Dealing with a Disability Claim with Attorney Ben Glass

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:
This is White Coat Investor podcast number 427 – Dealing with the disability insurance claim.

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All right, welcome back to the podcast. It's been a week since we chatted, and I hope you have had a wonderful week. I love summertime. I look forward to it all winter, even though in the winter, I go out and play, and in the summer, I go out and play. In the winter, I get annoyed by the cold, and in the summer, I get annoyed by the heat.

But for whatever reason, I love the extra daylight you get during summer, and it just reminds me of my upbringing in Alaska where we'd go out at 10:00 o'clock at night and go rock climbing because the sun was still up in the summer. Then in the winter, you sat around in front of your lights trying not to get depressed. But there's something special about summertime, so I hope you're having a good one.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Our quote of the day today comes from my friend Bill Bernstein, who said, “If you find yourself stimulated in any way by your portfolio performance, then you are probably doing something very wrong. A superior portfolio strategy should be intrinsically boring.”

I love that quote. A lot of truth there. There's a lot of people that talk about fun money. They use 2% of their portfolio or 5% of their portfolio for fun. It's probably true that most White Coat Investors can light 2% to 5% of their portfolio on fire and still be perfectly fine. So anything you invest in with 2% to 5% of your portfolio is probably fine.

That said, is that really the most fun you can think of spending 2% to 5% of your portfolio on? When I think of fun money, I think of traveling. I think of going rafting. Those are the sorts of things I think about with fun money. If your fun money is really gambling in the stock market, I wonder if maybe you need to pick your head up, look around, see if you can find something that's a little bit more fun than that.

All right. Thanks everybody out there for what you do. You do important work. We're going to talk about some of that work you do today as part of our interview, but it's not easy work. There's a reason you are a high-income earner. You spent a long time learning to do this and what you do is not always appreciated and often has significant legal consequences. And so, we just want you to know that as a society, we appreciate what you're doing out there.

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And don't forget, if you're getting these books for first-year medical or dental students, you don't even have to pay for them. All you have to do is find someone in the class to be a volunteer champion. We try to send this book The Guide for Students to every first-year medical and dental student every year. We get it to about 70% of them. We'd like to do better than that. So, if it's for that book and that group of students, you may not even have to pay anything at all. All you have to do is find a champion for that class. But if you want to get somebody 25+ books, we'll give you a discount. Email [email protected]. We'll get it set up.

INTERVIEW WITH BEN GLASS

Okay. Our subject today is near and dear to our hearts. Megan's our podcast producer. I'll mention in the interview that Megan is married to Tyler, who has hosted this podcast before. And some of you heard episode 365, where we had Tyler on the podcast talking about his disability experience, his disability claims.

He had a group policy. He had an individual policy. He got denied with the group policy. He made a claim successfully on the individual policy. And part of the reason they were successful at that is they spoke with our guest today before putting in the claim and learned some things, making any sort of a claim go a lot smoother and be a lot more likely to work.

I want you to pay attention to this, even if you're not disabled. I want you to think about your disability insurance coverage, what you have and what you might do if you ever actually have to use your disability insurance. It's not that hard to get disabled. I fell off a mountain last summer. I got myself disabled somewhat. At this point, I'm only disabled from being able to climb 5.10 and harder. But still I got to experience a little bit of what sudden disability feels like. It's not that fun.

Trust me when I say you don't want to be dealing with a bunch of craziness trying to make a claim when you're disabled and trying to take care of yourself and rehab your injury or whatever at the same time. So, let's get Attorney Ben Glass on the podcast. We're going to do a great interview. I'll chat a little bit more afterward.

Our guest today on the White Coat Investor podcast is Ben Glass. He's a long-term disability insurance attorney. But what you should really know about Ben, we just got done talking about, is that he is still at an older age, refereeing soccer up through the high school level. In fact, he says he has been refereeing longer than most of the parents yelling at him have been alive. He's also the father of nine and has worked with a lot of you out there, a lot of White Coat Investors that have had issues with disability insurance claims.

We thought we would get him on the podcast and talk with him about some of these issues and what you can do in advance and after you get disabled and when you're having issues and those sorts of concerns.

You should be aware, Ben is also a sponsor of the White Coat Investor. He's on our recommended list for legal services. If you go there looking for help with disability insurance claims, he's there. So, he does pay us money every year. You should be aware of that conflict of interest.

But that's not exactly the reason we brought him on the podcast. The reason why is actually we thought this was a really important discussion to have. And the funny part about it, you'll recall, Megan, our podcast producer, is married to somebody who has guest hosted this podcast before. You'll recall Tyler Scott, who has actually had some issues with the disability insurance claim.

And so, when Megan was lining this up, she was pleased to remember and recall and be reminded that, hey, we worked with Ben Glass when we were having issues with our claim. So, it's a very personal connection today. Ben, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Ben Glass:
Thanks, Jim. You should know that your brand is huge because, as I said before the call, I've talked to a lot of White Coat Investor tribe members, your fans. And the thing that I see across these discussions are they usually have bought good levels of insurance. So I just want to let you know that they are listening to you. They are reading your stuff. They're listening to your other sponsors who sell disability insurance to doctors. And so obviously, these are smart people. They usually come with some pretty good policies, and we can talk about that today.

DISABILITY INSURANCE GETS USED MORE THAN PEOPLE THINK

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Well, there's a little bit of a selection bias. If they don't have any policy at all, they're probably not calling you. And in my experience, that's actually the biggest issue with doctors and disability is people just aren't buying policies. They don't have the coverage, even though they need it. So, maybe we can sprinkle throughout this discussion people can realize, “Hey, these are real people we're talking about.” They're like you. They thought they were invincible. They didn't think they'd ever be disabled.

But the statistics on Americans in general is that one out of four people is going to deal with a disability before age 65. It's a pretty high percentage. I think maybe that's why these policies cost so much, because they actually get used.

Ben Glass:
Well, there's a couple of things there. And one that we'll talk about is that, and doctors, so a lot of the discussion I have with doctors is if you are a surgeon, if you are a dentist, if you work with your hands, that there's a lot of things that wouldn't “disable” someone like me who sits at the desk and thinks all day long. But when they buy the correct policy and it protects them in their own occupation, they may not be able to do what they were born to do. And they bought a policy that will pay them for their loss of income because of that.

The other thing, the other reason people don't buy disability policies is that most employers are providing some form of group policies. What folks need to know is that group policies, because they're sold to everybody, are almost never as good as an individual policy. Individual policy is more expensive, of course, but the coverage is better.

And so, most everyone who's working for an organization is probably covered at some level by group policy. But again, most of the folks who come to me from White Coat Investor have purchased individual policies.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But I'll bet most of the work you do is actually with people with group policies, isn't it?

Ben Glass:
It is. Most of my work across the country is for people, not just doctors, but anyone who has made application for benefits and been denied. So that's where I make most of my money. You've been denied benefits, I'm going to restore you to claim and I'm going to get paid if I'm successful in doing that.

In the doctor world, the space that I'm occupying is really as a pre-claim advisor. And our goal when we talk to a doctor who has been diagnosed typically with some sort of progressive disease process, and maybe today they can still work, but they have questions about malpractice and ability to do the job, is we'll have a discussion. And our goal in those discussions, Jim, is that you'll never need a lawyer because I'm going to give you a good strategy. Either your claim is valid and here's the 17 steps you need to walk through, but they're pretty easy once I tell them to you. Or maybe call me in six or 12 or 18 months, but right now you probably don't have a claim.

And so, these are important conversations because the last thing you want to do is quit your job, not have an income, but not have a valid claim. So, it's fun talking to doctors because they have complicated lives, they are achievers. These are family discussions often because the spouse is often on the call as well. They may be business owners, so there's a complication there with “What do we count as income and how can I make money?”

And many of them, Jim, can even with their, whatever the illness is that's causing their inability to say operate, they can go and do other things. And so, now depending on their policy, what are the other things they can go and do and still make money without messing up their primary disability claim? That's where I get involved and guys and gals like me, if we get involved early, give you a plan and hopefully you never need us after that.

WHAT KIND OF POLICY DO YOU NEED?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, that's good advice. All right, before we get into all this talk about trying to get your claim paid and all these strategies, let's talk for a minute. Let's say somebody walks up to you, it's a doc in your neighborhood, just started residency thinking about buying disability insurance. What would you tell them as far as disability insurance you ought to go buy?

Ben Glass:
Yes, good idea, sMy advice would be, you find a broker who's used to selling, who is experienced in selling to doctors and understands what it means to be a specialist, understands what it means to work in a practice, and understand that you can oftentimes switch out of your main occupation to something else.

I don't sell any of this stuff, so no bias here, but that broker will have access to a lot of different policies typically. I tell young professionals of all types, go and buy the policy because it's going to be the cheapest when you're healthy and young. And over time, you'll be able to increase the amount of coverage you're buying, and that's good. But if you wait until you have a diagnosis or you have some wonky blood test, then you either become uninsurable or it becomes a lot more expensive. When you're healthy, and when I was a young lawyer, it's expensive when you're young and maybe not making as much money and you've got some debt.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. It's interesting to look at the overall statistics in the country. If you look at people applying for disability, and this is everybody, this isn't just people that were going through White Coat Investor approved agents who are particularly adept at getting doctor's coverage. But something like one out of five is declined. And more than that, one out of four, one out of three gets some sort of rating or exclusion on their policy.

And so, it's actually pretty common that people have trouble getting ideal coverage. It definitely is easier, the younger you are, and the fewer problems you have. And the interesting thing about it, it's fascinating. This thing's only going to pay you till you're 65 or 67, most of the time. So actually you're buying the possibility of more benefits. When you're buying it younger, it's a better deal at age 30 than it is at age 50. I find it fascinating that it costs so much more at age 55, when they're only going to have to pay you for 10 years. But that's the way they're priced, the older you get, the more expensive this stuff is.

Ben Glass:
Well, exactly right. When I talked to guys, I'm 67, you said older earlier, I'm 67 and I had my policies from about 22 or 23 on. And recently, because I've built financial wealth, and I've got a business that I own, I could cancel my disability policies, because they would only pay if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, they would only pay me a max of two years.

Those are the types of discussions that I have with people all the time everything from “Should I buy?” to talking to group administrators to Jim, like, “What kind of policy will protect a group of eye doctors, or a group of interventional radiologists?” And I have an interesting story there, if you'd like to hear that at some point.

And so, it helps HR or whoever's making the decision buy the protection that they think that they need. Again, I refer them to the guys and gals selling the policies who are experienced with doctors. But I'm often surprised at how little the group administrator who's making the decision, how little thought they actually give to what policy to buy. They're relying on a broker.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You should see what they do when they pick retirement plans. It's even worse.

Ben Glass:
I'm sure. Yes, yes, I'm sure. And look, they have to wear a lot of hats, they have to be good. But that's why there's uber specialists in every little financial niche we can think of.

WHAT MAKES FOR A STRONG CLAIM?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about claims now. What makes for a strong claim?

Ben Glass:
What the insurance company is looking for, first of all, Jim is, “What do you do?” And it's not just necessarily the label on what you call yourself. I'm an MD. Okay, that's very general. But no, I'm a cardiac surgeon. And because most of these policies, at least for the first two years of coverage, are shaped around, “Can you do the duties of the occupation?” Not to get too deep, but it's not necessarily how your job is actually performed at this particular practice but how does the occupation perform? And so, we shape the parameters there, what are the occupational duties?

And then we look and say, “Well, what's the diagnosis?” although the diagnosis doesn't tell us a lot about whether claim were paid or not. You can have a very dire diagnosis, and still work. So, people with stage four cancer, who are radiologists, could still do their job.

But what we're looking for in the medical records is as much objective scientific evidence as we can, that whatever the disease or the injury process is, is preventing you from doing, say one or more of these occupational duties on a full time basis. That's the framework. And typically, an insurance company will ask, “What do you do? Send us your billing records, want to make sure if you say you're a surgeon, you actually are operating on people.” Things like that.

And this is why, so one of the mistakes doctors make is they talk to their doctor friends about disability, and disability is a big broad word. And hardly anyone can explain that no, it's disability through the framework of what were you actually doing in your occupation, or as your occupation at the time you developed your condition. That's the first step. The second is as much objective medical evidence as you possibly can get.

And then financial records. Particularly if you're a sole practitioner, or you're working in a small group, like your books have to be clean, especially if you're the practice owner. So there's investigations there. And again, talking to someone experienced at the beginning can help a doctor shape their claims so that they're not just chasing everything, financial records, billing records, at a time when they're stressed out and trying to get treatment for whatever their condition is.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
First let's step back and just generally walk us through the process of making a claim. What happens? You decide, “You know what? I think I'm disabled. I got this disability insurance policy.” What's the process over the next few weeks and months? And what happens?

Ben Glass:
Sure, exactly right. If it's a group policy, you go to HR and you ask them for the claim forms, and they'll often refer you to a website for Unum or New York Life or whoever the carrier is. Same thing. If you have a broker, you call your broker, say, “I think I'm going to have to tap into this policy. Can you help me get the claim forms?”

You fill out claim forms that tell your story, give authorizations, the insurance company to get your medical records, give authorization insurance company to talk to your employer if you are employed so they can get the financial records and you send that in.

You are advised typically is you should have looked at all of your medical records first. It would be a mistake to not do that to make sure your records say what you think they say. But whether you do or you don't, the insurance company is going to send out the authorizations going to get their records. They're going to do an interview, much like the interview I do of doctors to find out your story. What do you do? How many hours do you work? Where do you work? What's going on in your life? Why can't you work? Things like that.

And then depending on the nature of the condition. Unfortunately, I talk to a fair number of guys and gals who are relatively young with early onset Parkinson's. I don't know if I'm just attracting them or what. And they have a tremor and they are in one of the medical areas where they have to work with their hands. I talked to an emergency room physician just two days ago, 35 years old, early onset Parkinson's tremor. Can still do a lot of things, but has to be careful.

And so, sometimes if it's “obvious” like that, the claim is just going to be approved and going to be paid. Other times, if the diagnosis is kind of a mystery and you've got to go to two and three and four and five specialists to nail it down, that can make it more challenging for the insurance adjuster to understand what's going on.

What we're trying to do, what a doctor who's making a claim is trying to do is to make this claim an easy call for the insurance adjuster. The more information you have, the more records you have, the more maybe narrative statement from your own healthcare team about why you can't operate or why you can't do whatever your medical specialty is, the easier it's going to be. Because that claims adjuster has got a hundred files on her desk, let's say, and you want to make yours easy. That's a process.

If they pay the claim, then you start to get checks. You will typically have a follow-up. Again, depending on the nature of the diagnosis, you may have monthly follow-up reports from your doctors, which can be kind of a pain in the butt for your doctor. Or no, maybe if you've got a progressive disease and it's very clear, we're just going to check in with you every year.

And if the claim is denied, Jim, whether it's a group policy or an individual policy, typically, well, if it's a group policy, for sure, you'll have an appeal time, typically 180 days to answer the objections of the insurance company.

That's another time when it's good to have an experienced attorney do this because the appeal becomes the whole case and there's virtually no rules on what you can put into an appeal. So, we put a lot of stuff into our appeals. And individual policies, although it's not required by any federal rule, individual policies typically will give you an appeal time, a time for you and your doctors or your legal team, if you have a lawyer, to answer the objections, to have a look at the claim file and see, “All right, what's missing? Why didn't they pay my claim? Is there a way that I can make this more clear and obvious to the adjuster?”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, are the typical medical records just coming from your primary doc and maybe a specialist related to the condition, a neurologist or an orthopedist, or do you often need to see a doc that specializes in evaluating you for disability?

Ben Glass:
You don't necessarily need to see a specialist. And again, so much of this depends on the nature of the disease process. However, most of my doctor clients have seen a specialist because that's your world and they have access to, most frequently, the right name, the right phone number, and we can get in to see specialists.

Again, we're looking at the evidence. We want to make this really clear and obvious to an insurance adjuster. I would say the more that you have specialists that are appropriate for the condition you have and these specialists support, specialists don't have to say you are disabled, because again, that's defined by the policy. Specialist says, “And Jim, who's an emergency department physician, cannot do these types of procedures, and gee, this is risky not just to Jim, but to his patient in the middle of the night in an ER.” That's the kind of information the adjuster is looking for.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. But you don't need to find a doc that's doing half their practice is evaluating people for disability. You don't need that sort of a doctor.

Ben Glass:
No, in fact, I rarely see or have a client who is seeing that type of doctor because, again, my clients are folks with legitimate claims who have already, by the time they've talked to me, they usually have worked their way up the chain of specialists for their condition.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Okay. You mentioned legitimate claims. I presume there's a fair number of people out there in the world that really don't have legitimate claims and are trying to get paid from their employers or their individual disability insurance policy. That's why they go through all this is they don't want to have to pay people that are faking it, for lack of a better term. What's your sense of how much of that is out there?

Ben Glass:
I don't think it's so much people that are faking. I think it falls here. Someone is working in a bad, toxic work environment and they may have something going on, but the work environment makes the whole thing untenable. They get pissed off and want to quit and they want to tap into their policy. But these policies don't insure against a bad work environment. So, that's why we really look at your occupation. If you're an emergency department physician and you work for a crappy group in a crappy hospital and everybody's mean to you, that's not going to help if you could just move across town and work for a better group.

Are there people that have claims? Yes. Most of the people that approach us, we look and we go, “Oh, the records just aren't there.” They don't understand. Their friends may have said you should talk to an attorney or you should apply for disability. But we know based on our experience that the claim is not going to be paid and a judge isn't going to overrule the claims person.

I think most people are not genuinely out to cheat an insurance company. They just don't know because, Jim, nobody knows what's in their insurance policy until they have a claim and someone explains it to them. And so, I'm there to help people ignore the well-meaning advice of friends who don't do this work and to give them real clarity on “This is valid, go” or “You don't have a claim, you should go back to work or you should try to find a different way to make money.”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Ben, there are a lot of claims out there that, for lack of a better term, are in a bit of a gray area. It's a medical condition where there's not great objective evidence that there's something going on.

The classic example is probably back pain. Lots of surgeons have back pain that keep them from operating more than an hour at a time. Many dentists have back pain later in their career and yet they go get an MRI and all they see is one or two little tiny herniated discs. And of course, there's lots of people out there with small herniated discs that don't have any back pain at all. Can you walk us through the process of these claims and how you look at them and what happens when you have a claim like this?

Ben Glass:
Yeah, sure. Jim migraines would fall into that category as well. First, let's accept these are more challenging claims. But now we're looking at the sort of secondary evidence. So, is the claimant seeing quality specialists? Do those specialist records reflect that they believe that their assessment of the patient's pain is true? Do they believe in the patient? Are we trying standardized therapies including legit standardized medications without success?

We've been successful, migraine is impossible to see, to “see” a migraine, but someone who's seeing, again moving up the food chain of specialists and seeing uber specialists and trying to get better, trying to make treatments without success, that all becomes evidence that the insurance company is supposed to take into account the entire picture.

Now that having been said insurance company doctors will say what you just said, no radiologic evidence, sometimes they'll have surveillance. And if the surveillance they get on you contradicts what you say about your abilities, that's hard. But if you're a high-performing dentist and you've got a track record of X hours or X number of procedures in a week and that's also diminishing in conjunction with the medical records, that's all evidence that we are trying to tie together to say “Yes, this is very legitimate even if we don't have radiologic evidence. “

That having all been said, the thing that your listeners need to know is some policies will limit that. They'll say we'll accept the claim but if you don't have a proven radiculopathy we're only going to pay the claim for two years. And they may have a list of conditions such as fibromyalgia, migraine headache, chronic pain, they'll say we accept that this is real but we're not going to pay it for more than two years. What people need to know is that these types of policies exist, that's mainly a group policy that we see.

And so, again, the higher up the food chain you go in terms of buying a quality policy, the less likely in my experience it is that you're going to get big pushback. I think by and large these insurance companies try to treat high wage earning professionals the right way.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
It's interesting. You get what you pay for a lot with disability insurance, don't you?

Ben Glass:
I think that's true, absolutely.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now you mentioned something. You mentioned surveillance. How often is an insurance company hiring a spy, hiring a private investigator to follow you around to figure out if you're really disabled? Is this common? How often does this happen?

Ben Glass:
That part happens, I see less and less frequently. But why? They don't have to. They just go on social media, they go and look at your posts. Or you think your social media is private but your friends are posting “Oh, here's Jim at our ski trip” and tagging you in it. That's where the problem is. And again, I'm not saying you need to close down your entire life and secure it but I think you have to be very accurate when you're saying to an insurance company “These are activities I cannot do” or “I cannot do more than an hour.”

You have to be honest about that because they will find you that one time and I'll tell you a trick that they use. They'll find you that one time you're out doing something for three hours that you said you can only do for one. Here's how they get you. “Jim, when's your next visit with your surgeon? – Oh, it's July 7th at 11:00 A.M.”

Okay, some likelihood if you have that type of claim that there's going to be a guy waiting down the street who's going to follow you, going to see what you do before you visit the surgeon, what you do after you visit the surgeon. You stop at the grocery store and you say you can't carry a certain weight, you're doing grocery shopping. So, you've helped them by telling them when you will be outside of the house.

Again, I don't want people to be paranoid about living their lives but the main strategy is you have to be brutally honest in describing your condition and your limitations to the insurance company. Because one way or another if you're not being honest, they will find it.

IS DISABILITY INSURANCE WORTH IT?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
When people hear stories like this, they hear that your specialty exists to help people get their claims that you're actually needed sometimes. I suspect the hassle factor of knowing they may have to fight to get their benefits in some situations may cause them to wonder if they should bother buying the insurance at all. Should that potential hassle affect their approach to the initial decision to buy disability insurance any differently?

Ben Glass:
Yeah. Look, I bought my product for myself at 22 or so. I paid it and never had to make a claim, thank goodness, for 40 years. But I had that security as I was growing my family and growing my business. Here's what I tell people, Jim. You get run over by a truck, you don't need me. That's easy, they're going to pay the claim. And if you're driving to work, there's a decent risk there that something will happen that may put you out, maybe it doesn't put you out permanently but maybe it puts you out for six months or a year.

I think it's worth it. Again, I don't sell the policies. I recommend to my young lawyers who work for me and young professionals that I get to hang out with from time to time. I think it's one of the insurance policies that's worth it. Again, most people are going to have some coverage under the group policy from their employer.

Look at the picture of your family on your desk and say “What happens if my stream of income goes completely away?” That's the risk you're protecting. The insurance companies will tell you that most claims are paid. That's true but most claims are not for a long period of time. I broke my ankle, I can't operate for six months. I'm pregnant and I can't be around for six or nine or twelve months. They pay their claims that goes into their stats.

I'm a proponent of in America insurance is relatively inexpensive and most people just don't realize how important it is. Homeowners, malpractice, it's just one of the things we live with.

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST MISTAKES DOCS MAKE WHEN FILING A DISABILITY CLAIM?

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now you've alluded to a few mistakes that doctors make when they're dealing with the claims process. Lying, for example, or not seeing multiple specialists that are actually documenting what you can't do or putting things on social media that contradict what you're saying you can't do. Telling the insurance company where you're going to be. What other mistakes do you see people make with the claims process in general? Where are they screwing up?

Ben Glass:
I talked to an OB-GYN a few years back and he had progressive neurological condition which took him out of the labor and delivery and out of the operating room and he became an office-based physician and his income diminished by half. His friends told him “You don't have a disability claim, you make too much money.” He took advice from non-lawyer friends where actually he did have a claim. He had a claim for partial disability or what they call residual disability and he was entitled to benefits that time but he didn't claim it so he left money on the table.

Now, the problem became, as his condition progressed, now his occupation is not GYN surgeon in the L&D. It's office-based. And so, now his claim becomes harder. A mistake. And I see that a well-meaning treating physician will begin to describe what disability is or isn't to his patient. They're not trained in this.

The other thing that doctors do which I find, if I can say to you, hilarious, is they go to their friends for treatment, they don't charge each other and they don't make records sometimes. That makes my job a lot harder. When you have something, you can go to your friend but make sure you're paying them and they're keeping records.

The other thing I see, the story I tell which is kind of scary is I represented an interventional radiologist at a major university medical center. And this guy is one of the godfathers, he is more of my age, cohort godfathers of interventional radiology. Jim, he was getting some wonky blood results from being in the IR suite and exposed to radiation for 20-25 plus years. And his doctor said “You got to get out or else you may develop cancer.” And that's a legitimate claim. Problem was his practice had bought a policy that defined own occupation as whatever your certification is and if you have no certification it's MD.

There were certifications in interventional radiology but he didn't have one because he got his training before the certification came into existence and he actually today trained the fellows to become certified. And so, the insurance company said “Your board certification is general radiologist. You can still read X-rays, we're not paying the claim.” And we litigated that case and we lost the case.

The mistake there was not what the claimant did but what HR did in buying a policy for a group of interventional radiologists and not understanding the policy and not thinking through “Oh, we have some guys on the staff who don't have this newer certification and we're buying a policy that only protects the newer doctors if something happens they can't do.”

Those are the things I see. The other is making a claim, paying me, somebody like me to look over your shoulder while you make the claim and to say “Jim, I'm not sure that you check the right box here or I'm not sure your medical records really add up. Let's not do this thing now.” So, they're making a claim too soon or without the right evidence where if they stayed in treatment for six more months and saw the right specialist their claim would be much better.

There's a couple things that I see. The biggest one is, and I don't see this from doctors so much but just over-dramatizing what their limitations are and it's not backed up by the medical records and often contradicted by surveillance.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. What does it involve to hire an attorney like you? What's the range of what the clients you've had in the last year have paid in legal fees? I assume a fair number of people probably don't pay you anything because it's just a very quick discussion. But if they get an hour consultation with you, that's probably a relatively small amount. Other people are going to need you to do a lot. What's that kind of range of what they end up paying in legal fees to you?

Ben Glass:
Most people don't need us to do a lot. Again, if their claim has been denied and they're coming to me, they're going to pay me a contingent. They're only going to pay me if we win. And they are going to pay me a third of their benefits if I'm able to win their benefits no matter if I get you back on claim now or if I litigate your case and take you to the court of appeals.

We're going to evaluate that case, and obviously, we're only going to take cases that we believe that we can add value because that's the only way we're going to get paid. We offer a flat fee consultation in advance. It's about $2,200.

But what that involves is work with my team, we're going to collect all your policies because typically guys and gals who are White Coat Investor tribe members have multiple policies. That's good, we're going to understand the policies, you're going to go and get your medical records and get them to us. We're going to look at those medical records before we get on a call.

And then my call with you is to set a strategy. And half the time I spent on that call, Jim, it's a life coaching call. It's like “What are we going to do next? Because I can solve your legal problem. I can get you paid benefits if your claim is legit but I'm an entrepreneur, let's figure out how we're going to go make money out in the world.”

And then for what they have paid, we stand behind them. So, as they prepare their own claim forms and collect their records and communicate with the insurance companies, we're saying, and some lawyers will stay involved and charge every six minutes or something. We don't do that. We will look over your shoulders what we call it and bless your claim forms. And as you have small little questions, it's all included in what we do.

And then, Jim, what I tell the doctors is if it gets to a point where I need to charge, they'll never be surprised, I'll always say “Hey, you sent over another big batch of medical records. It's going to take me time to look through it. Here's what it's going to cost.” We're very transparent.

Again, I make money in the denied claims and the contingent fee denied claims work. And we're able because of the regulations to do this work all over the country and I've got a great team that does that. The consults, though, with physicians are the interesting part of what I'm doing in my career now.

Because I get to meet people who have achieved great things in their life. They've got this challenge and I'm a good guy to talk to about “Okay, challenge. Yes, I can't do anything about that but now I can help motivate and inspire you. What's next in your life?”

And I provide some level of assurance. Typically, it's spouse. Whether it's husband or wife or whatever. Spouses, they are worried as well what are we going to do. And so, having the spouse on the call and being able for me to go “Look, everything's going to be okay. Here's the steps, we're going to be good at the steps. It's not going to cost an arm and a leg because I want this to be the main call we ever have and I want you to not have a problem with the claim.”

I just find that interesting work. Now I'm getting invited to these medical conferences to be able to talk about this to doctors and to practice administrators and just helping them. I like doing that work a lot. I've been blessed. I'm 42 years into my career. I'm doing, Jim, some of the interesting work I've ever done. And it's cool to be a leader in this space of helping shape the law for consumers including doctors, CEOs, entrepreneurs.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. So, potentially, if there's a denied claim and they have to hire somebody like you and they end up paying a third of their benefits, I'm going to assume that's all the benefits they get from now until the policy stops paying. If that's the case, should they be getting a larger policy than they otherwise would, knowing that they might have to pay a third of it out to an attorney?

Ben Glass:
Insurance companies aren't going to sell you a policy more than about 60% of your income. They don't want to incentivize you. So, there is a limit to how much disability insurance you can buy. But by and large, yes, I would not be cheap on how much of a monthly benefit I'm buying. Again, you'll find that insurance is a very competitive space, I think.

But the more important question goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, which is the quality of the definition of own occupation. That's really where it can make a significant financial difference to you and your family. The one last thing is, and you probably know this, is if you're paying the premium, the benefit is tax-free.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure, which definitely helps when it's only 60% of what you were making before. But if you were paying 40% of what you were making before in taxes, it's exactly the same. But I do tell people, get a big enough policy that it will pay for your living expenses as well as to continue to save for retirement. Because as we know, these things typically don't pay longer than, whichever one's longer, two years or until you get to age 65 or 67. So, you still need some retirement savings or you're going to be all on Social Security.

Ben Glass:
Exactly. And if they bought the right policy with the correct occupation, remember, they may be able to collect that full benefit, but find something else to do. All you guys are smart. So, maybe there's consulting or expert witness work or something over here that you can still do even with whatever is keeping you out of medicine per se or patient care per se. And so, that's why I say it's the quality of the definition of disability in the policy, which I think is just as or more important than how many dollars are actually being paid as a benefit.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Awesome. All right. Well, our time's getting short, Ben. What have we not talked about today that you feel like doctors ought to know about the disability claims process or getting disability insurance or et cetera?

Ben Glass:
My offer is this, if anybody who's listening to this would like me to look at their policy and just give them a general overview, I'm happy to do that. I wrote a book for doctors that tells some of these stories. If you want to reach out to me, I'm happy to send them a copy of the book. It may be hard to believe hearing this come from a lawyer, but I really want people to have a seamless experience, not need a claims denied lawyer, because honestly, there's enough of that work out there for sure. And I like building relationships. These doctors are all treating potentially my future patients, my future clients as well.

And then the last thing I'll say about that is if you're insured under a group policy and you're not sure what it actually covers for you, I'm happy to look at that group policy too, because then you may want to go running to one of the White Coat Investor brokers and have a discussion about “Can I affordably buy individual coverage now?” And again, you said this before, the younger and healthier you are, the smarter that decision becomes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Awesome. Well, Ben, thank you for the work you do. Thank you for reffing high school soccer. We thought attorneys were underappreciated. Referees certainly are underappreciated.

Ben Glass:
It's a weird hobby. It's a weird hobby.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I appreciate you coming on the podcast and educating us on these topics.

Ben Glass:
Yes, sir. Thank you.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. I hope you enjoyed that interview. There's this idea out there, especially among doctors, the lawyers are the evil other side. Because we're always thinking about malpractice prosecution attorneys. There's actually lots of attorneys out there that help you a lot. We've got a list of multiple kinds of attorneys on the website, people we refer you to. Whether it's a state planning kind of stuff, more likely contract review stuff. That's what most of you use attorneys we recommend to you for. Disability insurance, claim lawyers, these sorts of people that can really help you get malpractice insurance, these sorts of things.

So, be aware that those exist on our recommended tab. They're not the most popular pages under our recommended tab, but they do get used by White Coat Investors from time to time. Let them know that you're coming from us so they know where their business is coming from so they continue to support the White Coat Investor.

But really they're there to help you. The reason we keep these lists, we maintain these lists is yes, to help support the White Coat Investor, but also just because we get asked for these things by you. We know there are a certain percentage of White Coat Investors that need help with this sort of a legal task. So, we keep that going.

SPONSOR

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It's true. It is a larger community. There are literally hundreds of thousands of White Coat Investors out there. They want to help you. We have online communities. You may not know this. We have a forum hosted at forum.whitecoatinvestor.com. We have a subreddit, White Coat Investor subreddit, if you're into Reddit. We have a Facebook group, if you like Facebook. White Coat Investors Facebook group.

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So, check those out. Be connected. We are a community. We're here to help you. Keep your head up and your shoulders back and know that you're not alone in your financial journey. Thanks so much for what you do. See you next time on the podcast.

DISCLAIMER
The hosts of the White Coat Investor are not licensed accountants, attorneys, or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. 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 230 – Radiologist Hits Early Financial Independence.

This podcast today is sponsored by Bob Bhayani of Protuity. He is an independent provider of disability insurance 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 today by email [email protected] or by calling (973) 771-9100.

All right, we have a scholarship. We give away money every year, but we need people to help us with the scholarship contest. We need judges, judges that are willing to read a few essays of scholarship applicants and judge them. You can't be a student, you can't be a resident, but you can be anybody in any career and you can be a retiree and be a volunteer judge for the White Coat Investor Scholarship. Just email [email protected] if you would like to participate.

All right, we've got a pretty interesting interview today, a little bit different than a lot of stuff we've done on here. After we're done, I'm going to talk about what I call the three pathways to wealth. I think it's a useful discussion. I think it's particularly useful in light of what you're about to hear in this interview. It's not the typical milestone, it's not the typical pathway to that milestone, but I think you'll find it interesting nonetheless.

INTERVIEW

Our guest on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast today is Matthew. Matthew, welcome to the podcast.

Matthew:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Let's start by telling people a little bit about you. Let's talk about what you do for a living, how far you are out of training, and what part of the country you're in.

Matthew:
Sure, yeah, I'm a radiologist. I live in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I'm six years out of training and something interesting about me is I did a pain medicines fellowship at Stanford.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool, very cool. All right, well, tell us what milestone we're celebrating today.

Matthew:
Milestone is, I guess you could say that I'm selling real estate this month. It'll be my first multi seven-figure exit. I guess you could say I'm pretty close to where I want to be for financial freedom.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool, so really getting to be financially independent. What kind of net worth are we talking about? What's your number? Is it $4 million? Is it $8 million? Is it $15 million? What's your number that you think you really feel like you'd be financially independent with?

Matthew:
Yeah. For me, I think more than just the number, it's really just how much passive income you're getting a month. I'd like to have $30,000 to $40,000 passive a month, but I think in terms of net worth, I'd like to have definitely over seven figures, probably like low eight figures would be my enough.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool, all right. Well, let's talk a little bit about how you got there because you're relatively young. You're not that far out of training. How many years have you been out of training?

Matthew:
Almost six.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Six years out of training and you're basically financially independent, more than lots of docs would love to have. What that tells me is you've had an unusual pathway. This is not the typical doctor pathway, whether it's how you earned money or how you saved money or how you invested money or how you use leverage, those sorts of things. Tell us how you got to where you are so quickly after training.

Matthew:
Yeah, sure. When I was done with training, I didn't have any help. I wasn't born rich. I think my net worth was probably negative $100,000. Despite that, I didn't start immediately. I know a lot of physicians will start immediately after training. I actually took three months off and rode my bicycle across the United States because I had pain medicine patients, one after another, had some terrible happen to them. They said, “I wish I could have done X if it weren't for… I wish I could go to Europe again, but I had this horrible event happen to me.”

I just realized I was going through hoops until the grave. On that trip, I realized that I wanted to take risks, try things. Things I did to get to where I was, was I invested in high conviction assets that I knew fundamentally were going to go up significantly, such as crypto assets, invested in real estate, and also different equities. Something else that helped me was I moved to Puerto Rico and I decreased my tax basis from 37% to 2%.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, that can obviously give you a lot more money to invest. Tell us about the crypto assets you invested in. Is this primarily Bitcoin or what else did you use?

Matthew:
Yeah. Originally, I invested more into Bitcoin, but dollar for dollar, I was investing about the same into Solana. That was when it was maybe $18 to $32, and now it's $180. That helped. I also invest a little bit in SUI. I don't know how big you guys are in crypto, but most of what I invest in are blue chip cryptos. It's nothing crazy. I don't have any mean coins or anything like that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
What percentage of your net worth is in crypto assets now?

Matthew:
Probably about 40%.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
40%. You have millions of dollars in crypto assets. Does that make you uncomfortable at all?

Matthew:
No, because a lot of it, I own ETFs. I converted my Bitcoin holdings into IBIT ETF, which is on Robinhood and it's FDIC, but I also am comfortable with owning my own hardware while I still have my own system for that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Now, you mentioned you had made some investments in individual securities. Tell us a little bit about those and why you decided to do that rather than the more commonly used technique of just buying them all via an index fund.

Matthew:
Yeah, sure. I think Dave Ramsey and some of these big financial people, they're all about index funds because their goal is for populations of people to have the best results on average for that population. But because I spend three to four hours a day learning and investing, I had high conviction in MicroStrategy and Tesla. I invested in those in 2023, 2024, and the returns have been good, but I'm applying common principles like taking profits and asset rotation.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I think if you have a lifetime cumulative experience of less than 50 hours of knowing finance or financial education, I think index funds are fine. I think if you are more hands on and you are part of communities of people that are really into knowing where to get alpha, I think that it's fine to go up a little bit on the risk curve.

Yeah. Do you still own a lot of Tesla stock?

Matthew:
Yeah. I definitely own more than $1.5 million in Tesla. And I also own a bunch of Tesla options. I've done covered calls. I've done leaps. I've done synthetic longs. But mostly now what I'm doing is just leap options in Tesla.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
How'd that feel this spring as Elon Musk got involved with the government and investors seem to not exactly treat the price of a share of Tesla very well after that?

Matthew:
Yeah. When people are trading headlines, usually that means it's an opportunity to buy. And so, I did buy more Tesla. But regardless of your political views, there's some people whose entire platforms on social media and Twitter is just Tesla modeling. And they're more than just a car company. Their energy storage component of their business is growing rapidly. So is their bot component, their car insurance component.

And so, I really think retail is the last to buy and the last to sell. And one of the easiest ways to make a lot of money is follow someone with less than 50 hours of financial education with a lot of opinions and just do the exact opposite of what they do. And so, when you take the mass and aggregate of people who are scared about Tesla, I just knew that timing the market is not as good as time in market. Tesla for me is about maybe a five to six year play at least.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Now you mentioned when we asked you what, what milestone you want to celebrate. You mentioned an exit from a real estate investment you had. Tell us a little bit about your real estate investing strategy. It doesn't necessarily sound like it's buy and hold forever.

Matthew:
It depends. I've owned various investment properties. Most of them are either divorce deals or partnership deals that have gone bad. Right now I'm selling a piece of real estate and I'll be rolling it into a development project or two that I know with some people that I know who are really good developers.

I think in the real estate world, single family homes, I just don't think it's scalable for a lot of reasons. I think you can go on LootNet and you'll find these people in collections of 50 single family homes that are trying to sell it as one big asset. I don't want to get into economics too much, but if you look at the Case-Shiller Index and divided by the M2, it's just like a flat line, meaning that single family homes just kind of mirror global liquidity. I really think that the alpha is in big commercial and development deals. I just think that's where you add a lot of value to society.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now that you've kind of gotten to enough for you, do you plan to change your investing strategy at all? Are you going to dial back the risk at all? Are you going to dump a bunch of money into treasuries? Do you have any plans to change how you've been investing?

Matthew:
Yeah, I'm definitely reallocating this year a little bit more into things that were more stable with passive income. I see no problem with that or profit taking and going down the risk curve a little bit. I just think it's because that you'll see this with a lot of high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals is that some of them start to go down the risk curve because they don't want to lose what they've accomplished. And so, I'm kind of in that same boat.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now tell us a little bit about where you got the money to invest in the first place. As you started practicing medicine, what was your savings rate those first few years?

Matthew:
My wife and I were pretty tight. We lived in a small house in Pennsylvania. For two years I basically just saved everything I could and we moved to Puerto Rico. We lived in a small apartment as well. I did the opposite of what you're supposed to do which is like I just traded a lot of time for money.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You say you made the money and then started to invest in it and tried to decrease your expenses as much as you could including taxes.

Matthew:
Yeah, things snowballed. When I went to Puerto Rico, I was like a thousander and then things quickly changed just because of the tax advantage status you have there. There's no capital gains tax.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Are you practicing via telemedicine at this point or what are you practicing in Puerto Rico hospital or what's your practice plans at this point?

Matthew:
Yeah, I just contract in the United States. That's part of the requirements for the Act 60 program is you have to do something that you're selling a good or service to the United States. And so, that's exactly what I do. I just contract in the United States and have contractors contract in the United States.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool, very cool. All right. Well, what's next for you? What's your next financial goal you're working on?

Matthew:
My next financial goal is starting a teleradiology business where I'd like to have rates be high, quality be high and try to tackle these multi-nine-digit private equity radiology businesses that have hurt a lot of radiologists either from their groups getting bought out or they almost hit partnership and I'd like to expand that to other medical specialties.

Other goals of mine is essentially just to get more into development deals and projects just because the returns are high and there's just a lot of good opportunity out there.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. All right. Well, someone out there is hearing your story and going I want to do that. What advice do you have for them?

Matthew:
I think one thing is that physicians especially, I think from an early start in their training, they're basically trained to mitigate risk or to be as more risk-averse as possible and I just don't think that that's something you should shy away from even if people are being naysayers about it. Don't be afraid to quit a job you have either because it doesn't align with your values or doesn't align with your goals.

I think if you follow the urge your returns are going to be less than mediocre and don't be afraid to try things. I tried making a supplement company with sleep strips that were inspired by what I took when I moonlit in a prison overnight as an urgent care doctor and it failed. Kroger almost picked it up and then COVID hit but it's okay to keep trying.

I think if you want to do what I did some of it is luck but some of it is just trying to aggressively spend an insane amount of time just looking for alpha in different asset classes. I think that's another thing I would definitely say that me and where I came to be didn't just come from me just throwing money in different places. It literally took hundreds and hundreds of hours every day just combing through opportunities.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Well, thank you so much for being willing to come on the podcast and sharing your story and using it to inspire others to also find financial success in their endeavors. Thanks so much for that.

Matthew:
Yeah, thanks for having me on.

FINANCE 101: THE THREE PATHWAYS TO WEALTH

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, I hope you enjoyed that interview. It's not a typical pathway to wealth that you guys hear about. I thought it would be useful to talk about what I call the three pathways to wealth.

The first one is what I call the default pathway. It works extremely well. It's very reliable. It takes time though and it is a pathway that I have talked about here for the last 15 years and it should not sound very unusual to you at all. It is not guaranteed but it's pretty darn close.

That pathway is to go to medical school, go to residency, complete all that and get a job where you're being paid reasonably well. We're talking about what your specialty or what your profession if you're not a doc is worth. Then over the next two to three decades you carve out 20% of your earnings and you put it toward retirement.

You basically save 20% of your money for retirement and you put it into some sort of reasonable investment. Typically index funds. You're buying all the stocks in the world using index funds. Maybe you have some bonds in there as well. Maybe there's a little bit of real estate, whatever.

Typical portfolio, you put your money in there, 20% of it or so. And you know what? After 15, 20, 25 years you hit financial independence. You get to the point where you never have to work again. You have 25 times what you spend per year saved up in retirement accounts. Whether it's a 401(k) or Roth IRA or a taxable account.

It's not very complicated. It's not very hard. It's very reproducible. It's very easy to teach. And frankly if you learn it well and you stay the course with your plan, it's pretty hard to screw up.

That's pathway number one and the pathway frankly that most doctors should be on. The real problem in the doctor financial world is not enough doctors are on this pathway. They're on no pathway at all. This is the default pathway.

Pathway number two is what I call the leveraged real estate pathway. You still have to save a bunch of your money and maybe you save significantly more than 20% of your money and you use it to invest with leverage. With borrowed money.

Typically this is done using real estate investments. Whether they are short-term rentals or long-term rentals. You buy the properties. As the debt starts getting paid down, the property appreciates. You borrow money out of the property again to maintain a reasonable but constant or relatively constant amount of leverage until you reach financial independence. At which point you can do what you want. You can start paying down those properties and reducing your leverage risk or whatever you want to do.

This pathway is probably faster than the default pathway. Mostly because you're using leverage but also because you are putting extra effort in and that effort has value. Typically in the beginning you're often managing these properties yourself. You're certainly putting effort in making the deals and so on and so forth.

This is a little bit faster pathway. In fact, I think a lot of people can even reach financial independence particularly with short-term rentals in less than a decade. It does work. I've met many docs who have gone down this pathway and been just fine.

Now you can't just do it haphazardly. You can't just throw the money around willy-nilly and not manage the properties well. You can't buy terrible properties. You can't get over leveraged and get to the point where your properties are not cash flowing. It does take more time. It takes more effort. It takes more expertise and yes, there is more risk there and yes, there are aspects of a second job to it. But I think it's a faster pathway than pathway one and it's reasonably reproducible.

Pathway number three is what I call the entrepreneurship pathway. It's interesting. People ask me, “Well, how do I get wealthy?” I generally tell them about pathways one and two. Is that how I became wealthy? No, I went down pathway three. Now we were also at the same time on pathway one. And if my pathway three had not worked out, our backup plan was to go down pathway two.

We would have still reached financial independence by the time I was in my early 50s only from pathway one without any entrepreneurship whatsoever. But because the White Coat Investor worked out as an entrepreneurial investment, as a side gig, as a business, whatever you want to call it, we became financially independent when I was 43 years old. Essentially cutting eight, nine years off the pathway to financial independence.

Now this is very similar to what the doc we interviewed today has done. He's a serial entrepreneur. He came out of residency and becoming wealthy was very important to him. It was important enough that he put in a whole bunch of work on the side. That's not all that different from what I did with the white coat investor. I basically had two full-time jobs for a number of years, one of which was not paying me very much for quite a while.

And he did this serially. When something worked out, great. He took the money, he invested it, generally invested with quite a bit of risk, but he invested the money and he took on another serial venture. Even now he's talking about starting another company.

He was willing to do a lot of things that a lot of people are not willing to do. Work very hard, not only in his radiology and pain practices. Just doing radiology and pain is pretty unusual. But after hours, on weekends, on holidays, on his vacations, he was putting in this additional work on this other stuff.

He was willing to move to Puerto Rico, for example. I'm not willing to move to Puerto Rico. We've had blog posts, by the way, if you're interested on that and whatever it's called. I can't remember, Lost 60 or whatever it is. But if you search Puerto Rico at the White Coat Investor website, you can read more about the tax advantages available when you relocate to Puerto Rico.

But he was willing to do these things. And the fun thing is when you have a massive savings rate, you're making good money, you're a radiologist, you're a pain dog, you're busting your butt, you've got this high six figure income. When you're doing that, and you're saving almost all of it, your ability to take risk is very, very high. Whether that is business risk, whether that is leverage risk, whether that is market risk, whether that's investment risk, your ability to take that risk is very high.

Now, the risk doesn't always pay off. Picking stocks is not a practice I generally recommend, no matter how much you're going to study the stocks. Just look at the data. There's all these professionals out there picking stocks, trying to beat the market. And what percentage of them do it in the long run? 5%-ish, over 20 or 30 years, that's the percentage that beats the market.

If those are professionals with all kinds of analysts working with them and high powered computers helping them that are beaking the market, it's probably not the way for you to bet. But if you're saving 80% of a really high income, it really doesn't matter all that much how you're investing. You're going to become wealthy very quickly.

Did he have some winners? Absolutely. Crypto has done very well over the last 15 years. And so, investments in that, it could have gotten somebody very wealthy very quickly. He's got a little bit of real estate on the side as well. And when that pays off, similarly, you can do very well.

Now, high returns help, but that big savings rate was a massive method. It would be interesting to go back and look at how much of his money was brute force savings versus how much was investment returns. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that 30%, 50% or more of it is just money he made that he didn't spend.

That's oftentimes how you can get anything like this going, whether it's a bootstrap business, whether it's reaching financial independence, making a lot of money and saving a big chunk of it is how you get wealthy very quickly. Don't assume that you can not make much and not save very much of it. If you just had put it all in Bitcoin and Tesla, it would have paid off. There's a whole bunch of people that pick something besides Bitcoin and Tesla for whom it did not pay off. So, be careful with that.

And certainly, as you begin to approach enough, remember Bill Bernstein's advice. When you win the game, stop playing. Now, that's not specific advice. Don't try to pin him down on what exactly that means. But the point is, if you get to $10 million and $20 million and $30 million, and then you go back to broke, you suck at this game. It's not that hard of a game. You only got to win it once. If you're getting to the point where you've got eight figures in assets, take some of it out and stick it in treasuries or something very safe. So you'll never go back to being broke.

I've had a few stories of docs who have done ridiculously well, oftentimes with stories like this doc has had, and then are subsequently find themselves at 55 or 60 back working clinical shifts because they have to. You don't want to be in that situation. You only got to get rich once if you do it right and you invest in a way that you will stay rich. So, I hope that's helpful.

SPONSOR

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Thanks for being a listener to the podcast. Keep your head up and shoulders back. You've got this. We'll see you next time on the podcast.

DISCLAIMER

The hosts of the White Coat Investor are not licensed accountants, attorneys, or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.