By Dr. James M. Dahle, WCI Founder
Long-time readers know we've done The White Coat Investor Scholarship for years, giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and prizes. In 2019, we started another award, one for attending-level physicians and dentists. This is the Financial Educator Award for people who are trying to boost financial literacy among their colleagues, trainees, and students.
In 2019, Dr. Gaurava Agarwal received this recognition. In 2020, Dr. Jason Mizell won the award. In 2021, Dr. Scott M. Truhlar took home the prize, and in 2022, Dr. Stephen Pamatmat was the one to be honored.
The primary mission of The White Coat Investor is to “help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street,” which primarily means boosting financial literacy among professionals like physicians, dentists, trainees, and students. Many of these people can be reached with what we are currently doing—a blog, an email newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube channel, books, online courses, social media, CME conferences, the Financial Bootcamp email course, the WCI Forum, the r/whitecoatinvestors subreddit, and the White Coat Investor Facebook Group.
However, some of them can only be reached face to face, one at a time.
You, my readers and listeners, have been promoting this material (I can't really say it is mine since most of it is just a rearrangement of material developed by others and blended with common sense) to your colleagues, trainees, and trainers for years. Sometimes it can happen a little more efficiently than one on one. For example, I go out and speak to groups of docs about a dozen times a year. It's not a very profitable use of my time, and the traveling isn't particularly enjoyable. But I love to meet you individually and stay in touch with the concerns of the “doc in the trenches.”
How to Teach Personal Finance to Doctors
However, I can't even come close to keeping up with the demand for this sort of in-person financial education by myself. We turn down several speaking invitations a week, and that's without even trying to get them. With this Financial Educator of the Year award, we have been enlisting your aid in providing this education to your peers. We have made this as easy as possible for you. We get requests all the time to “share our slides” with people. For years I've told people, “No. If my slides get out on the internet, nobody is going to hire me to come speak.”
Well, it's gotten to the point where I don't care if anyone hires me to speak. So, we've put together some slide presentations for you to use when educating your peers and trainees. While it is only common courtesy (and always appreciated) to give WCI credit, I know that some people will not, and I'm OK with that. These are canned (bottled?) lectures that many of you can give with little preparation. Seriously, I cannot make it any easier for you without getting on a plane.
Each presentation is designed to last 50 minutes, leaving 10 minutes for a Q&A. Don't be intimidated. I know you're not a professional financial advisor. After the first time, you'll realize 90% of the questions are ridiculously easy to answer. You'll be embarrassed for your profession when you realize the simplicity of most of the questions you get. Seriously, you've got this. And, if by chance, they come up with a real stumper, tell them you'll get back to them, and shoot me the question by email. Together, we'll find the answer, and you can get back to the questioner within a couple of days and be their hero.
Yes, it's this easy.
Just click on the links below, download the file, read through the slides to make sure you're familiar with the material, and look up anything you're not familiar with on the blog or elsewhere. Then, you're good to go. One doctor's financial lecture coming right up. You can give it to two people or 1,000 people. You can send it out via email. You can give it over Zoom. You can post a link to it on your blog. You can modify the slides, but please do include the disclaimer slide unmodified in your presentation.
The slides presentations below were all updated, as of April 2023.
Presentation for Attendings
Topics covered:
- Financial literacy
- Student loan management for attendings
- Financial advisors
- The five insurance policies you need and two you don't
- Basics of retirement accounts
- The benefits of index funds
- Basics of estate planning
- Basics of asset protection
Presentation for Residents
Topics covered:
- Financial literacy
- Student loan management for residents
- Disability insurance
- Term life insurance
- Know your retirement accounts
- A written financial plan
- Contract evaluation
Presentation for Medical Students
Topics covered:
- Financial literacy
- Living frugally
- School/residency choice
- Specialty choice
- Student loan management
- Owning vs. renting during residency
- Financial steps as you leave medical school
If you would like to do a deeper dive on student loans or have someone do it for you, contact our in-house student loan expert at studentloanadvice.com, Andrew Paulson.
Financial Educator of the Year Award
In addition to providing you with the resources necessary to give a presentation to your trainees, I'm also going to provide an incentive to do so. Again this year, we are going to give out the Financial Educator of the Year Award. We will start taking submissions immediately. You have until May 2, 2023, to fill out this form and make your nomination. A few weeks later, I'll run a post on the blog announcing the winner and the person nominating them. So, you get mentioned on the internet, and you get a nice certificate. Oh yeah, and $1,000 cash money from WCI. As an incentive to put together a nice submission, the nominator who writes the best nomination of the winner will get a free WCI online course of their choice.
Here Are the Criteria:
- You can't nominate yourself. (Sorry, get one of your colleagues or trainees to do it.)
- Include the nominator's name, the nominee's name, and a way to contact both of you.
- Nominator must attach a 200-600 word explanation to this form on why the nominee should win the award.
- Nominee must be a practicing attending-level physician or dentist.
- Nominee need not necessarily be an “academic” doctor.
- Nominee need not be an American, but you must speak and write reasonably competent English.
- Nominee cannot be a financial professional OR have a business that compensates them for teaching doctors about personal finance. No financial bloggers, financial podcasters, financial advisors, insurance agents, etc. Anybody can submit a nomination.
- The nominee must agree to be named and pictured on the blog. The nominator can nominate without permission, but the nominee must give permission to us before they can win. (The $1,000 and CV entry will hopefully be enough incentive.)
- The nominator's name and submission will be published with the name and a picture of the nominee and perhaps a few words of advice from the nominee to their fellow educators.
- There will be only one winner.
- A nominee can only win once. Sorry Gaurava, Jason, Scott, and Stephen, you're done.
- Make sure to fill out this form to nominate someone.
The selection committee consists of the WCI staff. Yes, we're completely biased in favor of those who are dedicated to teaching personal finance and investing to doctors without regard to specialty, gender, race, religion, nationality, skin color, or sexual orientation. In fact, don't even tell us about any of that stuff in your nomination because we don't care. We want to hear about what your nominee did to help doctors become financially literate. If you are nominated independently by multiple persons, that nomination will carry additional weight.
What do you think? Can you think of someone who should win this award? Should somebody nominate you? What's keeping you from teaching your peers and trainees basic personal finance and investing? What else can we do to help? Comment below!
Jim,
What a great idea (“atta boy, Crispy Doc!”)!
I was recently asked by the medical school where I work to create a personal finance curriculum for the senior medical, PA, and SRNA students. Your comments about the simplicity of the questions you get make me feel a lot better as my “imposter syndrome” almost immediately started kicking in when I was asked to lead this curriculum. I actually have a post coming up about how I feel like the dog who “finally caught the tire.”
Thanks for sharing your slides. I’ll have to look them over.
Enhancing financial literacy needs to be done, and I applaud you for recognizing the people who do it!
TPP
You da man TPP! so happy your hard work is paying off. Prov 14:23
Kudos. This is huge. Thanks for sharing the slides. As someone who is giving a national talk on this next month and hoping to start a fellows lecture on it in My, these slide decks are super helpful. Thanks as always for being true to your mission.
If someone was interested in doing this would it be acceptable to charge a small fee to cover expenses, or even perhaps make some money for your time and efforts? I am retired and might be interested.
I only speak for free in town at my alma mater. But as I mentioned, this isn’t a particularly lucrative part of this business.
In the last year, a colleague and me have been giving basic personal finance lectures to the residents.
It’s been super fun and rewarding. They are just favorite talks to give. Way better than taking about bronchiolitis….
Thanks for sharing your slides. This will be a tremendous resource for people.
Maybe you can great a spot on your site where you keep these slides and where people can upload or share their own teaching creations?
Well, there’s already a spot on the site where I’m keeping them. That’s what this post is. But that’s a GREAT idea to upload other slides. If people want to send me their presentations, I’ll upload them.
Great idea Jim and very generous of you to share your slides/presentations. A colleague of mine said that I should go to the local residency program and give a talk to the residents and I admit this is something that sounds like it would be a great thing to do. Your slides can certainly help me design a talk for them and definitely gave me inspiration to start working on something.
Jim- I have personally benefited greatly from your book, financial bootcamp, podcasts, blog posts, etc. I have provided my copy of your book to both of my younger partners in the last year. I frequently read your site and never comment. I felt compelled to comment on this post, because your generosity and selflessness to share these slides is so refreshingly genuine and counter-cultural. Thank you. You are really making a difference in people’s lives, staying true to your mission, and doing it the right way. I wish there were more people like yourself in medicine and in the world. Thanks again, Joe
Great job Jim! This gives me inspiration to give some talks to our local medical students and residents. Good job on furthering the mission of the White Coat Investor
I was going to give a personal finance lecture to our residents and had finished about half of it when my plans were waylaid by a family medical emergency. I am glad that you made your slides public. I can refer to them to make sure my presentation is hitting all the right points.
Thanks for sharing the slides. This is great. Do you have anything similar to this but geared towards dental students and dental residents?
Malin Friess DMD
No, but I’m sure they can be very easily adapted. The differences are pretty minor.
Thanks Jim! Very generous! I am trying to put together a webinar for my colleagues and something for the residents in the hospital I work in.
“ Seriously, you’ve got this. And, if by chance, they come up with a real stumper, tell them you’ll get back to them, shoot me the question by email, together we’ll find the answer, “
Not to hinder sales on the WCI course, the outlines on the slides could be used for a little group study project. Split it up, each takes a section to research and actually teach the others. You don’t have to have to memorize just understand how to find answers. Master of concepts and know when to dig deeper would be worth thousands down the line.
Hope this blows up the prevailing myth of pay your “advisor” to handle everything!
Great post!
Excellent ideas, and so happy to see you doing this for all those who need a boost to start educating at the boots-on-the-ground level. I have found your point to be exactly right – sometimes people just don’t read all the information that is publicly available (for many reasons), but they will be very in tune to a local speaker. Fortunately, sometimes a local speaker will be the spark that ignites the learner’s desire to then go online, etc. As always, I appreciate your work WCI!
I tried to get a few dental schools to allow me to talk to the seniors but no luck
Great for sharing these slides
I use much of your writings in my finance club in fla
Thanx
I’ve been invited to give four hours of personal financial planning content to our local medical school students in a few weeks. FOUR HOURS. Daunting task, but I’ve come up with some fun activities etc in addition to a big chunk of didactic as well. I’ve actually already put together my lecture slides (well, first draft/organization anyway) but now I look forward to seeing your topics and how you are handling the subject.
It is incredibly generous for you to release those into the wild. Are you our generations Jack Bogle?
No.I think that’s Rick Ferri.
Love Rick Ferri! He’s the best.
Check out Bogle’s Financial Literacy Project online-Great teaching tools
I would like to submit a nomination for the Financial Educator of the Year award. Is there a specific email address I should send it to?
As noted in the post, [email protected]
I’m doing a talk at my old family medicine residency this week. Your slides are way more helpful than the ones I made up 2 years ago when I did another presentation. Back to the drawing board! I will definitely use many of your slides. Thanks for posting these. I bought one of each of your books and one of total money makeover books to give out as “door prizes”. Thanks for all you do
You’re welcome!
Jim. Thank you. These presentations are yet another in your many successful efforts to create/boost financial literacy among our ranks. All of us are indebted to your unending efforts to show us the way to financial independence. John
This is great! We look forward to seeing who will bag the prize this year, though we are grateful for everyone who takes the time and effort to further financial knowledge among our colleagues, trainees and students! Together, these good voices will drown the bad ones in finance.
Thanks, Jim, for generously sharing your slides- look forward to going through them. They will be a valuable resource to so many.
-PFB
Hi Jim
Where can we access your slides?
Would you please email them to me at [email protected]
Thx
Just click on those links and they’ll download. I just finished updating them this morning.
If you have 200 k in savings account, how would you recommend to invest it when in mid 50’s?
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/investing/you-need-an-investing-plan/
What are your thoughts on Robo Advisors such as Wealth front, Betterment?
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-roboadvisors/
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-roboadvisors/
The search box is your friend.
These are so beautiful and helpful! May I suggest that you add the section on financial advisors in the attending slides to the resident slides? If most residency programs are like mine, the advisors are blowing up our emails and getting their hooks in early. An ounce of prevention…
Aren’t they pretty? That’s the benefit of having staff here at WCI. Obviously someone putting together a presentation is free to mix and match as needed. Maybe we’ll do more of these at some point.