By Genhee So, WCI ColumnistIf you are anything like me when it comes to learning about finance, I was completely overwhelmed at the start. The thought of trying to learn what I needed felt like it would be an impossible task that would probably take so long that maybe I could figure it out by the time I retired. The only base of knowledge I had was by way of osmosis—kind of sort of listening to what my parents had to say about investing and saving well and, later into my radiology career, grabbing tidbits of information that colleagues were chatting about over coffee. There was no formal education in my medical school on finance as it related to owning a medical practice, and so effectively, I was starting from scratch.
The pressure of what felt like a monumental task—to learn all the relevant information I needed to know about finance without even knowing what was relevant or not—was too much. It was much easier to turn a blind eye to it and shove that responsibility to the very bottom of the to-do pile. When I had the time and energy to tackle it, I’d do it. But for now, I was too busy with other “life stuff.” At least, that's what I told myself.
But when tax time came or after I had gone on a spending spree, I’d feel the guilt of negligence. I felt like an idiot that I still didn’t have a proper plan or approach to building wealth. I felt like a failure for not having the ability to do what so many others did with confidence and ease.
I used to feel embarrassed that, even after finding the right educational resources available, I still couldn’t do it all on my own. But fast forward to a few years later, and I’ve now come to realize that DIYing your finances doesn’t have to be a daunting term; it doesn’t have to be interpreted as the traditional notion of implementation from start to finish and every step along the way.
Finding My Own Version of DIY
When I finally started on my financial educational journey, the vast majority of my financial education for physicians was content created by highly competent docs who knew exactly what to do (I think we all might know one guy in particular). They knew which investments to buy, which accounts to use, how to set up those accounts, and how much they should save. They provided elaborate calculators that were available to plug in numbers and spit out the results of various scenarios. These guys were way smarter than me, and I felt like it would be hopeless for me to try and do this all on my own, especially on a consistent basis.
What ended up happening to me was worse than getting it wrong—I became paralyzed and, as a result, ended up doing nothing, losing out to inflation and the power of compounding.
Thankfully, when I decided to take charge of my financial education, a decade after finishing my radiology fellowship, some of the lessons I learned first were the basics, like compounding and inflation. And the sting of realizing how much I lost because my money was just idly sitting in a checking account prodded me to act; I started to tackle bits and pieces of our wealth-building processes and tools.
My approach to figuring out what aspects of finances I found engaging came from friends (and friends of friends) who made the thought of some sectors of investing manageable, providing support, availability, and experience to answer my barrage of questions and guide me through the process. The fact that there was no expectation for me to know or understand these investments and how they worked but rather to learn from the ground up made the thought of participating more approachable and something that I could learn, understand, and handle myself.
One example of this was our real estate investments. My husband and I invested in some pre-build condos with the intention of renting them and holding on to the properties as they appreciated in value. I discovered several friends had diversified their savings into this realm, and they were more than happy to help me get set up and guide me along the way. Through this journey, I found out that I enjoyed using spreadsheets to populate the cells and keep track of the flow of monies during both the purchasing phase and once they were earning a monthly revenue. But when it came time to fill out all the related tax forms, I left that up to the accountant. And we left the maintenance of the property in the capable hands of a property management company. My husband and I agreed that our time was better spent generating income to cover the cost of a property management company rather than trying to figure out how to fix a broken fridge.
More information here:
DIY vs. Validator vs. Delegator — Which Am I?
More recently, I’ve learned that investors can be broadly placed into three categories: the DIY investors, the validators, and the delegators. As Dr. Jim Dahle has mentioned, the DIYers are the traditional start-to-finish implementers, the validators are those who invest on their own but who also need a review and check-in every once in a while, and the delegators are the ones who prefer a financial advisor to largely manage the portfolio. Integrating this construct into the DIY conversation, I think it’s important to note that the delegator model still has a DIY component.
I feel like I occupy the space between a validator and a delegator, but I needed to be proactive to acquire the right resources to feel comfortable in this space. Successful wealth building cannot be a completely hands-off type scenario where you work with the first financial advisor who approaches you or blindly continue to use the same advisor without implementing some checks and balances along the way.
Maybe most of the WCI readers know this. Maybe this is why WCI readers have largely turned to the hardcore DIY group because they’ve been burned by financial advisors in the past. But maybe there is also a cohort of us who understand the importance of passive income building and mitigating tax but don’t have the time or the capacity to consistently take on this task with confidence. Maybe some of us are building wealth across various accounts and investment vehicles, and what might have started as a simple task for us to manage between our family and professional lives in our early years could become too complex as we start to understand that various accounts may be more interdependent and interconnected than we think.
To this cohort, I would say that it completely makes sense if you feel like you can’t be full-throttle DIY. There should be no shame or embarrassment felt if you can’t manage it on your own. I always remind myself that there are so many pathways on the road to success, and having the right professionals to help you achieve your personal and financial goals will not compromise you making it to the finish line. When it comes to your wealth, I agree with SC Gutierrez’s talk at WCICON25 that a purist DIYer can fall into some sneaky traps, like behavioral biases (you don’t know what you don’t know), if they’re not paying attention. As they say, even the highest-performing athlete needs a coach.
More information here:
Firing Your Financial Advisor and Becoming a DIY Investor — 6 Steps to Make It a Smooth Transition
DIY Isn't One Size Fits All
Now, I look at DIY as a spectrum, and the focus of what you research to achieve financial success changes depending on the level of wealth management you want to take on your own. To me, DIY means doing the research to find the right professional resources to help you achieve a wealthy life and your version of a comfortable retirement. You don't specifically need to know which funds to buy to build your portfolio if you’re someone like me who found the sheer number of funds for sale too overwhelming. I didn’t want to be personally responsible for a loss if the fund went sideways or turned out to be an underperformer against another option I could have chosen.
The other important thing to note here is that my skepticism of the financial industry led me to believe that a fully engaged DIY model was the gold standard and anything less than this was an admission of inferiority. I no longer think this is the case.
To the delegators out there, I suggest making a list of your hard truths and prioritizing what you value in paid financial services. I don’t believe you can beat the market by stock-picking. I believe that low-cost investments, such as (but not limited to) ETFs that mirror indices, are an important part of a larger wealth-generating operation. When interviewing various financial advisors, one of my first questions was if they could place me in low-cost investments or if they had to stick to a prescribed list of investment products laid out by their employer.
I also adopted a buy-and-hold-type mentality in tandem with dollar cost averaging to harness the power of compounding. One of the first interview questions to prospective wealth managers was not just how they were compensated but whether they were also aware of the buy and sell activity that was occurring inside the funds they recommended.
Of course, there’s also the tax side of building wealth; I don’t approach taxes as an afterthought or something only my accountant considers. I consider tax implications alongside both asset location and allocation before purchasing investments, and I also think about what the future tax treatment will be—either on a yearly basis or at the time of sale. In my case, a wealth manager’s grasp of the tax laws with this perspective in mind was crucial. If their only approach to taxes was to discuss tax-sheltered accounts, I knew that particular financial service was not for me.
Don’t let the thought of a traditional DIY approach to wealth building paralyze you into not acting or avoiding the evaluation of your portfolio and professionals. You’re not an idiot. You don’t need to feel guilty. And, unlike what I believed before, it’s not an impossible task. Think of DIY on a spectrum, and most of us in the general physician population need some level of professional help—whether it be an accountant, a lawyer, or a sage financial planner. Take a moment to list what your hard truths are. This will help you ask the right questions and find better value for services rendered. By taking action, you will find your DIY version of financial success.
Are you a DIYer, a validator, or a delegator? Or are you some combination of two or all three? Has your mindset shifted as you've gotten closer to retirement?
Nice one – especially the Delegator/Validator/DIYer distinction. For the years leading up to our retirement I was 100% DIYer.
As we got closer to pulling the plug, though, I started feeling the need for at least some validation. The challenge for me was from whom? I’d tried a couple of different advisors before, both fee-based and AUM, and was left feeling a combination of ripped off and unsatisfied.
Then I came across an advice firm called PlanVision. They charged a one-time fee of a couple hundred dollars for the first year, and then eight dollars a month thereafter. They offered exactly what I was looking for – validation using professional grade financial planning software tools, and they gave me full access to them to let me play around with the reports and analyses as much as I wanted to.
The best part, though, is their group of advisors which include CFPs, Retirement Planners, and a CPA/CFP for tax planning. They’re available to me by appointment anytime I want as much as I want for reviews of my plan, helping me dial in a report or analysis, and reviewing tax-related options like ROTH conversions and deciding the best way to decumulate to meet income needs.
For the last year or so they weren’t open to taking on new clients, but I just checked their site and it looks like they are again. For less than $100 a year (and a money back satisfaction guarantee), I think they offer great value to a DIYer looking for a little help and validation. More info here: https://www.planvisionmn.com/
[Disclosure: I have no affiliation with this firm and I receive no benefit or compensation from referrals. Just sharing what I ‘ve found to be helpful to me. ]
The key with using PlanVision is you have to just want a LITTLE VALIDATION, with the key being on LITTLE and VALIDATION. This is NOT a service for delegators. It’s not even a service for most validators. It’s a service for DIYers needing just a little validation.
I’m curious to see if the business model lasts long term (much less spreads) as it is extraordinarily difficult to stay in the financial advice business long term charging as little as PlanVision is charging. Even they had a huge increase in fees earlier this year as I recall. Current pricing is $389 for the first year. Only after that is it $8 a month. And it only works if most clients don’t call most years. I don’t know how much service you expect from an educated professional for $96 a year, but I don’t expect much. Once you consider overhead that only buys about 15 or 20 minutes of my time as a physician. What will your accountant do for $96 a year? One tax form maybe? Perhaps only half of one. What will your attorney do for $96 a year? Ours might charge $1,000 just to send a letter. So keep your expectations low and you’ll probably be pretty surprised and grateful for what you get there. I don’t think your current view
“They’re available to me by appointment anytime I want as much as I want”
is truly accurate. Go ahead, try to use up 10 hours of Mark’s time and see what he says.
Fair comments. OTOH, perhaps their business model is designed to cater to those who don’t need much handholding, and so they’re counting on people not needing much 1:1 support.
The way I think of it is I get full access to e-Money, a commercial-grade financial planning tool that is not generally available to individuals/DIYers. I trust it more than any of the other free tools out there, and I get access to pro CFP’s when I have a question about how to use it. And I have had a couple of hours of calls over the last two years or so with Mark, their tax guy, and another advisor. If there’s an open slot on a calendar there’s nothing stopping me from snagging it.
Speaking of pro planning software, have you checked out IncomeLab? My new favorite tool – it’s build around a risk-based guardrails planning paradigm.
Nope, never heard of it. But I think I could literally spend every day reviewing a new piece of planning software if I wanted to. There’s always something new coming out.
You’re making my point for me though. You used two hours. You paid $400. They made $200 an hour, a pretty typical rate for an hourly rate charging financial advisor. They’re definitely counting on people not needing much support. They need a whole bunch of people like you that will use them 2 hours this year, 1 hour next year, no hours the year after that, 1 hour the year after that etc. Then the model works. I’m just not sure there are enough clients out there that fit that model to keep one firm in business, much less multiple firms. I’m totally cheering for the model even if I’m skeptical this is going to work out long term at these prices. But even if they tripled the prices, it’s still probably a good deal for lots of validators compared to going to a delegator serving firm charging $5-15K a year (or worse, 1% a year on a $5M+ portfolio). Figuring out how to serve validators is currently the biggest problem I see in the financial services industry and at least PlanVision is trying. Kudos to them for that. They can keep their marketing fees to zero too since they have clients like you out preaching for them on blogs like this and forums like the Bogleheads.
I’m also a PlanVision client, and agree with essentially all the comments above from both Tom and Jim. I’ve been quite happy with their services (which have complemented those of the senior Fidelity CFP on retainer by my medical megacorp to work with its staff physicians), but this approach is very much for those who are willing to/comfortable with doing the heavy lifting themselves and are basically looking for a second set of eyes. PlanVision actually tells prospective clients that it reserves the right to fire them if they’re too needy, and 2 hours the first year/1 hour per annum thereafter is about what can be expected.
Yea, it’s a good service for those on the very far end of the validator spectrum. It’s not a very big jump from there to DIYing. It’s really not terribly different from DIYing and checking in with the WCI forum once every year or two with a question.
No good advisor wants to work with your cheap asses. No profession is further removed from how they are compensated than doctors. Combine this with overconfidence/hubris, and you get a vast majority of doctors who don’t respect the time or services of any other professional.
Ultimately, it comes down to doctors don’t understand or appreciate the value of their own time. And since they’re overworked, they feel obligated to waste minimal free time trying to be the best at everything they aren’t trained in, when they really wish they had more free time to focus on their families. Thus, they rationalize it by how much money they make, even though they would rather work less and make less, but can’t, because they are indentured servants to the hospital/private equity conglomerates that their previous generation sold their souls to because they didn’t plan for retirement. Now, every doctor is qualified to be their own CFP because they did a lot of training…in a completely unrelated field.
Nope, I refuse to spend time with any doctor asking for free advice trying to get me to teach them to be their own financial advisor! Just imagine if one of your patients treated you like that. But maybe you aren’t offended because you’re ingrained in taking care of people who don’t deserve your time.
Good advisors think for themselves and understand the value of their time, unlike doctors. So nope, I won’t spend a second with your cheap asses!
“Good advisors think for themselves and understand the value of their time, unlike doctors.”
But then again, you were willing to spend probably 10 minutes writing this comment saying that you won’t spend a second with a doc. Hope it was worth your time!
Josh, yes I’ll be sending you a $200 invoice for each 10 minutes (no price discrimination or third party payer). I’m married to a doctor, and I have 1500 doctor clients. Only 200-300 of those are real clients who pay me for my advice, the rest are policyholders or “clients” who turned into policyholders because they are too smart/cheap to pay for advice. So, I’m more qualified than anyone on the subject of how doctors treat/view the other professions, not just financial advisors. They won’t pay for a CPA, and then they get taxed on their backdoor Roth IRA each year because Turbo Tax doesn’t reconcile their 8606 when the custodian lists the conversion as taxable by default on their 1099-R.
Blissful ignorance they’re paying much more in taxes and mistakes than they will never know, because at least they aren’t paying for advice!
My advice adds $1000s/$10,000s/$100,000s/$1,000,000s of wealth at the highest level, whether the client has a good healthy life or tragedy strikes. It’s very common to have conversations with wealthy clients that save them $10,000-$100,000 in taxes.
I’ve also learned there are entire specialties that are a complete waste of time as clients and can only be policyholders, as these doctors have perfectionist/narcissistic traits where any advice will never be good enough and any fee will always be too much (i.e. Orthopedic Surgery, Dermatology, Plastic Surgery, Gastroenterology). Funny, they are some of the highest-paid and must be that much “smarter” because of their Step I scores to get there, but being book smart and emotionally intelligent interacting with others are completely different things.
I respect doctors when it’s mutual. Unfortunately, most doctors are so impervious to good advice from another professional (unless of course it’s from another doctor), they wouldn’t know it if it smacked them in the face.
The hot takes just keep getting better. I wonder if people are starting to wonder if you’re their “advisor.” You might be if they’re in Louisville per your IP address. There certainly are plenty of “advisors” that just need to be fired. Good gravy on denigrating entire specialties. Yes, I’m sure you’re right that every one of 50-100,000 docs are narcissists.
The majority of advisors should be canned, and I don’t need to respect them just because we’re in the same profession. But you, like all physicians, hold all physicians to the highest nobility because you confuse the trees with the forests.
Yes, the profession of saving others’ lives is noble. But that doesn’t mean these individuals treat other professionals with respect. In fact, it’s mostly the opposite.
You get paid to have doctors Fire Their Financial Advisor. You have no understanding of how difficult it is to work with the average doctor. Constantly following up because they are too busy to respond or send back the simple e-sign document for any administrative or advisory task. Constantly working around their schedules. And then some transfer accounts out behind your back without even showing gratitude for all the work you’ve done to help them. “I’ll just be my own CFP, screw that asshole charging me 1.2% to manage my $50,000 portfolio and giving me comprehensive advice. I was getting completely ripped off because of what I read on WhiteCoat Investor.”
I also get paid advertising fees for referring doctors to real financial advisors. I really don’t have a dog in this fight. If they want/need an advisor, I try to get them to a good one who gives good advice for a fair price and teach them how to interact with them (the first module of the Fire Your Financial Advisor course). If they just need a little help to write their plan, I’ve got an online course that’s way cheaper than a financial advisor. If they’re hard core DIYers like I am, the blog and podcast is free, the online communities are free, the book is cheap.
Look, I’m sorry your clients are a pain to work with. That’s why they’ve hired you, to help them with this stuff they find painful. I have no idea why you’re willing to provide (presumably) full services for 1.2%*$50,000 = $600 a year. That’s on you. No wonder you’re burnt out and bitter. Charge a fair price ($5-15K a year) and give good advice and service and you’ll be a lot happier.
For the last 15+ years I’ve been telling docs to make sure they’re paying a fair price and getting good advice. That if they’re paying via AUM fee that they need to do the math each year and when the price exceeds $5-15K they need to either negotiate a lower rate or find a new advisor. Your problem is you’re trying to operate on the “old model” where you lose money for a few years undercharging then overcharge for decades and hope they don’t leave. And you’re mad at me because I’m telling them to leave advisors charging like that. But that’s a you problem. Start giving good advice (if you’re not) and start charging a fair price to clients willing to pay it and we’ll all be a lot happier.
Let’s remember you are now one of the biggest insurance agents in the country, not just requiring advertising dollars but splitting commissions on the applications with the advisors who write the policies!
With your logic, that makes you an insurance agent, masquerading as a financial advisor, masquerading as a doctor.
I get it…you’re infallible and can do no wrong, and you’ve never led a doctor astray, and your ego is barely bigger than Trump’s. But if you actually read the context here rather than dismiss because it hurts your image, the average doctor stumbling upon this website will automatically assume their advisor is screwing them over. Again, whether that is your main intention or not, you are not the average doctor.
And let’s imagine they have a good advisor, but they would never know if it smacked them in the face. Because their colleagues reading this website will tell them they’re a loser if they’re paying a fee to a financial advisor, and they will feel like an idiot that they aren’t trying to be their own financial advisor.
But they don’t really want to try or have any understanding, they are just shamed into it by your website and their colleagues. Every advisor who’s worked with enough doctors would say the exact same thing if they could articulate it.
So client/advisor relationship are ruined under false pretenses. But it’s not a misunderstanding that can be solved with a conversation, because the doctor will just transfer their accounts out without even reaching out to the advisor. And then the funds will sit at Vanguard in cash, forgotten to be invested because the doctor was too busy or forgot the next step.
I know you couldn’t care less about any financial advisor, so no one wants your sympathy. But don’t act like this isn’t a common outcome whether you promote it or not.
Yes, we refer more people to agents to buy disability and term life insurance than anyone else. Yes, we get paid to do that. Whether we get paid via advertising or an affiliate marketing arrangement, the conflict of interest is the same. With insurance, the only way to do an affiliate marketing arrangement is to be an insurance agency too, so we are.
One thing WCI is NOT, however, is a financial advisor. Nor do we have any sort of fiduciary duty to readers, listeners, etc.
Impossible to make money without conflicts of interest, of course, but at least we’re open about ours, unlike most who call themselves financial advisors.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/state-of-the-blog-2025/
I disagree that the primary message of this website is fire all financial advisors. We’ve had real financial advisors advertising here for more than a decade. I’ve been very clear every time I’ve written about advisors that it’s okay to pay a fair price for good advice, even if figuring out how to be your own financial planner and asset manager may be the most profitable hobby there is.
The industry ruined client/advisor relationships all on its own, primarily due to greed.
Sounds to me like you’re bitter you lost some accounts because your clients read the site and realized how you work and how you charge. I can’t say I feel too badly about that. You’re not the target audience for this blog. You’re its subject.
I actually stumbled on to this website because my advisor was screwing me, not that I was happy with my advisor, stumbled into WCI then realized I was getting screwed. My buddy/”advisor” sold me whole life on me and my wife, put me in a VA within a rollover IRA so I couldn’t do the backdoor Roth and I was getting screwed with VA fees, and didn’t have true own occ disability and had expensive Term to 80 convertible to whole life policies. I was in $31,000 of credit card debt and WCI saved me. Because of WCI, I am now out of credit card debt, saving enough for retirement to reach my goals. So no, WCI is not telling every doc to leave their finaical advisor, but rather to save themselves from the bad ones.
I’m trying to decide whether to remove this comment for trolling or leave it so doctors can see what they’re up against when they wade into the financial services industry.
I vote to leave it in. My article promotes the benefits of working with good financial professionals including CFAs if docs feel they need it. The comments above further validate the reason why a smart, thoughtful approach to finding the right financial services is so important.
I agree. Keep the post so those of us can get a sense of how some financial advisors feel about working with us. Also it shows us who to avoid.
I agree, leave it up. It’s consistent with your signaling and previous posts.
I say keep it too- good lesson on how insensitive some financial advisors can be.
you are making this way too complicated………..just use all the tools on the Fidelity web site……….they are all free.
They provide a CFP, they have great retirement planning software for free, their platform is easy to use. They have great free webinars ………….great customer service………..your free CFP is just a phone call away………..you can use their products or any other company products (example……….I don’t have any of their ETF’s…………but I have other company etfs on the Fidelity platform. Very easy……….try it. Also great graphics on their full view screen.
Nothing is free. The challenge is figuring out why Fidelity would give away a service for free that a typical good financial advisor would charge $5-15K a year for. The likely answer is that they’re not providing that same level of service AND they’re also more likely to steer you toward Fidelity investments that make more money than their handful of ultra low cost index funds.
But the service, like PlanVision, may work just fine for a relatively sophisticated validator type who needs just a little more than a typical DIY approach. May help some DIYers get on their feet too, kind of like our Fire Your Financial Advisor online course.
apparently you did not read my post………..I have no Fidelity funds and I still enjoy all those things I listed on the post for FREE. I am the ultimate DIYer……………not sure why you would even make a comment on something you yourself would not even try.
PS
the Fidelity retirement software is great………….no need to pay for Bolden
But if you are a negative Nellie then so be it.
I understand as a DIYer that you can figure out how to get a bunch of stuff from Fidelity for free and not fall for all their pitches. I’m similar to you that way. I’m not sure that makes it some sort of substitute for a real financial advisor. Or maybe you’re just arguing everyone should be a DIYer, which just tells me you haven’t talked to very many docs about their finances. I assure you that not every doc should be a DIYer. If that’s “negative nellieism”, I guess I”m guilty as charged.
Naturally, I have a conflict of interest I suppose. Boldin advertises with us still I think and Fidelity does not, despite me doing lots of free advertising for them over the years.
As a retired EVS Director I have shown many, many hospital employees from doctors, to Directors to techs to housekeepers how to use Fidelity………..they all were able to use all the FREE stuff on Fidelity and benefit well.
When it comes to their own money people catch on real quick………….and remember people can always start!!!!!!! and then later get a CFP if they need to……………..but I have not come across one yet.
Schwab and Vanguard have similar great programs as well…………..Just like TROW and the others
Genhee nice article and yes, DIY doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself. even the most financial literate among us should consider a financial advisor. Heck, Paul Merriman says he has a financial advisor. I myself am considering given finances is not just about knowledge, but in my case would be great to help my spouse get on board with a financial plan, and at the same time keeping me in check regarding being too cheap. Nice how your frame DIYing can still mean working with an advisor.
Thanks Rikki!