The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need with Andrew Tobias

INTRODUCTION

This is the White Coat Investor podcast, where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high-income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is White Coat Investor podcast number 261 – “The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need” with Andrew Tobias.

Have you ever considered a different way of practicing medicine? Whether you are burned out, need a change of pace, or looking to supplement your income, locum tenens might be the solution for you.

Not sure where to start? Locumstory.com is the place where you can get real, unbiased answers to your questions. They answer basic questions like, “What is locum tenens?” to more complex questions about pay ranges, taxes, various specialties, and how locum tenens can work for you. Go to locumstory.com and get the answers.

Welcome back to the podcast. I missed you guys. It's a great week. Wonderful spring weather here in Utah, which means it might be a blizzard or it might be sunny and hot. You never know out here. Spring is a weird season in the Intermountain West.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Our quote of the day today comes from Randall Bell, PhD, who said, “Achievers prefer the term setback. The term success and failure imply a final point of destination.” And I think that is definitely the truth.

All right. If nobody's told you thanks for what you do today, let me be the first. I know you're on your way into work, you're on your way home from work. Maybe you had a bad day. Those happen sometimes in the high-income professions. Maybe you're off working out. Whatever you're doing though, if no one said thanks today, let me be the first.

In case you're not aware, I have a new book out. It's called the White Coat Investors Guide to Asset Protection. I think it is a great book. If you are interested in protecting your assets from lawsuits and understanding what your risks really are, this is a book you should read.

It's not that long. It's a relatively short book. In fact, about half of it, close to half of it, is the most comprehensive list of state-specific asset protection laws that I know about. The asset protection laws are always state specific. So, the important thing to know is what are the laws in your state and in the states where you may do business or have assets. And so I've compiled that as a significant part of the book. You don't have to read every state's asset protection laws. You only got to read about the states you care about. In reality, you probably only need to read about 60% of the book.

And it's about as long as the White Coat Investor book, the original one. But I think it's really worthwhile. If you're worried about losing everything to a lawsuit, if you just want to make sure you've done the basics of asset protection, if you want to learn more about advanced asset protection techniques, if you're thinking about going to see an asset protection lawyer, if you've been named in a lawsuit, whatever. Whatever your purpose is to be interested in this topic, I recommend you pick up the White Coat Investors Guide to Asset Protection. It's available on Amazon, like all of the other books.

INTERVIEW

All right. We have got a great guest today. One of the fun things about having your own podcast is you can interview whoever you want, as long as you can talk them into coming on the podcast. Sometimes that allows me to go out and find people who've had a significant impact on my financial life and bring them on the podcast and just get to know them a little bit better. And that's partly what we're doing today.

We're going to be bringing on Andrew Tobias, who you may know as the author of “The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need.” Which was how I was introduced to his work, was reading that book. And there's been many different additions of it. He's got a new addition out of that book if you're interested in picking it up after hearing from him today.

Andy Tobias, he graduated from Harvard. He was there in the 60s. So, he's an older guy now. But eventually, he got an MBA from Harvard. He's written for a number of magazines that you've heard of. These include New York Magazine, Esquire Time, Parade, Harvard Magazine, New York Times Sunday magazine. He's written 12 books I believe. And he just continues to do a lot of great stuff in the country, whether it's finance-related or not finance-related. So, I'm looking forward to getting him on the podcast and getting to know him a little bit better. Let's get him on.

All right, Andrew Tobias. We're going to call you Andy today, right? Welcome to the White Coat Investor podcast.

Andrew Tobias:
Thank you so much, Jim.

ANDY’S EARLY YEARS

Dr. Jim Dahle:
It's wonderful to have you here. Your work has affected me personally, and I've just gotten done introducing you before I brought you on. But let's hear a little bit from you. We want to hear a little bit about your upbringing and maybe how it affected your views on money.

Andrew Tobias:
Well, I had a great success in choosing my parents, and they gave me $4 which was a lot of money back then. I'm 75 now. When I was four, I got $4, 71 years ago. And I don't really remember that, but I remember getting $5 when I was five and $6 when I was six. And I was hooked. And then when I was 10, my grandfather gave my brother and me each, I think 10 shares of General Motors and 10 shares of General Dynamics or whatever.

And actually, it's a little embarrassing, but I started looking at the stock pages every day and nothing ever happened. I mean, it is the most boring thing. If you're going to give your kid 10 shares of something, please make it one of these ridiculous volatile stocks that's going to go to zero, but at least it'll be fun. And they'll learn not to take terrible risks. Owning 10 shares of General Dynamics or General Motors was so boring, but we did learn a little bit about this.

I spent three months behind the Iron Curtain when I was 16. I came back a little communist for about five minutes until I wound up running the student businesses in college and going to work for a company called National Student Marketing Corporation after college. That stock went from $6 to $140 in 18 months. And with stock options worth a fortune, at least in my terms, it turned out that the creative accounting that the company was practicing was so creative you could really only call it fraudulent accounting. So, the president went to jail. I went to business school, wrote a book about it, and here we are.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, tell us about your education. You did undergraduate at Harvard as well as an MBA there. Correct?

Andrew Tobias:
I majored in Slavic languages and literatures, which means that I read “War and Peace” in English in the trot. The little cliff notes things, because I was not a good student, but the real world was much more interesting to me. So, every day I would ride my bike up to Harvard Student Agencies, which is the little student-run business that rented the refrigerators and sold class rings and all those things that undergraduates do to make a little extra money in college. And that was so much fun.

Then they let me run a thing called “Let's Go: The Student Guide to Europe,” which at the time was just one book for Europe. And then we added some other countries and other continents, I guess. So, I was a little business guy. I was not a good student. My brother was summa cum laude. I wasn't summa, I wasn't magna. I was barely in the top 60% or something, but I sure did sell a lot of “Let's Go: The Student Guide to Europe.” So, I've been interested in business and money kind of forever.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Where's that taken you in your career? Tell us some of the things you've done.

Andrew Tobias:
Well, I expected after my high-flying stand as a 21-year-old Vice President of National Student Marketing Corporation, I figured, “Well, I don't know what I'm going to be, but obviously it's going to involve lots of assistants and junior vice presidents working for me and all that stuff.”

And in business school, I did get an offer from Boston Consulting Group, which made me feel good, but New York Magazine had put me on the cover when I was just starting business school because of this article and this book I wrote about the fraud that I was involved with, even though I was innocent, but the company didn't do so well.

So, they said, “When you get out of business school, come write for us.” And I said, “I'm not a writer. I only wrote that thing because I happened to be in the middle of it.” So, I had a choice between going to Boston Consulting Group or working for New York Magazine. And happily, I chose the latter. I've been writing magazine articles and books, and I had some computer software called Managing Your Money before Quicken. So, for a bunch of years, I had a very good fortune of that.

And then somebody called from the White House and said, “If a President of the United States asked you to be treasurer of the Democratic party, would you say yes?” And I said, “Richard, what are you calling me for? You clearly dialed the wrong number.” No, no, no president, whatever. And so, for 18 years, it was supposed to be a two-year ceremonial kind of gig and it wound up being 18 years. And still, I didn't get paid to do it, but it wasn't full-time. So, I had that detour and now I'm 150 years old and I'm still updating this every time.

THE CREATION OF THE ONLY INVESTMENT GUIDE YOU’LL EVER NEED

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, you've been publishing financial books since 1971, really. I count at least 12 books. How many books have you actually published? Not including new editions and translations.

Andrew Tobias:
I hear you're a terrific doctor, but you also count perfectly. I mean, that's exactly the right number. And actually, the first one, the very first one was this book about National Student Marketing. And it was sort of a financial book because it was a cautionary tale. Stock went from $6 to $140. And then in about five minutes, it went down to three ace or something. Interestingly, you could have made as much money buying it at three ace. Never did go back up, and letting it recover to 10 times that as you could have made in the very beginning. So, there are different ways it was going to cut.

But at New York magazine, everybody thought, “Oh my God, he's been to business school. And he writes about all this stuff. He's got to be so smart.” And everybody from the receptionist downstairs up to the editor and chief, I don't know how many people remember now, but Clay Felker invented not only New York Magazine, but all regional magazines. He was this huge guy, a very big character. Rupert Murdoch is the one who wound up buying this whole thing and wrecking his life.

But everybody from the receptionist on up would say, “So what should I do with my money?” I'm thinking, “Why are they asking me? I mean, no, I don't know anything.” I know Ben Franklin said, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” And I know you spend less than you make.” Brilliant insights like that. But I did my best at it.

But it also got kind of tedious because I would say the same thing over and over again. The advice would vary a little bit if I was talking to Clay who had a big income and lots of rich friends. That would be a little different advice than for the receptionist, but not that different.

I realized rather than me doing this over and over and over again, why don't I just write it down once, and then I can get it to everybody. And I already had some pretty good success by then with a book or two, not specifically about money. And I called my editor and said, “Hey, I got this little investment guide. It's tiny.” The virtue of it, especially back then, was much smaller than it is now because the world's got more complicated. “But would you publish it?”

And they looked and they said, “Well, yeah, it's not for us.” And I said, “Come on. I mean, you don't even have to give me an advance. I don't want to start with some other publisher. Give it a try. Why not?” And I said, “My last book was on the New York Times Bestseller list for you. I mean, can't you risk this thing?” And no.

So, I took it someplace else and it has sold millions of copies by now. It's the luckiest thing I ever did. At first, the money was what was so great, frankly. I mean, I got paid a lot of money, the paperback, I couldn't believe they were going to buy it in paperback on top of the hardcover. The thing was terrific.

But by now, it's not frankly, knock wood, compound interest. And if you're 150 years old by now, you better be doing pretty well. So, I'm okay. It's fine to get the royalties, but the emails I get and the letters from people, “I bought your book 40 years ago. And we just retired and I give it to all my kids at graduation,” and all this kind of stuff. That's the royalty that keeps paying.

So, it's been a lot of fun, but also embarrassing because it's called The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. I explain in the book how that title came to be, but if it's the only one you'll ever, ever need, I shouldn't really have to revise it, right? But they do things without my permission, by the way. They invented the internet. They invent IRAs and Roth IRAs and stuff. And then crypto and meme stock.

So, every five or six years, I find myself revising it. And it's really fun to do because much of it stays exactly the same and I'm very lazy, so I don't have to rewrite it. But then there are new challenges. What do you say about crypto and about all these things? So anyway, it's been fun and it just came out again and there won't be another one for probably five or six or seven years, by which time I'll be 156.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, you're in a very select group of people whose writing ability I don't just admire, I'm frankly jealous of it. That list is very short. It includes basically three other people, Morgan Housel, Bill Bernstein, and Jonathan Clemens. Your writing is both useful and entertaining. It doesn't sound like you had any formal training in writing. How did you learn to write so well?

Andrew Tobias:
Well, first of all, you're very kind. Other than in the ninth grade, a guy named Dana. And I might get even a little bit choked up because nobody remembers Dana, but he was the right after lunch English teacher in my high school. And everybody else after lunch is not a good time for 14-year-olds. They don't pay a lot of attention to somebody who has a monotonal kind of expression. But he taught us how to write. If you listen, what is a semicolon? What are ellipses? It wasn't the kind of writing I do now because now I break the rules all the time, but at least I know I'm breaking the rules.

You're right. I write the way I talk for better or worse. Probably a little bit worse, as people are beginning to realize. And I tried the hand stuff, that's the punctuation. I tried to get the hands in there, but again, it comes back to a good choice of parents. My dad was terrific. He was the original Don Draper basically, not literally, but of Mad Men. He won all sorts of awards for his copywriting.

He introduced Patek Philippe watches to America and Ronzoni Sono Buoni means Ranzoni is so good. That's my limit of my Italian. Oh, actually, do you know Manischewitz wine? Everybody listening is too young. But the slogan for Manischewitz was super famous back in the 50s and 60s of the last century.

And one day I and a billion and a half other people on the planet were watching television. When one astronaut said to the other, ” Man-O-Manischewitz, will you look at that crater?” And I remember this and I wrote about it a few years ago. And I said, “Am I really remembering that right?” They had invented the internet and Google, so I Googled “Astronauts Manischewitz wine.” And not only did they say it once, they said it like 20 times from the moon, all free impressions. My dad was a very good writer. And maybe I picked up a little from him. Thank you for the compliment and letting me tell you about my dad.

HAVE A FINANCIAL PLAN BEFORE WORRYING ABOUT INVESTMENTS

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, the bestseller here, the most popular one, it sounds like is pretty clearly The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, which I read pretty early on in my financial literacy journey. I don't know how many editions ago it was. Probably three or four editions ago. But I actually have that book fairly high on my recommended list in the personal finance section. I think the book section on personal finance is even better than the investing information you include in it. Why do you think it's so important to take care of the basics and have a financial plan in place before worrying about investments?

Andrew Tobias:
Well, first of all, most people, not your audience, your audience is doing very well, by and large, which is awesome and well deserved. By the way, sorry for the digression. But my plan is medical school should be free and it should be paid for by doubling tuition at law school. Too many lawyers and it's too hard for docs. It's a little late for your listeners, I guess, in case they adopt this plan.

But anyway, the basics of personal finance, having an overall strategy and getting into habits that will allow you to come out at a few thousand dollars ahead each year or a few hundred for just starting out, instead of a few thousand behind, which if you're a doc you can easily, I mean, everyone wants to lend you money. So, it's easy to build up all kinds of debt. But unless it's done very well and with lots of good strategy behind it, you don't want to be in debt at all. Your mortgage, of course, is different.

So, the basics and also from my point of view, most of the people in this country, again, not your audience, but they don't have any money. We have all kinds of problems. My only real talent in this thing is to try to make it fun enough so people get motivated to actually try getting better habits and see if you can make a game out of it.

And if you have a goal, you're not sacrificing a night out at the movies or sacrificing a Starbucks or whatever. Actually, this is part of a goal where in three years you're going to be out of debt and in 10 years you're going to have half a million dollars.

And then all of a sudden, you're doing it because you want to, not because, “Oh gosh, I can't afford to go to Starbucks or people are telling me not to.” Basically, I try to help people own their financial futures, and not to say that bad things can't happen. You can't totally control it.

But if you make a plan, at first, it's very hard as with any kind of new habit, but once you get going, it becomes part of who you are and you wind up being the person who doesn't smoke and has an extra million dollars when they're my age instead of having no money and lung cancer.

I mean, that one habit of not smoking, if you can, I tell people, forget the whole thing about health. It's probably good for you. It makes you sexier and all kinds of things. Think about the money. That's why you shouldn't smoke. And it's interesting, that's more of a motivator for some people.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I've been using that in my practice. I think you mentioned that in your book at some point. And I have had that financial discussion with patients many times. “Well, let's see. What are you paying for a pack? – $8. – How much do you smoke? Pack a day. Well, what's that work out to? $240 a month. That's $3,000 a year. That's a pretty nice vacation down to Mexico. Would you like to go to Mexico every year or would you like to keep smoking?” And it's the first time they've ever added that up.

Andrew Tobias:
It's so powerful and, also, it's tax-free. So, it's like getting a $5,000 raise or better still, if you put it in a Roth IRA and you start compounding it, it makes an amazing difference. Also, not to belabor the point, but your life insurance premiums will be a lot lower if you're not a smoker. So, you save a great deal of money there. And you'll have fewer sick days and less of all the other things that you don't have to buy. Here I am prescribing to you. You're going to be healthier. It saves a fortune.

So, those kinds of things. Making a budget. It sounds so boring, and I would tell people, “We'll start by making a budget.” And somebody finally said, “How do you do that?” And I'm thinking, “Duh. What do you mean, how do you do that?” So, I wound up writing. It's in the chapter in the book, but I think I wrote it for Parade. I used to have the cover of Parade Magazine one Sunday a year or something. And I think I did it for Parade for like 20 million people. And it was so fun because going through it, it's like naming the states. You go through all the states and you're up to 46 and then you're “Oh yeah, oh yeah. Okay. Missouri, Missouri.” And no offense for anybody listening from Missouri.

And 47. But boy, does it ever take a long time for you to come up with Delaware or whatever it is. It's very hard to get all 50, but the chapter on making a budget and remembering, “Oh yeah, lawn care, lawn care. Or maybe I should just do something different with the lawn.” It's a really useful exercise.

And keeping track, once you get in the habit, then you don't even have to think about it. But to get into the habits, you've got to organize yourself and make a plan and see the difference it can make and find ways that you can, instead of coming out $2,000 a year behind, come out $4,000 a year ahead. The difference over a lifetime is enormous.

Because last I looked, the money the bank would pay you on your savings was like a couple of percent. The money they would charge you on your credit card was like 20%. So, a lot of people who may even have some money in a savings account, they're earning 2% before tax with their right hand and paying 20%, which is not tax-deductible, on a credit card with their left hand. They need to get organized.

CHANGES IN THE FINANCIAL WORLD OVER THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. Now, the updates in this book, the number of editions in it is significant. I mean, this book has been in what? Six different decades this book has existed. Take us on a journey through history over that time period. What are the changes you've had to make to this book over the years? What changed in the financial world that made you say, “I got to do a new edition?”

Andrew Tobias:
Well, there are two kinds of things. One would be just world events and where we are in the cycle. It annoys some people because not everybody agrees with my perspective, but I usually recap where we've been and what the next few years may store.

In the last edition, I said interest rates are really low. They're not going to go lower. At some point, they're going to start to go higher. When they do, that's very tough on long-term bonds. It's a disaster for long-term bonds and higher interest rates are a challenge for stocks. And for that matter, for real estate, and for everything.

So, we had this long period. When I first wrote the book, it was just coming off of enormous inflation. Treasury bills were yielding 15%. Last year, they were yielding a 10th of a percent. A huge difference. So, we had this long period from 1982, basically, down to about five minutes ago when the wind was at our back and long-term interest rates were just unbelievably low. And just when you thought they couldn't get any lower, they kept getting lower. That's fantastic for the stock market. And it's fantastic for business and for everything else.

But in the last edition I said, I don't know how long, it's not going to get any better. And at some point, it's going to get worse. And this edition, which of course, I finished writing like two, three, four months ago. But this edition had said yeah, it looks like it really will get worse because with all the stimulus and with everything going on.

Anyway, part of the things that we could talk about all that, because this is on a lot of people's minds. Part of the differences are just to put it in historical context and help people see where we are in these long cycles of interest rates, productivity and technology and all that.

And part of it is just mechanical. Before there were IRAs, you couldn't write about them. And before there were Roth IRAs, which were better than traditional IRAs for almost everybody, you couldn't write about them. There were mutual funds, but then there were no-load mutual funds. And then there were exchange-traded funds which have an even lower expense ratio. That kind of thing.

Now, in this edition, I've added crypto, I've added venture investing, which is very fun. I've talked a little bit about meme stocks and Robinhood and all this stuff that people spend a lot of time thinking about. You've got to be very careful, and know what you're doing because most of this stuff is not a good idea for people.

CRYPTO IS NOT AN INVESTMENT

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Let's go through those three things that you changed in the most recent edition of the book or added to the book rather. I shouldn't say changed. I mean, you include crypto assets in the book and you've been observing investments for a long time. As you mentioned, you're 150 years old.

Andrew Tobias:
Yes, exactly.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I'm curious after watching markets for decades and decades, what's your take on crypto?

Andrew Tobias:
Crypto is not an investment. People who understand investing would agree. It's not productive. It doesn't pay dividends. It doesn't pay interest. It's not an investment. It's basically a substitute for money. But it's not a good substitute for money for two reasons. I mean, well, for a bunch of reasons, but money is two things. It's a medium of exchange and it's also an accounting mechanism, so you can make sensible decisions. And corporations do their bookkeeping in dollars in the US and much of the world, not in Ethereum or Ripple or Bitcoin or whatever.

Bitcoin is so volatile, obviously, that it's not like a medium of exchange and it's certainly not a way to do accounting. As money, it's not great. Also, it takes so much energy to make it. But one thing, I was just was watching David Pogue on CBS. He had a great little seven-minute segment on all this stuff. And he went through a lot of the caveats, but he missed the one that nobody ever thinks about, but at some point it's going to be an issue.

I have tons of friends and I'm sure you do. And a lot of the people listening have made a fortune on Bitcoin, at least on paper if they haven't cashed it in yet. So that's great and hooray for them.

But if you spend Bitcoin, let's say you buy a Tesla with Bitcoin. But even if you buy just a coffee at some coffee shop that takes Bitcoin, technically that's a taxable event. If you're buying the Tesla or the cup of coffee with Bitcoin selling at $30,000 today, or whatever it's going to be, but you paid only $1,500 for this $30,000 Bitcoin, it's almost entirely a capital gain, either long term or short term.

And yeah, you probably won't be audited. And certainly, for the cup of coffee, it's going to be very hard to figure out. But technically you have to pay tax on all the Bitcoin that you spend. People I don't think are taking that into account.

Anyhow, it may never go down from wherever it is today, but there's no particular reason for it to go up any faster than inflation. And it's not the best inflation hedge. What it really is, it's a hedge against collapse of the government and the world order, or at least the order in the particular country you live in. Most of us, the US.

And if you want to bet against the success of our government and society, it could be a good bet. I mean, look, especially if you bought it. I tried to buy some when it went from $30,000 back down to $3,000, I just figured I'll buy 10 of these things and either I'll have something fun to write about when I lose it all, maybe, and now it'd be worth a lot of money.

I didn't wind up doing it for kind of a boring, mechanical reason, but if I had it, I wouldn't probably sell it, at least not too much of it, because it's fun. You'll feel like an idiot if it goes to a million dollars of Bitcoin and you sold it. All that kind of stuff.

But a much better hedge against inflation for the long term are stocks, real estate or private businesses or your own education. Getting another degree to enhance your earning power. I don't think that ultimately, the US government is going to say, “Yeah, forget the dollar. Bitcoin is how we want to collect our taxes.” Anyway, that's crypto. I'm not a big fan, as you can tell. Sorry to go on at such length.

VENTURE INVESTING

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Let's talk for a minute about venture investing. What's your take on venture investing?

Andrew Tobias:
Well, there I am a big fan with an enormous caveat that you have to assume you're going to lose your money. This has to be money you can afford to lose, which is true with the stock market or anything else. But I had so much fun in the book. I thought of maybe reading it to you, but I don't want to do that.

But I had this long paragraph. I lost $30,000 with this thing. I lost $50,000 in that. When I was putting it together, I went, “Wow, I've lost even more than I thought in all these things. I've lost money in everything you can imagine.”

But every once in a while, you hit one that works. Honest Tea, if anybody drinks Honest Tea, we sold that to Coca-Cola and it worked out pretty well. And I had something that I didn't really know exactly what it was, but it was something having to do with logistics. So, the trucks would come back with something in them instead of empty.

And I vaguely remember the name, many, many years went by, like 12 years went by. And the thing, basically, it was going well at first, but then something bad happened and I lost track of it. I have an email account, you may do the same thing, which isn't my best email account. I have one for all the newsletters and all the spam and all this stuff. But I run my eye over it every once in a while. And I'm deleting hundreds at a time.

And I see a sender from Case Stack. I'm thinking, “Hmm, that sounds familiar. What is that?” And it had an attachment, so I was thinking, “Oh-oh. I hope they're not trying to put a virus in my computer, all that stuff, so I won't open the attachment, but I'll look at the email.” It said, “This isn't the email we sent you last week. This is something else you have to sign.” I said, “Oh, okay. They're finally going bankrupt. And they want me to sign waivers or whatever happens when they go bankrupt and you're a shareholder.”

But I looked and sure enough, the previous week they had sent me something with another attachment. And that email said we've just sold the company for $252 million. Please. I'd like to tell you. I own 10% of the company. Not quite but I own enough so that made up for an awful lot of mistakes. And the thing that I love about venture investing, other than it's fun and interesting, is depending on the venture, of course, but the ones I tend to invest in, if they work, will make the world better.

I don't know what's going to happen with my investment in real time, but if we get FDA approval and it works finally, and all this, everybody listening, when you take a flight on the 737 or an A320 at some point, not in the next few months, but in the next few years, you won't have to wait for a tug to pull you back out from the gate. And the plane will be able to twist when it gets to the gate and park parallel instead of nose in. So, you can board and deplane from the front and the back door, which cuts 15 minutes.

I mean, it's going to make every airline and every airport 10% or 15% more efficient because the time you spend on the ground is wasted and it's going to make every passenger etc. So, I have a whole bunch like that and some of them are going to fail, but if one or two succeed, I'll be able to go the next 150 years without having to work.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
So, what's a reasonable percentage of your portfolio to have in something like venture investing?

Andrew Tobias:
Well, for most people zero. But it depends on your overall circumstances. One way to do it, of course, is to go into funds that do this. Most of them, I have a lot of caveats in the book about why the expenses wind up being so much, and it's not necessarily the best way.

But there are some, where rather than you'll pick the venture yourself, you can diversify because you might be in 10 or 20 or 30 with professionals who spend a lot of time trying to figure out which ones are going to work. One of the funds that you can go into actually has a way to get people like us, who normally wouldn't be able to get into the really hot Silicon Valley stuff like Kleiner Perkins and all these big deal people do. They've kind of figured out a way to get the little guy into those things.

So, in my case, it's probably half my net worth, but I'm not typical. I'm very lucky. Everybody's different. But this sort of segues into another thought, if I can offer it, which is, you're a doctor, you're a surgeon, you're a dentist, you're doing incredibly important work. It's wonderful. Your goal isn't to become the richest man in the world, or be able to go into space on your own spaceship or anything. You have this great life. So, most of your money should be over time, at least the money that you want in the stock market, which is most of it for your long-term money. Most of it should be in index funds and you will do better than 90% of your friends and neighbors, and even those of your friends who went to business school instead of to medical school.

Index funds have the lightest possible jockey. Think of mutual funds as horses in a horse race. An index fund will have a 20-pound jockey. An actively traded fund will have 100 or a 200-pound jockey. Especially when you figure some of the tax consequences, it could be a 300 or 400-pound jockey.

Over the long run, most of the money should be on a regular basis of dollar-cost averaging, and should be in index funds. But if you're human and I think virtually all of the audience are, it's so boring. I think to carve out 10% or 20%, not more than 20% and it is kind of meaningless to be less than 10%, for speculative things in the stock market, not where you're trying to find crazy risks and you don't have to do it all at once.

But if you find some new medical device or something that you think is going to be great, and it hasn't been approved yet, but you know about it, because this is part of your field and you think this company could be really good, to put a little money into that. And if your son or your cousin or something has some money, to put five or six chips down in risky things, ones you lose on, which of course, it could be all five or six, but the ones you lose on up to $3,000 a year lowers your taxable income. And that saves you a little bit on taxes.

The ones you win on, and every so often you might have one where you do make 10 or 20 times your money, as long as you've held it for more than a year and a day, first of all, that's a nice, big win. But if you do any charitable giving, it shouldn't be with money and it shouldn't even be with stock. Although that's a great way to do it. It should be through a thing called either the Fidelity charitable gift fund or the Vanguard charitable gift fund or the Schwab gift fund. I don't want to go through all the details, but it makes it so much more convenient and so much more tax effective.

So, you have fun. Most of your money is sensibly invested, but you have some fun. And you have the tax control to come out ahead, even if you break even. And I hope you do better than break even, but if you just break even after-tax, you come out ahead. So that's a little piece of this.

MEME STOCKS

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, speaking of index funds and maybe the opposite of index funds, you include a section about meme stocks in your newest edition. And I understand you have a connection here. You've got a cousin that's the CEO of AMC. Give us your take on meme stocks.

Andrew Tobias:
Meme stocks are the notion, what really happened is as a lot of people know, there was a company called GameStop that was in big trouble and there were some others, but GameStop was the first one. And a lot of very sophisticated professional investors shorted the stock, knowing it was going to go down because it had to go bankrupt.

And somehow on Reddit, one place or another, little guys were angry about this and rightly. It’s tough being a little guy when there were so many people with 400-foot yachts and all this stuff, and they said, heck no, we're going to buy this. It was $3 a share or $4, whatever it was. I'm going to buy 50 shares, $200. And millions of people bought the shares.

The people who shorted either had to, or got scared and started buying to cover their shorts. And the stock at one point, I think it hit $480 up from $4 or $2 or whatever it was. And this was the triumph of the little guy, not because GameStop was suddenly going to make so much profit and pay out so much dividends for any business reason. It's just the crowd, they like tulips. As long as it's going up, it's going up. As long as someone will pay more. It’s musical chairs.

So, my baby cousin who is not 150, he's actually the CEO of AMC. And I love the movies and I love my cousin and I love popcorn, but they were in pretty rough shape. Because with COVID, nobody was going to the movies and the movie business wasn't spectacular even before because with Netflix and everything else and streaming. And the stock went from like a couple of bucks up to, I think, $78 or something, which makes 35 times your money in a few months. That's pretty appealing.

Anyway, I could tell you lots more about that, but suffice to say I have a wonderful cousin. I don't think it was a good buy at $78. I didn't buy it at $78. And meme stocks, this is if you want to play musical chairs or you want to go to Las Vegas, obviously some people go to Las Vegas and they hit the jackpot. But it's not because they were so smart in Las Vegas unless they are counting cards, in which case they're going to get their knees broken.

And yeah, the slow but steady wins the race. And my job in the book is basically to try to make it fun or give people enough confidence so they don't spend so much money on professional advice. It's going to be well-intended, but if spending $2,000 a year on professional advice is going to have you do really well, and $6,000 will make you do three times, it doesn't work that way.

The professionals do average. They have good years, they have bad years, depending. But by and large, with rare exceptions like Warren Buffet and Peter Lynch and all that, you can't have everybody doing above average. So, the trick is to keep your expenses really low, which is why you want a 20-pound jockey, not a 200-pound jockey.

HIGH EARNERS’ FINANCIAL MISTAKES

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Our audience is composed of high-income professionals, most of them doctors. What financial mistakes do you see those folks making specifically? And do you have any specific advice for them?

Andrew Tobias:
Well, I do know that doctors and dentists and so on, are real targets. Every life insurance agent in the world wants to sell whole life or variable life, universal life, one of these life insurance products that are impossible to understand and compare, which is one of the reasons that they're so profitable for the insurance companies.

And so, your audience are targets for all kinds of sales pitches. You may need life insurance, but you probably want inexpensive term life insurance that doesn't require a salesman. There are some people who look for somebody with a very large medical practice. You have an accountant, talk to your accountant. Don't listen to me about some of this stuff, because there are situations where you might want a different setup because of taxes and one thing or another.

But by and large, you don't want that. You don't want to be sold annuities by an annuity salesman who gets a huge commission. And one of the things the book does is it just goes through all these things that you don't want to do to kind of arm you for the conversation when your college classmate, who may be a terrific woman or a lovely guy, and they would like to see you do well, but they make a big commission and they persuaded themselves that this is something you should buy.

So, the most important thing I guess, is that, yeah, you may well have your accountant and you may have people you trust, but don't spend a lot of money on the expenses on the frictional cost of this stuff, because that does not add to your return.

It used to be that people assumed you could get 10% a year in the stock market. At least how could you not? So, to pay 1%, okay. But 1% is 10% of 10%. So, 10% is not nothing. And if we have a period where you only get 3% or 4% in the stock market, 1% of 3% or 4% is a lot of it. And you say, how could we ever have a period like that? Well, I remember 1966 when again, did I mention that I'm 150 years old? In 1966, I'm actually 75. So, I'm half. This is half true. Everything I say by the way, half true.

So, in 1966, I remember the day. The Dow Jones industrial average broke through a thousand for the first time in history. It didn't close above a thousand, but intraday broke through a thousand. It took 16 years. So, 1982, I think I had that right. But 16 years to get back to 1,000. 16 years is a long time to wait. Not for me, by now, it goes very fast. But if somebody listening is in their 30s or 40s, 16 years to break even on your stock in GameStop or whatever, it's a long time.

So, it's really important to keep expenses low because you can't assume, especially your after-tax return and your after-inflation return. I mean, it's tough to make 3% after-tax after inflation on your money. The easiest way to improve your return is not to give up expenses that you don't have to give up.

INFLATION

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, inflation is now over 8%. Now you were a columnist, you were an author the last time we had significant inflation back in the '70s.

Andrew Tobias:
That's right.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
What advice do you have for our listeners regarding inflation now?

Andrew Tobias:
I like to think this is going to be different because aspects of it are very much tied to the aftermath of COVID, all that pent-up demand and obviously Ukraine and oil and oil prices or energy prices go into everything. So, it may well be that over the next year or two, we get this more or less under control, things come back to more or less normal. We could have a recession in the meantime, I don't know. And interest rates, I think we're done with crazy low-interest rates, but you never know.

But it's also possible that it's going to be tougher than that and it'll be inflation of the type that we had in the '70s. Eventually, we will fix it because we have to. And everybody, the Fed knows we have to, the Congress knows we have to, the voters know we have to. So, we'll fix it. It may be painful.

One thing to know is it's not going to be forever, I think. I don't think the dollars can become worthless the way the Russian ruble did in 1917 or the way the German mark did in the Weimar Republic in the '30s where you needed a wheelbarrow of cash.

So, number one, I think we may get off easy, or at least it's certainly going to end. I don't think it's going to be like it was in the '70s. I could be wrong. But the other thing, an even more important thing is, whatever happens, people are going to need places to live and places to work and the things that they buy.

And if you own part of the company that sells the now $100 movie ticket or the $200 basketball or the $41 pound of whatever it is, if you own the business and the business is well run with not too much debt and can survive this inflation itself in any recession we have, you will own, I'm not saying it as simply as I should.

Think of it this way. You own a house. Oh, it's top of the value. Well, it's still a four-bedroom house. It hasn't doubled in bedrooms or in bathrooms or in swimming pools. You still own a house. It's kept up with inflation. If you own stock in a company, it depends on the company and how it's run, but basically over the long run, no matter what happens with inflation, your shares in that company could well, not only keep up with inflation, but because the company is productive and maybe growing and becoming more productive with better technology, you can do great with the company.

So, you certainly don't want a lot of money sitting in the bank. Most importantly, you don't want any of it in long-term bonds because you're going to get killed in inflation. I tend to run on at some length. The advantage of the book is I can go over and over with a scalpel and I can try to say things. I write so much better than I talk because I can slim it down and slim it down.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
It's interesting. I thought I had a deal with the Fed. I thought the deal was if inflation starts going up, they're going to raise interest rates. And I don't feel like they kept up their end of the deal. They kept them low for so long that now even these six little raises they're planning this year, it feels like too little too late. I mean, 10-year treasury yields are 2.8%. My high yield savings account is paying 0.5% and inflation is at 8%. What do you think about the path the Fed steered us down the last couple of years? Are they behind the eight ball?

Andrew Tobias:
Well, we have big challenges ahead. That's for sure. I don't know if the Fed did it wrong. I do think the stimulus may have been, there were reasons for it, but to send money to people who didn't lose their jobs and send them $1,400, it didn't seem to me as targeted as to send it to the people who actually needed it.

There are things that in hindsight, especially if there weren't the mechanics, that could be very difficult. It's one thing to have the idea. It's another thing to do it in a way that doesn't involve fraud and months and months of adjudication and all that. There are things that probably could have been done better, but people weren't thinking about inflation until quite recently. But we did have the possibility of a global depression and collapse. And those are very hard to come back from. You don't flip the switch on that.

So, if the Fed and if the stimulus by saving the world from global depression, which also can lead to more wars and to civil war and to horrible things. The bad things that haven't happened, they could have happened and we kept them from happening. And I think that we should feel pretty good that we kept them from happening. Now we have some inflation to deal with. In the next couple of years, hopefully, we'll get it under control, ideally without a recession. But we'll see what happens.

I got to interview Paul Volcker when he was chairman of the Fed in that period when inflation was 15% and treasury bills were yielding 15% and mortgages were as much as like 18%. Crazy times. It was the most interesting few hours I ever spent. I was like 12 years old and he was this incredible person with a 20-inch cigar and his feet up. It was awesome.

What I took away from it was that, yeah, of course, he's a superb economist and he's a brilliant guy. He was a real hero to the country, I think. He's the one who put the screws on the whole thing and gave us this terrible recession but killed inflation.

But it turns out that the job of being the chairman of the Fed, even though you've got to be a great economist and all that, you're really the national psychologist. You've got to try to get the collective head of the American people on what are they expecting and how do you get them not to expect inflation? Because if people expect inflation, then we're going to have inflation, if it gets to be a syndrome where no one can imagine that it's going to be tamed. Right now, people can absolutely imagine, and they should imagine that it'll be tamed because it will be.

But anyhow, Volker was a hero and we had a very rough recession that was necessary. This time, we absolutely may not need a terrible recession and we may not even need a recession at all. Oil prices can come down very quickly.

Some months ago, not more than a year ago, people who own oil stocks were moaning that the price was so low and now no one thinks it can ever get low again. It's going to come back down in part because renewables are getting so much more competitive. It's cheaper now, renewables, than coal and fossil fuels in many situations. And that's just accelerating. And there are tons of reasons to be optimistic.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Investors have to be optimistic. That's kind of the nature of being an investor. And usually, despite the fact that being a pessimist sounds smarter, the optimists have won historically.

Andrew Tobias:
Yeah. That's a very good point.

POLITICAL POLARIZATION

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Let's get even more political for a minute. Not for a long tangent, but just a brief one. Although you count many Republicans among your friends, you served as the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee for many years. Now, many people view today's political polarization as a huge problem. I'm curious if you do, and if so, what do you think should be done about it?

Andrew Tobias:
It is a terrible problem with polarization and it's playing right into Putin's hands. I think he had something to do with Brexit. I think that he wants us to be as polarized as possible because if we're polarized, we don't get anything done and it could lead to all kinds of terrible stuff. It's not only Putin, of course, but there's a lot of money to be made in the extremes. You raise a lot more money, whether you're a media outlet or a political fundraiser, if you scream and shout horrible things that might have a grain of truth, but are so overdone on either side. And it's a terrible problem.

I'm a liberal, but basically a moderate Democrat. Eisenhower, and Nixon, of course, he had his issues. But Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. A long time ago, I was on a radio talk show for one of the previous editions of this thing. The publicist warned me, and this was before there was even really a right-wing. This was way back. I think before the Tea Party, a long time ago. The publicist said, “I just want to tell you this. This fellow, he's a lot of fun. You'll like him, but he's very right-wing. You should just know that.”

So, we get to the call in section of the show and somebody asked me about something and I realized, “Oh, what a softball. I'm going to convert every right-wing listener.” And I said, “Listen, Peterson, even Peterson, who was Nixon's commerce secretary, even says, da, da, da.” And the host of the thing starts to laugh and I get a little nervous. I said, “Why are you laughing?” He said, “Listen, you're a nice guy, but you don't get it. To us Nixon was a socialist.” And Reagan, of course, by now, Reagan could never be. This isn't the Republican party. So, if it were the Republican party that most of us knew until about 20 years ago, okay, you might disagree, but you disagree agreeably and you compromise and all that.

Compromise is really important if we're going to get anywhere. So, yeah, it's a terrible problem. And the solutions are fixing the gerrymandering and there are ways to do that. And for primaries, especially mail in ballots for primaries, so that you don't have to be a real super-duper activist to take the time to go to the primary. We should get rid of the caucuses. It should all be primaries. It should be easy to vote in the primaries so more people do it, not just the extremes, so average people do it.

And there should be rank choice voting. It's also called instant runoff voting, which means you vote for Ralph Nader as your first choice because, “Oh my God, he's fantastic.” Or you vote for Marjorie Taylor Green because, “Oh my God, this is the real truth.” But if need be as your second choice, you would vote for Gore instead of Bush, let's say, or you would vote for whoever is on the other side instead of Marjorie Taylor Green.

And that gives moderates. It gives all the politicians some reason to try to appeal to people in the middle, people who are not rabid left-wing or rabid right-wing. So those structural changes which are possible and we're making some progress in some of them, that would help to deal with the polarization, and we need to.

TOBIAS’ CRUSADE AGAINST SMOKING

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Another area of your life that I think people would find really interesting is you have been on a bit of a personal crusade against smoking. Can you tell us about some of the things you did to fight smoking?

Andrew Tobias:
Well, I'm just a bit player in this, but I did a couple of things. Every summer, airplanes would go up and down the beach with these banners, “Newport, the perfect recess.” Now they're not trying to appeal to kids. Tobacco companies do not want kids to smoke. So, recess, which used to be what you had in between classes in elementary school. That just happens to be a coincidence.

But anyway, “Newport, the perfect recess.” And there were a couple of others. I forget now. I have to look. But after a couple of summers, I called up and I found it's not that expensive to get one of these planes. So, I hired a plane to follow the other plane. And mine said, “Newport, the permanent recess.” And I had another one, “Larry Trish sells cancer sticks.”

PACE YOURSELF

I had all these planes following their planes. The following summer, they stopped. So that was one. And the other, I went to Russia back when everything was changing. I had read in the Wall Street Journal that you could buy a minute of time or 30 seconds on the nightly news for $3,000. And I figured, “Wow, I got $3,000. I even have $30,000. I'll buy 10, 30 second spots.”

By the time I got over there for various reasons, it turned out it wasn't 30 seconds. It was a minute. And it wasn't $3,000. It was $1,200. And there were only three networks back then. So, I took for 15 nights night after night on all three networks in December when it was way too dark and cold to go outside during the nightly news. And you couldn't mute the TV and go to the other room for beer, because they didn't have remote controls. This was like 1992 and things were pretty primitive back then.

So, I annoyed the entire former Soviet Union with my dreadful high school Russian saying, each of the ads was different, but the tagline of each one was, “Kids, don't become slaves to the tobacco companies like your parents.” And my reasoning was you can't tell kids what not to do, because that's not going to work. But if you tell them that their parents are kind of dumb, that they might react to.

Anyway, I know it annoyed the whole former Soviet Union because about six months later, somebody sent me a tape. They had made a spoof, somebody on a big popular comedy show. They had spoofed my terrible American accent and all that. So yeah, kids, don't smoke. And doctors know this better than anybody. And you have shown how you can turn it into a financial thing and get people to stop smoking that way.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, our time is getting short, but tell us what you're working on now. Here's the part where you should hold up the book for those watching on YouTube. Show them the book cover.

Andrew Tobias:
No one is still watching or listening. We've been going for three hours. I'm now 152 years old. Here's what. The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. And what am I working on now? I have little daily blog posts, most days they started out. I've done about 6,500 of them. So, if you've missed any of them, they're all archived. And if you have like two minutes go to andrewtobias.com. Sometimes I offer irresponsible stock recommendations for money that you can truly afford to lose. I always stress that. And as my readers can tell you, we truly have lost on many of them, but others have worked out quite well.

But much of it by now is kind of politics and what's going on in Ukraine. After 200,000 years, when nothing pretty much happened until somebody invented fire and somebody thought of the wheel. These were big things and language was good. But basically, nothing happened until what? 10,000 years ago, and some cave paintings and some more things.

And then the Romans learned how to do indoor plumbing, but they forgot. So that didn't really count. Gutenberg is 500 years ago with the printing press. That was pretty big. And since then, it has just speeded up until what? 150 years ago, information could never travel more than seven miles an hour, as fast as a horse could run or whatever.

The next 10 or 20 years will set the trajectory. We are either on the cusp of unparalleled prosperity as a species. Cancer, in a few years, you go, they'll just take a pill or they'll do a little wand thing and the cancer's gone. The vaccines we're able to do now, which by the way, were DARPA. Hooray for Moderna and for Pfizer. But it's DARPA that did the underlying, which is the big, bad government got this thing going.

You are on a cusp of unbelievable prosperity, where almost everybody could have a decent, comfortable life and all that. Or more likely, probably, we're about to hurdle off the rails as a species. The cockroaches will be here, but we won't. There are so many ways this could go wrong.

So, this is a time to pay attention and to figure out how you want to live your life and how much of the world’s resources- can you have a good time living light on the land? If the only way to be happy is to have something that consumes a huge amount of fossil fuel and so on and so forth. Well, okay. But if you could find another way, it might be better and might save you a lot of money and set you up for a better retirement.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Last question. Our time is now short, but you've got the ear of 30,000 or 40,000 high income professionals, mostly doctors. What have we not yet talked about today that you think they should know?

Andrew Tobias:
All right. I guess one of the things that I like to say, and many of your listeners do know this. But I think that happiness, which is after all, what we're all after. Happiness is a matter of direction, not amount. Especially for your younger listeners, I think if you had two families. One earning $50,000 a year, but somehow knowing that it's headed up to $150,000. And another earning $500,000 a year but somehow knowing it's headed down to $250,000.

Like I said, $150,000 and the second one will never get lower than $250,000. I think the first family earning $50,000 is a happier family or happier individual doc than the second, because things are looking up. Things are going in the right direction. Things can get better every year.

So, what I counsel everybody, and I apologize, because you have a very sophisticated audience. So, this may be too simple minded, but pace yourself. Pace yourself. A luxury, once sampled, becomes a necessity. So maybe you can afford, especially if you take a loan, and you can certainly get a loan as we were talking about before.

You can afford to go first class, but once you get used to first class, it's so depressing to have to go to Greece or to the Bahamas or someplace in coach. Oh my God. Anyhow, it's a direction, not amount. So, these philosophical kinds of things maybe are more important in the long run than figuring out which index fund to buy or whether or not to go into crypto.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
Awesome. Andy, thank you so much for being on the White Coat Investor podcast today. For the listeners out there, check out his book. If you have not yet read this one, this is one of my favorite books on both personal finance and investing. The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. You can pick it up at Amazon or wherever you like buying books. And thanks so much for being on the podcast and sharing your wisdom.

Andrew Tobias:
Thank you. It was a lot of fun.

Dr. Jim Dahle:
I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. It's always good fun to get somebody that you've read their work and followed them a little bit and actually get to know them a little bit personally. So that was a lot of fun.

You can check out his book, there'll be a link in the show notes that you can check out. While you're there, check out our link to our new asset protection book. The White Coat Investors Guide to Asset Protection. It's my newest book. It may not be as entertaining as Andy's book, but it is a comprehensive book on the subject. If you are interested in anything about asset protection for physicians, this is the book to check out. There will be a link in the show notes for that as well or you can just look it up on Amazon.

SPONSOR

Have you ever considered a different way of practicing medicine? Whether you're burned out, need to change a pace, or looking to supplement your income, locum tenens might be the solution for you.

Not sure where to start? locumstory.com is a place where you can get real unbiased answers to your questions. They answer basic questions like what is locum tenens, to more complex questions about pay ranges, taxes, various specialties, and how locum tenens can work for you. Go to locum story.com and get the answers.

Thanks for leaving us five-star reviews. Most recent one came in saying “Great show. I really enjoy your show. After listening to a few episodes, I was totally hooked. It has great direction. It deals with very instructive and interesting topics. I really love this program.” Thank you, Mariann.

For the rest of you, keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. We'll see you next on the White Coat Investor podcast.

DISCLAIMER

The host 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.

INTRODUCTION

This is the White Coat Investor podcast Milestones to Millionaire – Celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.

Megan:
Hey everybody, it's Megan, your podcast producer. I'm just here to remind you that Dr. Dahle is still resting and recovering from his accident. But don't worry, he will be back soon. He's doing well. Please enjoy this episode.

Josh:
Welcome to Milestones to Millionaire episode number 191 – Cash Flowing a Medical and Doctorate Degree.

Our sponsor today is Origin Investments. Origin Investments is a private real estate manager specializing in multifamily investments, managing over $3.5 billion in transactions since 2007. They leverage their market experience and MultilyticsSM, their proprietary machine learning models forecasting rent growth, to help them select properties in high-growth US markets.

Their Income Plus Fund and Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund III are designed to offer tax efficiency, yield, and growth while minimizing portfolio volatility. Their affiliate partner, Origin Credit Advisors, offers the Strategic Credit Fund, a private credit fund for qualified purchasers intended to provide a steady stream of risk-adjusted income with capital protection. Safeguard and grow your wealth with Origin Investments today at whitecoatinvestor.com/origin.

And make sure to stick around today after the interview for our Finance 101 with Tyler. He's going to be talking about high yield savings accounts today.

INTERVIEW

Okay, let's welcome in today, Jacob and Jacqueline to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. Thanks guys for being here. It's a pleasure to have both of you. What is the milestone today?

Jacqueline:
Yes, our milestone is that my husband, Jacob, finished medical school and residency debt-free, and I also completed my family nurse practitioner, my doctorate program debt-free, and we are also positive a million in assets and cash.

Josh:
You're positive a million, and you cash flowed your schooling, based on what you're saying?

Jacqueline:
Yes, all of our schooling. My nurse practitioner and his med school and residency.

Josh:
Okay, that's amazing. I've listened to every Milestones to Millionaire podcast. I've listened to a lot of them, and I don't remember somebody cash flowing their med school education, much less cash flowing their med school education and a doctorate degree. It's crazy. When I hear that out loud, it seems bonkers to me, but when you say it and you lived it, what kind of goes through your head?

Jacqueline:
I honestly have gotten emotional preparing for this podcast because I just think it's miraculous, really.

Jacob:
There have been so many miracles, countless miracles. I think one of the biggest milestones that we haven't accomplished is through that, we actually have had technically four kids, and those kids are our biggest milestone and the miracle we've had, but it's through all of the simple things and the millions of blessings.

We never did receive financial support from our family, but we did receive so much emotional and physical support. And of course, we couldn't have done it without them and we couldn't have done it without God.

Josh:
Okay, before we get into the how you did this miraculous thing, let's break it down a little bit. What exactly do you guys do? What are your professions? How far are you guys out of school and what part of the country do you guys live?

Jacob:
We just moved back. We were in Philadelphia for five years. I am an urologist and just started working in Idaho, my hometown, where I grew up. I'm the first urologist. I joined another practice. I have four other partners. And Jacqueline, she has her doctorate in nursing practice. She's a family nurse practitioner. And she finished school five years ago.

Josh:
Okay, were you guys going to school at the same time, medical school and getting a doctorate?

Jacob:
Yes.

Josh:
Wow. And then Jacob was in residency and Jacqueline was working as an MP. Okay. I still kind of blows my mind, guys, that you paid, you cash flowed it and that you have a million dollars and you're just kind of starting your careers. You said a couple of times it was a miracle, it was a miracle, but you guys must've had a plan of attack going into it. This didn't just happen by accident, I assume.

Jacob:
It's a very interesting question. Can I take that one, hun? Because I think she was the mastermind behind it and it was all inspired. We got married and then a couple of weeks later, I started med school. And in my mind, I'd always planned on trying to do it debt-free and I procured a plan. And that was by doing it through the government, through the National Rural Health Service Corps.

And if I were to do that, Jacqueline mentioned that I would need to do one of five professions and I would preclude myself from maybe doing anything I wanted. And I'll never forget that night that after we got married, she said, “Are you sure you want to do this? We can still do it debt-free. God will provide a way. I'll provide a way if you want to do anything else besides the National Rural Health Service Corps.” And we prayed and we felt strong that we should not do that. And our purpose lied elsewhere. And so, we chose to just go for it. And we denied the National Rural Health Service Corps and Jacqueline went to work.

Josh:
Jacqueline, how much were you working when this was happening? How many hours a week were you working?

Jacqueline:
Well, I would work as an ER nurse, so I could do any shifts during the day and night. And then when I started my education at Washington State, I also taught during the daytime. I would get off a shift and then I would go teach with students. And then I also got some scholarships. My doctorate, I made money going and getting my nurse practitioner because I was working kind of around the clock.

Josh:
Did you have time to sleep?

Jacqueline:
Some, yeah. In between taking care of puppies, yeah.

Josh:
The two puppies. This is before you had kids?

Jacqueline:
Yeah.

Jacob:
Yeah. Before we had kids. Once we started medical school, we decided that we wanted to be able to have a small house and didn't want to pay rent. And so, we found an old abandoned house, had been abandoned for about a dozen years, figured out who owned it and offered a deal. The deal was we'd fix it up if we could live for rent free. And of course, it took a lot of work, but I remember her coming back after a shift in the middle of the night and having just a couple hours to sleep and we were still remodeling it. And so, we didn't have any heat in the house. It was winter time. She slept on the floor. Do you remember that, Jacqueline?

Jacqueline:
Yeah.

Jacob:
She slept next to the fireplace for a couple hours to make it through until you had to go teach. So that's when she slept.

Josh:
That's amazing. What kind of family support did you have? I guess they didn't pay for any kind of medical support or anything like that, but what did you guys learn from your family? How'd you guys grow up?

Jacqueline:
My dad is the genius behind that one. He really taught us how to be frugal and you can either make money or you can save money. And if you can do both, that's where you can be financially independent. He taught me at an early age. I had a little fence painting business and I bred dogs when I was little and earned things. He taught me.

And then during our schooling in these things, our parents, they didn't give us handouts, but they definitely were there to help us. And at a point when Jacob was doing some rotations that were rotating, we stayed with them for a little bit so we could save on rent too. They helped us in so many different ways, but mostly helping us be frugal.

Josh:
Jacob, was there a mindset that you learned from your parents?

Jacob:
I grew up on a potato farm. Yeah, there's no success can come without working your tail off. Luck comes from working hard.

Josh:
Okay. I'm curious, Jacob, it sounded like you were a little, I don't know if tentative is the right word, but you were certainly considering some options and Jacqueline was like, “No, we're going to do this. We're going to go debt-free all the way through.” I guess you guys were on the same page for the most part, the entire time or did Jacqueline kind of inspire you, Jacob, to “Okay, yeah, we can do this?”

Jacob:
She's always inspiring in every way, but I think we were a really good team. She would plant the garden, we'd eat the tomatoes and the pumpkins year round and I would remodel the houses and figure out how to sublease out the houses so that we could make a little extra money on top.

Josh:
You think you guys are getting emotional. I'm getting a little emotional here. This is good stuff, guys. Okay, let's break it down how you were able to cash flow because you talked about puppies a couple different times, you're talking about a garden, talking about flipping houses and stuff. What did you guys do to be able to cash flow all the way through?

Jacqueline:
Okay, we can give you a huge long list.

Josh:
I want to hear the list.

Jacqueline:
You want to hear the list, okay.

Josh:
I want to hear the list because I'm looking at it right now and it's bonkers. Go ahead, tell me.

Jacqueline:
Okay, I'll give the list. But also side note, Jacob's mom and his brothers too helped us so much renovate these homes. A couple of things is Jacob, he taught me this, he doesn't believe in paying rent to anyone. Like we said, the first home we found and we convinced someone, they paid for the supplies and we renovated the house for them. Pretty much our labor paid for our rent. Through that, we gained the skills and the courage.

So, the next home that we needed to live in, we purchased for a very cheap price and renovated. We purchased the home for $37,000. And then we renovated it. It's worth a lot more now and we were actually able to obviously sell it with a huge profit, but then also the person who bought it from us, we were able to carry the loan and they're paying a high interest rate to us.

Jacob:
9% interest right now still.

Jacqueline:
A 9% interest rate to us. That helped feed into our next home we purchased in New Jersey for residency. We purchased it for $150,000. We didn't get to see it in person, but we knew it was just a mess. It was a foreclosure. There was no electricity, no plumbing, no HVAC, no heating. Squirrels in the rafters, mice, asbestos. It was a mess, this house. I wish our podcast could show pictures, but hopefully that gives you a good picture.

So we moved in. I had a two-year-old and a six-month-old and this house was like, we used a floodlight to figure out lighting in the home and we grilled outside on this janky grill. It took five years to take up the whole residency, we finally finished renovating this house. And through that process, obviously we were able to sell it for a lot more than we bought it for. And it had a piece of land on the back. We had two pigs, over 50 chickens, guinea hens that we ate their eggs. We had a huge garden spot. We ate out of our garden pretty much year round.

And then in New Jersey, they sell deer apples and deer potatoes, because people like to put them out for their deers. But I would eat that, we would buy those. And we would pick peaches. We picked hundreds of pounds of peaches and pears. We got a truckload of onions one time from someone. We ate our pumpkins even one year during med school because we had a lot of squash and tomatoes. The houses now are provided for the gardens. We had enough room for gardens. And then we were able to do seven litters of Chocolate Lab AKC hunting puppies. They're not just like mutt dogs. They were just incredible dogs that we've sold across the nation.

Josh:
How do you get into dog breeding? How does that work?

Jacqueline:
Good question. I loved dogs growing up. And so I did it. And then Jacob had his dog. And then we were like, “Oh my goodness, these puppies.” And they're really like papered championship lines. Seriously, one day, I remember vividly, this wasn't just like, “Oh, we had all this money all this time.” No, it was like every time when tuition was coming up or every time when we needed, we knew there was a deadline, you're going to need to make a big payment.

And I remember one time I was praying the night before we did all, the wherever finances, I was considered doing travel like nursing. Because I had finished my nurse practitioner. So I was going to do these, do 13 weeks in Timbuktu so we can make a lot of money or something to figure out how we can make it work. And then I woke up that morning and our dog had gone into heat. And so, that was like a huge miracle to find, it's silly, but blood on the floor from her because we knew she was in heat that she could, she was early, but we could breed her and she has a very happy, wonderful princess crown at our house. We love her, but we're so very grateful for her. That was one of the ways that we got into this.

Josh:
And Jacob said he grew up on a potato farm. Jacqueline had you lived off the land before? Did you know how to do that?

Jacqueline:
I hadn't lived off the land like that. No, he's the gardener.

Josh:
Oh, and then you guys have four kids on top of that. All this stuff together with the four kids, it's like quite a recipe of something that's going on there. Some kind of strange meal or something that you guys are eating every day. How did you guys raise four kids in the midst of all this stuff?

Jacob:
They were part of our life. We would take them to do things. They learned how to garden. We made them work. We still do. We have four kids ranges seven to almost two. And they were in it too. We wanted them to experience all of it. There's no reason to wait. Take it all and just pray that it all work out. And as long as you work hard enough, it will.

One of the things that we haven't mentioned yet, Jacqueline, is the missionaries. We had it in the back of our house, we built another house behind it. And we rented that out to the missionaries for five years. That brought in another source of income.

Josh:
And you guys are landlords again for more people.

Jacqueline:
And in med school, we subletted this land. We got approval from who were renting. But that land, that little house that we were renovating for them for rent, we subletted part of it for a tiny house to come and rent from us. We were making money, not only paying rent, but making a little money. That also has been a real blessing.

And I think too, we're kind of going at it backwards. I think though our priorities were straight. God is number one in our life. We believe in the law of tithing. It sounds crazy, but we also contributed to our church fully through this whole process. And we always had exactly amount.

And then too, the biggest milestone for me, more than the millions that someone can ever see in my bank account, is that I have a marriage that I love my husband, and we're a team, and we have our kids. Beyond that, what else matters? And I think when you put God and those people you love first in your life, then everything else figures itself out. It comes with a lot of work and pain and joy, but that's what life is, right? But when you have your priorities straight in every way, then it all comes together.

Josh:
Guys, this is the most wholesome episode I've ever heard. This is amazing. You guys are great. Okay, real quick, the range of salaries. You guys already have a million dollars, basically. What is the salary like now? And then what are the plans in the future? Where do you want to go with this?

Jacob:
We landed into such a great, great position, and it was procured to a certain extent, and we made it happen. We feel very grateful. I have a base salary guaranteed income of half a million for the first year. That doesn't include another $150,000 in rent, call, and other ancillary things. And hopefully that will grow.

I am part of a physician-owned hospital, actually. So, I hope I'll have opportunities to buy into that, as well as other ancillary services. Hopefully that income can grow. We've already met with our accountant and tax advisor to try to find out other ways to shelter our money and find places to put it. We're really excited, and we're grateful for all the White Coat Investor podcasts and things along the way that we've listened to. And then beyond that, our kids are our highest priority. Jacqueline, she loves working. I don't know, what are your plans, honey?

Jacqueline:
Also, the other miracle thing for me is I've been able to be with my kids. I did blessing through COVID, I did a lot of telehealth visits, and I taught courses through a college long distance. I was able to be with my kids, and that too is a miracle for me. Right now, I'm honestly not running off to the clinic. My focus right now is at home. I think eventually I'd love to have a holistic clinic where we pull in everything, all the pieces together, but also the blessing of this financial situation that we've had is that I'm home with my kids right now, which I really appreciate.

Josh:
Yeah, that's so important. And so, you're right, it's such a blessing for you guys. For anybody who can do that. Okay, one last question. What bit of advice do you guys have for somebody who's 10 years behind you? Maybe somebody's going into the NP field or going to be an RN or something. The other person is going to maybe go to medical school. What kind of advice do you have for a couple who doesn't want to be saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt?

Jacqueline:
Make sure you have your priorities straight. Set goals together and keep them. And remember that God and your marriage, nothing is more important than that. So if you're taking an extra shift, if you're moonlighting, remember though, if your marriage is kind of falling apart or something's rocky, that's what matters most. So, don't push that off till residency. Don't think that you're going to figure things out later.

Number one, put God first and your relationships. And then number two is get creative. You can eat a pumpkin. They're actually really tasty. We heated our house with wood. It was extremely expensive to heat this house that we had in New Jersey because of just the walls and everything. And so, we heated our house with wood. We did dog breeding. You can either save money or make money. So if you're doing one of those, you're becoming more financially independent. And don't be afraid to set high goals. And if you make them with God and with your partner, you can do it.

Jacob:
We must be married, hun, because I agree with everything you just said. That's the same advice that I was going to offer. Priorities and finagling. There's always a way if you just sit down together and work through the numbers and try to think outside the box. And I would hope that this can sort of be a paradigm shift. We didn't get any handouts. We got a lot of help from family. We didn't get necessarily cheap tuition. I went to a for-profit school. It was over $50,000 a year. She got her doctorate of nursing and she figured out how to pay for it. And I figured out how to save a lot of money during that time.

And then things flipped and she figured out how to save a lot of money through residency and I made a little bit of money. But being a partner and making goals and then having faith that you can achieve those goals and don't lose sight of it are the keys to at least our success with God's help.

Josh:
That's amazing. Jacob and Jacqueline, thanks so much for being here. A real pleasure having you on and very inspirational. Thanks guys.

Jacob:
It's an honor.

Jacqueline:
Thank you.

Josh:
Okay, I don't think I've ever heard an interview like that before on this podcast. What an amazing couple Jacqueline and Jacob are. What an amazing family they've created. The amount of side gigs they've done and been creative about was astounding. I was reading over it before the show started and I couldn't wait to talk to them about breeding puppies and growing pumpkin in a garden. And they really delivered.

It was an amazing interview and just an amazing job. And I'm sure we're going to have them back at some point soon when they have millions and millions and millions of dollars and can cash flow their kids' college and medical school and everything else that kids do. That's what they do. It just goes to show you can be creative in how you pay for things. Just amazing stuff.

FINANCE 101: HIGH YIELD SAVINGS ACCOUNTS

Tyler Scott:
All right. Thanks Josh. And hello everyone. My name is Tyler Scott. I am a former dentist and current financial planner and general friend of WCI here today to handle Finance 101 while Jim continues to recover.

Today's topic is high yield savings accounts. A high yield savings account is exactly what it sounds like. It is a savings account at a bank or a brokerage that offers a higher interest rate on your cash than a savings account at your average local or national bank.

When I graduated dental school and knew nothing about personal finance, I had our checking and savings account at Chase Bank because they were everywhere. And I got some bonus to sign up with them.

As I started building my emergency fund in my savings account, like Jim told me to, I noticed one year I got a statement from Chase showing I made $1.09 in interest during the year. A closer examination of the statement showed that the savings account paid an interest rate of 0.02%. Two one hundredths of a percent. This is your classic low yield savings account that the vast majority of Americans are using, presuming they even have a savings account at all.

Today, we are here to make sure you don't fall victim to this unfortunate hole in our financial literacy. We want you to be earning a reasonable rate on your cash. To do that, don't let your cash sit in a savings account at the local credit union or some enormous national bank paying you no interest. Make sure you're keeping your cash in a high yield savings account.

To find a good high yield savings account, you can always Google it and a list of banks will come up. Some common ones I see clients use are Ally Bank, SoFi, Wealthfront, Capital One, Discover, Marcus, there's others.

What makes for a good high yield savings account? Well, the first and most important quality is a reasonable interest rate. Right now in late September, 2024, that means 4 to 5%. Don't worry too much about finding the highest rates. The difference between 4.2 and 4.9 is not what we are worried about. What we're worried about is the difference between 0.02% and 4.5%.

Just to drive that point home, let me quantify why you don't need to stress about getting the best interest rate. Let's say we're talking about where to keep your $60,000 emergency fund. Getting an extra 1% earns an extra $600 a year before considering taxes.

Remember that interest paid from a financial institution is subject to ordinary income tax rates at your highest or marginal tax rate. Assuming a 40% marginal rate, which is common for many high earners, this $600 extra you earned on your extra 1% really becomes $360.

Now I'm not here to scoff at $360. I just don't think $300 to $400 this year is going to make or break any of your short or long-term financial goals. But the difference between getting functionally 0% and 4.5% is $2,700 pre-tax and $1,600 after tax, assuming that same 40% marginal tax rate.

Again, I'm not saying you will get rich with an extra $1,600 to $2,000 a year, but that buys some quality holiday gifts, a nice weekend away. And it's more than my clients pay me for their annual checkup each year. So, it's definitely worth getting the 4.5%, but not worth bouncing your money from bank to bank to get a few extra tenths of a percent here and there.

A reasonable interest rate is the first quality we're interested in. The second is organizational opportunities. What I mean by that is some banks allow you to create buckets within your high-yield savings account. I'm not talking about different accounts with different account numbers. These are sub-accounts within the high-yield savings account that are earmarked for future expenses that we know will happen. We just don't know exactly when they'll occur.

For example, we know we need to replace our cars, our home will need updating and repairs. We'll go on bigger vacations at some point, and we'll have some large out-of-pocket healthcare expenses.

To prepare for these episodic expenses, we recommend clients set up what we call squirrel funds, where you squirrel away a little bit of cash every month into your high-yield savings account via automatic monthly transfers.

I personally use Ally Bank for this in my life. Our high-yield savings account has different buckets within the account that we deposit specific dollar amounts to every month via automatic transfer from our checking account.

You may be wondering how we pick the amounts to squirrel away each month. For travel, we pick an amount that is some combination of currently true and reasonably aspirational. For us, that's $20,000 a year. We don't spend $20,000 every year on travel, but the squirrel funds roll over year to year and give us a guiding light for an average annual spending target.

For out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, we pick the amount of our high-deductible health plan, individual deductible. Again, some years we use less, some years we use more, but this is a decent rubric for our healthy family of five.

For home-related costs, we save 1.5% of the value of our home each year. This is meant to cover big repairs, upgrades, and sizable furnishings. Obviously, this amount doesn't get spent every year. It rolls over each year, and when Megan asks me if we can get such and such done on the house, I just open up my Ally app, show her the home bucket on my phone, and that gives us a ceiling on what we can spend and ensures we aren't undermining our other goals with the insidious and corrosive threat that is perpetual home renovations and updates.

Same idea for cars. We take the number of cars in the family, the number of years we intend to keep each car, and the expected cost to replace those cars to come up with an annual savings target.

We have two cars, plan to keep them at least 15 years, and plan to spend about $25,000 to replace them. That math produces a monthly savings transfer of $278 to our car bucket. Then, down the road, when it's time to buy a new car, we're prepared to pay for it in cash.

Other squirrel funds that have been useful for other clients include saving up each year for your future Backdoor Roth IRA contributions. So, you've got $14,000 on January 2nd to do you and your spouse's Backdoor Roth. You can save up for your annual disability insurance premiums. You often get a discount if you pay annually instead of monthly.

People save up for weddings, big expensive cultural celebrations like bar mitzvahs or quinceañeras, a down payment on a home, what some people call a 20s fund to gift to your young adult kids one day so that they can start their life and leave the nest, or a squirrel fund that I call surprises and demises, intended for aging parents, pets, or other loved ones whose present uncertainty may result in a large cash demand in your future.

The way squirrel funds work mechanically is that we pay for the expense on our credit card so you can get your 2% cash back or your miles or whatever makes you happy with your credit card. Then we reimburse ourselves from the squirrel fund back to our checking account. Then we pay the credit card bill from the checking account. The squirrel fund then begins to fill up again because of the automatic monthly transfers.

Our emergency fund sits in its own separate bucket. Squirrel funds and emergency funds are distinct and separate ideas. Squirrel funds are for inevitable future expenses that we know will happen. We just don't know when or how much.

An emergency fund is the safety net that sits underneath the squirrel funds in case an expense arises sooner or larger than our squirrel funds can handle. Having these squirrel funds allows us to automate the rest of our financial life and to be reasonably assured that any future expense will not disrupt our normal monthly cashflow. They are a great way to make additional use of your high yield savings account because you're earning interest on all these buckets along the way.

Okay, now you have a good interest rate and some meaningful organization. If you're using a bank, you also have FDIC insurance. FDIC stands for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This government entity guarantees that you can get your money back if your bank fails, and bank failures happen. This is not just a problem in the 1920s. We've had some large bank failures in the last couple of years, and if that happens to your bank, the FDIC will return up to $250,000 for an account held by just one person, and up to $500,000 for a jointly held account.

In some cases, these financial institutions partner with other banks to ramp up their FDIC insurance to $1 million to $2 million, depending on the account. You probably don't have a financial plan that calls for seven figures in cash, so this is probably not applicable to most people.

For some people, though, FDIC insurance provides meaningful peace of mind for large sums of cash. For other people, like Jim, they don't care about this insurance or these squirrel funds. They just care about simplicity and interest rate. Often, they don't use a bank at all for their high-yield savings account. They use a brokerage, like Vanguard or Fidelity.

Jim is especially fond of Vanguard because the settlement fund in a taxable brokerage account there is defaulted to the federal money market fund, and that is currently paying just under 5%. Now, these money market funds are incredibly safe and incredibly liquid. They do not have formal FDIC insurance, however. But in exchange, you often get a slightly higher rate than the banks. Not always, but often.

Where you set up a high-yield savings account and what the exact rate is at the time is not really important. What is important is just using one of them instead of these crappy savings accounts most people are using and not even realizing there's a better way.

I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, go to the blog and search high-yield savings account or send a Speak Pipe question into the podcast. Thanks for listening and have a wonderful day.

SPONSOR

Josh:
Our sponsor today is Origin Investments. Origin Investments is a private real estate manager specializing in multifamily investments, managing over $3.5 billion in transactions since 2007. They leverage their market experience and MultilyticsSM, their proprietary machine learning models forecasting rent growth, to help them select properties in high-growth US markets.

Their Income Plus Fund and Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund III are designed to offer tax efficiency, yield, and growth while minimizing portfolio volatility. Their affiliate partner, Origin Credit Advisors, offers the Strategic Credit Fund, a private credit fund for qualified purchasers intended to provide a steady stream of risk-adjusted income with capital protection. Safeguard and grow your wealth with Origin Investments today at whitecoatinvestor.com/origin.

We will see you next week on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. Thanks for tuning in.

DISCLAIMER

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