18. Ryan Inman, MBA: Our Relationship with Money, Reframing Debt, Asset Protection & Building Health Through Wealth

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. Hey there, this is Dr. Erin Weisman. I'm a fellow Dr. Podcast Network member, Life Coach and Mama 3. I kick butt, I take names, and I help other high achieving people do the exact same. And today I want to invite you over to my podcast, Dr. Me First. It's well over 300 episodes and each one is filled with inspiration and advice from amazing guests. So grab your wife, your mom, your sister, your best friend, and come tune in as we explore what it means to be a woman in medicine and a woman in this world. Because this podcast is a dose of everything that I needed when I was burned out, exhausted and ready to quit it all. At the end of the day, I do this to help you feel more connected to yourself and to connect with others. I love to end my show with a kick of encouragement. So here's my favorite tag line, your life, your calling, your pulse matters. See you over at Dr. Me First. Thank you Dr. Weisman for that awesome intro. Now guys, I am super excited to share our guest with you today, none other than Ryan Imman. Ryan is a full-time certified financial planner, but you'll recognize him from his own podcast, Financial Residency, which is one of my favorite resources for financial education. As you've learned thus far in this show, it's all about filling in the knowledge caps and reframing a perspective on what it means to be healthy. And there is a huge gap when it comes to financial literacy, not just for physicians, but the majority of folks in most disciplines. I think we can all agree that the state of our finances has a strong correlation with everything we do and our overall health. So that's why I think this will be an extremely valuable discussion for all my medical colleagues. And with so many new physicians starting their medical journey this week, hopefully there will be a few things you'll take away from this show that will have a net positive in your own life. So in this show today, we talk about reframing a perspective on student debt, asset protection and after listening to this show, you'll learn what the most important asset is, especially if you're a physician. We talk about our relationship with money and why our behavior is a good indicator of our financial growth. We also talk about the various different models for financial advisors and how to identify a good financial planner. If that's what you choose as the best physician for you, we talk about the why for doing what we do and how that may be the step one for creating our financial plan. And we also discuss the common pitfalls for early career physicians and big ticket items that you want to make sure you take care of to prepare yourself for financial success. Lastly, we learn about Ryan's journey and why he decided to work exclusively with physicians. So without further delay, please enjoy this episode with Ryan Aiman. All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of medicine redefined. Today we have Ryan Aiman. Ryan, what's going on, man? What's up, guys? Thanks for having me on that. Oh, thanks for being here. Thanks for being here, man. Super excited to have this conversation and for those of at least people who are listening here and who know about you are probably thinking, what does what you talk about routinely financial health have to kind of do with the mission of our show. And I think if we look at it a second glance, obviously there are a lot of implications to just general overall well-being and health and we'll touch on that a little bit later on. But for those people who live under a rock and don't know about you or your show or what you do, why don't you kind of give us a little backstory about who you are and your journey. I love it. There's a little justification for why I come on a show. It's always a great sign. I'm excited to be here and I think a lot of what I talk about on the personal finance side for physicians really will help someone understand if they're going through burnout for various reasons. One of them will likely have financial impacts and understanding your finances and being more in control and feeling more confident will help you. I think overall just be a better physician, be a better father, mother, daughter, son. Just love life a little bit more. Give your more control of something that you guys were never taught or trained in school. A little bit about me, I am married to a pediatric pulmonaryologist. We've been together for 20 years now. I've been around med school, residency, three years of fellowship. We had two kids in fellowships that made it a lot harder too, but just being married to medicine is a whole different unique experience that I kind of bring to the table when I talk about personal finances because we literally have gone through it. You've lived through it. I've been where a lot of you are. Some of you are maybe further along in your careers than maybe my wife is, but a lot of you are potentially behind where she's at and I kind of sit on your side of the table so to speak and can tell you how hard it is, share the pains and joys of being in medicine and I think understanding your personal finances and being able to talk through and have an intelligent conversation of what you want to do and how you want to do it and what are your opportunities and what are your challenges that are coming up and how that impacts your finances are really going to be beneficial for anyone listening. Yeah, so let's kind of get into that right because when we think about money as physicians, it's kind of later in the game right when we start applying to medical school and then we accumulate debt and we say oh my god, there's a lot of money you got to invest in it right? And so when we think about financial health, those two words really don't go hand in hand until later on, but what are the implications of financial health? Why is it so important for us physicians to understand what it means? So if we think about everyone that you went to college with that didn't go the crazy path of medicine, right? They went to business or whatever. They started working at like 21, 22 years old and they were able to, I don't care if they're making 40K, 60K, 100K doesn't matter, but they're starting to earn money. So they're going in the positive at some point. They're saving in their 401Ks, they're saving in their IRAs, they're potentially saving to put a down payment on a home, maybe they've already bought a home. And by the time that a physician typically finishes, you know, you're in your early 30s, that person has a 10 year head start on you, right? It's kind of a weird abstract way to think about what everyone else is doing because you're so trapped into what all of your peers are doing because that's who you've been with. You take the brightest of the brightest of our population, you shove all your competitive people together. And that's all you think about. But there's other people outside of that group and they've been saving and earning for a decade. Now granted, their income potential is going to be capped unlike, I think physicians mostly aren't going to be capped. Or at least their cap is significantly higher than someone who's not a physician. But if we think about, now you've gone the road of, not did you, you're not earning money, you're actually taking on debt, our average clients a little over $300,000 is too low on debt per physician. So that means that we have many dual physician households that are six, seven, eight hundred. We have actually over a million dollars of student debt just, just alone. So you're taking on this debt in order to earn this potential income, which you guys aren't even really thinking about the dollars. You didn't become a doctor to become super rich. If you did, probably went into German, but I love you, Derm people, the idea though is that you took on significant amount of debt to buy a business. And that business is in your head, I talk about it in the show all the time. Don't feel guilty that you took this debt on. If I look at it in the business sense out in the business world, if I said, hey, look, there's an income stream out there that I could capture and buy. And this income stream is going to gross about $300,000 a year. And I could pay $300,000 a year for that income. And know that that income is going to be safe and secure for the most part. We didn't anticipate COVID, but I don't think we're going to have multiple blacks on events happen in our lifetime. And I think most of the physicians that we work with saw downwards of 20% reduction in pay and they're almost fully back now. So I think that it's a fairly secure income. And if we think about, I could pay one to one in the business, well, that's, I'll take that all day long. Like a most businesses are going to trade at multiples to three tech companies. They're trading at 20, 30. I mean, look at public companies with their priced earnings ratios. They're, I mean, hundreds, potentially. And these are big, big names, Fortune 500 companies trading at 60 X earnings. And we're looking at a physician buying a fairly stable income in a great profession for a one to one ratio. So if you think about the debt as buying a business and not all my goodness, I took on all the student debt. I'm super in the hole and you're feeling really overwhelmed. Just a mindset change around that should be a little more free. But you got to protect that income. So obviously you want to show up to work and do the right thing and know my practice and all that. So I'm excited also from the other end of, well, this is why disability insurance is really, really important. And this is why if you have people who are dependent on your income, so a spouse or kids or say your parents were epic and paid off your med school. But that was their retirement plan because now they need you to cover their retirement. You have dependents, right? People who are dependent on the income, you need life insurance. And you would get term life insurance to be very specific, not whole life or permanent insurance. You would get term insurance for that. But the idea is that you're now protecting and safeguarding that, that income stream again that's in your head, but treated as a business. That's why it's really important to understand finances because you start off in the hole. And especially compared to your college friends or people you went to high school, if they didn't go down the path of medicine, you're in the hole. And now you're out potentially, you're maybe a resident and still not earning that much. But let's say you're a brand new attending, you're out, you're making good money, money you deserve to earn, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you've got some catch up. So you got to understand, well, I have not been saving because you couldn't, it resencies all about survival to make this like perfectly clear, like just survive. And if you can learn decent money habits, so when the stakes are a lot higher, you're not going to be stupid and spend all your money and then wake up five years from around, go like, oh my goodness, I have nothing to show for this, right? You want to be able to take vacations and do things, but do it in moderation and learn how money works and your relationship with money. But when you finish, you've got to start saving for retirement. You've got to start saving, you know, your IRA is your 401k, your 403b's, like that's a given. That should just, that should just be off the top. You don't even think about that as your actual savings rate. You're so far behind in the retirement piece. But then the extra money that's there, having a clear path and a clear meaning of what you want to do and what's important to you, don't get caught up in the, like the physician rat race, if you will, from a financial side of, hey, I'm walking, stolen through the doctor parking lot. And it's like, beamer Mercedes Land Rover, holy crap, these are some nice cars. My 12 year old Toyota stinks. I need a new one. Well, if you're not a car guy or car gal, you don't need one. I could get you from A to B. You don't have to do what your peers are doing because I promise you this out of 12 of those cars, 11 of them have dead on them. Most physicians are, well, I need a new car now because I'm now a doctor and that's what's expected of me. Sarah Fala wrote a fantastic book and the next millionaire next door and her dad wrote the millionaire next door. We talk all about the Joneses and living next door to someone who is spending and has nice cars and is always dining out and always going on these nice vacations and that causes it's called social indifference. It causes all of us to feel like we need to do that to keep up the lifestyle. You guys get it from like, well, you're a doctor. You understand that? I get that, well, it must be nice to be married to a doctor, I'm like, oh, you would think, but there's a lot of death. There's a lot of sadness. I don't even want to sit down and explain this to you because then I'm just going to get sad that I'm having to explain this to someone and reliving some of those not fun times or like, my wife was every fourth night in the hospital, it's been in the night and I didn't say her the whole next day because she had a sleep. Now, that's super fun from a, you know, if we just think like, this is a job, this isn't your whole life, this is a job and that's what it's required to do the job and that's a tough job. It's really hard. And you do that for many years, people don't, they don't get it. They see all of us as physician families as the top one percent, the evil one percenters and you guys, you know, make a ton of money. You can afford it. You're like, I'm a resident and I make 60K and I have 300,000 in debt. Like, I am not that person yet. Maybe at some point, but not yet. Yeah. And what I'll say that meant, even, you know, you're talking about people, the whole keeping up with the Jones's concept of it, even people within your inner circle, they don't quite get it. So I'm just, I was telling Darshan before you came on that I just bought a car today. Don't ask me what you're not going to be happy. But I, you know, so I was doing a lot of test drives and stuff and the sales people were like, Hey, man, like, what do you do? I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of a physician. I'm like, okay, all right. So you're doing good. And I was like, no, you probably make more than I do. And so they don't understand. And I remember talking to actually my uncle recently and, you know, he was like, oh, don't buy it. Don't look at this car. Look at, you know, one of the luxury cars and whatnot, I was like, I can't afford that. He was like, in two years, you're going to be fine. You're like, you have no idea, you have no idea. And sometimes it's not even worth explaining. But, you know, at the outset, you mentioned that it is a, it's a crazy journey that we go down, right? And it kind of brings me back to this point. I remember my dean actually in medical school said that anybody who kind of goes down this path of, you know, four years of undergrad training, then maybe another eight to 15 years or potentially more training, there has to be a screw loose. But you said that your spouse, your wife is a physician as well. Because you've been a financial advisor well before that, right? Yeah. So, so why did you decide to primarily work with physicians? I mean, was it something that happened with you in your journey? Was it, you know, something that you saw her get screwed over something like that? Or what was it that attracted you to this is going to be your, your, your primary audience? Yeah. So, before I answer that, I want to go back really quick to your uncle and be like, well, in two years, you're, you're golden, man, right? Yeah. A lot of physicians think that way. Well, I know that, you know, I'm going through residency right now. And when I come out, and I'm going to be an anesthesiologist, like the average makes 350, right? So, I'm going to just maybe relax a little bit and kind of spend some money here and there. And maybe I'll rack up a little credit card debt, you know, because in two years, I'm golden. I'm good. Like I've got everything covered, right? Well, what if something happens, like, and you actually don't become an anesthesiologist, maybe you get disabled, maybe something that maybe you pass away, like who knows, right? That's the extreme. The hopefully the brighter side of this is that you're still living and working and doing things. But what did you do? You just really harmed your behavior and your mindset and your relationship with money, because you didn't have any delayed gratification off of that. You robbed your future self and basically sacrificed your future self to pay for stuff now. And when the money becomes a lot more than I'm making 60 K year to, I'm making 350 K year. Usually we see that behavior go, well, I've worked so hard. I don't really want to save anything my first year and I'll save a bunch next year. And so I'm going to go on vacation. I'm going to buy a car. I'm going to buy a house. I'm going to do all these things. It's like I want my cake and eat it too in this first year, but next year I'll be good. And then next year comes, and it's really, really hard to pair down lifestyle. It is really easy to let that go up and I just talk to, I think it's like lifestyle inflation and how people just let it, you know, I have more money, more problems, let it go crazy. So I look at it again back in the corporate world and I say, anyone in the, I don't care what industry you said, Hey, Darshan, I know that you are just really good at this mid managed job that you've got. And I'm going to increase your pay next year by 50%, you got a 50% raise. Your heart is probably going to fall out the pants, man, like you're going to fall over and just go, Oh my God, what 50%. If we looked at that from a resident perspective and said, Hey, you make 60 next year, you're going to make 90. You're like, well, my contract says 350, I like, no, no, no, you're going to make 90. And the rest of that money, you're going to put towards your debts, you're going to save for your retirement, you're going to build that emergency fund that is not your credit card. It's an actual emergency fund. You're going to do all the right things next year. You're still going to increase your lifestyle, a ton, but just getting one, maybe two more years of that 50% pay increase. So the following year instead of making 90, you know, make what, 130, 135, that's still an insane lifestyle. That's great. That's way better than most of your peers, you know, and you're still doing all their responsible stuff. So come back ultimately a question around like, why did I get into this field? Why am I doing this? I had worked for several other financial planners. I actually did two masters degrees at University of San Diego and during that was working at Merrill Lynch as an intern, one of my years of graduate here in LaHoya. And I basically realized that all of those big companies, it's all sales. Like 90% sales and 10% actual work with clients. And by work with clients, I mean, they get told from New York, hey, you know, where they're headgoers, like, hey, these are your investment options that you can give to your clients. And the work that these advisors do would basically say, well, you know, Dars, you seem like you're an aggressive investor. So we'll put you into this portfolio. And all they're doing is picking from this little list that came in from New York from headgoers and basically holding your hand saying, this is what your performance was and this is what you can do. Well, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley or any of these big companies likely are getting kick backs and some incentives for putting them into these funds. The advisors are charging a percentage of assets under management or just literally looking in a little box and checking a few things, like there's not any real planning done. They're not looking at your budget. They're not helping you with anything else other than more products. Oh, you need that disability coverage we talked about. Oh, well, here's a nice product for you. That is probably way over expensive, doesn't include any of the writers and is probably not applicable to you, but they can sell it because that's their job. So I actually was really turned off on the whole industry. I was offered job and said, no, thanks. And I, I think went the dumbest way and I went into public accounting. So I was an auditor for a couple of years. That was horrible. That was actually worse than the sales, which was comical, but then I ended up landing into two different working for two different planners and they were fee-only planners. They still charged an AUM fee, which I'm not a fan of at all, but there I got to understand a lot more about planning and how to do it and was able to use my master's degrees into that. But I was still working with people who, who had made it. Everyone I worked with was 65, 70, 80, 90, right? They all had money. They were all retired and it was all how to not run out of money or how to pass down money, you know, tax, you know, tax efficiently. And that's fun by like, after a while, I'm like, I want to help people like us, want to help people who need the help. I want to help people who, I can help grow their assets and help their relationship with money and help their actual relationship between themselves if they're married or just feel overall more confident. I don't need to just work with people who have quote unquote made it that's fine. It pays the bills. It's good money. I mean, I left a six-figure job to start my own company and make zero or several years, but I got to do it on my own terms. I got to help people that were like us and I, all of our friends are physicians or advisors. It's kind of how it works, I guess. And I got a thousand questions from all of our friends because they were never taught anything in school, right? How do I, you know, why does it say a minimum on my credit card? Is that what I actually pay or should I pay more than that? Well, what is the interest and how do they calculate and then how do I buy home and, you know, I just got a thousand questions. So that's actually how the financial residency podcast started was I said, I'm just going to create all this and you guys are just going to listen. So give me like a dozen things you want to know. And like probably the first 30 shows were the topics were actually because someone in my personal circle was like, I don't know how to do this or I don't know what this is. And so I'd bring people on and have a good discussion and good dialogue. And Taylor and my wife would always make fun of me like, who the heck is going to listen to me like, I don't know, someone hopefully is going to get something. If I can, imagine if I could get to like three or four or 500 people, you know, cool, that would be just a few thousand across the world. No big deal. Yeah. And now we're now we're like 5,000 shows, which is fantastic. And it's been, I mean, such a dream come true to get emails or people like, you've helped us so much. And I was about to buy this product and then I heard you show and then I started digging into it and I realized I was just getting swindled by this or, you know, hey, you've helped us. You know, we walked through XYZ exercise and now we understand and feel more, like, that's why I do it. Those emails are amazing. And the voicemails people send in are amazing. But why work one-on-one with clients and we only work with MD's and Dio's is because I want to help people like us actually make it and not feel burnt out and not feel overwhelmed and like, I can't, I can't solve EMRs for you. Like, yeah, it sucks. I can't solve billing, like go work for the Navy. My wife doesn't have billing, maybe that'll help you out. But other than that, like I can't solve those things, but what I can do is help you understand how money works and how it plays one piece of the role in your life. And most physicians, it's a horrible analogy and I don't know a better one. Maybe you guys have one, but it's the carry that you guys have in front of you, high school to get in a good college college, the med school med school, the residency, residency to fellowship, like, or just a really good attending job, right? You've had this track, this one path that you've gone down and you literally try to do the best you possibly can because you're all likely super type A and very, very competitive and extremely smart. And what do you think happens when we put all of you together in one place? But when we think about that path, then when you become an attending, usually it's like, well, I've done everything. So I guess I'll just start my career here and see how it goes. There's no secondary thought of like, is this where I truly want to be? Is this how I really want these pieces in my life to go? No one's stopping and really thinking about, well, this job offers me 300,000, but I'm on call three months, three weekends a month and I'm expected to do extra things that are uncompensated or I can make 280 or 270 and get to set my call schedule or I have no call schedule or whatever it is, like, it's all about the money because you're like, all of a sudden, well, I've worked so hard, I've done these things, well, I'll just take the job that pays me the most. It's like, stop for a second, just stop, think about those things. And if you choose a lesser job, that's okay, right? If you choose the job for more money, hopefully it's the job that you really want that you really understand who you're working with and the compensation model and what's expected of you in addition to clinic and all that stuff, like, that's all really, really important pieces, but understanding the money behind whatever it is that you have of, well, why are you getting up and doing what you do every day? Like, what's the, if I dropped a, you know, Bill Gates net worth on both of you right now, what would you do? Right, what would you, like, would you go, would you get up and go to work again? Would you, would you maybe go, would you donate your time? Would you still work, but just not put up with all the crap and the admin and this and that, like, what would it look like? Some people will be like, there's no way I'd ever step on a hospital again. That's okay. Right? So now we know that as we're planning out your financial future and we know that when you hit financial independence, like, that's your, your number, whatever that number is, like, I'm not, I'm not doing the same more. Well, great. But what would you do instead, not just going to sit home and eat Cheetos and, like, watch TV? Like, what are you going to do? Not if they're listening to this show. They're hopefully they're not going to be eating Cheetos and watching TV like, I had something bad in there. I was like, they're on that's bad. Like, the, the idea though is like, it's not just the ones and zeros. There's a ton of behavioral mindset piece that goes into this that maybe is even more, probably is more important than the ones and zeros. And sometimes you can work through it on your own and you don't need any outside help. And sometimes you do. And that outside help could be a book, could be a podcast, it could be working one on one with a planner, like, not everyone needs to hire a financial planner, but you still need to pay attention to your finances. You can't just, I call it being an ostrich and shove your head in the sand and figure it out another day because another day won't come. But someday it won't come. And it's the unfortunate and extremely frustrating and sad piece of doing the podcast and just being out there in the community is seeing the people who don't take action. And then email me and go, I knew I should have done it, but I didn't do it. And now XYZ has occurred in my life and I can't go back, right? I had someone email me, he was like, my wife got MS and we didn't have disability coverage. And this is going to be really tough and we don't know what to do in them. And it's like, I knew you told me this in the email, I knew you told me this, but I figured I would do it another day. Yeah, that's just like so disartening to hear and I wish I could help more. But so that's the stuff like that is what keeps me motivated and why I'm doing what I do. But also to all of you listening, some of you are like, who cares what this guy does? But it's important on the other end to say, you need to do these things. You need to care. You need to understand how money flows in and out. And the way you spend money should really reflect on doesn't make you happy or not. Now, student debt insurance, that crap isn't going to make you happy spending that money. That's okay. It's needed. But the $2,000, you know, you might spend on Amazon a month, highly doubt that's making you very, very happy. I would we joke about like the dopamine hit when you open the package or you're just going to say, man, especially with prime delivery, two hours here in San Diego, push your button in two hours. It's here. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. I do. You see those things, but just understanding that if you didn't spend 2000, let's just say you spent the $1,000 a month on Amazon and some of you are like, I'm a resident, I'm getting it. Hear me because our average client spends like $2,300 a month on Amazon. So it wasn't like a random number I pulled and that's how to we have 230 clients now. So that's a pretty decent sample size to pull that average number out. But if you said, hey, I'm going to spend a thousand bucks and then 1,300 bucks is going to go to something that I truly and motivated to save for that African safari trip. The epic girls trip to Vegas, whatever it is, like we have clients that want to write a book and do all these things and need money for a publisher, whatever it is, right? Being able to save some of the stuff to the things that really, really matter, but you're not going to get that by reading a book or listening to a podcast, you're going to get that by sitting down and writing out what's important to you. What do you want to accomplish in the next one, three, five years? What are your opportunities? What are your challenges? What would you do if money were no object? Start looking at your finances that way. Say, how do I want to plan my time? Letting the money flow around the lifestyle. I love that, right? I mean, you kind of talked about, hey, if money was no object, would you still be practicing medicine? What would you be doing? Essentially what you're talking about is, what's your why? Why do we practice medicine? We talk about that here all the time and I know you did this with us when we did the fellowship as start with the goals, right? You got one day, that kind of clichating, but it's really important to understand that. I really love the reason that you started the podcast actually for your inner circle. It kind of gives me an idea. Next time somebody asked me a question about nutrition or exercise or intermittent fasting, I might just send them a link, might lose some friends that way, but you know what, it's good. It's on record. They can just listen to it again. But ultimately what you've been doing is just financial education for, I mean, that's how we kind of linked up and it's so important what you're talking about is investing our own education, right? Because at the end of the day, nobody has more to gain or more to lose than you as an individual, right? Some people might benefit a little bit more depending on what structure your financial planner is getting paid by and I want you to talk a little bit more about that because you mentioned that you work with a couple of fee-only planners and you're a fee-only planner and a lot of people might not have heard of what that means. So could you talk about, explain what that is, what a fee-only planner is and how does that differ from some of the other structures and what are the pros and cons if you will? Yeah. So to take away from this, there's two types of planners. By the way, planners could be the same thing as advisors, could be the same thing as investment managers. They all, there's no universal term. It's all marketing, essentially, of what you want to call yourself, but it's all the same thing initially and we can lump them into two buckets. Be based and fee-only. So the keyword, obviously, there's based and only. Think based equals bad, so be equals, be equals bad and the reason it's bad is not because they're bad people. I have several friends who are fee-based planners. They are not bad people. They are part of my wedding. I love them. They will never become fee-only because the commissions that they make on the things that they sell are basically forexing their income. That doesn't mean, again, that they're bad people. It just means there's a conflict of interest and now for one of our kind of regulating bodies, if you will, did a study and more than 97% of anyone who calls himself a financial planner, a financial advisor, investment manager, investment advisor, like whatever you want to call it, more than 97% are fee-based. So line up 100 people to, I guess, a half people are going to be fee-based. That means they can earn kickbacks and commissions and sell you products. They don't have to fully disclose if, hey, I'm going to send you to the CPA because Bob down the road is a great guy and you become a client of Bob's and all of a sudden, Bob pays that advisor whether it's a nice dinner, it's tickets to the Lakers game, whatever it is, they can receive compensation back and they don't have to disclose it to you. And some of you might be going, well, why is that bad and it's bad because every time your advisor, your trusted person, the person that you are paying money for their access for their time, their experience and their trust, right? You are paying that person for this reason and every time something comes out of their mouth, your thought is going to be, hmm, are they telling me that because that's in my best interest because I really need that or do they make more money by telling me that? Is that the way you want to have a relationship with someone that you're spending likely thousands and thousands of dollars with every single year and they're getting to know you and your family and, I mean, not to mention, hopefully, they're doing all the right things, right? They're talking about your goals and your budgeting, which most of them don't. It's all about money. They charge, you know, assets under management fee, which is essentially, I've got, I'm just going to throw out an easy big number. A million dollars I'm going to put with all too much because he's my advisor and he charges 1%. So my fee is $10,000 a year, 1% times a million. You're paying a lot of money and likely they're only focusing on that one little sliver of the pie, right? And they're going to talk to all these fancy terms about your performance and all these other things that are happening in the market when in reality, who cares? Who cares what's happening in the market? Can you predict what's going to happen tomorrow when the market opens? No, here can I. I can't tell you what's going to happen in a week, a year, five years, 20 years, can't tell you. Anyone that says they can is full of it. Because if they could, they wouldn't be working with you. They'd be sitting on a beach, sipping my ties, enjoying their billions of dollars that they just made because they knew the future. Very, very few people can actually do that with some consistency and their household names, like Warren Buffett, the guy's like 90 something years old. Never heard of him. Yeah, never heard of the guy. Yeah, the most successful investor ever. He's worth billions and billions and billions of dollars. And there's only a few of those people that are around. And even him, when he passes, which hopefully isn't soon, but he's in his 90s, when he passes, he's already instructed everything to say, when I pass, all my money gets invested in an index fund for my errors. He's giving a ton of over way, but the money that's left over, the billions that's left over, he's going to instruct them to put in an index fund, which is essentially passive investing. So when we come back to the financial advisors, you've got then the other side, this little sliver of us called fee-only financial planners. And what they do is they, in terms of compensation, they can only earn what's in the client agreement. That doesn't mean that they're all good. I'm just saying that their compensation is now more in line with whatever is in there. So if they refer you to that Bob, the CPA, they can't get money back. They can't get a kickback on that. All they can earn is what's in their client agreement. And that's really, really important because then you know, well, they don't sell products. So if I need that disability coverage that we talked about the very beginning, they're going to help you get that coverage and they're not going to charge you money for it. They're not going to receive a commission for it. So you can go, huh, I think they're acting in my best interest. They're not selling me this product and they're telling me I need it. Now, they have very few conflicts of interest. The biggest one is usually around their pay structure that is in that client agreement. And it usually comes back to the assets under management model, which I'm not a fan of, because that fee scales as you become more successful and you put more money away, that fee will continue to scale. And we've had clients that were working with previous advisors that are, you know, paying $40,000, $50,000 a year. And the first thing I tell them, I wish I could tell you I'm worth that. But no one is worth that. Not one single advisor is worth 40 or 50K a year. It's ridiculous. You need to pay someone based on their experience and based on what they do and how they do it and their time involved, right? But you should be able to do that in a fixed flat fee model. So when you go to work with someone, they should be the only. They should charge a fixed flat fee, meaning, hey, it's going to cost five, six, even $10,000 a year to work with them. But you know that it won't change. That is a fixed flat fee to work with that person. And then lastly, and I think one of the most important things is they need to be a fiduciary. They don't just tell this to you. They need to put it in writing. I kind of look at it as similar to the Hippocratic oath. It should state just under no circumstance. Are we going to put our interest at clients? And by doing that and by putting that in writing and by saying that, that also means that, and this is how we do this. We happened 12 or 13 times last year. When someone outgrows us and can do this on their own and they don't need us, we are fiduciaries and we tell you, hey, Darsh, it's been awesome working with you. But you need to fire us. You shouldn't be paying us. You can do this on your own. We have confidence in you that you're not going to be, you know, maybe a non-compliant patient, so to speak, but like, you're not going to mess up your own financial future and you're on a good path and we think you should do that. And some of them will say, no, I like the independent third party. I love working with you guys. Like, let's do it. And somewhere like, yeah, let me try this. I'll do it on my own, right? But your advisor should be able to do that. And you should ask them, have you ever fired someone or how many people is really what you should say? You fire a year because they've outgrown you. No advisor does that. So I come back to this fiduciary oath and say, put it in writing and make sure they're acting as a fiduciary for you. That's interesting. I actually, I don't know if I've ever thought of this. Can an advisor or can one, you know, practice the AUM model, but also be a fiduciary or there was something that just don't never agree. So I look at this as it, it is in theory possible. But I think it still makes a a little bit more of a gray area than not. And I'm not like some prints on top of the hill thinking like, I'm the best at knowing can do what I do. It's absolutely not the case. But when I look at the fee only metric and I look at a fixed flat fee, I still have a conflict of interest. If you said, hey, Ryan, should I work with you or not? And I think you're a good fit. I'm going to say, yeah, right? But I'm also going to tell you, hey, I have obviously a conflict here. But yes, I think we can work to you. I think we can do. But the AUM model opens still that little gray area a little bit further and goes, well, you know, are they telling me that I need to basically invest more money because they make more money because think about that. They need to put food on table and they want to make money and do all these things that are not a charity. So making money is not bad. But it's got to be fair and equitable for everyone. So are they telling me that I need to invest versus paying off my debt because they make more money or because that's really the right answer. And again, we've come back to this is someone that you've hired that should be trusted that you're hoping and really should you deserve to have someone that is completely unbiased in this. And that payment model enters in conflict. So why choose the conflict, the conflicted thing. A lot of people will, and maybe listening, well, might might say this too, but well, Ryan, why don't I hire one of these guys that are an AUM model when I have no money? And then when I have money, switch. Well, it's the same thing of, well, I'm just not going to invest or save any money this year, but next year, I'll totally do it. Right. Is once you get and you meet someone, you like them, you're trusted, they get to know you and your family and they know everything about you, you're not going to leave. That's okay. Like if you like the person and you understand the conflict, so you know that they exist and you're okay with that potential sliver of uncertainty or doubt that they may be telling you this because they want to make more money. That's fine. Choosing fee only is the biggest requirement, but I think one of the other requirements behind it is, is why are they targeting physicians? Is it because they think you're in the top 1% and they want to work with you because they know that your financial literacy is on the lower end because you never were trained in finance or do they have some ties to the medical community, a mom, a brother, a sister, a spouse? Why are they, why are they doing and working with the medical community? Do they just work with the medical community? Like this is, physicians are very different. We've talked about your path and how that works and financially what is, a lot of people don't understand that. So why are they so confident that they can help you on that path when they don't understand that path? Yeah. These are just some of the bigger things I would talk about. But as you go through and understand that that kind of money becomes a lot in terms of the fee you're going to pay someone, whether it's a fixed flat fee, whether it's an EUM fee, doesn't matter. Like paying someone to do something for you, it is a luxury. And in the beginning, you might feel like you have to have a planner. That's okay. But no one should care more about your money than you do. Ever. Sometimes I feel like we do. We shouldn't. And I tell them, hey, I feel like we're carrying more about this than you. Please, please pay attention. I want you to know this. You need to understand this because I won't be sitting on your shoulder when you get pitched a bunch of crap because I promise all of you this, you will all be pitched a bunch of crap stuff over your lifetime investments. It might be borrowing from friends and family. I mean, anything you name it, you're going to get pitched in your residence. You're going to get pitched in your family. You're going to get pitched in your practice. It's going to happen. It's going to be, you know, maybe it's a surgical center that they have no business actually trying to make, you know, this investment because they don't actually understand real estate, but they think that they need this. I mean, there's all sorts of things we've seen that are some of the smartest people in the world. But when it comes to money, necessarily art. And you don't want to get trapped up in that kind of mentality or the herd mentality of going with it because well, if it's good enough for darshan, it's good enough for me. No, you need to stop and think about this. You need to understand how to impact your own personal finances. You need to have at least some passion in it because it is your money. But hiring someone to help you is okay. Not all of you need to do it though. But once you hire someone, you don't always have to work with that person. You always have to depend on that person. You are plenty smart enough to do this. Your time is obviously important, but don't just check out. And if you have a planner right now and they're not a fee-only fixed financial planner, really evaluate that relationship, understand how much you're actually paying them and how much you will be paying them over the future and the lifetime of fees that you may pay and see if you're comfortable paying that because it's expensive. It's a large investment in yourself. Yeah, I love that you brought up this point that every single person has a unique situation. Right? Darshan and I were just talking about earlier this concept of precision medicine that we've talked about. Right? You take the individual in front of you, you look at their life, their values, and then your expertise rather than just looking at the data that might have worked for a thousand other people, but this person is unique. Right? They have different circumstances. And to your point earlier about people might say, hey, I'll do it next year or I'll do it the year after. It just goes back to that point if you need to develop these behaviors and these habits that are earlier on. Right? It's like if you want individuals to learn the language, the best time to do it is to teach a child when they're like four to eight. You're not going to say, oh, they'll learn a third or fourth language when they're in their 30s. Can they? Sure. It's going to be way harder to do that. Right? And so if you can develop those patterns early on and residency, maybe in medical school, maybe even ideally when you're a children, you've talked about this on your show, you know, having these conversations with your children. I know you do it as well all the time. I got a funny seven-year-old pro quick. My son decided, I told me a couple of weeks ago that he didn't want to go to work. I'm like, he's six, by the way. Doesn't want to work. Yeah. Because he realized that if he works, he has to pay taxes. Because I taught him about the daddy tax during Halloween, that if he goes and he gets candy, that daddy gets a few pieces, that's just because you live in my house. Yeah. And these are my rules. And you have to pay to do that in the form of tax. And I then explained it, you know, we make money. We do these things. And my kid only thinks I'm a podcaster, which is funny because he just sees the microphone. Doesn't actually get the full, full blunt of it. But then he realized, oh, well, if you make money and then you have to pay, well, why do I want to, I'll just live here. So he's like, I'm just going to live here. And that way, I don't have to pay taxes. I'm like, oh, boy, I went the wrong way on this. Yeah, he's set, man. I'm knocking up. He's got it. It's got the earlier, the better, the earlier, the better to understand finance and explain it to your kids. And you know, it was a Chinese proverb. It's like, that's time playing trees 20 years ago. It's like, what's time to now? Like, it holds through on literally everything. Like, even if you haven't done it, that's okay, but start now. And if you have kids, start them on the journey while you're still trying to learn and have them understand and no more confident because they will be financially successful if you do that now. Absolutely. So let me ask you this, right? You've talked at length about the different structures and different types of fee-based models. And obviously, it's pretty clear that if you're going to be working with somebody who is fee-based and within that, there's subcategories, that doesn't sound like a great idea. That's a pitfall is what I would call it. And so, you know, your show is financial residency and both Darshan and I are residents. And so, you know, a lot of early career physicians and I see my colleagues saying these things and making these mistakes left and right. So what would be some common pitfalls with the exception of what you've already talked about in terms of how to hire a financial planner? If that's what you feel is appropriate for you, what are some other common pitfalls or early career mistakes that you will see physicians make that are just big no-knows that if you could get the word out there, what you already have been for several years, but just for our listeners here. Yeah, of course. So just to recap on the few that we've shouted on, so being an ostrich, I call it right, shoving your head in the sand and being like, I'll figure it out another day. That's a big no-known because you won't. Choosing the wrong advisor and then also goes in the fact of like buying the wrong products and usually that comes from choosing the wrong advisor. So you think like, oh, I'm going to hire this person. They're going to be a great financial advisor. When in reality, all they do is sell insurance and all roads lead back to insurance. Northwestern Mutual is a great example of this. They pitch all sorts of med schools and residencies and fellowships and all it is is insurance. All roads lead back to it. They've got killer pitches and millions of dollars in marketing to sell you coverage and that's it. You know, I kind of write, I'm going to interject there. I will say that and think we're going to use their name here, but I am extremely grateful for them because I don't think I would have gone down this journey of just financial education and just kind of found this passion. If I wasn't approached by two agents from them and was so close to getting disability insurance and I was like, let me pause and kind of educate myself about the product that I'm getting. And then that's when I found Wycoon Investor and I just went down this rabbit hole and you know, that's how I got to where I am. So I'm very thankful to them on that with that respect that, you know, I had a conversation and then I decided to teach myself. So I also consider myself very fortunate. So I just wanted to, I don't know if I should have shared that with you before, but I always think about that when we talk about that. That's neat. I mean, good thing that something good came out of Wycoon Investor because it's probably the only thing that came out. It's an exception. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. In grad school, I actually interviewed there in one of those questions they asked is out of all your friends and family, how many policies do you think you can sell in the next 12 months? Oh my god. That was like in our first interview. I was like, yeah, this isn't for me. This actually sounds pretty horrible. So no, thanks. I'm good. And we've talked about, you know, the the doctor parking lot just keeping up with the Joneses looking around, buying the bigger house, the doctor McMansion, thinking that there's, you know, a dream home or a forever home that you're going to be in. Sorry to burst that bubble. Like, I totally understand the American dream and what we're all told and kind of sold the story of when you get up and you're going to grow up and you're going to do all these things and you're going to have this really nice house and it is yours. And now that's great, except for it doesn't need to be a $2 million house. You know, kind of some people like $2 million. Like in the coasts, that is still a lot of money. But that is what a lot of doctors are reaching for is a multi-million dollar house. And then you're going to feel house poor. And that's not a way to do it. House is yes, they're an asset, but they're an asset that doesn't earn income. And so you're kind of parking your money. It's almost like dead money in the house. Still need a house. We need one obviously to retire. You don't want to have a payment. But if all of your extra money is going to the house, that means that you are actively making the decision to put more money into the house. And that means that you're not going to have the nice vacations. You're not going to have the nice cars. You're not going to have all the dining out. You're going to have all these other things that you wanted to do, but your house took up all that money. So that's a real tough one. I always kind of say in any of the presentations I give is that insurance is insurance investments are investments and never mix the two. And it sounds so simple, except for when you start talking to someone who sells insurance, they make it sound like it's the best investment you could ever make. And it's not. It's insurance. Are we talking about the very beginning about protecting your income? And you do that via insurance, whether it's disability or term coverage, those are important. But when they start selling them as the best investment you can make and you can park your money here and you can borrow from make all these things, all it is is tons and tons of fees and lots of commission like these guys and gals that sell this stuff like the whole life and the permanent insurance that are making $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $30,000, a policy. If you think about that and they make, I don't know, let's just say $10,000 on the low end on a policy, they need 20 suckers to make doctor money. That's it. Is that your money? Is it on a one time commission? And then they earn a trail of five to maybe nine percent of whatever your your premium is at your pain in a year. Every year that you keep it active. So that's why you see a lot of guys and gals that sell these products. They're not trying to knock out a park and sell thousands of policies. They got to sell a couple dozen and if they do that for 15 years, 20 years, and then they can retire, but they're retiring with a ton of money that's coming to them in the form of those those premiums and commissions that are in trails that are being paid every single month. Yeah, so I know. Oh, there's a lot of. There's a lot of pieces that you can get mixed up in, but there's also a lot of good things that come out of it. So just don't a lot of times we see people, physicians that are excited to get started and then feel very trapped because they don't feel comfortable because they're not an expert. And I want everyone to understand this. It is okay to not be an expert in everything that you do. You are extremely smart and you're probably the top of your class and you put us next to anyone else in the country and you're going to be significantly smarter. I know that you walk into a room and you're probably the smartest person in the room. But when we talk about money, it's okay to not be the smartest, but I know you can understand it. So if you just put a little time and effort into it, you will be very smart. You might be starting from a very low financial acumen now. But within a year, if you just every once in a while, once, twice a week, toss a podcast on or read a part of a book or read a blog post, like watch a YouTube video. I don't care how you're getting. Hopefully it's good financial knowledge, but if as long as you're doing something and you're looking at your cash flow, you're trying to make little, little improvements every single time. In a year, you will feel so much more confident and comfortable and understand how your money works. It is bad as some of these things are that we see physicians doing. If you just start to listen and educate and teach yourself these things on the other end, it's so nice and so much better. And I think coming back to this overall health, wealth, you know, mindset that if you have your money in your financial house and order, things will be easier for you from an overall wellness perspective. It doesn't mean that you're going to make more money as a resident or a fellow. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you will feel more in control and more confident and things won't feel as overwhelming and stressful. Yeah. So, you know, on the flip side of things, you know, it's great advice you talk about the pitfalls and things. What are those big ticket items that pre-meds or residents or fellows should know? You know, on social media, I'm getting hit up a lot, saying, hey, Dar, if you're a resident, I'm getting into medical school. What's the advice you have for me, you know, in terms of is it investing? Is it saving? Is it investing in myself through books and education? What are those top two or three things that you think every young physician should know? For those that are still taking on debt, the best debt to take out is not to take out debt. So, what I mean by that is if you need to borrow 50K for tuition and you've got a little bit of money for room and board that you need to be able to live, but that doesn't mean that you also need to take a bunch of vacations and pull out more money to buy a car and to do all these things because it's cheap debt. You don't have to pay anything on it for five more years. That debt will come back and it will absolutely be a lot more than what it is when you originally borrowed it and you're already teaching yourself really bad financial habits. So, because you have the ability to pull money out and to live, you know, beyond your current means, don't do that. It is really, really hard to stop that cycle, that mental cycle. It's easy, if someone doesn't, it's not borrow, but mentally you're going to be teaching yourself some really poor financial habits very early on. So, take out debt. That is okay from a student loan perspective. But where I see residents a lot of the time, they will have credit card debt and it won't be because they had to travel for interviews. They had credit card debt because they wanted to take a nice vacation or they wanted to do something by a new car but buy a little too much of a car that then had a bigger payment and then they kind of forward something else and that was now their emergency fund is swiping the credit card. That's not a good way to live. I understand that things come up. I remember when Taylor was interviewing and we didn't have a ton of money even though I was still working and making good money. We didn't have, it wasn't like we were scourge McDuck rolling around a bunch of gold coins. It was tough. So, I understand that if you have to take on debt to travel, to, you know, for interviews out, I guess maybe that's opening up now. I know last year it wasn't a big deal but it will happen again where you're doing on-site interviews and things. That stuff's okay. Don't beat yourself up over that. There's a lot of other things you can beat yourself up. Don't do it with that one. But if you're looking at it going, well that wasn't to further my career or better myself. That was because I wanted to enjoy this crazy, you know, guys tripped a Vegas and spent 8K on a credit card. That isn't good. Don't do those things. Understand the amount of student that you're taking and if you are about to be a resident understanding the repayment options, understanding how it influences if you're single versus married, if your spouse works, how you might need a file if it's married filing join or separate. Like student debt is a big, big issue and it's a tough thing. If you're going for PSLF or public service loan forgiveness, you need to know that upfront. I think a lot of residents should just get into an income driven repayment option and pretend like they're going for PSLF even if they're potentially not like it. Let's say you're going to be your physician. Most emergency medicine physicians are not going to work for a 501 C3, but we still have a few. So just because you think you're going into a specialty that never works for a 501 C3, that's not the case. So you want to keep your options open and make sure that you're understanding the debt that you're taking out. And it might feel like a really big number, but don't become debt immune and just say, oh, just add it on to the pile. It wasn't matter. I'm already 300K in debt. We have 300K in debt to buy that business. It doesn't mean that you need to take on 40 or 50K in car debt on top of credit card debt or a personal loan. You've seen residents that have had credit card debt that didn't refide into a personal loan and then got back into credit card debt because they didn't learn any financial habits other than to keep stacking debt. So just be very careful because debt is really, it's really easy to get caught up in and then it increases your lifestyle and then when you wake up, you go, oh my gosh, where did all this money go? Why do I feel like I work? And instantly it's gone out of my paycheck. It's a really rough feeling and it's really hard to unwind way harder than getting into that place. It's like losing weight. It's super easy to put on 40 pounds. It's super hard to lose. Five. Absolutely. Less than 40. That's such a good point, right? I mean, we know that the cost of higher education is just astronomical. Again, you've talked about that at length on your show, both for undergraduate and then obviously for all professional and graduate programs. Sometimes I think about this, both as a first and second year medical student when you spend most of your time on campus, it still doesn't make sense why somebody has to pay 50 to $60,000 for education there. But then especially for us for third and fourth year when you're doing clinical rotations, which majority of the time are not even on campus, but you're still paying $45,000, $50,000. I never made any sense to me whatsoever. And you know, again, to your point earlier on, which you've kind of just beat a couple of times now saying that you can't put your head in the sand. You can't be an ostrich. You have to invest yourself. I remember, you know, again, I've had, I've got undergrad debt and I have tons of medical suit debt. My wife, she, you know, we weren't lucky enough that our parents were able to pay for it. So both of us together in North of 500,000, right? I mean, what is it? The average physician comes out with 8185, 187, something around that, right? So we, I think that number is such a big deal. I mean, it does factor in people who have none who like parents paid for it or grants or whatever, but our average when you actually have the debt, our average is a little, is a little north of 300. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we crushed that number, right? And so for me, what's per, per physician though? Okay. So like, there'd be like six. So if you're in the five, you're below it. Okay. No, we're well over five. Yeah, I was just being very generous to us, but we're over six. Um, but uh, so it, you know, for me, personally, honestly, Ryan, it was like, this was the greatest stressor just thinking about like, what is going to happen? The uncertainty of PSLF because I didn't understand the situation. I didn't understand debt. I didn't understand PSLF, how it worked. And I had these conversations. I would say on a weekly basis with my core residents, when I talked them about PSLF or whether they should be doing an IDR, or if they're not really sure what the game plan is in the future, right? Because we're approaching we're going to be attendings. And it's, it goes back to not understanding how this system works, how their own debt works and looking at these clickbait things, so how what was it? 97% of people got rejected for PSLF that article 99, 99% rejected. And so people like uncovered it, it was, it was like 55% didn't even felt the application correct. Exactly. And so it's hard application by like, come on. Yeah. I mean, you know, and then again, we don't have time to get into like how competent some of these loan providers are in terms of doing their job. And you know, it just goes back to that point. Like you have to invest in this and you have to look out for your back. Like you have to, you know, you have to watch your own back to do this. But I want to come back to this point of the cost of higher education, right? Let's just pretend in a hypothetical world that, I don't know if the president of the ACGME reaches out to you, Ryan and me loves what you're doing. And he wants to say, right, I want you to come help restructure because this is getting out of hand and in 10 years, it's just not even going to be at the rate that it's going. It's just not going to be sustainable. What would you, or like, how would you help restructure in terms of the cost of at least medical education is what I would say? This might be a really loaded question. It can, it could be a simple, it's like, help put it making financial education a core component of the curriculum or, you know what I mean, do you have any thoughts to that? Well, I think every med school and residency and fellowship program should have some financial wellness attached to it and not done by even people like me. I mean, I feel like I'm a unicorn in the field and I'm one of the good people because I don't sell products and I'm actually married into medicine. But like, don't have the talks done by insurance agents that are then going to turn around and say, we're going to offer all this free planning just by my products. Like, they lead you into this. It's like the letting the, letting the fox in the, the henhouse concept. Like, it's terrible, but they need to have high quality information that's presented to you. Now the cost of education, I think we're on a lot of trouble because the government has stepped in a number of years ago and is allowing basically anyone to go and qualify for, for student loans, which is I don't, I fundamentally want everyone to have an education. But what that teaches the colleges and the graduate schools and the medical schools is we can keep raising our rates and these kids are going to keep taking out the debt and the government's going to pay our bills. So what are they doing? They're raising their costs eight, nine, ten percent a year, year over year. It's disgusting how much they're doing it. And until the government gets out of that business, they are not going to stop raising their rates. It's as simple as that. Or if they let people default on their loans and right now you can't get it discharged like that's with you. If that ever occurred, they're going to be a little more, I think, apprehensive on who they're letting in and how that would work. And I don't know if that is actually an answer or not. But right now, the money is there. It's guaranteed by the government and they're going to keep raising rates. And we just did the math for UCSD here for our client to send their one year old right now. I think maybe she's two, but we just did the math that if she was to go to in state, literally, they live here in San Diego and do that. It's going to be about $400,000 for an undergraduate degree in 17 years to 21 years out. That makes no sense. Yeah, it doesn't. But that's if I look at the last 20 years of data, it's telling me how much they increased tuition and room and board. I can pull the data. It's all there. And then all I do is drag the formula out a little bit longer and add it up. And it's going to cost about $400,000 for an undergraduate degree. And I don't see any way out of that unless the money isn't guaranteed to be there. It's unfortunate the way it is. But from a curriculum standpoint, they should be slamming this into kids that are in first and second and fifth, you know, seventh grade, high school, college, med school. It should be everywhere. Financial literacy should be everywhere. And it's not anywhere. It's like an opt-in class in your senior year of high school. And that's it. And then they expect all of us to understand how money works and how to not get into debt and how to not do dumb things with their money. It's and it's really unfortunate or physicians because you don't even take business courses. You're all stuck in the sciences, which is where you want to be. That's great. But it should be required like a basic fundamental of money class. This is what a 401k is. This is an iris. This is what stocks and bonds and mutual funds and all these other things are. So you at least understand how money works. So it's not just like, oh, well, this I got the statement. It says, pay for, you know, $44 is your minimum payment. And I pay that. All of a sudden, I'm getting interest charges on top of interest charges that are 20% and get stuck. And it's really unfortunate. So I think med schools specifically could really take hold of this and go, hey, for the better of our profession as a whole, we should teach these kids how money works. And it doesn't have to be, 20 hours a week. Just make it one of those classes one semester. Yeah, dude. And what I'll say is actually now that I think of it, you know, you're talking about undergraduate education is these 17 when you're 16, 17, 18, 18 year old when you're applying. And that's when you have to fill out these applications for financial aid or considered the loans that you're going to take out for undergrad, no 17 year old. Like I wasn't thinking about that. I was just thinking about going hanging out with my friends living on campus, getting away from home, getting some independence. Right. Oh, sure. I'll take out $25,000 a year, whatever. We'll pay it back later. And then it's monopoly money. Exactly. That's so much money. Like you don't even, you can't fathom what $100,000 looks like sitting out on a table. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to sign up for that amount of debt or more. So at the very least, it should be like before you sign up or apply, you should have a mandatory few hour class and like, you know, to try to understand what debt is and compound, you know, interest and how to pay back child structure. I mean, we do a bit so many other things yet when it comes to this, yeah, I definitely don't have the answers, but I mean, I do think that again, this is kind of why I'll give you a shout out here because, you know, it's it's platforms like yours that make this information and education so easily accessible, right? That people can kind of just listen to it in the car and kind of, you know, while they're whatever like, not during rounds, but like, you know, on their run or whatever it might be. And the more we talk about it, and I think it is becoming more widely known. And then it's going to trickle down into the undergrad level and maybe at the high school level. I do think there are some at least with social media. This is a great thing that they're, you know, the next generation, I guess, is a Gen Z. Gen Z is already popping in. Okay, they're pretty good when it comes to like, I remember talking to my cousin about it, and he's 20 years old and he started a company three years ago and he's been doing so well. And I was talking to him about ideas about developing a website and, you know, how to get these products out and stuff like that. So there is some good happening. So I'm encouraged. It's not all doom and gloom, but we got a long way to go, man. A long way to go. And that's where it comes back into, you know, if you had a budget, you know, how money flows in and out, right? If you don't, it's okay, learn how to do it. But in earmark, a little bit of that money to invest in yourself. You're probably going to buy books. I mean, there's tons of stuff free. Like I've been doing my show for almost four years now. It's all free hundreds, like 400 episodes, right? I'm not saying go back into it. It feels like it'd be torture for someone to do that. But you're going to learn a lot just by listening absolutely for free. But you want a more consolidated version by a couple of books, right? And learn about money that way. And then keep going. But you don't have to spend thousands of dollars in some gurus package or course or whatever. Like you can start small. And the idea of those to start to actually start. And then if you find something that was helpful or useful, tell someone about it. Because all of you need help with money. Just tell someone, you don't have to, this isn't a lecture. This isn't like, you know, hey, I ran into Darshan. I'm like, hey, man, you need to get your stuff together and you need to do this. No, like, hey, around this book, super helpful. I'm done with it. Here you go. Just help each other out because you're all in the same boat, whether you know it or not, heads up. You're all in the same boat. You don't really understand money. That's okay. It's not your fault. But we need to take it stance now and to learn about money. So then you all feel very confident and smart. Absolutely. I'll say, I remember, I mean, I started Richette Portad was probably the first financial book, like I've read, then it was The Richest Man in Babylon. And then it was, I will teach you to be rich by Robert Shetty, right? And those books are just very conceptual books. And, you know, they just, they kind of introduce you to this field of, you know, being financial literate, right? And hopefully an hour in, we're not scaring people, but we're making them more aware of their situation. And so Ryan, what are the other resources that you recommend? You know, we know you have a podcast. You've got a book out. What do you recommend that people go to? Yeah. So this is another book. And I have no incentive. I've actually never met this guy in real life, but he's another financial advisor. And I think his book, I know it's not all true, but the story is fantastic is how a second greater beat Wall Street and his name's Alan Roth. It's a fantastic book. It's, if you're super into finance, you are, and you know all this stuff, like it's not going to be that helpful. But if you're new and learning or like intermediate, it's a fantastic book to have to understand how investments work and how Wall Street is against you. I mean, the finance field like my whole industry is not your friend. Everyone that works in finance be very skeptical because they all have products to sell you. And they all think their products are amazing and going to help you. Some of them truly believe that they're helping. That's the scary part is they, they don't actually know how much harm they're causing. But that book is a really cool book to get started if you're trying to understand investing. And then I talked about the millionaire next door and the next millionaire next door. Absolutely must reads. Those will help more with the mindset and connect more than the other books that you just talked on. Those two books are going to be way, do way more for mindset and understanding the psychology around money and why we do things we're doing. It'll be hugely beneficial. So between those three, you'll have a really good knowledge of at least a baseline knowledge. Love it, man. And so, and you know, there might be some people who don't want to 100% work with a financial planner, financial advisor. But they also don't want to be completely 100% and read books and kind of listen to podcasts. They maybe want some guardrails, a little bit of guidance, but they're still DIY, right? Is there some type of fellowship or something that they could do to learn about this? I see what you're doing. Yeah, we have the financial fellowship. You can check it out financial fellowship.com. And we had a live component to this and we're doing a bunch of things with it. We have since kind of revamped the program a little bit due to COVID and just people's time and constraints of that. But that is an option. But yeah, not everyone needs to work with a planner. And if you do, there's also various ways to work with one. Like we have our outpatient planning. We with clients one time a year and they get three hours of access to us via email and voicemail, right? It's the people want to do it themselves but not by themselves. That option, we have tons of people that opt into that because they want to truly understand how it is, but they don't want to just go off on their own just yet. But you don't have to just hire an advisor. It sounds weird with an advisor saying that but like you don't have to hire an advisor to get all this done. I don't want you to think that that's the missing loop. That's the black box. There is no black box. It's going to take a little hard work. You're going to have to put some time into it because again, no one should care more about your money than you do. So you have to read some books. You have to watch some YouTube or some videos or some podcasts. They at least get in the right direction to know what you're even looking for what you want. But I mentioned some exercises here. Talk through those things if you have a spouse and just learn what your goals are. At least start there. Figure out what it is. I want to get better with money. It's not a really good goal. If you said, but hey, I'd really like to have an emergency fund within the next 12 months and that emergency fund should be like $20,000. That's a really smart goal. It's specific and it's actual. It's meant measurable. It's realistic. It's time bound. It's a smart goal. So at least set a few of those around what you want to do with money. And that'll help kind of lead you also in the right direction. Love it. Well, Brian, this has been absolutely amazing. This is something that it's a topic that we all need to hear. No matter how many people want to just refrain from it. This is something that us physicians definitely need to hear and get accustomed to and get comfortable with. I just want to thank you so much for being genuine, speaking from the heart and actually being there for people and caring. I do want to lease in trivia. We brought up keeping up with the Joneses a couple of times. Joneses is actually a street in Savannah, Georgia, I believe. It's called Jones Street. The whole premise of it is how many steps can you build to your front door was a competition. The more steps you had was essentially keeping up with the Joneses. That's kind of that's kind of where it comes from. So I recently learned that about like two months ago. So don't I throw that in there. But, um, right. Yeah. Oh, but the best thing. There you go. Right? Right. trivia night. We'll come up. How are in 10 minutes in and there you go. That's all I care about trivia night. What can I nail an abar at Thursday night? Um, but Ryan, where can people find you? You've got not one, but two podcasts out now, right? Yeah. So we have financial residency that we do, uh, release every Monday and every Friday. Friday is is all listener content that comes in. So people in our community call in their, their financial health assessment is literally what we call it. And, uh, my business partner, Casey and I, uh, we talk and we listen to the voicemail on air and then we talk about where we see the gaps and what they could do and not do. Um, it's been widely popular. We've been doing it a couple of years now. And then I also host another podcast with Dr. Jimmy Turner. He runs the physician philosopher. Um, and that's called money meets medicine and we talk a lot on the behavioral side of money there. So it's not a lot of ones and zeros. It's a lot of the mindset and behavior things that you need to understand around money. Awesome. Well, love that man. We're going to link that to the show. And I also want to put a plug in here for for the book. I mean, this, the book is an easy read. It's an awesome blueprint. And, uh, you know, I know, I know we didn't touch a lot on it. But, uh, you know, I've, anybody who I've come across, I've recommended that and they really enjoyed it. It's a short read too. Uh, Dars has a copy as well. So I know that he's working on his way. So I meant, I said, again, I want to thank you. You know, that I'm a huge fan. I've been listening for a couple of years and, you know, I'm, I'm, again, like you said, you know, we're all very type A. I'm the type of person who kind of just researches every little thing before making a decision. And, uh, you know, you have helped tremendously in just make my life better in terms of this, the financial literacy component of it. So thank you for everything that you've done and that you're going to continue to do. And I'm appreciate your time. Thanks. Thanks for having me on, guys. Appreciate it. Awesome. Before we end, don't forget to go hang out with my friend Dr. Aaron Weisman over at her podcast, Dr. Me first on your favorite podcast app or Lord more about how to connect with the Queen of Sass by heading to Drapodcastnetwork.com slash Dr. Me first. I also want to give Ryan a huge shout out for being recognized as a top 100 financial planner by investor pdf for three years in a row. He has been doing incredible things and providing financial education via several different platforms. And I have been a direct beneficiary of that. And I know he's in a continuum to do that and several of my colleagues have also benefited from that. So thank you so much for everything you do. Ryan and excited to see all the great things in your future. Now before you take off, guys, please remember this important disclaimer that everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the practice of medicine nor should it be construed as medical advice. No physician patient relationship is formed and anything discussed in the podcast does not represent the views of our employers. I will also say that anything discussed in today's show does not qualify as financial advice. So please be sure to discuss with your own financial planner or reach out to Ryan and you know you can learn how to work with him with the show notes as well. However, if you enjoy the show, please be sure to subscribe, review and share with anyone who you think will gain value from this. And until next time, thank you for listening.