By Dr. Bryan Jepson, Guest Writer
I’ve been listening to a lot of the WCI podcasts lately on my three-hour commute to a rural hospital where I do some locums shifts. What a great resource WCI is for physicians. Founder Dr. Jim Dahle does a great job of dispensing accurate information and answering complicated individual finance questions. Mixed in with these financial education topics are success stories of physicians who have achieved great milestones on their pathway to becoming millionaires.
Most of the stories have a fairly similar theme: graduate from residency with several hundred thousand dollars in debt, live like a resident for a few years, make $400,000-$500,000 per year (sometimes >$750,000 if you have a dual-doctor income), focus on paying off student loans, maximize your retirement account contributions, and celebrate how quickly you reach your financial goals. It is a great model and is honestly one that most doctors and other high-income professionals can reach with relative ease using the kind of financial discipline taught by WCI. Congratulations to those folks who have stayed on that path and have reached early career financial independence. It is inspiring.
But that is not everyone’s story. On several of the recent Milestone to Millionaire podcasts, Dr. Dahle acknowledges that some listeners have complained that the picture painted by these accounts is too rosy and that it may not be the reality for everyone for a variety of reasons. I found myself thinking the same thing as I reflected on my own story. Bear with me as I share some of it.
Becoming Financially Literate
Like many WCI readers, I became interested in personal finance shortly after I graduated from my Emergency Medicine residency program way back in 1998. At that time, there was no WCI blog to learn from. I didn’t even know what a blog post was for a decade or more. But there were bookstores (for you younger folks, that is a place where people used to go and hold bound copies of written material in their hand, flip through the pages, and decide if they wanted to purchase it).
I started reading a lot of personal finance books. The internet was young, but some websites taught about personal finance as well (I guess that is the early version of a blog site). That is how I learned these principles that stand the test of time: the importance of investing early and regularly, the safety of diversification, the power of compounding interest, the leveraging power of real estate, the value of multiple streams of income, the importance of protecting your assets, etc. I was raised in a frugal household, and I did not have problematic spending habits. I had a reasonable amount of student loan debt (relatively minimal in today’s dollars) that I was paying off ahead of schedule. I found a good Emergency Medicine job with a two-year buy-in with a decent salary and high growth potential. I purchased a modest home and bought an investment property.
I felt like I was on a great path to early financial success.
More information here:
Adjusting Our Financial Priorities
Then, everything changed. In 2001, my second son, age 2 at the time, began showing signs of developmental delay. He was diagnosed with autism at age 3. Almost overnight, my priorities changed. My wife and I poured everything that we had into understanding his disorder and helping him get better. This was still quite early in the rising wave of autism diagnoses and before there was much help in terms of therapies. None of it was covered by insurance, and everything that we did for him we paid out of pocket—which represented at least the equivalent of the cost of graduating from Harvard.
As I learned more about the biological abnormalities associated with the disorder, I felt internally compelled to use my degree to help others who found themselves on the same path. This led to me decreasing shifts in the ER and starting a nonprofit clinic to assist other families with what I was learning—it wasn't the wisest of decisions from a financial perspective but an important decision for other reasons. Ultimately, that decision led us down a far different path than what I had anticipated coming out of residency.
In mid-career, I left emergency medicine entirely for about six years while I treated kids with autism full-time using the things that I had learned in the functional medicine space. We sold our rental property to help pay for therapies and ended up moving to a different state to be part of a new multidisciplinary clinic to treat kids on the spectrum. The story is longer, but suffice it to say that my wife and I made decisions for our child and others that were not focused on how much money I could make and how quickly I could become financially independent.
And that set us back.
Returning to Emergency Medicine
We still lived frugally and invested whatever we had left over, but the rate was significantly lower than it would have been in our original circumstances. I eventually went back to emergency medicine so that I could catch up on finances and be sure that my family was taken care of in the long term. Eventually, we got there, although we are certainly far behind where we would have been had life carried us on a less complicated path, especially during those all-important prime early years of investing and saving.
I share this story not for sympathy or even kudos, but because I think that there are a lot of readers who may have experienced or are experiencing something similar. Life has a way of throwing us curveballs. It might be from a special-needs child. Or it could be your own disability or health concern where you can’t work as much as you need or want. It could be from a divorce where you suddenly find your family income and assets cut in half. It could be from the needs of a family member who you may need to support financially or emotionally. There is a myriad of other possibilities. I write with the desire that those of you whose circumstances have derailed your plans—either temporarily or permanently—not get discouraged or give up hope.
More information here:
Financial Lessons Learned from a Doctor Turned Patient
How My Recent Brain Tumor Diagnosis Made Me Reevaluate My Finances
Roadmap to Financial Freedom
It might take you longer to get there, but if you continue to live by sound financial principles, you can still achieve a successful outcome. The roadmap to financial freedom that I review with my planning clients includes the following mileposts:
- Earn more than you spend
- Spend on what you value
- Eliminate bad debt
- Create multiple streams of income
- Protect your assets
- Invest smartly and continuously
- Don’t pay more for taxes than you must
- Provide for your family’s future
- Plan your retirement wisely
- Find what will fulfill you during your retirement years
- Control your own estate
- Be charitable
Always remember that sometimes living a rich life has nothing to do with money. Rather, it has everything to do with relationships, family, experiences, receiving help when you need it, and giving back when you can. Your net worth as a parent, a spouse, a friend, or a neighbor is not reflected by the net worth on your personal financial statement.
I am a physician and a financial advisor. It is my goal that all my clients achieve financial independence. But more importantly, I hope that my clients will live a broadly wealthy and emotionally healthy life—a life where they are happy and fulfilled, a balanced life that is focused on more than the balance sheet. Although I applaud those who have found financial success at an early age, I truly respect those who have discovered that life is a marathon where the finish line keeps changing and where all their energy is focused on just taking the next step.
My heroes don’t just live in fancy houses or drive expensive cars. They have learned that money is useful and that it can certainly make life more comfortable. But true wealth involves so much more.
Have you had to radically change your financial plans because you were forced to take a different path? What happened? How did you adjust?
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Bryan Jepson is a board-certified emergency medicine physician and a licensed financial advisor. He has a master's degree in Finance and Risk Management, and he is a CFP candidate. He works for Targeted Wealth Solutions, an independent financial advisory and planning firm with a focus on healthcare professionals. He lives in Monument, Colorado, and he is married with three adult sons (two of whom have autism). He enjoys hiking, running, fishing, playing the guitar, and helping his disabled sons communicate through writing. Targeted Wealth Solutions is a paid advertiser and a WCI Recommended Financial Advisor partner. However, this is not a sponsored post. This article was submitted and approved according to our Guest Post Policy.]
I very much admire & respect the course that this physician has taken. 2 questions, first, how is your son doing today? Also, how is it possible to return to a job in Emergency Medicine after a 6-year absense given the rapid changes in knowledge & technology? I hope Dr. Jepson gets to be on a podcast as I believe everyone would like to hear more about his story.
Thanks for the comment, Chasbo. To answer your questions: first, my son is now 26, still has autism and still lives at home but I am super proud of him because he is doing great things with his life. He is not real functional with spoken language, but he is very intelligent, and we have figured out how to help him type out his thoughts. He has his own autism advocacy blog site at aaronjepson.com and he has recently published a thriller/suspense/murder mystery novel with a non-speaking protagonist with autism. http://www.amazon.com/I-Never-Get-Lost-Woods/dp/1960583018. Check it out–it’s a great book and if you met my son and saw what he was like on the surface (clearly autistic), it will change everything you thought you knew about non-speaking individuals’ brain functioning.
Second question: yes, it was a little intimidating to jump back into emergency medicine after a 6-year break. Luckily, I had a pretty good foundation in that career before I left, and I decided to keep up with my EM board certification in case I needed to go back to it. So, I had just studied for and passed the recertification test before I went back to practice. The diseases were pretty much unchanged. The way you diagnose and treat them adapt with time. Remembering the medicines was the hardest part but nothing that Sanford guide and Up-to-date couldn’t solve! It took about a year or two and trying to work at some lower volume places before I felt back to the same level of confidence and efficiency that I had before I left.
That is great that you could return to practice after a long gap. I saw other physicians with shorter gap that couldn’t return due to lack of references, despite maintaining board certification etc. It is such a beautiful story that parents invest their priceless time with their kids.
Wonderful post! Thanks for sharing your story.
Out of training I was burnout and thought the way out was early retirement. I saved over 50% of my wife and I’s income, while just looking at the numbers and just working and not paying attention to other aspects of life. I was missing out on life. Then dentistry was shut down for 2 months in 2020 and I had a lot time with my young family, the time off made me revaluate my approach to life and finances. Now it’s a balance of working hard and saving but also enjoying life now. Coaching my kids sports teams, taking regular time off and enjoying the fruits of my labor. My new approach has slowed my FI path slightly but I am mush happier and more fulfilled.
Great post. Life throws a lot of changes at you. I had a good Dental practice and financial independence never made a high income but our lifestyle didn’t require it. Our son is a successful lawyer and our daughter a great teacher when at age 30 became chronically ill with a disease 30 doctors couldn’t diagnose. Most said it was probably mental and were no help. After a lot of research a good luck , we found two physicians who believed us and diagnosed her with MCS Multiple Chemical Sensitivity like the bubble boy in Texas but worse. Now 20 years later she has been mainly home bound in the home we were able to purchase for her and support her.
Most of our retirement plans changed and I was able to practice to age 75. Just as you wrote we were blessed by a good life and still are with a few life changes. Our daughter is surviving a rough path and we are enjoying our modified retirement.
Life changes your plans.
I suffer, or I should say suffered, from very severe, the worst of the worst MCS. I ended up on life support weighing 96lbs with live failure, respiratory failure, and hypothermia with a core body temperature of 93 degrees as I became unresponsive outdoors in Texas as I could no longer tolerate indoors anywhere. My father spent his retirement on me and moved in with my brother. Long story short I had a huge spiritual and mortifying experience that proved to me beyond any doubt whatsoever that God is totally real. There is hope and today I as basically all the way well. It can come back, and sometimes I struggle with that, but life is a struggle, and I will continue my struggle. Find my story on Planet Thrive. Good luck and God bless.
Best post I’ve seen in a while! The message I see so often here is very black and white, tailored to the high-paying, married-with-kids specialists, and yet many of us do not fit that mold and live in a grey world that we have very little control over. This is not a knock to WCI, as I have been following for over a decade and am grateful for the many tactical strategies I have learned and implemented. AND I greatly appreciate you for sharing your story and normalizing the other paths to wealth.
I definitely empathize with your situation. I’ve had some issues with my son for which I was prepared to spend thousands of dollars simply to obtain a diagnosis (high-functioning autism vs. ADD?). However, before I wrote a large check, I paused to contemplate what I was about to do. Was I simply throwing money at the problem to make it go away? Did I feel a responsibility to spend a large chunk of my doctor’s income on my family to prove that I was a good parent? It’s a tough place to be.
Recently, Dr. Alonso spoke at WCICON and shared some pearls of wisdom from “How to Raise an Adult” by Julie Lythcott-Haims. The book points out how parents in the USA feel an obligation to be overly involved in every aspect of their kids’ lives to prove that they are good parents. To make a long story short, I’ll summarize the main points:
1. We can still be great parents even if we don’t spend large sums of money or attend every extracurricular activity for our kids. In fact, maybe we should go so far as to keep some of our personal plans in place when they would conflict with our kids’ schedules.
2. Instead of having a goal to make our kids be successful, happy, or college bound, maybe the best thing we can do is to teach them to be responsible, independent, and self-sufficient without our prompting (ie household chores).
3. Our kids’ successes (or lack thereof) have little to do with us. They are living their own lives and making their own choices (at least they should be). We should love them, teach them responsibility, and stand back to let the fly (or fall) on their own (straight As vs. straight Cs). If they learned what we taught them, they will pick themselves up from their failures and go forward wiser and stronger.
I’ve definitely changed my parenting approach. Instead of making their problems my problems, I ask them to think about what they could do on their own to solve their problems. I don’t feel guilty when I take some personal time for myself instead of spending all my time off with my kids. It’s resulted in less stress for all of us, and I’m amazed at how responsible my kids have become.
Bryan,
That is a great perspective you shared. Many may not have the straight path and your story should be encouraging. I appreciated your days of financial learning before blogs. You must have clipped articles from the free copies of Physician Money Digest and Medical Economics.
I linked to see Aaron’s book and then jumped to the “About the author.” That led me to your amazing son’s website!!!
I could not stop reading about your father-son marathon (he has completed many since then), his hobbies and his plan to work on a sequel to “I Never Get Lost in the Woods”
Wow! Wow! Your parental net worth is prodigious!
Yes, you invested money. But from the stories he tells, you invested something that is priceless – time. A lot of time, it seems. And for that, you have a young man who has accomplished more than many from Harvard.
I plan to recommend Aaron’s book to our public library. If others don’t know, an email to your public library explaining why a member thinks a book is important to the collection places a product on the purchase list for the next funding cycle. As there is a significant shortage of materials surrounding neurodiversity in public libraries (I checked and we don’t have it), a work such as this will be a tremendous boost to many young people and their families.
You and Aaron made my day!
Acham,
You’re getting me all choked up. Thank you for your kind words and especially for what you said about Aaron. He really is an amazing young man. Thanks also for recommending his book to your library. It really is a great book and an even more incredible accomplishment for him to have written it, but his hybrid publisher really doesn’t do anything to market it, so it hasn’t got much attention. I appreciate your comment very much.
Bryan
Thanks for sharing your story. My son age 5 1/2 was recently diagnosed on the spectrum. He’s verbal, but receptive language delayed. We are close to getting him into ABA and OT. Do you recommend anything else? We are also considering stem cell treatment at the Stem Cell Institute in Panama after hearing incredible stories of gains including non-verbal children becoming verbal.
Hi SMVH,
The type of behavioral/educational therapies that your son will respond to really depends probably on what his particular deficits are. ABA is always a good place to start. If he has challenges speaking (not just the ability to say words but the ability to communicate with verbal language), I would recommend looking into Spell-2-Communicate. You can learn more about that at i-asc.org. I haven’t been active on the medical side of autism as a physician for quite a while, so if you want to look into biomedical/integrative/functional medicine approaches, I suggest looking for a practitioner who would be more up-to-date through medmaps.org. Stem cell therapy was just getting started as I was leaving my practice and like most things in autism, had some great anecdotes, but also a high cost. I didn’t see anything super remarkable on the few patients that I had met personally that had used it, but I can’t say that I was experienced enough in it to say definite yeah or nay.
The financial preparation side of having a special needs child is very important and that is where I am more focused now on helping people. I am finishing up my Chartered Special Needs Consulting (ChSNC) certificate in June and then will add that to my financial practice. Happy to talk with you more about that. You can email me off-line at [email protected]
As your uncle, I thoroughly enjoyed reading “When-Life derails-your plans”. I am not a doctor or in any way contacted to the medical field. I would not have been lucky enough to have this opportunity if I wasn’t a family member. I enjoyed reading the comment as well. I would like to hear how you and your brothers were influenced to go into the medical field. You have a brother that retired from the medical field and is spending his life traveling to the world’s most beautiful places and sharing his visits in his Websight: thethoroughtripper.com. and Russ, a chiropractor, who was vote # 1 in the St. George area. Your parents live only a couple blocks from me. How did they influence your choices? You have been a great father to your son aaronjepson.com and everyone should read his blog. Best wishes for your continued success.
Haha! Thanks for all the family plugs, Uncle Truman! Honestly, I’m not sure why we all went into medicine. For me, it probably came from early education teachers in my life who saw that I did well in school and kept saying “you should be a doctor.” That sounded good to me, so I went for it! Biology and physiology were the most interesting subjects to me at the time, so it seemed to fit. Having an older brother just two years ahead of me do the same thing certainly made the path a little more predictable to me. I just followed it and never got off.
I appreciate you sharing your experience with dealing with adversity in life on your own terms. Protecting yourself from and recovering from setbacks is a vital skill. Dr. Dahle’s WCI Guide to Asset Protection and Lynnette Khalfani-Cox’s Bounce Back have been good reads to plan for when *it hits the fan.