INTRODUCTION

This is the White Coat Investor podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high-income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the White Coat Investor podcast.

Full disclosure, what I'm about to say is a sponsored promotion for locumstory.com, but the weird thing here is there's nothing they're trying to sell you. Locumstory.com is simply a free, unbiased educational resource about locum tenants. It's not an agency. They simply exist to answer your questions about the how-tos of locums on their website, podcasts, webinars, videos, and they even have a locums 101 crash course.

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All right, we're sure glad you're here. It's not much of a podcast without you, and we try to meet your needs, meet your desires with regards to the podcast. Hopefully, it's a little bit entertaining. Probably not. I'm not that funny of a person.

More importantly, hopefully, it's both educational and inspirational to help you to improve your life so you can make a big difference in those things that matter most in your life. Maybe that's your medical practice or another profession that you do. Maybe that's your family. Maybe it's just having a little more free time and crushing your burnout.

I don't know what you're dealing with out there. I thank you for dealing with it. I know everybody has a struggle. I've got my own. Everybody I know struggles with something, so whatever you're struggling with today, thank you for fighting the good fight, number one, and number two, may you find success in doing so.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Dr. Jim Dahle:
We've got a guest today with a decently long interview, so I wanted to get a few things out of the way before we got into that discussion. The first one is our quote of the day. This one comes from Plato, who said, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Now, I've heard that for years and years and years. I didn't realize that came from Plato, but apparently, he said it first, or at least he was the first recorded as saying that.

Now, in today's interview, we're going to be talking a lot about estate planning. Really, gathering documents to make other people's lives easier, for the most part, is what we're going to be talking about, but I want to let you know about another service that we've brought on.

I've had people asking me for years and years and years and years for referrals for estate planning. They need a trust, they need a will, etc. So, we have partnered with a new partner, it's called Trust and Will. If you go to whitecoatinvestor.com/trustandwill, you'll see there's a discount of 20% off for our readers, and you can do a lot, a lot online these days, thanks to the assistance of AI and all the advancements that have been made, basic wills, basic trusts. If you just need a simple revocable trust, this is a great way to do it.

Very inexpensive, way cheaper than finding the nearest estate planning attorney in your state. Check it out, take a look, whitecoatinvestor.com/trustandwill, let us know what you think about it.

Now, if you've got some complicated estate planning situation, you really need to sit down with somebody and go over things and weigh your options and put together some decamillion trust, this might not be the service you want. You probably need to sit down with a good estate planning attorney in your state.

But for the vast majority of White Coat Investors, especially relatively early in their career, I know there are tons of you out there that don't even have a will. Despite having kids, nobody knows who's going to be taking care of those kids if something happens to you. Go to Trust and Will and get this sorted out as soon as you can.

Tonight, this drops on June 11th. So tonight, June 11th, there is a Financially Empowered Women event. It's at 06:00 P.M. Mountain. These are live. Ashley Shaw is going to be talking to us about contract negotiations. I say us, I should say you. I'm not going to be there. I'm not allowed to the FEW events. That's not true. I did get to speak at one of them one time about backdoor Roth IRAs.

But otherwise, I haven't attended any of the FEW events. I've not been invited to them nor to the socials at WCICON for the FEW. But if you are a member of the FEW or would like to be a member of the FEW, register at whitecoatinvestor.com/few-contracts. And that'll get you signed up for the event tonight. Even if you're not able to watch it live, I think they probably send you a video of it and check that out.

Okay, if you need help with disability insurance, I know a lot of you do, and I feel like I talk about it all the time. But the truth is, the people who most need it are those who just found White Coat Investor. So if you're somebody who actually needs this, maybe you've never heard me talk about it. But if you depend on your income, you need disability insurance. And the best place to get it is to go to whitecoatinvestor.com/insurance. Or you can just go to whitecoatinvestor.com, go into the recommended tab, and we have insurance there as well.

Okay, my guest today on the podcast is Josh Kanter. I'll be introducing him on the podcast. The feedback I've gotten from the annual survey is always to make sure you guys know when there's any sort of financial conflict of interest with any of our guests on the podcast.

I'm letting you know right now, there is potentially a financial conflict of interest with this guest. We were just lining them up because I thought he was doing something really interesting. And then somebody at the company said, “Well, maybe we could have some sort of affiliate relationship with him.” So we actually put one together.

If you hire Josh's company, after coming through the links we give you in this podcast, we might actually get paid. We've never actually been paid at the time I'm recording this, but it's possible we could get paid. So, be aware that we may have a financial relationship going forward.

I'm not sure we're really going to send him a lot of business, given what he does. But I think what he does is super interesting. And I think you need to do it in some form, whether you hire his company to help you do it or not.

And that is mostly to aggregate and communicate with your family about all the different accounts and people and things that are going on in your financial and non-financial life and get it together in one place. So that if somebody ends up having to be your executor, they'll be able to find all this stuff and won't be tortured for the next 18 months dealing with it. So let's get into that interview now.

Our guest today on the White Coat Investor podcast is Josh Kanter. He's the founder and CEO of Leaf Planner. Josh, welcome to the podcast.

Josh Kanter:
Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this conversation.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, this is really exciting for both of us because we discovered after lining this up that we only live like a mile apart. So we're very much neighbors. We've never met prior to doing this, but we probably run by each other's houses multiple times. So it's great to have you on the podcast and talk to you a little bit more about you and your career and what you've done and your company and even your family a little bit.

LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF FAMILY WEALTH AND COMPLEXITY

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Before we start talking about Leaf Planner, let's talk a little bit about your dad and then we'll talk a little bit about your career. Tell us what your dad did for his career and some of the things that he came up with that maybe listeners would find interesting and relevant in today's estate planning world.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, thanks for asking. I love talking about my dad. So my dad was a fascinating, fascinating guy. All of my grandparents were from Eastern Europe, emigrated to the United States, God knows when. And my mom and dad both ended up on the East Coast. My dad was born in New Jersey, ended up in Chicago in the 1950s for him to go to University of Chicago undergrad and then law school.

He became a wildly, wildly well-known and successful tax lawyer, probably of his era, which is now back into the 1960s through 2000 when he got sick and then passed away. And I'll come to that part of the story. He really was the preeminent tax lawyer in the country, to some extent around the world. Developed many of the estate planning techniques that we all continue to use today. His client roster was kind of anybody who was anybody of multi-generational family wealth of that era.

The projects he touched were just remarkable. Everything from helping to build Ticketmaster and Cablevision and the film industry and represented Santana and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Just a crazy career. Just a crazy, crazy career.

His fingerprints are still on all the things that we do in the tax world today. And again, just touched all these iconic projects. He turned into the venture capital space in the 1980s. So started, I wouldn't say a different career, but a whole other aspect of his career, building businesses and running two venture funds.

The downside to all that is one, I guess the attention of the Internal Revenue Service when you're that good at what you do. And so he was audited every year from 1964 to 1994.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
That's a lot of audits.

Josh Kanter:
That's a lot of audits. He was charged criminally in the 1970s and acquitted. And then the IRS started a civil case against him in 1979 that went to trial in 1994. Ultimately went through three circuit courts up to the US Supreme Court, back to three circuit courts, back to the tax court and back to three circuit courts and not ending until 2012, 11 years after his death. And so, yeah, it was quite a fascinating career.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. He's coming up with new stuff and it sounds like he's relatively, for lack of a better term, aggressive when it comes to seeking out tax deductions, and that will attract attention at times, won't it?

Josh Kanter:
It will.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Especially if you're publicizing it widely. Give us an example of a technique he came up with that's still being used today.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, one of the ones that I love is, and I don't know if your listeners will understand what these are, but I'm happy to describe it a little bit. But there's a trust structure called the intentionally defective grantor trust.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yes, I've got one of those myself. So I know very well what that is.

Josh Kanter:
There you go, okay. Well, I've got the first private letter ruling approving an intentionally defective grantor trust on my computer because that was something my dad dreamt of. I think it was like 1974, 1975. And so, many of those techniques, again, were things that really came out of his practice and his work.

And it's interesting because you make the comment about if you're public about it. My dad was very, very public about what he did. And many of our generation has grown up in an era where you could pick up the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal and you'd see that law firms and accounting firms were asking their clients to sign NDAs and all these other kinds of things.

And my dad was out writing law review. I think he published 100 articles, law review articles about the things he was doing. His attitude was, “This is what I'm doing. This is why I think it's legal. Come copy me. And if you don't think it's legal, then come challenge me.” And they did.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Did you get a sense he ever regretted being that outspoken about it?

Josh Kanter:
I don't think so at all. I think underneath it, he was a teacher.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You don't think he minded the audits. He's like, this is my 27th year of auditing. Bring it on.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, in their law firm, they had an office set up basically for the IRS auditors because they knew that they were just there full time. And so, no, I think he really loved it. I think he loved it. I think he loved the game, but I think he loved the education about it. I think he loved teaching people, including people at the IRS.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And it's true. Because sometimes they do need to be educated. I found myself over the years, I'm not professionally trained in finance by any means, but I found myself teaching a lot of accountants about accounting just because things that they just didn't have a lot of clients that were dealing with this issue. And I happen to have a big part of my audience dealing with that issue. So I know it very well. And sometimes the teaching goes in a direction that people don't expect it to.

Josh Kanter:
There's a new book that is just coming out. It's coming out actually in a week that I've been given a pre-publication copy of. It's got a chapter about my father. And one of the things that the author uncovered or came up with was a conversation with an IRS agent from back in those days. Who basically, I think very begrudgingly has to say and acknowledge Burt Kanter worked within what Congress handed him. And that if you want to blame anybody for this, you've got to go back and blame Congress. You can't blame Burt.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Hate the game, not the players.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. So what was it like growing up in that shadow?

Josh Kanter:
It's funny. I think for me, growing up, certainly the criminal trial in the mid-1970s, which was my early teen years, was rough. That was rough on our family. I think after that happened, my dad really protected us from it. We didn't really know. I didn't know until I came back to law school that the civil case had started back in 1979. And I came out of law school in 1987. And then I was carrying briefcases for everybody when that thing went to trial.

He did a pretty remarkable job of just kind of protecting us from knowing that this was continuing in some different format. But then there's the side of it of just growing up in the shadow of this giant. And my dad was nationally recognized, internationally recognized, but certainly in the Chicago community, nobody didn't know my father.

I remember coming out of law school and interviewing at different law firms. And there wasn't a firm in Chicago until the one I went to, whose first question wasn't, “You're Burt Kanter's son. Why would you want to come here? You're not going to stay.” There's mostly pride, I would say. Do not shed a tear for me whatsoever. But it was interesting growing up in the shadow of this remarkable human.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You talk about going to law school. Now tell us about your career.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, I went to law school. I became a corporate securities lawyer. I started in commercial real estate, and then in one of the real estate downturns I turned into a corporate securities lawyer. And my family was engaged in venture capital work by then. So I ended up doing a lot of work with my dad, and my brother worked with my dad on the venture side. The three of us were kind of loosely working together. I was still out with another law firm. I was outside counsel, really in that respect.

I really enjoyed being a lawyer. I was good at it. I had fun. I was doing well and building my own career. Again, a partial connection to the family. And then in 2000, we found out my dad had cancer and was going to pass away. He was 70. So still a young guy, deal junkie, globetrotting, really, I'd say still somewhat at the prime of his career and his life. And again, we knew he was going to pass away. So I left my practice to come help our family navigate through all that.

And obviously, as you might imagine from the description I gave you of who my dad was, there was a lot of complexities surrounding our family. We were filing 750 tax returns a year. We had a complicated balance sheet. He was in all kinds of deals. We had the venture business, obviously, ongoing IRS litigation, as I mentioned, and family dynamics. We were three generations, three branches.

And so, I came in to basically help navigate through all that, which was, I think, for me, it was the right thing to do. I knew I had to come help my family. But again, I enjoyed being a lawyer. I'm not the guy who walks into a room and says, I'm the recovering lawyer.

And so I left, I did that. I spent 18 months with my dad before he passed away. And then really jumped into the family office world and have been leading a single family office for our broader family for the last 25 years, which led me to then doing a lot of consulting with other families, because I saw among the families I worked with and nearby all the kind of problems that families of multigenerational wealth face and I really enjoyed talking about those issues and helping families think through those issues, especially first-generation wealth creators who don't even know what the questions are to ask.

I jumped into a consulting practice of helping families go through those issues. And then ultimately that led to the creation of this company, Leaf Planner. So it's all connected. It's one winding path like so many of us have had.

WHY FAMILY COMMUNICATION MATTERS MORE THAN THE BALANCE SHEET

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, I didn't run into you on a run. I became aware of your work after taking, I think it was a quiz you put together for Leaf Planner, which was basically designed to help somebody decide if they would benefit from having a family office, I think is essentially what it came down to. And of course, I was pleased to see that after I got done taking the whole quiz, it said, you probably don't need one at this stage.

But it was a fascinating process because there was way more involved in the quiz and the things it was asking me about than just the level of assets. Because that is what it so often comes down to. And people start talking about family offices. “Do you have $30 million? Do you have $50 million? If you have $50 million, but not $30 million, then now you need a family office.”

But you started asking about other things. You started asking how many businesses, how many generations? Questions like that, where the financial life just becomes a lot more complicated. When did you start thinking about that sort of level of complexity and designing something like that tool?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, it's really been in the background the whole time. So if I go back to my dad's death, again, when he died, as I mentioned, 750 tax returns, complicated balance sheets, on and on and on. And what I realized quickly after he died, and I spent, as I said, 18 months with him before he died. I'm a lawyer. I took his estate planning class in law school. I knew where the documents were. I knew where the balance sheets were. It was all the complexity, all the context that was missing.

And so, we started building this thing for our family 25 years ago that we called the family owner's manual. I'm sure you remember the old adage of you get an owner's manual with a toaster and not with a kid. And we said, well, guess what? You don't get one with family wealth either. And so, what would that look like?

It was really about that complexity. And so complexity has kind of been at the forefront of the way I've thought about this for 25 years, long before Leaf Planner came along. And what you took was our complexity calculator, I think. And there's also a free quiz on there about just family readiness. And there's another EQ quiz that really is out there to talk about, do family members understand sort of the emotional side of the family's wealth?

But the idea of complexity that you're talking about in that complexity calculator that's out there, anybody can go take it. And it's not even really about whether I need a family office. It's really just to get people to focus on how complex we really are. And I think your audience is the perfect audience for this, because you've got physicians and other professionals who are high-income-earning people, who “My neighbor puts me in this deal and I've got now my vacation property down in Cabo,” and whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

People tend to grossly underestimate their complexity. And one of the ways I say that all the time is you could be worth, who cares, make up a number $10 million and have a couple of homes and a couple of kids and a couple of trusts and a couple of cars and a couple of insurance policies, and a couple of private investments. And you start thinking about all these things, and you're really complex. And alternatively, conceptually, you could be worth a billion dollars of Bitcoin on a USB drive. And I keep saying to people, don't lose that password and you're not that complex at all.

And so again, I think the idea of that complexity calculator was to say, we all have a tendency to say, “Oh, I'm not that complex.” And that's because it's all rattling in our heads. It's not in my wife's head. It's not in my kid's head. It's not in my lawyer's head. It's not in my accountant's head. It's not in my wealth advisor's head. Little pieces of it may be in all of those heads.

But again, it ends up being this really gross miscalculation of how complex we are. And so, I'll often say, I think there is a correlation between wealth and complexity, but it's not a correlation of one. That correlation is much, much different. We did that because it's important, and you got a kick out of it. That's all that matters, is that it opens their eyes a little bit to say, “This is more than the size of my balance sheet.”

And you said there are a lot of things we ask about. Yes, it's things like generations. Because you're young enough, your parents may be alive; mine are gone. But that means people who are in that sandwich generation, who have parents above them and kids below them, that adds complexity. If you add another house, that probably adds 15 new relationships between the landscaper and the utility accounts and maybe a property manager, whatever it is. And people don't think about that. So you start thinking about all those moving pieces, and it gets really complex, really quickly.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, the classic “Mo Money Mo Problems” for sure. We'll include in the show notes a link to that complexity calculator. If you want to learn more about LeafPlanner, by the way, probably the easiest way to go there is just go to whitecoatinvestor.com/leafplanner. And you can check out the services available there, which we'll get into more as we go along.

But I noticed when I go to the website, the first phrase on the website is “Identify, aggregate, and communicate.” Why? Tell us about those three things and why they're so important for somebody with a relatively complex financial and family situation.

Josh Kanter:
Really, I think that, again, the problem I had when my dad passed away, and I've seen it now over and over and over again, literally in hundreds of families and family offices, is that there's so much information that's rattling around somewhere. One of the phrases I use is information is everywhere or nowhere. When I came to this 25 years ago, there was no Box, there was no Dropbox, there was no Google Drive.

But nevertheless, it was the same problem. Information was scattered. Different systems, different file drawers, different people. That's all still true today. Even if you're really well-organized around a Dropbox folder, somebody's got to understand the architecture of that. You still have to know, are your private investments over at Juniper Square? Do you have documents over in DocuSign? It's endless.

The more systems we add, the more complexity we continue to add as well, even though they're designed to simplify things. When you think about educating, whether it's your spouse, your partner, your kids, whoever it is, your advisors, your trustees, your guardians, how do you educate them? How do you give them what they need to know? How do you communicate that to them? How do you share your values with them?

These are all the things that people, I would say, tend not to appreciate. They say, “Oh, I've named somebody as my trustee or my guardian, and they know where to find my balance sheet.” Okay, that's helpful. That's a great first step. But that's not really how you get them prepared to have conversations with your kids or with whoever you're supposed to be doing this with.

And the communication part, I would say, is really, to me, I'm sure you've got some real estate investors in your audience, and there's that old real estate adage, location, location, location. And when I talk about families, I say it's about communication, communication, communication. Because you don't end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times because you were looking for 10 more basis points of performance. You end up there because sister and brother are suing each other because they don't know why mom and dad did this, that or the other. It's all about communication.

Now that's not going to always solve everything. There certainly are problems that communication can't solve. But I think that in my experience and what I've seen in all the families that I've worked with and worked alongside and studied, so much of this just comes down to preparation, communication, saying what you mean, all these kinds of things. That's really where that came from on the website.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Identify, aggregate, and communicate. People are hesitant to talk to their kids about how much they have. For lots of reasons, they're worried they will ruin them. They'll quit working if they know they have this big inheritance coming, or they just tend to be private. There are some things you don't talk about.

And so, I think communication is challenging for families, not only from generation one to generation two, but between members of generation two. What problems have you seen in this work you've been doing for the last 25 plus years with families that did not communicate? Tell us a few horror stories that could have been solved just really easily if people would just communicate.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, let me answer first from a different perspective, but then I'll come back to answering what you specifically asked. First of all, people tend to really confuse, I'll say, communication with transparency. And what I mean by that is people tend to think transparency is a binary issue. “I'm going to show you the balance sheet, or I'm not.”

And I think that really harms people because that's not what transparency should be. Transparency should be a continuum. And you can have a conversation with your kids about your values. You can have a conversation with your kids about your investments or your structures long before you reveal the balance sheet.

I get that there are families out there that don't want to talk about the balance sheet or don't want to talk about how much they're worth or whatever those things are. But there's a lot of preparation you can do leading up to that sort of reveal, if you will. And that I think is one of the things that people need to really focus on, because if you don't do this, then back to your horror stories.

Again, you're leaving your kids. Obviously, things can happen when you don't expect them to, but let's say things even go in the most normal kind of processes in the way they're supposed to go. You die before your kids. And now your kids are adults, and they've got their own careers and their own lives and their own kids and their own homes and their own complexities. And now all of a sudden they've got to unwind your crap. Is that fair? Is that really what you want to do to your kids?

One of the things I keep saying is if it takes me 20 hours to put this together in my leaf plan, for example, it doesn't matter how you do it. It's going to take my kids 200 hours, 400 hours. I don't know. By the time they have to go do all the forensic work to figure this out, it's not fair. It's not what I want for my kids. I don't think it's what my dad wanted for me.

And so, the worst horror stories, of course, are lawsuits. The second level of horror stories is ruined relationships. Because again, kids don't understand why Susie gets more than I do, or why didn't whatever. And if you're not communicating about these things, again, you're not helping anybody.

We had a very open communication in our family, for example, and our broader family, but it doesn't matter. It could just be our little nuclear family. Education was such an important value to our parents. And so, like our parents, we all came out of school with no student debt, really, really fortunate. We understood the gift that we were given by our parents to be able to do that. And we said, we want to do that again for the next generation. But we want to do that in a way that didn't matter whether you went to Georgetown or the University of Utah. It didn't matter if you went through college or to vocational school or to law school. Whatever it was, it was getting paid for. It didn't matter if you had three kids and I had two kids.

And so that was important to communicate to all of the cousins, I'll say, at that next generation or to my kids, that that was never going to be equalized. And that's intentional because this is based on the values that we hold. To me, again, that's about the communication side, not about telling them how much we're worth, not about revealing that balance sheet.

And so, if you think about communication, about your values and why you're doing these things, then worrying about whether you're going to ruin your kids becomes much more secondary to those lessons that you're giving them.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. So, let's talk for a minute. I think this is the first time we've probably talked about the concept of a family office on this podcast. Can you describe for us what a family office is? What kind of services do they offer? How is that distinguished from a typical financial advisor, who's a financial planner and an investment manager? What am I getting with a family office that I'm not going to get from even a good financial planner?

Josh Kanter:
Sure. The reality is the word family office has, I'll say, kind of been bastardized over the last 20 years, and now they mean whatever you want them to mean.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
That's the problem with the term financial advisor too.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, true, exactly, exactly. I tend to think the best definition of a family office is a structure. Forget legal structure, but it's a structure that's set up to really be able to look holistically at everything the family is doing and involved in and wants to accomplish, and is really there to serve the best interests of the family.

Most people think immediately, “If you think family office, you think, well, I'm going to have a bunch of investment professionals, and I'm going to bring that function in-house.” I would argue that's fine, you can, lots of family offices do it. You're not going to do that, you're not going to go hire a chief investment officer if you're worth $50 million. If you're worth a billion dollars, you might.

So there's clearly scale around some of those decisions, but the most important function from my perspective is that holistic picture. How does this all fit together? How do we think about this in that holistic nature?

Then you can start thinking about all the services. For us, I would say it started around, remember I mentioned we were filing 750 tax returns a year. That takes a number of accountants who are on full-time, that's all they did for years. And so that was kind of our core function. Some family offices are focused on investment. Some family offices are going to be focused on tax and compliance. Some family offices might offer concierge services. Some family offices might offer financial planning, as you said.

So lots of different things that they can do. And typically, I would say the family offices decide what we want to do in-house and what's better outsourced. Most families, even really, really large family offices, tend not to hire an in-house estate planning attorney because you can't use one full-time. You've got to be a really, really big family to need an estate planning attorney on full-time.

So, you've got to just be looking at “What is it that I want to do well internally and what do I want to do externally?” And you'll start to get conversations about, “Am I a single family office? Am I a virtual family office? Am I a multi-family office?” All these different variations that are starting to pop up.

But ultimately, I think it's what do you need at the core to serve your family and your legacy? And if you're building wealth, and especially if you're compounding it, I'm sure you've got listeners who are still in debt from school, but they're going to be off into a high-income career. They're going to build wealth. And I doubt there's a class in medical school about compounding. There should be.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
There certainly is not, I assure you.

Josh Kanter:
There should be. Because I run into lots of people who all of a sudden wake up and realize, “Oh, I'm in my 30s. I'm in my 40s. I'm worth $5 million or $10 million.” Compound that out for a few more years or a few more decades. And you know what that does.

And so, the notion of thinking about, “How do I want to think about the legacy I'm building? What do I want to do for my kids?” All these things, those are to me at the core of that family office conversation.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And of course, the cost of a family office is highly variable based on how much you bring in-house. I think there probably aren't very many family offices at all that are going to cost you less than $100,000 a year, but I'm sure there are seven-figure family offices as well.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, easily. Big, big, big family offices can easily run into $10 million, $20 million a year or more. Because they're bringing in really, really sophisticated professionals on the investment side, on the tax side, on the accounting side, on all these different things.

I would again argue, you could conceivably be a family office of one and be the person who's really acting as that quarterback, conductor, whatever you want to call them. If you like sports metaphors, music metaphors, or whatever you like. But it is that coordination that to me is really the value. And maybe that is $150,000 a person, probably still a little higher than that, but nevertheless. It doesn't have to be the billion-dollar family and the multimillion-dollar budget. I think you can start at scale, so to speak.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And I've even seen businesses out there offering a shared family office experience where maybe this family office is taking care of, I don't know, four or five or 10 different families. What do you think of that model? Do you think that it's possible that they can do that in a way that's really adding value?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, absolutely. There's really, I say, and I don't know if you mean the distinction, but I'll make a distinction. There are a few models out there that are truly what I would call what you just used, a shared family office. That's really four or five, six, 10 families coming together and saying, “We're going to hire the staff and build out the family office to just serve us.”

Then there's the multifamily office that really is a commercial business that is out saying, and there are a lot of these popping up that are saying, “Hey, let's call it the $20 million to $100 million-dollar family that's unlikely to go start their own true single family office, but needs that level of service and attention.”

Those, I think, can be great. I think they're a really, really good offering, and they're very different than walking down to your typical broker-dealer, your Merrill Lynch office, your Wells Fargo office, your UBS office, whoever it is. That's a very different service level and a very different component of services that they're offering you. And I think those can be great.

I think it's hard to go, I'll say, I don't mean this to sound bad, backwards. Like for me, the problem for us to go now after having run a single family office for so long, to go into a multifamily office environment, for example, I don't know who wakes up every day as I do and thinks about “What does the Kanter family need today?” That's hard.

But if you're growing into this, I think the multifamily office, the shared family office, they're great models. And you can get really good talent these days. There's a fight for talent, but I think, as opposed to 25 years ago, you can outsource a lot more. There's a real conversation about this and how to do it, which 25 years ago you couldn't do. So there's much more opportunity, I think, for families that don't want to build all this infrastructure themselves to go share it or to go find it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, I think a more typical story for our audience is someone who's going to retire with $2 million to $6 million. Maybe they die with $8 million, $10 million, $12 million, maybe. Is there a role in that sort of family as it becomes multi-generational for this sort of structure? Or are they stuck with using a financial planner, DIY, see your estate planning attorney, and do the best you can?

Josh Kanter:
No, I think there definitely is a role. Again, there are firms that are going to cater to the $20 million to $100 million family, but there are firms out there that are offering something akin to a family office service to the $2 million to $10 million family. I think you have to be careful of your expectations.

If you're bringing $2 million to a firm that offers something akin to family office services, you're not going to get the same service if you had $100 million. You've got to be honest about that. But I think you can go find the services that you want matched to your wealth level and what you're hoping to accomplish, much more so than, again, you could in the past.

CREATING A FAMILY OPERATING SYSTEM WITH LEAF PLANNER

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, you've been running this family office essentially for decades, and obviously come from a fairly well-to-do family. But at some point in the last few years, you became very passionate, enough to start a new company, enough to start Leaf Planner. What need did you see that you felt like you could fill with Leaf Planner?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, what Leaf Planner essentially does is, what were the words? Identify, aggregate, communicate? You've got to remind me of my own words. It really takes everything there is to know about you, your family, your family enterprise, if you will, your family business, your investments, your really everything, and maps it out into a giant mind map or owner's manual, again, of all these things that we do and how does that all interconnect? So you're talking about documents, you're talking about balance sheets, you're talking about deals, you're talking about relationships, you're talking about EQ. Why is this painting behind me important? Why do I care about it? Where did it come from? I don't want to just know the basis records. I want to know why it is important to me? Not is it even important in the art world? Why is it important to me?

It's aggregating all of that kind of information in a way that nothing else on the market was doing. And so, for me, I'm 63 years old. I started this at 59 years old. And I jokingly say, it doesn't change the beach I retire on. It might change how close to the beach my last house is.

But it's out of passion. It's out of passion for helping families because nobody else is doing this. Nobody else is really guiding families to say, “This is the kind of thing that's important.” And in many respects, that makes your audience perfect for what we're talking about.

Because again, they're likely high-earning first-generation wealth creators. Nobody's sitting down with them. Their Merrill Lynch broker is sitting down with them and saying, “Let's talk about your portfolio.” Nobody's sitting down with them and saying, “Let's capture how your family is going to find that when your neighbor and your fellow doctor and oh, you bought your medical office building. And nobody knows where the information is about that or the utility accounts or whatever it is, or where your dog goes to the vet.” Literally, it's all-encompassing. Or why do you support this charity? All of these different things that aren't explained, that aren't brought together into that, again, that holistic picture.

And so for me, the passion was saying, to your point, “How do I help everybody, not just the $100 million dollar plus family? How do I help everybody understand how to ask those questions?” And that became Leaf Planner.

Sure, of course, I'm trying to build a business and check a box to say I went and built something, but it's very much how do I take what I've experienced for the last 35 years of variations in my career and help your audience and the people I work alongside and do it more than, because I'll do this, I do this on a consulting basis with four or five families a year. And that's awesome. I love helping four or five families a year. But Leaf Planner gives me an opportunity to say, “How can I go help hundreds of families a year?” And that's really meaningful to me at this point in my life.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, very cool. And this is a real issue. My wife's grandfather died recently. I wrote about it in a newsletter for the White Coat Investors. He died as wealthy as he'd ever been in his life. Long career as an educator and then a superintendent, and just always a saver and never got around to spending as much as he certainly could have spent. And so he built some wealth in his 94 years.

And now in the last few months, there's this scramble, even though this was foreseen, and he essentially was able to choose when he died, still a scramble to find information and look at intent and these discussions that started before he died and continue after his death of what he wanted to do, and so on and so forth. And how the trust he wanted to set up is going to be administered.

There's a lot here that is not covered just by setting up an asset allocation for your investment plan. There's a whole lot more to it. And having this information in one place would be miraculous for, I think, most families going through it.

Tell us how this works a little bit. And for those who are not aware, we wanted to kind of have this conversation. Of course, I bounced it off, anytime I do anything like this, I bounce it off our COO, Brett. And his job, of course, is to make sure we make payroll every month. And so, he's running the business of White Coat Investors.

I've always just set up an affiliate agreement. So we did. We set up an affiliate agreement with Leaf Planner. If you go there from whitecoatinvestor.com/leafplanner, we can get paid. I don't know if we're going to send you a single client. I think it's an interesting conversation, even if we never do. But listeners should be aware of that. But knowing that, tell us how this works. Like somebody decides, “Okay, I'm going to make a Leaf Plan.” How does it work? What happens?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah. First of all, thank you for the partnership and my conversations with both you and Brett. And it's really important to us that you guys get paid for that and that we're putting deals together specifically for White Coat Investor members. And that's really important to us to be able to offer something of value to your members.

And again, if this doesn't make sense to anybody, I hope everybody will just learn something and think about it differently, whether they come to Leaf Planner or not. Honestly, not the most important piece. The most important piece for me is to educate people that there are a lot of little nuances that they need to be thinking about.

If you do come to Leaf Planner, and if you don't, by the way, again, some of this is available on our website as free tools or as free quizzes. The one, for example, that you talked about earlier. And so we really just want to help people. If you do become a Leaf Planner client, we have a team that you work with. You get actual people. You don't call 1-800-LEAF-PLANNER. You call Susie, Diane, Josh, and whoever. Everybody's got my phone number and my email address. And we train you. We onboard you onto the platform.

We have different plans where people can choose how much of a do-it-yourselfer they want to be. But obviously, as you can imagine, and certainly within your audience, again, you've got people who are working six, seven days a week and 8, 10 hours a day, and say, “This is great. I see the value of it, but I don't want to do it. I don't have the time to do it, or I don't have a family member who wants to do it.” And we'll come in and do that for you. So, it's really a very curated experience, depending upon what it is that you and your family need and want, and what's the right fit for you guys. We work that out with each family and get them up and running.

It's an annual subscription. There are no commitments. People can move, can leave, they can stay, they can move from plan to plan, from year to year. We really try to make this as client-friendly, which again comes from, let's go back, I'm 63. I'm doing this to help our clients. There are a lot of things that we do that I've seen in the industry that really bother me. There are no data limits. There are no user limits. A lot of things that just bother me as a buyer of these kinds of things, we don't do. But anyway, it's a very streamlined process. We try to make it as easy as possible. And we're there with you along the whole journey.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So what does my Leaf Plan look like? Is this 20 pages long? Is this 800 pages long? Does it list everything I have and why I own it, and who it's supposed to go to, and what the passwords are to get to it? What's in this plan, I guess, is my question. If somebody wants to try to DIY this thing, what do they have to do?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah. You're going to be guided through all of that, but first of all, you don't have to do everything. But if you went into my Leaf Plan, for example, and you zoom in on a person, because you're capturing, again, documents and contacts and describing relationships and all these different things. And all the little tidbits of knowledge that come out of your head.

A simple example of this out of my Leaf Plans, if you went in and you said, “Oh, here's this person, Barbara, and she touches these 17 different things. She's a trustee. She's an investment advisor. She's a confidant. She's whatever.” You're going to see that.

Then you're going to see, “Oh, I want to come in on this trust.” Well, okay. “Now, for the trust, I'm going to see the documents here. And here's why we created this trust. And here's where this trust has a bank account. And here are all the parties to the trust. And here are all the documents for the trust. And that trust owns my house, a mile away from your house.

And by the way, if you look at my house, my house has these utility accounts. And this is how you get into them. And this is the passwords. And they're on autopay from my bank account.

If you go into the house, well, there's this art collection. The art collection has business records, sure, but we also have a deal at one auction house, different than a deal at another auction house. Or you should know that this painting hung in my dad's office, and now it's in my office. So it means a lot to me.

Here are people you can trust in the art world if you're going to go to them. Or then you might zoom out into a deal that I did. And why did I do that deal? And who did I do it with? And where are the documents? And what's it worth?”

We're not a financial aggregator, by the way. So we don't replace the general ledger system. We don't replace the portfolio aggregation system. We're about all that connective tissue in between the hard data, if you will.

And when you say, what are you going to say? You're going to get down to utility accounts. You're going to get down to your charitable donations. You're going to get down to your housekeeper. You're going to get down to your dog and where they go to the vet. And do they have pet insurance? And do they have a Chewy account? If you want to do this stuff.

And then it's an app, obviously. It's a web app. And you're going to see this all mapped out. At the click of a button, you get a book of the whole book. So the number of pages depends on how complex you are. But yes, you're going to see everything there is to see. And in my Leaf Plan, for example, the first instruction to my wife and kids, if something happens to me, is just print and read our Leaf Plan, because that's going to give you the picture of what the next 18 months of your life is going to look like.

And it's a tool I can use to educate my kids along the way. My kids have their own access to it. They can go in. One of my kids is in college, and his car wouldn't start. And for the first time, he had to call AAA, and God bless him. He actually went into his Leaf Plan, found his AAA card, and did it all without me. There's just teaching kids about adulting, if you will, that's kind of baked into it. There's a lot of education in it. It's kind of what you make out of it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But this doesn't replace an estate planning attorney. You're not going to draft a trust for me.

Josh Kanter:
Correct. It's not going to replace your financial advisor. It really is not designed to replace people. It's designed to help everybody do their job better and more efficiently. It will save you money on your estate planner, especially when you return to your estate planner because somebody has died. Now, when they start asking you all those questions to fill out a 706 and estate tax return, it's all there. But no, it's not going to replace those people.

It may ask you questions about why you're doing what you're doing. It may ask you questions. If you look at your house, it's going to ask you who owns your house. And if you say, “Josh and Catherine own our house”, it may trigger the thought, “Is that intentional? Or did my estate lawyer tell me I should move my house into a revocable trust?”

So you're going to see a lot of blind spot identification, but it's not going to replace the actual estate planning, the actual financial planning. It's going to ask you to build out the context again, that connectivity, that connective tissue around those things.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, I'm a big fan of planning. White Coat Investors know I've been preaching, “Have a plan, have a plan, have a plan” for 15 years now. And that includes not just when you're trying to get back to broke as a young attending physician, but also a little bit later in life when you need this sort of thing and your heirs will certainly appreciate it. I think Brett worked out some sort of a discount for White Coat Investors. Is that right?

Josh Kanter:
Yes. When you come to us, we will offer you the White Coat Investor discount, and we're really excited about that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. So you can go through whitecoatinvestor.com/leafplanner to get that. But what sort of range of fees are people looking at for an ongoing subscription to have access to a Leaf Planner?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah. Ongoing subscriptions. Usually, our first year is a little bit more expensive because of the setup and the work with our team. And ongoing subscriptions can be as low as $3,000. And I've got to look at, actually, I don't remember off the top of my head what we agreed to do for White Coat. So we'll figure that out. But yeah, it's designed to be very accessible for really anybody who wants to do it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Well, I think this could be very useful for pretty much everybody. Having this information in our lives has certainly become more and more complex as I look at my life. I think this year's tax return had 21 K-1s on it. I filed in 9 or 10 or 11 states or something like that. Life starts getting more complex, especially the more successful you get, especially if you're successful in creating a family as well. Now we've got multiple generations, and they've got their own spouses, and eventually their own kids, and their kids will have kids. It just gets really complicated.

I think having something like this, just to keep track of it, can be very useful. Obviously, this isn't for every listener of the White Coat Investor podcast, but if you would find this useful, be sure to check that out. Again, that's whitecoatinvestor.com/leafplanner.

All right. So, your son has used Leaf Planner to hook himself up with AAA. What other success stories are the right way to phrase this? Maybe the big success is after generation one kicks the bucket, where it really becomes successful. What can you tell us about the experiences some of your clients have had in the past with Leaf Planner?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, we've seen all kinds of things. We had a guy whose daughter was passing through O'Hare, lost her phone, and had one of those credit card sleeves on it. So she lost her license, her passport, her credit cards, her phone, everything. And he was literally in between his three houses and was able to pull up all the information he needed for her. We've had a parent go into another state, go into the hospital, and all of a sudden the kids are all traveling and need access to the healthcare power of attorney, the medication list, the doctor list, the social security number, and the health insurance card, and all that stuff. And it's all right there.

We've seen families take this into family meetings, talk about the communication side that we were on earlier. We have families all the time using this as an educational tool to help bring the kids into the picture. I share it with my dog sitter so that they have constantly updated information about our dogs. It's really good.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, are you able to just share it, like just a part of it, with somebody?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Obviously, you don't want to give the dog sitter a list of your portfolio assets.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah. No, highly structured in how you share things. And then there's a whole workflow management piece of it. So, it's all integrated into obviously, the single system. I'm sure many of your listeners have done grants or trusts that require crummy letters, for example, or insurance trusts that require crummy letters. So it's going to remind you about the crummy letter. It's going to remind you that your passport is due. It can remind you that your boiler maintenance is due at your house. It can remind you that your insurance policy needs to be reviewed.

There's a huge amount of workflow management built into it to make it a day-to-day family operating system, if you will. And so, yeah, I think success stories are sort of all over the board, which I think speaks to our retention rate, which is super high in the 90s.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I feel like I've tried to do this myself over the years at times. I have written down a death document, on what you should do if I die. I've written a letter to my executor, and I don't keep it up to date. Now we have a password manager, which I think helps with the passwords anyway. But what else have I done? I've taken everything out of my wallet and made a photocopy of it before. But the last time I did that was 10 years ago. It's different stuff in my wallet now.

And so, I think a lot of people have tried to do what you've done in this incredible way. They've tried to piecemeal it, DIY it in the past, and I've seen a few other products where you just kind of write down a few things on a few pages and put it in your file cabinet. This is dramatically more comprehensive.

Josh Kanter:
Yeah, more comprehensive and really designed to avoid that problem. Both the garbage-in, garbage-out problem and the “Oh, I forgot.” Well, I guess garbage in, garbage out is the same as “I forgot to do it for 10 years” or whatever.

So, again, it's really baked into taking a multidisciplinary approach we've got on our advisory board. So, a lot of this obviously comes from my 35 years, but we've got insurance people, lawyers, accountants, but then we've moved to the softer side, and we've got family dynamics experts, we've got religious leaders, we've got doctors. So that everybody is asking the questions that matter from their perspective.

We had a question in there originally, for example, that just said, do you have long-term care insurance? Well, that's a great question. Most people forget to ask that question, but it wasn't until one of either, either the doctor or the insurance person, I don't remember which, said to us, “But you need to ask the follow-up question, which is, do they want to be cared for at home or are they okay going to a facility,” kind of thing. I wouldn't know to ask that question. Your audience would, but I wouldn't.

And so, again, if you try to DIY this, you're only as good as the number of questions you know how to ask, or the prompt that you give ChatGPT. And so, what we've done is take that guesswork essentially out of it and then systematize it, if you will, in a way that avoids that neglect or garbage in, garbage out.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, very cool. Well, thank you for developing this, to start with. The world is constantly looking for, lack of a better term, entrepreneurs, but problem solvers, because this is a problem. Looking back over the years, I'm like, oh yeah, I understand why this is needed, because I've made a mess of things. And despite doing my best to have a plan and to write it down and keep it up to date, and that sort of stuff, you've come up with the solution to that.

So, thank you for doing that. Whether I actually send you a single client, I have no idea, but thanks for what you've done, because you've seen a problem and you've gone to solve it. Hopefully, you've created some jobs and created a successful business along the way. So, well done in that case.

What have we not talked about today with regard to estate planning, leaf planning, whatever you want to call it? What have we not talked about today that our audience ought to know?

Josh Kanter:
Yeah. Well, I think the obvious answer is, as you said earlier, have a plan. I just saw a Chubb report that still said, and Chubb is not exactly dealing with the mass population. They're dealing with a pretty upper end clientele. And even their latest wealth report said 74% of people don't have an estate plan. So, get your plan done.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And we're just talking about like a will. We're not talking about somebody who actually knows where the accounts are.

Josh Kanter:
Exactly, right. A basic estate plan, just chip away at this. A lot of people just don't take this on because it seems overwhelming. One I would say is not, and you can do it over a long period of time, but everything you do is going to make your family's life better.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, one of the downsides to doing this, to having a Leaf Plan, is you have to do it. It's a fair amount of work. How do you get people to overcome their natural laziness and actually do the work?

Josh Kanter:
To some extent, you can't. That's always going to be a problem. If it weren't, then 100% of people would do it. If it were easy, then 100% of people would have an estate plan. But we've done whatever we can to make that easier. So, it's a very guided process. Our team will do it for you. We'll hold your hand. We'll do whatever you need us to do. And so, we're trying to reduce that friction. Obviously, AI is making that easier as well. So, lots of things that we're trying to do to reduce friction.

But to your point, there's always going to be friction. The only thing I would say about it is if there's friction to us, there's going to be multitudes, exponential multitudes of friction to our kids. And if that's not what you want to leave them with, then accept that there's a little bit of friction in life. There was friction in life to get to where you got.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Fair point. If you love your kids enough that you have bought a term life insurance policy at some point, you probably had to love your kids enough to put together some sort of a Leaf Plan, whether you hire a Leaf planner or not for them to help sort through this stuff because it is complicated after you go in particular, but you may not even go before this thing's needed. You might just become a little bit demented or disabled, or just be in the hospital for a while, or maybe your kid just needs AAA, whatever it might be.

Awesome. Well, Josh, thank you so much for your time. As I mentioned before, that link, if you're interested, whitecoatinvestor.com/leafplanner. Thank you so much for your time today, Josh.

Josh Kanter:
Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for letting me share it with you.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that. That was a lot of fun for me. It's fun, not only because we're neighbors and didn't know it, but because it's just something that I've dealt with for a long time in the background and never even thought about hiring out, probably because there never was anybody to hire this sort of thing out. Well, now there is in our world, in our AI world, in our world of apps, you can actually keep this stuff up to date and move forward with it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, if that service is right for you, hire them. If it's not, figure out how you're going to do it yourself. But either way, you need to aggregate some of this information. You definitely need to be communicating with your family.

SPONSOR

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Our sponsor for this episode is locumstory.com. And full disclosure, this is a sponsored promotion for them. But the weird thing here is there's nothing they're trying to sell you. Locumstory.com is simply a free, unbiased educational resource about locum tenants. It's not an agency. They simply exist to answer your questions about the how-tos of locums on their website, podcasts, webinars, videos, and even have a locums one-on-one crash course. Learn about locums and get insights from real life physicians, PAs, and NPs at whitecoatinvestor.com/locumstory.

Don't forget about the FEW event tonight. You can sign up at whitecoatinvestor.com/few-contracts. Ashley Shaw is going to be talking to the Financially Empowered Women about contract negotiations. Get paid what you're worth. We hear a lot about gender pay gap, and we're not going to get into a big deep discussion about that today. But you know how one of the methods for eliminating is? Making sure you're getting paid what you're worth by negotiating, getting your contracts reviewed, etc. So, learn more about that tonight, 06:00 P.M. Mountain. Also, don't forget, if you still need disability insurance, get it. whitecoatinvestor.com/insurance is the best place to do that.

Thanks for those of you leaving us five-star reviews and telling your friends about the podcast. A recent one came in and said “The best medicine. The principles of WCI are the best medicine for physician burnout. With all due respect to wellness talks, yoga, and meditation, taking care of your finances is by far the most beneficial burnout buster. Dr. Dahle and the WCI team will show you the simple steps necessary to control your financial life rather than having money problems control you. Burnout physicians, you need this podcast, and WCI in general.” Five stars.

That was really nice. I appreciate those reviews, not only because they make us feel good, but more importantly, they help spread this message to others, help others find this podcast. There's somebody listening to this right now that has never listened to this podcast before because somebody put in a review.

I thank you for doing that. I thank you for what you're doing in your daily work. It does matter. I want you to optimize your career for longevity so you can do this important work you're doing as long as you possibly can.

But also, you got to find balance. Balance in your financial life between the needs of current you and the needs of future you, and balance between having purpose in your life, eudaimonia is the Greek term, as well as pleasure or fun in your life, or hedonia. You got to balance it all. I know you can figure it out. The more intentionally you live, the happier you're going to be.

Keep your head up and your shoulders back. You've got this. The whole White Coat Investor community is here to help you. See you next time on the podcast.

DISCLAIMER

The White Coat 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 principal. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.

INTRODUCTION

This is the White Coat Investor podcast Milestones to Millionaire – Celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is Milestones to Millionaire podcast number 278.

This podcast is sponsored by Bob Bhayani of Protuity. He is an independent provider of disability insurance and planning solutions to the 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 www.whitecoatinvestor.com/protuity. You can email info@protuity.com or you can also call (973) 771-9100.

This is the Milestones to Millionaire Podcast. If you'd like to be on the podcast, you can apply at whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones. We'd love to have you come on, share your story, and use it to inspire others to reach their financial goals.

But if you're sick of trying to make spreadsheets and calculations that do what you want, you should check out BoldIn, formerly known as New Retirement. It's perfect for DIY investors to take control of all the variables that impact your wealth, retirement timing, and long-term financial security. Even with the free version of the software, the financial plan generated was actually far higher than I've seen come from many professional financial advisory firms.

When combined with a financial literacy course, such as our Fire Your Financial Advisor course, this could be a powerful tool for someone looking to bridge the gap between hardcore DIY financial planning and paying thousands to a financial advisor. Check it out at whitecoatinvestor.com/boldin.

All right. We've got a great interview today. He's going to stay a little bit anonymous, but stick around to the very end. You're going to like a little bit of a gem that's going to come at the end of this interview.

INTERVIEW

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. We've got a wonderful guest that's going to remain anonymous on the podcast today, but welcome to the podcast.

Speaker:
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What part of the country you're in and what you do for a living. How far you are out of training?

Speaker:
I'm an emergency physician. I live in the Southeast. I'm about 10 years out of training.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Tell us what you've accomplished, what we're celebrating today.

Speaker:
When I was getting all of my tax documents together for this year, and looking over at gains and inputs from everything, I realized that during the last calendar year, all of the gains I had from my investments outpaced everything I had put into those accounts.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Pretty awesome. It feels like it's hit escape velocity, right?

Speaker:
It sure does. It sure does.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
It might not be quite the same thing as financial independence, but you can smell it from here, right?

Speaker:
You know what? I can definitely see that I'm not through the tunnel, but I'm getting through the tunnel. I can definitely see that big bright light on the other side.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. Well, tell us about your financial journey. When you started paying attention to this stuff and what you've done over the last 10 years in order to get to this point.

Speaker:
Yeah. I think I've always been financially minded when I was growing up. I had at least a summer job basically since I was eighth grade and worked probably most of the time through high school waiting tables. I tutored in college. I was an RA. I had a real sense that it would be a benefit to my life to have money, both for all the fun things that you can do with it, but also school was expensive.

Speaker:
I had a tuition scholarship, but I didn't have my residence paid for. So I became an RA and then had all my housing taken care of and then was able to save a little bit of money and leave undergrad with no debt.

And then looking at medical schools, I decided to stay in state. Well, I was only accepted to in-state schools. So that decision was made for me, but I was able to keep things cheap and then graduate with at least compared to a lot of people that I have since come into contact with, not minimal debt, but less debt than I could have otherwise. I graduated with about $130,000 in debt all told.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, it's pretty good these days. On a typical physician income, you can get rid of that pretty quickly.

Speaker:
Yeah, and I got rid of it. I think it was around year three, between years three and four. I had an end of the year incentive payout that also matched up with some over hours. I had a really big check come into my checking account and realized that I could just write a big check for I think $35,000 and pay off the last bit. I did it and it felt good. And I've been trying to get rid of debt ever since.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, very cool. Okay, give us a sense what your incomes look like over the last 10 years. I know what emergency physicians make. Most of them make $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 if they're working full time. Is that about what your incomes look like the last 10 years?

Speaker:
Yeah, I'm on the lower end of that. I'm in academics and I have been since graduation. My wife is a teacher. We've been between the low threes to the low fours. I think last year, our combined income was maybe about $420,000, $425,000 all in. So, not a huge amount, but also, it's nothing to shake a stick at. We feel very blessed with our incomes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
For sure. Okay, so about how much of that income have you saved over the years?

Speaker:
I was just running the numbers yesterday. Our pre-tax savings rate was 27% on that $420,000.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
For last year is what it was. And has it looked like that since you got your student loans paid off? Or how long have you been saving that much money?

Speaker:
We definitely have been saving around that same percentage every year. We have decided to pay ourselves first. I always make sure at the beginning of every calendar year, I'll usually have some over hours or incentive bonus that is sitting in the checking account. And I'll go ahead and fully fund my 403(b) and my 457 at the beginning of the year, as well as our Roth IRAs. We really take a savings first mentality. And then once we get those out of the way, then it's easier to spend the money that we do have without having to do calculations of have we saved enough? Because everything else is either on autopilot or front-loaded to the start of the year.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But it sounds like you've been saving something like $75,000 or $100,000 every year since you started working.

Speaker:
Absolutely. So last year, we ended up saving about $120,000. That includes contributions from my employer to my 403(b). But yeah, we've been saving six figures for the last couple of years, to everything, either retirement accounts or paying down extra mortgage or our taxable investment account.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. I'm guessing your investable assets at this point are something like $2 million to $3 million. Does that sound about right?

Speaker:
Yes. Kind of right at $2 million for invested assets.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. And that was enough last year. And the returns were good last year. That was enough last year that your money made more money than you put in the account.

Speaker:
Absolutely. It's a good feeling.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. For people out there who want to kind of be multimillionaires like you are, 10 years out of training, what recommendations do you have for them?

Speaker:
I was definitely the kind of person who, it's easy to overthink everything. I remember I got very familiar with your 150 portfolios that are better than your blog article. When we decided to start an investment account and I was going to manage it, really splitting hairs with regards to what the appropriate asset allocation was.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And I think probably the best thing that I did for my own mental health regarding that and anxiety is just to choose something reasonable and send it off. So, I don't have anything very fancy. It's all low costs, Vanguard, total stock market, total international, nothing fancy. I have a little bit of a small cap tilt, which is the most complicated thing that I do.

But once I set something and then set up recurring payments, I could use the mental energy to just keep track of things rather than sweating bullets with regards to, “Am I in the right thing?” Because once you set the stage for success by getting everything set up, then you'll watch it grow and it'll dip a little bit. It'll grow a little bit and watching the fluctuations, you just have to write it out and really know that it's all about the long game. And you stop worrying about, “Oh, the S&P 500 lost a half a point today.” And knowing what the mental calculation is for how much that is of your net worth.

Now the numbers are so big, the market can swing in the direction that outpaces my 403(b) contribution for the year. But once you see enough of it, it just bothers you less. And you see the overall trend is up so far.

Well said. Now you're an emergency doc, and most emergency doctors have heard of the White Coat Investor at some point. I write an article every few months for a throwaway publication. And I speak at the ASAP conference every year. Do you recall when you first found out about White Coat Investor? And what was your state of financial literacy at that point?

Speaker:
I remember being either referred to it or heard people talking about it when I was in residency. So it was before I was married in residency. But having a sense of, I now have to pay off six figures of student loans. I need to figure out if I'm going to go for loan forgiveness or just pay it off. And I was planning on getting married. And my wife was employed.

And so there were a lot of financially active things in my life at that time. I remember that was when I first got introduced to your blog. And I think that reading that was very helpful to one, teach me some things about what I need to do. But also know that there's all these resources out where I can go. And I don't really know exactly what this is or that is. Or I can go and find the answers to questions that I was starting to have. Because I'd never had any money before. Now I needed to know what I was going to do with it.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, well, we got a few minutes left. I want to talk about something else unique that you've done in your life, especially since Megan, our podcast producer, is such a huge fan of the TV game show Jeopardy. And you were on Jeopardy at one point. Tell us a little bit about your experience with that and maybe some of the finances of it.

Speaker:
Yeah, going on Jeopardy, that was really achieving a lifelong dream for me. And the experience in real life was just as much, if not more magical than I could have imagined. I was flown out to California. I was with 12 other people who were all just having a time of their lives. You film five episodes in a day and you don't know when you're going to go on. And I was fortunate enough to win one over $30,000. And that was great.

But as a well-employed emergency physician, I've had paychecks that have been more than my Jeopardy winnings. I think it just goes to show, if you're a physician who's made it and you've got a good job, you are bringing home game show winnings every month.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, it's a good way to think about it. A lot of people think about the lottery and you think about the Powerball or whatever that's a gazillion dollars. But I think the average lottery winning is significantly less. I think the average amount won is a whole lot less than what most people think.

It tends to be maybe a little bit more than most physicians make in a given month, but something like $100,000. So, it's not this money that you never work again for. And I suppose it's similar that way. So you won, you said. Doesn't that mean you get to go back the next week? Did you lose the next week or how did that work out?

Speaker:
They filmed five episodes a day, one after another, every two weeks. So they filmed two days a week, every other week. I won and then went right into the next game and yeah, ended up winning, won a couple times. But I'm no James Holzhauer.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But you got to play in three games, it sounds like then, if you won two.

Speaker:
Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Very cool. What an experience. And you've been a Jeopardy fan your whole life, I assume. And you probably still watch episodes.

Speaker:
Yeah, from time to time.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, and I'm going to ask you a related question about your finances, of course. Let's say there's somebody out there that wants to go on a game show. They want to go on Jeopardy. What advice do you have for them for getting on the show?

Speaker:
You got to take the home test. I think they do it year round right now. But you got to take that and get lucky. And then you got to show up in person. And they're going to choose people who can do well on that test. And also, I guess, look good on TV. I wore a nice suit.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Okay, well, not counting the Jeopardy. Let's talk about the rest of the success you've had. It's far more significant, at least financially speaking, than what happened on Jeopardy. There's somebody out there. They're coming out of residency. Maybe they're an OB-GYN or an emergency doc or anesthesiologist, whatever. And they want to be successful like you are. 10 years out, they want to say, “Hey, I got a couple million dollars. I just did the basics and I was able to do what they talk about doing at White Coat Investor.” What advice do you have for them?

Speaker:
I think the best decision that we made early on in our careers was when I was getting ready to graduate residency, we decided, we knew where we were going to live. I had a job set up. My wife had a job set up. And we knew where the “best neighborhood” was. And so we did the thing where we bought the big doctor house. We actually bought a rundown, fallen into disrepair house. And then we bought it for very cheap and then put in a very expensive construction loan before, when I had a contract in hand, but no actual income.

And we spent a lot of money, a lot of sweat equity into that house and then realized within about six months that the house was going to require a lot more finances than just the mortgage, landscaping, heating, cooling, keep up of everything when you have a large house. And we also didn't really like the neighborhood as much.

The best decision that we made was selling the house within a couple of months of us living there and then moving back to an apartment for a year and just basically doing a reset. And we found a neighborhood that we liked a lot better. That was much more speed and a much more affordable, not that it was unaffordable, but I was starting to learn what it meant to be house poor. So, we bought a much more reasonable house.

And then since then, when you have lower costs for a mortgage and you don't have fancy expensive cars, which the Jeopardy winnings paid off both of our very reasonable sedans, you suddenly have a lot more money to do not only fun things, but also the things that you have to do. You save for retirement, put things away, and you don't have to feel like you're sacrificing.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Do you think if you stayed in that house instead of getting out when you did, do you think you'd still be a multimillionaire now?

Speaker:
Yeah, I think we'd still be well off. I don't think that we would, one, be as happy because we got rid of a lot of headaches, sizing down to a smaller house. And then we've since moved and now we're in an even smaller house, but in a great neighborhood. And fortunately, when we've moved, we've bought and sold at good times so that we had a lot of equity in the house. But yeah, if we had stayed in that other house, we'd probably be so well off, but we would have a lot more headaches and probably wouldn't be as happy in our daily lives just in terms of it wasn't the right fit for us.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, congratulations to you on all of your success. And thank you so much for being willing to come on the podcast and talk about it and inspire others to do the same.

Speaker:
Absolutely. Well, thank you for everything that you do.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. I thought that was pretty fun. It's fun to meet a doctor celebrity. We're all celebrities in our own minds, I suppose. But sometimes there's somebody that's a little bit more famous than the rest of us, and that's fun to talk to them about what their experience was really like.

It's interesting. You talk to people about fame, and sometimes it's not all good. And the classic saying is, “If you think you want to be rich and famous, why don't you just try being rich first and see if that doesn't do it for you?” There are downsides to fame, it turns out.

FINANCIAL BOOT CAMP: CREDIT CARDS

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Credit cards are a tool that many of us use, but it's not all that hard to get in trouble using this tool. A very high percentage of Americans carry credit card debt, and that is a bad thing for a few reasons. One, you get used to spending money you don't have, and that's just not a good habit to get into. It's really not consistent with building wealth. And two, credit cards, as easy as they may be to get and as easy as they are to use to borrow money, do not offer great interest rates.

Credit card interest rates, at least beyond any sort of introductory period, are typically in the 15% to 30% range. That is very high. Your debt will double in a matter of two or three years if you're carrying it around on credit cards. It is not a good place for long-term debt. If ever there were a good debt and a bad debt, credit cards would certainly be put into the category of bad debt.

So, how should you use them? Should you use them, et cetera? Well, I have said many times over the years that if you've ever carried a balance on a credit card, you probably shouldn't use them at all. Cut them up, call a plastic surgery, and figure out ways to just use debit cards in your life.

But they are awfully convenient. And so, I like to call them convenience cards, not credit cards. They're convenient when you go to buy things online. Yes, a lot of those you can buy just using a debit card, but a credit card is convenient and offers a few kind of protections in the event that you're having trouble with the person that's supposed to be selling you the service or the product that you're trying to buy. It's easier to stiff them when you bought it on a credit card than when you bought it with a debit card.

Now, theoretically, debit card transactions occur over the same network, and you should have similar protections. But in reality, the credit cards are just a lot more convenient to use.

A lot of times people like the cash back or bonus miles or other sorts of things you can get with a credit card. In fact, if you really get into this game and start doing credit card hacking or travel hacking you find that the signup bonuses are really where the bang for your buck is. You put a few thousand dollars on a credit card, you never pay interest on it, you pay them off as soon as the monthly payment comes due, and you might get thousands and thousands of miles or cash back or other benefits from using that credit card.

Now, you have to manage this process carefully. It doesn't take very many months of carrying a balance on a credit card and paying 24% interest in order to eliminate all of those other benefits that you might get from using the credit card.

But used wisely, you can get some benefits from using the credit card. Just make sure that you recognize it's easy to get in trouble with them, number one. And number two, we all have an impact on how we spend money when we're using something that allows us to spend very conveniently.

When you can spend conveniently, whether that's PayPal, or whether that's Venmo, or whether that's your debit card, or whether that's your credit card, you're likely to spend more money than you otherwise would. Just like when you go buy a car with a car loan, you're probably buying a nicer car than you would if you had to bring cash to the table and actually fold it out on the table. We just spend more money. Studies have shown it's probably about 15% more when we're using credit cards.

So if you're having trouble getting your savings rate as high as you want it to be, I usually recommend attending physicians and similar high-income professionals save about 20% of their gross income for retirement each year. If you're having trouble getting your savings rate up that high, maybe you shouldn't be using credit cards. You're likely to spend less money, and you can thus save more if you don't use credit cards.

On the other hand, if you're like many White Coat Investors and you have trouble spending money, you have trouble reversing all these cheapskate habits you put in place over the years and decades, maybe a credit card's a way to help you spend a little bit more money. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just be aware of that effect.

But carrying a balance on a credit card is not very smart for anybody. Maybe there's a six-month or a year or 15-month 0% period at the beginning, but you can run through that very quickly. And at that point, you're going to be paying 15, 20, 25, 30%. And that is a terrible, terrible way to borrow money.

In fact, if you have any credit card debt, that is probably your best investment is paying that off. Paying off a 20% credit card debt is earning you a 20% guaranteed return. And I assure you, there are not that many 20% guaranteed returns out there in the investing world. Take advantage of any that you have offered to you by paying off your credit cards.

A lot of people get fixated on credit scores. And the truth is, I'd love for you to get to a place in your life where your credit score really doesn't even matter that much to you. Now, truthfully, it does get used in rental decisions. It gets used in job decisions. It gets used for your utilities. It's not just for borrowing money.

But the truth is, if you will just do what you agreed to do and pay off your debts every month as you agreed to do, you'll have a credit score very quickly that's as high as you'll ever need a credit score for. Whether you're getting a job or whether you're getting a mortgage or whatever. So you don't have to play a lot of games to get your credit score up if you're living your financial life in a reasonably responsible way.

So, don't go crazy getting credit cards in order to build your credit score. Don't find yourself worshiping at the FICO altar, thinking your credit score is the most important number in your financial life. It is not. Your income is more important. Your savings rates are more important. Your net worth is more important. Your credit score is a relatively unimportant part of your financial life as far as your numbers go.

But be aware that opening and closing lots of credit cards can lower your credit score. If you're about to go get a mortgage, don't get into the travel hacking game the month before. It's not a good idea. But credit cards used wisely can certainly add convenience to our life. Certainly can help us spend a little bit more money. Maybe if we use them wisely, we can get a little bit of bonuses, cashback, miles, etc. from them.

But tread carefully. Lots of people, including lots of doctors, have gotten in trouble because of credit cards and the ability to borrow money that they offer in an easy, convenient way. So be careful with credit cards. Use them wisely. But it's not necessarily the greatest sin in the financial world if, heaven forbid, you have a credit card that you pay off every month.

SPONSOR

Dr. Jim Dahle:
This podcast was sponsored by Bob Bhayani at Protuity. One listener sent us this review. “Bob has been absolutely terrific to work with and has 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 and the underwriting process in a clear and professional manner.”

Contact Bob by emailing info@protuity.com, by calling (973) 771-9100 or by going to www.whitecoatinvestor.com/protuity today.

All right, this is the end of our podcast. Hope you enjoy these. If not, send us an email and tell us how to make them better for you, editor@whitecoatinvestor.com is the best place to send those. We're just here to help you is our main goal. So if this isn't doing it for you, let us know how it can be better.

Keep your head up, your shoulders back. We'll see you next time on Milestones to Millionaire podcast.

DISCLAIMER

The White Coat Investor podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered financial, legal, tax, or investment advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You often hear the phrase passive investing or passive management, as opposed to active management or active investing, and in reality we're talking about two different things here. Okay, sometimes the phrase passive is used to refer to kind of an index fund strategy, right? When you're investing in stocks, for instance, you are, you know, just buying all the stocks via an index fund and trying to match the market rather than trying to beat the market. However, the term also gets used, particularly in real estate strategies. Right, you can be a passive investor or you can be an active investor. If you're an active investor, you're going down, looking at a house down the street, evaluating it, making an offer on it, buying the thing, maybe you're going in there and you're renovating it. Now you're finding a tenant, you're interviewing the tenant, you're putting together a contract for that tenant, maybe you're going out and trying to hire a property manager to assist you, and you know, after a few years, you know, maybe you got to replace the tenant, or maybe you want to sell the property, so you got to go sell it, right, that's a very active way to invest in real estate, as opposed to, you know, just hiring a passive manager to do that sort of thing for you, and there's all kinds of, you know, there's a whole spectrum of passive ways to invest, whether you're just buying a turnkey property that already has a tenant in it and already has a manager set up, or whether you're buying a real estate syndication or a private real estate fund, or just investing into a real estate index fund, right. There's a whole, you know, continuum of ways to invest passively, with each step being a little bit more passive.

So this term can apply in more than one way, but mostly what we're talking about here is we're talking about mutual funds, which is the easiest way to invest, probably the way that most people should invest, and probably the way most of us should have most of our money invested. Right, mutual funds give you a lot of advantages, they give you instant diversification, they give you daily liquidity, they give you professional management, they give you economies of scale, because you're banding together with 1000s or millions of other people to invest in this investment, but there are two kinds of mutual funds, right? There's passive mutual funds, there's active mutual funds. Passive ones are generally just trying to get the market return, keep costs low, get you the market return for that particular type of investment, whether that's stocks or bonds or real estate or whatever, whereas an active manager of a mutual fund is usually trying to beat the market, at least on some sort of a risk-adjusted basis, and so they usually own fewer stocks in an actively managed stock mutual fund than a passively managed index mutual fund.

The index fund, this passive manager computer, mostly just buys all the stocks, it's essentially easy to guarantee yourself the market return, you own all the winners, yes, you own all the losers, but over the long run you tend to have good returns that are going to help you reach your goals, and in fact, when you compare these two approaches, particularly when it comes to stock mutual funds, you realize pretty quickly that the smart way to go is to invest passively, because even before tax, in the long run, you're beating 90 95% of those active managers, and after taxes it's even higher, plus you don't have to worry about manager risk, you don't have to monitor as much, there's all these benefits to using these index funds and investing in a passive way, so it's very clear when you look at the data, particularly when it comes to investing in stocks, and I'm not talking about just US large cap stocks, I'm talking about all kinds of stocks, you know, international stocks, US stocks, the data is even pretty good for bonds, it's not quite as good for bonds as it is for stocks, but it's very good when it comes to these frequently traded, commonly owned, highly analyzed asset classes like stocks and bonds, that the approach to take is passive. It really does work better in the long run, almost all the time, and it's probable you're in that almost all the time category.

Now, there are some funds that are kind of passive, you know, the more passive they are, the cheaper they tend to be, the better they tend to outperform, but you know, there's always a continuum of passivity, you'll see some index fund providers or passive fund providers, such as Avantis or DFA, you know, some people call them indexing light or something like that, because they have a passive strategy, but kind of an active way that they implement it, and so there are some mixes where there's a little bit of active going on along with passive, and that's okay, the point is you got to recognize just how difficult it is to predict the future to pick stocks that are going to beat the market.

As you move away from these highly analyzed asset classes, index funds often aren't available, right? There is no index fund for all of the duplexes in your hometown. If that's the type of investment you want to invest in, you're not going to be able to invest in an index fund to do that, that doesn't mean you can't invest passively, you know. If you find somebody else is building syndications or a fund of these things, or if you're just hiring, you know, a turnkey company to run them for you, or you know, hiring out as much of the management as you can. There are other ways to invest passively, even in the asset class that doesn't have index funds, but keep in mind if you are in an asset class that does have index funds, that's probably the way to go. That's why 85% of our portfolio is in boring old broadly diversified low-cost index mutual funds and ETFs, because it's just such a smart way to invest.

Okay, so when might active management make sense? Well, if you think you have some edge that is going to help you beat the market, I guess active management is how you implement that edge, but mostly the times to use it is just when you're investing in something where, you know, an index fund is not available, and that usually means some sort of a private investment, whether that's real estate or oil and gas or a small business or some other thing like that, but if you're a beginner building your first portfolio, the way to start is broad-based index funds, we're talking total stock market index funds, total international stock market index funds, bond index funds, those are the building blocks to build your portfolio in the beginning, and even now, 20 plus years later, those are still the biggest building blocks in our portfolio.

Just recognize that a lot of investors out there are making big mistakes when it comes to this question, right? The mistakes usually are just picking an active manager, or worse, trying to pick the stocks themselves and being that active manager. These professionals can't do it with all their fancy computers and high-paid assistants and all their expertise and degrees. What makes you think you're going to be able to do it in between patients? You're not going to be able to, and frankly, neither are they, probably, when you compare it to an index fund.

So, the first mistake is just actively investing when you should be passively investing, but other mistakes get made as well. Sometimes people don't pick the right types of indexes to follow. Right, I'm a big fan of broad-based indexes, you know, the ones that buy all the stocks in the US, for instance, but there are other indexes out there, such as indexes that follow the Nasdaq index, right? That's not all the stocks in the US, it's just the ones that trade on one stock index. It tends to be very tech company heavy. It's not a broad-based index, so I'm not a big fan of that index, nor of index funds that follow it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is well known, it's been around a long time, but it's not a broad-based market index, it's just like 30 big stocks, is all it is. So, I would encourage you not to buy an index fund that follows that one, or some little niche index funds, right? If you're just buying an index fund that invests in semiconductor companies from Taiwan, right, that's very niche, and yes, if those companies do well, you're going to do well, but that's a bit more of a gamble than just buying all the stocks when you're using a total market kind of approach.

Hope that's helpful in learning to understand the difference between active investing and passive investing, and really the advantages of passive investing that not only help you beat active investing returns, but free up your time and allow you to use your time actively, because you're investing your money passively.

The White Coat 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 principal. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.