Many white coat investors have been handed a WCI book upon starting their medical, dental, or other professional school lives. This year will be our seventh year running the WCI Champions program, and each year we’ve gotten a copy of The White Coat Investor’s Guide for Students into the hands of as many as 70% of US MS-1s. Our Chief Impact Officer, my wife Katie Dahle, tells me that, in the last six years, we’ve given away something like 114,000 copies of the book. Imagine a world where every doctor is financially literate and where they can see a clear pathway to eliminating their financial stress so they can concentrate on what really matters in life:
- Their education and training,
- Their practice,
- Their patients,
- Their family, and
- Their own wellness
Katie and I get excited just thinking about it. However, when the first copies of the WCI student book showed up on my doorstep, I was a little crestfallen. The book was a little too long. Kind of like the WCI asset protection book, I added a lot of reference material to the end. I was worried that would keep students from reading it. I never really believed they were all going to read the book just because it was handed to them, although I think very few of them throw it away. I think it just goes on the shelf, hopefully to be pulled down when the moment is right for some just-in-time learning.
But I was a little disappointed in myself, and I resolved NOT to make that mistake when I eventually got around to writing the resident version of the book.
Well, that moment came recently. The book is finished, and we are now implementing the WCI Resident Champions Program. It will work similarly to the Student Champions Program. We need a champion from first-year intern classes (PGY-1) to volunteer to be the champion. What are the duties of the champion? Not too bad, really. You just have to fill out an application before anyone else in your class, and you win. The application basically asks how many are in your class and asks for your mailing address.
Once you fill it out and we make sure you’re actually who you say you are, we ship you a copy of the brand-new The White Coat Investor’s Guide for Residents for each doc in your class and a free T-shirt for your efforts. You can pass them out at the next Grand Rounds, and you’re done. If you send us a picture with the books and some members of your class to use on social media, we’ll send you a WCI insulated water bottle, too.
The White Coat Investor Guide for Residents
As I mentioned, The White Coat Investor’s Guide for Residents is significantly shorter than the Guide for Students (108 pages vs. 298 pages). I did that on purpose. I know that residents are very busy people, and I wanted to maximize the chances of you reading it. The whole thing. It is as high-yield as I could make it. It is entirely focused on what you must know and must do as a resident. Some of you will finish it and wish for more. Well, there are other books, the blog, the podcast, and more for you. But I didn’t want the size of the book to dissuade any doctor from opening it up and gleaning wisdom from its pages.
So, what IS in the book? Here’s the table of contents:
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Every Resident Is Unique
- Your Career Is the Source of Your Wealth
- How to Spend Money
- Principles of Student Loan Management
- Insurance as a Resident
- Saving for Retirement as a Resident
- Getting a Great First Attending Job
- Prioritizing Your Use of Money as a New Attending
- Additional Resources
Basically, it goes into great detail about the most important tasks residents need to accomplish, like buying disability +/- term life insurance, getting a real student loan plan, learning to live on a budget, starting to save for retirement, getting a great first real job, and having a plan for your first 12 attending paychecks.
Dr. Kent Bradley, the 2024 Financial Educator of the Year Award winner, said this about the book:
“‘Where do I even start?’ is the financial question residents ask me most often. This book answers that question and much more. It covers the financial topics most relevant to residents in a concise, easy-to-read fashion. It would make a great ‘book club’ option to start your trainees out right. I will make sure all my residents have a copy! If you follow the path this book sets out for you, your financial future will be VERY bright.”
Dr. Leif Dahleen of Physician on FIRE fame even wrote the foreword, which is well worth the price of admission all by itself! He said:
“You are one lucky resident. You’re being paid for your time in the hospital or clinic instead of paying them for the privilege. You earned the title of ‘resident’ by graduating from medical school rather than by being forcibly committed to an institution, even if the line between the two feels blurry at times. Most importantly, though, you are about to read a book that will be truly life-changing if you do even half of what Dr. Jim Dahle suggests.
Obviously, we think the book is great for all medical and dental interns, residents, fellows, and other professionals at a similar career stage, but we’re only giving it away to those lucky PGY-1s. Everybody else has to buy it. Don’t worry, it’s still 1/500th of the price of a financial advisor, but if you’d like a free copy for you and everyone else in your first-year resident class, apply to be a champion today!
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