Unions, ACATS Fraud, Vesting, HSAs, and ETFs: What Doctors Need to Know

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 449.

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All right. Welcome back to the podcast. We are grateful you're here. We're grateful for what you do. If you had a rough day today, I'm sorry. Know that you're appreciated, that your work matters. If you're headed to a rough day, I guess you don't know it any better than I do, but I hope that's not the case. Keep your head up. You can get through this.

UNIONS

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. We're going to start by talking about unions. I got an email from a PA in CT surgery and a longtime subscriber. She says, “I'm currently involved in forming a union in Oregon for APPs. The information and the data on unions for health care providers continues to roll out as popularity grows. I think it's time to talk about physician and provider unions on the podcast.

With many hospitals having acquired private physician groups and those physicians losing their voice within the hospital system and seeing wages stagnate, I think it's time to at least make some introductions to the who, what, and how of unions. I also think it's vital to talk about the bad part of unions. It's a new field, and we'd appreciate you guys doing a kind of public service announcement on it.”

All right. Well, here's my public service announcement on unions. If you treat doctors like labor, expect doctors to act like labor. That's the PSA. I'm sending it to hospital administrators. Treat people well, and they don't feel like they need a union. Treat people poorly, and they feel like they need a union. Maybe they do.

I asked the email writer, I said, “Well, okay, what do you see as the pros and cons?” I invited her to write a guest post. I think she's going to do that. She said this, “Well, it depends on who you ask what the pros and cons are. This can be a very polarizing topic. One of the first things I hear people talk about is that unionized employees have protections. You can't get fired as easily. If you feel targeted or had some bad reviews, it's a massive relief to know a union rep will be there to ensure a fair review process and legal representation if needed.

If you're another employee who feels their co-worker is slacking or just unsafe, some folks feel unions provide them too much protection. Of course, that also means you have a bargaining team who know your job well enough to negotiate it for you. For APPs, that's been a big issue. PAs, NPs, and CNMs often get grouped together with nurses or physicians and quickly outnumbered on their bargaining team.”

But that gets more into the nitty-gritty than maybe this email can review. Here's a quick review of union pros and cons. Fees. Here's a con. Unions aren't free. You often don't have a choice if you want to join. If they're unionized in that group, you often have to join. You get protection of your rights. That's a pro. And bad employees get sheltered, which is a con. Maybe more commonly, pay is the same across the board.

Even though you're more productive, you might not get paid any more than the guy down the hall seeing half as many patients. So, no more sweetheart deals for your pay. You're not able to necessarily negotiate it individually. The union does that for you. Whether that's a pro or a con, I guess, depends on how good you are at negotiating. But your special agreements are going to be out the door.

Any special skill sets you have or ability to negotiate well that you have, that's not going to necessarily mean you get paid more. It's also a majority rules kind of thing. It's a democratic process, but there's also some strength in numbers. I guess it depends on if you're in the majority, whether you see that as a pro or a con.

She says, I personally know where union protections have been worth their weight in gold. The hospital attempts to recover wage overpayments where it's not legal to do so, or the employer makes changes to your work location responsibilities or schedules and the union is there to at least bargain over the impact, if not halt it from happening at all. And then of course you get some legal representation when you need it, like discrimination or harassment or breach of contract issues.

You also have some ability to push back and some power to address issues like when your hospital decides to make broad sweeping changes that go against safe patient practices. She admits she's a little bit biased given that she's helping to form a union and a bit of a novice on the subject, but she'll see if she can give us a guest post. So we'll watch for the guest post on unionization.

It's certainly becoming more common in medicine. I hear about it typically in bluer states, probably most often among doctors in training, but any big organization with lots of doctor employees should probably not be surprised when unions start showing up, for better or for worse. So let's share our stories with each other and we'll probably have more of those on the podcast as the years go by.

Okay, let's take our first Speak Pipe question today.

PROTECTION AGAINST ACATS FRAUD

Kelly:
Hi Dr. Dahle, this is Kelly from Maryland, longtime listener, first-time caller. I'm hoping you can provide some insight on protection against ACATS fraud or automated customer account transfer service. There was a recent blog post on this by Mike Piper where he references a great article online by Harry Sitt, but still I'm really trying to collect more information and I would love any additional information you have or any insight on this topic.

As I'm sure you know, ACATS fraud occurs when a fraudster has your social security number and your brokerage account number and they use your social security number to open a brokerage account in your name and then with your brokerage account number they can initiate a pull of some or all of your money from your taxable account without your approval and without your knowledge and you may or may not even be notified after the fact.

It seems that Fidelity is the only brokerage that offers a lock against ACATS transfers and that specifically Vanguard does not offer a lock. I'm a little torn about what to do. We're considering moving at least some of my husband's Vanguard accounts to Fidelity because he has had identity theft in the past and we're thinking he may be high risk for this.

I'm a little more torn about my personal accounts and I also don't know if my current 403(b) which is forced to be through TIAA-CRAF is subject to this type of risk or if this is only a risk for taxable accounts. Any insight you have is appreciated. Thanks again for all you do.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay let's talk a little bit about ACATS fraud although I thought that was one of the more impressively educational Speak Pipes we've ever gotten on this podcast so thanks for providing so much information as well as referring to two of my personal finance blog heroes.

Those who've been here not that long may not realize that both Mike and Harry were major inspirations for me to start the White Coat Investor blog. They both started blogging before I did. They were blogging in the late 2000s. I didn't start until 2011 and I talked with both of them before starting the White Coat Investor blog and they both encouraged me to go forward and do it. And so, I'm very grateful to them. Both of them have spoken at WCICON in the past and they're exceptionally talented bloggers.

I will refer you to their articles. We'll include those in the show notes if you want to read more about what they've written about ACATS transfer fraud. But in the last couple of months there's been lots of discussion about this because there was a New York Times article written by Tara Siegel Bernard who talked about an ACATS transfer fraud from a Vanguard IRA.

That answers one of your questions. Yeah, IRAs are also at risk for this. I think it's probably less of a risk in an employer provided investing situation than it is in an IRA or a taxable account but it may be able to be happening there as well. But I would think the employer in the plan may be a little more on the hook for it.

What is ACATS fraud? Well, first of all let's go over what it actually stands for. ACATS is an automated customer account transfer service. This is basically a way in which you can move your assets, whatever your stocks and bonds, your mutual fund shares, your ETF shares or whatever from one brokerage to another. It's really handy if you want to do this.

Think you want to go to you know some brokerage that is offering you a sign-up bonus. If you move your money over there you'll get a thousand dollars or you get five thousand dollars or whatever and so now you want to move your money over to that account. This is a relatively quick way to be able to do that. That's what the ACAT service is.

What happened that caused everybody to start talking about this? Well, it turned out that this retiree Tien Tran, he logged into his wife's Roth IRA one afternoon to check on a solar energy stock and found out that half of her retirement holdings, over $120,000, had vanished. They went from her Vanguard account to a Merrill Edge account without her ever authorizing it. The criminal had opened two new accounts in her name, initiated the transfer using ACATS and they luckily spotted it. Merrill froze the funds, returned the securities, and they weren't out anything. So, it was good but there's some risk there that maybe it wouldn't have been spotted and they would have been out the money.

And so, that's the issue. If someone steals your personal data, name, social security number, address, whatever, can get access to your existing brokerage account, your existing IRA, they can request a transfer to some other IRA they've opened that they have access to and liquidate the securities, pull out cash and spend your money, take your money from you. That's the risk.

In general, the brokerage that holds the assets has to validate the request within one business day and complete the transfer within three days. So, it's supposed to be efficient, right? It's supposed to be fast but that leaves little time for human review. And because it's mostly automated, the receiving firm only gets basic information and it's pretty easy for people to have this happen to them.

FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has warned that this type of fraud is on the rise. Obviously retirement accounts are a target for them. How do you protect yourself? Well, what Fidelity offers that Vanguard does not yet offer, although we had the CEO of Vanguard at the Bogleheads conference a few weeks ago and he got grilled in front of 500 Bogleheads on this topic.

And so, I suspect the same thing available at Fidelity will soon be available at Vanguard and that's basically the ability to lock your account so these transfers can't occur out of it without you first going in and unlocking that feature on the account. That's what Fidelity offers and Vanguard doesn't.

There are a lot of little customer service things that Fidelity offers that Vanguard doesn't. And so, lots of people have chosen to just take their assets to Fidelity and often they still invest them in Vanguard ETFs, they just do it at Fidelity where you pay no commissions to buy and sell Vanguard ETFs. There's still Vanguard investments, but the money's held at Fidelity.

I don't really feel strongly one way or the other about whether someone needs to do this. I've got accounts at Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab. In my experience, I get treated about the same at all of them. I'm not terribly worried about ACATS fraud, but I guess it's a possibility, and if you want to protect yourself from that, you could move your money over to Fidelity. Just be aware that there's a pretty good chance that Vanguard is going to eventually do the same thing that Fidelity has done to protect you from that.

Some other things that you can use to protect yourself. This is from a Yahoo finance article about the fraud. They said, use some extra security measures if they're available. Like Fidelity allows you to lock the outgoing transfers and send notifications to your account when your account is accessed. And of course, all of these brokerage accounts for the most part offer multi-factor authentication, which means you have to have your phone with you if you want to get into your account. So, be sure to use that.

Request immediate alerts. You can monitor your accounts daily. Boy, that sounds painful. I'm not going to look at my accounts daily. You can shred your statements and secure your paper mail. You can check for unexplained mail. You can ask your broker about identity verification protocols. And of course, if you find something, you need to say something right away. You need to call the brokerage. You might need to call FINRA, the SEC, the local police, the FBI, whatever, once something has actually happened.

What else does Mike tell you about this? Not much else in his short article on the topic. Just basically how it works. And Harry's article talks about that this can be a problem. He read about an account of it happening from somebody on the Bogleheads forum. He basically says have the strongest two-factor authentication you can. Your email should also have the strongest two-factor authentication that you can. That's an option. Because if thieves get into your email, you can have stuff sent to your email.

Choose paperless statements and tax forms. They're more secure than stuff in your mailbox. And then store those documents securely. And of course, safeguard your account number from falling into the wrong hands. You do have to know that for a successful ACATS transfer.

Protect your statements and use the lockdown that's available. Fidelity's lockdown, he notes, is really only a partial lockdown. He says it's better than no lockdown. But if you enable that setting on the account, they will reject all ACATS transfers.

He has a list of what is covered and what isn't. He says outbound money transfers would be blocked. Transfers between Fidelity accounts would be blocked. Transfer of shares and assets from another institution would be blocked. Individual withdrawals would be blocked.

But deposits or transfers into your Fidelity accounts wouldn't be. Check writing and direct debit from the account wouldn't be. Debit card and ATM transactions wouldn't be. Trading's not locked. Scheduled RMDs or personal withdrawal. Scheduled plan would not be locked and bill pay would not be locked. You can lock some transfers out of your account, but not the others.

So, keep that in mind. But at least you can turn on some alerts so that you'll get an alert before it happens. But they don't require your approval. That's part of why ACATS is so efficient. He also recommends you keep some independent records of your securities in case you have to go back and prove what you own. I'm not sure how big of a problem that really would be with Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab or something like that. But maybe with some other brokerage, it might be more of an issue.

I hope that's helpful, Kelly, in talking about ACATS fraud. Be aware that it's out there. It's a new type of fraud. It's becoming more common. Can happen very quickly. If you see something screwy going on in your accounts, do something about it. Don't just ignore it. And use your multi-factor authentication. Consider turning on that account lock if you've got accounts at Fidelity or using accounts at Fidelity or another brokerage that will offer a similar lock on this sort of a transfer out.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Our quote of the day today comes from Chris Brogan, who said, “The goal isn't more money. The goal is living life on your terms.” Great quote.

Okay. Let's talk a little bit about vesting with this Speak Pipe.

HOW DOES VESTING WORK?

Speaker:
Hello, Dr. Dahle. Could you go into some detail about how vesting works? I'm a new attending and my vesting period is three years. If I contribute $100 and the hospital matches $100 in retirement savings and I leave before the three years, what do I get to keep? If at two and a half years, that initial $100 has grown to $125 for my contribution and $125 for the company match, do I leave with just my $125? What happens to the growth on the matching funds? Do I get to keep that? And then the principal is returned to the hospital. Thanks for all the work you do.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. Great question. The answer hopefully is in your plan document. Anybody that has an employer provider retirement account should have a copy of the plan document. If you don't have it, go ask HR for it. They are legally obligated to give it to you. If you don't have it, go get it, read the stupid thing. It matters. And you'll be surprised how much you learn reading them.

It should answer the question. It may not answer the question. If not, the next place you go is you ask HR. Now HR might refer you to the provider of the 401(k) or 403(b) or whatever, and you have to ask them the question, but it's worth asking the question.

The way it works most of the time though, is if you have vesting, the vesting only applies to the matching dollars. You're always 100% invested in the money you put in there, as well as all the gains on the money you put in there. But most of the time until you vest, you not only don't get the match, you don't get the earnings on the match.

Now, when you start thinking about stuff like this, you start thinking about the opposite. Well, what if you lost money in the account? And now you leave before you're vested. Do you have to somehow make the employer whole? Well, I don't think so, but it's worth looking into and asking those sorts of questions.

Most of the time, I think it's basically just treated as kind of a separate account until you vest, and then it's lumped into your account and it's your money. But you can think of some interesting situations that could occur before that money's vested, which might result in somebody not getting back as much money as they might expect they're going to.

But the bottom line, ask HR, read your plan document, talk to the plan provider, and get an answer to your question if it's really going to matter. If you think you're probably leaving in two years and you don't vest until three, it's worth finding the answer to the question. It might affect how much you want to put into the plan, but most of the time it's just part of the cost of doing business.

If you want that new job and you want it now instead of waiting another year, well, you're going to lose a little bit of money and you got to ask for a bigger signing bonus at the new job to make up for it.

REBALANCING YOUR PORTFOLIO AND PAY CAPITAL GAINS TAXES OR LEAVE AS IS UNTIL DEATH

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, our next question comes via email. “We are a two physician couple, age 72 and 73, have average good health, retired and spending approximately $100,000 per year. Our net worth is $20 million.” Congratulations, well done. There's a big disconnect there between spending $100,000 a year and having $20 million though. Let's keep going, this is interesting.

“$14 million in taxable accounts, $6 million in Roth IRAs.” That's interesting too. No tax deferred accounts at all. “Our taxable account is 100% invested in equities with a very low cost basis.” Congratulations on all those gains. That's a wonderful thing, but a very low cost basis means there's probably a lot of tax costs there if you want to spend that money.

“Our Roth IRAs are invested 100% in fixed income investments.” Okay, it's basically, what is that? A 70-30 portfolio. $14 million in stocks in taxable, $6 million in bonds in Roth IRAs.

“This has resulted in a stock allocation of 70% for our total portfolio. We would prefer an overall stock allocation of 60%, but can easily tolerate volatility. Above our living expenses, we are giving away about $250,000 a year to relatives and charities.” Good for you, good for you. Well done.

“Since our children will inherit much of our assets upon death, we have been reluctant to rebalance the portfolio to 60-40 since there will be a step-up in basis in our taxable account upon our deaths.” Keep in mind they are 72 and 73 in average good health. “Does our reluctance sound reasonable or should we pay capital gains taxes now to get back to 60-40?”

I love the question, I love the whole situation. There's so much to talk about here. This is lots of fun. First of all, if you get $20 million, great job, well done. Don't know what you did to do it, maybe some entrepreneurship, maybe just good earnings and high savings rates and wise investments over the year. Who knows how you got to 20 million, doesn't really matter.

But one thing you ought to be thinking about if you get there is you ought to be thinking about estate taxes. Because right now, the estate tax exemption limit is basically $30 million for a married couple. It doesn't take that long to go from $20 million to more than $30 million.

Typically, stocks have returns of something like 7% or 10% a year, which means your money doubles every 7 to 10 years. And if you're 72 in good health, one of you is almost surely going to live another 10 years. So your money's going to double, it'll be at $40 million, now you've got an estate tax problem.

It's well worth doing some serious estate planning. If you like giving money away to heirs and family and charities, maybe you should give more of it away now. Maybe you should get it into a trust, whether it's a charitable trust of some kind or whether it's into a trust where that appreciation that it has in the future will now be outside your estate. You use some of your exemption up now, so that all the appreciation that happens in the future is outside your estate and you can avoid some of those estate taxes. So that's a good thing to be thinking about.

But that's not really what they're asking about. They're asking about a totally separate question of whether your asset allocation matters more than your tax bill or not. And the truth is, their asset allocation doesn't matter that much. They've got $20 million, they only spend $100,000 a year.

How much can you safely spend when you have $20 million? Well, certainly you can safely spend 4% of that a year, that's about $800,000 a year. Even with all their giving, they're using up less than half of that each year. So they can certainly spend dramatically more money than they're spending right now. They could give away twice as much money every year and be okay.

The truth is, they're already in their 70s. So they don't need their money to last another 30 years probably. It's probably going to be some period of time less than that. 15, 20, 25, probably something more like that. It wouldn't be crazy even for them to be spending more than 4% a year. 5% or 6% would not be crazy either.

Keep that in mind that when your burn rate, as Bill Bernstein likes to call it, is so low, I mean, their burn rate at this point for their actual spending is like half a percent. It's not 4%, it's like half of a percent. When your burn rate is that low, it really doesn't matter what you invest in. It can all be in stocks, it could all be in bonds, you're going to be fine. You're not going to run out of money.

You don't have to go too crazy on whether you're 70-30 or 60-40. Let's be honest, 70-30 and 60-40 don't perform all that much differently. As long as your behavior's okay, as long as you're not going to panic sell at 70-30 in a nasty bear market, then it's probably fine to be 70-30 instead of 60-40.

I don't love paying taxes. And so, if I had to pay a whole bunch of taxes, and it might be a lot, it might be $400,000 or $500,000 in capital gains taxes these guys would have to pay to rebalance this portfolio. If that's what I was looking at, boy, I'd certainly hesitate, too. I'd say, “Well, maybe I am okay with the 70-30 portfolio”, but it is likely to get worse.

Some of the things I would do in that situation, I would make sure I was not reinvesting my dividends into stocks. I would be selling stocks to spend if I need to sell something, though they probably don't. The burn rate's so low, it's probably covered by dividends. And of course, there's no RMDs out of those Roth IRAs. So they might not need to sell anything. But if I did, I'd be selling some stocks and that would help a little bit with the ratio there.

This is really an academic question. The academic answer is rebalance. Don't let the tax tail wag the investment dog. But in this situation, I think I might probably sit on it a little bit more if it was me.

It's really a question about regrets. What are you going to regret more? Are you going to regret it more if you pay taxes on $1.5 million in capital gains, this $400,000 or $500,000 in capital gains taxes, and then the market goes up even more in the next five or 10 years? Or if you hold on to what's your own and the market drops 40% next year, or maybe stocks have a 0% return over the next 10 years, are you going to regret rebalancing or not rebalancing more? And maybe you're just trying to minimize your regrets.

Great question. Well worth talking about. And of course, I emphasized in my email back to them to make sure they knew that they could spend or give more safely. And if there's anything they wanted to buy that would make their life happier, they ought to do that, whatever that might be. Whether it's first class tickets or a big cruise or eating at fancy restaurants or remodeling the bathroom or whatever it was, that they should go do those things because they can certainly afford it.

One other option I gave them, though, was if they're giving to their kids or they're giving to family, whoever that family might be, why not give appreciated shares to them? That'll change the asset allocation. That'll get them closer to the 60-40 they want to be. And of course, if they don't need the money now, maybe they even give more than they're giving. And maybe the heir or the family members in a lower tax bracket, maybe they can sell those shares at 0%. So way better to flush those capital gains out of the portfolio and take that route.

If I had $20 million and I was only spending $100,000 a year, I'd give pretty serious consideration to just giving all million and a half away to family members and voila, you're back to 60-40 where you wanted to be.

So, lots of options there. It's wonderful to have these first world problems like this one. Let's not shake our head too much at it. I thought it was a great question. And so that's why we're talking about it on the podcast.

All right, let's move on to our next one. This one comes off the Speak Pipe.

HSA PLANS FOR 2026

Joseph:
Hey, Dr. Dahle, this is Joseph from South Texas. I'm looking at healthcare.gov and I'm looking for HSA plans for 2026 for my family for health insurance. I don't really see many HSA options or high deductible health plans. I'm looking online and I think it says it was for the Big Beautiful Bill that there's going to be more bronze plans that are covered and let us do the HSA. Is that correct? Can we just pick a bronze plan from the healthcare.gov and then we can do an HAS? I think that starts in 2026. Is that correct? Thank you.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, great question, Joseph. Let's start a little bit higher level that I think you're looking for an answer for. First of all, are you actually buying health insurance in the right place? It sounds like you're buying it for your family. It sounds like you're probably still in your earnings years, maybe you're self-employed or something.

If you are a typical listener of this podcast, you're a high earner, you're not going to qualify for any sort of tax break by buying your health insurance through the ACA marketplace. You don't have to do it. You can just go to a health insurance broker. You said you're in South Texas, Google health insurance broker South Texas and call them up and have them help you buy health insurance. It doesn't cost you anymore. The insurance company pays them a commission, but get their help in buying health insurance.

You're probably not getting any tax benefit by buying it off the marketplace anyway. There are other places to buy it. There are other plans available other than what's on the marketplace. Keep that in mind. Maybe you're in retirement, maybe your income's lower, maybe you're not a super high earner and you actually are qualifying for some sort of credit by buying off the marketplace, in which case that comment does not apply.

Make sure that's true before you bother buying off that marketplace. It's not that convenient of a place to shop. There aren't all the options available on that marketplace that you could use. Only buy there if you're getting paid to do so with a substantial tax benefit.

Second thing to keep in mind is in order to use an HSA, in order to contribute to it, you can use it anytime, but in order to contribute to an HSA for this year, your only health insurance plan must be a high deductible health plan. Now, you would think that this would be super easily defined as a deductible is more than a certain amount, it's a high deductible health plan. If it's less than that amount, it's not a high deductible health plan.

That is not the case. The government decides what a high deductible health plan is. So if they say it is a high deductible health plan, then it qualifies for you to be able to make an HSA contribution. If they do not say it's a high deductible health plan, because it doesn't meet all the requirements for it, which are more than just having a high deductible, then it does not make you eligible to contribute to an HSA. So, keep in mind the definition there.

Now you're asking what the Trump administration is doing with regards to the health insurance marketplace. Now, as near as I can tell, everything's in a lot of flux. I don't know exactly how it's all going to shake out. But if you need to buy a plan on the marketplace, you're limited to what you can choose from the marketplace. And maybe something else is going to be added there in the next few weeks that you'll be able to buy. But if not, you're presumably limited to what is available there.

I don't think I've seen anything that every bronze plan will be a high deductible health plan. Let's Google that. Will every bronze health insurance plan be a high deductible plan? And Google AI tells me no, not all bronze health insurance plans will be high deductible plans. But starting with the 2026 plan year, all bronze and catastrophic plans purchased through the marketplace will be considered high deductible health plans by the government.

Okay, there's your answer. Yeah, it appears that if it's on the marketplace, and if it's a bronze plan for 2026, it's going to be qualified as a high deductible health plan, you'll be able to make an HSA contribution. Says it's due to new legislation, which expands eligibility for HSAs to millions more people who purchase their insurance through the ACA marketplace.

So there you go. Looks like you were more up to date on it than I was. I think that was part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. I now vaguely recall reading something about that, but I probably glanced over that because I don't expect it to affect a lot of White Coat Investors. It does affect some though.

Let's see what the income limits are on ACA credits. For 2026, those limits are capped at 400% of the federal poverty level. What is the federal poverty level? I know it changes. The 2025 one for a household of four was $32,000. 400% of that was $128,600. That's going to exclude most White Coat Investors, but there's plenty of retirees that can keep their taxable income, their AGI, whatever income that's based on is probably AGI below that amount. There's some of you for whom this is a legitimate question is mostly going to be retirees or partial retirees or something like that.

Maybe some residents, but most residents are probably on the residency healthcare plan, not buying it off of the marketplace. But if you are buying it off the marketplace, that's what it takes to get some sort of a subsidy. Otherwise just go get a health insurance broker to help you buy your health insurance.

There's other options too. You can look into health sharing plans, just recognize that those look really good because the equivalent of a premium is usually only about half as much as what it is for real health insurance. But you're also not buying real health insurance and you need to understand the differences between real health insurance and health sharing plan.

There are some things that health sharing plan doesn't cover. It works a little bit differently when you need to make a “claim” or share your expenses with the other people in the plan. So, make sure you really understand the differences if you choose to go that route. Lots of White Coat Investors have been very happy with their health sharing plans, but before going that route, make sure you understand how it works. I hope that's helpful.

All right. Some people have asked about bulk book orders. We give a discount if you buy 25 plus books. We give an even bigger discount if you buy 100 plus books from the white coat investor store, but you probably ought to contact us about it so we can get you those discounts. Just email [email protected].

Thank you so much if you're considering this and passing them out to your students or residents or colleagues or whatever, and especially thank you for discussing money and encouraging financial literacy among potential White Coat Investors out there.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Our next question is off the Speak Pipe about mutual funds and ETFs.

EXCHANGING A MUTUAL FUND FOR AN ETF

Speaker 2:
Hey Dr. Dahle, first of all, thanks for all that you and the team at WCI do for us. My question today is in regards to exchanging a mutual fund for an ETF. In my situation, I'm interested in exchanging the U.S. small cap value fund for the Avantis U.S. small cap value ETF.

I hold these in a tax advantaged account, so I'm not worried about the tax implications, but I'm more so worried about missing time in the market since the mutual fund trades at the end of the day and ETFs only trade when the market is open. Are you worried about the spread from market close to market open?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, great question. We're going to answer your question as well as some related questions we get frequently. First of all, in a tax advantaged account, you're right, there's no tax consequences to this, and so your only issue is you can't buy the ETF until after you've sold the fund, and you don't sell the fund until the end of the day. Well, then the market's closed, so you can't buy an ETF.

A couple of comments about doing this. The first one is that this could also work in your favor. The market might open lower tomorrow than it closed today, in which case you get today's price on your sale, and then you get to buy lower tomorrow. So, it could go either way. You could get burned, and most of the time, since the market goes up most of the time, you will get burned, but some of the times you might come out ahead actually by doing this.

Another option you might have is to convert that traditional mutual fund to an ETF. Vanguard lets you do this. You call them up and you go, I'd like to convert the fund shares to ETF shares, and they'll let you do it. And then once they've done that, you can go in and you can sell the ETF and 10 seconds later buy the new ETF that you wish to have, and you're out of the market for 10 seconds instead of overnight. It's a much lower chance of having any sort of significant drop between the time you sell and the time you buy.

I think if this were a big chunk of your portfolio, I think I'd do that. If this is not a big chunk and you really want that Avantis ETF instead of the other one, I don't know that I'd worry about it. Maybe I'd just sell them the next day, put the ETF order in the next morning.

Okay, now the question I thought you were going to ask until I realized this was in a tax advantaged account is the tax consequences for doing this sort of stuff. Now you can do the exact same thing in a taxable account. You can convert it to an ETF and then avoid the same issue, swap the ETFs out.

But the reason most people are doing these sorts of changes is they're often tax loss harvesting. They're trying to harvest a loss. They've lost some money in the fund and they're trying to go to a tax loss harvesting partner.

Now as a general rule in your taxable account, you'll want to choose one or the other. And ETFs are generally slightly more tax efficient. There's usually more options for tax loss harvesting partners. I think if you're investing in a taxable account and you're going to be paying enough attention to it to be doing things like tax loss harvesting, I think you're probably better off using ETFs in there. That's what I use in my taxable account. There's kind of a gradual transition over the years, but that's almost our entire account is ETFs. I think maybe our municipal bond fund is still a traditional mutual fund, but everything else is an ETF in there as well as its tax loss harvesting partner.

I would just get used to using ETFs in there. Now it's fine to use funds. If you want a tax loss harvest, you just put the order in for the end of the day and it happens at the end of the day, there's no chance of losing or gaining money on the swap. And it allows you to do it anytime during the day and your tax loss harvesting happens.

Now, I guess you can get burned if you put it in the morning when you had a big loss and some or all of that loss disappears during the day, you could get burned. But as long as you're putting it in late in the day, there's probably not much risk of that. But I think you're better off just doing it with ETFs.

Yes, you're out of the market for 10 seconds or 30 seconds or two minutes or whatever. And maybe the price of the new ETF goes up in between the time of the sale and the buy of the new ETF. But it doesn't happen very much. Markets don't generally move that fast. And on those days when the market's all over the place, it's probably not the best time to be in there doing things anyway.

But if you're trying to get your maximum tax losses to harvest, that might be the day you're in the market trying to do that. Just be extra careful and try to be extra fast on those days so you're not out of the market nearly as much.

Now, a few other things to keep in mind. If you're going the opposite direction, if you're going from ETF to fund when your tax loss harvesting, this isn't nearly as big of a deal. You just sell the ETF during the day, you put in the buy order for the fund that happens at the end of the day. So maybe you want to wait until 3.30 Eastern to sell the ETF and then a half hour later or whatever, the market closes and the fund purchase goes through. It's actually easier to go that way than to go the way you're trying to go, which is going fund to ETF. If you're going ETF to fund, it's actually a little bit easier to do.

But like I said, if you're going to be doing this a lot, if you're going to be making a lot of exchanges, usually because your tax loss harvesting, just use those ETFs in your taxable account, learn how to do it. If you're sophisticated enough that you care about tax loss harvesting, you're sophisticated enough to trade ETFs. It's just not that hard.

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Dr. Jim Dahle:
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Don't forget about those bulk book orders, email [email protected] if you're interested in buying 25 plus copies of our books. And thank you for not only doing that, but just for talking about money with those you interact with. It's a great way to spread the word without feeling like you have to preach to them. Just hand them a copy of one of these books.

We have a student book for students. Hopefully soon we'll have a resident book for residents. The White Coat Investor book, the original, is a great one to pass out. Financial boot camps are a great one to pass out. Maybe the Asset Protection book isn't the first one you hand people, but it's helpful for the right person in the right situation.

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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 252 – Psychiatry resident maxes out personal and spousal Roth IRAs.

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All right, we've got a recommended list for tax strategists that you should be aware of. If you go to whitecoatinvestor.com/tax-strategists, you can get there. Just go under the recommended tab of whitecoatinvestor.com. But for many doctors, particularly employees, your tax situation can be very straightforward. And we highly recommend the benefits of at least once using TurboTax or a similar software program. Do your own taxes and kind of learn the parts of the tax code that are relevant to you.

But for those who desire professional help, you got to understand that there's two sides of tax aid. There's tax preparation, the actual filing of the forms, and there's tax strategizing, planning done in advance to lower your tax bill. And it seems everybody wants the latter for the price of the former. And that's not exactly the way it works.

But tax strategists, they specialize in this proactive planning. They specialize in making changes in your business structure, your financial life, your retirement accounts in order to lower your future tax bills. If that's something you're interested in, if you've got a complicated financial situation and a large tax bill, even that higher cost of hiring a tax strategist could add value to your life more than the cost of the fees of hiring them. You can find both these types of people, tax preparers and tax strategists, on our tax page under the Recommended tab at whitecoatinvestor.com.

Okay, we have got a great episode today. It's fun to talk to people early in their career about their milestones. It's fun to celebrate with them because you get to see the end from the beginning. I can see the end for them. They have a hard time imagining it. But when I talk to them about their habits and I understand how financially literate they are as a resident, I know where this pathway leads, and it's a pretty good place. So, let's talk with Matt and find out where he's at and what he's done so far. Stick around afterward. We've got a special topic to talk to you about.

INTERVIEW

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Our guest on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast today is Matthew. Matthew, welcome to the podcast.

Matthew:
I’m happy to be here, Dr. Dahle. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Tell us where you are in the country, where you are in your career, what you do for a living, et cetera.

Matthew:
Yeah, I'm a psychiatry PGY-4. I'm currently in the Midwest, so I'm still in training. Haven't left yet.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, very cool. And what's your family status?

Matthew:
I am married. I've got two kids, a four-year-old and a six-year-old.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, four-year-old and six-year-old. Is your spouse working?

Matthew:
Nope, just me. She stays at home.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, one earner, four people in the family.

Matthew:
That's correct, yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
This becomes very relevant as we get to your milestone. Tell us what milestone you have accomplished.

Matthew:
Yeah, I applied several months ago, but the milestone I wanted to celebrate is I maxed out my Roth IRA and my wife's Roth IRA last year, and I'm on schedule to do the same for this year as well.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Awesome, congratulations. That's pretty awesome. You're both under 50, I assume.

Matthew:
Yes, yes we are.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
That's $7,000 times two for this year. That's $14,000. That is not a small percentage of a resident income. This represents something like a 25% savings rate or something, right?

Matthew:
Yeah, I think we'll talk about savings rate in a bit. So it's not just a resident income, but yes, it's a significant portion of my resident income for sure.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Well, let's get into it. Tell us why this was important to you, how you did it. Tell us about your financial journey.

Matthew:
Sure, my financial journey was interesting in that I've always been a saver. I don't know where I learned that because my parents didn't talk too much about money, but they were definitely folks who tried to live within our means, didn't live lavishly. I grew up middle class, but went on nice trips, but my parents didn't do a lot of financial education in regards to finances, investing, other than opening a bank account.

I was pretty naive. I think like a lot of medical students are getting into medical school. I just knew I'm going to take out loans and pay it off somehow. And then fourth year medical school, a friend of mine was really familiar with the White Coat Investor podcast and your books. And so, he got me a book and I read it and I was like, I just took a liking to it. And I was like, this is fun. I like learning about this.

I think just coming into residency, I set a goal. I'm going to become financially literate and financially responsible. And I just decided to open a Roth IRA and see what I can put towards it and start my financial journey.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. You opened a Roth IRA as a PGY-1.

Matthew:
I sure did. I didn't put much in it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
We should have brought you on the podcast to celebrate that. That's a worthy one. Okay, very cool. And so last year, 2024 is the first year you maxed it out.

Matthew:
That's the first year I maxed out mine and my spouse's. I actually maxed mine out the first time, my first full year of residency.

Jim Dahle:
Okay. So you've been doing this for a little bit. You're making progress here. How much you got in Roth IRAs now for your family?

Matthew:
Currently, we've got about $40,000 in Roth and I've got about another $30,000 in a 401(k).

Dr. Jim Dahle:
That you contributed to during residency. This isn't from before medical school or anything?

Matthew:
I had nothing before medical school. My net worth coming out of medical school is negative $220,000.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay.

Matthew:
All from my loans for medical school.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Now, granted, you're in the Midwest. You're not in the Bay Area, but there's still four people living off this income. Did you boost your income somewhere or what have you done income-wise the last few years?

Matthew:
I've started moonlighting. I started moonlighting halfway through my second year and I found an opportunity that was very lucrative for moonlighting and that has helped me boost my income significantly from second year onwards.

I went through and in preparation for this, I went through my income ranges, savings rates, all that. First year coming out of medical school into residency, I made $30,000 on my resident income. Second year, I made about $65,000. But last year, my gross income was $152,000.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. So this is a pretty good moonlighting gig you've got going on.

Matthew:
Yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, is it doing something in psych? What is it?

Matthew:
It's psychiatry. Psychiatry, I think if you have any psychiatry listeners, which I'm sure you do, there's a lot of opportunities within psychiatry to moonlight in inpatient psychiatry facilities and otherwise in psychiatry emergency departments, that sort of thing.

And so, I partnered with a local psychiatry company or a healthcare system that has multiple psych units. They needed help rounding on the weekends on their inpatient units. And so that's what I do. Typically, I will round one weekend a month, sometimes one to two weekends a month in addition to some overnight stuff.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Boy, if that makes for more inpatient psych units, especially P's inpatient psych units, I am all for it because that is our biggest medical need in my metro area is just inpatient P's psych beds. We got kids sitting in ERs for seven days at a time before we can get them admitted. It's just crazy.

Matthew:
Yeah, I think that's the universal problem of just not enough beds, too many patients.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. Okay, well, I'm glad that's helped you as well, not only helping the community, but helping you to boost your finances. So, what does this mean with this increased income? What does that mean for your savings rate since you started earning more?

Matthew:
Yeah. I think my savings rate stayed about the same. Actually, well, it's increased quite a bit. My savings rate for the first couple of years was about 26% of my income. And then my savings rate last year was about 35% of that income. That's between savings and a high yield savings account and retirement. And then currently for this fiscal year, my savings rate has been about 45%.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You are a good saver. You're aware of this, right? You're going to have a problem later in your life. You're going to have a problem where you're going to have to figure out how to spend money.

Matthew:
Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
It's common to lots of White Coat Investors, but you don't have it yet. But you do this for another 10 or 20 years, you're going to have this problem. So, it's a good problem to have though. It's lots of fun trying to solve it.

Matthew:
Yeah, that's the problem I hope to have.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so tell us about these money conversations you have with your spouse.

Matthew:
Yeah, I'll be honest. Money is not something that she likes to talk about or that she is excited to learn about necessarily. She's happy to delegate a lot of that to me. But a lot of our conversations have been about what do we want to do with our money? How do we want to be intentional about where we spend our money? I said, I would like to be intentional about paying ourselves first. Let's put some money away for retirement. Let's put some money in a high yield savings account. We have an emergency fund.

I showed her the resonant waterfall that you have on the White Coat Investor website. I said, “Hey, I want to follow this, use this as a bit of a roadmap for how we allocate our funds.” And she was totally on board with that. We pay ourselves first, make sure that we're saving some. And then once we cover all of those things, then whatever we have left over, we spend on fun stuff.

Even though we've been saving a lot, that doesn't mean that we have been denying ourselves things. We went on a nice 10 year anniversary vacation earlier this year. We just got back from Disneyland last month. We've been using the extra income to still enjoy our lives, but certainly reach our goals first, pay ourselves first before spending on the fun stuff.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, clearly some intentionality is easily seen there because you do worry about that, right? When you see a doc saving 45% of their income, especially if their spouse isn't quite as interested in stuff, especially if they're in residency, you worry, “Oh, is the spouse really wishing they could spend more and feeling deprived” and that sort of a thing. So, it's good to talk about that and be intentional and go, “Hey, we can do this because we took care of business and the rest we can spend. What do we want to spend it on?” And address those sorts of things along the way as you go for sure.

Okay. Well, most people in residency are not saving as much as you are saving. What are your long-term goals that make you want to be such a big saver?

Matthew:
That's a really good question. I don't know if I've thought that far ahead. I've got some kind of shorter term goals. I think I just want to feel financially stable. I want to make sure that I feel I can send money when I need to. I can travel when I want to. I can donate money to the causes that I want to donate to and not worry about whether I'm going to be able to pay rent the next month or if I have some unexpected expense, will I be able to afford it?

I just like that security to be able to do what I want when I want. I don't know if I've thought 10, 20 years down the road. I'm hoping to be financially independent, probably, hopefully by age 50, 55, something like that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You realize it won't take that long if you keep saving 45% of your income, right?

Matthew:
Well, now you're making me feel very optimistic saying that because it still seems very far away, but I'm hopeful.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
The fun thing about this is, especially doing these milestones podcasts, I get to meet people at all kinds of stages. When I meet somebody at mid-career that's been saving 45% of their income, I know what that looks like. Now you haven't yet experienced that. Maybe you listened to it vicariously through the podcast or whatever, but I know what road you're on. I know where this road ends and it's a pretty awesome place. So you're going to be pretty happy about that.

Okay, tell me that you have taken care of business in the other important areas of a resident financial life. You're the only earner in the home. Tell us about your disability and life insurance.

Matthew:
Sure. Disability insurance, I got that first month in residency. I looked at the website, I found an independent broker, went through them, I decided on a plan and I took out my disability insurance almost immediately. That's been a monthly expense since the beginning of residency, which I plan to increase as my income increases.

I haven't increased it yet because I know it's not a great thing to have a group policy or the group policy, I can't rely on it fully, but the group policy through my residency is actually fairly generous and would cover my full resident salary for a long time.

I didn't feel a need to increase the disability insurance with the moonlighting increase. And then along with the disability insurance, I also got a term life insurance policy that I took out, 20 year term. I figured 20 years should be enough for right now. And then once I hit my attending salary, I plan on probably getting another, maybe 15 year term that will carry me through when I become financially independent.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Wouldn't surprise me if you hit those numbers before 15 to 20 years. That wouldn't surprise me at all. Okay, what about a student loan plan?

Matthew:
Student loan plan, that's a little up in the air right now. My plan was to pay it off myself or PSLF. I know based on my income and my amount of loans. I think I said earlier, I have about $220,000 in student loans, all from the federal government, all from medical school.

I was thinking about doing PSLF because I wasn't sure what my job is going to be. And right now for a long time, there was a student loan pause. My loans haven't grown until just a couple months ago when the interest is now starting to accrue.

It's really going to be determined by my first job. If my first job has some kind of loan repayment plan, I know some jobs will give you a sign on bonus and will pay X amount for student loan repayment. Then I will just plan to pay off my loans in however many years they give me of loan repayment. And I will just add extra payments on top of that to pay it off.

I don't plan on keeping these things long-term. And if that's the case, then I may refinance my loans. I don't have a high interest rate. It's about 5.6%, which I think is low or on the lower end for some of these loans. I don't really feel a great push to need to refinance to just 1.5% lower than that.

But if I get a job that is PSLF eligible with no loan repayment, I may just hang on to them and go for PSLF. But either way I've been saving. In case I want to, I might just have a lump sum and just drop a hammer on them. But it's really dependent on that first job. What's it going to look like?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, there is an MS-4 out there somewhere listening to this going, this guy's got it all figured out. I want to be like him when I'm a PGY-4. What advice do you have for that person?

Matthew:
First thing first, educate yourself. I feel like I knew something about saving, but I can't say I knew anything about money, finances when I was a PGY-4. All I knew was throw some money in a savings account.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You mean an MS-4. You clearly know something about it now as a PGY-4.

Matthew:
Oh, as PGY-4, let me clarify. But as an MS-4, I feel like I was pretty naive. And what I did is I educated myself. I got myself a copy of the White Coat Investor book. And then I started reading the blog. I started listening to the podcast. And honestly, I'm not an expert in any of this stuff.

But just doing those things gave me enough confidence to just start doing it myself. I've kind of become the finance guru amongst my resident class. A lot of them will come to me for questions about disability insurance, questions about life insurance, questions about high yield savings accounts, investing, opening a Roth IRA. And I love being that guy that everyone's like, “Oh man, I can just ask Matt. He can help me out, he knows.” And it didn't take a tremendous amount of effort. It was certainly a lot easier to educate myself about financial literacy than it was going through medical school. I can tell an MS-4 that.

And then once you educate yourself, I would say, just come up with a plan. Decide what your priorities are. Coming into residency, my priorities, I wanted to be a place that I knew would have a good cost of living. Geographic arbitrage was something I really considered when I chose a residency. And then I also ranked programs that would allow me to moonlight.

I knew that I wanted to work hard. I knew I wanted to make a little extra money. And so when I matched to the program I matched at, I was really happy because I knew that the lifestyle would be good. I will get a lot of clinical training in different settings. And then starting in PGY-2, I could moonlight and get that extra experience and make some extra money. And my family's really happy here too.

I think making those priorities from the beginning was a great step for me. And then allowing for some fun. And once you get your ducks in a row, you can spend some of your money, have some fun with it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, absolutely. Good advice. Well, Matt, thank you so much for being willing to come on the podcast and share your success with others. We can use it to inspire them to do the same.

Matthew:
Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I hope you enjoyed that interview. Clearly Matt is on an awesome pathway. It's pretty exciting to see people at that stage of their career so financially literate, right? My financial awakening was kind of mid-residency or so. And I'm like, “Ah, I'm being ripped off by a financial advisor. And I keep getting ripped off by everybody.”

I started reading books and learning about this stuff and becoming the go-to guy in my residency. It's exciting for me to see somebody else going down that same pathway so early in their career.

FINANCE 101: BOOSTING YOUR INCOME

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, what I wanted to talk to you about was exactly what Matt has been doing. One of the things he's been doing, he's been doing a lot of good things, which is boosting his income. And there's lots of ways you can boost your income, of course, we're going to talk about some of those ways.

But I want to emphasize how useful this is as a financial tactic. I am convinced for the general public out there that most people dramatically overestimate the difficulty of doubling their income. Now, I get it, it's harder for some people than it is for others. But for some reason, when people sit down and start doing financial planning, they assume they can make all these changes in their budget and all these changes in their investments, but never think that they can make changes in their earning.

But the truth is the higher your income, the easier all this other stuff becomes. The easier it is to wipe out debt, the easier it is to save, the easier it is to build income, the easier it is to invest, the easier it is to do all this stuff, the more you make. It's just way easier.

And so, we should consider this when we're talking about how to increase your savings rate and how to invest your money. We should also be talking about how to increase your income. It matters. It just makes things a lot easier when you make more money.

I don't know how many times in my life, it's a whole bunch of times that I've doubled my income. Now, it doesn't always happen quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes your income even goes down. But actually concentrate on that as part of your financial planning, as part of your written financial plan is worthwhile.

So let's talk about some of the ways that our typical audience can increase income. We mentioned one of them with our sponsor of this episode, right? The surveys. You can go take surveys. Even if you only make $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a year.

Well, how much faster do you become a multimillionaire if you're saving an extra $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 a year? A lot faster. It makes a big difference for most docs making typical doc income. That might boost your annual savings by 50%. It's huge.

But there's also the more simple things. In today's corporate world, people change jobs every two or three or four years. Especially the people who want to get ahead. And why is that? Because you usually get raised when you change jobs. Changing jobs is one way you can increase your income. It doesn't always work, obviously.

There's no guarantee you're going to get a higher income when you change jobs, but be open to it. Especially if you like the job better. A lot of times you find a better situation, people you prefer to work with, things you prefer doing, and you get paid more. It's a win. So, don't feel like you're stuck in the same job for the next 30 years. You're not.

In our employee doctor world, where more and more docs, like three quarters of us now are employees. Well, if they treat you like labor, you ought to act like labor. And if somebody is willing to give you a 30% raise, maybe you ought to go work for them, right? You give your two weeks’ notice or whatever your contract requires, and you go and work for those other guys.

Something else you can do is maybe at the same time or different times, just asking for a raise. Sometimes we go years without asking for a raise and we're not getting paid anywhere near what we're worth. It's a good idea to know what you're worth, not only when you signed that initial contract, but also periodically throughout your career. If your income is not increasing, at least with inflation, there's probably an issue.

Those same contract review companies we referred you to when you first came out of residency, you can go back there and talk to them about your current contract, figure out what other people are making that are doing the same thing you're doing, have them review your current contract, maybe make some suggestions. They only charge a few hundred dollars for that. And it doesn't take much of an increase in your income to have that be a massive value add in your life.

You can start a side gig, be some sort of entrepreneur. It's not for everybody, I get that. But what if I'd never started the White Coat Investor? How different would my financial life look now? It would look very different. There'd be a lot of things we've been able to accomplish and do and causes we've been able to support that we never would have been able to do if I hadn't just started typing crap into the internet one Monday morning, when all my friends were at work and my spouse was doing her thing and I didn't have to work until that evening at the hospital.

You can start a side gig, you can do something, lots of them fizzle out and that's fine. That's the nature of small businesses. But sometimes they don't fizzle out. Sometimes they go into something great.

So, pay attention to your income, care about what your income is, take simple steps to increase your income when you can. And you'd be surprised how much it helps in reaching all of your other financial goals.

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Dr. Jim Dahle:
As a white coat, you have valuable knowledge and various companies want that knowledge and they're willing to pay you for it. That's why we put together a list of recommendations for companies that pay you to take surveys. If you're looking for a profitable side gig for not too much effort, getting paid for surveys could be the perfect solution for you.

You can make extra money, start a solo 401(k), use your medical knowledge to impact new products. Sign up today and use a fraction of your downtime to make extra cash. Go to whitecoatinvestor.com/mdsurveys. You can do this, the White Coat Investor can help.

All right, this has been another episode of the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. We'd love for you to apply and come on it. You can do that at whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones.

We'll celebrate any milestone with you. I don't care if it's building a comic book collection. I don't care if it's maxing out a Roth IRA. I don't care if it's getting back to broke. Whatever it is, paying off student loans, becoming a millionaire, becoming a multimillionaire, becoming financially independent, giving a million dollars away. Whatever. If it's important to you, we'll celebrate it with you and we're going to use it to help other White Coat Investors to do the same. See you next time on the podcast.

DISCLAIMER

The hosts of the White Coat Investor 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.