By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content Director

A few times when we’ve been on stage together at WCICON, Dr. Jim Dahle has told the audience that I enjoy publishing controversial articles on WCI, because it brings in more traffic and more engagement. I do love the traffic, and I enjoy most of the engagement (though sometimes, the comments section veers off into a negative space that’s unusual for this website).

But I’m not usually looking to publish controversial posts just for the sake of being controversial, and I’m not normally trying to rile up people just so I can get satisfaction from a full email inbox of people saying they revile my work.

Sometimes, though, controversy is unavoidable, either because you have something meaningful or unpopular to say or because you miscalculated the amount of vitriol that a certain post will evoke. Sometimes, you know people will come after you in the comments. Sometimes, you have no idea.

When the controversy gets going in a major way, I’ll often email Jim, and we’ll do a quick debrief to see if we did something wrong or if what we published was the right thing to do. Then, occasionally, we’ll lift back the curtain so readers can see our thought process (and weigh in themselves).

As I’ve written before:

“Beginning in 2021, we introduced a slew of new writers to the WCI community, and sometimes, these columnists have opinions that don’t necessarily mesh with what Jim would normally write. Since this website isn’t simply one person’s blog, differing ideas are beneficial. Quite honestly, they should be expected.

Sometimes, those competing philosophies make people really mad.

So, let’s revisit some of our most controversial pieces in what will be an occasional series on our most controversial articles and see how Jim and I feel about them in retrospect. Were we wrong to post them at all? What was the point of publishing them in the first place, and, in hindsight, would I make the same decision to run them?”

Here are part 1, part 2, and part 3 of our most controversial articles for even more viewing pleasure.

 

How PAs and NPs Can Make Doctor Money by guest writer Heather Zamarron on August 2, 2024

Josh Katzowitz: In Q3 of 2024, we had a bunch of guest posts come in written from non-docs who were discussing their own investment strategies and how to make more money. We heard from “bad ass” nurses and physician assistants and lawyers and cops, all of whom had their own stories to tell and their own advice to dispense. While there was some hand-wringing in the comments of the bad ass nurse post, the one that really seemed to make people mad was from Heather, the physician assistant who makes a six-figure salary and wrote the post “How PAs and NPs Can Make Doctor Money.”

I love a good headline like that—and to her credit, that was mostly Heather's idea (though I added “and NPs” to try to widen the spectrum a little bit). But I knew that it was potentially going to be triggering. Sure enough, plenty of people ripped the idea of WCI running a post from an APP who was looking to make the kind of salaries usually reserved for doctors.

It's important to me to run posts like this so we can have other high-earning people giving their own POVs that can help create a wider audience for WCI. But clearly, there are some who think WCI is exclusively for doctors. I don't know if that was your original idea when you started the site in 2011, but clearly, that's not what we're going for now. Why do you think some people get so bent out of shape about these kinds of posts? After all, we had multiple docs call this post “garbage,” when it was a well-written, interesting piece of work.

Jim Dahle: I'm not sure where the idea came from that WCI was exclusively for docs. It never has been, although docs are clearly the largest part of the target audience and the part I personally relate to most. The original tagline was, “Giving those who wear the white coat a fair shake on Wall Street.” There are lots of people who wear white coats that are not docs, much less physicians. The real focus here is “high-income professional,” and there are certainly plenty of CRNAs, PAs, and NPs that qualify for that title.

There is a sentiment (with a fair amount of truth to it) that is VERY common among docs that APCs are “stealing their jobs” and/or offering “substandard patient care,” and I think most of the backlash on that post was primarily due to that. That's a deep topic where a lot can be argued, and any time a post mentions APCs or is written by an APC, there's going to be some of that.

The mission of WCI isn't to help docs win all their turf battles against optometrists, APCs, chiropractors, or whoever. The mission is to boost financial literacy, and I'm just as happy to help an allied health professional become financially literate as anyone else.

JK: I just wonder if we can ever run a post from a mid-level provider who comes across as confident (the “bad ass” nurse, for example) where doctors won't take offense or claim that WCI is their exclusive domain. Or at least maybe where they can stop personally insulting the author of these kinds of guest posts. I worry that those kinds of attacks in the comments will make non-doctors not want to write in with their guest posts.

JD: It's a legitimate concern. It doesn't take much to turn people off from a resource that can really help them.

 

Why I Sold My Practice to Private Equity, and Why You Probably Should Too by guest writer Dr. Brendan Hallissey on November 22, 2024

Josh Katzowitz: I knew this one was going to get some heat. We usually get plenty of engagement when we talk about selling a practice to private equity, but when this guest writer actually endorsed doing it, I knew people would be furious in the comments. And boy, they were. But you made a good point in the comment sections when you wrote about a grumpy email we got:

“People can stop sending me emails like this one:

‘I am disappointed that you would put out any advocacy for middlemen in medicine. The greed of insurance payers and health equity are ruining medicine. Bad form.'

I mean, really? You don’t even want to have a public discussion about this? We should censor anyone talking about it on the Forum, Facebook group, and subreddit? And if not here, where? And do you really believe NO ONE who has sold out to a DSO or private equity is happy about it? Really?”

That's my thought as well. I recently played tennis with a dentist who is part of a DSO, and he seems pretty happy about it to me (keep in mind, though, we couldn’t play our match until 8 pm because he didn’t get off work until late most nights).

Brendan made some good points in the piece, and believe me, I pushed him when I was editing it to think through what kinds of arguments people would make against him. But the fact at least one person doesn't even want to talk about it and say it's “bad form” when we do is always a little nuts to me.

After all these years, why is that still the case with some readers?

Jim Dahle: I'm not sure. Maybe they're worried that discussing it (like discussing Bitcoin or whole life insurance or whatever else is unpopular among most people) will encourage others to do it who might not otherwise consider it and their view of it is not particularly nuanced (“DSOs are always bad, they're wicked and ruining doctors' lives!”).

JK: Are DSOs good or bad? Use as much nuance as you'd like.

JD: That's like asking if employment is bad. I'm a huge fan of ownership and much prefer owning my job. In fact, I'm probably no longer employable. But I'm not naive enough to think that ownership is right for everyone. There are a lot of risks and hassles associated with ownership. As discussed in the comments below that article, there are a lot of docs who are very happy with their DSO-associated job.

 

Teaching Your Kids About Investing with The Stock Game by guest writer Dr. Adam Ylitalo on June 13, 2023

Josh Katzowitz: I love the Stock Game! We even did a version of the Stock Game on WCI, where a bunch of readers picked one individual stock that I then put into an index-fund like arrangement to see if we could beat VTSAX and FSKAX after one year. I called it the White Coat Investor Fund (WCIF), and we didn’t even come close to succeeding.

Anyway, why do you hate the Stock Game so much?

Jim Dahle: Let's be clear. “We” are not doing “a Stock Game.” YOU are doing a Stock Game. I think I made my feelings about the Stock Game pretty clear with a note on that post. One example: “I have always had a problem with The Stock Game . . . The problem with The Stock Game, of course, is that it encourages a short-term gambling mentality. I often worry it teaches precisely the wrong lessons about stock ownership.” The controversy/blowback for this post was not a surprise to me at all.

One really great thing that came out of that post was some links (such as this one) to other games that can be played with your kids to teach them about money that don't have the same problems as the Stock Game.

JK: Who owns this site anyway? Not me. It's you. ALL OF US are playing the Stock Game. You know what, though? Out of everybody who I asked at WCICON23 to participate in the White Coat Investor Fund, nobody said, “Hey, this is like the Stock Game, right? This is stupid. I'm not participating.” Even when I told YOU at WCICON about this idea, you said you thought it would be fun.

Don't tell me you don't like the Stock Game. I see through you, man.

 

Money Song of the Week

I never gave much thought to The Byrds’ Turn! Turn! Turn! other than it was a snappy tune that showcased some of the talent that David Crosby would eventually bring to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. But after reading a couple of WCI pieces in the past few years, the 1965 tune has taken on a much bigger meaning when it begins playing in my earbuds.

The song was written by the legendary Pete Seeger in 1959, but I’ve always listened to the more rockin’ version performed by The Byrds. In fact, I’d never heard Seeger’s version until this very moment. Here’s how they compare.

It’s fascinating that the song uses almost exclusively quotes from the Book of Ecclesiastes (except the repeated “Turn, turn, turn,” and the last line of, “I swear it’s not too late”) and manages to turn them into a protest anthem.

As Financial Times writes:

“The song reached No. 1 in the US in December 1965. That year, American ground troops arrived in Vietnam, men on campuses burned their draft cards, Black civil rights activists withstood fire hoses and police dogs, and President Lyndon Johnson promoted his ‘Great Society’ reforms. A chorus of shaggy-haired young men pressed the nation to ‘turn, turn, turn’ and accept that change is inevitable, history is a cycle, strife is temporary, and to everything there is a season.”

But it has a slightly different meaning to me after reading Jim’s Seasons of Life post from January 2024 and Dr. Charles Patterson’s Phase of Life Spending column from May 2024.

As Jim wrote, “If you let a season go by without taking advantage of an experience or opportunity that is only available in that season, you can never reclaim it.”

And as Charles wrote, “Most of us have a need to save and invest. But we have to be mindful that delayed gratification is only worthwhile if there is gratification at the end of the delay. There are experiences that are best enjoyed as youth, and some that can only be enjoyed at certain phases of life. We know this intuitively yet also commit to the habits of high-income professionals who don’t prioritize mental and physical health, personal growth, and experience-facilitated maturation. Financial independence is great, but how great is it to retire early enough to live five decades regretting how you spent the first four?”

But you should also avoid being too hard on yourself if you miss a season or two in the pursuit of financial freedom.

As noted by Far Out magazine, this was not an easy song to record, considering the band needed 78 takes over five days to get it just right. If even singing about the seasons of your life is that difficult, actually taking advantage of those seasons is even tougher.

More information here:

Every Money Song of the Week Ever Published

 

Instagram of the Week

You can always tell just how bad a hurricane or winter storm is depending on whether the local Waffle Houses are open. If they're closed, you know it's probably going to be bad. It's known as the Waffle House Index.

And when Waffle House is making moves like this, it doesn't calm my scattered, smothered, and covered heart.

What do you think about our most controversial topics? Were there other posts that we missed that made you absolutely steam?  

[EDITOR'S NOTE: For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at [email protected].]