Every January I do a post telling you about what has been accomplished here at The White Coat Investor over the last year. In my view, the most important thing this post does is extend a great big thank you to both the readers of this site and to its advertisers. So THANK YOU!
Thank You
Over the last 4 1/2 years I have had the opportunity to directly interact with tens of thousands of readers in person, via email, in the comments section of blog posts, by phone, through my books, and even on other internet forums. I have provided valuable information, helped many of you correct financial mistakes, inspired others to reach their financial goals, and generally changed the financial outcome of your lives by hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of dollars. All for free or very close to it. However, you have rewarded me by becoming my biggest fans and literally ambassadors of The White Coat Investor brand. The devotion I see from some of you is very fulfilling and extremely valuable. I do very little marketing for either my book or this site because you guys do it for me in the most valuable way possible-word of mouth. Thank you!
I also want to thank the advertisers for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that the advertisers keep all of the content (well, except the book) completely free to you. There is no subscription fee for the site or the newsletter. Similar newsletters might charge $200 a year. $200 * 6,406 subscribers = $1.3 Million. While that would be nice, I have no doubt I would have a tiny fraction of 6,406 subscribers if I was charging $200 a year. Doctors, especially those who read financial blogs, don't like paying for stuff even when maybe they should!
While I don't make $1.3 Million a year off this site, it has provided a very good income for me and, increasingly, others who work for me. While I have not yet reached financial independence, this site has allowed me to be financially independent of medicine (which makes practicing medicine way more fun by the way.) Other than book revenue, that all comes from the advertisers. So I appreciate you supporting those who support me. Frankly, if I wasn't making at least some money doing this, I probably would have dropped it three or four years ago. My initial goal was to be making $1,000 a month after 2 years or I would quit. I barely made that.
Growth of the Site
The site now consists of 66 pages, 800 posts, and 25,000 comments (not counting 50 times as much spam comments). We had 3.9 Million page views this year, a 44% increase over last year. 2.1 Million people have come to this site in the last 5 1/2 years. The RSS feed (the number of people reading any given blog post via email or RSS reader) stands at about 3,175. The newsletter has 6,406 subscribers, almost double what it was a year ago. It has been a wonderful year by any measure. The most popular pages this year were the Doctor Mortgage Loan page and the New To the Blog page. The most widely read blog post this year was the one I did about Utah's proposed doctor tax. That was read almost 30,000 times and hopefully had a big effect on that tax NOT passing.
The Scholarship
One of the biggest accomplishments for this last year was the awarding of the WCI Scholarship. The revenue for this scholarship came from website profits, many readers, and a number of website sponsors. While I threw in some very inexpensive advertising in exchange for the sponsors' contributions (allows them to deduct it) I was amazed at just how excited they were to be involved with this revolutionary effort. In case you missed the winning essay, Landon Woolf was the recipient of the $12,625 award. I consider the scholarship a great way to pay forward the success you all have given to me here. My contribution will increase significantly in 2016.
The Mission
The White Coat Investor, LLC has a three-fold mission:
- Help those who wear the white coat (and other high-income professionals) get a fair shake on Wall Street. In essence, I'm trying to give you the financial information you never received during your training.
- Feed my entrepreneurial spirit. That is to say, make money for me, my family, and my favorite charities and allow me to create as many jobs as possible.
- Connect readers with the “Good Guys” in the financial services industry. While not one of my initial goals for this site, I was increasingly asked for recommendations to the point where it was obvious there was a huge gap to be filled.
Competition
For the last couple of years after I ran this State Of The Blog post I was bombarded with emails from readers asking rather detailed questions about how I got started doing this. Apparently the financial success this site has seen was attracting more attention than I really wanted to and I was spawning my own competition. So, after a while I wised up a bit and told these prospective physician financial bloggers that while blogging is collaborative (people have plenty of time to read all the great content that can be produced), making money on the internet was not. So, to those of you thinking about starting a financial blog, I'll help you as much as I can to fulfill mission # 1, but I'm not going to email you the list of advertising contacts that I've been building for years or a step by step history of how I built this business. It's not like it's that hard to figure out who's advertising on my site, and if you just concentrate on helping as many people as you can, the money will come to you anyway.
Financials
So, with that caveat out of the way, I still plan to be very transparent about both the financials on this blog and more importantly, the conflicts of interest I have dealt with in the last year. So here's how we did.
[Update January 2019: I decided to remove the financial reports from the State of the Blog posts for the last three years. You can read the reasoning on the January 2019 post.]
That's over twice as much as last year, and more than 3 times what my family currently spends outside of taxes, charity, savings, and major purchases. For the first time in this blog's history, I can envision a scenario where we might make less money next year than we made this year, although my expectation is for continued growth of both readership and income. In fact, I've got far more ideas than I have time to implement and what I really need to improve on is figuring out how to maintain (or even improve) quality while spending less of my own time on the various required tasks.
Conflicts of Interest
I have always been very big on disclosing my financial conflicts of interest on this site. I'm sure you have noticed the statement at the beginning of every guest post I've run and perhaps even the disclosure page that links to another page about my financial conflicts of interest (which now that I look at it probably needs a little updating.) The only way to avoid conflicts of interest around here is to simply do all this for free. Not only am I not willing to do that, but my wife isn't willing to let me do it either, so we'll all have to simply settle for sufficient disclosure to allow you to properly evaluate the information found here.
This year, rather than a long list indicating all the companies I have a financial conflict of interest with, I'd like to talk about some of the specific dilemmas I have faced in the last year with regard to these conflicts of interest. For the typical reader, this post gets much less interesting from here on down, so don't say I didn't warn you.
# 1 Accepting New Advertisers
Most of the ads you see on the site are private firms who have contacted me and asked to advertise here. Approximately half of those who contact me are turned down as I felt the missions of their companies were simply incompatible with that of The White Coat Investor, LLC. These include a lot of companies who want to lend you money, firms that want to help you invest in currency, options, or other investments that I did not feel comfortable recommending to you, commissioned salesmen masquerading as financial advisors, and a lot of financial advisors who I didn't think could provide readers with great advice at a fair price. Sometimes I had a problem with the advice, and sometimes I had a problem with the price. However, my incentive is to always accept new advertisers. By turning them down, I'm turning down revenue. But I felt that revenue came at too high of a price- that is, I felt I would lose my most valuable commodity- your trust.
# 2 Doctor Mortgage Loans
One of the most profitable pages on this site lists firms that would like to sell you a doctor mortgage (i.e. <20% down with no PMI.) However, long-term readers know that I never used a doctor mortgage. I simply saved up for a 20% down payment and got a conventional mortgage. So how can I possibly justify listing all these doctor mortgage firms? Well, my justification is two-fold: First, most doctors are better off either paying down student loans or maxing out retirement accounts rather than saving up a downpayment (although I wish they'd live like a resident long enough to do all three at once). Second, you're all buying instead of renting anyway no matter how often I tell you not to do so until you're in a stable attending position. So I might as well get you in touch with the folks who can actually close your loan and give you the best rates available for what you've decided you're going to do.
# 3 Recommended Financial Advisors
The page on this site that has caused me the most heartburn over the last year or two is the Recommended Advisor page. As you may recall, I wrote earlier this year about how there is no perfect advisor. Long-term readers know I don't have a financial advisor, mostly because financial advice is very expensive and I don't see sufficient value in that relationship for the price I would have to pay. However, it is very obvious to me that the vast majority of physicians (although a smaller percentage of readers of this site) would benefit from having a reasonably priced competent financial advisor. And I am asked for recommendations all the time. Thus, the purpose of the “Recommendations” page. However, the conflict I faced this year was who to list on that page. When I initially made that page 5 years ago, I simply listed a handful of low-cost, index fund-based asset managers I was aware of without ever contacting those firms, much less receiving advertising dollars from them.
Over the years, I have had an increasing number of firms contact me in order to be listed there. It was getting to the point where I didn't have as much time as I needed to create content because I was spending so much time reading ADV2s, reviewing websites, and communicating via email with potential advertisers. I knew I wasn't going to list firms that I felt gave bad advice or charged too high of a price. That was an easy decision. What was a hard decision for me, however, was whether or not to remove firms from that list that I thought were good but which were not paying me. In the end, I decided to remove the non-paying firms as I felt it wasn't fair to those who were paying, and besides, many of those advisors already had as much business as they could handle without shunting clients to their less experienced associates. Also, in order to decrease the amount of time I was spending evaluating firms, I made a standardized application that I plan to include with each listing so potential clients can see what I think is important for an advisor and see how a given advisor stacks up in those respects.
High above the City of Rocks, Idaho
# 4 No Personal Loans
I had one potential advertiser that wanted to make personal loans to doctors. I turned them down initially. They were very persistent and in the end, I acknowledged that many doctors and dentists required a business loan to open their practice. That was a service they also offered (and with pretty good terms) so I eventually relented and allowed them to advertise. But I had to send their banner back for a revision or two simply because it also mentioned their personal loan product!
# 5 Advisor Lawsuit
One of the advisors that advertises with me is in the midst of a lawsuit with a former client. I spent a long time thinking about whether I should be referring readers to an advisor in that situation, even if I refer patients to doctors being sued all the time. After speaking with both the advisor and the plaintiff's attorney, I was convinced that not only was the lawsuit probably unwarranted, but that it was unfair to have it discussed on the site where privacy laws and ethical constraints prevented the advisor from responding. I also held comments related to the lawsuit until the suit is complete (at which point I plan to do a post discussing the lessons learned for both clients and advisors, as the only winners in a lawsuit situation are the attorneys.) The advisor also demonstrated some major changes the firm had made to prevent this sort of thing from occurring again. I still felt comfortable referring readers to the firm, but I also made sure that every single reader I referred was aware of both the lawsuit (which, like most suits, will be tied up in the courts for years) and my conflict of interest with the referral.
# 6 Order Listed
In several places on the website, multiple firms that offer the same service are listed. It is obvious that the higher a firm is placed on a list, the more business they are likely to receive. So my dilemma is whether I should list firms by how much they pay me or by some other criteria. These firms ask me what the criteria are and offer more money to be listed higher. In the end, most of the time we decided to list them by how profitable they were to us. This tends to come into effect with affiliate advertising relationships, such as the student loan refinancing companies that advertise here. In one place on the site, I list them by how much they pay me if you refinance through them. However, as you'll soon see when the forum goes live, in another place I decided to list them in a different order-by how much they pay you if you refinance through them. Dilemmas dilemmas.
# 7 Content Dilemmas
I receive 10-15 offers a week to run “sponsored posts.” That is, a company gives me a payment and I run a post about them that either they write or I write. I have always turned these down. (Although I'm considering running 3 or 4 of them from established advertisers in association with the scholarship fundraising drive next summer- with all of that revenue going toward the scholarship fund.) However, aside from that rather easily avoided conflict of interest, I run into other content-related dilemmas all the time. For example, advertisers always want me to write more about their pet subject- insurance, financial advisors, student loan refinancing, mortgages etc. A bigger dilemma for me occurs with affiliate advertisers (meaning I only get paid if you open an account or refinance a loan with the firm)- the more I write about it, the more money I am likely to make. Consider student loan refinancing- it's a win for the company, a win for you, a win for me, and even a win for the taxpayer (who gets his money back to lend to someone else.) So, while my incentive is to write about it twice a week, I'm really only writing about it a handful of times a year and usually only when there is something new.
The site redesign had a number of purposes, one of which was to provide a more uniform experience to first time readers. However, one of my other goals with the site design was to make sure new readers all had the opportunity to see the most profitable pages on the site. The prominent Featured Posts space on the “fancy” homepage showcases some of the most profitable posts on the site.
Speaking of student loan refinancing, three years ago nobody was doing it. Then there were only a handful of firms. Over the last year more and more firms have come into the market. When I hear of a new one, I approach them and try to set up an advertising deal with them. It seems like a no-brainer to me for them to advertise here, especially with an affiliate deal. I mean, they don't have to pay me a thing if they don't get any business from the site. However, this Fall and Winter I've been trying to bring on a new firm. Like many of these guys, they're a small bank and so the idea of an affiliate advertising relationship is a bit new to them. My dilemma was how long do I wait to tell you about this option (or do I tell you at all) if they keep dragging their feet? Thus far, I haven't run a post about them (but have allowed readers to discuss them in the comments section) with the thought that “Who's going to buy the cow when you get the milk for free?” Hopefully, they'll come on board as an advertiser soon and eliminate my dilemma.
Another student-loan refinancing dilemma came with institution of the new government REPAYE program. The rumor and then eventual implementation of this program kept some student loan refinancers from allowing residents to refinance their loans. (Remember with REPAYE your effective interest rate is lowered during residency, possibly even lower than the rate you can get by refinancing.) So my dilemma was how long do I wait to tell you, dear reader, that it is possible you would be better off going into the government REPAYE program (which pays me nothing) rather than refinancing your student loans (which pays me a lot more than nothing) in July of your intern year? In this case, I decided I needed to let you know about this earlier rather than later, and ran the post 3+ weeks before REPAYE went into effect, about the time it seemed to me that the rumors were likely to actually become reality. I have no idea how much money that has already cost me, or will cost me over the years. The worst part about it is that REPAYE makes the decision so much more complicated. There are still lots of people who would be better off refinancing early in residency, but it's a lot harder to figure out if you're one of them!
Conclusion
Once more, thank you very much for being a dedicated WCI reader and/or advertiser. I hope this disclosure and lengthy discussion of my financial conflicts of interest increases your trust in what you are reading here. (Although I suspect I just decreased your trust in everything else you've ever read on the web.) The internet is truly The Wild West of entrepreneurship where anything goes if you can get away with it and if your moral code allows it. But as you can see, I had plenty of income BEFORE I ever started this site and don't have a need to sell you out in order to get a little more. Knowing I'm going to have to reveal my conflicts of interest to you each year helps guide me in doing the right thing throughout the year.
Questions? Did you find that discussion of my conflicts of interest even remotely interesting or was it as boring as it sounded to me when I re-read it? Any suggestions for dealing with my ethical dilemmas? Comment below!
I look forward to reading this post every year. Disclosing your conflicts of interest is a great way to keep the site focused and to remember the initial purpose of your blog. This is exactly why I recommend this web site to everyone I can, because I have so much trust for you. Keep on doing what you doing, and giving us all a fair shake on Wall Street!
I really appreciate the transparency of this site and hope competition doesn’t result in that changing at some point. In addition to valuable financial advice, it is great to hear about a small business success story in such detail from its beginning. It would be interesting to hear more about how you manage to juggle your priorities with the site continuing to grow and demand more of your time. Thanks for all the great content and advice!
I have thoroughly enjoyed myself reading this post, specially since I also have a personal finance blog.
Thank you for sharing.
Good stuff as usual. Now I agree that you should not be encouraging or assisting your competition. I would be interested in how you got started and what continues to motivate you. Perhaps you could “outsource” some of the posts to others that have a similar interests to increase your income and somewhat reduce your efforts. Perhaps you could have some information on how to effectively manage a practice to complement the data on how to manage your finances. Thanks for your efforts I always recommend your blog to those I think might benefit from it.
The interesting thing is that from your end of the enterprise, it appears that most of what I’m doing is writing posts. But from my end, that seems a very small chunk of it, and the chunk I enjoy the most. I’ve already been outsourcing 1/3 of the writing for years to readers and financial professionals. But to be honest, it takes me almost as long to edit and prep many guest posts as it does to write a post myself.
Great job! I enjoyed getting a deeper feel for your personal decisions and your true integrity. I would love to be hired as an employee. 🙂 When do the forums officially open?
Congrats on your financial success. That’s over twice the net profit as compared to last year, right?
With regard to doctor loans: I still believe there are good deals out there. I closed on 12/22 with a 30 year doctor loan from Bank of America: 90% LTV, jumbo, no PMI, minus 1 point (just over 1 point back to me in closing costs), 30 year fixed @ 3.875%. Given that Bankrate.com has current 30 year fixed rates of 3.9% for non-jumbo, 20% down loans with decidedly non-negative closing costs it seems to me that this really is just free money, in essence.
The caveat is that Bank of America’s lack of timeliness caused me many a headache and ultimately a 5 hour closing delay. It wasn’t pleasant by any stretch of the imagination… but it is cheap money.
That is a nice loan. Amerisave shows a 30 year fixed with 20% down and minus 1 point at around 4% right now. Of course, with lender fees/points of about 1%, you can get a 15 year fixed (20% down) at 3%. That gap between a 15 year and 30 year seems to have gotten bigger over the last year or so.
Thanks for your work putting out a great website. I’m a partner in a large radiology group and for the past several years I have strongly encouraged our new hires to visit your site. I sure wish I would have had access to something like this when I came out of training 20 years ago!
You have definitely built a level of trust between you and your readers and I am glad WCI has been this profitable for you. You deserve every penny you make here as I’m sure you have helped keep much more than that in the pockets of many physicians and other high income earners.
In the last 2+ years I have know WCI, you have saved me from a very expensive whole life policy. You have introduced me to the boglehead community where I learned how to get rid of my overpriced Schwab account. I was paying a 1% management fee and they had me in managed funds ranging from 50-150 bases points. You also showed me the benefit of moving from a SEPP to a 401K and initiating my Backdoor Roth. This year you kinda held my hand with tax loss harvesting. Based on my calculations you have saved me at least $40K in the last 2 years.
I am thrilled at your success and hope your revenue from this site continues to grow.
I can do some handholding today for some more tax-loss harvesting if you like. I’m currently looking for a fourth EM ETF since I’ve burned through 3 in the 3 weeks doing TLHing.
There are also now frontier market etfs. Brazil is a stinker, and probably would give some good losses for a while still. Long term I expect to buy into EM and some of the worst countries sometimes this year depending on how down they are and if theyve flatlined or look to turn. The CAPEs are just too low, and when you combine that with the fx impact its a double win at some point (especially brazil).
I have no idea what the future holds, but I buy all the stocks so that I own the ones who do well. You make a lot of predictions in the above comment. I suggest you start writing all your predictions down and checking on them in a year or two. I’ve been amazed at how hard it is for me to predict the future and I find that very humbling.
Not really predictions just mean reversions in line with historical proportions. At some point the dollar will stop increasing, and again at some point it will go down. That in and of itself is a currency tailwind to anything that is beaten to smithereens right now, like the Real. Not saying it will end soon or I have any idea when, picking bottoms and such is foolish. As is expecting current extreme scenarios to last forever. That one day the dollar will devalue and that EM will not be continually imploding is not much of a prediction. Obviously, any commodity based country will not be having a quick turnaround, or even a turnaround at all in the near term, at some point they will, and though they likely have some more downside this year is not a terrible time to buy.
I dont think thats a 1-2 year timeline thing, cape isnt very useful in the short/medium term and just gives relative valuations, not absolutes (and I have a lot of CAPE reservations but see the comparative use), its usually discussed as 10+years. Anyways, if you were looking to burn cash, Brazil is good for that is all I was saying.
Not only do you have to predict what will happen, but you have to predict when. Otherwise, it’s just not useful information.
Knowing that certain segments of the world market or funds are at valuation levels that are considered low (or high and are best avoided) and have provided a good risk adjusted return in the following 10+ years isnt useful?
Its at least slightly useful if you are further diversifying your portfolio beyond a all market index into international or sectors to see where things stand. It may or may not change your plans, but it adds to the weight of the evidence and informs your probabilities about the spectrum of possibilities of that decision.
The world markets, despite deflationary period, busts, wars, etc…have grown in size and will grow in size though the makeup will continually change. Is the probability of that more or less likely to be true. For long term investors thats all that really matters. Earnings in 2050 for the global “market” should be higher than today (div/infl adj). Thats all it really says, as does any purchase of stocks or indexes.
So how does that knowledge change your portfolio today? That’s what I’m talking about with “not useful.” I had 5% in EM 5 years ago. I have 5% in EM today. The only way the knowledge is useful is if it allows you to tactically asset allocate. I’m arguing it’s not useful enough to do that.
In your case not so much, you are essentially accomplishing as much by rebalancing (assume since you have the same allocation percentage).
In my case since im just starting, I look to add those allocations and give more attention and priority to those that are down. Tactical asset allocation is definitely interesting, as is countercyclical investing, but agree its not necessary and likely detrimental to get too exotic if you have the income/savings/time tailwinds of high earners.
Depending on how the year goes (as the slow global deflationary trend continues to make its way through) I will likely be adding EM to my portfolio to round out my indexed exposure. I didnt pick an allocation and spread it out when I started (was just a target rollover), I’ve done that after and am “filling in” after wards, generally with the poorer performers from the list Im looking at.
Well, as you know, if you’re just starting it doesn’t really matter what you invest in or how you do so. It’s all about the savings rate. Even less reason to pay attention to macroeconomic factors.
I “filled in” like you did in the beginning, and I think that’s fine. If you want to try to time which asset class you add when, I don’t think there’s a lot of harm in that. You may find, however, as I did, that your ability to predict the future is even more limited than you thought at the beginning of the exercise.
In the past I’ve swapped around VWO (tracks FTSE emerging all cap China A transition index), IEMG (MSCI emerging core), and EEMV (MSCI emerging minimum volatility). I’ve run into the same problem today – could not TLH as didn’t have a fourth option in mind, and it was a great day for TLH too… I have over a week to wait it out before cycling through again. However, I just came across SCHE (FTSE emerging) – would that work? I don’t want to buy EEM to risk being stuck with its expense ratio long-term, so I don’t want to add that into my rotation.
Also – any suggestions about a less expensive place to be doing these trades? Prior to starting TLH in the past 6 months I would “buy and hold” index funds with Vanguard in retirement and non-retirement accounts. All of this was free. I would happily hold things that I buy “forever” if the prices kept going up or were less volatile, but I feel a need for TLH while I can. Some of these trades are costing me $7 each, and this cuts into the benefit. There must be a more lower cost way to do this…
I think SCHE is a great choice. Hopefully that gets you to next week. Maybe I should have done that today. I’m also on my third EM ETF in taxable.
I’m just doing mine at Vanguard. It’ll be cheaper for my next bear market when I have more assets.
Thanks! I’ll add that one to my rotation.
Keep up the great work, WCI. You deserve all of your success. As we have talked before I had a similar idea as yours years before you. My colleagues in the MBA program couldn’t understand how I could ‘monetize it’ and they saw no potential. I couldn’t get it off the ground to prove them wrong. Your success is validating that the model works. You downplay the difficulty but you have a unique set of skills, work ethic, interest in the subject, ability to forcibly argue points, memory for details, ability to successfully self-publish, ability to update and maintain a dynamic website, discipline and time to keep at it, willingness to bare your details with the world etc. Your expanding sphere of influence has been a positive force in our field and you are rightfully being rewarded because of the good you are doing for others. Happy New Year!
Thank you for this website. I was introduced to it by chance but ever since, i’ve been gobbling up your post. As a resident right now, the best i can do is save whatever little money I can but reading your posts have introduced me to ways that as an attending or even later on in residency (maybe i’ll be financially free of the short-term debt) i can start to building on my savings/retirement account and start paying off my student loans. Keep doing what your doing and i look forward to all the things that this year brings to the site and to you!
Congrats on your success! This blog has been extremely useful to me as a resident and now a new attending. I recommend it to all my friends!
Via email from Taylor Larimore:
I never read an advisor article like yours. It sets you apart as a ruthlessly honest person – something I admire and try to emulate.
I like that term- Ruthlessly Honest and am honored by your comment.
For those who may not know, Taylor Larimore, one of the authors of The Bogleheads Guide to Investing, recently celebrated the 71st anniversary of his Christmas in Bastogne:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bastogne
That’s “Nuts!”
“Legend” status…not even kidding. And he is trying to emulate you. Niiiiice.
That is “Nuts”! Thanks for sharing. I had no idea. Taylor Larimore, you are truly inspiring.
WCI,
Very impressive! Keep up the great work in 2016. I appreciate the disclosure. More sites should do this.
Whenever I make decisions that affect others I try and take money out of the equation. Just do the right thing for your readers and the money will care of itself.
Cheers,
TheHappyPhilosopher
I started reading your blog every MWF during my third year of medical school and I can trace so many financial decisions to the information I’ve learned here. We started roth IRA’s for my wife and I, rolled over old retirement accounts and converted them to roth IRA’s during my med school years, obtained a disability policy during my intern year, and started funding an HSA. Thanks for all you do! I definitely think the trust your readers have in you is your most valuable resource and appreciate what you do to protect that.
Thanks!
You’re welcome.
Congratulations on your blogging success.
While your disclosure and openness is certainly welcome, this sort of disclosure is found in nearly ALL finance blog. This is a way to keep your readers trusting you. I suppose you can still make up those numbers and no one would know any better. I wanted to make sure other posters know this. Also you are taking on private personal lenders and other student debt refiers – whats the dilemma? despite plenty in the market you feel like bringing more online (its not like they will lower rates further); you’re making more money. Lastly, while you made money before this blog’s financial success, your net income from this blog is more than many partner ER physicians; how is that no affecting your bottom line? You can retire today. This income is just pushing your “retirement number” higher – probably was 2 million, now more like 3-4 million just because you can.
I have been a long time reader of your blog (since 2011) and first time poster, but I am not so sure I can tell the difference between you blogging for helping/fun and NOT as a business vs running this as a true business and thus maximizing returns/income in which case you are preserving trust of a doctor like me to earn more through links. When I compare your blog to MrMoneyMustache, he has less affiliate links and less private label ads, I am inclined to read his blog as majority of “Doctor” specific stuff is really just common financial sense.
Not a slight at your blog, its just that I don’t want to be part of internet money making entrepeneur while a primary care is breaking his/her back earning pre-tax 200K (may be). For me, increasingly through the years, you have brought on ads and links to posts. I see/feel a difference for the worst.
I cherish all the old posts and always will.
Good luck.
Thanks for your valuable feedback, especially with regards to amount of advertising on the site. That’s a tough balance to get. Obviously I want to maximize income, but I also don’t want readers to feel visually assaulted by advertisers.
You’re correct that the numbers are all self-reported and I could be making them all up. Sorry, not going to pay for an independent auditor just for this post. I think you’re incorrect in that this type of disclosure is very common among bloggers. I only know of one other blogger who posts what he makes from his blog (and he makes A LOT more than I do.) I’m sure there are others out there, but it’s not common. Pete, over at MMM, is not one of them BTW AFAIK. Great blog, of course, but not much more than federally mandated disclosure there.
I’m not sure why you thought that this additional income doesn’t affect my bottom line. It certainly does as has been discussed in many posts, especially recently. It goes directly to my bottom line.
Lest there be any confusion, from day one this website has been run as a “true business” in addition to being “helping/fun.” There were ads on this blog from the first week. While I’m glad you love the early posts, if you think there were no ads back then you’re simply mistaken.
The good news is that as a long term dedicated reader, you’re almost surely NOT part of this internet money making scheme. Almost all clicks, both for regular ads and affiliate deals, are from occasional/rare/first-time readers- people coming in off the search engines. Ask yourself how many ads you’ve clicked on in the last month. Probably none if you’re like most regular readers. But those ads keep all the content free to you. The only affiliate deals I make any money on are the ones where readers are getting a special deal too. Without that, readers just go directly to the company’s site to open accounts/refinance/buy books etc.
I agree that primary care physicians are terribly underpaid. My goal is to help them boost their income and make the most of what they do get. However, I don’t really feel guilty that I get paid more on an hourly basis than a primary care doc. Nor do I feel guilty that I make more than a primary care doc by writing. As I tell my kids, life isn’t fair and society will pay you what it thinks you are worth, not what you are actually worth. Teachers, social workers, EMTs etc- all underpaid in my view compared to insurance agents, mortgage lenders, financial advisors, defensive linemen etc. But that’s the way life is.
The relatively low anticipated income of a family physician was part of the reason I chose to go into a different field. It is also part of the reason I chose to start a website on the side rather than open a general practice on the side. It is not clear to me what you are suggesting I do with the primary care comment. I doubt you want me to change specialties. It also seems odd to somehow regulate how many ads go up in order to maintain website income at the same level as a primary care doctor. I suppose I could split up any website income above $200K among all the primary care physicians who read the blog, but it seems a rather large hassle for a very small amount of money each, plus it takes away any financial incentive to expand in order to reach more doctors than I currently do. Your suggestions in this regard are always welcome.
This year review of your blog AND the way that you replied to the comment above is why I keep coming back. I read lots of financial blogs, no one else is so transparent. You really are putting yourself out there, most of us who dream of starting such a blog just don’t have the guts to do it. I don’t think you can be as successful as an anonymous poster. As a physician, you are very searchable so kudos to you for having to nerves of steel to post this kind of very personal information.
Good that you are a cheerleader. Again no doubt WCI has helped folks but its a two way street, not pro bono work. As a physician I am mostly distrustful of people saying “Hey I’m helping everyone” and profit from it. And no if you are an online philanthropist I expect no payments. Marketing student refi products to clueless residents.
@WCI: I have no suggestion to split your income and you shouldn’t. My issue will always remain that your advice now has a personal profit bend: You most recent student refi post is a link-fest aimed at maximizing your income. You have written about refi before but never having so many links. I suppose this helps people with choices but I am not sure post that says you should refi again and again with many links is helping.
Here is a suggestion: Post real world residents getting those ridiculous 1.9% rates. Its not roses. Almost like a financial advisor, whether resident gets their refi or not you make money.
Anyways, appreciate your reply.
If you’ll read today’s post, no residents are getting 1.9% variable rates (actually, those are pretty much gone even for attendings as of last week.) They’re getting 4.75%ish fixed. The only reason to refinance now as a resident (instead of REPAYE) is if you have private loans or if you need the lower payments DRB/Link Capital offer.
What I’m saying is that my advice has ALWAYS had a personal profit bent. That’s not new. It just happens to be more profitable now than it was 5 years ago. I’ve had affiliate marketing agreements and ads since the beginning. Of course, most of those affiliate marketing agreements haven’t been for products that were such no-brainers as student loan refinancing, so they didn’t do as well.
Why are there more links in posts about refinancing now? Because there are more companies doing refinancing. It used to be 1-3. Now it’s 20.
Again, I’m left unsure of what you are recommending to me.
Are you suggesting I do not write about student loan refinancing? If so, that seems a disservice to readers.
That I do not have links in the articles? If so that seems to require readers to do an extra Google search they don’t have to, not to mention they lose the $300 bonuses I’ve negotiated for them.
That I do not accept affiliate marketing fees from refinancing companies? That seems to cost me revenue without any clear benefit to anyone except the refinancing companies.
I’m open to suggestions, but they’ve got to make sense in light of the mission of the site.
I think you are correct. May be (probably) I am just a cranky old physician who is not technology savvy and may be I am jealous that I break my back in primary care making a 1/3 of what you make while treating patients where 1/5th to 1/4th don’t even pay me. I don’t know. I have also been swindled when I was young. Actually that has corollary to why I identify with your blog, but that event keeps me weary of online advice.
Sorry I don’t understand this links etc thing. Don’t have much to add.
I suppose I mistook you for “never enough go earn more and more” person than someone who is content with reaching retirement goals with side business while helping fellow physicians with a pure heart.
You don’t have to answer any of this but those are my thoughts. I am actually incredulous you have been this patient with my comments. More power to you.
It’s interesting you mention the “cranky/jealous” issues. I have done some consulting with financial advisors who have a running bet about how much income the site will be making when I quit telling readers how much it is making. They basically predict that when it is making a million bucks a year that I’ll be getting lots of feedback like yours.
I don’t know what the solution is.
I also suspect the student loan refinancing related revenue will dry up/decrease dramatically within a couple of years, but we’ll see. Of course, I said that about the book revenue too. It went down down down for a year, and then all of a sudden, it went back up and leveled off. Can’t explain it.
I empathize with you that there are so many ways to have a higher income than primary care medicine. You’re not the “rich doc” your family and friends think you are, especially if you came out of school in the last 5-8 years. I really feel badly for some of the people I run into who will owe $450K+ upon finishing an FM residency.
Your honesty with your disclosure is something I have never seen from a blogger. I read the whole article with interest and it was amazing to me. I am a primary care doctor, 13 years out of residency and until just three years ago made under 200K a year. I wish your site was there when I graduated, but it was not, but I lived like a resident listened to people like Dave Ramsey, and read Suze Orman and David Bach and did a whole lot of financial ‘CME’ I worked in an underserved area to assist with loan repayment and while I will now advise my kids to NOT chose primary care, I am pretty certain that I have a lot more saved that some doctors in a higher revenue specialty. I supplement my income with ER shifts and became a hospitalist two years ago. YOur site is now helping me maximize retirement savings. As a primary care doc, I cannot begrudge you at all and I am glad to know that you are doing so well because your advice to me thus far has been priceless. I am 47 and still have some years to go in my career and I plan to continue to read your blog and catch up on the doctor specific advice that puts your advice ahead of the other financial experts. There isn’t a primary care doc who I come into contact with (and my hospitalist colleagues) that I do not tell about your site and your book. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for what you do. Your work is important and it matters. I’m glad you have been able to achieve financial success while still pursuing the specialty you love.
Reminds me of Comedian Adam Carolla, who used to share his annual earnings with his audience, up until he hit 7 figures, I think. I can’t think of the other blogger you mention who is sharing his/her earnings publicly – perhaps I don’t read that blog. Care to name it?
http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/
I hope you have hired (possibly kid or wife, but might be child abuse!) a screener of replies to ‘auto’ delete any ludicrous defenses of eg Whole Life to save you having to read and respond to those.
They’ve really slowed down lately. I’ve gotten better at just defusing the whole argument with something like “Hey, if you love whole life, buy as much of it as you can.” But no serious purchasers of whole life insurance are still reading 100+ comments below a post. It’s all just entertainment for a few at that point.
Congratulations! This is just the universe giving you back.
This is nothing compared to what you have helped thousands of others save, and enhance their money, aside from bringing financial sanity in their lives. If people follow what you are teaching, each one of them will earn multiples of this in their lifetime.
great great site foe everyone’s financial education
just learning the basics will save each and everyone at the minimum a six figure #
will there be a forum in the future???
Yes, like next week if all goes as planned. The forum is up and running. I just haven’t shared the URL yet as we work out the final kinks. It won’t quite be finished when it goes live, but there are a couple of key things I want working well when it does go live that aren’t quite done yet. But it looks great!
Congrats on your success. I worry that your financial honesty and details about your life will make you a target. Be careful and keep up the good work. Quit the night shifts and spend time having fun.
I am excited about the forums like most of your regulars.
Congratulations on the great success on your website. Wow, 5 and half years into it. That is serious commitment and you had family, your practice, investments and many other things in life to juggle with! I look forward to reading more of your future posts.
Awesome! Congrats on this venture. I remember when you were just a newbie over at Bogleheads.
I was never a newbie at Bogleheads. I was a newbie at the Vanguard Diehards site, but I went over to Bogleheads the same time as everyone else-when it first started!
Incidentally, the Bogleheads were partially responsible for this site. They asked me to work on the wiki, and I decided I was willing to spend time generating internet content, but wasn’t willing to do it for free!
Dr. D,
I’ve been reading this website from nearing the beginning when I stumbled upon it in medical school. It truly changed my perspective on my financial future and when all is set and done, hopefully save me $100k’s over my career. As I near the end of my residency (1.5+ years to go!), I’ve been pushing this website on all our residents for the past 4 years. (I’ve even bought the new interns each a copy of your book).
I’ve also applied this knowledge to help my parents get their own independent advisor (and get rid of their 1% aum + fee guy) and saved my sister from getting sold whole life at the good ole age of 25!
This website is truly valuable and I congratulate you on your success and wish you continued success in the future.
Happy New Year!
I love it when people use the phrase “stumble.” You have no idea how much work goes into your stumbling onto this site.
Big bucks! Nice job. Do you still practice medicine? If not, would you suggest people just go into blogging instead of spending all that time and money in medical school?
I do wonder whether people realize you can make a lot of money from a blog rather than just a day job.
BTW, do you have a net worth post? That would be fascinating!
Thanks. First time visiting I think.
Sam
I wrote a book chapter about how I (we) became a millionaire(s) 7 years out of residency.
Would I tell doctors to blog instead of seeing patients? No way. Very few physician bloggers are making any kind of serious money doing it and besides, who would see the patients if all the doctors are blogging? I still practice medicine full-time and do this on the side.
Cool. How long are you out of residency now?
10 years this summer.