Today, we are answering a big variety of your questions. We tackle subjects like capital gains, disability policies for mental health, debt funds, enhanced cash management portfolio, title insurance, and more. We always want the podcast to be directed by you so please remember to send your questions, topic suggestions, or guests you would like us to have on to whitecoatinvestor.com/speakpipe or email us at [email protected]

 

Buy, Borrow, and Die

“Hi, thanks for all your great advice. My question is related to the “buy, borrow, die” philosophy for avoiding capital gains. Would you please comment on this? Thanks for all that you do. I appreciate you.”

Let me explain how this works. This phrase got a little bit of press in the last year, I think, because some media outlets picked up the fact that some very wealthy people do this. “Buy, borrow, and die” is basically the idea that it might be better to pay interest than it is to pay capital gains. It all comes down to the step up in basis at death. When you die, your heirs get a new basis. Basis is what you pay for an investment. When you sell an investment, you pay capital gains taxes on the difference between the basis and its value on the date of sale. It's a pretty cool trick to have the basis reset when you die. Then, your heirs can basically sell it and not pay taxes on any of that inheritance that they've received. The idea is you don't want to realize capital gains on your deathbed because they're going to go away as soon as you die.

That's “buy, borrow, and die.” If you need money before you die, then you borrow against your assets. You borrow against your home, borrow against your taxable portfolio, borrow against your real estate, whatever, rather than selling them and paying capital gains taxes. The problem is if you still have many years until you die, you may be better off realizing the capital gains, because that interest adds up over time. If you borrow $1 million dollars against your portfolio to spend, for instance, and you're borrowing it at, let's say, 6%, well that's $60,000 a year in interest, right? How many years does it take before $60,000 a year is a higher amount than the capital gains taxes that you would be paying on those $1 million dollars? Maybe if your basis on that million is $300,000, then you have $700,000 in capital gains, multiply that by maybe 20%. That's $140,000 in capital gains. If you pay three years of interest, you're paying more in interest than you would be in capital gains taxes.

This is a great strategy if you can borrow at very low interest rates. It's a great strategy if you're going to die soon. If you are 55 and in excellent health and interest rates are high, maybe this isn't such a great strategy. If it's something available to you, keep that in mind, especially for maybe your parents, if they are not in awesome health and are needing additional money. Maybe the way to get it is to borrow rather than to sell an asset. Just keep in mind that it's one option.

More information here:

Top 5 Ways to Pay No Tax on Capital Gains and Dividends

 

Capital Gains on Your Primary Residence

“Hey guys, this is Sam. Big fan of the pod, longtime listener, first time caller. The recent Q&A on tax-loss harvesting got me thinking. I live in a high cost of living area and have seen high appreciation on my primary residence since purchase six or seven years ago. We have over $1.5 million in capital gains accrued on paper. And while my crystal ball is cloudy, I would hope to realize at least $1 million in gains when we sell in 10 or 15 years, if not a lot more than $1 million. Since this is so far above the $250,000 single and $500,000 married capital gain tax free limits at the federal level, wouldn't tax-loss harvesting also be useful in this scenario, particularly in a state with a high state income tax or capital gains tax? Thanks.”

That's more of an observation than a question. You asked one question. There, the answer is yes. If you had capital losses, you could use those to offset your capital gains. There are a lot of different ways that you can use capital gains, or rather capital losses, that come from tax-loss harvesting. The first way is you can put $3,000 a year against your ordinary income. The second way is if you have mutual funds that for whatever reason are distributing capital gains to you; a capital gains distribution that is offset by any capital losses that you have acquired that year or that you've been carrying forward. If you have to sell an investment for whatever reason, you want to use a different investment or you just want to spend the money or you want to rebalance your portfolio and you find you need to sell something that's appreciated a lot in taxable. That's another great use to have some losses around.

If you've got some legacy assets, stuff that you've owned for a long time that have a low basis that you really don't want to own anymore, capital losses allow you to change investments without having to pay taxes on that. If you sell a business, if you sell The White Coat Investor or if you sell your medical practice, or if you sell some side gig business, then that is a capital gain and you can use tax losses from your tax-loss harvesting to offset that. When you sell a real estate property, including some syndications or funds, they distribute some capital gains to you and you can use capital losses to offset those.

In today's day and age, this ability to offset the capital gains on your home is becoming more and more important. It's not just people in the Bay Area and Washington DC and New York that have a high cost of living area. Now there are a lot of places in the country, thanks to rapid appreciation of housing prices the last couple of years, that are pretty high cost of living areas. Anytime you have a significant capital gain on a house, you can use tax losses to offset those. Remember, of course, that the first $250,000 in gains is tax free with your primary residence. I think it's every five years you can use that. Maybe it's every two years, I'd have to look it up. But you have to live there for two out of every five years to get that. If you're married, it's doubled. It's $500,000. But above and beyond that, you have to pay capital gains taxes when you sell your house. If you buy a house for $500,000, you sell it for $1.5 million 20 years later and you're married, you're going to have $500,000 in capital gains that you have to pay taxes on. At 20%, that could be a $100,000 tax bill. If you've got $500,000 in capital losses saved up from tax-loss harvesting over the years, that can obviously offset that.

More information here:

How to Tax-Loss Harvest: What You Need to Know

 

Disability Policies and Mental Health

“I was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia. And I had to be off of work for five months. Thankfully, I had a disability policy in place so I was able to use this policy to cover my expenses. However, it is troubling to know that the policy only has a 24-month payout for mental illness diagnoses. I think this is a crime. And I wonder if there are policies that don't have this limitation out there. I wonder if you could bring light to this issue, and we could advocate for policies with more robust coverage for mental illness.”

There are many policies out there that have a two-year limitation on mental, or sometimes they call them nervous, illnesses. They're not talking about neurologic disease. They're talking about psychiatric diseases. There are others that have lifetime coverage that treat it just like any other disability. It's not a crime. They put the policy in front of you, and you signed it. You signed up for that policy with that limitation. So, it's not a crime; it's a contract. If you don't like that contract, don't buy that contract. Go to one of the providers that offer lifetime coverage. Now I'm not a disability insurance agent and this sort of thing is changing all the time. My recollection, however, is that the Guardian policy does offer lifetime coverage for mental/nervous disorders.

You could change policies, but in this case, once you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia, it's probably going to be an exclusion from any new policy, I would assume. So, probably not a good idea for this particular doc to change. Hopefully, that is not a lifetime payout. It's per disabling episode. Maybe this doc will get another 24 months if he or she becomes disabled again due to schizophrenia. I don't know; it'll depend on the policy. Be aware that docs do get mental illness. I have a family member who was an attorney who got a bipolar diagnosis, which was disabling. They weren't able to function as an attorney for many years and happened to have a very strong disability insurance policy and lived off of it for a long time. This stuff happens, and it can happen even in your late 20s, 30s, or 40s. Even though you didn't have any sort of mental illness before that time, it can develop. Keep that in mind when buying disability insurance.

More information here:

What You Need to Know About Physician Disability Insurance

 

Debt Funds

“Thanks for all you do for your audience. I'm a 60-year-old, and I would like the option of retirement in about 3-5 years. I invest in debt funds through a self-directed IRA. These funds are quite liquid. Typically, I have the option to liquidate after holding for six months or more. My plan is to liquidate my position in these investments at retirement, and then roll all of my traditional IRA money into the Roth IRA as my tax bracket would be much lower. Am I thinking about this correctly? I'm trying to stay away from debt funds with longer required holds for this reason. Thanks in advance.”

You're mixing two issues here, Richard, and I don't know they necessarily need to be mixed. You're talking about both the investment within a retirement account—in this case, a private real estate debt fund and the accounts themselves. It's in a traditional IRA now, self-directed traditional IRA, and you eventually want to have it in a Roth IRA. It often makes sense to do Roth conversions, especially in those first few years of retirement before you start taking Social Security. If you retire at 63, you're not going to take Social Security until 70. You have seven years there in which there's a good chance it makes sense for you to do some sort of Roth conversion each year.

Is that easier when you have very liquid investments? Oh, probably it is. Can you not do it with these debt funds? You probably still can. I would contact them and say, “Hey, I'm going to do a Roth conversion. I'm going to move some of my traditional IRA money.” Let's say you have half a million dollars in there. “I'm going to move $100,000 a year of that into a Roth IRA. I want to keep it in your fund, though. Can I just pull it out of this traditional IRA and put it into a Roth IRA? I'll be paying the taxes from separate money. And can that be fine even though I've got the money locked up for a year or two or whatever the requirement is on the debt fund?” They'll probably say yes.

You've got two questions. One is the Roth IRA question. Do you want to do these Roth conversions, and how do you want to do them? The other question is, do you want to stay invested in debt funds? If you do, then you don't necessarily need to be prepared to pull all the money out at any given time in order to do that. Most of the debt funds I have, I think the required hold period is anywhere between 1-5 years. I think they'd let you get it at one year. But I think in a lot of these, the deal is a little bit better for you if you leave it in there at least five years. If you had it in there already for five years, then you could pull that out and reinvest it in that or something else after you do your Roth conversion, no big deal. I think you're mostly thinking about it correctly, but keep in mind that you need to make those decisions separately. What retirement accounts you're going to use when you're going to do Roth conversions is one question, and the other one is what you're going to invest in. You just need to follow your written investing plan as far as that goes.

If you don't have a written investing plan, that's where our Fire Your Financial Advisor course comes in. It is very helpful for people who don't yet have a written investing plan. Every time we do surveys, at least 50% of our audience doesn't yet have a written investing plan. If you don't have one, you need to get one. If you don't feel comfortable writing it yourself, maybe getting a little bit of help from the WCI forum or Facebook group or subreddit, then consider taking our course. That'll take you step by step, help you write it yourself. It'll be dramatically cheaper than the third option, which is going to get a financial planner and paying them a few thousand to help you draft up a financial plan that you can follow. But whatever pathway you take, you should get a written financial plan. It's really, really helpful in reaching your financial goals.

 

Enhanced Cash Management Portfolio

“I'm in the process of selling my practice and have a sizable sum of cash incoming. My financial advisor has recommended I set aside the income in an enhanced cash management portfolio that returns 1.3% tax-free. Having trouble understanding the nuts and bolts of this investment product offered by a private firm, but they say they invest in money markets, variable rate demand notes, auction rate preferreds, US government treasuries, US public municipal and corporate debt markets, and US listed mutual funds and ETFs. I will eventually use this money to pay taxes and distribute it per my written financial plan. However it is a short medium-term location to store my money. I am considering this. Have you heard of these before or advise against them? Thank you so much for all that you have done and continue to do for us all.”

This sounds a little squirrely, right? Enhanced cash management. That sounds like a product designed to be sold, not bought. Look at all this stuff that is in it: auction rate preferreds, variable rate demand notes, treasuries, etc. First of all, this isn't going to be tax-free, right? Unless it's just muni bonds in there, it is not going to be tax-free. You're going to have to pay some taxes on whatever income is coming out of that. Keep that in mind. If they're telling you, it's 1.3% tax-free, something's wrong. Maybe they mean 1.3% after tax. I don't know exactly, but when you're looking for something with very low risk, you're looking for cash. You have a few options, and the quick and easy way to do it is Google “Vanguard mutual funds by asset class.” What that does is it pulls up all the Vanguard mutual funds. I don't know if it's all of them, but it's most of them. Then, you start at the top with money market funds.

If you look at the Vanguard money market funds there, you can see that right now, the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) is yielding 1.54% which is taxable. So, something that's paying 1.3% is not too impressive when you can get that out of a run-of-the-mill money market fund, which basically is a very, very safe place to invest. If you want tax-free money, you can go to a municipal money market fund. The Vanguard one which I've used in the past has a current yield of 0.55%. That's usually not that much lower than the taxable money market fund that's being offered out there. That one's probably going to go up soon in its yield if it returns to more of the historical relationship between those funds.

If you are willing to take more risk, meaning credit risk, the risk that somebody that owes you money is not going to pay you, or term risk, having longer term assets than 90 days to one-year assets, you can do that and get higher yields. If you go to the intermediate-term bond index fund, you'll see the yields up to 3.6%. If you take the short-term index fund, that's yielding 3.28%. So, there's some risk there. As rates go up, you'll lose value, but you're getting a much higher yield than you would on a money market fund. Likewise, if you want to take on some credit risk, you can look at the intermediate-term corporate bond index fund. It's yielding 4.57%. Those are your options when it comes to fixed-income investments. Yes, you can get similar yields sometimes from a high-yield savings account. You just go to someplace like Ally bank and you can get a high-yield savings account.

Do I get super excited about some complex thing being sold to me with a yield of 1.3% when I know that that's what the standard cash things are paying? Not really, not very exciting. I'm not sure I would stick around with a financial advisor that's recommending crap like that to me. If I'm going to have something that's investing in mutual funds and ETFs and all this crazy stuff, I expect a heck of a lot higher yield than 1.3%.

 

Managed Futures 

“Hello Dr. Dahle. I'm a 50-something-year-old gastroenterologist, contemplating retirement soon, and looking at alternative investments that can potentially decrease my downside risk and be somewhat decoupled from stocks and bonds. I'm specifically looking at long short funds and market neutral funds and perhaps managed futures. I have little experience with this, and I was wondering if you had any opinion or experience with it that you could provide. As always, I greatly appreciate what you do with The White Coat Investor. I read it and listen to it all the time. Thank you very much.”

Let's talk in general, then let's talk specifics. First in general, hedging strategies, hedge funds. Do you qualify to invest in these? Yes. You're probably an accredited investor. If not by virtue of your income, by late career, by virtue of your wealth. You qualify to invest in these things, and you can invest in them. However, I recommend if you choose to do so, that you keep it to a relatively small percentage of your portfolio, certainly a single-digit amount, just like if you were going to invest in something else that's kind of oddball or creative or alternative. Limit the amount of your investment that you're putting into those sorts of investments. In general, the thought with these hedge fund kind of investments is that they're probably not worth the fees you're paying. If you look at long-term returns of hedge funds against boring old stock index funds, the stock index funds tend to do better. Now, does that mean they do better at all times? No. When stocks are not doing well, anything that is not stocks is going to do a little bit better. Don't be surprised that there are times when a hedge fund or particular hedge fund strategy is going to outperform the stock market.

But keep in mind that the ones that don't outperform tend to disappear. There were a lot of investors in those funds that did not do very well, and some of them blow up spectacularly. You are allowed to do a lot of crazy stuff inside a hedge fund. It really comes down to the manager and what they're doing and how much you trust that manager to have your best interests at heart. Because a lot of them are taking an awful lot of risk because of the way they get paid. The classic way a hedge fund manager gets paid is 2% and 20%. Two percent a year plus 20% of profits. Two percent a year is obviously an incredibly huge expense ratio if all they're doing is messing around in the stock market. One percent might be average, but I think it’s a really high expense ratio for a mutual fund. I'm looking at mutual funds with an expense ratio 1/10th of that. So, 2% seems outrageous. Then, to also lose 20% of your profits, they've got to be really talented at bringing you alpha, bringing you return above and beyond what the market will return you in order for that to be a good deal.

In general, I’m not a huge fan of hedge funds. I’m not a huge fan of hedging strategies. I prefer to use a strategy where you just realize you're going to be investing for a long term, for a long, long time, and that you can ride out the market ups and downs and be rewarded with those solid long-term returns by doing so. Now anytime people start talking about managed futures, I figure commodities are doing well. Commodities tend to do well in times of high inflation. Given inflation's been pretty high the last six months, it shouldn't be any surprise to see commodities doing pretty well.

In fact, if I look at last month's WCI newsletter, that includes a market report. If I look at our selected investment for commodities there, which is an ETF with the ticker symbol GSG, it didn't have a great July, but it's having a heck of a year. It's up 31%. Over the last 12 months, up 44%. Over the last five years, it's up 14% a year. So, no surprise that people are interested now again in commodities, right? The way people typically invest in those are managed futures funds. If you want to have an allocation to commodities, again, I'd keep it to 5%-ish of your portfolio. But stick with it through thick and thin, because there are a lot of times when commodities do not do very well. In the long run, they tend to do about what inflation does, similar to precious metals but with a heck of a lot more volatility.

I’m not a huge fan of either one. If you want to invest in them, you're convinced by the case for including it in your portfolio, then go ahead. Just limit how much you put in there. Same thing I'd tell you about gold. Same thing I'd tell you about crypto assets. Limit your investment there. It's not something I’d put 40% of your portfolio into.

More information here:

Can Doctors Also Be Successful Investment Managers?

 

Title Insurance

“A review of title insurance would be interesting content. There is a paucity of quality information on these policies. Often what people get is dictated based on what a lender requires. I would love to be more knowledgeable about these policies—what they cover, what they don't. I would love to hear some stories about why and when claims came up and what happened. Consensus seems a necessary part of risk management for everyone. You might face big problems if you don't have it. I don't really understand the risk being mitigated and how the insurance does that. If someone is willing to write the policy, does a risk really exist?”

Title insurance is something you buy when you buy a property. Whether it's an investment property or whether it's a home you're going to live in. What it does is it protects you from any other claims to that title. What are some examples of other claims that might be on that title? Let's go through a few of them here. Some problems that you'd want to discover in a title search or for which you would need to have title insurance include outstanding liens. When somebody does work on a property and they don't get paid for it, they often put a lien on that house. There's a lien on the title, and until it gets paid off, you don't really own it free and clear. Back taxes or property taxes can have a lien on them, as can conflicting wills. If somebody else can come back and say, “That person didn't really have the ability to sell that house because I own half of it because the will says I'm supposed to own half of it.”

Those are the sorts of problems you can have. Now, what do these title insurance companies do? They do research to make sure none of that stuff's out there before you buy the house. The title insurance is basically like a little guarantee on their research. They're saying, “Yeah, we looked, we didn't find anything, but just in case for whatever reason we missed something, we'll take care of it.” That is what title insurance is. Lenders generally do require you to have it. In fact, there are sometimes two types of title policies. There's the homeowner’s policy. That's a guarantee against potential hazards. Whether it's a lawsuit or a lien or flawed public records or fraud or forgery with regards to that title easement that weren't disclosed to you, those sorts of problems. Then the lender, assuming you didn't pay cash for this property, is going to always require that you have a lender's title insurance policy. That protects the lender in the same way from all those same sorts of claims. I don't know that I necessarily know anybody who's had to use their title insurance, but I've heard lots of stories where people uncovered something in the title search process.

There is one other alternative, apparently. You can get a warranty of title, and I suspect this is probably state specific. But that's where the seller guarantees that they have the legal right to transfer ownership to the buyer and that no one else can lay claim to the property. If someone else has a claim to the property, the warranty gives the buyer the ability to go after the seller in the future. Whereas without that sort of thing, you wouldn't have the ability to do that. That's kind of title insurance in a nutshell. Everybody buys it. I don't know if that is going to change anytime soon. If you're buying a property, you probably ought to buy it, as well. It's not that expensive. I think most honestly, though, what you're paying for is the title search. I think the policy is relatively cheap once the title search has been done. It’s not someplace I'd try to skimp out too much.

 

A lot of physicians have questions about locum tenens, and locumstory.com is the place for them to get real, unbiased answers to those questions, basic questions like, “What is locum tenens?” to more complex questions about pay ranges, taxes, various specialties, and how locum tenens works. And then there’s the big question: is it right for you? Go to locumstory.com and get the answers.

 

 

The White Coat Investors Guide for Students

In case you're not aware, we have a book for students. It's called The White Coat Investor's Guide for Students. If you are interested in the audio version of that book, it's finally out. You can get it on Amazon. You can get the paperback or Kindle version, and you can now get the audiobook version. If you've been waiting for that, it's now out. Check it out and buy it for all the students that you know who are too busy to read books but have a commute and help them get their finances in order right from the beginning of their careers.

 

Student Loan Advice

The pricing is about to change for studentloanadvice.com. As of right now, a consult is $479, and that includes six months of email follow-up. That means any questions you have later on for the next six months are totally free, that our man, Andrew, will answer those for you. That price is going up, though. So, I'm giving you some notice. If you book your consult before September 1, you get that price. After September 1, the price is going up to $559. You do get a couple of other nice changes with that increase in price, though. First of all, the email follow-up is going to go from six months to 12 months. They're also allowing for repeat consults to now get a $100 discount. If you come back in a couple years, want to do another consult with Andrew, it'll be $100 off. So, a nice little benefit there. If you want to book before September 1, if you're thinking about getting advice as with all these changes coming up with student loans, go to studentloanadvice.com today and book that.

 

Quote of the Day 

Bill Bernstein said,

“Imperviousness to the emotions of others is immensely valuable in finance.”

 

Milestones to Millionaire

#78 — Oncologist Multimillionaire

If you save enough, you really can save yourself to financial independence. This guest was not a big spender and still has a lot of her money in cash. She has now left her clinical work and is filling her time with many interesting activities. Your 50s are not too late to learn to invest.


Sponsor: PearsonRavitz

 

Full Transcript

Transcription – WCI – 275

Intro:
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 275 – The buy, borrow and die strategy.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you're considering locum tenens, either full-time or on the side, you probably have a question or two or 20. Fortunately, locumstory.com has the answers you need. It's packed with unbiased information and advice from physicians like you.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
locumstory.com is nothing to sell. It is simply a resource for information. You'll find super handy tools to let you see locums trends for your specialty, compared different locums agencies. There's even a quiz to help you decide if locums is right for you. locumstory.com is a perfect place to start if you want to learn more about locums.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I don’t know about you, but my month is absolutely packed. Summer has been busy. There's a reason I don't do any speaking gigs in the summer and it's because I am just too busy to do them.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I am currently… We're recording this, what? July 27th. I think it drops August 11th. But I'm recording this in five days I have between two river trips. We went to a family reunion in Colorado earlier this month and then floated Desolation Canyon. And then I have five days between that trip and going to float the Salmon River, which I'm doing in a couple more days here.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But in those five days I have three shifts to work and just two days to wedge in all of the WCI stuff that we're doing. So, one of those things we're doing is selecting speakers for next year's conference. And you guys have gone crazy with submitting talks for the conference. We have over 250 talks submitted for this conference. If you remember the first conference we did, there were only 12 talks. We got 250 submitted for this.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And it's going to be really hard. I think it's over 138 speakers. And so, it's going to be really hard to choose. Katie and I, and actually a committee of people are going through them trying to select a good mix of old favorites as well as exciting new speakers. A good blend of topics. It should be a really awesome conference.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But wow, it's a lot of work to go through all those submissions. So, thanks for all those. It's going to make for an awesome conference. But please do not feel bad if you're not selected because most people are not going to be selected. That's just the way the numbers are going to work out.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
The crew here got me a birthday gift. It's a candle with a very unique flavor. Not sure how much I like the smell of it, but if you want to see what the flavor is, you're going to have to watch this episode on YouTube, a little Easter egg there on the YouTube channel.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Thanks for what you do. It's hard sometimes. Wedging in these shifts I've been doing between these two trips, every one of them has been just crazy busy in the ER. And we do a lot of great stuff on the worst day of people's lives. I had someone come in with a hot stroke, 30 minutes of stroke symptoms, a young person. He was in his forties. A couple of risk factors for it, but a pretty impressive little stroke. Actually qualified for TPA. I gave him some TPA and whether it was a TPA or not, by the time he left the ED, his symptoms had resolved. So that was pretty exciting to see that work and make him a little bit better.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Also, I had another patient come in. Just terrible coronary artery disease. Had already been put on hospice at one point, because there wasn't anything else they could do for his coronary artery disease and decided he was going to come off hospice and get treated for his chest pain. Came in and again was having another big huge MI and kept having arrhythmias. And given his mental status, it was a little bit hard to sort out if he wanted to be coded or not.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And so, in between talks with the patient and family members in another state and trying to control his arrhythmias with medications, it was a little bit of a stressful situation there for a while. And I know you guys deal with this sort of stuff all the time in your lives. And if no one said thank you today let me be the first.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, this isn't supposed to be about medicine. It's not supposed to be about rafting although I could probably talk for an hour about rafting if you want. But we're supposed to be talking about finances here. So, let's get into finances.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
We want you to be financially secure. We think that makes you a better partner, a better parent, and a better practitioner. If you do not have to spend all day worrying about your finances, if you can just take care of your patients and your clients and your family and yourself, I think you're going to have a lot less burnout and be a lot happier in your lives.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, let's take our first question. This is the one from which the title of today's episode “Buy, borrow and die” comes from. Let's take a listen to the question.

Dominic:
Hi, thanks for all your great advice. My question is related to the “buy, borrow, die” philosophy for avoiding capital gains. Would you please comment on this? Thanks for all that you do. I appreciate you.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Good question, Dominic, but let me explain how this works. It got a little bit of press in the last year I think because some media outlets picked up the fact that some very wealthy people do this. “Buy, borrow and die” is basically the idea that it might be better to pay interest than it is to pay capital gains. And it all comes down to the step up in basis at death. When you die, your heirs get a new basis. Now, basis is what you pay for an investment. And when you sell an investment, you pay capital gains taxes on the difference between the basis and it's value on the date of sale.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And so, it's a pretty cool trick to have the basis reset when you die, then your heirs can basically sell it and not pay taxes on any of that inheritance that they've received. And so, the idea is, you don't want to realize capital gains on your deathbed because they're going to go away as soon as you die.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So that's “buy, borrow and die.” If you need money before you die, then you borrow against your assets. You borrow against your home, borrow against your taxable portfolio, borrow against your real estate, whatever, rather than selling them and paying capital gains taxes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
The problem is if you still have many years until you die, you may be better off realizing the capital gains. Because that interest adds up over time. If you borrow a million dollars against your portfolio to spend for instance, and you're borrowing it at, let's say 6%, well that's $60,000 a year in interest, right? How many years does it take before $60,000 a year is a higher amount than the capital gains taxes that you would be paying on those million dollars? Maybe if your basis on that million is $300,000, then you have $700,000 in capital gains, multiply that by maybe 20%. That's $140,000 in capital gains. If you pay three years of interest, you're paying more in interest then you would be in capital gains taxes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, this is a great strategy if you can borrow at very low interest rates. It's a great strategy. If you're going to die soon. If you are 55 in excellent health and interest rates are high, maybe this isn't such a great strategy. So, if it's something available to you, keep that in mind, especially for maybe your parents, if they are not in awesome health and are needing additional money. Maybe the way to get it is to borrow rather than to sell an asset. But just keep in mind, it's one option.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Here's another question about capital gains. This one on the primary residence, from Sam. Let's take a listen.

Sam:
Hey guys, this is Sam. Big fan of the pod, longtime listener, first time caller. The recent Q&A on tax loss harvesting got me thinking. I live in a high cost of living area and have seen high appreciation on my primary residence since purchase six or seven years ago.

Sam:
We have over $1.5 million in capital gains accrued on paper. And while my crystal ball is cloudy, I would hope to realize at least $1 million in gains when we sell in 10 or 15 years, if not a lot more than 1 million.

Sam:
Since this is so far above the $250,000 single and $500,000 married capital gain tax free limits at the federal level, wouldn't tax loss harvesting also be useful in this scenario? Particularly in a state with a high state income tax or capital gains tax. Thanks.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Well, that's more of an observation than a question. You asked one question. There the answer is yes. If you had capital losses, you could use those to offset your capital gains.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, there's a lot of different ways that you can use capital gains or rather capital losses that come from tax loss harvesting. The first way is you can put $3,000 a year against your ordinary income. The second way is if you have mutual funds that for whatever reason are distributing capital gains to you, a capital gains distribution that is offset by any capital losses that you have acquired that year or that you've been carrying forward.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you have to sell an investment for whatever reason, you want to use a different investment or you just want to spend the money or you want to rebalance your portfolio and you find you need to sell something that's appreciated a lot in taxable. That's another great use to have some losses around.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you've got some legacy assets, stuff that you've owned for a long time that have a low basis that you really don't want to own anymore, capital losses allow you to change investments without having to pay taxes on that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you sell a business, if you sell the White Coat Investor or if you sell your medical practice, or if you sell some side gig business, then that is a capital gain and you can use tax losses from your tax loss harvesting to offset that. When you sell a real estate property, including some syndications, funds, etc, they distribute some capital gains to you and you can use capital losses to offset those.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
In today's day and age this ability to offset the capital gains on your home is becoming more and more important. It's not just people in the Bay area and Washington DC and New York that have high cost of living area. Now there's a lot of places in the country thanks to rapid appreciation of housing prices the last couple of years that are pretty high cost of living areas. Salt Lake, now, I think the figure I saw this week was something like $590,000 is the average home now in the Salt Lake valley, which seems crazy to me. I think it's doubled in the last three years.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But anytime you have a significant capital gain on a house, you can use tax losses to offset those. Remember of course that the first $250,000 in gains is tax free with your primary residence. And I think it's every five years you can use that. Maybe it's every two years, I'd have to look it up. But you have to live there for two out of every five years to get that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And if you're married, it's doubled. It's $500,000. But above and beyond that, you have to pay capital gains taxes when you sell your house. If you buy a house for $500,000, you sell it for $1.5 million, 20 years later and you're married, you're going to have $500,000 in capital gains that you have to pay taxes on. At 20% that could be a $100,000 tax bill. So, if you've got $500,000 in capital losses saved up from tax loss harvesting over the years, that can obviously offset that. All right, good question.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Quote of the day. This one is from Bill Bernstein who said “Imperviousness to the emotions of others is immensely valuable in finance.” You got to avoid that fear of missing out, that FOMO, and you've got to avoid that panic in market downturns. And if you can do that, you're going to be a lot more successful investor. The investor matters more than the investment.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, here's a question. This one comes in via email. It says “I was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia.” I’m sorry to hear that. “And I had to be off of work for five months. Thankfully I had a disability policy in place so I was able to use this policy to cover my expenses. However, it is troubling to know that the policy only has a 24-month payout for mental illness diagnoses. I think this is a crime. And I wonder if there are policies that don't have this limitation out there. I wonder if you could bring light to this issue and we could advocate for policies with more robust coverage for mental illness.”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yes. There are many policies out there that have a two-year limitation on mental or sometimes they call them nervous illnesses. They're not talking about neurologic disease. They're talking about psychiatric disease. And there are others that have lifetime coverage that treat it, just like any other disability. It's not a crime. They put the policy in front of you and you signed it. You signed up for that policy with that limitation. So, it's not a crime, it's a contract. And if you don't like that contract, don't buy that contract. Go to one of the providers that offers lifetime coverage. Now I'm not a disability insurance agent and this sort of thing is changing all the time. My recollection, however, is that the Guardian policy does offer lifetime coverage for mental/nervous disorders.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, you could change policy. But in this case, once you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia, it's probably going to be an exclusion from any new policy I would assume. So, probably not a good idea for this particular doc to change. Hopefully, that is not a lifetime payout. It's per disabling episode. So maybe this doc will get another 24 months if he or she becomes disabled again due to schizophrenia. I don't know, it'll depend on the policy.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But be aware that docs do get mental illness. I have a family member who was an attorney who got a bipolar diagnosis, which was disabling. It wasn't able to function as an attorney for many years and happened to have a very strong disability insurance policy that lived off of for a long time. And this stuff happens and it can happen even in your late twenties, thirties, forties, etc. That even though you didn't have any sort of mental illness before that time, it can develop. So, keep that in mind when buying disability insurance.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Another question about retiring. This one from Richard. Let's take a listen.

Richard:
Thanks for all you do for your audience. I'm a 60-year-old and I would like the option of retirement in about three to five years. I invest in debt funds through a self-directed IRA. These funds are quite liquid. Typically have the option to liquidate after holding for six months or more.

Richard:
My plan is to liquidate my position, these investments at retirement, and then roll all of my traditional IRA money into the Roth IRA as my tax bracket would be much lower. Am I thinking about this correctly? I'm trying to stay away from debt funds with longer required holds for this reason. Thanks in advance.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. You're mixing two issues here, Richard, and I don't know they necessarily need to be mixed. You're talking about both the investment within a retirement account in this case, a private real estate debt fund and the accounts themselves. It's in a traditional IRA now, self-directed traditional IRA and you eventually want to have it in a Roth IRA.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now it often makes sense to do Roth conversions, especially in those first few years of retirement before you start taking social security. So, if you retire at 63, you're not going to take social security until 70. Well, you got seven years there in which there's a good chance it makes sense for you to do some sort of Roth conversion each year.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, is that easier when you have very liquid investments? Oh, probably it is. Can you not do it with these debt funds? You probably still can. I would contact them and say, “Hey, I'm going to do a Roth conversion. I'm going to move some of my traditional IRA money. Let's say you got half a million dollars in there. I'm going to move $100,000 a year of that into a Roth IRA. I want to keep it in your fund though. Can I just pull it out of this traditional IRA and put it into a Roth IRA? I'll be paying the taxes from separate money. And can that be fine even though I've got the money locked up for a year or two or whatever the requirement is on the debt fund?” And they'll probably say yes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, you've got two questions. One is the Roth IRA question. Do you want to do these Roth conversions and how do you want to do them, et cetera? The other question is, do you want to stay invested in debt funds? And if you do, then you don't necessarily need to be prepared to pull all the money out at any given time in order to do that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Most of the debt funds I have, I think the required hold period is anywhere between one and five years. I think they'd let you get it at one year. But I think in a lot of these, the deal is a little bit better for you if you leave it in there at least five years. But if you had it in there already for five years, then you could pull that out and reinvest it in that or something else after you do your Roth conversion, no big deal.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, I think you're mostly thinking about it correctly, Richard, but keep in mind that you need to make those decisions separately. What retirement accounts you're going to use when you're going to do Roth conversions is one question and the other one is what you're going to invest in. And you just need to follow your written investing plan as far as that goes.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you don't have a written investing plan, that's where our Fire Your Financial Advisor course comes in. Very helpful for people who don't yet have a written investing plan. And every time we do surveys, at least 50% of our audience doesn't yet have a written investing plan. If you don't have one, you need to get one.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you don't feel comfortable writing it yourself, maybe getting a little bit of help from the WCI forum or Facebook group or Subreddit, etc, then consider taking our course. That'll take you step by step, help you write it yourself. It'll be dramatically cheaper than the third option, which is going to get a financial planner paying them a few thousand to help you draft up a financial plan that you can follow. But whatever pathway you take, you should get a written financial plan. It's really, really helpful in reaching your financial goals. So highly recommend.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, our next question. This one comes via email about an enhanced cash management portfolio. “I'm in the process of selling my practice and have a sizable sum of cash incoming.” Congratulations. That's great.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
“My financial advisor has recommended I set aside the income in an enhanced cash management portfolio that returns 1.3% tax free. Having trouble understanding the nuts and bolts of this investment product offered by a private firm, but they say they invest in money markets, variable rate demand notes, auction rate preferreds, US government treasuries, US public municipal and corporate debt markets and US listed mutual funds and ETFs.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I will eventually use this money to pay taxes and distribute it per my written financial plan, however it is a short medium-term location to store my money. I am considering this. Have you heard of these before or advise against them? Thank you so much for all that you have done and continue to do for us all.”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Well, this sounds a little squirrely, right? Enhanced cash management. That sounds like a product designed to be sold, not bought. And look at all this stuff that is in it. Auction rate preferreds, variable rate demand notes. You got some treasuries in there, etc.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
First of all, this isn't going to be tax free, right? Unless it's just muni bonds in there, it is not going to be tax free. You're going to have to pay some taxes on whatever income is coming out of that. So, keep that in mind. If they're telling you, it's 1.3% tax free, something's wrong. Maybe they mean 1.3% after tax. I don't know exactly, but when you're looking for something with very low risk, you're looking for cash.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
You have a few options and the quick and easy way to do it is I Google “Vanguard mutual funds by asset class.” And what that does is it pulls up all the Vanguard mutual funds. I don't know if it's all of them, but it's most of them. And you start at the top with money market funds.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, if you look at the Vanguard money market funds there, you can see that right now, the Vanguard federal money market fund is yielding 1.54%. Now that's taxable, but 1.54%. So, something that's paying 1.3% is not too impressive when you can get that out of a run of the mill money market fund, which basically is a very, very safe place to invest.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you want tax free money, you can go to a municipal money market fund. The Vanguard one which I've used in the past has a current yield of 0.55%. That's usually not that much lower than the taxable money market fund that's being offered out there. So, that one's probably going to go up soon in its yield if it returns to more of the historical relationship between those funds.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you are willing to take more risk, meaning credit risk i.e., the risk that somebody that owes you money is not going to pay you, or term risk, having longer term assets than 90 days to one-year assets, you can do that and get higher yields. If you go to the intermediate term bond index fund, you'll see the yields up to 3.6%. If you take the short-term index fund, that's yielding 3.28%. So, there's some risk there. As rates go up, you'll lose value, but you're getting a much higher yield than you would on a money market fund.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Likewise, if you want to take on some credit risk, you can look at the intermediate term corporate bond index fund. It's yielding 4.57%. And so, those are kind of your options when it comes to fixed income investments. Yes, you can get similar yields sometimes from a high yield savings account. You just go to someplace like Ally bank and you can get a high yield savings account. Let's see what they're yielding as we record this podcast. All this is at the tip of your fingers when it comes to just Googling on the internet. Okay. So, their online savings account is currently paying 1.25% at Ally bank. As rates go up, that'll probably go up, but those are kind of your options.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, do I get super excited about some complex thing being sold to me with a yield of 1.3% when I know that that's what the standard cash things are paying? Not really, not very exciting. And I'm not sure I would stick around with a financial advisor that's recommending crap like that to me. If I'm going to have something that's investing in mutual funds and ETFs and all this crazy stuff, I expect a heck of a lot higher yield than 1.3%.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. In case you're not aware we have a book for students. It's called “The White Coat Investor's Guide for Students.” We give a ton of them away. We give them away to all the first year medical and dental students that will have a class champion each year, but we also sell a fair number of them to people that aren't first year students, or weren't willing to be champions for their class and pass a copy out to everybody in their class so they could get their own free copy.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But if you are interested in the audio version of that book, it's finally out. The audio book is now out. You can go to amazon.com, just search “The White Coat Investor's Guide for Students” and you'll see that you can get the Kindle version. You can get the paperback version and you can now get the audiobook version. So, if you've been waiting for that, it's now out. Check it out, buy it for all the students that you know are too busy to read books but have a commute and help them get their finances in order right from the beginning of their careers.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, let's take a question from Ruben on managed futures.

Ruben:
Hello Dr. Dahle. This is Ruben from Dallas. I'm a fifty something year old gastroenterologist, contemplating retirement soon, and looking at alternative investments that can potentially decrease my downside risk and be somewhat decoupled from stocks and bonds.

Ruben:
I'm specifically looking at long short funds and market neutral funds and perhaps managed futures. I had little experience with this and I was wondering if you had any opinion or experience with it that you could provide. As always, I greatly appreciate what you do with the White Coat Investor. I could read it and listen to it all the time. Thank you very much.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, Ruben, great question. Let's talk in general, let's talk specifics. First in general, hedging strategies, hedge funds. Do you qualify to invest in these? Yes. You're probably an accredited investor. If not by virtue of your income, by late career, by virtue of your wealth. You qualify to invest in these things and you can invest in them.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
However, I recommend if you choose to do so that you keep it to a relatively small percentage of your portfolio, certainly a single digit amount, just like if you were going to invest in something else that's kind of oddball or creative or alternative. Limit the amount of your investment that you're putting into those sorts of investments.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
In general, the thought with these hedge fund kind of investments is that they're probably not worth the fees you're paying. If you look at long term returns of hedge funds against boring old stock index funds, the stock index funds tend to do better.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now, does that mean they do better at all times? No. When stocks are not doing well, anything that is not stocks is going to do a little bit better. And so, don't be surprised that there are times when a hedge fund or particular hedge fund strategy is going to outperform the stock market.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But keep in mind that the ones that don't outperform tend to disappear. And there were a lot of investors in those funds that did not do very well and some of them blow up spectacularly. So, you were allowed to do a lot of crazy stuff inside a hedge fund. And so, it really comes down to the manager and what they're doing and how much you trust that manager to have your best interests at heart. Because a lot of them are taking an awful lot of risk because of the way they get paid.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
The classic way a hedge fund manager gets paid is 2% and 20%. 2% a year plus 20% of profits. 2% a year is obviously an incredibly huge expense ratio if all they're doing is messing around in the stock market. 1% might be average, but I think it’s a really high expense ratio for a mutual fund. I'm looking at mutual funds with an expense ratio one 10th to that. So, 2% seems outrageous. And then to also lose 20% of your profits, they've got to be really talented at bringing you alpha, bringing you return above and beyond what the market will return you in order for that to be a good deal.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, in general, I’m not a huge fan of hedge funds. I’m not a huge fan of hedging strategies. I prefer to use a strategy where you just realize you're going to be investing for a long term for a long, long time, and that you can write out the market ups and downs and be rewarded with those solid long term returns by doing so.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now anytime people start talking about managed futures, I figure commodities are doing well. And commodities tend to do well in times of high inflation. And given inflation's been pretty high the last six months, it shouldn't be any surprise to see commodities doing pretty well.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
In fact, if I look at last month's WCI newsletter, that includes a market report. And by the way, if you're not signed up to this newsletter, you should be. It's totally free. Just go under the appropriate tab there, whitecoatinvestor.com and sign yourself up.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But included in this newsletter is a market report. And if I look at our selected investment for commodities there, which is an ETF with the ticker symbol GSG, it didn't have a great July, but it's having a heck of a year. It's up 31%. And over the last 12 months, up 44%. And over the last five years, it's up 14% a year. So, no surprise that people are interested now again in commodities, right? And the way people typically invest in those are managed futures funds.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, if you want to have an allocation to commodities again, I'd keep it to five percent-ish of your portfolio and you can do that. But stick with it through thick and thin, because there are a lot of times when commodities do not do very well. In the long run they tend to do about what inflation does, similar to precious metals but with the heck of a lot more volatility.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, I’m not a huge fan of either one. If you want to invest in them, you're convinced to the case for including it in your portfolio, then go ahead. Just limit how much you put in there. Same thing I'd tell you about gold. Same thing I'd tell you about crypto assets, those sorts of things. Limit your investment there. It's not something I’d put 40% of your portfolio into.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Note given to me here. Student Loan Advice. If you don't know about our Student Loan Advice company, this is a company that does flat fee pricing just to give you advice on how to manage your student loans, help you decide what IDR to be in, help you decide whether to go for a PSLF, how to file your taxes, what retirement accounts to use in order to maximize your student loan management plan, etc.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
They do consults. As of right now, a consult is $559 and that includes twelve months of email follow up. So, any questions you have later on for the next twelve months are totally free, that our man, Andrew will answer those for you.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
That price is going up though. So, I'm giving you some notice. If you book your consult before September 1st, you get that price. After September 1st, the price is going up to $559. Inflation in all things these days, it seems. You do get a couple of other nice changes with that increase in price though. First of all, the email follow up is going to go from six months to 12 months. So, there's some additional value there. And they're also allowing for repeat consults to now get a $100 discount. So, if you come back in a couple years, want to do another consult with Andrew, it'll be $100 off. So, a nice little benefit there.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
But mostly I'm just letting you know that the price is going up. So, if you want to book before September 1st, if you're thinking about getting advice as with all these changes coming up with student loans, go to studentloanadvice.com today and book that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, let's talk about title insurance. I got this by email. “A review of title insurance would be interesting content. There is a paucity of quality information on these policies. Often what people get is dictated based on what a lender requires.” Okay, that's true.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
“I would love to be more knowledgeable about these policies, what they cover, what they don't. I would love to hear some stories about why and when claims came up and what happened. Consensus seems a necessary part of risk management for everyone. You might face big problems if you don't have it. I don't really understand the risk being mitigated and how the insurance does that. If someone is willing to write the policy, does a risk really exist?”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, title insurance is something you buy when you buy a property. Whether it's an investment property, whether it's a home you're going to live in. And what it does is it protects you from any other claims to that title. So, what are some examples of other claims there might be on that title? Well, let's go through a few of them here.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Some problems you can have that you would need that you'd want to discover in a title search or for which you would need to have title insurance include outstanding liens. When somebody does work on a property and they'll get paid for it, they often put a lien on that house. There's a lien on the title and until it gets paid off, you don't really own it free and clear. Back taxes, property taxes can have a lean on them. Conflicting wills. If somebody else can come back and say, “That person didn't really have the ability to sell that house because I own half of it because the will says I'm supposed to own half of it”, etc.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, those are the sorts of problems you can have. Now what are these title insurance companies do? What title companies do? Well, they do research to make sure none of that stuff's out there before you buy the house. And the title insurance is basically like a little guarantee on their research. They're saying, “Yeah, we looked, we didn't find anything, but just in case for whatever reason we missed something, we'll take care of it.”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
That is what title insurance is. And lenders generally do require you to have it. In fact, there are sometimes two types of title policies. There's the homeowner’s policy. That's a guarantee against potential hazards. Whether it's a lawsuit or a lien or flawed public records or fraud or forgery with regards to that title easements that weren't disclosed to you, those sorts of problems.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And then the lender, assuming you didn't pay cash for this property, is going to always require that you have a lender's title insurance policy. And that protects the lender in the same way from all those same sorts of claims. So, I don't know that I necessarily know anybody who's had to use their title insurance, but I've heard lots of stories where people uncovered something in the title search process.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
There is one other alternative apparently. You can get a warranty of title and I suspect this is probably state specific. But that's where the seller guarantees that they have the legal right to transfer ownership to the buyer and that no one else can lay claim to the property. So, if someone else has a claim to the property, the warranty gives the buyer the ability to go after the seller in the future. Whereas without that sort of thing, you wouldn't have the ability to do that.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, that's kind of title insurance in a nutshell. Everybody buys it. I don't know if that is going to change anytime soon. If you're buying a property, you probably ought to buy it as well. It's not that expensive. And I think mostly honestly, though, what you're paying for is the title search. I think the policy is relatively cheap once the title search has been done. So, I hope that's helpful to you. It’s not someplace I'd try to skimp out too much.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
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Dr. Jim Dahle:
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Dr. Jim Dahle:
Hey, by the way, the other thing we're doing this week while we're doing all kinds of crazy stuff, unpacking from one trip packing for another is we are in the process of finishing up our White Coat Investor Real Estate course. It's called No Hype Real Estate Investing.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, if you want to be one of the first to hear about this, make sure you're signed up for the real estate newsletter or even just the regular newsletter. You can sign up for that at whitecoatinvestor.com/free-monthly-newsletter. We're hoping to have this out the first of September. It should be awesome. It's going to be an overview of all real estate investing, both direct and passive real estate investing. It should be pretty awesome.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Anyway, thanks for those of you who are leaving us a five-star review and telling your friends about the podcast. Our first review that we got is actually from Physicians Capital Management. I think that's Randy Gertner’s firm who said “Just awesome. This gem of a podcast clearly and elegantly explains the ins and outs of student loans. The WCI podcast is articulate, accurate and loaded with lots of pearls. I plan on sharing this with all of my clients.”

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And that's from back in January, 2017. Thanks for that review. And for those of you who are still leaving reviews, they do help us spread the word to other White Coat Investors.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Thanks for listening to our podcast. Without you, the audience, there would be no podcast. And so, we're here to serve you. We try to let your desires and what you want to hear on the podcast drive the show. So, leave us questions whitecoatinvestor.com/speakpipe. Send us emails, [email protected] with suggestions of guests or people you'd like to have on the show or subjects you'd like to hear about.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
And until next time, keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help you here at the White Coat Investor.

Disclaimer:
The hosts of the White Coat Investor podcast 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.