By Dr. Jim Dahle, WCI FounderSometimes people mistakenly assume that wealth is only a financial term. It's not. Truly wealthy people aren't just rich; they have control over their lives. Wealth refers to money, time, and relationships. We recently had an experience that demonstrated to me how wealth can enrich your life.
The Call and the Decision
Katie received a call that her grandmother was in the ED in another state with a stroke. She had been found unresponsive that morning. We had just returned home late the night before from a five-day trip to Las Vegas with the kids. It was a wonderful trip but not a particularly cheap trip. No, we didn't lose any money at the tables (Las Vegas, to us, is mostly a hiking, climbing, and mountain biking destination), but we certainly spent a lot renting a house, eating out, and going to shows and other experiences in the evenings after playing all day outdoors.
As soon as I heard the news, I told Katie that this was bad and she should go—even though we had just returned from an expensive trip and even though it was one of the most expensive days of the year (the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend) to fly, especially on a last-minute ticket. She held off for a little bit waffling about whether to go while other family members on the scene sorted out what was really happening. I returned a couple hours later from an event to find her car gone, the kids home alone, and a text on my phone indicating she had decided to go after all. Within just a few hours, she was at the bedside. She stayed with her grandmother throughout the night as aggressive care was appropriately withdrawn, and she was moved to comfort care measures. This massive wake-up stroke was a blessing in disguise in many ways, given her increasingly severe dementia.
Katie could be there to support her family in this moment of need. Why? Wealth. Wealth allowed her to do that.
More information here:
Building Wealth as a Physician
Generational Wealth and Teaching Your Kids About Money
The Financial Benefits of Wealth
The first way in which wealth allowed us to do this is simply that we could afford the travel. Last-minute airplane tickets aren't cheap. There was also the cost of gas, parking, and maybe an Uber on the other end. You've heard the phrase, “If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.” We didn't need to ask the price. I don't even know the price, as I write this post. It doesn't matter. We could have put her on a private jet to travel there (although availability on a holiday weekend probably would have been an issue) so we could certainly afford whatever the airline would charge for one of the few available seats.
While people in the accumulation years keep (or should keep) an emergency fund to help cover expenses like this, we're financially independent. Our entire portfolio is our emergency fund. Since we're still working and saving a large percentage of our income, this additional expense simply means we'll invest a little less next month than we otherwise would have.
The Financial Benefits of Time
Financially wealthy people quickly realize their scarcest, least renewable resource is their time.
We're fairly busy people. But we're in control of our time. Our work with The White Coat Investor is location-independent. I asked Katie what she had going on the next few days. She had a fair number of meetings scheduled and a couple of appointments for the kids. But the meetings are all on Zoom anyway—or can easily be moved there. When I finally talked to Katie, I asked her when she scheduled her return flight. She hadn't. It was a one-way ticket, but she thought she'd come home in five days.
Can you disappear from your life for five days on short notice without your world blowing up? Katie can. That's wealth. She knew (and we knew) that we could manage without her. Just a couple of months before, she was gone for three weeks to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and go on Tanzanian safaris. The kids were fed, the homework was done, and WCICON tickets still went on sale. The WCI online courses still functioned normally, the school community councils still functioned, the church youth group still had its activities, and the sports team she coached continued to play games. Five days? That's nothing. No problem.
More information here:
What’s the Value of Our Time, Anyway?
The Financial Benefits of Relationships
You've heard the phrase that your net worth is your network. Relationships are another form of wealth.
My work is not quite as flexible as Katie's. Six times a month I need to be in a specific place at a specific time to care for patients in the emergency department. And one of those times was the following morning. I had to drop off our 14-year-old at hockey practice at 5am and be at my shift by 6am. (My partners LOVE this hockey practice schedule since it means I come in to work 40 minutes early on Mondays.) The 16-year-old can certainly get herself (and her brother) to school, but the challenge is getting the 8-year-old to school. That's where we need some help.
Luckily, a third aspect of wealth for us—beyond financial resources and the time that comes with financial freedom—is relationships. We have several (dozens of?) families in the neighborhood that can make sure our 8-year-old gets off to school. The 16-year-old dropped her off at a neighbor's house on her way to school and she caught her own bus with the neighbor kids an hour and a half later. No problem. We'd do the same in a second for those other families. One of the main reasons we renovated our house a few years ago instead of buying a new one (which probably would have been financially smarter) was simply because we love the people we live around.
Luckily, that was my only shift before the next weekend. But we had a few other conflicts. Some appointments were moved around. The 14-year-old had to find a ride to a hockey game (another great relationship). The 16-year-old took the 14-year-old to an appointment during school while I was on shift. Katie's week was cleared so she could be a support to her family for this important life event.
Taking control of your finances and living a deliberate life leads to wealth. Wealth, however, refers not just to money but also to time and relationships.
What do you think? What situations have you been in where you found it useful to be wealthy with respect to your money, time, and/or relationships?
Your wife’s story resonates with mine in terms of getting that dreaded phone call of a family tragedy and being in a position to move things around and help because of my profession. That is where the similarities end, however.
I was in Belize at the end of October and on my second day there, I received the call of my beloved grandmother’s passing right before my city tour of Belize City. I sat in a daze as the tour operator pointed out various sites, and mentally rearranged everything! I was able to switch my flight to go directly to the funeral instead. I had to ask my colleagues to cover 1 shift. And I also had to purchase flights for my siblings who couldn’t afford the flight from two different states, plus an AirBnb, rental car, food etc. My trip to Belize was cheap. I used miles. The hotels were reasonable. The tours were not expensive. But all of a sudden, I had hundreds of dollars more in expenses than I planned to spend. As an early career physician whose family is from Haiti, who is the only in my family who earns this income, I’ve supported my family countless times even when I was in medical school using loans and in residency with a paltry salary in an expensive city. I still have major student loans as a result. I’ve lived frugally most of my life and saved aggressively knowing I’d be called to help my family time and again. I drive a Toyota and bought my first home in a hood-adjacent neighborhood that no other doctor would dare live in. I travel a lot as it is my passion but since I started as a backpacker prior to med school, I also as travel on a budget. Compared to most docs, that is not wealth. But, in that moment of immense need for my family, it truly was wealth that allowed me to make sure my family was at the funeral to say goodbye to our matriarch when I remember the days I couldn’t rub two quarters together to catch the city bus for my graduate classes and went to bed hungry many nights while in grad school. And that is priceless.
And your story reinvigorates me to keep striving to reach true financial independence because what I’m really after, is time freedom. I’m grateful to have attended WCICON this year.
I’m sorry for Katie’s loss. Wealth truly gives a person options.
My wife and I are going to Tanzania and Kenya in a couple of months. Did you enjoy the trip/safaris? Did you use a tour group?
Thank you! Yes, the trip and the safaris were amazing! We used Serengeti African Tours, a Tanzanian owned tour company, as our guide for the 4 parks in Tanzania.
I am sorry for Katie’s loss. And thankful that she could be by her Grandmother’s side as she passed. I hope everyone can grieve and find comfort during the holidays.
There are certain powerful moments in life – marriages, births, deaths – where the most important thing is just being there. Sitting with others to celebrate or mourn. I will never forget spending the last few weeks with my best friend as he was dying. Lots of tears. Lots of hugs. But that time and physical presence helped all of us grieve and mourn.
This story illustrates the highest uses of our time and money. To make choices aligned with our highest values and spend time with the people with love. Regret is a heavy and powerful force. Think about how hard it would have been if Katie could not have flown out because of the cost. Or the inability to get the time off? That weight and regret never leave.
The real wealth is the happiness you got when you are with your family. What we do for making money or wealth, we do for our family. If our family is happy then we can consider our wealth as real wealth.