The WCI October Newsletter

Featured Business

Laurel Road is committed to serving the financial needs of doctors, including helping you manage medical school debt.

Now, when you open a Laurel Road Linked Checking account during student loan refinancing, you can get a $300 cash bonus with $2,500 in direct deposits, [1]and qualify for an introductory 0.25% off your interest rate for the first 3 months. [2]You'll also get a 0.25% rate discount for setting up Autopay via ACH. [3]Plus, White Coat Investor readers receive a $550 cash bonus when they refinance student loans with Laurel Road. [4]Laurel Road's Premium Care Team is available 7 days a week – feel free to reach out with any questions you might have! For terms and conditions, please visit www.laurelroad.com/wci.

WCI News

We've been working hard the last few months on all the details for what many of you say is "the best wellness conference of the year". And from what they have shared with me, WCICON23 (aka the Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference) is going to be even better than last year. This conference will have new workshops to help you take the next step in your wellness and financial goals, keynote speakers I am personally excited about, even more networking and happy hours, and of course, the wellness curriculum and activities to make this the CME (17 credits of AMA Category I or Dental CE) retreat conference you don't want to miss. If you haven't already, mark your calendar to register with early bird pricing starting Oct. 10th at 7pm. You can sign-up here to get a reminder. The last time there wasn't a pandemic the in-person slots sold out in 23 hours, so don't miss it. We hope you'll be able to join us March 1-4, 2023 in sunny Phoenix, AZ.

We had a great launch of the No Hype Real Estate Investing course last month. We've had lots of people ask about the differences between No Hype and Dr. Peter Kim's Passive Real Estate Academy, whose waitlist is opening this weekend for the Fall 2022 cohort. No Hype is evergreen and typically done at your own pace. You go through the 4 week PREA course with a cohort of other students. There are live events and you join a vibrant community of other passive investors. No Hype is a broad (active and passive), "just the facts" style educational course. PREA is focused solely on passive real estate investing and motivates you to take that first step. The PREA waitlist opens this weekend with special $200 off pricing. Besides going from "zero to confident" with passive real estate, you'll get to join 2000+ docs and other pros inside a special Investor Club for world-class networking & priority access to consistent deal flow for trusted, vetted cash-flow opportunities. Enroll in PREA at no risk to you and join a great community of real estate investors!

Speaking of Peter Kim, I had a great time meeting many of you at PIMDCON last month and am looking forward to meeting more of you at the Bogleheads Conference later this month. I'm in charge of "Bogleheads University", basically the entire opening day, and we're offering a star-studded line-up of faculty including Christine Benz, Rick Ferri, Mike Piper, and Allan Roth. It'll be great to see people in person once again.

We're in the process of wrapping up the WCI Scholarship process and will be announcing the winners in October. Thanks to all of the sponsors!

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 Insurance
Laurel Road – Student Loan Refinancing
Paul Sundin (Emparion) – Workplace Retirement Plans
Dr. Stephanie Pearson (PearsonRavitz) – Disability and Life Insurance

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
Michael Relvas (MR Insurance) – Disability and Life Insurance
Dr. Robinson (Doctors Support Doctors, LLC) – Contract Review/Career Advice
Josh Mettle (Neo Home Loans) – Physician Mortgage Loans
Johanna Turner (Fox and Company Wealth Management) – Financial Advising

Thank you for supporting those who support us!

Real Estate Opportunities

Did you know we have another free monthly newsletter besides this one? If you have interest in real estate investing, you should make sure you're signed up for it too. It provides real estate education and introduces accredited investors to private real estate investment opportunities. Examples include:

Origin - Whether you want growth or income, Origin has a fund for you starting with just a $50,000 minimum investment.

DLP - Offers high-performing evergreen equity and debt funds, including two new ones this year.

JAX - They make it easy to control your own destiny and taxes by owning the entire property, but still not having to deal with toilets and tenants using their turnkey system.

Although Katie and I have personally invested with many of our real estate sponsors and are pleased to introduce them to you, you still need to do your due diligence prior to investing with any of them.

Market Report

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

What a terrible month to be an investor! Crypto is still in the toilet. Stocks fell hard and bonds sure didn't like that third 0.75% rise in short term rates by the Fed. Real estate has started to turn in many areas (home prices are down 7.5% in Salt Lake since May). As Thomas Paine said, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink." Okay, I took that a little out of context, but you get the point. Remember all those times I told you how hard it would be to stay the course when markets are down? This is one of those times. Doesn't feel too good does it? Feels like it may never end, huh? But it will. And abandoning your plan at a time like this would have serious repercussions on your financial situation for the rest of your life. Don't do it. In fact, if your income remains steady like many high-income professionals, this is likely a great time to buy just about any sort of investment, at least as measured over decades. You're getting stocks at a 25% discount, bonds at a 15% discount, crypto at 70%+ off, and as the effects of higher interest rates slowly take place, great deals in real estate will begin to be common, especially for cash buyers. Even cash is starting to pay something significant, at least on a nominal basis. Those who bought I Bonds at the beginning of the year (or earlier) are feeling pretty good about that decision these days.

Best of the Blog(s)

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

1. Mobile Home Park Investing 101 Paul Moore got a lot of heat for this particular guest post, especially given how fast rents have gone up on everyone over the last couple of years.
2. Why Landlords Should Charge Market Rent (and Why the Housing Crisis Is Not a Landlord Problem) Rising rents feels like a landlord problem, but it's really a supply problem.
3. Visualizing Your Way to Wealth Neurologist Rikki Racela takes you inside the brain to show you how to become wealthy.
4. How We Created a Real Estate Course From Scratch Content director Josh Katzowitz puts on his investigative reporter hat to learn more about the new WCI real estate course.
5. In Defense of FIRE Leif Dahleen takes the gloves off to defend his passion against those who don't know what the heck they're talking about.
6. 20 Ways You Are Incentivized to Earn Less It's not just the progressive tax system.
7. TikTok Doctors Are Creating Millions of Fans and Making a Huge Impact on Social Media Did you know WCI has 2,000 TikTok followers? But we're a TINY fish when it comes to docs on TikTok.
8. 8 Business Tax Errors That Could Really Cost You How many of them are you making?
9. Three Years of FIRE and the Point of No Return Loved this one from Physician on FIRE. Eventually, you can't really go back to medicine.
10. 5 Reasons Why I Don't Regret Lump-Sum Investing in January 2022 Boy I do, but I'd still do it again, just like I do every year.
11. FIRE Crossroads 033: Government-Issued Golden Handcuffs Another in the Physician on FIRE case series about real FIRE folks.
12. Physicians Scammed Out of Tens of Millions of Dollars Passive Income MD has a fancy, new, upgraded website. You can check it out while looking at this important cross-post from Physician on FIRE. Scams abound out there, be careful! I had a partner show up to a shift late just this week because she almost fell for a surprisingly sophisticated scam.

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. How Far Are We From Buying Groceries with Bitcoin? I enjoyed this article in the local press. Currently 0.03% of businesses in Utah take Bitcoin.
2. Democrats Want to End Lucrative Backdoor Roth IRA Loophole. A shot across the bow from some members of the House Ways and Means Committee. Not too worried given I don't think their party will be in charge for the next couple of years, but it does show there is an appetite among some to end this WCI standard.
3. Rich Dad Snore Dad and The Millionaire Next Bore. Hot takes on classic popular personal finance books.
4. What is Comprehensive Financial Planning? It's probably more than you thought.
5. Moving the Goalposts? Mutual Fund Benchmark Changes and Performance Manipulation. Yet another reason to avoid high-fee, actively managed funds. They're more likely to change the benchmark index to improve relative performance.
6. Should You Invest More After the Market Declines? The historical record suggests you don't "double down" unless the market is down at least 40%.
7. How Much Should You Give to Charity? I was wondering how anyone could write this post and was pleasantly surprised with what I found in it.
8. The Hidden Costs of IRA Rollovers. You don't always get lower costs by rolling from a 401(k) to an IRA. Sometimes they get worse.
9. Don't Ignore Direct Indexing. I came away from Allan Roth's article with the opposite conclusion to the title, but I'm sure there's someone for whom the extra tax benefits may outweigh the additional cost and hassle. Not me though.
10. Why Are TIPS Losing Money With Inflation at 9%? One of the biggest disappointments in 2022 as far as I'm concerned, but the effect of rising rates seems even larger than the effect of rising inflation.

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. Pay Off ~200K Loans Quickly (In Full) or Go For Forgiveness Under Biden's New IDR? Moral hazard now exists in student loan management. It's tough for everyone to understand the best path. Check out studentloanadvice.com if you need some professional help choosing.
2. Am I Being Irresponsible For Spending This Much Money? Is it okay to go to Thailand on student loan money?
3. Doctor Loan Question People love to talk about the current rates they're getting, but we usually see this question on the Facebook Group, not the subreddit. Ahhh....the subreddit is growing up!
4. FICO Scores A WCIer wonders why his or her 828 credit score isn't even higher. But the discussion goes in lots of interesting directions.
5. Tax Loss Harvesting I'm doing a lot of this this year unfortunately. If it's your first time, you may enjoy this thread.

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.

• #279 Roth Options and Questions (Sponsored by First Republic)
• #278 Recession Proof Investing (Sponsored by Laurel Road for Doctors)
• #277 Non-Clinical Work for Physicians (Sponsored by SoFi)
• #276 529s, iBonds, TIPS, S Corps, ETFs, and 403(b)s (Sponsored by SoFi)

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

• #83 Anesthesiologist Gets Back to Broke (Sponsored by PearsonRavitz)
• #82 Gynecologist Gets Back to Broke (Sponsored by Locumstory)
• #81 Orthodontist Pays Off $540K in 4 Years Loans (Sponsored by DLP Capital)
• #80 Dual Physician Couple Pays Off Loans and Becomes Millionaires (Sponsored by PearsonRavitz)

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

• PIMD Podcast #126 Lets Talk Opportunity Cost
• PIMD Podcast #125 How To Use HELOC To Invest In Real Estate

New Videos

Come check out the WCI Youtube Channel. 478 more of you subscribed this month, now more than 19,200! Please subscribe, like, and share!

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

1. No Hype Real Estate Investing - An Online Course From The White Coat Investor
2. 5 Steps To Setting Up Your Portfolio
3. What Is The "Buy, Borrow, Die" Strategy & Should I Use It?

Tip of the Month

I had a great time at PIMDCON22 last weekend. I was on a panel that was titled "How are You Investing in 2022?" They thought it was a little weird that I was investing the same in 2022 as in 2021 and 2011 of course, so I had to explain that. But the more remarkable take away from the panel in my opinion was simply that you don't have to invest in everything.

It was a pretty eclectic group of real estate investors on the panel. On the left side of the stage was me, and you know my approach. A static asset allocation of stocks, bonds, and real estate rebalanced every year, the majority of which is in low cost index funds. Next to me was Eric Tait, who has essentially nothing invested in the public markets at all, preferring instead an approach of trying to find outperforming real estate around the world for himself and those who invest with him. Next to him was Letizia Alto, who pulled money out of retirement accounts in order to invest it all in directly owned residential real estate. Next to her was Jeremy Roll, who avoids direct investing like the plague. Eng Taing was next to him, running his $350 million private real estate fund trying to divine what will do best in the next 3-5 years. On the far side of the stage was Peter Kim, who may very well be the "crash test dummy" of income-producing investments. Let's just say he isn't afraid to collect investments with everything from direct real estate to passive real estate to mineral rights to index funds in the portfolio. But pretty much everyone on the stage was already financially independent despite their dramatically different investing styles.

If you want to build wealth, the truth is that there are many roads to Dublin. If you make a good income, carve a significant portion of it out for your future, and invest it consistently into a reasonable investment plan, you are highly likely to be successful. You don't need to be dogmatic about your particular investing strategy, but you do need to believe in it enough to stick with it through thick and thin, including in years like 2022. Bouncing around from one strategy to another in an effort to chase performance is not only likely to result in a lot of frustration, additional taxes, and transaction costs, but it is also likely to leave you out of an asset class when it has its day in the sun, resulting in underperformance.

This investing stuff isn't that hard. Put together a good plan. Follow it. That's it.

Thank you for being part of the WCI community. Your work is important and we hope for your financial and professional success.

Jim

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

We only want to send you emails that you actually want. Use these links to fine tune which emails you get

Subscribe to the monthly newsletter (Unsubscribe)
Subscribe to the weekly blog post digest (Unsubscribe)
Subscribe to all the blog posts (Unsubscribe)
Find out about real estate opportunities (Unsubscribe)

I don't want ANY emails from WCI ever again | Change email address | P.O. Box 520421, Salt Lake City, Utah 84152