This website went live on May 17, 2011. It's been an interesting experience to say the least. I've been gratified to see the growth. We now have 456 RSS/email readers and 310 subscribers to the monthly newsletter. Another 72 follow via Twitter. 93 sites link here, and according to Alexa, this is the 68,721st most popular site in the United States (359,711 in the world). That doesn't sound so good, until you realize there are over 367 Million websites in the world, putting this site in the top 0.1%.
More importantly, these pages have been viewed over 385,000 times, by over 69,000 people. There have been 22,500 comments (okay, I admit 21,000 of them were spam, but that still leaves 5 a day.) Judging by the email and comments I get, there are a lot of people benefiting from the free, unbiased advice here. That was the whole point of starting the site, so I'm very pleased with that.
A website is a tough business to start, since there is little barrier to entry, and limited ways to monetize it (at least if you feel some obligation not to sell your soul). Financially, the site hasn't been a total bust, but it certainly is not a significant source of income to me. Emergency medicine is a far better way to trade my time for money. The gross income on the site in the last year was a little over $3000 (of course I'm working hard on keeping the net income very close to zero). Most bloggers will tell you that's a pretty good first year. But when you divide that income by the 255 pages/posts written, it works out to about $11 a page. It's passive income going forward, but it certainly was an active process researching, writing, editing, and putting them together in the first place! But the research benefits me as well, and the writing seems to be helping a lot of other people, so I've recently re-upped my web hosting agreement for another year.
I hope you all have enjoyed the journey as much as I have. I figure there are nearly a million doctors and dentists out there just in the US (not to mention similar professionals), and at least 25,000 or so new ones every year, so there are plenty of people left to rescue from the clutches of Wall Street. Please share the word with your friends and colleagues.
Now it's your turn. What subjects would you like to see covered on The White Coat Investor in the future?
Yes! Because of you we transferred my wife’s (MS2) Roth IRA out of Mainstay (1.3% fees) and over to Vanguard. 1% over 40 years is a lot, Thanks!
Congrats on the great job here.
Topics I would like to be covered here
1. HSA providers and the better deals(quite confusing in view of the high fees charged by many providers who do provide access to vanguard funds) – more detailed instructions re best options to transfer money from employer provided HSA to one of the better ones.
2. Guide for dummies re things to be doing when starting a taxable account for investment purposes(after one has maxed out the tax advantaged plans) – like reinvesting dividends in say MMF, TLH etc.
3. I bonds for dummies – re more detail as in using I bonds for kids, ? use of trusts etc etc
4. Whole bunch of articles re diff kind of trusts for investment purposes, asset protection purposes, privacy. Combine these with adv of combining trusts with say LLC to achieve above goals
– like a land trust with LLC.Also importantly the cost aspect and the steps to go about this , if these can be done fool proof without an estate attorney.
5. As in above with estate planning relevant to doctors.
Iam sure we will have more questions in the various learning phases.
Thanks
Dan
Happy bday from down under!
I waste a lot of time surfing meaningless websites, i.e… ESPN, NFL.com etc..
Thanks to you I’m locked and loaded on this website now!
Happy one year anniversary. I’m spreading the word to my friends. Some will be ecstatic. Others who went “all in” with the spending will be sad that they didn’t find your site before they pissed away their future.
Cheers!!
Congrats! As much as I feel compelled to disagree with your political leanings, you’ve helped me immensely with understanding taxes and finances and I’ve recommended your blog to all my friends (who, like me are mostly young docs trying to figure out what to do with all our new income.)
Happy Birthday White Coat Investor!
You should be very proud of your accomplishments. You are providing your colleagues with a very valuable service and are very fair and balanced in they way you present the subject matter.
Congratulations! Like!!
Thanks for the articles over the last year.
Happy belated birthday!! Keep up the great work!
I check the website several times per week for updates. Congrats on the first year. I look forward to learning more in the upcoming year.
Perhaps some articles on contract structuring for new grads, student loan strategies, and more resident specific advice…
Congrats! I love this site, keep the posts coming!
Congrats on 1 year. Your blog has been very informative and encouraging. I’d like to see more posts on alternative investments, especially those that are specific to physicians. While we probably all should have the bulk of our retirement saving in a well diversified stock/bond portfolio, there are many other options out there that can yield much higher returns. Granted, risk is higher as well, but potential return can justify the risk. I’d like to hear about investing in:
Outpatient surgical centers
Imaging centers/scanners
Medical office space/buildings
Stand-alone urgent care, staffed primarily by employed midlevels
Laboratory facilities
You may want to employ some guests to write about some of these, since as an ER doc you may not be exposed to all of these opportunities. It would also be germane to write about Stark laws.
Some articles about evaluating and negotiating buy-ins would be useful too, especially for the dentists that follow your site. Practice buy-ins are often the first large investment many of us make.
I also think you should write a series of posts on “Business Basics for Physician.” We have so little business background as physicians. For the last couple of years I’ve been on the board of directors for my multispecialty group of about 100 docs. Our accountants present the financials for review, but I know very little about accounting. I read Mike Piper’s book on accounting. It was very informative and useful. Topics in this series could include: basic accounting practices, balance sheets, buying and deprecation of assets, borrowing and leverage for a business, common types of corporations and partnerships, business tax basics etc.
You could also expand into more discussion of estate planning, asset protection/liability etc. Even a basic article on umbrella policies and why all physicians should have one would be useful.
Keep up the good work!
You’re website has helped me tremendously. I was able to purchase a reasonable disability insurance policy with much more confidence and knowledge through your series. I’ve also stayed the course with my retirement/investments through low cost index funds at times when I thought about market timing 🙂 I was able to maximize my tax-advantaged accounts as well. Excellent and useful website for physicians.
Thanks for the suggestions, JR. Some of the topics that are useful, but hard for me to write about, are those for which I’d need to do a lot of research, or find a knowledgeable guest poster. The “special deals” like imaging centers are all so individualized, you can’t generalize that they’re all bad or they’re all good. And since there are very few people who have done it more than once or twice, it’s hard to put together general advice on the topic! Really a catch-22.
The business topics are a great idea. I’ve done a few asset protection and estate planning posts, and the umbrella insurance post was one of my first.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/personal-finance/dont-lose-what-you-have/
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/umbrella-insurance/
would like to see something on making investments out of my HSA – where can i do it, at what monetary value should my HSA be at before investing, and how to invest it.
Love the site, keep up the good work! One idea, as we are planning for post residency, is a budget template, my head is spinning with all the insurance options, loan payments, and other ways to spend. Would love to see your real world example and thoughts behind how you spend your money, no amounts but percentages would be helpful. Trying to make a master list of all the things we need to budget and plan for as we hope to buy a house (finally).
Sounds great. I’ll put it on the list of posts to do.
This is a fantastic blog and I’m so glad we found it. My husband is a physician and I’m an engineer. I’ve been investing long before he finished training and we got married. I can’t agree more with your investing philosophies and have learned some new things too. I love how you back up your arguments with calculations. Sure you weren’t an engineer in a previous life? Although you’ve titled your blog to say “…get a fair shake on Wall Street”, have you considered covering other forms of investment such as rental property?
I do address rental property issues from time to time. I consider the investing, mortgage, banking, financial advice, real estate, and insurance industry “Wall Street”.