MtoM #216: Two Doc Couple Gets Back to Broke While Raising Kids in New York City and Finance 101: Mortgages

Summary

White Coat Investor Podcast Summary

Episode: MtoM #216: Two Doc Couple Gets Back to Broke While Raising Kids in New York City and Finance 101: Mortgages
Release Date: March 31, 2025
Host: Dr. Jim Dahle
Guests: Dr. John Doe & Dr. Jane Doe

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Introduction

In episode #216 of the White Coat Investor Podcast, Dr. Jim Dahle welcomes Dr. John Doe and Dr. Jane Doe, a dual-physician couple from the New York metro area. The episode, titled "Two Doc Couple Gets Back to Broke While Raising Kids in New York City and Finance 101: Mortgages," delves into their financial journey, challenges of managing finances in a high-cost living area, strategies for overcoming substantial student debt, and practical mortgage advice tailored for medical professionals.

Guest Introductions

• Dr. John Doe (03:09): A PGY9 in a procedural specialty nearing the end of his fellowship in the New York metro area.
• Dr. Jane Doe (03:36): A primary care physician, five years post-training, working in a large health system's community clinic.

Celebrating Financial Milestones

Dr. Jim Dahle opens the discussion by acknowledging the couple's achievement of getting "back to broke," a term they use to signify a reset in their financial status after accumulating significant assets and debts.

• Dr. John Doe (04:07): "We're back to broke."

This milestone is particularly noteworthy given their substantial student loan debt:

• Total Student Loans: Over $800,000 initially, which has grown to approximately $990,000 (04:23 - 05:00).

Despite the high debt, they have amassed assets worth around $600,000 in retirement accounts and are saving diligently for a down payment on a new home (05:22 - 05:49).

Income and Savings Strategies

The couple has maintained a commendable savings rate, which has been pivotal in their financial journey.

• Income Range Over Nine Years: $100,000 to $320,000+ (05:57 - 06:38).
• Savings Rate: Averaging 21% to 24% from 2023 to 2024 (07:17).

Key Strategies:

1. Paying Themselves First: Allocating a portion of income to savings before other expenses (08:03).
2. Expense Tracking and Reduction: Monitoring and cutting discretionary spending to maximize savings (08:03).
3. Intentional Financial Planning: Setting clear long-term goals, such as saving for a down payment and future car purchases (08:03).

Balancing Family and Finances

Managing a high-income profession while raising three children in an expensive city posed significant financial and personal challenges.

• Childcare Costs: Approximately $552 per week per child, totaling around $4,400 monthly (11:02 - 11:19).
• Parental Leave: Both utilized paid leave, with Dr. John Doe balancing professional obligations by hiring a full-time nanny (09:37 - 10:52).

Challenges Faced:

• Work-Life Balance: Coordinating long work hours with family responsibilities.
• Financial Strain: High childcare costs and the necessity of maintaining savings despite these expenses.

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Jane Doe (09:31): "We are very, very intentional with our savings and asset allocation. And just by squirreling away all these years and just being really intentional about it, we were able to go back to broke."

Navigating Financial Challenges

The couple discusses the tough decisions and compromises they've made to achieve their financial goals while maintaining family harmony.

• Expense Prioritization: Choosing to save on rent by accepting longer commutes, allowing for more travel and savings (12:17).
• Communication: Regular financial and marital check-ins to ensure alignment and address conflicts (13:31 - 15:49).

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. John Doe (12:17): "It's really about being intentional on where we spend the money and trying to figure out what makes us happy."
• Dr. Jane Doe (14:55): "We carve out time to work it out as a couple and talk about our finances... communication is free, so as long as you communicate with your partner, you're able to together achieve a financial goal."

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Concerns

With a significant portion of their strategy reliant on PSLF, the couple shares their thoughts amid political uncertainties.

• Current Status: Both are enrolled in PSLF programs, with Dr. John Doe facing delays in recertification (16:20 - 17:58).

Key Points:

• Optimism: Dr. Dahle expresses confidence in their continued eligibility for PSLF, highlighting historical difficulties in altering such federally legislated programs.
• Plan B: While relying on PSLF, they've built a robust savings rate to pivot if necessary (17:36).

Notable Quote:

• Dr. John Doe (16:20): "I probably had a good chance for a scholarship, but I didn't even bother to ask at the time...we have a pretty decent saving rate and if we have to redirect our savings somewhere, we could."

Advice for Dual-Physician Couples in High-Cost Areas

Dr. John and Dr. Jane Doe offer practical advice for medical professionals embarking on similar financial paths.

• Start Simple: Focus initially on maximizing retirement contributions and maintaining a solid savings rate without specific financial milestones (18:18 - 19:29).
• Automate Savings: Automating contributions can significantly enhance savings consistency (19:29).
• Patience and Communication: Building wealth takes time and requires ongoing dialogue about financial priorities and relationship health (19:53 - 20:32).

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Jane Doe (18:18): "We did not have a specific number goal in mind...but just being really intentional about it, we were able to go back to broke."

Finance 101: Mortgages for Medical Professionals

In the latter part of the episode, Dr. Dahle provides mortgage advice tailored for physicians, highlighting specialized products and strategies.

Key Points:

1. Physician Mortgages: These are specialized loans that cater to medical professionals, often allowing for lower down payments and eliminating the need for Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI).
2. Employment Contracts: Many physician mortgages accept employment contracts in lieu of traditional pay stubs, recognizing the stability of medical careers.
3. Timing and Strategy: Advises taking time to rent and understand the housing market before committing to a purchase, emphasizing a typical 3-5 year horizon for financial viability.
4. Refinancing Opportunities: Encourages viewing mortgages as long-term commitments that can be refinanced to take advantage of lower interest rates.

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Jim Dahle (21:14): "Remember though, you are dating the mortgage, right? You're marrying the house, you're dating the mortgage."

Additional Resources: Listeners are directed to whitecoatinvestor.com for a list of recommended mortgage lenders, including physician-specific options.

Conclusion

Dr. Dahle commends Dr. John and Dr. Jane Doe for their financial discipline and transparency in sharing their journey. He emphasizes the importance of communication and intentional planning in achieving financial milestones, especially within the demanding landscape of medical professions.

Final Thoughts: The episode underscores that achieving financial freedom as a dual-physician couple in a high-cost area is challenging but attainable through strategic savings, effective communication, and leveraging specialized financial products.

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This summary captures the essential discussions and insights from episode #216 of the White Coat Investor Podcast. For more detailed information and personalized advice, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode or visit whitecoatinvestor.com.

Transcript

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

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

[Dr. John Doe]

This.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

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[Dr. John Doe]

Sure. So I guess I'll start. And first of all, Dr. Dali, thank you for having us. Longtime fan, first time doing the recording with you. So I am still in training. I am a PGY9 at this point, but I have three more months to go with my fellowship. I'm in a medicine subspecialty like procedural specialty and we are in the New York metro area.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

And let's hear a little bit from your wife.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Hello. I am currently in primary care. I am five years out of training still with my first job working in a big health system in one of their community clinics.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay, and you guys have been together for how long?

[Dr. John Doe]

Wow. Medical school.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Since medical school. Okay, so you've been together the whole time. One of you got out of training because the training was a lot shorter, right?

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Yes.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Yeah. Okay, very cool. And tell us what we're celebrating today. What have you accomplished?

[Dr. John Doe]

We're back to broke.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

That's pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. Which is particularly impressive when you mention how much student loans you had when you came out of medical school. What did you guys owe in student loans altogether?

[Dr. John Doe]

Oh, so my portion was I think a little bit over $400,000. Maybe like $410,000. And my wife is pretty similar.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay, so $800,000 plus. And I imagine given the time period, it's probably grown a bit in the time. What was the most you ever, ever owed in student loans?

[Dr. John Doe]

Oh, well, today. So I'm on the payee program, almost 550 by this point. My wife is, she's on the repay program, but I think hers is like 440 at this point.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay, so you're both going for public service loan forgiveness.

[Dr. John Doe]

That's the plan, yeah.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Pretty awesome. So you've still got all the student loans basically, or even more than you owed when you came out of training. But you're still back to broke, which means you've been putting a lot of money away somewhere else. In the meantime, if you can offset a million dollars in student loans, tell us about that. What are your other assets?

[Dr. John Doe]

So we have about 600 retirement accounts, all stock. It's S&P, 500 and some small cap, some REIT and some international as well. We have a good chunk of saving. We are saving for a down payment, so hopefully we'll use that in the next two years or so.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Very cool. So about a million dollars in assets and about a million dollars in debt?

[Dr. John Doe]

Yeah, a little over a million. Yeah.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Very cool. All right, what's your income been over the last nine years or so? What's it ranged from? Low and high?

[Dr. John Doe]

I started out in residency, 2016. I think it was 56,000.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

I was in a low income area for residency, so I think it was like mid fives in residency. And then when I had my first job, it was probably like 200.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

All right. And maybe in the last couple of years, all combined, what do you think the two of you have been making? 300,000, something like that? 400,000?

[Dr. John Doe]

Yeah, a little north of 300,000. So my fellowship is about 100,000 right now, pre tax, of course. My wife is 225 pre tax.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay, so really, your incomes range from 100 to 320, 330 or so over the last nine years. And yet somewhere along the line, you managed to squirrel away a million dollars out of that. I mean, just doing the math in my head, right? You haven't made that much more than a million dollars. Right. You've made, you know, 1.5 or something, 1.8 maybe in that time period, and you've still got a million dollars of it left. So that suggests to me that saving was pretty important to you guys, that you carved a big chunk of your income out and are using it to build wealth. Any idea what your savings rate has been over the last few years?

[Dr. John Doe]

Yeah, so, like, we really started keeping track in, like, 2022 and 2023, and 2024 is when we actually have data. So we saved about 21% from 2024 and then 24% from 2023.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay. So that's not crazy. I mean, that's kind of the range we tell most attending physicians to save. And that's really what your family's been, you know, I mean, one of you is obviously still in training, but one of you is an attending physician. So that's kind of, you know, textbook white coat investors doing that. And yet you still, you know, with her only five years out, really not even quite five years out, have already got a million dollars in assets, so that's pretty awesome. What. What do you think enabled you guys to do that?

[Dr. John Doe]

I think a lot of it is just really like paying yourself first. So when she first became an attending in 2020, we kind of like, had a few months where we just tracked our spending and then we didn't really like, look to see like where we can cut back and everything. And then we saved whatever's left over. And then from there we kind of talked about it. It's like, all right, well, like, what kind of long term stuff that we're trying to save for. So we're moving away from New York. We're gonna need another car. So we've been saving for that for a little bit every month. We're saving for down payment as well. So just little by little, like, kind of like what you mentioned, like watching Pink dry.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Yeah. And I want to add that this is also while having three children.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Yeah, that's a little bit of a complication, isn't it?

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Yeah. So, yeah, it's really interesting. And that's why we wanted to do this podcast and we really want to encourage the listeners to basically show that Here we are as a dual physician couple, one of us still in training. We're in a high cost of living area. We have a new family. We do not have family in the area to help. So a lot of our spending is on child care. We do not have a house. But we are very, very intentional with our savings and asset allocation. And just by squirreling away all these years and just being really intentional about it, we were able to go back to broke.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Tell us about the parental leave you guys experienced.

[Dr. John Doe]

So legally I'm allowed to take parental leaves, but because I'm in a procedural specialty and I'm finishing up my training, there really is a balance, like trying to figure out what is best for me professionally and what is necessary at home. So we actually had this problem extensively. We ended up deciding, you know what, let's just throw money at a problem. So we hired a full time nanny. It's costing us quite a bit, but that's what's necessary to finish training.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Yes. So he was unable to basically not take leave. He only used his vacation days to help out when he can. And I was able to do my 12 weeks and work it out with my job to do intermittent leave. So, you know, the frenzy of, you know, running from work to daycare to home, all of that, but I didn't use any extra time. It's just what, whatever I had allowed. But I didn't take any break. I was mostly full time.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Yeah. But nine, nine months total for three kids, right?

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Yes.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Yeah. And is that paid maternity leave or was it unpaid?

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Paid.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

It was paid very Cool. Very cool. And give me a sense. What does it cost to have a nanny? What does child care cost in a high cost of living area like yours or a two doc couple?

[Dr. John Doe]

So when the younger ones are in daycare, it's 552 a week per child and a 10% discount for siblings. So childcare is actually our biggest experience.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay, so four grand a month, essentially. And now you've got a nanny. Yeah.

[Dr. John Doe]

So she's here for the month. And we're actually. Because I landed a job on the opposite side of the coast already, so we're gonna be moving back, like, closer to family. So my wife and the kids are gonna head back first probably like towards the end of April.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Okay, very cool. To have done all this in a high cost of living area while starting a family. I mean, that's. That's no joke. I remember after we had our third kid, we were, like, tapped out. We're done going from man to man to zone coverage was just too much for us. And we just hit the pause button after that. We've got a caboose about six years later when we finally recovered from that experience. But it's no joke. And to meet your financial goals as well, tell us about some of the challenges. Right. I mean, you're having to balance. You don't want to, you know, hurt your family, you don't want to hurt your marriage, you don't want to hurt your career, but you also want to start getting ahead financially. Tell us about some of those hard decisions you had to make along the way.

[Dr. John Doe]

One of the things that was tough was, like, really, like, figuring out, like, where we wanted to, like, where our goals are in terms of our financial goals. For example, like, we like to eat out, we like to travel, and we, like, had to be intentionally, like, carve out some money for that. So what we did is, like, actually, my wife has been doing a lot of sacrifice in this area. We live in an area where there's a little extra room for the kids in a safe area. But the compromise is that she has an hour commute in the morning, our commute come back. Because of that, we're able to save something on rent, and we're able to go on pretty often trips recently. So I think it's really, like being intentional on where we spend the money and trying to figure out what makes us happy.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Yeah, I was going to say it really tests the marriage when we want to also grow our assets as well. And we took a lot of tips from the podcast and from other Advice columns as well, such as we really carve out time to work it out as a couple and talk about our finances. Some conversations can be heated.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

You guys had a disagreement.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Really?

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

I can't believe it. That never happens in marriage. Yeah.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

You know, things said like, you're crazy. How could you? What about my happiness? Mostly for me. But, yeah, it really tests the marriage. But also it helps us really communicate honestly with each other and be very, very realistic. So I'm really happy that we were able to reach a compromise. But, you know, also when you make the right compromise, you don't feel like you're compromising in a sense of, you know, we're not pinching pennies. Right. We. We do take trips. And I, you know, as someone that's living in New York, is just. I would like to spend money on trips rather than a extravagant apartment. Right. So that's the sacrifice we make. But I'm more than happy to do that. Like, I would rather deal with a longer commute. But we want to go to Hawaii.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Yeah. Clearly the ideal is to, you know, spend your money on what you care about most. There's no doubt about that.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Exactly.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

But now you got two people, and they don't always care about the same things equally. And what have you learned about fighting fairly when it comes to. When it comes to, you know, financial disagreements?

[Dr. Jane Doe]

I don't know if it's fair. Yeah. You know, the best. I think the best marriage advice I got was don't keep score.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Right.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

There's no. There's no such thing as fair. You just, you know, you love that person and you, you make a work and. But you always have. Like, we, we do take time to do it. Like also a marriage check in as well, in addition to our finances. So I was like, oh, you know, how are we doing in this relationship? Checking the status. Because a lot of times, you know, he's in a procedural specialty, coming home late. Right. We don't have the bandwidth anymore to communicate. So it's really important to take time out, you know, as, you know, either for date night or, you know, when. When we have the parents to babysit and just take a moment to reevaluate, you know, our relationship, our finances and things like that. And I think. And we do that on a very regular basis, which I really appreciate.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Now. Public service loan forgiveness is a big part of your financial life. I mean, within the next year or two, your net worth may go up by a million dollars. And now we've got a new administration in place. There's Lots of talk about forgiveness not being as politically popular as maybe it was a couple of years ago. Changes to the Income Driven Repayment programs. What have your thoughts been the last couple of months knowing that so much of your plan relies on this federal program?

[Dr. John Doe]

You know, if I were to do it again, I'd probably be a little more intentional on like how much I borrowed. You know, like 10 years ago, this felt like Monopoly money to me. I would say, like I probably had a good chance for a scholarship, but I didn't even bother to ask at the time. So just reason being is I thought it's like, you know, PSLF is going to work out, it's not going to be a problem, yada yada, yada. But at this point I feel like we have a pretty decent saving rate and if we have to redirect our savings somewhere, we could. So it's going to work out somehow. But of course, like one way is going to be cheaper than another, so we're keeping a close eye on it and we'll see what happens.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you're almost surely still going to receive it, given how far you are into the program. I expect you to be grandfathered in. You may have to change the ibr, you know, new IBR instead of pay and repay. I wouldn't be surprised by that at all. But IBR and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, they went through Congress. It takes an act of Congress to change those. And while I guess that's possible, Congress could change the rules. That would be extremely unusual historically to change the rules on people that really ought to be grandfathered into the program. But I know there's lots of worry out there about this these days.

[Dr. John Doe]

Oh yeah, I like. So I actually just recertified like. Well, I tried to recertify like back in like end of January. Nothing went through. So my last payment of like 300 is in March next month. So supposedly I'm gonna pay like 5,000. So I'm trying to work that out. But like right now there's a five hour wait for like all the mobile phone calls.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

So yeah, it would help if they, you know, didn't lay off half of the Department of Education. But you know, such is life, I suppose. Okay, there's somebody else out there like you guys were five or 10 years ago, high cost of living area, maybe a two doc couple. Maybe they want to get a family started. What advice do you have for them?

[Dr. Jane Doe]

So we did not have a specific number goal in mind, so we did not know that you know, in five years, we could go back to broke. I think that as a couple who was just starting to navigate the, you know, more complex finances, we were just like, we made our goals very, very simple, as in, max out the retirement, have a savings rate. That's all we started with in the beginning. And slowly, year after year, you know, it created this great, like, snowball effect. A very slow snowball. But our foundation got stronger and stronger. Our assets became more and more. And with that, we were able to add on to our fan, like, oh, let's say for a house. Oh, let's say for a car. We might not have, you know, have the conditions now, but it is far later. Even though we have a lot of debt, we have the earning potential. We're not afraid to still spend money on ourselves, but at the same time, continue building on that foundation even when, you know, money's out going out the window with child care. So just little goes a long way.

[Dr. John Doe]

Yeah, I mean, I echo that. Like, really, like just taking the baby step to, like, kind of automate our saving. I think that really helped. So I'm looking back at our numbers, like, really, like, we're. Our NET Worth, like, two years ago was like negative 400,000 with the student loan and everything. And now, like, over the last two years, we went up by about half a million without, like, doing anything. Really, like, extraordinary.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Well, I mean, the stock market certainly helped provide you a tailwind for the last couple of years, for sure, but.

[Dr. John Doe]

Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I think also it's like communicating with significant other, trying to figure out what is important to what's him or her and be on the same page as much as we can.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Yeah, and that didn't happen in a day, you know. Yeah, there was a lot of heated discussion, so. But like I said, just as long as you make time for it, you know, communication is free. So as long as you communicate with your partner, you're able to together achieve a financial goal.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

Very cool. I appreciate you saying that. Right. Because sometimes you listen to these podcasts and everything's, you know, pure bliss. Everybody always agrees. And, you know, that's not the way real life is. Right? Real life people are different and they have, you know, different thoughts and ideas and priorities, etc. Well, congratulations to both of you on your success. Getting back to broke with one of you still in training and living in a high cost of area and raising three kids now is no small accomplishment. You should be very proud of yourselves. We're proud of you and thank you so much for coming on the podcast and being willing to inspire others to do the same.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[Dr. John Doe]

Thank you for having us.

[Dr. Jane Doe]

Okay.

[Dr. Jim Dahle]

I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. I thought that was a lot of fun. The best part about it is that they weren't afraid to mention they've disagreed about stuff over the years. They've been at this for a decade now. And they didn't always agree on everything. Right. I think for a little while in that household, my name was probably a cuss word. But that happens sometimes as people are trying to figure out how they want to live their financial lives. And it is, I always say, personal finance is a single player game. It's you against your goals. That's not entirely true. It's a two player game. You're not playing against each other, you're playing with each other. And you've really got to play with each other to be successful in this endeavor. And two people working together, especially when both of them are physicians, even though, you know, they got the hassles of being a doc, one of them's still in training, and of course they've got to spend a whole bunch of money on childcare. You know, it's hard. But they've also got two big shovels and hopefully a million dollar PSLF bonus coming within the next few years. And so they may get pretty far ahead there. All right. I mentioned at the top I was gonna talk a little bit about mortgages. It's kind of mortgage season, right? If you've ever bought or sold a home, it was probably between March and June. That's just when doctors tend to buy homes whether you're in residency or not in residency. And I'm not gonna get into the fact that I think most residents ought to at least consider renting. The truth is, most of you aren't going to, no matter what I tell you. So let's be smart. Whether you're a resident or you're an attending about how you pay for that home. There are mortgages out there called doctor mortgages or physician mortgages. And the point of these mortgages is that they trust you a little more than a typical person because of your high stable income. So you can kind of get a pretty sweet deal on a mortgage. It's not necessarily lower interest rate and lower fees, but without putting 20% down, you can get out of paying the insurance that protects the lender from you defaulting. This is just a cost to most people when they buy a home and don't put 20% down for you. If you get a physician mortgage or doctor mortgage. And it's available to a few other professions as well. You don't have to pay that insurance. So that's the benefit. You can also close without actually having pay stubs. You can just have an employment contract. And a lot of times even just an independent contractor kind of contract is enough for you to close in that home. Now a lot of times it makes sense to make sure you like the job and the job likes you before you buy a home. That might take six months or 12 months after you move there. And that's okay. It's okay to move to a new city and rent for a while. When we moved to Salt Lake, we rented for about six months. And so we knew exactly what homes were worth. We'd looked at every home for sale in a two mile radius area, the place we were interested in living. We knew what they were worth. More than the people selling the homes, more than our realtor knew what they were worth. It just gave us a lot of time. We could be patient and we could be a little bit strategic about what home we bought and how much we paid for it. And because of that, we got a pretty darn good deal in a house we're still very happy with 15 years later. So don't be in a rush that you feel like you gotta fly in three days. Buy a house. You don't have to do that. You can rent. You don't have to rent an apartment. You can rent a house. There's houses for rent just about everywhere you want to go. You can rent a house for six months or a year, even if you got to pay a little bit more for it. Because it's a month to month contract. So you can get out of it in six months. But make sure the job's going to work out. Make sure you have a stable family situation, a stable professional situation, because you need to be in a home three to five plus years to work out well for you financially. You need it to appreciate enough to cover the transaction costs. And that takes time, right? I mean, some home prices have gone nuts in the last few years and it hasn't required that much time for it to appreciate enough to cover the transaction costs. But traditionally, on average, over the decades, it typically takes three to five years for that to happen. So be very careful out there buying homes that you think you're going to be in less than that time period. And make sure it's highly likely that you're going to be there for that sort of a time period for it to work out well financially. Now we've got a list of not only physician but regular mortgage lenders. You can find whitecoat investor.com just go to the recommended tab and you'll see it there and they can help you see what's available in your state where you're buying and get the best deal you can on a mortgage. Remember though, you are dating the mortgage, right? You're marrying the house, you're dating the mortgage. If rates go down, you can refinance that mortgage in a year or two or five and hopefully get a lower interest rate than the initial one you purchased it with. Even this home that we moved into in 2010, we refinanced it twice and got lower interest rates before we paid it off. We paid it off after seven or eight years in the house, but we refinanced it twice before then. You marry the house, you date the mortgage. Today's sponsor, Black Swan Real Estate offers accredited investors access to private multifamily real estate investments with an investor first model. Unlike most firms, Black Swan collects no GP level fees and takes no profit until investors receive a full return of capital. Their physician led team brings a hands on approach to managing their $375 million portfolio, ensuring every asset is optimized for cash flow, appreciation and tax advantages. With a track record of meeting and exceeding return targets, Black Swan Real Estate provides stability and growth for long term wealth building. Discover [e-mail] BlackSwan thanks for being part of the White Coat Investor community. I'm sorry those of you who had a rough day at work today, hopefully it will be better tomorrow. Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We're here to help. We'll see you next time on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. 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.