MtoM #292: From $8 Million to $20 Million Net Worth in Four Years

0:00This is the White Coat Investor Podcast, MyelStone's to Millionaire, celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom. Welcome to The MyelStone's to Millionaire Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Bob Bionni, a pro-tuity, an independent provider of disability insurance, planning solutions to medical community in every state, and a long-time White Coat Investor sponsor. He specializes in working with residents and fellows early in their careers to set up sound, financial, and insurance strategies. If you need to review your disability insurance coverage, or to get this critical insurance in place, contact Bob at whitecodeinvestor.com slash pro-tuity. You can also email info at pro-tuity.com or call 973-771-9100. All right, we want to let you know about a podcast, only sale we're having. 20% off, if you use a podcast 2026, that's the code you got to put in. This goes through September 14th.

1:02I think today is the last day that the day this podcast is dropping. Well, this is a podcast only discount on all of our online courses, it's 20% off. So for students, that makes your fire your financial advisor course just 79 bucks, right? We built these courses because no one taught us this stuff in medical school. They walk you through exactly how to build a financial plan, pay off your debt faster, invest without guessing, and start turning your income into wealth. Someone told me that fire your financial advisor saved him $85,000 a year. Another person that took up became a millionaire three years out of residency. That can be you too. Go to wcicourses.com and use code podcast 2026 again through September 14th, which I think is the day this podcast is dropping and get that 20% off. Like all of our courses, it comes with 100%, no questions asked, money back guarantee, if you return it within a week. We want you to be satisfied as much you're buying from us. And so we offer that and frankly,

2:03people use it very rarely. So we're not all that worried. We're gonna lose a bunch of money for offering that guarantee. All right, while I'm talking about podcasts, I wanted to mention some feedback I got. I don't know this was about, not about podcasts about the online courses. As someone wrote in said, thanks for your tireless efforts educating docs. You've helped countless colleagues, especially younger docs, including many the residents and medical students I interact with. I follow you on social media, which I think is key to this comment. Listen to your podcast and I purchased all your books. You're an trusted voice and you set the tone on many aspects of medicine, financial and otherwise. However, I do take some issue with the wording in some of your recent advertisements. Your words carry significant weight and you've built a huge following of doctors in a successful messaging platform. I feel that selling a course entitled your fastest way out of medicine may be sending the wrong message, especially to your younger listeners. We want our well-trained young doctors to realize a long rewarding career. It's important to me to encourage trainees to find the best path forward and embrace healthy ways to deal with the unique stresses

3:04and anxieties of medicine without giving up. I hate to hear people making plans to leave medicine as soon as possible. Many rewards of clinical practice take years to appreciate from a public health perspective. We need more doctors in America now and not lose them to fire. Doctors want to leave medical practice early. That's the right. But also be nice to highlight the many benefits of sticking it out and building a long and rewarding career. Thanks for making the medical world a better place and I hope your wrist is doing okay. My wrist is doing okay. That's a good description for how my wrist is doing by the way. But at any rate, first of all, we don't have a course called your fastest way out of medicine. We do have a course called No Hype Real Estate Investing. And we often talk about how short-term rentals are probably the fastest, reasonably reproducible pathway out of medicine. That is true. And so if you've gotten to 35 or 40 years old and you're like, oh crap, I made a mistake with my career. I hate doctrine. This isn't a bad way out.

4:05And I do point that out in the course. But keep in mind, I don't write all the ads here. There's 20 people working here. And I am not in charge of all the marketing. I'm not in charge of all the ad copy, et cetera. So don't assume that anything that shows up in ad is me personally, right? We have a really great social media team, a really great marketing team. But don't assume that that's necessarily me saying that. That said, I have totally empowered them to write the most click-bady titles and most click-bady ads they can. I'll tell you why. Whatever it is that gets people into the White Code Investor Universe, it is good for them, okay? It is good because they become more financial. They're literate. They usually become more financially disciplined. They usually become more financially successful. And I'm a firm believer that that makes them better doctors. You know, they become better parents, partners, physicians, et cetera, because of that. Will some of them leave medicine early? Yes. Is that because the White Code Investor exists?

5:07Well, we did make it possible for them to do that. But I think telling doctors to mismanage their money or not teaching them how to manage money in hopes that they will stay in medicine longer is probably not the right message either. So maybe what we ought to do is exactly what you suggest. We ought to highlight the benefits that come from a long and dedicated and fruitful practice in medicine. And I have certainly experienced that, right? I am eight years out from financial independence. I was in the ER yesterday, okay? Taking care of some people that really needed my help. Really needed those skills and that knowledge I acquired over a decade plus to have better lives. I'm working a lot of shifts this week. I think I've got eight shifts or six shifts and eight days. I had a lot of time off earlier this month when I were recording this. And so a bunch of my shifts are stacked together. I don't normally work six shifts and eight days. But I'm certainly still working. And I hope a lot of White Code investors out there that become financially independent will choose to continue working in a way that they choose

6:10to do so and taking care of people and helping be great docs. There are a lot of rewards to practicing for a long time, not least of which are financial, right? The longer you practice, the more you can save for retirement, the longer the more your investments compound. Like you're gonna hear today in this interview. And the more that you will be able to get from social security and the longer, less time you'll need your investments to support you. So you can spend more on retirement. The financial benefits are great. But the non-financial benefits are great as well. So let me put that plug in there. I think this criticism is somewhat deserved. But we're gonna continue to write the ad copy that we can get people into White Code investor with. And that's probably gonna include things like escaping from medicine or the fastest route out of medicine on some of the ads, especially for that real estate course. But that doesn't mean I want you all to leave medicine. I need somebody to take care of me. I'm very grateful for the docs and other professionals that have taken care of me over the years.

7:10All right, we got a great interview today about a doc who has done exactly what this comment says, stayed in medicine despite having enough money to not be in medicine. And it's had some pretty awesome financial benefits for doing it. Our guest on the milestones millionaire podcast today is Alan Allen. Welcome back to the podcast. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me, Dan. For those who aren't aware, you can go back to milestones podcast number 86. We had Alan on four years ago with a net worth milestone. He was at eight million back then. Tell us what's happened in the last four years that's enabled you to come back on with another significant milestone. Well, we crossed the double decadent millionaire stage in our family. So that was an exciting event. Double decadent millionaire. I'm not sure I've heard that phrase before. 20 million, 20 million in net worth. Right north of 20 million net worth. Wow.

8:11Never thought that they would come. How does that feel? It is kind of surreal, but at the same time, it really doesn't feel any different than it did four years ago. It's just I'm still working and I still have a lot of, feels like dependents. I tell people work all the time as to have a lot of pigs at the trough. So that's fine. Well, there's there's some truth to that. But you know what? At this point in life, I suspect you're not mostly working for the money. No, probably more than anything. I'm working for identity validation. And we still have one in high school. And as long as he's still at home, I'll continue to work full time. And that will change next year. Yeah, I suspect that you may find as we have that the limiting factor is not so much work as it is your kids' activities and things they need to be there for it's keeping you from having a retired lifestyle, et cetera. Yes, there's a lot of truth to that.

9:13Okay, well, let's break down your net worth a little bit. How much do you have in housing and retirement accounts, taxable accounts and investment properties and go through your assets and your debts? Yeah, so we're somewhere between 20 and 21 million. 3 million of that is in home equity. We own our personal residence rent now. Within the past year, we bought a retirement home out in Phoenix area. And we'll be relocating there. I don't know exactly when, probably another year, maybe a little bit longer than that once I pull back from my full time job here. And so that's about 3 million of it. But the other 18 million is essentially just investments. And I wrote it down because I can't always remember it. So we have about 11.5 million in taxable accounts and 2.7 million in Roth. Some of that's backdoor Roth for myself and my wife and some of it is 401k Roth.

10:143 million and a 401k pre-tax account. Have about another million in equity and some partnerships that our practice has. Like I'm a partner in a surgery center and another management company that manages a single specialty hospital. And then the $3 million in the two homes that I talked about. So that all told up somewhere between 20 and 21 million. And it can vary. I don't look that often, but through out he is. It can vary quite a bit day to day, depending on what the stock market would do. But there's no point in looking very often. About how much of it's in stocks, how much of it's in bonds, anything else. I would say 95% or more in equity. So I have almost no bonds. So we do have a REIT. And we have another couple of private equity funds were involved in, but total of all that's probably less than a million, a million half.

11:15So it's stocks. You wrote a big stock sale in the last few years. We have. And now the question becomes is how do we move going forward? And I don't. I'm a little bit paralyzed within decision on that. And we read all the white coat investor and other investment forums I look at. And they talk about as you get closer to retirement, you need more bond exposure. And I've just never, never gone that route. And there are some people that say, if you have enough, don't change courses. They where you are at that market pulls back 30%. You're still fine. So. Well, there's some truth to that. I mean, even if the market gets cut in half, you're still a decadent millionaire, right? Right. We won't starve. Certainly. OK, so you practice OBGYN. And you're still working full time and investing full time. But that does not explain an increase. Even with the tailwind of equity returns the last few years, that does not explain

12:16an increase from 8 million to 20 million in four years. So there's something else in the picture. Tell us what it is. I was part of a partnership group that had partnered with a local hospital here and had built a single, specially hospital 20, over 20 years ago. And it was successful. And had done quite well over the years, not just trusting to visually, but for the system overall. And about five years ago, maybe well, about four years ago, they approached us about, would you be interested in selling your half of this entity out? It was a 50-50 partnership. And they had approached us a few years before the answer was we're not interested. But this time when they approached us, actually the CEO of the system called me at home one night was in February. And he said, would you guys be interested? And my response that time was everybody has a price. So I went to some of my senior partners in this entity that we had.

13:17We started negotiation process. And we eventually made the decision to sell. And that ended up being north of a $4 million by-off for each partner, when it was all said and done. Now, that's not all hit yet. Most of it's hit by now. I think next year's the last year, though, they always had any money. But yeah, that was about a $4 million push. But that's pre-tax. This was long-term capital gains tax rate. So probably after taxes somewhere north of $3 million. So that was a pretty good chunk of it. And the rest was just returns on your stocks. That and we just continued to contribute. New contributions. Every month, we just put money in. And so I just continued to grow. OK. Have you thought about cutting back just because you have enough money to do so? Yeah. You know, the answer is yes. But we're a private group. And we're at Eat Watching Kill Group. So the problem you run into, if you cut back very much, you're working for free.

14:18And I just can't mentally make that hurdle to say, I'm still showing up every day. And my paycheck drops by 2 thirds. Now, because your overhead's fairly fixed. Rinse getting paid, employers getting paid. Your health insurance is coming out of that, all that sort of stuff. So I still have not pulled the trigger yet. But we've had those conversations. But I told the practice next summer, I'll be, I'm going to retire. But I don't know what that's actually going to look like for me just yet. The hospital has, we have a labor's program. And I've thought about potentially working three or four shifts some other day. Not just to give me some purpose in life. And hopefully that'll be, you know, I can do it for a year or two or three. I don't know. We'll, it might be a situation where that will help me transition into complete retirement. Not so much from a financial perspective, but more from a professional, personal angle.

15:19Has this increase in, in wealth, the change the way you look at giving, whether to your, you know, future errors or giving to people you care about now or given to charity or anything like that? It has. One thing we've been working on the last several months. My wife and I is a state planning. And we've met with an attorney who, we actually met with him several years ago. And last several months, it's been a more intense conversation about how we're going to structure trusts and wills and what we want to do to help with our adult children. We, I'm of the mindset, I want to bless them, but I don't want to enable them. And that is a fine line, in my opinion. So, but we've paid for a lot of education. I have, my older son's a physician, I have another daughter who's an attorney, I have a son who just actually starting medical school this week. So, of course, we pay for all that. More than anything, we're wanting to kind of give them a hand up, not a hand out if that makes sense. I think we're just now more than the beginning processes

16:20of what's this going to look like in five, 10, 15 years. And what do we want to do for our grandkids? Do we want to set up a trust? This going to pay for education. And we're kind of just working the details out and trying to come to some agreement between my wife and I, what would be the best plan going forward? Yeah, he's not always the same plan, but just like everything else, there's some compromises in there. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right. I mean, there's things that I think that she'd be like and things that I would like. And they're mostly in alignment, but occasionally they're not. But, you know, I think whatever we decide, we'll be able to fully find it. And, you know, it's interesting with the growth and the net worth over the years. It's just, it's such a mental hurdle for me to take a step back and say, you've made it. And it's just a, it's a very big shift. And I don't think I'll ever would have thought I'd have been that way, but that's kind of, I'm getting there, I think. Well, if you need to hear it from somebody,

17:21you have made it. Okay. I'm podcasting, I'm listening to this agrees with me. I'm sure. Give us the sense, what's the most you ever made clinically? Not counting your investment income or anything like that. The most you ever made clinically in a year. So between the practice and the surgery center, dividends and the hospital dividends, I think it was somewhere around 1.2 to 1.4 million might have been my peak year. You know, it's hard when I look at, you know, you get all the everything together for your tax return that a lot of it every year is your dividends that have come in. And so it's hard for me to differentiate how that is. It's not hard, I just don't take the time to do it, I guess. But it's north of 1.2 million, that's probably about the peak, 1.2, 1.3 million. Now, there are people out there that look at surveys, you know, physician income surveys. And if you look that up for an OBGYN right now, it'll save the average is something like $350,000.

18:21And I'm constantly telling people the range of incomes in any given specialty is very wide. But I don't know that they believe me until they hear a story like yours. Well, I think part of it is, you know, we're a large single specialty group. And that helps, we've had in the area here, where we're kind of the big kid on the blocks. We've been able to negotiate pretty good contracts with the payers. And that helps. We do, I think do a good job, keep our overhead and check. We have a strong CEO who does a really great job with that. And you know, it's been a lot of, it's, you work hard. I mean, you know, and one thing we struggle with as a practice the last four or five years is trying to replace people when partners have retired, which we've had a few retire. And when you don't replace them, everybody just, you know, ratchets think up a notch and you feel like you're working hard. And me and one of my partners, who's, she's actually a couple years older than me. And we were talking just the other day about, we are working much harder than we ever thought

19:24we would be at this point in our career. But we also feel like we got, we do have new partners coming in next year, you gotta keep things coming up, you know, from coming apart before they get here, keep everything together. So I think that's one reason that we've been able to keep our income up to, just like I said, not much competition and having, have some leverage with the insurance carriers. Yeah, I can, I can remember feeling like that. You just gotta keep it together. I remember when I was a military emergency doc, you know, and a quarter of the group would get deployed. And we still had to cover all the same number of shifts, you know. Oh yeah, well, I'm, I'm prior military to this. So I, I know where you're coming from on that. You'd have guys who get deployed and you're like, here I am. Yep. We still gotta take call. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, so how's your spending changed at all in the last four years as your wealth increased so much? It has, like we just bought the house out in, you know, it's a Scottsdale Fountain Hills area out in North, North East Phoenix. So that was a big expenditure.

20:24That was, you know, we really hadn't even, we had talked about buying another place. We were, and my wife were just out there last year, this past year or this year, I guess, on over Valentine's Day. And we started looking at some houses. The next thing I know I had a, a new house. I'm not, not counting big purchases like that. How much do you guys spend per month or per year? Oh, you know, I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that we don't really have a budget. We just, if we, if we want, we get it. We pay cash for everything. That's one thing. And it varies, you know, so we have six children and we've paid for a lot of education and we've paid for a lot of cars, pills like. And, you know, like we have a poll in our backyard and we had a winter storm this year that class part of the pool. And that, you know, that cost, you know, $80,000 to fix the pool. I mean, so it always feels like stuff like that's coming up. I would say outside of events like that,

21:26we probably spend somewhere 20 to 25,000 a month, something like that. We travel a lot. My wife travels a lot. I mentioned to you, she does a lot of endurance athletic events. She's done a marathon in every state. She's done one on every continent, you know, so, so that, that kind of gives her an outlet. And then, but those things aren't free either. So we spend money doing that. We try with our kids quite a bit. So yeah, I think probably that 20 to 25,000 dollar ballpark, but we just don't really keep a tight budget. Certainly a lifestyle you're going to be able to afford no problem on $20 million in retirement. Yeah, but we, you know, I've been running some of these calculating the Monte Carlo simulations and I think we should be fine, you know. Yeah, I think that's an understatement. All right, the bigger worry, I mean, at 20 million,

22:26you don't have an estate tax problem with two of you in the couple. Right, right. But as that doubles again, which it probably will given how much you spend, you know, you start moving into the train of, you know, having an estate tax problem. Do you anticipate, you know, putting any sort of trust or family limited partnerships, that sort of thing in place to try to reduce that? Yes, we've been working with an attorney on some of that. And I'm sure you're well ahead of me on this, but when you sit down and start working on trust, it snowballs very quickly on how confusing these things get. And we were setting down probably two months ago setting with an estate planning attorney and walked out there an hour after the, had about an hour sit down with them. My wife and I'll walk out and look at each other and it's like, what just happened? We felt like, like, did we make any progress here? It's, we're getting there, but yeah, we're definitely setting up trust. In fact, everything we have pretty much is in trust now.

23:28We're just gonna figure out what it's gonna look like. Probably over the next five to 10 years, maybe, and we're gonna set up individual trust for each child. Are we gonna have a family trust? It's gonna pay out dividends to children, to our adult children and grandkids as things go along. So yeah, we'll get that figured out. Just not quite there yet. Mo money, mo problems, but the, yeah, at least the good problems to have, right? Yeah, you're right. So, all right. Well, somewhere out there, there's a doc, listen to this, maybe there are the career, maybe they're mid career and they're like, man, that sounds pretty awesome. I'd like to get there. What advice do you have for them? Well, there's three or four things. One of the big ones is staying married to your first spouse. I think that's key right there. Pay yourself first. And I think the advice you give is 20% of your growth should go into retirement. And I think pretty much anybody can do that. And even people complain about certain specialties

24:29make more than others, I understand all that. But you could still, you know, you could be a $200,000 your primary care doctor and you could still put back, you know, $3,500 a month. That sort of thing. So pay yourself first. And you know, really join a practice where you're happy and you enjoy the partners and the work you're with. And I think the other thing, big thing is, is you know, live within your means. And I think we all have been around other positions and there are some of them that live large. Well, congratulations on your success. You have done fantastic and we're very grateful for you not only coming on the podcast once but coming on twice. Well, it's been, it's been great. I said this last time and, you know, 10 years ago we're making progress and I looked around at my peers and, you know, we have a very nice home and we drive nice cars but you know, it didn't belong to a country club and you know, my kids went to public schools

25:31and I kept thinking, you know, why everybody else seems to be doing something different or we doing the right thing. And then we, I found the white coat investor and I realized there are other people that think like I think and they're like we live. So that was kind of an eye opener for me. And I talked to our younger, some of the younger positions are in hospital and try to get them on board. We have some medical students that will rotate through with us and everyone I might say, do you have the book and if they don't have it, I'll buy them one and give, give the white coat investor. I said, this book will make you more money than probably any other thing you'll do in your life if you're reading, follow this advice. And the ax out surprise, most of them have heard of you. Well, these days the younger ones, the ones younger than you and I, most of them have heard of the white coat investor. I'm still trying to get to all the docs in their 60s. I don't know that I've reached all of them yet. So what do you think, I'm just gonna ask you a question on my, what do you think the average position's retiring with now? Three to five million something like that.

26:33You know, when you do surveys of position that worth, it's shocking, you know, the 2019 medscape surveys. The last time I saw them break it out by age, but 25% of docs in their 60s were not millionaires in that survey, but about 25% of them were pentamillionaires. So on average, you know, most docs are doing okay, but they're certainly are plenty that aren't and those are the ones we're trying to help the most here at white coat investor. Yeah, well, you've done an incredible job and I think you've been, it's been such a, you know, service for physicians out there and it's actually doing surgery last night. Here I am still working at 10 o'clock last night and the guy was operating with, we were kind of having this conversation about, you know, he's close to retirement also and, you know, some of the mistakes that we've seen some of the younger doctors make and so it's just, it's really interesting to kind of pick your peers' brains and see how they view this also.

27:36And he has a son of law who's in residency now and we were talking about, hopefully they'll make good decisions. So it's really, you know, I find it in sight for let's see how we all view money and, you know, is it a, I always think of it, it doesn't buy you happiness, but it's nice to buy some choices. It certainly does. Well, thank you for your time and thanks for being willing to come on. I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Okay, great interview. It's always fun to talk to a deck of millionaire and multi-deck of millionaire, especially one that's so open about how he did it. And really this is a doc that did it just practicing medicine. Yes, paying attention to his income and making sure he was making good money but saving a whole bunch of it, investing in a boring but wise way and look what happens after 20 and 30 and 40 years, right? You have a lot of money and you can do some pretty awesome things with it for your family, for others, for the next generation, whatever you want. So pay attention to your finances, please. And hopefully you'll be in a position like this

28:39where you'll be on a milestone the millionaire podcast is a pentamillion or a decadmillion or a multi-deck millionaire someday. A lot of people ask me questions about buying cars. What they may not recognize is that I'm a bit of an extremist on this topic. And so I'll try to temper that a little bit with the recognition that you do not have to be an extremist on this topic to make a good decision and to be financially successful. A typical doctor these days makes something like $375,000 a year. It might be married to somebody else, but I also then come might be $500,000 a year. That wouldn't be unusual in the White Code Investor community. If you are making $500,000 per year, it doesn't matter what you do with your cars. You pretty much can't go broke buying regular cars no matter how you do it, no matter how you finance them, et cetera. Now if you can go buy a bunch of Maserati's

29:39and the Clarenz or something, then sure, you can go broke buying cars. But the advice about cars is very important for lower earners. I am firmly convinced that the vast majority of people who don't build wealth in this country fail to do so because of something that's sitting in their driveway. The truth is that you can get an extremely reliable car without spending very much money. I used to tell people you get a $2,000,000,000 car and have it be reliable. A number's probably gone up in the last few years. Cars have just become more expensive insurance or inflation seem to hit it a little bit more than some other areas in our lives. But still, you can get a very reliable car that will get you to work, that will get you the places you need to go with a relatively low risk of breakdown for something between $5,000 and $10,000.

30:40Because of that, because reliable transportation can be had so inexpensively, especially on high income professional income, there's little reason for anybody ever have a car loan of more than $10,000. A five-figure car loan seems kind of dumb to me. If you needed to pay for your car with credit, you should be buying something that costs less than five figures total. And thus, you shouldn't have a car loan more than four figures. But the truth of the matter is that it doesn't matter that much for doctors because they earn enough to make a financial mistake or two, and this is a relatively common financial mistake that people make. They just spend too much money on cars. And why do they do that? Well, they do that because they can, because cars are available that cost a lot of money. It's not that hard to go buy a Tesla for $120,000. A nicely equipped pickup truck can run you close to $100,000.

31:42There are plenty of cars out there for $40,000, $50,000, $60,000. So the cars are available, you're driving past them every day. And sometimes that FOMO and desire to keep up with the Joneses causes us to maybe spend more than we otherwise would on cars. Now, a car is a tool. It's generally a depreciating asset. Maybe a few classic cars, that's not the case, but those are the ones you're not really using for transportation anyway. You just keep it in your garage and rubbing them with a diaper and pulling them out for a parade a couple of times a year. We're talking about the real cars that you use, that you drive around, that you take to the store, that you take to work, et cetera. They're depreciating assets, they're tools. You're exchanging money for transportation. And while I get it, it's fun to drive a nicer car with better features that might be slightly more safe than a little bit older car, it is what it is, right? It's just transportation. It's four wheels, it's a hunk of metal. There's another one down the street. So don't get too attached to cars. Remember the lesson that I teach my children

32:44that you are not what you drive. A lot of white coat investors have discovered, they drive a sensible, relatively inexpensive, often previously owned economical car and park it in the doctor's parking lot. And they walk past a lot of very nice cars on their way into the hospital. And they do that for a few years. And then they realize that people drive in the expensive cars, are not actually building much wealth. They start asking them, these doctors driving these beaters for financial advice. So it's not wealth is not what you spend. It's not what you earn, it's what you have after you get done earning and spending. So keep that in mind. These are depreciating assets, the less you spend on your car, the more money you can use to build wealth. Now you don't need to dive the richest doctor in the graveyard, but you're probably out of weight until you're wealthy before you try to start trying to live like you're wealthy.

33:46So don't spend too much money on a depreciate an asset, especially if you're not wealthy yet. Now if you're a multi-millionaire fine, spend a little bit more money on a car. You know, we drove inexpensive cars for a long time, now we buy brand new ones, often custom order. Because we have the money and it's fine. It's a relatively small part of our financial world. But if a car is still a big part of your financial world, be very careful how much money you spend on it. And you should generally be buying less car than you can afford. You know, one of the famous people out there said, if you can't buy it twice, don't buy it at all. I think there's some wisdom to that. Just buy less than you can afford. I mean, reliable transportation you can have for $5,000, $10,000. Okay? That doesn't mean you can ever buy a car more than $8,000. But it means you ought to be thinking twice before you spend a lot more than that on cars. You ought to think, do I have a better use for my money? Would this be better off going into a college fund for my kid? Would this be better off paying off some debt that I have?

34:47Would this be better off being used to max out a retirement account or going toward something we want even more like a really nice vacation or, you know, a lake home or something like that. I make sure your money's going toward what you actually care about rather than just trying to keep up with the Joneses or because of some ridiculous fear about not driving the very safest thing on the road. All cars that have been manufactured in the last 10 years are dramatically safer than all cars that were manufactured 40 years ago. Okay? You don't need the 2026 model or the 2029 model when your old car was from the year before, right? It's not dramatically more safer than whatever you could about a year or two or five or even 10 years. Hold on that. It's only a little bit safer. And some of those features don't make all that much difference at all. It's been a long time. Since they sold the car without any seat belts, airbags, you know, anti-lock breaks, those sorts of things.

35:48Consider buying pre-owned or used. You can buy these off a private party and will often get a better price than you will go into a dealership or go into a car lot. Those guys have them additional expenses and they're a little bit more savvy about what cars cost and what people are willing to pay. So they generally charge more. The best deal out there is usually buying from a private party. Now that comes at slightly more risk. Some risks that you'll have to do a little more work to the car is generally not that expensive work to make it look a little better or to update a few things or just, you know, bring maintenance up to speed that dealership would have done for you. But, you know, when you get the car for $2,000 less, you can afford to put a little bit of money into it. And often a private party has different motivation to sell than that used car lot. And so they'll often give you a much better deal on the car, right? That's often where you get these cars that were driven by grandma to church once a week and they're 10 years old, but they only have 20,000 miles on them.

36:49These kind of cream buff cars. That's where you usually get them is from that sort of a private party. In general, you should pay cash for cars. You should pay cash for everything that you can, right? It's a little bit hard for doctors and similar high-income professionals to pay cash for their educations. They don't come from a wealthy family. They're often having to use some student loans. And housing tends to be such a big piece of your financial life that waiting years to buy while saving up cash probably isn't very wise. But when it comes to a car, a typical physician is getting paid 20, 30, 40, 50,000 dollars a month. And if you can get reliable transportation for eight or 10,000 dollars, well, you don't have to save up very long. Come up with that cash, right? Certainly within two or three or four, having for bits six months, you should be able to save up enough money that you can pay for cash. If you do have to buy a car with a loan, make it the last one you ever buy with a loan.

37:52Buy after you finish paying it off, continue making those payments into a savings account. So when it comes time to buy your next car, you already have it paid for. And if you do finance a car, keep in mind that they're selling you loans, right? Yeah, they sold you a car as well, but they often make more money on the loan. They're highly motivated to get you to finance a car. Okay? They want you to buy as much cars you can. They want you to pay for it over as long of a time period as you're willing to. And they want you to pay as high interest as you can. And so if you're gonna finance something, try not to finance at all, try not to buy as expensive of a car, try not to finance it for very long, right? Paying off a car in three months or six months is not dramatically different from just paying cash for it. But paying it off over seven years, sure is. I mean, I hope doctors can get rid of their student loans

38:52unless time than that. There's no reason they ought to be dragging out car payments for seven years. Don't forget about the hidden costs of car ownership, right? It's not just the price you pay up front. There's gonna be some maintenance. Even new cars break down every now and then, just buying a car with zero or 20 or 50,000 miles doesn't mean you're never gonna have it in the shop, you're never gonna have it in the dealership. They break down too, maybe not quite as often as a car with 150 or 200 or 250,000 miles. But they certainly do break as well. So focus more on reliability than luxury. A luxury is nice, I get it. I've got some nice cars and it's nice to have nice stuff. But at the end of the day, the really frustrating thing isn't that your seat is cloth instead of lever. That really frustrating thing is when the car doesn't get you where you need to go. So focus first on reliability. Then if you have some extra money,

39:53feel free to throw in a little bit of luxury. The bottom line, anytime you buy anything, whether it's a car or something else is you need to make sure where you're spending your money aligns with your values, that things you care about most. If what you care about is your child's education, maybe you're better off putting money toward private, K through 12 and a college education and spending a bunch of money on an expensive car. Or if you value vacations, maybe the money ought to go toward that or if you value having a really nice home, maybe the money ought to go toward that. But on the other hand, if you're a quote unquote car guy, feel free to spend some money on cars. Just make sure as money you can afford will still reaching all of your financial goals. This podcast was sponsored by Bob Bionni at ProTuity. One listener sent us this review. Bob has been absolutely terrific to work with. He's always quickly and clearly communicated with me by both email and or telephone with responses to my inquiries usually coming the same day. I have somewhat of a unique situation and Bob has been able to help explain the implications

40:55and underwriting process in a clear and professional manner. Contact Bob by calling 973719100 emailing info at ProTuity.com or just going to whitecodeinvestor.com slash ProTuity. Thanks for being here without you. It's not much of a podcast. Keep your head up and your shoulders back. We'll see you next time on the Milestone and Simulator podcast. The Whitecode Investor podcast is for your entertainment and information only and should not be considered financial, legal, tax or investment advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principle. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.