215. The Psychology of Enough: Money, Comparison, and Knowing When to Stop | Meagan McGuire, CFP

0:00 Welcome to Medicine Redefined. I'm Dr. Ultima Sharajah. And I'm Dr. Darsha. Let's put the hell back in healthcare. If you're a high performer who wants a clear plan for longevity, performance, and staying active with fewer setbacks, and you want to work with me directly, you can book at refininghealthrx.com. Most people assume the hard part of money is earning it. Megan McGuire sees something different. As a financial planner for physicians, dentists, and other medical professionals, she often meets people who have already hit their number but can't stop chasing the next one and can't say what it's all for.

0:41 Megan is a certified financial planner, a partner at SLP Wealth, a senior advisor at Student Loan Planner, and the host of the Financially Free Era podcast. She's also a returning guest. Today, we dig into the psychology of enough. Is the fire movement dead? And what did die with zero get right? We cover two comparison traps, the experience trap where someone else's vacations rewrite your goals and the achievement trap, where you see other people's successes, but never their sacrifices. Megan explains how to tell whether a shiny opportunity is worth the squeeze, how the 4% rule turns enough into a number, and what the new student loan limits mean for future physicians.

1:21 If you've ever wondered whether you're working towards something or just running from something, this one's for you. Also, if student loans are a part of your picture, Megan's team is kind enough to offer our listeners $100 off a first consult with Student Loan Planner. The link is in the show notes. All right, let's begin. Is the fire movement dead? I don't think it's dead. I think it has had its shining moment. And I think people have gotten exhausted from maybe going that route and realizing, oh, I don't know if I knew what that exactly meant in a lot of different ways. And they're rethinking it. I think that's what it is. Yeah, it's funny, right?

2:02 In every domain of life that's important for people, I think that there's the pendulums we talk about it, whether it comes to health and supplementation and wellness, and even in the finance space. I remember my foyer into this was graduated in May 2017. and somehow stumbled on White Coater Investor and then spent the next month, every waking hour, just going down every rabbit hole that I could. And I just loved it. I mean, somebody who identifies as a pretty frugal person, there's a whole life. That was the goal. Like that was the goal. I even so much. So when I was thinking about disability insurance for, in my mind, I had 45 to 50 as where I'm going to be able to self-insure.

2:45 So every plan that I came up with, conversations I was having with insurance agents, I said, listen, I really just need to get to just 45, 50. And that's why instead of having a level policy, I had the graded policy. And over time, you know, your, I don't want to say value has changed. Well, maybe some level of your value has changed because you're in your 20s and transition to your 30s. I'm almost 40 now. And you start to realize because you've given so much of your time up, at least in the medical field, but a lot of other fields as well. You start to ask yourself, it's like, what are we doing all this for? And so enter maybe 2023. Is that when Bill Perkins put his book out?

3:25 somewhere around that time. So for those who don't know, I think we've referenced it a couple of times, right? Darsh, Die With Zero, nominal book. And I actually even read this blog on My Code Investor about his thoughts. I thought he would be super anti this. He's not. He's actually accepted it a little bit. And so this idea of fulfilling or getting net experiences in life, right? Is it experience dividends he talks about rather than just having money in the back? was something that was really, really appealing to me. And I'm wondering, because I think maybe you and I were probably not that far apart in age. We work in slightly different fields, but we have a similar mentality, clearly, as we were talking about offline. Where have you found yourself to land?

4:05 Was the fire movement something that was appealing to you? You got into finance really early on in your life. Were you somebody who was like, I'm going to save pennies here, pennies there, so I can be financially independent? And where are you now? Yeah, no, that's a good question. So I did, I'm kind of an odd bird in the sense that I did go to school for finance. I went for a business degree, concentration in finance, and then stayed in finance. Like after graduation, I worked at a financial planning firm and, you know, did my own thing. And so I've been in the financial planning space since I was literally 20, 19, 20 years old, almost 15 years later, I've been in this space in a lot of different ways, but still in financial planning.

4:51 So I think at the time, why I was interested in financial planning was more of, and a little bit about my background, I came from the need From the background of, I had a parent who passed unexpectedly. He was the breadwinner for our family. And we were obviously not prepared for that. At the time, I remember asking myself, I don't know how we're going to pay bills or mortgage. I don't know how our life is going to be the same. And thankfully, he had life insurance. That was something I, you know, as a kid, I didn't know about. I learned about very quickly, like when that came through and helped us pay the bills and do the things to keep our life the same.

5:34 But I got interested in finance because I realized, holy cow, like my whole world were like revolves around the need for that tool money. Yeah. And I didn't know anything about it. Like I wasn't taught about it. We're not taught about it standardly. And so I was like, well, I'm going to go to school and study it and learn more about it. And I got into financial planning. So for me, it was more of like a necessity. Like I needed to learn more about it. And then I realized, oh, if I learn about it, I can teach other people about it. And so for me, it wasn't so much like I would like to retire as early as possible. For me, it was more like I'm really intrigued by this topic.

6:15 I need to know about this topic. Other people need to know about this topic too. And wow, yeah, financial planning is cool because I could really kind of write my own future with the tool of money. Yeah. And so I wouldn't say I was fire-minded. I really wasn't. I was just, I need to pay my bills and start saving and make a life for myself. My partner, Travis, was very much fire mindset. He had a mindset of fire. He retired early on the student loan planner space. And so us pairing up and joining together doing financial planning was, For folks who had student loans, it was more like, again, scratching my curiosity, bird or bug, I guess is the saying, and going from there.

6:59 So I'm a little bit maybe on a totally different spectrum than White Coat Investor in that way. I just see it more as I would really like to design a life that I want to live versus only focus on retiring as early as possible. And so I never quite understood that. I understood the FIRE movement. I understood why people were attracted to it. But I also would encourage folks to think about the now. What do we want to be doing now? What do we want to be doing with our time versus always thinking about the future? So that might be a long-winded way of telling you how I got to where I am. Yeah. No, I love it. And I'm taking this for granted that most of the listeners are going to know these terms that we're using.

7:43 So let me just elaborate on that. So fire, financial independence, retire early. And I think generally most people would say there's fast fire, there's fat fire. So many branches off that, right? But generally it's, hey, just sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. Try to save as much money as you possibly can and try to retire at a much earlier age than 65. And that started shifting. People started questioning, saying, okay, well, like, why, you know, what are you going to do when you retire? You're not going to just work really, really hard, hustle your whole life, go into medical school, and then just play golf. Like, that's not, that's not reality. So maybe financial independence is the goal. And then the Bill Perkins concept, what his argument is that, again, you know, if you go to the grave, you can't take that money with you.

8:25 And really, you're trying to maximize for fulfillment. And literally, actually, he talks about the goal is to die with zero dollars in your bank account. Initially, I thought that was figurative, but there was a really good post that I'll link for people Jordan Grumman talks about where he's actually saying, no, the goal is to time it so you're dying with zero. Now, nobody knows when they're going to die, so you can't actually do that. But, you know, he makes a lot of really amazing arguments about, hey, people to think about, well, I want to leave kids money and this, and his argument, well, why not enjoy that time, right? Give them that time. that lump sum that's coming in retirement, give that to your children early on so they can enjoy it and you can enjoy it with them. And so there are a lot of really good points. And I recommend that people read it if you haven't yet.

9:06 My question for you is, given that you work with so many professionals in the healthcare sector and field, like some of these adjacent ones, dentists and nursing and whatnot, Have you seen this pendulum swing a little bit? Have your conversations changed where people started asking, why am I doing that? And the other reason I ask this is because this word purpose has been used a lot over the last couple of years. Maybe COVID has something to do with it. I don't know, Darsh, you can comment on this, where people are starting to think about why. The question why comes up a lot. And I know this is a question that Darsh and I have just explored a lot on this in the last six years. And my question is, I'm curious if people's mindset has started shifting in your planning, in your conversations.

9:48 Yes. Yeah, I would say, and I think, yes, I think they've been shifting. And I think by nature of who we work with, we do work with a lot of folks who have student loan debt, which is a lot of medical professionals. The vast majority are medical professionals. But I think some of that mind shift happened, I would say, I mean, I started working in what year, you know, 2014, really, like starting on financial plans. I think I really started seeing a shift closer to maybe 20, I'd say like 18, 19, where people started, you know, talking about, okay, yes, of course, it's important to retire. I have this big student loan balance, though.

10:29 I've got all these other competing priorities. So I started to see some shifting there in some of the conversations. Yeah. But I think it started maybe more so with the conversation of, and I think this is maybe a trigger word for people too, but burnout. Like I think people started telling me and talking about, hey, I'm working a lot. Like I'm working a lot. I'm paying a lot towards my student loans. I'm paying a lot towards XYZ, my retirement, whatever it is. I'm just feeling burned out. I don't know if it needs to be a new job. I don't know if I need to reduce hours. But I started hearing those conversations a lot. before the actual shift away from maybe fire specifically, or if that's what they originally started planning for.

11:15 So I think burnout became a very common thing that we were talking about a lot in meetings as it related to how much they were making, how much they needed to make to continue to save the way they were saving, and unwinding some of the plan from that place, For sure. I guess I chime in here kind of thinking about the constructs of money, right? I mean, this topic is so complicated, especially as we kind of think about why people choose to do the things they do. Like, why did fire even come up in the first place? Why did Die With Zero, that philosophy come up in the first place? When I think of social media really coming on strong with COVID, Money to me was always kind of something that had people distinguish between classes, right?

12:03 You could always tell who the rich were, middle class and lower class, right? But now with social media, anyone can perform and act and show that they might be in a certain class that they might actually not be in, right? And we tend to see that in certain cities, certain demographics. And so I think what happens now is you start to turn into social capital. And people now want to pay for experiences. But when you start to do those types of things, you also have to justify why you're doing it. And therefore it becomes a die with zero concept where, okay, I might as well start buying into experiences and saying, this is the reason why I'm choosing to spend my money. And of course, with that comes a sense of fulfillment, purpose, happiness, joy that you now spend with your family.

12:45 But I'm curious to see too, if there is going to be this swing back the other way once you get after, was it Gen Z, Gen Alpha now, and maybe in 30 years where people start to say, okay, well, what's the next form of capital? How do we now distinguish ourselves I don't know, maybe people are to retire early. I know that's a conversation I've been having with a lot of my friends is with artificial intelligence coming in and Megan, please speak on this. If you have any experience or ideas on this, how do people start thinking about their money now? Have you had conversations with people about artificial intelligence coming and their jobs maybe getting replaced? Do they start to now think about their money differently? There's an extent on that.

13:27 I think when it comes to AI, I feel like more of the conversations are around what it's doing to values of investments, for example, and companies and the appreciation of shares between different tech companies. That's been kind of interesting. But I do think folks who are in the medical profession – I do think tend to be, and actually we did a survey about this. Like we did a survey of our big audience of like multiple different medical professionals, but our big chunk are physicians, dentists, and veterinarians. And AI was in maybe the top three areas. lists of concerns for folks. I think it was mostly on the physician side, I think it was maybe the top two things that people were listing as something that they were concerned about.

14:14 The number one thing that people were concerned about, though, with their profession as a physician was was reimbursement rates and the cost of care and what that looks like and maybe steady or not increasing wages, like wages not keeping up with inflation or keeping up with like the costs of services and things. So that was like the number one kind of concern. And then it was AI. And I think AI isn't terrifying medical professionals. professionals because there is still like a big human component to what you do, obviously. And you are going to want to talk to a doctor, not AI about your specific autoimmune disease or whatever it is that you're going through.

14:54 Like you're not going to want to talk to a robot about it. So, but that's what I've seen, what the conversations I've had as a financial professional, not like a medical professional, but is that different for you guys or how are y'all feeling being in the profession? Yeah. Old Puff, go ahead. Depends on the day. For me. It's, you know, I, this idea that humans do a bad job understanding exponential growth, I think is something that I'm paying a lot of attention to and reminding myself of. I... It is really, really amazing. And I'm constantly telling people how good it is. I mean, just Darsh and I, I think, use it a lot. And I use every single one of the platforms.

15:37 And they have limitations that I run up against. And I think that I'm running up against these limitations just because I find myself using it so much that they're probably losing context. And the other aspect of it, that some of the limitations that I do run up against are in subject matters that I have deep, deep expertise in. Which is not to say that it's not going to eventually gain that. Right? So there's this idea that Arthur Brooks came up. I don't know if Arthur Brooks came up with it, but in his book, Transit, he talks about fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Where fluid and intelligence... Have you read that book? I have not. Yeah, another really, really good one. But he's talking a lot about strivers.

16:18 And at some point, everybody, I guess David Brooks is another author who had the two mountains idea. Your first mountain, your climb, it's raw smarts. You're go, go, go earlier in your life. But you have a lot of energy and you can accomplish a lot of things. And then you go on to the next mountain in your life where you are trying to connect different ideas. You acquire a lot of wisdom from the mistakes that you made. And I would put at this juncture AI in the first category where it has a ton of fluid intelligence, which is why when I'm having this conversation with my trainees, I'm telling, we don't need to memorize facts and stuff. You are not gonna beat open evidence and chat GPT on recall. It's just not gonna happen. But how does it all connect, right?

16:58 That's where real world experience can get that. But the problem is I can't see it gets smarter and smarter, right? But supposedly GrokBot, you talk to it, it learns your preferences, it creates a profile on you and it starts adapting its behavior. Well, if that's what people are swearing by now, Darsha, I think you use a lot of GrokBot. then what's that going to look like three years from now? Because GrokBok wasn't even a concept three years ago. You know what I mean? So that rise has been so exponential that I just, I can't even fathom what that's going to be like. So it's a very real concern for me.

17:40 And some days I'm like, no, I'm going to be good. Other days I'm like, you know, what the hell are my kids going to do? I got two kids now. And like, I'm really, really concerned. And my, the only guardrail that I can, I think, build this point is to be incredibly fluent with the tools. So when that time does come, I'm somewhat irreplaceable. Does that answer your question? Yeah, that makes sense to me. I think, you know, and I feel like every generation, every has gone through something similar to this, like computers coming out, right? Like, imagine what our parents or grandparents were feeling like, oh, my gosh, like, my job is toast, like, I'm not ever going to be able to make money for my family again.

18:25 And now it's like, no, it's just made us a lot more efficient. It's made us connected, able to do a lot more things, a lot more you know, faster, more efficiently, you know. And so is this the next thing that's kind of like the big computer invention? Is this the next thing? Who knows? Like. It's a little different though, right? It is different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've never, people say industrial revolution and stuff. I know you're going to jump in here, but we've never had. intelligence. Yes, computers would put in code, but intelligence that can translate into the English language, you communicate back with us or articulate something that I'm trying to say better. Like sometimes I'm at a loss of words and I just give the raw idea to Claude or GPT and it's going to put this beautiful thing that much better.

19:13 I'm not saying like necessarily quote unquote AI slop, but also just cleaned up something. And I don't know if any technology Yeah, I mean... Go ahead, Darsh. Yeah, I agree with you all, in the sense that, you know, I don't know if we've had any technology that's going to kind of do what it's doing now. And, you know, I drive a Tesla and I tell people, if you've never been in one, you have to, just so you understand how crazy the full self-driving is and how much you can blindly trust it to keeping you safe. And I think when people first get in it, they're like, wait, this is real life. And it's like... Yeah. And, you know, I've been doing it for two years now, but it's just crazy to see.

19:55 And now, you know, Elon, of course, came out with the Roadster and flying cars and whatnot. I think the question becomes, you know, I know this is a financial topic and of course, we're going to also get back to that. But when we think about creativity, right? Like, what's it going to take for humans to be more creative? What becomes more of the purpose and meaning of life? Is that going to be almost self-destructive to where now we're starting to think about it too much and that we can't just be in the present moment? What do we use money for at this point, right? If we have a utopia, quote unquote, where we have people kind of doing things. But I think financially too, I think the other thing that I think about You know, me and my wife talk about is if we can be ahead of the curve and we can be more that upper echelon, if I'm going to get affected by it, I'm assuming everyone else is also going to be affected by it.

20:38 Right. And like or not, we do live in a world that's kind of stratified. Right. And I think the wealthy are probably doing things where one, they are trying to propel AI, but at the same time, trying to make it so that there still is this stratification. Because in the end, humans are about the social hierarchy, right? Like we are humans to the end. If we go by what Nietzsche says, we're going to act on the interests that we actually care about and not necessarily what the social constructs have a hold on us for. So it is definitely going to be interesting. Like Ultima, I think I am very pro-AI. I think it's something that's amazing and can help us. have an understanding and fulfillment in the world. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, I can definitely see how people start to get a little bit more freaked out about it, especially as physicians.

21:19 I mean, I use it all the time as well. I think a lot of the electronic medical records are starting to now adapt it into their own systems. You know, ultimately, she sent me that interview with Ariana Huffington at the amount of times that they talked about healthcare and that too, right? Like that was the constant example that they kept bringing up. But I don't see as many conversations from these frontier models or people who are writing these frontier models about the financials. So that's actually definitely what I'm curious about, because we'll always get op-eds. You can go on Substack and see a million articles about people talking about, yes, your job will get replaced. No, it won't. You will need universal based income. You'll see the other side of the pendulum. But from the top, you're not really seeing much of that conversation about, should people stack away money right now?

22:01 Or should they be sending and enjoying life? Because what the hell? It is. It's interesting. Yeah. I think, well, kind of like you were saying, you know, at the beginning, like I think in financial planning too, we are able to connect all the pieces together with that deep knowledge of financial planning. So like bringing all the way back to the beginning of that conversation, like I think, you know, in financial planning, it's knowing how all the pieces fit together. And then the human component, of course, what should people be doing financially to kind of prepare for what's next? You know, I think... Literally going back to the basics, like do we have money set aside for a rainy day? Do we have our emergency fund?

22:41 Do we have access to funds if we needed to? Are we investing still in a very intentional way with the timelines that we know exist today? So like if we know we want to be something as simple as buying a new home or upgrading a car. Like, do we have a game plan for that? Are we setting money aside for that? Are we planning for what we think retirement will look like, setting money aside for the future? I think it's just the balance of all those foundational things are still what we should be doing versus... Because I think what sometimes happens is people get decision fatigue or people get scared to even make decisions. So they might stockpile cash. And I think that's not doing yourself justice because then you're, you're, you're going backwards against inflation.

23:27 You're not having your money work for you. You're living in that fear-based mentality to where you could still be doing proactive and productive things with your money. So we, we definitely don't want to, I don't want this conversation about AI and finance and what you should be doing to scare you away from doing anything other than like still having the, the foundational basics like set up in your financial plan. Cause that's still, crucial and what our kids are going to be doing 20, 30 years from now with their own careers, like we will learn all together. We'll, you know, probably, we probably should still be funding education funds or having access to money for paying for education, or they're just going to learn everything from GrockBot and ChatGPT and Claude, and we won't have to pay for tuition in the future.

24:12 Who knows? And that money can be- For subscriptions? For something else. Yeah. When you said decision fatigue, do you mean they're not sure? Do I put it in stock? Do I put it in real? Like what do you mean by that? Yeah, decision fatigue. I think it's really just like if you're – and we live in that age now where you have access to so much information. It's like you could literally Google or Claude or ChatGPT anything and learn – Anything. And so that's great. But then it creates sometimes it can create a lot of decision fatigue, or it'll literally paralyze people from taking action and actually doing something because there's so many decisions and there's so many different directions you could go.

24:58 And so that's what we as planners, as humans, have to kind of sort through, sift through, talk through with people, having those human conversations about, okay, this is what you want. This is what you say you want. Here's how we could start to put a plan together to get there. And this is what's applicable to you. This is what's not applicable to you. Because that's the other part is, and y'all, I think physicians, doctors have been up against this forever with what was the like saying, like, don't Google your symptoms because it's always going to tell you you're going to die or whatever. Right. Yeah. WebMD and stuff. You know, so like that's the same in finance in a way, like don't Google something or don't like ask online something because it's going to give you maybe...

25:40 the most morbid answer or a billion answers that don't actually relate to you because you haven't given it all the information it specifically needs or all the context it needs. So I don't know. So that's maybe some thoughts there. Yeah. You know what I'll say is that you had a really good – episode a while back about whether an LLC is helpful for taxes or not. I thought it was funny because you had talked about tax strategists on there. A while back, I don't know, maybe I was looking at some tax content and I kept getting people about tax strategists. Some guy out there was like... I saved this doctor $300,000 in taxes and I saved this person, whatever. Now, these people are making a million dollars a year, but still like it was just these absurd amounts.

26:22 And so that's when I, you know, when my wife became an attending to, I, that's when I started having this conversation with our show. I was like, I need a tax strategist, right? That's what I need. I need to figure out how to save money. What's funny is that these conversations that I will have with Claude or GPT about tax strategy, it will almost never guide me on breaking those rules and say, no, this is not really a business deduction. This is not. So I'm like, okay, that's actually pretty cool. And I just kept thinking, I'm like, no, it's just, I don't think chat TPD is good enough for this. I don't think it's good enough. And so just listening to you and forget what your colleague's name was, who was on there. Yeah. Talk about, yeah, Sam, right about, okay, like, you know, bending the laws or sometimes outright breaking the laws is what some of these people are probably doing.

27:06 And, you know, it depends if you don't have a lot of integrity in our field, okay, sleeping at night, and then you surely can do that. And I always remind people like who is who are doing type of something like it doesn't matter unless you get audited, you get it audited, you better. I mean, like you can do that if you can sleep at night. But if you get audited, like all hell is gonna break loose. If you don't have your ducks in a row. But I guess something that came to mind for me is, you know, working with these overachievers, high agency individuals, how do you get them to focus? So you mentioned they have access to this information and they probably, if they hired you and your colleagues, your partners, they're clearly interested in getting the best out of their finances.

27:51 Yeah. And I think just naturally physicians and just high overachievers are wired to seek out information, try to process information and solve problems, you know. And when they're getting that, do you find that a lot of times there is a little bit of friction when they come to say, well, Megan, why are we not doing this? Or can we do this? I read this and, you know, and you have to just pull them back and say, listen, we're going to not do this. And here's why. And like, how do you tactfully coach somebody through you need to focus? We have a game plan. We're going to stick to the game plan and we're not going to worry about all this extra fluff. I think blinders is the term that you use in one of your. So walk me through that a little bit. Yeah. And I will say like even physicians within the physician community, like there's still a lot of different personalities, but I will say physicians do tend to be more of the problem solvers, which is amazing.

28:44 Like I feel like we're problem solvers too. And so there can be times where you may, and people have literally brought like chat GBT research or like, you know, chats to meetings, like, Hey, why are we not doing this? And then like you're saying, we have to kind of move back to, well, this is why we're not. So I think it comes down to redirecting to the goals that someone has told us. We're really trying to redirect back to what did you say you wanted to accomplish? You wanted to accomplish more time with your kids? Okay. Well, that's back into why we went through like this recommendation, why we did our savings strategy this way or our investment strategy this way.

29:24 and we walk into like, why did we build the plan the way we did pretty briefly and not like regurgitating the whole thing, but why did we do the things that we did? Is that still in line with what we're trying to accomplish? Yes or no. And does what you brought, maybe this other idea that you brought or thought about or heard about online, does that make our plan better or worse or does that distract us? And so we have to kind of call out distractions a lot. And I think, Fortunately, unfortunately, like physicians make great income. So you guys are targeted a lot for a lot of different things. Investment opportunities. Real estate is a huge buzzword, I think, in the physician community.

30:07 Alternative investments. Passive income is a buzzword. So, you know, these things are presented to you as things that could be better or could be something that helps optimize or improve their financial situation more effectively. And sometimes they could, but it's also, is that in line with what we talked about we're trying to go towards? Or has our plan changed? Have our priorities changed? Because some of those other things, like real estate, for example, I'm not against investing in real estate at all. But I think sometimes people position real estate as passive income. Like, oh, you should own a bunch of properties. You will make a bunch of passive income. That's how you build wealth.

30:48 And it can be. But then folks don't really unpack, like, what does that actually mean to own a bunch of real estate? Like, you've got to manage the properties or hire someone to manage the properties. It's kind of a liquid asset, unless you're, like, lending from it or borrowing from it to roll into the next property. So, yeah. There's just things that I think are sometimes missed when they're thinking about, oh, these are the results of a super successful strategy with that particular financial thing without knowing like the full process that like gets us to that successful result. And then, you know, sometimes people forget like the time that goes into those things to continue to optimize or continue to add to their financial strategy and success.

31:34 And they forget, oh, I only have so many hours in the day. And oh, yeah, my goal was to not work as much. Why am I wanting to add this to my plate? So we have to kind of back folks out into, what did you tell me you wanted to do? Has that changed? If it hasn't, then I think this is the right game plan still. Not to say that like any idea that you bring to a planner or like you think about adding to your portfolio later is a bad idea. Definitely not. It's just, of course, you want to run it through your own like thinking process on what Is this in line with what I wanted to do from the get go? Or is it a distraction? And sometimes that can help you answer the question on your own or answer that question with a professional.

32:19 You mentioned shiny, shiny objects. And so I'm wondering, when does a shiny opportunity actually fit the plan? Or has there been time where they brought these chat transcripts to you and you're like, actually, that's pretty good. Interesting. Do you want to make a pivot? And if so, let's explore that a little bit. Mm-hmm. There's definitely been times where it's like, we're not, again, we're not like shutting down every idea. It's just more so, is the idea, is the juice worth the squeeze? That's our saying. Like, is the effort worth the squeeze? And sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. So it's just taking those opportunities as they come and doing a quick assessment, deciding if it's even worth like continuing down the rabbit hole of like actually planning it out, running the numbers, doing You know, really, really starting to figure out if we can go that route or if it's if it's something that we're not even interested in and going down the rabbit hole on.

33:16 I'm trying to think. So one example or a couple examples in it, just the ones that are coming to mind have to do with like real estate is, you know, real estate. There was an opportunity to buy a property for a client, very low cost property. This person was trying to offload the property because they needed to move to a different state. They needed it to sell very quickly. They needed the capital from it. And so was that opportunity a actual good opportunity for someone who wanted to get into real estate? For this person, it was. They had family member in town in this location that could manage the property. They had the time and the desire to manage the property. So it was almost helpful to their family too, to help pay somebody to manage that.

34:02 And it was in an area that they felt like they could consistently rent out. So in And financing wise, like they had the capital to be able to finance it or to, you know, make it work financially if they didn't have a renter for a period of time. So, I mean, the stars aligned with that. But it was an opportunity that just kind of presented itself. And it was like, should we entertain this? And the answer was yes. But there's been other opportunities where we run the numbers and it's like, this is way too much risk to take on for your plan. And, you know, we'll give that that recommendation or that opinion. That's really what financial planning is, is here's our opinion. Here's our recommendation.

34:43 And. you take with it and do with, with it what you want. And there's been plenty of cases where folks are like, yep, okay. I agree with you. And then there's other cases where folks are like, yeah, I disagree with you. I'm going to do this anyways. And so, and that's okay. You know? So I think, you know, in financial planning, it's, it's about having like that thought partner too, to, to, kind of check yourself for these types of ideas before you execute versus like reactionary where you've done the thing. Now you want to go talk to somebody about the thing. And if you have to unwind it, that's like the worst position to be in. So it's more about like proactive planning at that point. Yeah, I'm just thinking about parallels to medicine, where somebody might come to you and say, how should I approach this?

35:25 And you'll give them advice. They'll come back two months later and say, no, actually, I did something completely different. I decided to do the juice cleanse instead or whatever you have. Yeah. It's like, okay, that's fine. Let's try it again. Maybe a different approach, right? I, I'm thinking about the real estate example that the real estate piece is so interesting because people who've been really successful in their life with the real estate. Oh, like it's at the end all be all right. Like it's like real estate. You've got to do real estate. That's where you make your money. Like real estate is everything. And I think everybody's a little bit different. Like I, the idea of managing real estate is just something like I, I have so much distaste for the, for managing the house that I live in, let alone, you know, any other properties.

36:08 I don't understand. Great point. Yeah. property managers and all that kind of stuff. But I just, it's not my thing, right? But you do see people being really successful, really successful. And so that got me thinking a lot about this, a couple of traps that you had talked about, the experience trap of how people are enjoying their lives. And does that mean anything to you versus the achievement trap? You care to, you know, shed some light on those specific ones for our listeners. And maybe I know Darsha like this if he hasn't heard that yet. So talk a little bit about the experience trap. I think the context that you were using, it was a little bit different, but I think it applies here. And the achievement trap was, I think, really, really important because that ties into social comparison, which is kind of where I want to go next. Yeah. And just one, maybe a little funny comment based on what you just said, like, you know, seeing other people be super successful in real estate.

36:54 Like I could see, I could do that for any profession though. Like I could look at you guys and say like, you guys are super successful physicians or podcasters, however you want to look at yourselves. And, and, you know, maybe I should do that. Like, is that, so just kind of reframe, maybe you're thinking in that way too. Like you can look at any profession and, anyone making good money and decide, maybe I should do that and put that in the same wrapper as real estate. Do you want that to be your job or do you want that as part of your portfolio? For me, I'm the same as you. No, for me. But experience trap and achievement trap. Yes, I think these are two comparison traps. And I talk a lot about comparison on our pod because I think especially with social media.

37:40 There is a lot of comparing you can do by just being on social media. Like you follow people that you don't talk to every day and that you wouldn't have if we didn't have social media, you know, back 15, 20 years ago, like you wouldn't have known what these people were doing with their lives. Right. So it is so easy to to get a lens into somebody else's life and compare yourself to whatever they're doing. And so I think one of you guys, maybe Darsh, you had mentioned like COVID where a lot of folks were talking about experiences and travel because we couldn't travel for so long during that time. And on social media, especially like travel is a big sector of like what you can look and view and glamorize on social media to compare yourself to.

38:27 So with experience traps, I think sometimes people will look at other people's like travel or other people's lifestyle if they're not like living in one home like they might be. you know, maybe a nomad in a sense, or look at the things that they do, like going to a bunch of concerts or going to a certain events and, and they compare themselves to, I'm not doing any of those things, or I'm not doing things similar to that. Like, I must not be doing life right. You know, we get that FOMO feeling. And so we fall into that trap and we realize, or sometimes folks will like start to catch themselves or find themselves spending in those areas for travel or for experiences that they don't even actually care about.

39:13 I think I'm somebody who I like travel, but I would not say I'm a travel connoisseur. I don't dream about, I might be crazy for saying this, but I don't dream about like... backpacking around Europe. I just don't. That's not what I'd like to spend my money on. But if I watch somebody on TikTok or Instagram doing it, it's going to look so fun and like I'm missing out on everything that's good in life. And it might make me want to change my goals to make that part of my financial plan when it's not actually something that I deep down, if I really thought about it, would enjoy. I think with that episode, I used the example of my family who, some of my family members who really love going to Disney.

39:57 So I know Tampa is not the same thing, but you're close-ish to Orlando Darsh. So Like they go down to Disney every year and they make a huge production out of it. They have so much fun when they go down there and they're a family of five. So they take their kids, they do all the things, they get the fast passes and makes it seem like, wow, that's something like, maybe I should do that with my, you know, my 10 month old. And I have to continue to kind of remind myself like, nope, I'm comparing myself to somebody who does that. 10 month old is free right now, by the way, just so you know. Shoot, I didn't know that. Yeah. Three under three. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty funny. But yeah, so like that's one trap that we find ourselves in.

40:38 And so that's why we spend so much time in financial planning meetings talking about goals and what actually lights you up, what actually like... do you enjoy doing? And let's put our dollars to those things. The achievement trap is a little bit different. The achievement trap is less about what you're spending your money on and more about what you're chasing on a regular basis. And that's chasing the next step in your career, chasing the next title, the next promotion, the next bonus. I do think especially physicians are very motivated. They have lots of grit. They are very achievement oriented. And And so, you know, they may have goals to slow down, work four days a week, three days a week, whatever it is, or, you know, maybe even like do something else part time, like they might have these goals, but then they get caught in this trap of, oh, well, I need to get to that next thing.

41:33 I need to get to that next level, that next, you know, it's almost like a life level, like I need to get there, I need to get to that income level. And it's almost, it's like never ending. You're never going to get to like the end, which sounds kind of like, I don't know, that might sound scary to some people, but it's also, that's where we try to coach more contentment and not in the sense of like, just be content, be happy with subpar results or, you know, mediocrity. Like, that's not what I'm saying. It's more so like, figure out where you're happy, where you can be happy. And let's learn to live there and stay there for a bit.

42:14 And not to say that you can't always grow and learn more and develop as a human. It's more so just, do we need to be constantly chasing the next thing, especially if it goes up against our goals? And that's hard for physicians, especially because y'all are so like achievement oriented. You have achieved so much. So that's a big behavioral thing that we have to fight with a lot. Yeah. I don't know if I have much to add on to that. I mean, I've been personally caught in both those traps at some point, probably right now the achievement trap a little bit more. And I think it's always this, again, we use the word pendulum, but I think... you're always going to be caught in a trap, right? Unless you're kind of a monk. And even monks, I feel like, are caught in a white space experience trap, right?

42:57 Where you see people go down that right and then you have like Dr. K and Jay Shady being like, wait, why am I doing this, right? Why am I, I've explored it. But I think, yeah, it comes down to that common thread that when I try to coach people or mentor, it's kind of like, what is the thing you're looking to explore this world, right? And it's more of an abstract question. Like, is it truth? Is it meaning? Is it purpose? Like, what is it that you wake up trying to figure out? What are those conversations you're having with yourself when it's completely still? And we all have those moment to moment. We all question, why do we do this? Why do we do that? So coming back to kind of what you said is, how does this relate back to, to your goal. And so I do think there is value in the experience. There is value in the achievement. Right.

43:37 But again, for me personally, when I go through these kind of constructs in my mind, I say, OK, I'm going to we're going to Japan for two weeks coming up. Right. And that's been not experience hotspot. It was Italy four years ago. Now it's Japan. But for me, it's, how do I do this not so that I can show other people, hey, I'm also going here and I'm one of you now, but it's, what am I going to take away from that experience that will add more to my life, right? And so I think we've learned to chase unique experience, chase bucket lists, chase those things that make you say, whoa, I was never going to learn this anywhere else unless I was here. And then same thing on the achievement side. I feel like it's different as a physician because competition is so high too, especially when you're in a space like mine where there's always competition.

44:21 And if you're not the one doing it, you're the one getting food. And then when you kind of circle back to the talk about AI and finances and staying alive and showing your company that you can do things, I think that's a big part of that trap as well. But you're right. I mean, it really does come down to... you know, am I doing too much? And why am I doing this? Or am I losing sight of what that common thread was? Am I doing it now just because the dopamine hits that I get for every time I get a new building or every time I see a new patient, you know? And that itself can be a super, super huge trend. But I do also tell a lot of people when they're on social media, you don't follow people like follow ideas. And sometimes ideas come through following people. But don't chase the identity. Chase what you're learning from that. Sometimes bad, sometimes good.

45:02 But you're always going to learn something when you just look at social media from a third person perspective and not looking at it from somebody being like, oh, my God, I want to be like that person. Yeah, that's a little bit of commentary. I mean, this kind of leads perfectly into what is enough as well. That's something I'm super, super interested in because you did talk about complacency versus, you know, it's not about that, but it's also about being content. So I don't know if you have anything else, but I think that's a good segue too, but go ahead. Yeah, no, just a couple of things that I want to chime in as well because it resonated with me so deeply. The experience trap is... That one is another fascinating thing about this too. You did bring up the idea that we are now, if you're following 2,000 people or whatever and you're getting pointed out reels, you're going to be exposed to people, a fraction of the people 20 years ago that you are seeing today.

45:52 And maybe less than 5%, probably less than that, just because of how much time we spend on social media or any platform for that matter. But it goes beyond that, even within your inner circle. Like I grew up with one of my childhood friends and you know, we love him with death, but the way that they do vacation is very different than my idea of a good time for vacation. I remember a couple years ago, I gotta name him, but he talked about like him and his wife went and they were on a nude beach and had a great time. And I was just like, the thing about that sounds fun. Tell him to come to Florida. Yeah, yeah. New colonies everywhere. I think it was somewhere that you are, but I was like, yeah, we were at a nude beach and it was so great. And I was like, what? No. And to him, and you know, again, he's in my inner circle. So I had a conversation with him on, like, we're not talking on social media, we're only talking.

46:36 And so I think even within your inner circle, like, people can do things very differently, and that's what's important to them. So to Josh's point about going to Japan, like, there are different trips that can go to Japan. So somebody might go to Japan. might fly economy or basic economy and, you know, get there and live through hostels and just maybe eat a lot of great food and go on excursions. And there's not another person say, no, when I'm going, I'm flying business class and I'm staying at five-star hotels and stuff. But maybe that's the only vacation. Whereas Darsh might say, I'm going to do three international trips this year. Or you might be spending the same amount of money, but it's a very different experience. And I think that not only are we catching people's lives, but to your point about you're probably not getting exposed to that person because you don't follow them daily.

47:20 So you didn't hear about the other two trips or what they actually gave up, which ties into the achievement trap. And that one really is something that I have to remind myself. I think the way that I first heard you frame it was, you know, somebody might be doing really well. Like they might be driving a nice car. They might have a really nice house. And you're like, man, you know, we... I'm four years out of training. I'm about to be five years attending. Why am I still living like this? Why am I not living like that person? Well, maybe the decisions that person made 10 years ago were a very different decision I made. You know, I got four hundred and nearly twenty thousand dollars of student debt. They person doesn't have that. Maybe they were lucky and they got scholarship. You know what I mean? Like, there's so many things.

48:01 There's so much context around somebody's life that we are just unaware of. And if they're not within our circle, we're not comfortable. We don't ask about that. And we just make judgments and critique ourself like I am not there. I am not there. Why am I not there? It's funny you talked about the podcast versus a physician. This past weekend is the first time one of my childhood friends introduced me to another mutual friend and he was like, hey, this guy, he's a doctor. And I was like, no, actually, I'm a podcaster. I play a physician. So I think that's going to be my go-to thing from now. I'm going to introduce myself as a podcaster, full-time podcaster, part-time doctor. But there are other podcasters like Chris Williamson, one of my favorite podcasts. Other people who are like Diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett, just shared on LinkedIn that I think they'd be Joe Rogan for the most subscribers on YouTube.

48:48 Like 34 million people or something like 30 million people. And I'm like, okay, Stephen Bartlett is 33 years old, you know? and kind of tongue-in-cheek about being a podcaster, but kind of have been doing it for six years. So it's like, what's different, right? You know, and I have no idea the context of his life. So I think that that one is like really important too. It's like, you don't know all, you don't have all the information. So be very, very careful. And really there's no amount of judgment, like, or no amount of context that you can probably get that's still going to be enough or you can adequately and fairly judge yourself. So I think like those, that's why those two things really hit me. And I find, yeah, that people who are high achievers, high agency, are probably finding themselves in that one a lot, right?

49:32 They are measuring themselves against the expected timeline. And I don't know if that's always fair. We think about that. Yeah. No, I was going to say the sliver of information that you get or that you're exposed to, that you're comparing yourself to, just reiterating that it is not fair to compare that sliver that you see of their life to your entire life. Because that's what happens is you question all of your life choices when you're looking at this one person. instance online or next door or whatever it is. And it really is not fair. And I think in that episode too, I was talking about how like in financial planning, it is kind of cool because we do get a peek under the financial curtain to see how people are different and how people may have gotten to where they are.

50:20 And, you know, there's a number of different ways, like you said, like different sacrifices that they make, they may not be spending in other areas, but they're able to spend big in other areas because of that. They may also be over leveraged. You don't know their situation. You don't know what they've committed to, what maybe they're trying to back their way out of. Like you said, they might have gotten lucky. They may have family or, you know, some money that was able to help kickstart their financial life or their standard of living, whatever that is. So just wanted to reiterate that that is so true. And we have to remind ourselves of that when we're in any of those comparison traps is like, you know, don't compare your entire life, your entire, don't question all of your choices to that one little sliver of something that looks amazing.

51:05 And if it's really important to you to try to incorporate that sliver into your life, great, let's try to figure out how to do that and make some adjustments to your plan to do that. Have you guys heard of Dunbar's number, Megan? I don't think so, no. So it's the number of people you can have within your circle that are either close all the way up to like an acquaintance, right? And it's a certain number where if you go beyond that, then you have to remove somebody else. It's kind of almost like a fixed but a little bit of a fluid number. Do you know what that number is? No, I don't. I was trying to remember if I could. 150. Okay. 150 people. So, I mean, we talk about numbers here on social media, right?

51:46 Where you mentioned how many YouTube subscribers are there, or how many people we even follow on Instagram. And so, I remind people of this number all the time. Most people follow way more than that, right? You're following way more, but then you're actually as if you know this person. And even within that 150, there's probably what, 5, 10, maybe up to 20 that you actually know people's daily lives and are like very close to. And the rest are kind of trickle down effect where you may keep in touch with here and there. But the minute you start adding these Instagram influencers into that Dunbar's number, I mean, it's, you know, it's definitely going to skew a lot of people's perspective. And I think a reason why a lot of people are falling into these traps that we are talking about. So yeah, for the audience out there, just keep in mind, 150. And it's important because as you kind of get up there and you meet more and more people throughout your life, like even me, if I'm doing a business deal or I have to figure out something with somebody else that I just met, I sometimes have to make a decision based off what I know about that person.

52:40 And so it does get complicated, right? But you can't decide your entire career or life just based off that sliver of information like you're saying. It's tough though. Right. It's tough. It takes pattern recognition as you get there. A lot of people, they're just doing based on something on the screen versus actually talking to people. Yeah, that's very true. I think, I mean, me personally, I think my husband is the best at this, like, cause I, I think I had an achievement comparison trap for a while. Like being, I started as, you know, somebody at a firm, then I went and started my own practice, then I joined up and started a different business. And so I'm constantly feeling or have in the past, like constantly been feeling like I need to get to that next level for my business, or I need to grow to this next stage.

53:23 And then I'll feel okay. And I have had to learn and my husband has been very good at teaching me like, there's always going to be the next level. There's always going to be the next thing that you can optimize or do more efficiently. Like you are never going to outrun that. But what you do have to remember is like, today, you only have today. And I think the way he explained it, that literally almost made me cry was like, this was and I think I had mentioned this, I had such a hard time shutting off. Like I didn't know how. I had never been off from work that long in my life. Two months, I took eight weeks of maternity leave and I'd never been off work that long.

54:07 And I could not shut my brain off. And he had to remind me and consistently remind me since then, like your son is only going to be, you know, seven weeks old this week. Like this is the only chance you're ever going to see your son at seven weeks old. Or, you know, and now he's coming up on 10 months. So, you know, he's only going to be six months old today. So like that really helped put it into perspective with something that like I deeply care about to where it kind of grounds me a little bit to where if I'm ever feeling like I'm in some kind of trap, like I focus on, okay, this is the only day I'm going to get where these things are true. And I need to be present in that day and enjoy like what's around me today.

54:48 And there's always something I can chase tomorrow. So yeah. So speaking of chasing things, to address the question is, how do you start having the conversation about what enough is? And I love the fact that you talk about being vulnerable. I think physicians are the other one, right? So people come in and they can be vulnerable with you right off the bat. They have to. You have to understand the insides of somebody's mind. And maybe it's not the first visit, but certainly in the second or third, you have to start peeling the layers and changing. They'll bring you behind the curtain. And so with finance, the same thing. Talk to me a little bit about the conversation or conversations with that overachiever who is addicted to work, being rewarded and really, really good at what they do and is accumulating wealth over time.

55:34 And maybe they're falling in these traps. Maybe they're falling in social comparison. I need to make more because X, Y, and Z, my salary compared to my colleague's salary and so on and so forth. Maybe you can even talk about telling them, hey, this is time that you got to start spending money. Let's apply some of that Bill Perkins philosophy because what are you saving all this money for? And also, I think you're good. Because again, it's a behavioral thing, right? Like if you, especially if you have somebody who comes from a, what's the word that you use, use cheap, cheapskate is there, right? The, the dental floss thing in your newsletter, which prompted this whole conversation. Was that a real story by the way? Yes. I'm sure you could look it up. It was literally an episode that I watched and it scarred me for life.

56:17 Amazing, mad respect for those. But so you get- We must really love each other. Yeah, so how do you get the people to like unwind that behavior a little bit? So walk us through that. Yeah, I think, and sorry if I scarred anyone by using that story. I had a lot of funny, angry emails like, I did not need to know this. So I think I like to work backwards a lot. I think sometimes working backwards also helps unpack certain things. But so working backwards to figure out, okay, what do we need to live? Like, what are our necessities right now for our current standard of living? Let's figure out what that number is. And we can project that out to see, okay, like based on how you live today, when could you retire?

57:01 When could you be financially independent? Is that the 4% rule? Sorry to interject. Is that how people... Is that what that is? That's part of it. Yeah. You also, you have to know though, how much you spend, how much like is 4% of X number enough? Like we have to know how much you spend on an annual basis to understand if that 4% amount is enough, if that makes sense. Okay. Just tell me what the 4% rule is just so they know. Yeah. Yeah. So 4%, that's kind of a rule of thumb for when your assets get to a certain point, you take 4% of that number. Let's say that is $200,000. Once it gets to that amount, and you have to know, again, like the first part of this is you have to know how much do you need to live off of in your retirement years.

57:46 And if you spend $10,000 a month right now, you want to add in some buffers for vacation, for spoiling grandkids, whatever, then we round up, let's just use that 200,000 number. So we have to get the spend number first, how much we want to spend. And then the rule of thumb is, our assets, once they get to a certain point, what generates $200,000? So you can reverse math, the 200,000 divided by 4% to get up to the asset level that we need. So we can do that math for what your current standard of living is and figure out, okay, when could you hypothetically go ahead and be financially independent?

58:27 At what age does that shake out to be based on your current spend? And sorry, Megan, I'm just going to add. So people know that spending 200,000 and not making any money, so you don't have income. Correct. You're only extracting and spending down. Yep, you're taking distributions from the assets that you've already saved. And that is enough to survive you. Like you will not run out of money at that rule of thumb of 4%. It used to be 3%. 4% is now I think the standard number. Sometimes you could be a little more conservative and do 5% if you want to. So but if we get to that number, we get to that timeline, we know, okay, based on your current spend, this is how long it would take.

59:08 take you to get to that financial independence timeline with how much you're saving today. Are you happy with that? If we're not happy with that, that's when we're talking about, okay, increasing savings. We're always looking at like, is the structure of your investments optimized, of course. But we figure that out first is, okay, based on what, when you want to be financially independent, are we even close to the timeline that you want to be financially independent? Yeah. If the answer is yes, like we're definitely there. Like you could keep doing what you're doing today, not make any more than you make today, not save any more than you do save today, and you'd be fine. And so that's a really comforting place to be too because it's like if you like your job enough, you like what you do, you know you'll probably get pay raises in the future.

59:54 It's comforting to know that, you know, Anything else, anything more is kind of cherry on top. And so that's the first place we go to is figuring out, are we close to the timeline that you're desiring? And a lot of times with physicians, like we are, and like you're saying, it's more of a conversation of, okay, we're there. Why are we trying to still keep adding cherries on top? Like, is there more that you want out of... You know, do you want to retire earlier? Do you want to spend more in that retirement? Do you want to work less now so you don't have to save as much now? So now it's kind of reversing back to figuring out why are you wanting to get to that next level when you don't have to and trying to unpack that to decide if we need to make adjustments to the plan.

1:00:41 But does that make sense how I explain that? I actually have a question on that. I think, you know, I hear a lot about this from the psychology of money, Morgan Housel, and he talks a lot about the way you think about money is influenced by like how you grew up with it. Right. So if you're like a child in the Great Depression, you're going to be more conservative with your money. Whereas if you're somebody in the golden age, you're more okay with spending. How much of like that psychology do you have to tap into or do you even refer out to to try to help people to change the way they're thinking about their lives? Right. I mean, you know, I think people have a good understanding or I shouldn't say good understanding, but they understand what they want. They have a bad understanding about actually change their psychology to get there. Yeah, no, that is a huge part of financial planning.

1:01:22 I think like, what is the saying in like fitness? It's like to make abs, it's 80% of the kitchen and 20% the workout where you would think it's like 80% workout 20. I think finance is the same. It's 80% your brain and finance and behavior or with finance and behavior versus the numbers, like the numbers, we can crunch them, you know, we can typically make something work, but it's the behavior that a lot of times gets in the way. So that's part of every conversation. I think that's also part of what makes like an ongoing like relationship with somebody. Either that's your spouse, that's a professional, like a financial planner, like an ongoing relationship is really helpful to check you and to not like say that you're wrong or that you're thinking about something wrong, but to really just question things when they need to be questioned.

1:02:14 And to re-pivot things back to where they should be or they could be. And so sometimes that accountability is really crucial in these types of conversations, these relationships with a financial professional is like – Yes, the numbers matter, but the behavior is what's going to make or break you getting there and you kind of self-destructing and not actually doing the things that you want to do or not getting there as fast as you could or not allowing yourself to actually enjoy like the things that you can enjoy. So I think the behavior part. Yeah. To answer your question is huge. And I love that book, The Psychology of Money, because it's so intertwined and how people think and feel and come to you to talk about money for the first time.

1:02:59 Megan, this has been absolutely amazing. I think this is most of the stuff that I wanted to touch on with regards to just this, I guess, the psychology of money back to high achievers. But I feel like I can't let you go without talking a little bit, student loans, just because so much has happened. Particularly, you know, I have a lot of concern with the administration's new rules on the 50,000 cap. And I'm curious to get what your take is going to be for that. I know that was something that was when I was going to medical school, I would have had a lot of trouble. And I, you know, for me and my wife, like, I'm not really sure it would have been feasible to do that. And so Darsha and I were talking about this the other day, what this means in terms of socioeconomic status and how that's going to determine whether who goes to medical school and then the downstream or ripple effects of that with respect to what fields are people are going to go into and, you know, what part of the country they might practice in.

1:03:54 It could be a real absolute game changer. And so. I guess question number one is, is this real? Do you think this will stay? And I know there was some other stuff about the Grad Plus Loan. So what else do we need to know if we're in the student loan place? Yeah, I do. I do unfortunately think it's a game changer for a bad reason. I do think it. So basically, in a nutshell, what has happened is within student loans, federal student loans, you used to be able to borrow up to the cost of attendance for a graduate program, not for undergrad, but for graduate school programs. And. That was good and bad. I think we've talked about that before on podcasts.

1:04:36 You know, here we've talked about how it is good and bad because you could borrow up to the cost of attendance. The school dictated the cost of attendance and there wasn't any limits. There was no like threshold that they had to stay under or no percentage of. how much you earn, like you had to like relate to the debt that you graduated with. There was none of that. So there was no like checks and balances on how student loan balances could balloon. And that's kind of where I think our generation got in this crazy bubble of having ginormous student loan balances and having to rely on student loan forgiveness as a reasonable option for tackling the loans versus a typical payoff approach where like our parents, grandparents, like this was not a thing.

1:05:22 Like they graduated with $10,000 of student loan debt and they paid it off in the first couple of years of working. So different like with our generation. So that was part of the problem. So I think they, the pendulum, talk about pendulums a lot, swung in the opposite direction, but also like very aggressively to where it is now capping how much you can borrow. And it's it is going to make access to being able to borrow as much as you need for a medical degree, for a law degree. It's affecting a lot of different professions. because the schools have not quite yet, and maybe they will, but they haven't quite yet adjusted their cost of attendance in relation.

1:06:05 So that means people are going to be faced with, okay, they can only borrow up to, let's say, 200 or whatever the exact cap is, depending on when you went to school. but you can only borrow up to that amount. Where do you get the rest? And you can go to private lenders. That is probably what we're going to see more of, where people have federal and private student loan balances, which is hard because then you have two separate student loan payments. You might have federal loans going towards PSLF because a lot of physicians work in public service. Then you might have a big private student loan payment that you have to make too. So it's almost like what we went through, like our millennial generation went through, but times two on the payment side, like maybe not on the balance side, but on the payment side, it's going to be a lot more expensive for people.

1:06:54 So I think access wise, like there will be people who still go and borrow privately and that can allow them to finish their program, to get into the profession. They'll just be strapped with larger cash flow responsibilities going towards these payments, which is unfortunate. But it may also prevent people from being able to go at all if they are not able to borrow privately. Maybe they don't have a cosigner. They don't have somebody who has enough credit or because that's that's the difference with federal loans. It was super easy to get loans. Anybody could borrow a federal student loan. You had no credit. No problem. With private student loans, though, you have to have typically a cosigner.

1:07:37 And a lot of folks, you know, some folks will not have a co-signer who can sign off on a private student loan. So that means thus they do not have funding to go to school if they haven't been able to meet like the tuition amount. So all that to say, it is negative. Do I think it's permanent? I hope not. I think in the student loan system, we've seen a lot of changes in the past six years since 2020. I don't think we're done. I think we saw some aggressive changes over the past four years, but we also saw aggressive changes before this term, too, in a positive way, like PSLF waiver, IDR waiver.

1:08:18 There were a lot of positive things that happened. Now, again, the pendulum example, like things are a lot more aggressive on like very limited repayment options. They're limiting how much you could borrow. But I think that pendulum is going to swing back and hopefully be somewhere in the middle. When is that going to happen? I don't know. But I don't think we're... at a point to be, I'm not, I'm not, I am still optimistic. I think it's the best way to say it. I'm still optimistic that we're not going to be shutting people out of the profession. I think it's just, this is a weird blip of time where, you know, I hope, you know, I hope they fix things soon, you know?

1:08:58 So hopefully that's helpful. What's going on with the buyback situation that's been on hold for like, they're like 24 months back at this point. Yeah, they have been processing buyback applications. It's just basically taking at least a year. It is not any faster. It's taking a lot longer than that sometimes. So what we're suggesting for buyback is if you just are trying to buy back six months, 12 months, you probably just want to keep paying as regular and get to PSLF kind of the normal way. If it's a lot more than that, maybe it's worth waiting around for. But you have to kind of decide based on the time if you want to keep going the regular, just keep paying until you get PSLF the natural way or if you want to apply and do the buyback program.

1:09:46 Presumably, people would get a refund though, right? If they paid extra 12 payments, they would get that from the buyback? With buyback, yes. So you would tell people, hey, apply and then keep paying? Yeah. And you actually have to. So with PSLF buyback, they say in the language, they're very specific that you do have to keep paying while you wait for the buyback decision. So you will get a refund of any payments made over the 120. It'll just also take a long time to get your money back. So something else to keep in mind. Darsh, anything else? So I guess I get the question when you talk about, you know, the cap of the 50,000. Do you have a good pulse on like Gen Z and their views? Or do you have any class or Gen Z? Because I just think about from their perspective, you know, it's tough already for them to find jobs right now in the current market.

1:10:32 And then you have AI topic, kind of what we talked about. And then this, it's like, I don't know how they feel. Yeah. I mean, some of Gen Z were kind of in the middle of this to where they weren't affected. They were kind of on the last round of borrowing to where they could still borrow up to the cost of the school. So it's almost like people younger than Gen Z are going to be affected. What is that Gen Z? Alpha? Alpha. I think so. Yeah, I think it's really going to be more so them. But I also think the tone of college has changed. I think a lot of folks are kind of regretting going to school for their certain degree or their first degree, not even using it.

1:11:14 I kind of made the joke at the beginning that I'm kind of unique where I went to school for finance and I'm in finance. That's not as common. Right. So I do think that that's a good thing though. I think people are assessing the return on investment more before deciding and committing and signing papers to go to school, which is good. I think that's a very good thing. But yeah, I think we'll see more effects of this, I think, in the next few years when it's actually impacting people because we've only gotten a small, small taste of this actually impacting people. You mentioned earlier when I was asking about enough you said we first have to track like how much you're spending what do you what do you like for that i use copilot big fan copilot what do you how do you track it we use monarch money so i we have clients that use copilot as well monarch money is is something that we've used as a company yeah it's very similar Dark, is that Origin?

1:12:10 It's Origin. Origin, yeah. They're all kind of similar, I feel. Yeah, probably it uses AI too to like help. Yeah, so I mean, anything that like works well for you and that you consistently use, that is the winner. Like they're all very similar, but it's whatever you find the most user friendly and whatever you'll actually use on a regular basis. Yeah. Any other tactical tips? I know this has been more of a philosophical strategy conversation. I think maybe a lot about the why behind finances, but anything tactical that might be worthwhile that you found yourself giving that tip to? I don't know. I know people should get a consult. I should say this. People should get a consult to get that. But maybe you could give one or two bite-sized things for people.

1:12:52 Yeah. Do you mean in student loan, student loan related or just like in general? I would say in general, in general that you find that you're having the same conversation where you're like, you know, these are basics, right? Like this tactically should be taken care of. Yeah. I do think, first and foremost, know where everything is at. Like, use one of those apps that we're talking about to kind of pull everything together. I think too often than not, folks will have old 401ks laying around, old accounts or old credit cards that they're not using laying around. So... get organized first. I think that that'll make your financial life a lot easier. So that's number one. Number two would be, and this maybe goes swings back to, you know, psychological, but think about like what you actually want.

1:13:40 That sounds so simple, but I mean, it really needs to be a thought exercise with yourself or with you and your spouse on, you What do we want for our life? And don't feel like you need to think about forever. Just think about what do we want to happen in our lives in the next year? Is that pay off this annoying debt that we've got lingering around? Is that finally putting in the pool in the backyard that we've wanted for five years? Yeah. Think about what you actually want. A lot of your decisions in finance can and should be directed by like these goals. And if you have these goals like in mind, top of mind and identified, it helps make a lot of other financial decisions easier and avoids a lot of financial distraction, which tends to happen.

1:14:24 So I think that's and now is a great time to be doing that coming up towards the end of the year is thinking about goals, objectives, things you want to accomplish. Yeah, I have one for people to actually I'll say your point about getting organized, I think is so important. And, you know, physicians, and especially you might have gone done your medical school one place and then interneer and then residency different institution and the fellowship and you might be in a completely different students, you might have five or six different. places where 403Bs might be and 457s and HSAs which means there's a million different passwords to remember and then there are things like data leaks that happen and the passwords get compromised so a password vault I love 1Password those can be really helpful they can make strong passwords for you and they can keep everything so then you can just remember 1Password and do that I mean like you can remember 1Password, 1Password they're not a sponsor of the show, I like them but they're not sponsored, they should sponsor it Last question I'm going to ask you, Megan, is we've asked you about the adding the health back to healthcare and how to do that.

1:15:26 So the question for you actually is going to be a little bit of a pivot here is if you could put one sentence, one phrase, one word on a billboard and you can put that billboard anywhere. Right. Or in Georgia, New York City. Right. Or Georgia, if you want. What would you put in that billboard? Oh, gosh. You said one word? Yeah. I'm sorry. One word, one sentence, one phrase. Okay. I was going to say one word would be hard. One word would be hard. As many words as you want. Cha-ching. That's a really good question. The person that you are today is somebody that you dreamed about five years ago. And I have to remember that, too.

1:16:06 That's something like along with what I said, my husband tells me to think about all the time about being present with my son right at the age that he's at. But I do have to remember, like five years ago, I literally dreamed about where I am today. And I do think that that's helpful for anybody. Like, because if you think about five years ago for you guys, like where you are today, like you're probably pretty darn proud of yourself if you're if you're five years ago. Right. So that'd be one thing. Amazing. Megan, again, thank you so much. I enjoy these so, so much and I'm glad and we're certainly hopefully going to have you back again in the future and keep this going. Where can people find you? Where can they find your work? How can they work with you?

1:16:46 Let the people know where they should go. Yeah. Yeah. So for student loan consultations, studentloanplanner.com, we do one-on-one consultations for financial planning, SLP wealth. We do comprehensive full financial planning. We like the financial planning relationship. So it's an ongoing relationship with the planner. We do profession-specific planning. So we do work with lots of physicians. We have physician-specific financial planners on our team. So, but thank you. Thanks for having me again. I really enjoy And your podcast. Tell them about it. Oh, yes. Financially Free Era. That is our pod. So go check that out if you like to talk money, behavior, not just the technical stuff.

1:17:28 I will definitely talk technical stuff, but I do like to layer in the behavior a lot because that's 80% of it like we talked about. Perfect. Thanks, Megan. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Medicine Redefined. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe, leave a review, and share with anyone who'd get value from it. To stay up to date on more content like this, follow us on Instagram, X, and TikTok at MedRedefined. And if you prefer high yield, bite-sized information delivered to your inbox twice a month, subscribe to our newsletter. The link is in the show notes. Now, time for the ever so important disclaimer. This podcast is intended for general public use and is for educational purposes only.

1:18:09 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 on this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. We recommend that you seek the guidance of your personal physician regarding any specific health-related issues.