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This is the White Coat Investor Podcast Milestones to Millionaire celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.
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All right, welcome back to the Milestones Podcast. Goodman Capital is a premier real estate credit investment firm specializing in senior secured low loan to value lending on class A properties and prime markets across the greater New York metro area. Founded on a family legacy Dating back to 1987, Goodman has closed more than $850 million plus across 95 plus loans with a track record of 0 principal loss. Their flagship private mortgage REIT Liquid Credit Strategy Fund 1 delivered a steady 9% net dividend yield since inception at a very conservative sub 50% loan to value ratio. Invest in tax efficient high yield risk adjusted dividend debt investment strategies with goodman capital@whitecoatinvestor.com Goodman we always have a lot of fun here. And it's especially fun because we get to connect with you. And sometimes I get excited about some random topic in finance, talking about options, strategies or some interesting things some mutual fund's doing and we get off in the weeds. But by connecting with you guys out there, whether it's on the podcast, whether it's at some speaking gig, whether it's a WC icon, it brings me back to real life. And real life is that mostly what I need to be doing here is not educating you about some off in the weeds topic, but somehow inspiring you, encouraging you, motivating you to do the basic things you need to do in order to be financially successful. It's not that complicated. We bring enough people on this podcast. If you've been listening for a while, you recognize, wait, this isn't all that complicated. All these other doctors have done it. They're no smarter than I am. They had no more benefits or luck than I did. And I can do this too. Well, one of those things you need to do is to get disability insurance. Okay? You don't have to hold it forever. When you become financially independent, you can get rid of it. But if you depend on your income, and especially if anybody else depends on it too, you need disability insurance. Doctors get disabled all the time. It breaks my heart to see GoFundMes for doctors and I see them out there, attendings, fellows, residents. Something terrible happens. Now they can't work. There's a GoFundMe. The average GoFundMe is like a five figure amount, low five figures or even four figure amount. Now some of these ones I've seen for these docs might have been a higher five figure amount, but it's nowhere near the amount of money that they need to live the rest of their life with their now disabled condition. Okay. GoFundMe is not a life insurance company. It is not a disability insurance company either. You really do need to buy these policies. Someone else depends on your income. You need disability and term life insurance. If just you depend on your income, you just need disability insurance. But you can get both of these by going to whitecoatinvestor.com insurance. Yes, this helps support the mission of the white coat investor. If there's profit left over, it comes to us because we're the owners of White Coat Investor.
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But.
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But the truth of the matter is you actually do need this stuff. And we found the best people we can find to sell it to you. Okay? And they're gonna help you get the best policy that you need. All you gotta do is go to whitecoatinvestor.com insurance. We'll get you connected with these folks that sell literally hundreds of these policies to white coat investors every year. And they're gonna help you get the policy you need that is gonna take care of you. If you're one of those people who actually does get disabled during their careers. And if you look at the statistics, it's not insignificant. One out of four 18 year olds will become disabled for at least three months between 18 and 65. One out of four. Now, I don't know what the exact statistics are for doctors, and the insurance companies don't necessarily want to pass that information out. But it's not a small number. We're not talking about 1 or 2%, right? It's 10, 15, 20, 25%. Those sorts of numbers are the percentage of people actually using their disability insurance policies. That's why they're kind of expensive policies. Cause they actually get used. So make sure you get your okay. If you don't have one yet, you need to go get one. Even if you're a resident, even if you're a fellow. Certainly if you're beyond there, you know, the expense just keeps going up as you get older. So the earlier you buy it, the better. Okay. Whitecoatinvestor.com insurance all right, let's get our guests on the line. We've got a great interview today. Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Sam. Sam, welcome to the podcast.
C
Hey, thanks for having me, Jim.
B
It was fun to meet you in person a few months ago at wcicon and it's great to have you on the podcast. So everybody else gets to meet you too. Introduce yourself a little bit to them, tell us how Far you are out of training, what you do for a living, what part of the country you're in.
C
So again, my name is Sam. I'm an academic family physician down in Galveston, Texas where I teach and educate and see patients. I'm 8 years post residency and fellowship graduation.
B
Okay, very cool. And we're actually celebrating two milestones today. And they're kind of classic seven eight year milestones and you've knocked them both out. So tell us about your two milestones.
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You've done so. First milestone happened a year ago. February of 2025. I had PSLF and all my loans were completely forgiven.
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Woohoo.
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So three years of residency, seven years out. Now you're at 10 years. 10 years of payments, you get PSLF. Awesome.
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Correct. And it was approved? I guess. Let me say it like that. It was approved February 2025, but I was actually, they backdated it all the way to June of 2024, when I started PSLF right after Med school.
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Yeah, it was a little, it was
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a little messy there for a while.
C
Yep. And the second one is on my birthday this year. My wife and I crossed over the $1 million net worth threshold.
B
Oh, what a coincidence. What birthday was.
C
Was my 38th birthday.
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38. Millionaire at 38. Pretty awesome. That's pretty awesome. Okay, all right, let's do the first one. You're in academics, so your job qualifies for pslf.
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Yep.
B
Did you know you were going into academics in med school?
C
No, I actually was looking at private practice all throughout medical school and even in residency. But I got the opportunity to do a fellowship after residency and did a one year fellowship and fell in love even more with teaching and working with students, working with the residents. And I've been here ever since.
B
And it has a financial benefit. Typically, not always, but typically academicians are paid a little bit less. But getting PSLF is a nice little cherry on the top of that pay. So tell us, how much did you borrow from med school? How much did you owe when you came out?
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So I owed about 240 by the time I came out of medical school. When I finally became a faculty member, that had gone up to about 300 or so, maybe a little more. And so by the time PSLF happened, I had a 300. Roughly 300,000 forgiven.
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So in one day your net worth went up by $300,000. How did that feel?
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It was unreal. We really couldn't believe it. We kept staring at the notice and
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just said, is this for real?
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And then we'd Go and check the bank account and make sure that it actually showed it was gone.
B
That's pretty awesome. Pretty great program.
D
Okay.
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Did you ever lose faith in it?
C
There were some times that I was really concerned that it wasn't going to happen. I was really cautious because part of this happened during the COVID years. And so I had a couple years where I had to pay nothing and was really unsure if those years were going to count, if it was going to set me back even more. And so we even tried to do a little bit of saving just in case I had to pay those off. The time that we just didn't have any payments on the pslf.
B
Kind of started a little PSLF side fund, just in case. Yep. What'd you end up doing with that?
C
That actually went to help pay for down payment for our home that we purchased a couple years ago.
B
Very cool. Okay, so how much do you think you paid over that 10 years toward your loans?
C
So, because I started right out of medical school, following actually some advice on the forum and White Coat investor website, I paid total less than $30,000 for my entire PSLF timeframe.
B
Yeah, pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. I have met a few people that paid even less than that. I've had a few that were 10 or 15,000. But that's pretty awesome. You know, between getting, you know, making no payments because your income was student and then lower payments because your income was resident and fellow. And then of course, the PSLF or the student loan holiday was in your timeframe as well.
C
That really helped a lot.
B
Yeah, because you were an ATT at that point and not making payments. That makes a big difference. Okay, let's turn to your other milestone here. You became millionaires. So give us a sense of income in the family. You, your spouse. What kind of money have you guys been making the last eight years?
C
So we're a single income family. My wife currently stays home with our two daughters because she wants to be there and be with them. And we make enough that we can do that. And so currently about 75% of our net worth is in stocks and bonds and investment portfolio. About 5 to 10% of that is in real estate investments. And then 20% is our house. Our two homes currently. But we're in the process of selling one of them.
B
There was a recent move, or we did.
C
Yeah, two years ago, my spouse and I moved because we were expanding our family. We ended up going, buying a little bit of a bigger home and so have that second home. In the first one we were renting out and now are selling, selling that home currently.
B
And I'm presuming income wise, I mean, when I look at surveys, academic family physicians are typically in the 200 to 350 range. Is that kind of where you've been the last eight years?
C
That is about where I've been. When I started eight years ago, it was actually 175. It was really low and then has slowly increased throughout the years. And part of my salary is based on RVUs and what I bring in. And so that has actually pushed me to the upper limits. I make about 350 per year.
B
Okay, but if we added that all up, it probably adds up to something around $2 million. And you've still got a million of it left, which is a pretty awesome ratio. So give us a sense for what you guys did differently that most doctors do not because they're not building wealth at this level, despite sometimes having significantly higher income.
C
So number one was actually, I don't know if you noticed, right down here is your book that I give away a lot to students and residents. We just followed the book, man. We lived like a resident our first two, three years out of residency. We lived in a small one bedroom condo until the birth of our first child and then ended up moving into a home and buying. And that really helped set us up for success with just those low payments on mortgage. Until our most recent home, our mortgage payments were 8% of our total spending each year. That really helped. We were really aggressive in saving and specifically using the backdoor Roth IRA and then making sure that I got the complete match with my employer for retirement.
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Yeah, very cool. So you just did the basics, the basic white coat investor stuff, and it really works. It's amazing. That's awesome. Okay, well, there's somebody out there that's like you. Maybe they want to go into academics, maybe they don't. Maybe they're just hoping PSLF works out for them and maybe they want to be a millionaire seven or eight years out. What advice do you have for them?
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I think the biggest advice I can give is to create a plan and stick with it. My wife and I sat down early in our marriage and said, this is where we want to be, this is what we want. And regularly meet together to make sure that we're on target with our savings, we're on target with our spending, and to talk through just kind of the long term financials. Even with that, we still take time to do the things that we love. And so we go on kind of a bigger vacation at Least once a year with our family or with friends and still have the opportunity to do the things we love, but are just very intentional about how we spend our income.
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I get the sense that you guys never fight about money. Is that true?
C
It is. More, I'm a bit of the spender in our relationship, actually. So there have been times that I've had to call her and say, hey,
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you've been reigned in a little.
D
Huh?
B
Well, very cool. Very cool. Well, you've been very successful. You should be very proud of what you've accomplished. You are en route to financial freedom in not that long from now. And then you're going to be dealing with that existential crisis that all these financially independent docs in the White Coat investor community have to deal with, figuring out how much they want to work and what kind of work they want to do and how they want to spend that money and how much they want to give and all that. So congratulations to you. You're making awesome progress and should be very proud of what you guys have accomplished so far.
C
Thanks very much, Jim.
B
Okay, that was a fun interview. At about seven or eight years is where we typically see people making a lot of traction in their financial plans. Right. If you're actually paying attention to this stuff and you're doing what you should be doing, you ought to be getting your debts paid off within about five years of coming out of training. If you're going for PSLF and you only did three years of training, it might be seven years before you get pslf. But. But that sort of timeframe, that's what we expect people to be getting medical school paid for now. Sure, there's 27% of you that didn't have any debt coming out of medical school, although some of you had contracts. Again, those contracts are typically paid off in something like four years. And so in that time period is when you're really getting your debt under control and your savings are really starting to add up. In my book, first book, the White Coat Investor, I think the chapter's called millionaire at 38. And our goal was to be millionaires by age 40. We made it a little bit early by 38. The success of White Coat Investor had nothing to do with that. Right. White Coat Investor had not made any money by that point. I don't know, Maybe he'd made $5,000. That was it. This was all from my clinical work, four years of which I spent in the military. My income when I came out of residency as a military emergency physician, that first year was $120,000. Okay. And despite that income, which did go up over time, and of course, once I got out of the military, it went up. And once I made partner in my group, it went up. But on average, on less than $200,000 of income for those eight years, we became millionaires. And that's not all that dissimilar from what some of our recent guests on this podcast have had. You can do this. Do you have to be intentional about it?
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Yes.
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Do you actually have to deliberately build this wealth that's going to give you the financial freedom you want?
E
Yes.
B
You don't have to start the next white coat investor to do have to save 90% of your income to do this. You have to save some of it. You have to invest it in some sort of reasonable way. You have to have some sort of reasonable plan to pay for medical school. You have to buy the insurances that are going to cover you if something terrible happens to you. But you can do this. You can be successful. And you'll be amazed seven or eight years out of a training when you pick your head up, look around and go, wow, we're millionaires. They were right. All those people at Whiteco Investor were right. If we just put this plan in place and follow the plan a few years later, we're exactly where we want to be, where we need to be, and we now have this wonderful, financially free life to do what we want to do. So keep at it. Those of you in that period of time, that first seven or eight years out, keep grinding it. You're going to get there. Pay attention to your finances. Obviously that's not the most important thing in life, but you got to pay some attention to it and you too can be successful. Build wealth. And that'll help you to not only be a better physician, it'll help you be a better partner to your partner, it'll help you be a better parent to your kids. You're just going to be a better person all the way around when you can quit worrying about money.
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Umbrella insurance is a personal liability policy different from a professional liability policy like your malpractice policy. It's called an umbrella policy because it sits over the top of your auto policies, any recreational vehicle policies, like a boat policy you might have and your homeowner's or renter's policy, and provides additional liability coverage. Each of those individual policies typically has an amount of liability insurance, and you're required to have that on your car in every state in the union. But the amount you're required to have is often ridiculously low, sometimes as low as $25,000 or $50,000, which is really nothing when people are out there driving around in $100,000 cars, right? If you total their car, that's 100,000. If you also send them to the hospital, that could easily be hundreds of thousands of dollars and you need liability coverage or you're going to be paying out of pocket for that. And so, in general, the recommendation is to increase your personal liability to a few hundred thousand and then add on an umbrella policy on top of that. And the amount of the umbrella Policy
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is typically seven figures.
E
Common amounts are 1 million or 5 million. You can get something in between those two. I hear these days you can even get as much as 10 million, although that was hard to get a few years ago. The last time I shopped this around. It's not about how much net worth you have, it's about the liability you have, right? Because if you hit somebody and cause them serious damage worth millions of dollars, it doesn't matter Whether you have $300,000 or $3,000,000 or $30,000,000, your liability is the same. And so that's what you're buying when you're trying to decide how much umbrella policy to buy. And what you will find is that like with malpractice, when people get a million bucks, they feel like, okay, I've been compensated for the damages. This is a lot of money in my life. This is nice. Me and my attorney are willing to walk away with policy limits on this. That's kind of the million dollar mindset
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that goes on out there.
E
And so typically that's the amount I recommend people have. Obviously, that's going to pay for your defense. Just like with malpractice, it's also going to pay for any settlement and any judgment that might come out against you. Now, is it possible to have a judgment against you for more than a million dollars? Yes, it is. But the higher you get, the less likely it is and the less likely it is that that person decides, even if they get a judgment above policy limits, to go after your personal assets. It's just much harder to get personal assets than it is to get the money out of a liability insurance policy. But that's how it works, right? It just gives you additional liability coverage. You might be surprised to learn that most of these are not from people slipping and falling on your walk or from being bitten by your do or a kid being injured on your trampoline or your pool or something like that. Most of them are auto related. 80% of umbrella claims are auto related. So if you're, you know, and maybe not the world's best driver, nobody thinks they are, maybe it's worth having a little more liability coverage. If you've got teenage drivers, right, they're far more likely to get in a wreck than you are. Good reason to have significant umbrella coverage. You'll pay for it. Of course, as soon as they find out you've got a 16 year old boy in your house, especially once he gets a T or two or has a wreck or two, you're going to find your insurance goes up pretty significantly in price. But in general, lots of people find that they can buy a million dollars of umbrella coverage for 3, 4, $500 a year, right? It's dramatically cheaper than your disability insurance, it's cheaper than your life insurance, it's dramatically cheaper than your malpractice insurance. It's not that expensive of stuff. Now if you decide, you know, I'm a belt and suspenders kind of person, I want a whole bunch of liability coverage. You want to get yourself a $5 million policy, you might be paying $1,500, $2,000, $3,000 a year for that. And who should get that?
B
Well, if you're getting to the point
E
where you're considering expensive, complex asset protection techniques, you're thinking about an overseas trust or a family LLC or a grantor trust, like a slat, something like that, you're thinking about paying thousands of dollars to attorneys to come up with these additional asset protection techni. At a certain point you gotta go, well, maybe you ought to just buy more umbrella coverage too, right? For a couple thousand dollars a year, it's way cheaper than setting up a bunch of trusts. And it seems like a reasonable addition if you're still concerned about asset protection kind of situations. But it covers all kinds of personal liability, right? It can even cover things like libel. I mean, read the coverage in the policy. Every one of them is a little bit different, but it's going to cover damage from car accidents, it's going to cover people getting hurt at. It covers things like libel. It covers all kinds of things you might not expect it to cover. So if you have some sort of a claim against you, make sure you check your umbrella policy. You might be surprised that you do have coverage for that thing. It's not, however, going to sit over the top of your malpractice coverage. It doesn't give you additional professional liability insurance. So if you were thinking you were going to get Another million dollars you could pay to a patient if they sue you because you damaged them. That's not the case that none of them cover that. So be aware of that. But basically it just sits on top of your auto and home policy limits. So your auto policy pays out its whole amount and then you go to the umbrella policy and often it's with the same company, sometimes it's not, but that's how it works. Your auto policy is only going to pay out policy limits and above and beyond that it's up to the umbrella policy. So I think the main takeaway here is that this is just one of those insurances you need to have. You need to have health insurance, you need to have disability insurance, assuming you're not yet financially independent. You need to have some term life insurance if anybody else depends on your income too. You probably ought to insure your house so if it burns to the ground you can replace it. Most of us can't afford to self insure our house and liability coverage, right? Both malpractice and personal liability coverage. So the place people usually start is just to go to whoever's providing them their auto policy or their homeowner's policy. Often that's the same company, but we have got a service here at wci. If you go to our insurance page, we'll get you connected with that. If you go under the recommended tab, you will find that and we can help you get not only home and auto coverage, but umbrella coverage as well.
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Our sponsor for today's episode is Goodman Capital, a leading real estate investment firm focused on asset backed private lending in prime markets across the greater New York metro area. Since 1987, Goodman has built a cycle tested platform worth more than 850 million plus in closed transactions. And over 1,000 investors served including physicians and medical professionals. Their institutional infrastructure, third party administrators, auditors and counsel ensures transparency and compliance while their focus on senior secured low LTV loans provide strong downside risk protection. Join Goodman Capital and access tax efficient passive monthly income with principal safety@whitecoatinvestor.com Goodman. All right, that's the end of another episode. If you want to be a guest on this, apply@whitecoatinvestor.com Milestones. Until the next one, keep your head up, your shoulders back. You've got this. We're all here to help you. This one big huge white coat investor community. Let's help docs be successful so we can provide better medicine, have better lives, have less burnout. And let's get after this. See you next time.
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The White Coat Investor Podcast is for your entertainment and information only and should not be considered financial, legal, tax or investment advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.
Podcast: White Coat Investor Podcast – Milestones to Millionaire #283
Host: Dr. Jim Dahle
Guest: Sam, Academic Family Physician
Release Date: July 13, 2026
Main Theme:
Celebrating the financial journey of Dr. Sam, who became a millionaire at 38 and achieved full Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) a year earlier. The episode unpacks how basic, steady financial principles—rather than luck or extreme sacrifice—enabled a mid-income academic physician to achieve significant financial milestones.
[08:11] Created a "PSLF side fund" as a backup in case forgiveness faltered, eventually using it for a home down payment.
[08:29] Total out-of-pocket for a decade of loans: less than $30,000.
[11:06] Simple, consistent financial habits:
Quote ([11:53]):
“We just followed the book, man. We lived like a resident our first two, three years out of residency… That really helped set us up for success.” – Sam
Sam on PSLF payoff:
“It was unreal. We really couldn't believe it. We kept staring at the notice and just said, is this for real? And then we'd go and check the bank account and make sure that it actually showed it was gone.” – [07:28]
On keeping financial faith during uncertainty:
“There were some times that I was really concerned that it wasn't going to happen... we even tried to do a little bit of saving just in case I had to pay those off.” – Sam ([07:43])
On early frugality and its impact:
“We lived like a resident our first two, three years out of residency… our mortgage payments were 8% of our total spending each year. That really helped.” – Sam ([11:06])
On planning together:
“My wife and I sat down early in our marriage and said, this is where we want to be, this is what we want. And regularly meet together to make sure that we're on target...” – Sam ([12:14])
Dr. Jim Dahle’s encouragement:
“You can do this. Do you have to be intentional about it? Yes. But you can be successful. And you'll be amazed seven or eight years out of training when you pick your head up, look around and go, wow, we're millionaires. They were right.” – Jim ([15:27])
Sam's milestone story is a testament to the power of intention, teamwork, and sticking to foundational financial habits. Achieving PSLF and surpassing $1M net worth by 38 isn't out of reach for most physicians—it's about consistent, reasonable planning alongside a partner, and making the most of the financial tools at your disposal.
If you’re in that crucial 7-8 years after training, keep grinding—the math and the stories prove it works!