The WCI June Newsletter - Life Isn't Fair

Featured Business

Our newsletter sponsor this month is Lawrence B. Keller, CFP®, CLU®, ChFC®, RHU®, LUTCF and his firm Physician Financial Services.

Larry is well-known to blog readers from the more than a dozen guest posts he has published on disability insurance and life insurance planning since 2012, has been a Platinum Level Contributor to the WCI Medical School Scholarship since its inception, and presented at WCICON22.

While he might not be a doctor's first phone call regarding their insurance needs, he is often their last. He can also help you review your insurance coverage or give you a second opinion on a policy you have been offered. If you're in the market for disability or term life insurance, or think that maybe you should be, contact Larry today by email at lkeller@physicianfinancialservices.com, by phone at 800-481-6447 or use this link for disability insurance or term life insurance.

WCI News

WCICON23 is going to be in Phoenix on March 1-4, 2023. I'm expecting to get back to the winning Pickleball court again despite the fact that I have no plans to practice. You can't register for the conference yet UNLESS you are willing to speak at it! That's right, this is a call for speakers. We like to have a mix of new and favorite speakers at each conference. We'll be covering all the main topics as well as a few new ones I'm sure. So whether you want to speak on wellness, investing, or something unique, now is the time to apply. Hint: Apply early and often if you want to win. Not only does it save us money if you give more than one talk (we only have to fly you out once), but you're just far more likely to be chosen if you're not trying to speak on the same subject as a dozen other applicants. Speakers not only come free to the conference, but also get paid a stipend to help compensate them for their time. Apply today at www.wcievents.com. By the way, if you're not interested in getting up on stage, you can sign up to get a reminder when registration opens this Fall at the same link.

I hope you heard about my newest book, The White Coat Investor's Guide to Asset Protection. It has been very well-received and is an Amazon best-seller in multiple categories. One attorney said this about it:

I just finished your new book recently. It really is quite fantastic. I say this from the perspective of a litigator—and not a doctor. I found the information that you provided to be equally applicable and solid for lawyers. I also ran much of what you said by my asset protection lawyer. He also just bought the book! Neither of us found any fault in the advice. All of it was rock solid and extremely well organized.

I was on the KevinMD podcast this month. Check it out!

It's time to give away some money again. The White Coat Investor Scholarship contest is underway. Full-time professional students in good standing can apply as per the instructions here (deadline is August 31st). We also need volunteer judges. Don't worry, you'll only need to read about ten 1,000 word essays within a few days in September. It won't take long. But to avoid bias, nobody here at WCI serves as a judge. We need our audience (no students or residents, sorry) to do that. If you'd like to judge, apply by emailing scholarship@whitecoatinvestor.com with the words "volunteer judge" in the subject line. Thank you to the sponsors who help make this possible each year. We appreciate you supporting those who support what we're doing.

Platinum Level Contributors ($8,000 or more)
The White Coat Investor, LLC
Larry Keller (Physician Financial Services) – Disability and Life Insurance
Bob Bhayani (Dr Disability Quotes) – Disability and Life Insurances
Laurel Road – Student Loan Refinancing

Paul Sundin (Emparion) - Workplace Retirement Plans

Gold Level Contributors ($1,500 or more)
Jon Appino (Contract Diagnostics) – Contract Review/Negotiation
Chad Chubb (WealthKeel LLC) – Financial Advising
Robert Kaplan (Kaplan Financial) – Disability and Life Insurance
Pattern – Disability and Life Insurance
Stephanie Pearson (PearsonRavitz) – Disability and Life Insurance
Michael Relvas (MR Insurance) – Disability and Life Insurance
Kyle Robinson (Doctors Supporting Doctors) – Contract Review/Negotiation

If you're like me and put almost all of your spending on credit cards for the convenience and awards, check out our new resource to help you get the best credit cards while supporting the WCI mission. Please don't carry a balance on them!

We're excited for the opportunities available through our real estate partners and want you to be aware of them if private, passive real estate is right for you. DLP Capital should not be a new name to you, but one of my investments with them (the Lending Fund) had its best month in four years in April, all while stocks, bonds, crypto, and precious metals were melting down. They have a new debt and a new ground-up equity fund out this year. If you find the $200K minimum investment at DLP too rich for your blood, check out long-time WCI sponsor Origin Investments where I've also had a couple of investments over the years. They've got something for everyone including a Ground-up fund (Growth Fund IV), an income focused fund (Income Plus), an opportunity zone fund, and a debt fund. A new company to us and you this month (but hardly a new company given their 20 year track record) is JAX Wealth Investments. They provide both turnkey individual property investments in Florida and Georgia and, for those who prefer a passive approach, a very high-yield income focused fund.

Market Report

Link to Spreadsheet Data sources: Vanguard, Morningstar, and SPGlobal

Well, May was a much better month than July, despite all of the negative signs above. US stocks were pretty much break even for the month, although a value tilt was rewarded. International stocks (which are more valuey than US stocks) also did well. Bonds were a mixed bag, with some up (short term nominal) and some down (long term and TIPS). Commodities continue to do well (seems like correlates awfully well with the price at the pump) but precious metals were sharply down. The crypto bear market continues, with its leader Bitcoin down from $67K at the peak to as low as $28K this month. As I've said many times before, if you liked BTC at $67K, you're going to love it at $28K. Other coins were down even more and one of the algorithmic "stablecoins" was completely wiped out (see link below). One interesting statistic is that over the last 5 years cash has actually outperformed treasury bonds.

Best of the Blog(s)

Lots of great posts from across the WCI Network this month. Check them out!

1. The Cheapest Way to Own a Car. I didn't agree with everything in this article, but man did people love this data-driven approach that allowed them to justify their decision to buy a new car!
2. How We Became Accidental Landlords: Turning a Primary Residence Into a Rental Property. Many of us have done this. Sometimes it even works out well.
3. How Physicians Can Prevent Getting Sued. Retiring early certainly helps, but there are a few other things you can do.
4. Vanguard: Growing Pains or Abandonment of Its Mission? It's not Jack Bogle's Vanguard any more. Why not?
5. Inflation is Soaring and a Recession is Possible: What Should You Do If You're About to Retire? Josh explores the fears of those facing decades without earned income.
6. Backdoor Roth IRA Millionaire. We put our first $5K or so into Roth IRAs way back in 2004. Now we're Roth IRA millionaires. Come along on the journey.
7. FIRE by Trial. No, we're not burning witches here. We're trying out retirement to see if it fits us.
8. Building Wealth in a Bear Market. We're getting awfully close to a bear market these days. You younguns should be relishing this opportunity to buy low.
9. Earn 2.25% to 15% Back on Purchases With These 2 Credit Cards. POF talks about two of his favorite reward cards.
10. 7 Things You Must Know About Real Estate Crowdfunding. # 3 is the hardest one to do given how fast these deals often close.
11. What's Keeping You From Your Dream Life? Do you have a dream life? Are you living it? What steps are you taking to get it?

Best of the Web

Every month I recommend (about) 10 articles from across the web. Thank you to those who send us suggested articles.

1. Stanford Residents Vote to Join Union. Another month, another physician union. This one motivated by non-clinical administrators getting COVID vaccines before residents.
2. TurboTax to Pay Customers $141 million. It turns out you're not supposed to steer people away from free tax-filing services. You might have $30 (a year) sent to you if you were one of them.
3. Biden Admin Reaches Deal to Provide Free Internet Plans to Low Income Households. You've heard of Obamaphones. Now there's Bidennet. However you feel about the government providing this sort of stuff, I suspect most medical and dental students should qualify. If you qualify for Medicaid or Food Stamps, you should qualify for this.
4. Politics and Financial Planning. Mike Piper says you shouldn't let your politics affect your financial planning and investing. I'm always surprised that people don't believe this.
5. Bitcoin Doesn't Belong In Your 401(k). Michelle Singletary spoke at WCICON22, so I wasn't surprised to see her take on Bitcoin in 401(k)s. Besides, it's so easy to tax loss harvest why would you want to give up that ability!
6. We All Knew This Would Happen. If Nick Maggiulli can't stay the course, what hope do you have of resisting FOMO?
7. Striking Out. Allan Roth points out the fallacy about individual muni bonds providing higher yields than funds, among others.
8. Conflict Incentives in 529 Plans Harm Investors. Larry Swedroe takes on the 529 industry. Is your state on the bad list? Mine, as usual, is not.
9. The Diversification Myth of Alternative Investments. This is something I worry about a lot. Am I mistaking illiquidity for low correlation and volatility.
10. Why Are Charitable Bequests so Rare? Katie and I plan to leave most of our money to charity. Apparently we're rare birds. Only 5% of wills leave anything to charity at all.
11. Luna Crypto Crash: How UST Broke and What's Next for Terra. Right when I was warming up a little to the idea of a stablecoin, one of them completely implodes. Not all stablecoins are the same, but you don't get 10% yields without risk.
12. El Salvador Expected to Default as Bitcoin Plummets. You know how the Bitcoin Bros love to brag about how two countries have adopted Bitcoin as legal tender? Well, one of them is now about to default on its debt because of that decision. I'm curious how the Central African Republic is doing. Pretty interesting that they're in this exclusive club given that only 11% of residents have internet access.

Great Stuff from the Forums

The WCI Forum, subreddit, and Facebook Group continue to be great places to get some help with your questions. See these great topics that people are discussing now:

1. Disability Insurance - Two Higher Earner Household This one is always a hard dilemma.
2. Where to Put $100K in Savings Per Year Such a hard decision when you have no written investing plan.
3. Deciding Between Medical Schools (The Importance of Cost) Money matters, but it's not everything.
4. Are Target Date Funds too Good to Be True? They certainly are in a taxable account.
5. Asset Reallocation in Bear Markets. How do you avoid buying high and selling low?

New Podcasts

Be sure to check out the podcast if you haven't yet. 30,000-40,000 are listening to every episode. If you'd like to leave a question to be answered on the WCI Podcast, record it here.

• #263 Investing in Crypto-Assets With Hedge Fund Manager, Dr. Jeff Ross (Sponsored by Laurel Road)
• #262 Kids (and Engagement Rings) Are Expensive! And What Is the Future of WCI? (Sponsored by Dr.DisabilityQuotes.com)
• #261 The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need With Andrew Tobias (Sponsored by Laurel Road)
• #260 Backdoor Roths, Solo 401(k)s, and the Safe Harbor Rule Q&A (Sponsored by PearsonRavitz)

The Milestones to Millionaire Podcasts (all accessible at this link) are short podcasts celebrating your accomplishments! Lots of professional variety this month.

• #67 Family Doc Pays Off $184K (Sponsored by Pattern)
• #66 Living Like a Resident Really Works (Sponsored by PearsonRavitz)
• #65 Family Doc Achieved $0 Net Worth (Sponsored by LocumStory)
• #64 Back to Broke (Sponsored by PKA Insurance Group)

Not enough podcasts to get you through the month? Try these from Passive Income MD!

• PIMD Podcast #107 Investing Success In a High Cost of Living Area
• PIMD Podcast #106 What's In Your Dream Bucket?

New Videos

Come check out the WCI Youtube Channel. 462 more of you subscribed this month, now more than 14,300! Please subscribe, like, and share!

Tons of new videos this month. Here are just a few of them:

1. Estimate Quarterly Taxes
2. Can I Rely Just On My Residency's GSI Policy For Disability?
3. Is Housing Overvalued? The State of The Housing Market In 2022?

Tip of the Month

I recorded two Milestones to Millionaire podcasts the day I wrote this Tip of the Month. They'll both run this summer, but they really illustrated to me just how dramatically all of our lives can differ. The first was an IMG who had graduated debt-free, matched into Neurology, made twice as much as the average neurologist, and was now, 8 years out of residency, cutting back to 7 days a month (still with a great income), a multi-millionaire, and on CoastFI. 15 minutes later I was on a call with a US graduate with $380K in student loans and $26K in 25%+ credit card debt who had failed to match the first time. While I wholeheartedly congratulated each of them on their recent accomplishments (the second had just paid off and negotiated away the credit card debt and matched into Anesthesiology the second time), I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that life isn't fair.

Now I use this line all the time with my kids. I'm really saying two things with it, even if they're only hearing one of them. The one they hear is that "you don't always get what you want." But I'm also telling them that they have advantages that others do not have. Life isn't fair....IN THEIR FAVOR.

The lesson to take from all this is that we are all starting in a different place, with different advantages and different disadvantages. Your advantages might include:

1. Parents who paid for your schooling
2. Learned about money before ever leaving home
3. A well-paying specialty
4. A PSLF qualifying job
5. A particularly good job
6. A cheap med school
7. A frugal spouse
8. Lots of fantastic retirement accounts

Disadvantages might include:

1. A low paying specialty
2. A crummy job
3. A high cost of living area
4. An expensive dental school
5. No family help with school
6. An employer who doesn't even offer a retirement plan
7. A financial advisor who gave poor advice at a ridiculous price
8. Getting suckered into an inappropriate whole life insurance policy

Lots of other things could be added to either list. Your list of advantages and disadvantages is completely unique to you and your situation. Overall, you're better off than a lot of people. You're also worse off than a lot of people. You will be a lot happier if you compare yourself to the ones you're better off than! Better yet, remember that personal finance and investing is a single player game. It's you against your goals. If your financial life is getting better and better each month, you're winning. It doesn't matter if the anesthesiologist behind the curtain had higher returns than you, if that guy in radiology retired early, or if you beat the S&P 500. All that matters is what YOU have, what YOU want, and whether you have a reasonable plan to get from the first to the second.

Life isn't fair. But it's mostly not fair in your favor. Take advantage and once you've made it, see how many others you can help before your time on this sphere is over.

You can do this! Thank you for letting White Coat Investor help you get there.

Jim

James M. Dahle, MD, FACEP
Founder, The White Coat Investor

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