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Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is White Coat Investor podcast number 328 – A conversation With Locums Docs.

Everyone has a story, different needs, wants, and goals, and how to attain them. Your story determines your solution. Whatever your situation and story, locum tenens should be part of that conversation.

How do you find out if locums is a good option for you? Go to an unbiased, informative source like locumstory.com. You'll learn all the ins and outs of locums, details on travel and housing, assignment coordination, tax information, and more.

You'll also hear first-hand stories from locums physicians from all walks of life, so you get a bigger picture of the diverse options. Get a comprehensive view of locums and decide if it's right for you at locumstory.com.

This is a perfect sponsor for today's episode. In fact, they weren't actually planning on sponsoring this episode. We went to them and said, “You should sponsor this episode.”
We've worked with Locumstory for many, many years. They've sponsored speaking gigs for me and really been a great partner for us.

But today we're going to be talking about locums. It's apparently locums month as you're listening to this. I didn't even know they had locums month. They got a month for everything these days, I guess. But it's a great time for us to talk about locums. So today's podcast is going to be a conversation with a couple of docs who are doing locums. That's all they do is locums.

You can hear a little bit about what locums is, what it's like, and maybe dream a little bit about the options for you and how your career might change if you started doing that part-time, full-time, etc.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Before we get them on the line, we ought to tell you about a few other things we got going on. First, let's do our quote of the day. And this one's from Dave Ramsey who says, “A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.”

And I also want you to be aware of a sale we're doing. This podcast drops, August 17th, and that's the first day of the sale. And this is a podcast sale. So, it's only for you podcast listeners. If you put in code PODCAST200, you get $200 off any of our White Coat Investor courses from now through the 25th. So, it's just the next week, $200 off any of our courses.

Our Real Estate course, our Fire Your Financial Advisor course, a version of that that provides CME so you can use your CME funds. Our Continuing Financial Education course for this year. That's CFE 2023. Again, that qualifies for continuing medical education funds. All you need to know is the code PODCAST200 to get $200 off. So check that out through August 25th.

Also, we're going to try something new on the podcast. We're always trying new stuff. Let us know how you like it, how you don't like it. But we're going to do a little bit of a live Speak Pipe if you will. We want people want to come on and ask their questions directly to me and have the chance to ask some follow-up questions.

And that's good not only for you, but also for me. I can ask some follow-up questions because sometimes on the Speak Pipe I don't get all the information I need to really give you a good answer to your question.

We're going to spend five or 10 minutes together and we'll put these into the Q&A episodes. So, apply for that. Send your question to [email protected]. We'll choose a few of you to come on, and the rest of you tell us how you like it. If you guys like it a lot, we'll do it more often. If you hate it, let us know that too.

INTERVIEW

All right, let's get our two friends on the line here and we are going to talk about all things locums and get into the nitty gritty details of what their life is really like doing this. All right, our guests today on the podcast are Dr. Chad Greene and Dr. Daniel Shin. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Chad Greene:
Thanks Jim.

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Thanks for having us.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Both of these doctors have been doing locums now for a while, but we're going to get to hear their stories and then we're going to kind of compare and contrast a lot of things about what they've done. So why don't we start with you Daniel. Let's start with you telling us a little bit about your career path at this point. Just take two or three minutes and kind of tell us about your career to where you're at right now.

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Sure. That's a little bit of a story, but I'll try to be succinct. Basically, I'm a urologic surgeon and I did my training in Southern California in Los Angeles, and I did my residency there and I went immediately into practice in Southern California as a general urologist.

And I was good at my job. I liked my patients, my patients liked me but it was only a couple years into my practice when I started feeling a little burnt out and I wasn't exactly sure what was going on. There was a 10 hour commute in Southern California traffic.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Did you say 10 hours?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
10 hours, yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Like 10 hours a week?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
10 hours a week, yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. All right.

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Not every day. It was about an hour each way or an hour and a half if I got unlucky with traffic. That on top of a 50 to 60 hour work week, even though things were very good with the job, it started to wear on me. And just two or three years in, starting to feel a little burnt out was a little bit disconcerting because you don't think that you're going to be experiencing that as a young surgeon.

I think that's really where sort of the roots of my transition to locums medicine kind of started, because it was at that point where I started to think of a life where I had a little bit more time for the things that I was interested in. Things like looking for things outside of medicine, like real estate investing, which I'm very interested in, and also writing on a blog, which is something that we share.

I started The Darwinian Doctor blog as well, and I started to indulge these passions sort of as a solution for the burnout. And then after a few years, these passions started taking up more and more time. And then as I kind of went along my career, I didn't really see a way to sort of have everything at once until I had an opportunity for a big change.

My wife got offered an incredible career opportunity outside of Los Angeles. And after about six or so years in my job, I decided that it was time to make a shift as well. So we took a leap and moved from SoCal to Tennessee and I eventually settled on locums as a way to sort of have it all.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. All right, let's go to you now Chad. Tell us about your career path at this point, just so people can get to know you a little bit.

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah. I finished my residency in 2019 and actually had planned to practice in Tennessee, the small town that I grew up in. I interviewed there, interviewed quite a few places throughout the country and really wanted to stay in this small town, stay close to family, and ultimately was able to line up a job with this group that I'd wanted to get at so bad.

However, the kicker was, they weren't quite ready for me yet, so I had about a six month window to find something else to do. At the time we had two kids and my wife was pregnant with our third, I believe. We were thinking “What should we do for six months? I definitely have to work somewhere.”

I trained in Nashville and the academic institution there had offered me a position that I thought about taking. But ultimately, after some thought and prayer, my wife and I decided it was time for an adventure. And I had a friend that practiced up in Alaska in an anesthesia group there. He said, “Why don't you just come out and work with us, have a little adventure? And I bet you'll fall in love with it and want to stay.”

I was thinking, “Well, I’ll give that a shot. My wife's from Texas, so I’m not quite sure what she's going to think of Alaska as the cold sets in.” But to make a long story short, we loaded up the car with our two kids, myself and my wife who was pregnant, and we drove all the way from Nashville to Alaska over a period of two weeks. Had a phenomenal time. Of course, we didn't have any money so we camped along the way with one eye open, hoping no bears or wildlife would come and get us in the tents at night.

But we eventually made it to Alaska. Had a phenomenal time there, and I had basically just worked directly with that hospital group. And then just worked a week at a time, 1099, and then definitely took some time to travel while we were there as well on the weekends.

I learned at the time that there's a nonstop flights to Hawaii. So, towards the end of November when it was getting pretty dark and cold, we loaded up the family, flew down to Hawaii for a week and then came back.

We were there from July all the way to the end of December, after which I went back and had joined this group in Tennessee that I grew up in. It's kind of one of those things before we settled down and knew that we would likely stay here for the rest of my career, we just wanted a little adventure.

And then along the way we really fell in love with that lifestyle and from a family standpoint, just had a great time doing it. I actually had been going back, usually two to four weeks a year, to work with that same group, just to say hello to everyone and just have a good time, have a change of scenery. That's my locums story so far.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You know why those flights are nonstop to Hawaii, right?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah. Very little land along the way.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Nowhere to stop. Yeah. Your story almost mirrors my parents. In 1973 they took my two older sisters, bundled up into a camper and bought a trailer and drove the Alcan to Alaska over two weeks camping and fishing along the way.

Dr. Chad Greene:
How cool is that?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
He got up there, my dad stumbled into a job. He's been there ever since. I was born a couple of years later, but it's a wonderful place to be. So, which two to four weeks do you spend up there now? June?

Dr. Chad Greene:
I usually go back for the first salmon run. Really got into fly fishing there, so I'll typically go and do some salmon fishing. And then they did talk me into coming, they had a gap to fill in March at one point, and I'm thinking, “Oh, March it's springtime.” Well, it's not springtime in Alaska.

I drove to the hospital one night on call in a blizzard, and finally I called and I was like, “All right, I don't know where I'm at. The street signs, I can't really tell.” I wasn't really prepared for this, but I finally made it. So, most of the time I try to go back in the summer though.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, Alaska, as you know, is near and dear to me. A place I grew up for 18 years, so I know your stomping grounds up there very well. It's interesting you talk about what you enjoy and all your other interests, Daniel. That commuting was not one of them. It's interesting, the studies show that commuting might be the thing that makes people most unhappy. And yet how many docs are there in Southern California that commute for 45 minutes or 60 minutes or 90 minutes each way?

Now, what did you learn moving outside of Southern California and perhaps having a bit of a more normal commute about how commuting affects your happiness?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I think you're right. I think commuting is actually an incredibly big part of everyday life. And in the beginning I rationalized it, I said we don't have to move and my wife can continue her job and I could commute to my job and I can use that time. I started listening to podcasts and eventually I got a Tesla so I could put it on autopilot and sort of zone out. And that helped up to a point.

But after a few years, there's only so much you can do. You've listened to all the podcasts and you've educated yourself as much you can within the confines of the car, and then you just start dreading it because you're tired after a long day and then you still have to get in the car and you know you're not going to be home for an hour or two in Southern California traffic.

And there's so many advantages in terms of lifestyle to Southern California but the commuting is certainly one of those big detractors. I moved to Memphis. So, we're both in Tennessee now, I guess, but it is eye-opening. The fact that you can get anywhere in town in about 10 to 20 minutes is just amazing. And then I somewhat miss that time in the car because it's this alone time when you can have it to yourself and really think about things. But I certainly don't miss it enough to want to go back to that 10 hours a week.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you think 10 to 20 minutes is good, you should try moving to Anchorage. We thought it was a big deal to have to drive eight minutes. The old joke is that Anchorage is 10 minutes from Alaska. Any direction you drive 10 minutes, you're in real Alaska instead of in the city.

Okay. Now Chad, you are settled down it sounds like. 11 months of the year you're in this dream job in this small town in Tennessee that you wanted so much.

Dr. Chad Greene:
That's right. Yeah, we had our fourth child now and we decided it’s probably best just to kind of have a little bit of a more stable lifestyle for them. My wife and I homeschool them. And I have about 12 weeks on average of vacation a year. So we still travel a good bit, some of which is going back up to Alaska and doing some locums.

But for the most part, yeah, settled down. My mom and dad are also in this little town I grew up in. My two sisters are here. So, it made sense for us to be close to them. And we're pretty close with our family, so, it didn't quite make sense for us to go back and move up as hard as it was not to do that.

Yeah. So we're here. I do a little farming with my dad, and help them out. Yeah, for the most part I have enjoyed the stability, but still being able to have my foot in the water as well to going up and still having a little adventure from time to time.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. So, how's this work? Every time you go to Alaska, are you working through a locums agency or you just have a relationship now that they just call you directly? Or how's it work?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah, I've never worked through an agency. This initial job was through a friend that actually practices in that group. I continued to do 1099 work directly through them.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, how's this work? You call them up in March and they're like, “Yeah, we'll have you in June again. We'll pay for a rental car and your Airbnb and we'll pay you so much a shift?” Or how’s it work?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah, pretty much. We pick our vacation weeks for the year every October. And then I'm pretty sure the gentleman that I work with up in Alaska, he has a calendar set or an alert set because I'll get a text the first week of November. He is like, “Hey, when can you come work?” I'll usually try to, like I said, section off some time up there.

But yeah, they pay for my flights. The time we were up for the six months after residency, they did a long-term rental on a little town home there. So that was great. I didn't have to worry about the hotel life. We had our own little house there. And yeah, now I'll go back and stay in a hotel and then just rent a car. However, last time I went, I found that car rentals, if you book them the last minute, could run out. So that could be a little bit difficult depending on where you go to.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. Alaska in June is not a good place to get a car rental. It's not cheap and not easy to get for sure.

Dr. Chad Greene:
I remember hearing people renting U-Haul trucks as their rental cars up there.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yes. Because it's cheaper. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So does your family go with you every time?

Dr. Chad Greene:
They haven't gone the last two times. But the plan is for this next year for us all to go up, and enjoy it together.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And how much do you work when you're up there?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Usually I'll try to go for at least two weeks. I have gone for a week at a time. When I go by myself, I burn the candle at both ends. So I'll fly in usually, catch a red eye Friday night, and then I'll take call starting Saturday morning. And then usually I'll take a first call the next Saturday if I'm there for a week and then fly out Sunday to get back to work on Monday, just to try to make it most worthwhile.

But if we go for two weeks and the family's there, I'll usually work for five days, take a couple days to go fish and sightsee, and then just work some more before flying back home.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And do you typically get paid more than you do at your regular gig in Tennessee, or is about the same or is it less? Or how does it usually work out?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Right now, I'm on a four year partnership track with my group, and I'll make partner this January, so it'll get much better at that point. But currently, yeah, I make a lot more doing locums, certainly enticing if it were just me and didn't need the stability, that would be a great route to go. I learned a lot about small business management and retirement planning. Doing the locums route you could certainly make a good bit of money doing it that way.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Daniel, let's turn back to you. Tell us about your work life. Where do you work?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I work right now in two locations. I work in Ohio and I work in Oxford, Mississippi as well.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. So, how many days a month do you work in Ohio and how many days in Mississippi?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Basically, I'm a bit newer to locums than I think my colleague here is because I started it about five months ago because we've only been in Memphis for about 10 months and it took us a while to get situated and it took me a while to settle on locums as the way to go.

But for the last five months I've been splitting my time. I used to spend about one to two weeks a month in Ohio, and now I've been splitting my time a little bit more evenly some time in Ohio. And I started working with a group down in Mississippi as well. Mississippi is drivable, and Ohio, I have to fly unfortunately and transfer in Atlanta because there's virtually no direct flights for Memphis, unfortunately.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And so, total, you're working what? 12, 15 days a month? What's the total amount you're working a month now?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
It was about 14 days a month, about half the time. I'm trying to scale it back to about 7 to 10 days a month actually, to leave the rest of the time for business.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. At 14 days, that sounds almost full-time to an emergency doc, but that's probably less than full-time for a lot of urologists. But was that deliberate? Was that part of the motivation to go locums to be able to easily cut back to a part-time gig? Why did you decide not to look for a job in Tennessee, for instance?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I did. I initially did talk to the private practices here in Memphis. They're great groups and I had a really nice time exploring that option. But when I came down to it and did a little bit of soul searching, I really did want the ability to A) have a lot of control over my day-to-day, and B) have the ability to spend sort of uninterrupted chunks of time working on things outside of medicine.

And it's really tough to do that as a private practitioner, urologic surgeon. You've got clinic, you've got the messages coming in, the results, you've got the surgical center and your scheduled cases.
Dr. Daniel Shin:
When I thought about that, I thought that locums would just be much more compatible. And I'm not ruling out that life in the entirety, but I thought it'd be a really great experiment to try and try to gain that autonomy.

It's very efficient sort of time and income wise to do locums. We looked very critically at our spending and what my wife is making and what I was expecting to make on locums and figured that we could do this where I essentially am just doing about a week or a week and a half of medicine and very easily covering all our bills.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Especially when you get the cost of living in Memphis versus Southern California.

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Yeah, certainly real estate is a lot cheaper out here. We were able to buy a house out here for about a third of what it cost in Los Angeles.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. And the tax savings must be substantial as well. I can't remember, isn't Tennessee one of the tax free states?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Yes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Okay. So, how is your practice different? For an anesthesiologist, for a hospitalist, for an emergency doc, for a radiologist in some ways we're plug and play, right? You get inserted in, you do your shifts, you're done, you walk away. Nobody's calling you. That's not the case for most urologists. And when you go to Ohio and you do some operations, who covers those patients after you leave?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
This particular location, there's some permanent urologists who are full-time and then they have full-time locums coverage as well. And basically the way it works is that my main role when I'm there is covering hospital call. And that includes seeing the ER consults, seeing the inpatient consults. They do schedule cases for me during the day as well. And I see some patients in clinic as well. So it's actually a pretty malleable situation right now. And when I'm gone, it's either the next locums kind of taking care of the patients or the permanent urologists. And it's actually pretty seamless so far.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Have you talked to them about why they're using locum docs instead of trying to hire a doc that's living there, that will move there, that will be there full time? What do they tell you when you have that conversation?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Yeah, we've actually talked about it pretty frankly. And when I first started locums, I also helped a hospital that's very similar to this hospital in sort of the southern tip of Mississippi. And it was actually a very similar story. The places where I'm doing locums in Ohio and that initial place in Mississippi, it's not like Cleveland. It's about an hour outside of Cleveland.

And this group started out with six urologists a number of years ago, and then just through attrition, shrunk down to four, and then over the last year shrunk down to two. And this was, I think it's reflective of the physician shortage that's particularly acute in urology, but I think it's also just telling that the towns outside of the main cities sometimes struggle to attract full-time people. And they saw locums as a way of basically getting the coverage they needed. And it was a very, very similar story to the first place where I did locums as well.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
It's not that the job is bad, it's that nobody wants to live in the town. Is that fair to say?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Well, yeah, I guess the job is not bad. The job is very busy. And like all hospitals, I think there are challenges that they're working through. Various things could be tuned up, but I do think geography does play a big role for sure.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And when you go out to these gigs, whether in Ohio or Mississippi, how do you feel like you're treated? Do they welcome you with open arms? “We’re glad you're here. Thanks so much for being here. Lots of respect. You're the expert coming in from outside or are you the chump, the locums guy they don't even talk to him. He is going to be gone next week guy.” How do you get treated?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I would say that overall the reception has been really good. And maybe part of it is because I feel that I had a good training and I came fresh and young and energetic. I think that when I'm doing locums, I'm trying to do the absolute best job I can. But I think that the reception has been really good and overall they've been really happy to have coverage.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now Chad, kind of the same question to you. You're going back to the same place over and over again. They obviously like you or they wouldn't text you every November. You're helping them whatever they're doing in June, go fishing or whatever. Do you feel like they treat you like a member of the team or how are you treated?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah, absolutely. I get a Christmas card from the OR staff every year. So I feel like that means I've reached a certain tier there. But yeah, I stay in touch with a lot of the docs that I've met, as well as some of the nursing staff throughout the year. Even one of the radiology techs, we go down and do some anesthesia down in radiology from time to time, befriended him and we're still trying to plan a moose hunt at some point. And he'll text me from time to time.

But yeah, I made some lifelong friends that I didn't really expect. Going straight from residency to there, I was super nervous about it, and thought I would just kind of go in, do my job and get back out and rinse and repeat the next day. But along the way, I made some great relationships, and some lasting friendships that keeps us coming back.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. I think you said earlier, Chad, that you've always been paid on a 1099. Have you always been paid on a 1099 as well, Daniel?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Yeah, it's been 1099 so far, but a new development is that I basically worked out an arrangement with the hospital in Ohio directly. They actually asked me if I was okay with them buying me out of my contract and contracting with them directly. So, starting next month I'll be a W2 with that particular hospital.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. Are they going to offer you benefits being as part-time as you are or what do you expect from that situation?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
They are offering me some benefits, but I didn't really need health insurance because my wife has that. So, it's sort of a bespoke package that is specific to my situation. I think I get retirement, but not health insurance for example. And they are covering malpractice and transportation and lodging and the rental car as well.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. And I assume Chad, you're just using the health insurance you have with the regular group since you're only going for a couple of weeks now?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yes, sir. Currently I'm doing that. I will say that wasn't something I really thought of when I stopped residency and before I started with my other group. So health insurance, we had to just visit the marketplace and that was quite expensive from what I remember. Thankfully I don't have to do that anymore.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Have either of you opened a solo 401(k) for the 1099 income you've had?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I haven't yet, but this is the first year that I'm doing this. I'm curious to see what Chad has to say about that.

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah. As a medical student, I started reading White Coat Investor and then also throughout residency would visit the forums from time to time. I knew that was something that I probably should do. And so, yeah, the first paycheck, I opened up a solo 401(k) at E-Trade at the time, and started contributing to that. And now it's still something that I'm able to contribute to from time to time, depending on how much 1099 work I do and I’m able to save a little bit more.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Now Daniel, you've got a blog, I don't know how much money The Darwinian Doctor makes and also a growing real estate empire on the side. Without those two side gigs going, do you think you'd be able to do locums?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Yeah, for sure. I'm very transparent in my writing on the blog and I basically make twice as much per hour as I did as a well-paid full-time urologist in Southern California. And I think that's pretty typical for locums. So, totally without the real estate investing, without the blog, the blog doesn't make much money, to be honest. We would be totally fine with me still doing the same amount of locums as I'm doing now.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. It helps to double your income at least on an hourly basis, even if you're working less. Very cool.

All right. And this is probably more for you, Daniel, because you're now all over the place, but you've experienced staying in one place for a long period of time. Do you feel like you're missing anything in your career by giving up that experience of being one place where everybody knows you, etc?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
That's a good question, and I think you're right. I think a large part of the enjoyment of being in medicine is having a team. Especially if you're in a specialty that has a clinic or if you're in the operating room, a large part of the joy is interaction with your coworkers and I really enjoyed that part of my job in SoCal because I had a team, a department of 14 urologists, and we had so many team members and it was really a joy just kind of socially interacting with them on a day-to-day basis.

And you do miss that when you're on hospital coverage or when I'm on hospital coverage, for example. It's pretty much me. I'm the person, I'm going around seeing the consults. I do have some mid-level support in Ohio, which is great. But after rounding it's pretty much me, and certainly in the middle of the night it's just me.

And I think that is one of the downsides of doing purely hospital coverage type locums. It can be a lonely existence, honestly. One of the reasons why I started and exploring this other locums gig down in Mississippi more recently is that I am in the clinic and I am doing very typical sort of regular urology things.

And that interaction with patients in the clinic setting, when they're not an extremist from renal colic in the ER, that can be a lot more rewarding, I think. So, I think you do lose a little bit by going locums depending on the way it's configured.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But I imagine you don't have that same concern, Chad, given that you're only there for a few weeks now.

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah, not necessarily. I have started, there's another locums gig that we have been asked to pick up also in Tennessee helping with some weekend coverage. And so, I will say I feel like locums is very different from site to site. And it's probably one of those things where once you get to know everyone things fall into place. But there's certainly different environments and different flavors of hospitals and groups, and I think it's just one of those things where you have to kind of go and see if you're a good fit for each other.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Let's talk about malpractice. What kind of malpractice coverage do you guys have when you do locums?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah. The group that I worked with up in Alaska just took me in under their group's malpractice. I know in some other places, you're required to provide your own. That was something that was a little bit… It was kind of scary, I guess I could say, coming out of residency.

And you're thinking, “Well, I'm brand new to this, I want to make sure I've got good coverage in.” And in the back of my mind, I think, “Well, I'm going to Alaska, I don't know what all resources there's going to be there.” But certainly, it was something that was good knowing that there was malpractice coverage in place. I didn't have to use it, thankfully.

Dr. Daniel Shin:
For me, the malpractice was covered by the locums companies, and that's still the case. They contract out to whatever companies provide this type of insurance, and it seems fairly typical. They include tail coverage and all that. And since I'll be employed directly from the hospital in Ohio starting next month, I'll be on sort of their physician hospital plan.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Let's talk about control over your schedule. This is a big reason why people go do locums, is they want control. They want to know what weeks they're going to be working, what months they're going to be working. How much control do you actually have over your schedules when it comes to your locums work?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Well, for me, that's one of the best things about it. I think on a day-to-day basis, I'm much happier because I do feel much more in control over my schedule. And I think autonomy is this really big component of happiness, and I basically tell them when I'm available and they have preferences and they may make some asks in terms of scheduling, but in the end, it's pretty much up to me. I can say I'm available these dates and we'll kind of craft a schedule around my availability. So, in terms of control, I think that's one of the benefits of locums for sure.

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah, and for me, I think it's really a two-edged sword. I do miss the ability to create my own schedule. And if we wanted to take a week to go to Hawaii, hey, we can't necessarily do that since we picked vacations a year in advance now.

But at the same time I found myself when I was doing locums, just trying to work every possible week and almost felt a slight sense of guilt when we would take some time off to travel, knowing that I could be working and making good money.

For me, the stability and organization that comes with being in a group and having kind of an equitable amount of vacation weeks and shifts already predetermined for me, kind of gives me just the good system to stick to.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I think a lot of doctors feel that guilt. Do you have any tips for them for getting over that?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah. For me, just looked kind of down, knee level at my kids and I was like, this is for them creating memories. It's more important than money. Just trying to be the best dad that I could be for them and good husband for my wife, and just making memories that they'll never forget.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I'm curious what your biggest surprise has been about locums. And Daniel, why don't we start with you? What surprised you the most when you started doing locums?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I think the biggest surprise is that you can do too much. And obviously it depends where you're doing locums, but I would say the biggest downside of locums for me is that I'm away from my family. And like Chad, I've got two young boys. They're five and nine years old, and I've got a wife and my parents are with us here in Tennessee as well. And when I'm gone, I'm completely gone. I can't contribute to sort of their day to day and I miss them.

As I said, it can sometimes be a lonely experience. And when I was doing two weeks a month of locums just last month, it surprised me how easily it kind of tipped over into too much time away from the family. But quickly we realized that balance was not so good. So that's why I'm kind of scaling back now. But that's what surprised me, how much I would miss being away from my family.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Chad, what surprised you the most?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Okay, my biggest surprise, and this is going to probably crack you all up, but it was estimated quarterly taxes. That was kind of something that was sort of foreign to me. The first kind of set through where I talked with our accountant, he was like, “Yeah, you've been setting aside your estimated quarterly taxes, right?” And I'm thinking, well, I definitely forgot that. I'm setting aside some for retirement and things.

But that was a big surprise for me, and something that's important to think about when you see the money come into your paycheck. So, it's kind of tough to really get into the mindset of creating those subsets instead of just saving all or spending too much money and having to really curtail yourself from doing that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I bet that was really depressing to have that conversation, huh?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yes, very, very depressing.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Interesting. Okay. So, what should those considering locums be warned about? There's downsides to everything we do. What warnings should be given out now that you guys have had some experience doing this for a while?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah, I think it's important to really ask questions and to vet the facilities, the hospitals or the groups that you're going to be working with. You want to make sure that there's going to be good support system.

For me, like I mentioned, coming straight out of residency where I had an attending and several other residents right there at an academic institution going straight off to Alaska, it was a great learning opportunity for me, but something that you have to really consider. So, the support system and the work environment that you're in. Don't be afraid to ask questions. I feel like we as physicians are in a position whenever those negotiations are taking place to just say no sometimes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Daniel, what would you warn somebody about? They come to you and say, “It sounds awesome what you're doing with locums. But tell me, what should I be worried about? What am I not thinking about?” What would you tell them?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I think that's right on the money because every locums position is so different that a lot of your success as a locums is going to depend on how you're regarded by the other physicians there and what kind of support they can offer you.

For example, last night in Ohio, I got called as an emergent consultant to the OR to reimplant a ureter that had been cut during a gynecologic procedure. And this is something that if I had encountered in Southern California, I just would've called one of my buddies and say, “Hey, Amir, hey Justin, can you help me reimplant this ureter?”

But in this instance depending on the place that you are, maybe you're going to have to handle it yourself. You have to basically figure out what your capabilities are. And in a lot of places you may actually be stretched even more than you're used to.

I think I'm very lucky in both of the places I've gone to that the local urologists, they're great, they're very supportive, and they're more than welcome to give backup if necessary. It wasn't required in this case.

But I think that's one of the things. You have to really evaluate as much as possible each locums gig separately. And the thing about it though, is that if you find that it's not to your liking, what I found is that most of the contracts have a 30 day out. So, you can change your mind and you can switch things up, but there is kind of a startup cost and a switching cost if you do that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Have either of you worked a little bit with agencies? What was your experience with locums agencies and the good and the bad of doing that?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I've gone through agencies, so I could speak a little bit to that. The agency situation is very interesting. I think there's more than you can count. And as an employed physician, I would get calls, cold calls and emails every single week from locums agencies looking for coverage here. And I would get tired of saying, “Look, I'm employed. I don't have time nor the inclination to go cover a week of locums in South Dakota or North Dakota.”

But the fact is afterwards it's a lot of trial and error. I didn't really have a great way of figuring out which agencies had the best gigs, the well-paid gigs. There was a lot of trial and error, and I actually did end up switching agencies because I felt like the first one that I was contracting with was honestly not paying high enough.

As I sort of learned and saw more gigs coming in, I said, “Well, this doesn't really seem to be a good compensation rate.” And then when I challenged them on it, I wasn't satisfied with their response. Basically I went to another agency that I thought was being a bit more fair.

But the thing about agencies is I think it's very routine for them to take 30% to 60% of the fee to cover their overhead. And I think there's much more upside if you can work directly with the hospital, but I think initially that's a little bit daunting for people who are just starting out. Certainly it was for me.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You think it's pretty common for people to initially work through an agency and then either have the hospital buy out the agency or wait until the contract is up and then go directly if it's going to be a regular thing?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
I suspect it to be the case. I honestly haven't spoken to a hundred locums urologists, but I think that's the case.

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah, I haven't worked directly with an agency on any particular assignments, but do get text messages quite often. And it does seem the rates are considerably lower even for the same geographic locations. And so, yeah, just human nature thinking, well, someone's getting paid as the middleman there. So, if I'm going to take the time to go, I'd rather just work directly with the hospital. But sometimes those relationships between the agencies and the hospitals are already there and maybe it makes sense to go that route for some people.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. All right. Well, our time is getting short. I want to give you each a chance to tell us anything you haven't had a chance to talk about, particularly with regards to locums, but about anything really. You got the ear of 30,000 or 40,000 people, mostly docs. What have we not talked about that you think we ought to talk about today? Daniel, why don't we start with you?

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Sure. I think in closing I would just encourage everyone to think about your career and your life sort of as a trajectory. And the thing that really has affected my career over the last few years is that I started thinking of my timeline not in chunks of one to five years, but sort of in an arc of 20 and 30 years.

I saw where I wanted to end up and I started making very deliberate changes in my day-to-day to try to inch towards that vision. And some of that ended up manifesting as a move out of the comfort of my employed physician to locums. But a lot of that also ended up changing my focus from 100% medicine to business and things outside of medicine like writing and real estate investing.

So, I would just encourage people to take the long view and see where you want to end up, and just make sure that the things that you're doing on a day to day are getting you towards that eventual vision.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
That's a good tip. Chad, what have we not talked about you think we ought to cover?

Dr. Chad Greene:
Yeah. For me, I think just the change of scenery was worth a lot. We get in the doctor grind, so to speak, from time to time in our practices and our jobs in the same rhythm. I encourage anyone that is feeling burnout or feeling like they need a move or something different just to potentially explore doing one locums assignment for a change of scenery.

It's something I didn't expect to do that much for me mentally, but it certainly brought our family closer together, created lasting memories and then also just provided like I said a growing number of new relationships that you can build on and have for years to come.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, part of what you did it for was the adventure. Have you thought about going for a bigger adventure, picking a smaller town in Alaska or going to a foreign country or something like that?

Dr. Chad Greene:
I have thought about that as a pre-med actually. My wife and I, we have met in college and we had planned to do just mission work through our church. And then along the way, decided I liked medicine. And so, from then on, we think, and we're still not going to rule out the fact that one day we might go for a bigger adventure and try to retire a little bit early from my clinical practice here and do a medical mission work with our family one day. So, we'll see what's coming down the pipes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Awesome. Well, this has been a pleasure having both of you on. We've had Dr. Chad Greene, Dr. Daniel Shin, a.k.a The Darwinian Doctor here with us talking about their experiences with locums. Thank you gentlemen for your information and willingness to come on the podcast.

Dr. Chad Greene:
Thank you, Jim. It was a pleasure.

Dr. Daniel Shin:
Thanks for having me. It was really nice talking to you.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. I hope you enjoyed hearing from those two docs, two different experiences about locums. It's one of those things that you want to mix your career up a little bit at the beginning, at the end, in the middle.

I know Dr. Leif Dahleen who started the Physician on FIRE blog, he started his career doing locums. I think it was four or five years or something he did locums and eventually one of those gigs transitioned into his longer term gig.

But he loved it for getting to jumpstart financially because they paid all his living expenses. So, he moved his young little family around with him and they put them up and he got to make a little bit more money than he probably otherwise would've been making. He saved a whole bunch of it. And the rest is history.

Other people, they kind of turned to locums when they get into mid-career. They're feeling burnout. They're like, “Is this all there is?” And they want to mix it up. They want to go have an adventure, they want to go to Alaska, they want to go to New Zealand. They just want to go to a different part of the country and try something unique, change their practice up a little bit. And so, they do that in mid-career.

And others I've met like Cory Fawcett. He did a bunch of locums at the end of his career because he had so much control over the schedule. He was a general surgeon. He could swoop in and do 10 days of work as a general surgeon and then move on. And sometimes he moved on a week later he was working again. Sometimes he moved on four months later and he was working again. And he loved having that control at the end of his career which he had not gotten to enjoy as a busy general surgeon with regular practice.

So, lots of different reasons people choose locums. But I just love the idea of docs having control over their career. That's my favorite part about it.

SPONSOR

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All right, don't forget about the Milestones podcast. We've added some stuff to it. We've gotten great feedback. It's almost a little bit of back to basics with each episode. The one I recorded earlier today, I talked about cash after our interview with the person who had hit their milestone.

But if you're interested in being on that, whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones. Those drop on Mondays, the regular podcast drops on Thursdays. So, be sure to follow along and enjoy those podcasts, tell your friends about them.

Thanks so much for being here. This is driven by you. We're interested in what you think about it, what you want to hear on the podcast, guests you're interested in. We take your questions on the Speak Pipe, whitecoatinvestor.com/speakpipe, and we want to make this a useful resource for you. We're here for you.

I've kind of already got mine. I'm already enjoying the wonderful benefits of having financial literacy, having my financial ducks in a row, being able to do whatever I want with my life by mid-career. I want that for you too. That's what this podcast is all about.

Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. We'll see you next time on the White Coat Investor 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.

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 131 – Nurse becomes a millionaire.

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Welcome back to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. This is that podcast where we share in your successes. We want to hear from you, the milestones you've reached, whether it's paying off your car, whether it is sending your kid to college, whether it's having $100,000 in your HSA, whatever it might be.

Maybe you just got back to broke. That's a great milestone, important milestone for most doctors. You might be a millionaire or a decamillionaire or financially independent or whatever. We'd love to celebrate it with you and use your story to inspire other White Coat Investors to do the same. You can apply to come on the podcast at whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones.

All right, one other thing you ought to know about, my friend Peter Kim, the Passive Income MD, has put together a fantastic conference. I'll be speaking at this conference. It's September 21st through 23rd, 2023 in LA. It's a good time. It's called the Physician Real Estate and Entrepreneurship Conference.

It got some great speakers, some great courses, some great events associated with the conference. You can check that out, pimdcon.com is where you can sign up. There's also a virtual option. So, check that out.

All right, let's get to our guests. This is a little bit unique, this is a lower income person than maybe a lot of people we've had on the podcast, but I think there's a lot of lessons to learn here and we'll talk about in a minute.

Stay tuned afterward, I want to talk about student loan refinancing because that is going to become a very important topic for a lot of White Coat Investors in about two weeks.

INTERVIEW

Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Heath. Heath, welcome to the podcast.

Heath:
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Tell us what you do for a living and what part of the country you live in.

Heath:
Yeah. The last 12 years I've worked as a nurse and I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. Just a nurse. What kind of nursing do you do?

Heath:
Yes. I started out in the neurology, a lot of strokes, seizures, back surgeries, et cetera. And then about seven years in, I switched over to rehab nursing, and then last year for about a year, I did some local travel contracts for travel nursing around Michigan.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. To be clear, you are not a nurse practitioner. You are not a CRNA. You are a regular nurse.

Heath:
Correct. A BSN RN nurse.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And what's your income been over the last 12 years? What is kind of the range of what your income has been?

Heath:
Yeah, I took some notes here. I started out back in 2011 at $22.65 an hour. And then I ended at $36.59 an hour. And so, per year I made anywhere between like $60,000 to $90,000 a year, depending on how much extra shifts I picked up or how much overtime or incentive pay that I picked up. So, between $60,000 to $90,000. Except for last year, I did make like $130,000 but that's because I was doing the local travel contract. So, I was getting paid quite a bit more for that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
$130,000 as a nurse. That's pretty awesome.

Heath:
Yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
How much work were you doing? How many weeks did you work? How many hours a week?

Heath:
Yeah, as nurses, a lot of us do three 12 hours shifts a week. But when I graduated and got into nursing, I would get bored. That's four days off a week, and I would get bored. So I would usually pick up, every few weeks I'd pick up a 12 hour shift or maybe like an eight hour shift or a couple four hour shifts to break it up. I would say towards the beginning, the first 3, 4, 5 years, I picked up a decent amount of overtime shifts.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But now you're just doing three twelves a week.

Heath:
Yeah. And so, I'm kind of transitioning. I'm still doing nurse and actually I love finances so much that I am doing financial advice on the side to help out some of my nursing colleagues and other people in healthcare. I'm kind of doing both, doing part-time and both.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But that's all new in the last year or so, the financial.

Heath:
Correct. Yes. Exactly. Yes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. I go through all that information before we actually get to the financial milestone we're going to talk about today, because I think it's all relevant because you are a millionaire. In fact, you're well past being a millionaire. I understand your net worth is about $1.8 million. Is that right?

Heath:
Correct. Yes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Tell us about your net worth. What's it divided into? How much is in your home, how much is investment real estate, retirement accounts, et cetera?

Heath:
Yeah. The total $1.8 million when I added it all up, the breakdown of that, about $17,000 in cash, have about $47,000 in a money market fund, and about $30,000 in my HSA. $164,000 in my Roth IRA. $115,000 in a traditional IRA. $31,000 invested in after-tax brokerage account. And then real estate, about $1.4 million is in real estate. The value is around $2 million. And then I have about $600,000 in real estate mortgages.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Tell me about the real estate. Do you own a house that you live in?

Heath:
Correct. Yes. When I graduated about a year in of nursing, after I got some money saved up, I bought my first house and I did house hacking. I bought my house. It was a five bedroom house, so it was pretty big. I rented out the four other bedrooms to some random people, which was pros and cons to that.

It was fun. Some was not so fun living with a bunch of random people. But I did that so I could use their rent money that they're paying me to save up for the second house, and then just kind of cascaded that way of saving up money for the third rental and the fourth rental. I have six and a half rentals right now. One of them I bought with my brother, so that's where the real estate is broken down.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, very cool. And how much leverage are you using under the real estate? What's the overall loan to value ratio?

Heath:
Yeah. $2 million total in value, and then about $600,000 in mortgages. I have about $1.4 million in equity.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, really not that highly leveraged at all. You're only about 30% leverage.

Heath:
Correct. Yes. And I've looked in it too. I graduated in 2011, so I kind of got some good deals on my first few rentals because that was after the 2008/2009 crash. Yeah, I would buy some, fix them up and I wouldn't refinance all of them. Some of them I would just put the money in and just let the loan stay at a lower balance.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You're 12 years out of nursing school and have $1.8 million. Tell us how you did that. Obviously part of it was investing and you had some leverage involved and some real estate investing, obviously did some house hacking, but this is pretty remarkable. If you look at the money you've made nursing in the last 12 years is less than $1.2 million, yet your net worth is $1.8 million. So, how do you explain that?

Heath:
Yeah, I like to consider myself a pretty frugal person. One thing which I actually thought of, I don't drink. That's one thing which I think alcohol is a big expense for a lot of people. When I go out to dinner with my friends, if we're ordering meals, their bill is usually twice as much than mine because they buy drinks on top of it.

But just staying frugal. I don't spend a lot of money on materialistic things. I like to spend it on travel or something that is going to help me get to the goal of what I want instead of just having a bunch of materialistic stuff sitting around my house that isn't going to go anywhere.

I've always driven an older car. I've always had a car that's probably eight, nine years older. Right now, my car is a 2011. And just having that in the back of my head that I don't need all this fancy stuff when I could instead use my time better.

I've talked to many people that I think money is really just time in disguise. We go to work to get money, to use that money to buy somebody else's time and we sacrifice our time to go to work. I always try to keep that in my mind whenever I spend money as actually I'm spending my time or my future time that I'm going to have to do when I pay for something.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Are you single married kids?

Heath:
I'm single, no kids. I'm sure that has part of it to do as well. I know kids can be quite expensive. So, yeah, single, not by choice. I just have not found the right person yet. And I know on a previous podcast episode you mentioned that the right partner is one of the best things you can do financially because a divorce splits your assets in half. So, I just haven't found the right one yet.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. The data shows married people acquire more wealth, but only if they stay married.

Heath:
Correct.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is pretty cool. How far away do you think you are from being financially independent?

Heath:
Like I said, I live pretty frugally. My expenses per month are probably $3,000 a month. And so, my rental portfolio could probably support that if I wanted it to. I would say that I could be financially independent if I want, but what would I do if I'm not working? I feel like it's good to have a goal or to have something, even the social networking that you get at work as well can add a lot to your life.

I would say I could be financially independent, but I'm choosing not to because I want to do something else to try to bring value to the world that we live in and bring value to my life. So, this fall I'm actually teaching in the school that I went to, I'm going to teach another clinical rotation for the school with new nurses in the hospital. I think it's still good to be beneficial or do something beneficial and keep working even if you don't have to.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Maybe better said you are financially independent, just still working because you find some gratification doing so.

Heath:
Correct. Yes. And so, one thing I've noticed too is because I'm financially independent now, maybe I'm not picking up a bunch of shifts anymore if I don't have to. I'm choosing to do some other things in life instead of picking up because I put in the hard work to begin with and invested well and invested consistently that now I can kind of start reaping some of those benefits and not having to pick up extra shifts or off shifts, et cetera.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, how does that make you feel at work? Do you enjoy work more or do you enjoy work less now that you get these sometimes nonsensical tasks that you don't need the money for?

Heath:
That's a good question. I think some of both. I enjoy not feeling like I have to go into work, that's beneficial. But if I go work and the hospital or administration is wanting to do something different than us clinical staff might not want to do, or it doesn't seem like that's the right thing to do, then that makes it probably more frustrating because I know that I don't have to do it if I didn't want to. So, I think it's some of both.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, this podcast has occasionally received criticism over the years that we only put on people to make a gazillion dollars and save a gazillion dollars and have a gazillion dollars. Today we've taken a little bit to the other extreme. A lot of people out there would not necessarily consider a nurse to be a high income professional, although $130,000 last year is more than lots of pharmacists, et cetera, make.

But what's the lesson there for the typical physician that's making $275,000 a year if you've gotten the financial independence by the time that some of them aren't even coming out of their training?

Heath:
Yeah, that's actually one reason why I wanted to come on this podcast because obviously it's a little nerve wracking sharing your finances with a huge audience. But the last few episodes I listened to, it really encouraged me to do it as kind of a respectful challenge to other residents and physicians that listen to the show that if a nurse can do it on a salary that's much lower, then there's really no good excuse for people that are having a higher income, not able to do things.

It's all about choices. If you choose to live as a resident for two or three years after you graduate, like you say, then you're going to set yourself up for a much better success. If you choose to be the person that goes out and buys a brand new car and a $600,000, $700,000 mortgage on a house, then you'll reap those rewards too down the road.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now I work with lots of nurses and I talk to them about finance all the time, and I'm going to ask a whole bunch of them to listen to this episode. What message do you have for them?

Heath:
Good question. I would tell them to Google a financial calculator and just plug in a certain percentage at a certain amount of years. And so, you can actually see how much a small amount can grow over a large number of years.

I don't think people truly understand how powerful compounding interests can actually be in the long term. I think the first five years I did my Roth IRA from 2008 to 2012, I didn't really make any money. But if you look back 12 years, 15 years ago, all that money and how much it's gained over the years, that'd be my challenge, is to figure out compounding interests and truly understand it so that they can help harness it for themselves.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You made a passing remark earlier about house hacking. Let's talk a little bit about house hacking in your experience. Tell us about the pros, obviously, you had that extra income. But tell us about some of the bad things too, maybe why it wasn't such a great experience.

Heath:
Yeah, the cons, you were living with some random people. They don't treat your house as nice as you treat it. They damage stuff. They don't take out the trash. They can be loud when you're trying to sleep and you have to work the next day.

Actually, when I was doing the house hacking, I think I only had one person who ended up not paying me rent for like three months. And so, then I had to evict them or ask them to leave and I never got that money back. I was out $1,000 from their rent. But in the big scheme of things out of $1,000 of what it's allowed me to accomplish is a very small amount. Those are some of the negatives when you're living with random people.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Were you more picky in choosing your roommates, your tenants than you might otherwise be if it was one of your other properties?

Heath:
I wasn't. If I could go back in time, I probably would be a little bit more picky, but I was just all about whoever's going to pay me the rent and pay it on time, then I could deal with living in that situation for a short term because I knew it wasn't going to be a long-term thing.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Well, by the time everything is said and done, 30,000 or 40,000 people are going to listen to this podcast. What have we not talked about that you think they ought to do here?

Heath:
I would say the one thing that we didn't touch on, I have a good quote that I think everybody would like, from James Clear. It's about instead of being the learner, actually be the doer. His quote goes, “The teacher learns more than the student. The author learns more than the reader and the speaker learns more than the attendee. The way to learn is by doing.”

And so, I would say if they've been thinking about trying something new or trying a podcast or doing this is just to do it because we all start from somewhere. And it's probably going to be the best quality to begin with. But as you do it more and more with practice and over time, you're going to consistently get much better at it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Awesome. Well, Heath, congratulations on your success. It's pretty awesome to be financially independent and so congratulations to you on that. And thanks so much for coming on the podcast and inspire others to do the same.

Heath:
Yeah, thank you for having me. I hope it does.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview. The truth is income matters. The more income you have, the easier it is to build wealth, but it kind of doesn't matter because people that don't have that high of an income can build wealth too.

Yes, they need to do things to boost their income like this nurse did. Yes, they need to save maybe a bigger chunk of their money and maybe they need to do it for a longer period of time. But the point is it can be done.

And so, I love sharing stories like this because I think it emphasizes to those of us who are making $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 a year or more that this is not that complicated and you really don't have a huge excuse when you have that sort of an income.

You got to get this stuff taken care of. It's just a matter of applying some financial literacy, some financial discipline. And if you got the combination of those two things in our world, it's like having a superpower because it's so rare to have both of those. But you can do it. You can put those two together and you can build wealth no matter what your income.

FINANCE 101: STUDENT LOAN REFINANCING

All right. I promised you at the beginning that I was going to talk a little bit about student loan refinancing. As this podcast drops, it's August 14th, 2023, and guess what starts happening on September 1st this year?

That's right. That student loan holiday is over. It's over. That great announcement made on, I think it was March 13th, 2020. President Trump gets up there in front of the White House, declares everything an emergency and says student loans are going to 0% and no payments.

And it's been that way for three and a half years. You don't owe a dollar more than you did before in federal student loans, and you haven't had to make a payment for three and a half years.

Well, that all goes away September 1st. Starting September 1st, the interest starts accumulating again. And within a month or so after that, you're going to have to start making your first payment again. And so, that means it's time to be thinking about your student loan plan. A lot of you have been thinking about your student loan plan.

Our sponsor for this episode, studentloanadvice.com has booked a lot of consults for this late summer and early fall. They're talking to all kinds of people about their student loans and getting plans in place.

So, check them out. If you have a complicated situation and you need some help putting together your student loan plan, they will help you.

Many of you don't have a complicated situation. You've just been waiting until the holiday ends to implement your plan. And maybe your plan is you got a whole bunch of cash sitting around and you're just going to take your student loans in a corner and drop an anvil on them on September 1st. So, don't forget to do that before the interest starts accumulating.

Others of you have been waiting to refinance. You knew that refinancing was right and you made a decision a year or two ago that you'd take 0% for a little bit longer as long as it went instead of refinancing to 2% or 3%.

Well, in the meantime, interest rates have gone up dramatically. So you've lost the opportunity to refinance to 2% or 3%, but I expect you should still be able to refinance to something around 5%. And maybe that only knocks a half percent off your student loans. Maybe it knocks 1% or 1.5%. It just depends on what your loans are at.

But if you're going to be paying them back and you don't need the protections of the federal system, the federal student loan system, you're not going for PSLF, you're not going for some IDR taxable forgiveness in 20 or 25 years and you can get a lower rate, you should refinance.

And the best place to refinance is through the links at the White Coat Investor. If you go there, you'll see on our recommended page, whitecoatinvestor.com/recommended. You can go to student loans and you'll see the folks we recommend. If you go through those links to refinance, you'll get cash and they'll send you a check or they'll put it toward your loans if you want, but you get cash back. And so, that's a great benefit.

Also, at least for a limited time, we're giving you Fire Your Financial Advisor, our flagship course, if you refinance a student loan through those links. So, be sure to check that out as well.

Now, you may find you go on there and you've got student loans at 5.4% or something, and the best they can give you is 5.5%. What's the worst that happens? You wasted a little bit of time, like three minutes finding that out. You don't even have a hard credit poll on your credit. But you know what? You might also find out that you qualify for 4.75% or something like that. So you can't know unless you actually check on there and go through three or four or five of these and see what rate they're going to give you.

Now a lot of you had something way worse than 5.5%. Maybe you have 6.8%, maybe you got 7.8%. Maybe you went to a Caribbean school and you got 10% loans. I don't know what you have, but if you can get a lower rate and you're not going for PSLF or some other federal student loan forgiveness plan, you ought to refinance your loans. It will save you money. You can make the same payments and more of it will go to principal. You'll just be out of debt sooner.

But this is your warning. Don't say nobody ever told you that it's time to do something about your student loans again. This fall is the time. It's time to get that done if you've been putting it off, and a lot of you have.

Don't focus on the payments. A lot of you are like, “Well, they're still using my 2019 income to determine my payments.” Payments don't matter so much. In repay and save, the payments do matter because it means less is accumulating, but still it doesn't help you to pay back your student loans just to have a low payment. In a lot of cases it makes it harder because loans are going up and the loan balance is going up.

Get that stuff taken care of, know what's going on. If you're one of those who's had your head in the sand, ignoring it, pour yourself a stiff drink, sit down at the dining room table with your partner if applicable. Actually write down what you owe, how much, what the interest rates are, what the payments are. Let's get on top of this. It's time to get it done.

SPONSOR

All right. If you need help, or you're just feeling overwhelmed, you're really not sure what to do, you're worried about the political climate, whatever. The experts at studentloanadvice.com, they're here to help guide you through the best options to manage your loans.

They've consulted on over $250 million in student loan debts. It'll be a whole lot more than that by the time you hear this podcast because they're super busy right now. But the average studentloanadvice.com client has saved over $190,000. A lot of that is additional public service loan forgiveness they didn't know they were eligible for, for example.

You'll receive a customized student loan plan using the principles of the White Coat Investor and get answers to all of your student loan questions. You'll gain clarity about your financial future. You'll start down the right path toward financial freedom.

Book your consult today at studentloanadvice.com. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help.

All right, we've come to the end of another Milestones to Millionaire podcast. Hopefully we've educated you a little bit about what can be done even on a low income. Relatively low income. The truth is that's actually a pretty good income compared to the average American household income, but it's a low income in the White Coat Investor community. And we've talked a little bit about student loan refinancing.

I hope this information is useful to you. Let us know how this podcast can help you better. Our goal here is to serve you. We're here on a sunny afternoon in Utah recording podcasts, and we're doing it for you because we want to help you. So, if this is not helpful, let us know that. We'll fix it until it is helpful. We want to inspire you, we want to educate you. We want to encourage you because you can do this. We'll stand by you every step of the way. See you next time on the 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.