
We are answering a variety of your questions today. We start out talking about methods to save up for an early retirement. We answer a question from a listener who received an inheritance from a Canadian relative and they want to know if they should...
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This is the White Coat Investor podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.
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It's White Coat Investor podcast number 441. Today's episode is brought to us by SoFi, the folks who help you get your money right. Paying off student debt quickly and getting your finances back on track isn't easy.
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While you're still in residency.
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Got you covered there too.
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For more information, go to sofi.com whitecoatinvestor SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi.
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Bank NA member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply.
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NMLS 696891 all right, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for what you're doing out there. It's important work, you know, a bunch of you. I apparently made an offhand comment a few weeks ago when recording a podcast.
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About, you know, the fact that I.
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Got a non union in my scaphoid and I got a whole bunch of hand surgeons that emailed me and said, hey, I'll take a look and see if I can help. You guys are awesome. It's amazing what you will reach out and do for each other, for the white coat and community. It's really pretty awesome.
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And I appreciate, you know, getting a second opinion and knowing that what I'm hearing from my surgeon is probably the.
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Best advice I can get. And I do appreciate that. And let's be honest, right when I complain about my wrist not being functional, I can still do an awful lot of fun stuff. We just got back from a trip to Switzerland and the Dolomites in northern Italy. We spent one day canyoning in Ticino, which I was thrilled about, right? This is like a Mecca. This is like Moab for mountain bikers, Ticino for canyoneers. It's a pretty cool place. A lot of you probably never have.
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Heard of the place, but it's a.
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Bunch of mountain streams, waterfalls, et cetera.
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That come into the mountains there.
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And so we had a lot of fun, jumping off cliffs into pools and sliding down slides into pools and rappelling off stuff and hanging out in waterfalls.
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It was a great time in Ticino.
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Then we spent another five days in the Dolomites doing Via Ferratas, which a lot of you might not know what a via Ferrata is. This is Italian phrase for the Iron Way. And basically In World War I, the Italians and the Austrians fought each other to a stalemate in the mountains in the Dolomites. And they got up and down on these peaks using ladders and cables and whatever they could to get to these high peaks.
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They dug into the mountains, they lived.
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In caves, they literally fought inside of mountains.
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Dragons.
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During World War I, that front basically didn't move the whole time for like three years. They're all in the same place fighting.
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Each other in these mountains.
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But afterward there were all these ladders.
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And cables in the mountains that you.
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Could go check out.
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And obviously Those are all 100 years.
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Old, so they've updated them.
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And there's lots of cool places where.
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You can go to the top of spectacular mountains, past all these caves that people were fighting in, and past all these trenches and lookouts and really explore.
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And so it's heaven for those of us who love mountains.
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You look around and there's 50 peaks visible that are like the Grand Teton.
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And so we got a chance to go up some of those via these Via Ferratas. You know, they're.
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You basically, instead of using a rope and rock climbing protection that you put.
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Into the rock, you're. You're just clipping yourself into a cable as you climb along the whole way. And so it's a way for people that aren't, you know, particularly skilled at rock climbing to be able to go to pretty spectacular places very safely. And so we had a fun time doing that. And I'm pleased to say that in both the canyons and in Via Ferrata's.
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My wrist worked perfectly fine to keep.
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Up with the group. And we had a wonderful time over there. It was kind of a couple's trip and had fun. I spent one day down in Venice, which is about all I can take in Venice anyway. But it's obviously a pretty cool place. If you've never been there, it's worth.
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The day of your life for sure.
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But I don't mean to complain too much about my wrist not working great, since obviously I can do most of what I want to do in my life.
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In fact, I even went rock climbing.
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This week, like real rock climbing.
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I told my son he better lead.
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Because I wasn't sure what my grip strength could really do on this particular route.
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And so he led a rock climb for the first time.
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It was a very safe, bolted rock climb and he did great and we're very proud of him. And he's very proud of himself. And he was thrilled because that day.
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He got his braces off as well.
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So it was a big day for him. And I hope you guys are all doing great out there in White Coat Investor land.
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You guys are a community and maybe you don't feel yourself a part of that yet. One way you can is joining one of these online White Coat Investor kind of communities. Since it was founded, it has been bringing together this community of like minded physicians and high earners that are committed to financial success. So whether you're celebrating a money win or navigating a financial setback, or looking for guidance, you'll find a wealth of knowledge in the subreddit.
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Right?
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If you're into Reddit, go to White Coat Investor or White Coat Investor. The Facebook group is White Coat Investors.
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It's a private Facebook group. You got to actually answer a couple of questions before they let you in there. You can't be a financial professional. It's supposed to be high income professionals like docs, et cetera.
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You can come by the White Coat Investor forum, right?
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That's forum White Coat Investor and check that out.
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And we also have the few financially empowered women.
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This is an all women's community if.
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You prefer to learn in that sort of community.
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That's our smallest community obviously compared to the others. But in some ways there's a community we have on Instagram and X as well.
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But we encourage you to engage with.
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Other White Coat investors.
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A lot of the questions you have can be answered very quickly and very thoroughly. And you can get lots of different.
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Opinions just by posting them in one of those groups.
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So don't be afraid to use those. They are there for you. They're all totally free.
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You know, we don't make much money in any of those communities, to be honest with you. They're all pretty hard to monetize compared to a podcast or a blog or a newsletter or something like that. But we think it's important to maintain those because we think it does a great service for you. So take advantage of this.
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Know someone great. We're hiring a content marketing specialist. The application window is closed for everyone except our podcast listeners.
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We're keeping the window open for just a few more days.
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So if you or anyone you know would be a good fit, apply by Monday. That's October 20th. We're looking for a Content marketing specialist to help expand the reach of white coat investors. Mission the role involves copywriting, repurposing content across marketing channels, email, social website and leading outreach efforts to help more physicians.
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And high income professionals take control of their financial lives.
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We're accepting applications until Monday at jobsoitecodeinvestor.com the job description and more info can.
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Be found at whitecoatinvestor.com contentmarketingspecialist all right.
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Let'S get into your questions.
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We're going to take some questions today.
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We also have an interview here with.
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One of our sponsors. We're going to bring on a little bit later, but our first question comes from Nicole, who wants to learn a.
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Little more about saving for an early retirement.
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Hi Dr. Dally, my name is Nicole and I have a question about saving up for early retirement for context. My husband and I are both 35. We are pharmacists. We hope to retire in our early 40s. We currently have about $2 million in investable assets and want to retire with somewhere between 3 and 4 million dollars in investable assets. Our current situation is we have about $1.4 million in tax protected accounts and about $600,000 in taxable accounts, $67,000 of which is cash. To mitigate sequence of returns risk. I would like to have about $250,000 in cash when you retire. To do the bucket method. I am wondering how you would go about accumulating $250,000 in cash. Every year we max out all of our tax protected accounts and then after that we have about $40,000 left over to save in our taxable brokerage account. In the past we've just been investing that money in index funds and bonds. But now would you start just saving in a money market account? I don't really want to sell investments to accumulate this $250,000 in cash. What are your thoughts?
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Okay, great question. First of all, congratulations. You're doing spectacularly, right. If this were the Milestones to Millionaire.
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Podcast, we'd be totally heaping congratulations on you.
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You guys are doing great. You're 35, couple of pharmacists, you got.
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A couple million dollars already.
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You're multimillionaires.
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Awesome.
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The only problem here is that you have a pretty aggressive goal. You want to retire. I think she said in her early 40s, right, Megan? Early 40s. I mean you're 35. We're talking five, six, seven, eight years from now. You want to retire and retiring that early in life requires you to save lots and Lots of money. Now, clearly, I don't know, maybe you got an inheritance or something. Maybe you won the lottery.
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I don't know.
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But I'm guessing you accumulated this by saving a whole bunch of money. If you go back and run the numbers and see how much you got to save to retire very quickly in life, you realize it's a pretty high savings rate, right? I mean, Pete Adeney, who started a blog a month before mine called Mr. Money Mast at Mustache, did a post, probably his most famous post from 2012, and he called it the Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement. And he built a chart. In that post, he uses net savings rate.
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And I usually talk about savings rate as a gross percent percentage of your.
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Income, but he used net savings rate.
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In his charts, and he basically said.
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If you save 5% of your net income, you got to work 66 years until you can retire. And if you're saving 100% of your income, well, you could retire right now because you don't need to save anything. But if you're saving 90% of your net income, you'll be able to retire in under three years. If you're saving 50% of your net income, you'll be able to retire in 17 years, so on and so forth. It's all dependent mostly on your savings rate, is the more you save, not only do the more you have to invest, but the less you need to replace later because you're only replacing what you actually spend, and what you save is not part of your spending. So that's the way the math of early retirement works. The more you save, the sooner you're financially independent, the sooner you can quit working if you want. Doesn't mean you have to quit working, right? Fire is financially independent. Retire early, but you can be just fi. You know, we've been financially independent for seven or eight years or something now.
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We're still working, we're still running.
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White coat investor Katie even ran for office. She's in a school board meeting this.
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Morning as we're recording this, and I'm.
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Still seeing patients in the emergency department. Nothing says you have to retire, but you can retire if you want to.
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Once you're financially independent.
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In fact, a lot of the benefits of financial independence show up long before you actually.
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Before you actually hit that mark of being financially independent.
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So your only question is, well, how do I get $250,000 in cash? Well, I'm guessing you're not going to find it in your couch cushions, right? So you got to save it. You said you don't want to sell any investments ever to get it. Well, that limits a lot of ways you could get it. So you just have to save it. You said you're putting $40,000 into a taxable account every year and you got $67,000 in cash and you want $250,000 in cash. So I figure that taxable account money has to go to cash for the.
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Next three or four years, right, to.
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Get you where you want to be. Seems like as easy as a method as any. Luckily, right now cash is paying 4.
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Or 4.2% or something like that.
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If you have it in a high yield savings account or a good money.
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Market fund, I think it's gone down recently with some changes made at the Fed. But you know, if you want to.
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Retire very soon and you don't want to sell investments to get that cash and you want to have that much cash, which is not an unreasonable way to deal with sequence of returns risk.
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By the way, I don't have any.
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Problem whatsoever with your plan, but with the limitations you gave me, the only way to do is to save it. So you got to start saving the cash now in your taxable account. You could also turn any dividend reinvesting off that you have.
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That might help you get to $250,000 sooner because whatever you that $600,000 you have in investments there, maybe you're reinvesting the dividends, have those go toward cash.
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And you'll get there. You know, it might take you a.
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Few years, but you'll get to that $250,000.
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But you're not that far away. You want 3 or 4 million. You got 2 million already, right? Even if you do nothing, that 2 million is probably going to become 4 million in the next 7 to 10 years. Now, you want to retire a little sooner than that, which is fine because you're still saving. So I think five years from now, five, six, seven years from now, you're going to make it. You're going to hit your goal of three to $4 million, $250,000 in cash and be able to have this early.
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Retirement you've been dreaming about.
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I think you're well on track to your goal. I think it's very reasonable for you to do what you're talking about doing. And it seems to me like you're doing everything right. So congratulations. Keep going. You're almost there. And we rejoice with you as you reach your financial goals. Okay, let's talk about Canadians for a minute. I Love Canada. I thought about living in Canada.
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I visited Canada a number of times and every one of those trips was one of the best trips of my life. So let's talk about somebody that got.
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Some money from Canada.
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I've never gotten money from Canada. I've always spent money when I went to Canada.
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But I guess it's possible to get money from Canada.
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So let's listen to that.
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Hi Dr. Dali. I am a 50 year old subspecialty neurologist living in the South. Married, no kids, no college funds to save for. I have paid off all my student loan debt and there's no mortgage, no consumer loans. I have a net worth of 1.4 million, mostly in retirement. That does not count my house, which is my forever home. Not planning to move. My question is regarding an inheritance from a deceased family member in Canada. It'll end up being approximately $100,000 in US dollars. I'm not really pleased with the current administration's tendency to want to manipulate the Fed. I could bring the money into the US or I could leave it in Canada as a sort of currency hedge. I would have to make a personal trip to Canada in order to open a bank account there. The question is, is it worth it to make the trip to Canada or should I bring the money to the US and stop being melodramatic about the potential decline of the US dollar as a reserve currency. If I did bring it to the US I would either invest it in my brokerage account or spe on my house on some long wanted but unnecessary home upgrades. Anyway, just curious about your thoughts. Thank you so much.
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Well, you gave me the option of a trip to Canada, so I'm taking that. I think you should open a bank account in someplace like Squamish or Revelstoke. Revelstoke. About January. You can tie it in with, you know, a pretty sweet hela skiing trip. Or maybe Squamish come, you know, August or September and you can go climbing on the Sheaf. It'd be great trip.
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I think it'd be wonderful.
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All joking aside, you don't sound like you're going to Canada. I mean, you're going to stay where you're at. You're in your forever home in the South. That's a long way from Canada. So I don't know what the big deal is about keeping money in Canada and hedging your currency risk. It sounds to me like you're spending dollars the rest of your life, right? Yeah.
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It doesn't sound like you like the current presidential administration.
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Well, I got news for you. President Trump is on his second term, okay? And as I record this, it's already September, so you got three and a half years left, and then you get a different president. Maybe you like this one more, maybe you like this one less, I don't know. But you're gonna get a different one in three and a half years, barring.
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Some real changes to our political system.
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So, you know, you sound young, you sound like you're not retiring for quite a while.
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You sound like you got a lot.
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Of life left to live. I don't think I'd make any big changes to my financial plan based on who's in the office of the White House, the Oval Office of the White House. So, no, I don't think you. I think you are being melodramatic. If you're like, I better leave some of this in Canada because we got Trump going on, I think that's nutty. If it was a good idea to have money in Canada before President Trump.
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Then, yeah, sure, put some money in there.
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But it doesn't sound to me like it was a good idea before. It doesn't sound like it's a good idea now. You know, if you just think the whole US Is going to implode, fine.
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Go buy some property in Canada or Switzerland or New Zealand or wherever else.
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You want to go.
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But it just seems a little melodramatic to make a bunch of changes to your financial plan every time a new party sweeps into Congress or a new party sweeps into the White House or a different judge gets elected to the Supreme Court. Things change, but they don't change that much, that you got to make huge shifts.
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I mean, you've got 1.4 million, I think you said, if the right answer is putting some of that into Canadian dollars, why would $100,000 be the right amount?
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Right.
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The right amount is probably $400,000. So not only do you got to.
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Go to Canada with the $100,000 you've.
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Already got there, you need to take another 300,000 DOL and put it in.
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That Canadian bank and invest it in Canada. It just doesn't make any sense. Right. You're panicking about who's in the White House, and don't do that. That's not good for your finances.
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Now, what should you do with this windfall you've received?
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Well, that's a totally different question.
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And probably the best thing to do with the windfall is nothing for a few months, and then you got to Ask yourself, well, how big is the.
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Windfall compared to what I have?
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If you inherit $5 million and you got a $500,000 portfolio, well, you're probably treating that a little bit differently than if you have a $1,400,000 portfolio and you inherit $100,000. This is.
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I don't want to call it chump change, because $100,000 is still a lot of money, but compared to what you have, it's a very small percentage of it. So I think it's reasonable to spend.
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Some of it, save some of it, use some of it to pay down debt. I think you said you don't have any debt, so that's not an option for you. Maybe give some of it away. But bring this money all down to your house in the south, and you want to use it to update your kitchen and your bathroom, More power to you. Go for it. Money is to be spent to make your life better. Yes, you got to take care of business, but you're taking care of business. You're doing great. You're already a millionaire. You've taken care of all these debts. You're not going to have a problem where you're out of money, right? I can already tell from the success you've had you're on track to retire as a multimillionaire. I. What you do with $100,000 now is not going to change that. You're still going to be successful. Now, if your goal were to try to retire in three years, well, maybe.
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This $100,000 needs to go into your portfolio, but I'm not hearing that from you. So it sounds to me like you.
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Can easily use some or all of this to do that home upgrade you've.
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Been wanting to have. And more power to you.
B
I think your relative would be very happy to see you use that money.
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To buy something that brings you a lot of happiness.
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Happiness.
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But I wouldn't feel like you got to go to Canada, just open a bank account because you don't like the person in the Oval Office. That's kind of silly, I think.
B
Okay, let's get one of our friends on here.
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We bring sponsors on the podcast from time to time to talk not only a little bit about what they do, right? I mean, they sponsor the White Coat Investor, but also just to talk about their area of expertise. And this is one of those interviews. So let's bring them on.
E
I have a guest now on the White Coat Investor Podcast, Nathan Kleberg, the senior vice president of Business Development for mlg.
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Capital.
E
This is a long term sponsor here at the White Coat Investor and somebody I've invested quite a bit of money with as well in their fund forward. They're now raising money for Fund 7, but we thought we'd bring Nathan on and talk a little bit about today's market, especially for multifamily real estate. Nathan, welcome to the podcast.
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Thanks, Jim. Excited to be here.
E
Now, we did a webinar not long ago and we talked a little bit about how 2022, 2023 and 2024 were pretty unique for multifamily real estate investments. Can you explain why those years were so unique and what that means for the future?
G
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think there are a couple things that really played out over the last few years. The first and probably the biggest headline that we've seen is the historic level apartment supply, particularly in the Sun Belt that we saw really from 2022 through 2024. It was, it makes perfect sense when you think about it. Everyone started their development projects in 2020, 2021, early part of 2022, when debt and equity were available and both were very cheap, interest rates were low, and it was a time when there was a lot of capital chasing the real estate market. All of those projects started to deliver in 22 through 24. And that created a level of new supply hitting the market all at once that we hadn't seen in like 50 years in some markets even longer than that. So you had all of this new supply. And new supply tends to put downward pressure on rents, it increases vacancy, it increases concessions. And pretty quickly it can make a pro forma that, you know, looked great in 21 start to look really challenged here in 2024, 2025. So that was one big headline that we saw. New supply was, was at historically. And then on the capital market side, all of the institutional capital, or a lot of the institutional capital, started to leave the market. Institutions are what drives a lot of the investing volume into an asset class. And when rates ran in 2022, we saw a lot of the institutions rebalance their portfolios into bonds, which their values went way down during the interest rate run and away from real estate. The impact of that is, and here's the punchline, in 2021 and 2022, there was $34 billion placed into private real estate from the large private REITs out there. In 2024, that number was 6 billion. So you have just dramatically less capital chasing real estate, which impacts the demand in the capital market side of the Equation you just have significantly reduced competition, less people chasing, which doesn't give us way to as strong a pricing. That combined with the challenges operationally from all the new supply. It's been a pretty interesting couple years now.
E
Let's talk a little bit about MLG specifically. Those interested in more information on MLG you can go to whitecoatinvestor.com MLG as I mentioned earlier, they're raising for their fund 7. Now MLG has a very long track record compared to most private real estate companies and even compared to most of our sponsors. Can you talk a little bit about what having a track record that goes back to 1987 means and why that matters when it comes to investing in real estate that both you and I believe is best invested in long term?
G
Yeah, I mean you said it. Real estate is a long term game. And having a long track record gives you experience that a lot of sponsors don't have. Our principal group that exists here at MLG today has been investing together for about 25 years on average. And you just see it experience a lot of different things when you go through that time. And it's funny you talk our CEO Tim Wolin, he often says that today feels a lot like the early 90s. Right. And just sees parallels in different market cycles. But for a lot of sponsors, this is their first go round, this is their first cycle and the first time that they've really had deals not go exactly as planned. And inevitably if you're in this business long enough, you're going to see things not go exactly how you put them into your spreadsheet. And you got to be able to run right at those problems and get them fixed. And we think we're well qualified to do that. And that's why I think when you look back on this period of time, in a few years you're going to see MLG emerging as a really strong sponsor because we continue to perform in challenging markets.
E
Now, MLG allows you to invest in Fund 7 with as little as $50,000, but it offers two different types of funds. And I think this is a challenging thing for white coat investors to decide which side they want to invest in. On the one side you can invest in a typical partnership where you get a K1 and you have all the losses passed through to you to use against your passive income. Or you can choose to be in the dividend fund. The investments are all the same, but the dividend fund you're not going to have any multi state tax returns. You don't get those Big losses passed through to you. But it's super convenient for a retirement account, for instance, because you get to avoid ubit, you know, this unrelated business income tax. How can someone decide which one of these two, you know, options they should take when they're investing with MLG for the first time?
G
Yeah, that's a great question, and I'll reiterate something you already said, but it's important to note that the investments that you're participating in and the business deal that you have with MLG is exactly the same on a pre tax basis between these two options, the difference really lies and how the distributions you receive are characterized from a tax perspective. So it's always best to involve your CPA in this conversation. And I think there are three important questions you need to ask your cpa. First is what's it going to cost me to file in multiple states? In general, in these funds we're invested in 10 to 12 states. Usually those states include Texas, Florida, and sometimes Tennessee, all of which don't have state income taxes. So let's say you have eight to 10 states that you may be filing taxes in. It's important to know what that's going to cost in your tax preparation. You have to factor that in. The second thing you need to ask is how much would passive losses benefit my specific tax picture, and it really varies depending on what's going on in your tax picture. If you have a very high W2, but you don't have a lot of passive income, then the losses that we can provide may not be as immediate of a benefit than if you're someone who has significant passive income already going on in your tax picture. If you've got $50,000 passive income and you make $100,000 investment and get a $50,000 paper loss from us, that could be $20,000 of tax savings right away. And I'd be confident in saying that you're not going to spend that much in tax prep. So it really depends on what's going on in your particular tax situation. And then the third thing I think you have to ask yourself is how much am I looking to invest both right now and over time? The tax prep cost is relatively fixed. Doesn't cost your CPA to add another 0 to your to your K1, but the potential savings that you can realize definitely grow as you invest more dollars. So if you're going to invest a significant dollar amount, sometimes we, we like to say breaking point is roughly around 250 000. We start to see it make More sense for people to go with the private fund than the dividend fund. But especially if you're going to be ramping up your investment over a long period of time and you intend to really get up into the, you know, 5, 6, 700,000 or north of a million, we think you're going to see more benefit over time from doing the private fund versus the dividend fund. Now we're talking all taxable dollar investments. If you're going to invest through a retirement account, the dividend fund's the only option for you because all these tax considerations don't matter. But if you're considering investing taxable dollars, I would take those three questions to your cpa. What's it going to cost me? How could it benefit me? And how much am I looking to invest?
B
Yeah, great.
E
Great response. And I think that's so important to emphasize that the amount matters. I mean, you can invest in Fund 7 with just $50,000, but obviously, if you end up having to file in a number of states for that, the tax prep costs can eat up a significant percentage of your turn. That just wouldn't if you were investing.
C
A quarter million dollars.
G
Yep, that's right.
C
Yeah.
E
Awesome. Well, it's awesome that MLG offers both options, because I think there are people for whom both options can be right. As I mentioned earlier, if you're interested in more information about MLG, go to whitecoatinvestor.com MLG to learn more. Nathan, thanks for being on the podcast today.
G
Thanks, Jim. Thanks for listening, everyone.
B
Okay, I hope you enjoyed that. Let's take a question from Pedro.
C
I think we had one from Pedro a few weeks ago, but here's another one.
H
Hi, Dr. Dali. This is Pedro from the East Coast. I had a question about the 4% rule. So the way I used to think about the rule is that you could withdraw 4% of your portfolio and you would always use the 4%, regardless of whether the stocks are up or down. But it looks like we have to adjust for inflation. But how do you actually adjust for inflation? Do you take an exact number that represents 4% in the first year, and then you add a percent that represents inflation? And how do you figure that out? How do you know exactly what the current inflation is? So I don't know in practice, how do I actually do the 4% rule? How do I actually choose how much to withdraw?
B
Okay, great question. There's a lot we can talk about with this. First of all, we got to be.
C
Careful calling anything a 4% rule a rule. Sounds like Some sort of guarantee.
B
The best way to think about the.
C
4% rule is as a 4% guideline. It reminds me of that line from Pirates of the Caribbean where it turns.
B
Out that it's more like a guideline.
C
You might remember this line from the movie. And of course, you don't always get your parley as they asked for in the movie.
B
It's a guideline.
C
There's no guarantee with the 4% rule.
B
But the way it works, if you look at the classic studies like the Trinity study from 1997, the data has.
C
Been updated since then.
B
But the way it worked was that you take 4% of what the portfolio is worth as you retire the next year, you increase that with inflation. And the most commonly used marker for inflation is the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, AKA CPI U. And the place I usually go to to get that is a website called Inflation data dot com. And that'll tell you, if you go there, it'll tell you what the current inflation rate is.
C
And they have all kinds of fun calculators you can use to calculate what inflation was from one date to another.
B
But if you go up there and.
C
You go to the top, they'll give you all kinds of options and data.
B
You can go to, like numerical inflation data. So you can go to the current inflation rate.
C
If I click on that, well, I got to click through an ad, and.
B
Then what pops up is basically a chart that tells me the current inflation rate for the 12 months ending in August 2025 is 2.92%. So if I were going to actually withdraw money According to the 4% guideline, what I would do is say I.
C
Retired on $1 million and I took.
B
Out 4% that first year. I took out $40,000. I would take out the next year $40,000 times 1.0292, right?
C
So that'd work out to be 4% more than $40,000, whatever that works out to be. Let's have another $1,000 or $2,000 or something like that. It's like another $1,500, I think.
B
So the next year, instead of taking out 40, you'd take out $41,500.
C
And that's what you'd live on that year. Plus your Social Security or other sources of income that you had.
B
That's how you would do that. Now, most people don't actually do this, right. The real value of the 4% guideline is it tells you about how much you need to retire because you can reverse engineer it, right. If you reverse engineer, 4% a year. You realize I need about 25 times.
C
What I'm going to be spending in retirement in order to retire.
B
So if that's $100,000 a year, you need $2,500,000. If that's $200,000 a year, you need 5 million dollars. If that's $300,000 a year, you need 7,500,000. That's the usefulness of this 4% rule, because prior to this coming out in the 90s, Bill Bangin talked about it.
C
First, and then the Trinity study authors.
B
Kind of popularized the concept. But before then, financial advisors were telling people, well, if your portfolio makes 8% a year, you can spend 8% a year. The problem with that is sequence of returns risk. That's the risk that despite having adequate average returns throughout your retirement, the crummy returns come first. Because if you're withdrawing from the portfolio and having terrible returns, you'll actually run out of money. So telling people they can take out 8% a year was bad advice. They were causing people to run out of money.
C
Even if they had 8% average returns.
B
If their first few years were 2000, 2001, 2002, or the early 70s or whatever. These bad economic periods where your portfolio gets crushed, especially if inflation is high.
C
Which is when most of those bad sequences happen.
B
So that was the point of it, was that you can really only take out 4% ish, not 8% ish. That's the message you should get from the Trinity study.
C
Not that the rate withdrawal percentage is.
B
Exactly 4% or 4.25 or 4.7 or 3.7 or whatever.
C
That's not the message.
B
The message is it's not eight.
C
You can't take out eight because sequence of returns risk might show up in your particular sequence of return returns.
B
So that's the message you can take from that. So how do people actually withdraw money in their portfolio? Well, the truth is, most people, it's like six out of seven sell nothing in retirement. Isn't that wild? Most people are spending dramatically less than 4%. If you were a good enough saver that you have a portfolio, you tend.
C
To not spend as much as you could have. You tend to only spend like the income 1 or 2 or 3%. And most people die with dramatically more than they started with.
B
Even if you follow the 4% rule historically, after 30 years, on average, you have 2.7 times what you retired with. Now, that's not even close to spending principal. That's having almost three times as much Money after the years as you started with. And I can tell you that's basically what my parents are doing.
C
They're probably halfway through retirement and they don't spend as much as they could spend. You know, people that are savers for.
B
A long period of time, it's really hard to make that transition. And of course you usually don't have a bad sequence.
C
Usually the returns are fine and so.
B
Your money grows pretty well. I mean, they've got more money than.
C
They retired with right now for sure.
B
Sometimes they don't even spend their RMDs.
C
In fact, most of the time we.
B
Just take them out of the IRA and reinvest them in the taxable account.
C
And that's the truth of what most retirees are doing.
B
So most people who actually save up.
C
You know, a seven figure amount to.
B
Retire on need to be talked into.
C
Spending more of it during their retirement. It's not that they're having to limit themselves to 4%. They're, you know, they limit themselves to.
B
Less than that even though they could spend more.
C
I mean, most people don't save up a seven figure sum for retirement.
B
That's the bigger problem.
C
Most people are retiring, you know, on Social Security or Social Security plus a little bit. I think 40% of Americans retire that.
B
Are retired are solely on Social Security.
C
So if you can save up a seven figure nest egg in addition to.
B
That, you're way ahead of almost all retirees.
C
Right?
B
So, so keep that in mind.
C
That's how the 4% rule works.
B
Now, there are lots of different ways.
C
To spend money in retirement.
B
Determine how much to spend and where.
C
You spend that money from and all that. And there's lots of different ways, lots of very reasonable ways to do it.
B
But if you are starting at something around 4% and you're adjusting somehow as you go along, you're probably doing it right. And we got all kinds of posts.
C
On the blog about this. If you want to go to the blog and you want to search retirement income or safe withdrawal rates or the.
B
4% rule, you will find endless numbers.
C
Of blog posts discussing these issues and.
B
All the different ways you can use.
C
To calculate exactly how much you can spend. But the truth is most of us end up having enough money that we're not spending anywhere near 4%. And I suspect that's the way it's going to be for Katie and I and most white coat investors is you're not going to even get to your 4%. You're going to leave out behind way more money and end up saving. So if you're one of those people that's getting close to there and you.
B
Realize you're a pretty good saver, you.
C
Need to start working on those spending muscles a little bit too and see if there's some things that you can spend money on that would bring yourself and those you care about a little more happiness.
B
Okay, Our quote of the day today comes from Jack Bogle said the miracle of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs. Love that quote. Costs matter, right? They have to come from your returns.
C
There's nowhere else for them to come from. And that's whether they're commissions or loads on your insurance policies or your loaded.
B
Mutual funds, or whether they're expense ratios.
C
On your mutual funds or whether they're.
B
Advisory fees you're paying. They have to come out of your return, no other source of funds to pay those costs. So pay attention to your costs.
C
It's okay to have a financial advisor. It's okay to pay them a fair.
B
Price for good advice. But recognize that if you can learn to operate without them, that will be the best paying hobby you ever have.
C
Likewise, you ought to pay attention if.
B
You can cut your investing costs in.
C
Half, that boosts your returns, Your money.
B
Grows faster, you have more money you.
C
Can spend or give away, and your costs matter. So pay attention to your costs. You don't have to get crazy about them. You don't have to rejigger your whole portfolio to go from an average expense ratio of 5 basis points to an average expense ratio of 4 basis points.
B
But pay attention to them enough that.
C
You recognize that 1% is a big number in the investing world and that should be enough for you to get what you deserve.
B
Okay, another question.
C
This one from John on the speak by.
I
Hi Jim, quick question. I have listened to your teachings and read all the books and it's done me super well. Can't say thanks enough. I'm debt free with 7 figure net worth and barely turned 40. I try to ignore the news as much as I can, but my question is I can't help but read about how much money keeps getting pumped into our economy and the PE ratios of stocks and for the most part I do index funds. Pretty boring. It's a written plan, but I'm not trying to retire early, but I am trying to work a lot less to curb burnout. And I'm wondering if you have any advice on just capital preservation, knowing that I don't really have any more years anticipated where I'm going to be able to max out my savings. I think my savings rate is going to be a smaller percentage of my annual income as my income is going to decrease since I'm working less. So maybe I'm overthinking things and should just take the hit on the nose when the market resets a little bit and just don't worry about it. But I was curious if there's any capital preservation strategies or if I should start Investing like a 60 year old normally would even though I'm 40 since I'm anticipating working less. Hope that makes sense. Thanks again.
B
Okay, great question. First of all, with lots of successful people calling in today and leaving questions, I don't want the message of this podcast to be if you're not a gazillionaire already, you shouldn't be listening.
C
We got questions from successful people, but.
B
We take questions from people who are not yet successful. It's okay to call in here and leave us a question. The way you do that is you go to whitecoatinvestor.com speakpipe and you can ask us how to invest your first thousand dollars, or you can ask us, you know, how to deal with the fact that you have a negative net worth, or you can ask us how to sort out your first few insurance policies or how to budget your money. We'll talk about all that kind of stuff as well. Don't feel like this is only a podcast for people who are already super wealthy. John, congratulations to you. Like some of the other questioners we've had today, you've done great. Yeah, we told you how to do it, but that's the easy part, right? The hard part is actually doing that and you have actually done it.
C
So congratulations to you. Seven figures and debts paid off at 40 is awesome. And being able to really as burnout.
B
Strikes in mid career as it does.
C
For a majority of physicians, you're in.
B
A position to do something about it, which is awesome.
C
Work a little less, earn a little.
B
Less, save a little less and you're.
C
Still okay because you got seven figures.
B
Of money working alongside you and that money's going to double every seven to 10 years.
C
So even if you just work for.
B
The next 20 years and don't put a thing in there, that's probably four or five million dollars, even if it's barely seven figures now by the time you're 60. So you've got a lot of little employees. Every little dollar you saved along the.
C
Way is now your employee. It works 24, 7, 365 and you've got them all working for you now. So nice work on this.
B
That what you are recognizing though, is that your relationship with risk is now changing. Okay. Because your asset allocation, your mix of investments should be set up according to your ability and need and desire to take risk. And a few years ago you didn't have that much money. You're working hard, you needed your money to really grow and you needed to get that seven figure portfolio that would work alongside you. So you had a relatively high need and ability and desire to take risk. So you took risk.
C
You had an aggressive portfolio. I don't know exactly what your portfolio asset allocation was, but presumably fairly aggressive. Maybe it was 100% stock, maybe it was more than 100% stock, I don't know.
B
And now you're going, well, maybe I.
C
Don'T need or want to take that much risk anymore.
B
And that's a very reasonable thing to do. I love that you're looking at your life and going, you know, my life is changing.
C
I don't need to necessarily take this much risk.
B
Yes. You're also looking at the markets. I want you to look less at the markets and more at your life though, because it makes sense in your life to maybe dial back the risk a little bit.
C
Right.
B
I wouldn't necessarily do that because of the markets. It's just too hard to predict future market returns. Right. You're like, oh, PE ratios are high.
C
Well, PE ratios have been high for a while. Right.
B
If you just dialed it back, when PE ratios first got high, you missed out on a bunch of really great returns in 23 and 24 and so on. Right. But the fact that you stayed invested.
C
Over those years really paid off for you. Right.
B
So I wouldn't necessarily try to predict the markets. Your crystal ball is cloudy just like.
C
The rest of us.
B
It's time in the market, not timing.
C
The market that builds your wealth.
B
So don't do it in response to market changes. It's too hard to do. Do it in response to changes in your life. You're cutting back, you're going to be saving less effectively. Yes. Your financial life is looking a little more like a 60 year old than it is a 40 year old. So maybe you ought to invest a little bit more like that. Now, I have been basically 20 or.
C
25% bonds my entire investing career. And the reason for that is because I've been constantly weighing that fear of.
B
Missing out with the fear of loss.
C
And I can remember in 2008, we.
B
Lost a whole bunch of money and I was really Glad I didn't have all my money in stocks that fall.
C
And the next spring. The third week of March 2009 was kind of painful, I can recall, and.
B
I was really glad I didn't have.
C
It all in stocks. And so I think it's a mistake to put all your money into stocks or into a very aggressive asset allocation until you've been through a bear market, whether that was 2008 or 2000 or 2020 or 2022, whatever your bear market was that you can relate to in.
B
Your life, until you go through that, you don't really know how much panic.
C
Selling you're going to do when the market drops. So I'd encourage people to actually dial it back a little bit until they go through a bear market and see what their temperament is as an investor.
B
Because the investor matters way more than the investment.
C
Being able to stick with your investments through thick and thin is far more important than exactly which investments they are. I mean, you don't want terrible investments, but as long as you have a reasonable asset allocation of reasonable investments, sticking with it matters a lot more than exactly what it is.
B
So should you dial it back? Almost surely you're going to be saving less. You have less need to take risk. You have less desire to take risk. Frankly, you now have less ability to take risks. So should you dial it back? Yeah, you should.
C
Now, what does that look like?
B
I don't know.
C
You're going to have to personalize that. Maybe it's if you're 80, 20 now, maybe you're 70, 30, or maybe you're 75, 25, or maybe you're 65, 35.
B
Or maybe you're 60, 40, I don't know. But it probably means a change in your ratio of stocks to bonds, of risky to less risky assets.
C
So yeah, as you start recognizing that you're achieving your financial goals and you don't need to take as much risk to reach them.
B
Really, the game of investing is how little risk can I take and meet.
C
All my financial goals?
B
And now that you've been so successful, you can take less risk and meet your financial goals. You probably should take a little bit less risk.
C
So hope that's helpful to you.
B
As I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, SoFi could help medical residents like you save thousands of dollars with exclusive rates and flexible terms for refinancing your student loans. Visit sofi.comwhitecoatinvestor to see all the promotions.
C
And offers offers they've got waiting for.
B
You one more time. That's sofi.com whitecoatinvestor SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi Bank NA member FDIC.
C
Additional terms and conditions apply.
B
NMLS 696891 all right, don't forget about our communities. You really ought to check them out. Even if you don't feel like you need much help. Get in there and make a contribution. Help somebody else.
C
Right?
B
Answer some questions on Reddit or Facebook or the White Coat Investor Forum or the financially empowered Women's Group. Other people could really use your expertise so you can find all links to all of that@whitecoatinvestor.com thanks for telling your friends about this podcast. It really does help us move the.
C
Needle on improving financial literacy and financial success among high income professionals like Docs.
B
Thanks for leaving us five star reviews.
C
That also helps get the word out. We had a recent one come in.
B
From Chad who said life lessons. I look forward to listening every Thursday. This is vital information. I'm glad I stumbled upon this while still in training.
C
Will have a full career to benefit from these financial lessons. Dr. Dali's breadth and depth of knowledge.
B
Amazes me and I learn something new every episode. Well, I hope that keeps up that.
C
You continue to learn something new every episode. But I suspect it's like most things, that there is a law of diminishing returns.
B
I have a partner who started reading my blog as an intern.
C
He didn't even recognize he was working with that blog's author for about six months after he joined the group.
B
And he told me a few years.
C
Later he's like, I don't read much anymore because I've got a plan.
B
And that's kind of the point, right?
C
The point is this stuff's not that hard to learn. Yes, you'll continue to learn some pearls here and there if you find this stuff interesting. But really the beginning is where the bang for your buck is. Let's get you a financial plan in place, let's get you going. And then all you gotta do is stick it on autopilot and stick with it for a decade or two. And you wake up, you pick your head up, you look around, you realize you're a multimillionaire, you're financial ducks in a row and you can really concentrate your life on what matters most, which is your practice, your patients, whatever business you're running. It's your family, it's your own wellness. We've got a pandemic of burnout among doctors. I think the last statistic I saw was something like 57% of them. It's incredible. But you know what? You get your financial ducks in a row and all of a sudden you.
B
Can put all these changes into place.
C
In your life that allow you to stave off burnout and go from feeling like you can't do this anymore to this is one of my favorite parts of my life, and we want to get you into that place. And oftentimes the only difference between those two places is just making a few changes in your financial plan.
B
So keep your head up, your shoulders back. You've got this.
C
We're here to help. We'll see you next time on the White Coat Investor Podcast.
A
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.
Host: Dr. Jim Dahle
Date: October 16, 2025
In this episode, Dr. Jim Dahle dives deep into retirement planning, focusing on the 4% withdrawal rule, strategies for early retirement, and approaches to capital preservation. He answers listener questions from high-achieving professionals on topics ranging from asset allocation to managing windfalls, and features an expert interview about trends in multifamily real estate investing. As always, Dr. Dahle’s approachable, practical financial advice is delivered with humor and clarity, making complex topics accessible, particularly to physicians and other high-income professionals.
Listener Question from Nicole (07:15)
“If you want to have that much cash… the only way to do it is to save it.” — Dr. Dahle (12:14)
Listener Question from a 50-year-old Neurologist (13:45):
“It just seems a little melodramatic to make a bunch of changes to your financial plan every time a new party sweeps into Congress or … the White House.” — Dr. Dahle (17:08)
Guest: Nathan Kleberg, Senior VP, MLG Capital
“Real estate is a long term game. Having a long track record gives you experience that a lot of sponsors don’t have… for a lot of sponsors, this is their first go round, the first cycle.” — Nathan Kleberg (23:36)
Listener Question from Pedro (28:54):
“The real value of the 4% guideline is it tells you about how much you need to retire because you can reverse engineer it.” — Dr. Dahle (32:25)
“Most people die with dramatically more than they started with.” — Dr. Dahle (34:46)
Listener Question from John (38:55):
“It's time in the market, not timing the market that builds your wealth.” — Dr. Dahle (43:57)
“The investor matters way more than the investment.” — Dr. Dahle (45:27)
On Costs & Fees:
“The miracle of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs.” — Jack Bogle, quoted by Dr. Dahle (37:31)
On Financial Independence:
“We're financially independent for seven or eight years or something now. We're still working... Nothing says you have to retire, but you can retire if you want to.” — Dr. Dahle (10:50)
On Burnout & Life Flexibility:
“You get your financial ducks in a row and all of a sudden you can put all these changes into place in your life that allow you to stave off burnout and go from feeling like you can’t do this anymore to ‘this is one of my favorite parts of my life.’” — Dr. Dahle (49:16)
| Time | Segment | |----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 07:15 | Nicole’s Early Retirement Question (Saving for $250K cash goal) | | 13:45 | Inheritance from Canada (Currency risk and windfall management) | | 20:07 | MLG Capital Interview: Multifamily Real Estate Trends (Nathan Kleberg) | | 28:54 | Pedro’s Question: How to Apply the 4% Rule | | 38:55 | John’s Question: Capital Preservation as Work/Income Decreases | | 37:31 | Quote of the Day (Jack Bogle, on costs) |
For more, visit the White Coat Investor website.