PFFAP-PYP-23-1222-3 Ways Physicians Can Get The Things That Money Cannot Buy
Voiceover: [00:00:00] This show is for educational purposes only and is not personalized advice. Consult your tax advisor before taking action. All investments involve risk of loss. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Read show notes for full disclosure.
Welcome to the physician family financial advisors podcast, where physician moms and dads like you can turn today's worries about taxes and investing into all the money you need for retirement and college.
Nate: Hello, physician moms and dads. I am Nate Reneke, a certified financial.
I'm going to be your solo host for today's episode as Ben is enjoying some time with his family during the holidays. So today's episode is going to be a little different. I'm hosting solo today, so I get to talk about something really important and that is three ways physicians can get the things that money cannot buy.
So the topics I'm going to be covering aren't exactly actionable advice [00:01:00] like normally we'll give you some real advice to sink your teeth into and actually go do. It's more of three ways to think about life and money so that you can allow yourself to get all the things you want, all the things humans need aside from money.
So I'm going to start by laying out sort of a thought or hypothesis that I have sort of been developing over the last several years, as I have been working with hundreds of physician families and observing your lives for my office chair. So here it is. I believe that physicians don't leave much money on the table in their careers, but many of you do leave an abundant.
Life on the table. So again, instead of giving you some advice about how to prepare for retirement or save money on taxes, I'm going to express some thoughts I have of which I don't really explore or reinforce as often as I should. So here's the first one. Money is important, but it's not everything.
Money can get you some freedoms, [00:02:00] freedom from needing to work, freedom from stress over paying bills, freedom from living in an unsafe place geographically. It can get you some peace of mind, some comforts, and you'll be well fed and have some nice vacations with enough money. But here are some things That money can't buy.
Money cannot buy your health. Money can't make you eat the right foods, avoid the bad foods, and it cannot make you exercise, right? Money can't buy respect. It can get you some artificial respect, but not the real stuff. It can't buy friendship. It can't buy love. It can't buy wisdom. purpose, happy kids, internal happiness, gratitude, self esteem.
It can't buy a close knit family. And while money can help you buy back some of your time, the pursuit of money always costs more time than you can ever buy back among physicians. Those of you in the lowest quartile of income amongst your peers still make in the top. 10 percent of income in the [00:03:00] US, one of the richest countries in the world we're living in.
And if you're in the middle or top quartile of earners amongst physicians, you are in the top 5 percent or even 1 percent of earners in this fabulously wealthy country. So how could it be possible that we are focusing so much on the money? When we all seemingly have so much. A few weeks ago, I was speaking to with a radiologist on the east coast.
He was considering entering private practice so he could increase his income from 400, 000 to 600, 000. And really quickly after we started talking about money, he immediately brought up the idea of potentially working a day less. And instead of making 600, he can make 400 or 500 by taking Fridays off. So here's a guy who can make an extra 100, 000 a year, which is almost twice the average income in the U S ton of money by working on Fridays.
And if you ask me, that is the best possible way you could spend a hundred grand with that money or with that time, he'd be able [00:04:00] to put time and energy into everything on that list that I just set. And all those things. Cannot be purchased with a paycheck and making 400, 000 a year is more than enough to have a comfortable life Send your children to college and retire with plenty of money.
So when you are considering your balance of resources That's time energy and money consider putting a lot more emphasis on your time for far too long I've seen many of you completely ignoring your time and your energy in your pursuit of mastering your specialty at work or pursuing money. This is wrong.
What you're missing and what I have found over time, again, just observing from my office chair is that time will go on and you will master your craft, whether or not you work on Fridays or you don't. And I have also seen money come by the barrel, whether or not you're working 8 FTE or 1. 0 FTE. It all comes down to a [00:05:00] perspective shift.
Turn I must make as much as I can now to I have a lifetime to build a career and I'm going to do it at a reasonable pace. The money, the experience at work will come, but my children will be grown and gone in the blink of an eye. When I start thinking like that, it starts to put my perspective or change my perspective to a healthy one.
I believe that there is plenty of money out there to be made and I have plenty of time, but my kids won't be in my house forever. So let me read you a quote that I think is super valuable. It comes from a book by Vicky Robbins called your money or your life. We've talked about this book on the podcast in the past.
It is a great. Great perspective shift on how to view your life energy, your time, and how the pursuit of money robs you of your life's energy and your time. So here's a quote. He who knows he has enough is rich. Money is something we choose to trade our life [00:06:00] energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn't matter that Ned over there sells his time for 100 and you sell yours for 20 an hour.
Ned's money is irrelevant to you. The only asset you have is your time, the hours of your life. And this brings me sort of to my second thought. I really wish I had the trust and the relationship with many more of you that is required to have this type of conversation or to express my thoughts about this.
It's a bit ironic that I'm choosing to announce it on a podcast, but here it goes. Enough. really is enough. When I have said this to friends and family in the past, it hasn't grabbed their attention and open their eyes to what a truly fulfilled life might actually look like if they were able to kick the pursuit of money to the curb and adopt the pursuit of what I would call a full life.
Everything that I just listed a minute ago, maybe I'm not expressing it in a way that's getting their attention or maybe I'm I'm just wrong, but I'm going to try again today, right now. So, [00:07:00] enough house, enough car, enough vacation, enough money, enough. As much or as many that is required is all you need. In fact, enough may be all you should ever Want, because once you have more than enough, and that's still not enough for you, there is no end to the madness of pursuing wealth.
Charlie Munger, a famous investor known for being Warren Buffett's right hand man, he died last month at the ripe old age of 99. He was a really rare and special person. He had an abundance of wisdom to share. And he once said a majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do.
Now, when he's giving these quotes, when he's speaking to the public, he's mostly talking about business and investing. He's on these panels where people are asking him questions. But Charlie often talked about wisdom and happiness. So I apply this quote to my life when I'm questioning my next [00:08:00] step, even outside of money.
So I ask you, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to amass wealth beyond your ability to spend it? Or are you aiming to have enough money along with a rich life filled with health, a close knit family, love. purpose and a wealth of wisdom that can span across generations. This right here is the essence of why we here at physician family, even write detailed financial plans.
Because if I'm being totally honest, we could easily ask about 80 percent of you to simply save 20 percent of your income and you would probably have plenty of money to retire. No plan necessary, but without a detailed plan for your money, You may never know what is possible when it comes to your life outside of money.
So what you are trying to do is have enough money to live comfortably, send your children to college, and retire all while living the most fulfilling life possible. Consider this frame of mind shift in the new year. You [00:09:00] can opt out of the rat race by living on less than you make and focusing purely on having enough.
If you work less now and put time and energy into all the things that money cannot buy, your retirement will be filled with enough money and an overwhelming amount of community, happiness, and wisdom that goes well beyond medicine. So this brings me to my last thought. This one I actually have not been able to withhold from families no matter what our relationship or how new a family is to physician family, but that's because it's just far too important to me and that is your children don't need to.
more money. They need more you. All too often you hear the story of parents who try to buy their family's love with money. It never works. In fact, the pursuit of money almost always has a negative impact on families. And story for another time, but it has had a negative impact on my life before I adopted this way of thinking.
While [00:10:00] you may have convinced yourself that working for more money is for the family. Handing your children a check for major life purchases in lieu of spending time with them simply will not get the job done. No, that is if the job is raising well balanced children who will adore bringing your grandchildren home for the holidays when they are in their 30s.
If that's the job, if that's what will fill up your soul, then start acting like it. If you don't, don't expect to have anything. That money cannot buy. So the other day, my five year old son was telling me a story about recess at school. He told me another boy yelled at him. It was crying because he scored a goal on him while playing soccer.
He was sad about it. He's a pretty emotional five year old. And so I said, you know what, Mateo, sometimes what is going that that's going to happen. And, but it's not nice for people to. To yell at you so I'm sorry that happened to you and he thought about it while eating a cereal and said Then [00:11:00] why do you yell at me?
Sometimes dad ouch. I think I responded. Okay. I said it's not nice when I do it either And i'm sorry for that and i'm working on it. But you see the point is That kids learn from your behavior, no matter how many pieces of wisdom you try to bestow upon them with your words, me telling him, I'm sorry that happened to you.
It's not nice when people do that. They learn from your actions. He learned from my actions that people yell at you and how to handle it. So you may tell your children, it's not nice to yell, but they're paying attention to how you speak to them. You might tell your children they should save some of their money.
But do they see you saving yours? Or do they see you living above your means and keeping up with the Dr. Joneses? You may say family is important, but how much better would it be if you showed them how important it really was with your time and your energy? You might even tell them you love them. But do they see you openly show love to your spouse every day?
And do they know how to [00:12:00] model that love to their spouse and their children later on in life? You see, you can force your child to act humble and kind. You can force them to act patient and mature. But they will only internalize those traits and carry them for the rest of their lives if you show them with your actions.
So I believe the endless pursuit of money leads to an incomplete and empty life. I've also seen firsthand that those of you who focus on your family as much as you do your work are happier and seem to be living much more abundant lives compared to those of you who devote your 30s 40s 50s entirely to work just so you can live in the most expensive beach houses in your 60s 70s and 80s.
And listen, I'm not blind to the fact that by the time You show up at the door at Physician Family here at Physician Family. You're ready for a conversation to be filled with tips on making more, saving more in taxes, being in complete control of your finances. Those are all terrific things to be doing.
I'm really passionate about helping you with all those things, [00:13:00] but it doesn't have to be the end of what you reach for when it comes to balancing your resources of time and money. In fact, that really is just where it starts. So if you agree, with my hypothesis, or even if you don't, if you disagree that physicians leave too much life on the table, please reach out to me at podcast at physician, family.
com. I'd love to hear from you and open this conversation up. It's something I really take seriously and I would love to just hear from our listeners and see what they think. And if you want to find out how much is really enough. When it comes to your finances, I promise that we could talk about that as much as you like.
If you sign up for a membership at physicianfamily. com, we do mostly talk about all those things, which is saving for retirement, saving for college, saving on taxes, and those are important. So we will talk about those a lot, but again, that doesn't have to be the end of our conversation. So next time you listen, we will be talking about some of those things, great ways to save money on taxes, prepare for college retirement.
But I hope [00:14:00] this episode connected with you. As we're heading into the new year, I do want to leave you with a big takeaway, like we always do. So here it is. The way you spend your time, energy, and money will be exactly where you devote your mind, body, and soul. So please spend your resources wisely. And remember, you're not just making a living, you're making a life.
Voiceover: Thank you for listening to the Physician Family Financial Advisors Podcast. Are you getting all the tax breaks you really deserve? To find out, get your copy of the Overtax Doctor's Retirement Investing Checklist, available at PhysicianFamily. com forward slash go.
