would she know where that is and what our plan and our strategies are.

Now knowing that we have a plan in place and she understands why decisions were made, I feel much more comfortable at something knock on wood if there was something to happen to us or one of us.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
At some point you decided that you were going to fire the financial advisor. Was that before or after taking the course?

Adam:
After. I knew I was going to do it during. As I was going through the course, that was one of my goals of doing the course, was to have a plan, but then to be able to manage mainly our retirement assets, and all of our assets on our own.

And I will say I was surprised and shocked on how little pushback the advisor provided. Maybe we weren't that important of a customer, but we had been with this advisor, basically since I got out of college and he'd managed a good six figure amount of our money. So, maybe he had bigger clients but didn't even receive a phone call. It was a quick email saying, “Okay, no problem. Send the forms over and we'll do it.”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Maybe he gets fired a lot.

Adam:
It honestly made me feel better about the decision that he was quick to always try to call me to almost sell me something, but then didn't really show a lot of concern when we decided to part ways. So, it made me feel better about my decision.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, how do you guys feel about your finances now that you have a financial plan that you not only understand and can follow, but that you wrote yourselves? How do you feel about that now?

Adam:
Oh, it feels great. I think although the initial steps of writing a plan, I understand can be kind of daunting. I think the benefits of getting a plan in place and the security it provides and the peace of mind it provides, it's unmatched.

Again, it takes some time on the front end, but I feel like we've saved a lot of time in the last year or two since we've had the plan in place by when we have major financial decisions that come around, the answers are already there. Can we afford this? Are we saving enough? Is our son going to have enough money to attend any college or university wants to? Instead of having to then spend the rest of that day or that night or the weekend trying to run numbers, we can quickly just reference the plan and some of our spreadsheets and know that it's all kind of taken care and everything's on track.

So, I think that was one of the things I also learned through writing a financial plan, again, it can be a lot of work upfront, but it's going to save you a lot of work and headache of financial decisions that come on a day-to-day or a month-to-month basis.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
How much money did it save you to take the course instead of paying this advisor every year?

Adam:
Oh yeah, it was probably breakeven within the first year, as far as what we were paying the advisor versus the course. And the course, especially too, there's so much value that the White Coat Investor and yourself obviously that put out that I feel like you can put together a very solid plan by just the information that's available, but there's so much structure around the course that you really feel confident that it's kind of a bulletproof plan that you covered every aspect of family finances. So yeah, I think the breakeven is pretty quick.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Cool. Well, Adam, thanks so much for being willing to come on and share your experience on the Milestones podcast. And congratulations to you and your spouse on your success. It's pretty awesome what you guys have done, and I know you're going to be successful going forward.

Adam:
Great. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, I hope you enjoyed that interview. What I love about this is seeing White Coat Investors take control of their financial situation. The power of a written financial plan is not just during a bear market that helps you to stay the course, but it gives you the confidence to know that you're going to reach your goals and it outlines the pathway to your goals.

And probably one of the best things Katie and I ever did was get a written financial plan together. And we originally did it during residency, made a few minor changes as I finished residency and became an attending and a rare change since then. But basically that outlined our pathway to financial independence, and we just followed the plan.

All kinds of people have questions about their investments and their finances. You only have to decide those things once. Once they're in the plan, all you got to do is reference the plan. And if you write it yourself, if you compile it yourself, you know it so well, you don't even really have to look at it very often because you remember what it is because you put the time in to develop it.

And yes, it does take time and yes, it's not a free course. I was actually surprised that he said he only broke even the first year. Most people are paying so much to a financial advisor, they're paying a few hundred dollars for our online course is dramatically cheaper than what they're paying to a financial advisor.

But sometimes when you're paying a commission based advisor, you're not actually paying that much money. You're maybe not getting very good advice at all, but you're not paying that much money if you don't have that much money invested with them. You're just paying those loads on their mutual funds.

I thought it was a great episode. I'm glad you guys were able to hear that and hear from someone who's had success taking that and putting their financial plan in place.

FINANCE 101: UMBRELLA INSURANCE

All right. I promised you at the top of the episode that I was going to tell you a little bit about 401(k)s and we've gotten lots of feedback on the podcast that we get into the weeds a little bit too much. So, I'm trying to do a little more basic kind of stuff because I feel like there's a lot of podcast listeners who are either new or for whatever reason, don't have those basics downs. So, let's talk about 401(k)s.

A 401(k) is named that because it comes from Section 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code. That's what outlines the ability to have this employer provided retirement plan. And a 401(k) is essentially a tax protected plan. Your money grows faster inside a retirement account like a 401(k) than it grows outside the retirement account. Because every year an investment outside a retirement account puts out interest, puts out dividends, you got to pay taxes on those. And so, there's a drag on that, a tax drag on that money as it grows.

If you buy or sell an investment, you got to pay capital gains if you have a gain on it. And again, more of a tax drag so it grows slower. Inside a 401(k) or other retirement plan, it grows tax protected. Buying and selling, there's no tax consequences. The dividends that come out or the interest that comes out every year, you don't have to pay any taxes on those. And so, it's in this tax protected shell.

And of course, there are tax deferred accounts and there are tax free accounts. For the tax deferred accounts, you get a tax break up front. It grows tax protected. When it comes out, you pay ordinary income tax rates on it, often at a lower tax bracket than when you put the money in. But for the tax free account, you're putting in money that you've already paid taxes on. It grows in a tax protected way. When it comes out in retirement, that's tax free.

And so, 401(k) is just one type of these retirement plans. Originally they were all tax deferred, all these traditional 401(k)s. So you got the tax break up front, you paid taxes when you pulled money out in retirement.

In more recent years, the last decade, decade and a half or so, you are seeing Roth 401(k)s, which are like a Roth IRA or other tax free account. You put in after tax money. It grows in a tax protected way and eventually comes out tax free.

The other great thing besides these tax benefits in these accounts is they are asset protected. A 401(k) is an ERISA account, which is basically this federal legislation that encourages people to save for retirement.

One of the ways it encourages it is if you have declared bankruptcy, because heaven forbid you have an above policy limits judgment that's not reduced on appeal and you have declared bankruptcy because somebody has a $20 million judgment against you, you get to keep your 401(k) in every state. Hey, this one isn't even state specific, this is federal protection. So you get to keep that. And so, it's asset protected and tax protected. That's pretty awesome.

Aside from the fact that you feel like it's retirement money so you're less likely to rate it for a boat or a vacation or something like that. People don't view a 401(k) as their emergency fund and so they tend to leave it for retirement.

Some people worry about these rules, this 10% penalty that you have to pay if you take money out before retirement age. For IRAs that age is 59 and a half. For a 401(k) it is not 59 and a half, it's 55. It's 55 and separated from the employer. So, if you retire at 55 and you leave money in a 401(k) instead of rolling into an IRA, you can access that without the 10% penalty.

There's all these other ways you can access it too. There's all these expenses that are exceptions for that particular rule. The ultimate one of course is basically an early retirement exception that it's called the 72(t) rule is what it's called. But basically if you retire at 45, you can start taking money out of your 401(k). You just have to take money out from then until you're 55 or in the case of an IRA, 59 and a half, the same amount each year essentially. It's annuitized in that way, kind of like a required minimum distribution would be.

For most of you, you're young enough that you're not going to have to take money out of a 401(k) mandatorily until you're 75. If you have a tax deferred retirement account, the IRS does make you take money out eventually. But it's not that much, it doesn't kick in until age 75. Even at that age, it's only about 4% a year, which you want to be taken out that much anyway. What's this money for? Your horse isn't going to have a trailer hitch, so you might as well be taken out that much.

So, no big deal about the RMDs, don't worry about that. Use the 401(k), try to max it out. If you're under 50, you can put an employee contribution of $22,500 in that account every year. If you are 50 plus, the employee contribution is $30,000 a year that you can put into a 401(k). That's a separate limit from your IRA limit, which is $6,500 or $7,500 if you're 50 plus.

It's a separate limit from your 457(b) limit if you have one of those. Sometimes people have a 403(b) instead of a 401(k). There's a few subtle differences there. But for the most part it's the same thing. Again, $22,500 in 2023 or $30,000 you can put in there as an employee contribution.

In addition to employee contributions, the employer can put money in there. They can put a match in. Sometimes it's what they call a safe harbor match or it's 50% of the first 3% of your income that goes in there. Whatever. It's your employer encouraging you to save money for retirement.

But not getting your match is like leaving part of your salary on the table. So, don't do that. Always get your match. That should be your biggest priority in your finances is to get your 401(k) match if there's one offered.

And the total contribution you can put into a 401(k) if you are under 50, total contribution for 2023 is $66,000. And that's composed of your employee contributions as well as any employer contributions. So, a lot of us that are in partnerships or whatever, we can make our own employer contributions, these profit sharing contributions.

There's also the possibility of putting in after tax employee contributions up to that limit if the plan allows it. That's sometimes called a mega backdoor Roth IRA contribution. So, look into that if you're interested in saving more inside retirement accounts than you're allowed to do.

But those are the basics of a 401(k). It's a great way to invest. They're typically invested into mutual funds. Most 401(k)s these days offer at least a handful of low cost index mutual funds, and that's most of the time the ones you should be using. You can round out your asset allocation using your taxable account or IRAs or 457(b) or any other accounts you have. But for the most part you're looking for the low cost broadly diversified index funds within the 401(k). You don't want to leave it just sitting there in cash.

All right, enough about 401(k)s. I hope that's helpful to you. If you didn't know all the ins and outs of a 401(k), hopefully you're more well versed in that now.

SPONSOR

Don't forget about the sponsor of this episode. This is 37th Parallel. They are a private multi-family acquisitions and asset management firm based in Richmond, Virginia. Since 2008, they've completed close to 1 billion in multi-family transactions with a 100% profitable track record for clients.

They provide a vertically integrated investment platform, both fund and single asset investments for high-net-worth family office and institutional investors seeking tax advantaged income and equity growth.

They specialize in class A, B apartment communities in demographically strong markets in the south most, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. You can learn more about 37th Parallel and the special investment discounts available only to White Coat Investors at whitecoatinvestor.com/37parallel.

Thanks for listening to the Milestones podcast. We're really grateful for your feedback. This is about you. We want to produce the content that is most helpful and most valuable to you. So your feedback is very, very important and we do appreciate those who give it to us in whatever format. Obviously bad feedback, we want privately. Good feedback, give us a review, that'd be great.

But until we see you next time, keep your head up, shoulders back, you've got this. We're here to help you. See you next time on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast.

DISCLAIMER

The hosts of the White Coat Investor podcast are not licensed accountants, attorneys, or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.