← White Coat Investor Podcast
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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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This White coat Investor podcast number 470
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this episode is brought to you by KeyBank for six years, White Coat member Benefit partner Laurel Road has been part of KeyBank since March. That partnership becomes even stronger as Laurel Road is now officially under the KeyBank brand. With the transition to KeyBank, the same tools and services you rely on now come with enhanced resources and support and the same great experience you trust. White Coat Investors can continue to enjoy the benefits and financial resources they always have with even more support from KeyBank. To learn more and for terms and conditions, please visit whitecoatinvestor.com KeyBank Join us May 14th at 6pm Mountain for a free live class and learn how to go from broke resident to millionaire in five years. Your first 12 months after training are the most important of your financial life. This free information can literally make a difference worth millions of dollars. Over the course of your career, you're going to learn the importance of financial literacy for wealth building. You're going to learn how to manage your student loans and minimize their cost. You'll learn how to prioritize your money and start investing. You'll learn which insurance policies you need to protect yourself and your family. And you'll learn how to reach your financial goals and spend the rest on whatever you like, guilt free. We think this is so valuable to you that we're going to bribe you to attend it. Five attendees will win a free copy of the Fire your Financial Advisor resident course at 299 value. Go to whitecoatinvestor.com resident to sign up today. Even if you can't make it live, we'll get you a copy of it and you can watch it at your own convenience later.
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B
Welcome back to the podcast. This is a podcast driven a lot of the time by you and your questions. Sometimes, however, I get to choose something to talk about. I get to choose somebody to interview and we're going to be doing a little bit of that today. But before we get into this interview, I want to share a few things. The first is that we have a CFE course sale. This is on our continuing Financial Education 2026 course. From now until May 12th. You can save $100 off that by using code CFE100. You'll get 30 plus hours of financial and wellness sessions from the latest physician Wellness and Financial literacy conference, you know, the one we had at the end of March. So it's great. If you've got an Apple device, an iPhone or something like that, you can listen to this podcast style in your car, right? So this will give you, I don't know, a month's worth of great material to consume on the way to and from work while you're running, while you're walking the dog, whatever. Whether you watch it at home, obviously you get to see the slides when you're watching it. Please don't watch it while you're driving. But it's wonderful. It was a wonderful conference, Some great speakers at the conference, fantastic material. Burnout is the biggest financial risk in your life, quite frankly. And about half the content in the course addresses that. And so I think it's very useful. Check that out. You can go to wcicourses.com, use that code CFE100. Save yourself $100 on the Continuing Financial Education course until May 12th. And of course that just like the conference was, is eligible for category one CME credit. I think it's 16 and a half credit hours that it is eligible for. So obviously you can use your CME fund if you are self employed, you can write it off, you can use it, use pre tax dollars to buy it and get that investment in your financial confidence in your long term wellbeing. All right. Our quote of the day today comes from Winston Churchill who said, we make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. And what an appropriate quote to have today because we're going to be talking about giving. I've talked about giving a number of times over the years. Maybe I don't spend as much time talking about it on this podcast as I ought to. It is a big part of our financial life, Katie, and my financial life. You know, we've kind of moved past the point where we were trying to get better at earning. We've moved past the point where we're trying to get better at saving. We've moved past the point where we're trying to get better at investing. Right. We probably have some improvements still to make on spending. I had a recent outing with, you know, at what we call the Bro Down. It was a really fun event put on by a friend of mine in West Yellowstone and we played a lot with some somewhat expensive toys. And so clearly there are ways you can spend money to have an awful lot of fun and happiness. But our focus more than ever these days seems to be on becoming better Givers. Right. That fifth money activity out there. And I'm a little hesitant to talk about it on the podcast, to talk about it on the blog, to give specific amounts or, you know, that we're giving or what kind of organ or people we're giving it to, because I fear it will come across as a humble brag. It's like saying I bought a Ferrari to say you gave away enough money to buy a Ferrari. Right.
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C
It comes across as a humble brag either way.
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B
And so I don't want to do that, but I do want to encourage people to give. And the reason for that, the data is very clear, actually. Givers have been shown to be happier, healthier, and wealthier. So I'm doing you a disservice by not talking more about giving. Another reason I'm maybe hesitant to do it, and particularly to be specific, is at times in the past, we've talked about the giving meeting our family has each year and what charities we decided to give money to that year. And it's a different list every year, right? We have the kids bring something they support. One of my daughters is relatively progressive politically. My son's less progressive politically and often chooses a veteran charity of some kind to support. And we've gotten feedback on these posts in both directions from both sides of
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the political aisle saying, I can't believe
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you supported that charity.
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And we've literally been criticized for giving
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money away for who and what we gave that money to. And so I tend to be less specific. You know, I don't necessarily list the charities we gave to anymore. And maybe I'm doing you a disservice
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C
by not just being willing to take
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B
that criticism, but it's a little bit painful to give away money instead of spending it yourself or saving it for later or saving it to give to your kids and then just get whacked about it just because you don't necessarily see that as the best charity. And of course, you know, everybody's going to disagree about what the best charities are. You can't expect that we all want to give effectively. We want to give toward causes we support, but we don't necessarily all support the same causes. And some charities do have a little bit of a, you know, political bent, for lack of a better word. So we're going to talk today about giving, about the nuances of giving, how to give, how to, you know, motivate yourself to give, how to start giving. I've got a great guest. She actually lives relatively locally to me now. Let's get her on the line and start this conversation.
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C
My guest today on the White Coat Investor Podcast is Rebecca Herbst. Rebecca, welcome to the podcast.
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D
Thanks for having me.
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C
You've got a pretty awesome background. So rather than giving you a formalized introduction, I think maybe we start by you telling your story of how you were able to become financially independent at a time before many of the people listening to this podcast came out of training and what you've decided to do with your life since then.
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D
So, unlike many of your listeners, I graduated college without any significant debt. I studied economics and directly went into the business world. I did graduate in the 2008, 2009 recession. So it was a really hard time to find work and find a job, but I did manage to land a job at IBM. So right from there, it was a kind of a crummy job. To be honest, I didn't really feel very useful or apply myself, but it was a good name, right? And so that really set me up for success. So I got that job out of college and then I did 11 years in commercial real estate. So I was like this researcher slash economist. So I had a good paying job, a good career, and I was naturally always a saver. I came from a family with a scarcity mindset and I always had the big things under wrap, like rent, car, I drove a really old used car. I lived with three roommates well into my 30s. And so I just didn't know that there was this whole world of personal finance. I just thought that you worked hard and you did well and you had a quote unquote successful job. I kind of stumbled upon it in my late 30s. And I think most people, and probably most of your listeners who are first learning about personal finance are either in debt or like just beginning their journey. When I found out about it, I was really only three to five years away from financial freedom. I just didn't know that you could have something called financial freedom before the age of 65. I just wasn't dialed into the community, so I was very lucky in that sense. I didn't have to battle the. The boring middle. And so really those first few years about learning about financial independence and personal finance in general, really about just like getting my ducks in order, getting invested in the right things, getting my accounts. And once all that stuff was set up, I was really on track for success. And so again, like, I always try to empathize with the people around me about I understand that they're on a much longer journey than I was, but I really did Take some chances by pulling that quote, unquote, early retiree trigger early. And I left my job at the age of 32 and my husband did it as well. So we did this together and it was nice to have a partner in that process. And so now it's been about six years since I've truly earned an active income. And today I really spend my time on what I like to think of as like high skilled volunteering. So I founded a nonprofit called Yield and Spread. And we're on a mission to promote finance as a force for good. And so the idea is to help people with their finances achieve financial freedom, but with the idea of building a meaningful legacy and to give back.
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C
What a fun thing to do with financial independence. So there's a lot of people out there that this idea of financial independence is relative, relatively new to them. And even if whether they start at 22 or start at 32, give us a sense for what that took for you guys to really not have to work for money about a decade out of school. I mean, about what percentage of your income did you save for those years?
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D
Towards the beginning, I didn't really track this information as much. Like I said, I wasn't as dialed into personal finance, but feel pretty confident that the range was between like 30
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C
and 50% of your gross income.
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D
Yeah, so I was making. Yeah. So out of college, inflation adjusted, I was making $52,000 a year, but like I said, really was focused on those big ticket items. Towards the end of my career, as I gained more financial confidence, I gained the ability to advocate for myself a little bit more. So asking for raises, I left a company that was sort of just giving me that classic 5% income increase maybe year over year, and I switched companies and effectively doubled my salary. So those big pushes in the final years really helped me. So towards the end I was saving like 85%, which is an astronomical number,
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C
85% of the household gross income out
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of my income out of your income. But that's because I was making a ridiculous salary. And then I was living with three roommates in an apartment in the Boston area. And so I didn't really, you know, climb that hedonic treadmill the way a lot of my peers did. And that was natural. That was not that much like reading into, hey, don't spend more. That was just a natural part of who I was. But I think towards the end, just really making those pushes and like a couple years of just like super high income, keeping things pretty tight allows for so much freedom down the line. I don't always advocate for this for other people. Like, I don't want people to feel as though they're like miserable and sacrificing. But I wasn't miserable, actually. I have like a really good life. I travel the world. Four years of that, by the way. I lived in Singapore where that my taxable income is like 10 to 12%. So that helped a lot. But like, I got to do all these things. And so by the time I reached 32, I'm kind of showcasing my age here. It was Covid. So I know that, you know, these were challenging times to show up in the workplace. And I was just like, my company was doing layoffs. They were on their third round of layoffs. We were at home working at our computers, not sure what the future held.
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And.
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And I just kind of was like, you know what? Maybe include me in these round of layoffs. I think I'm ready. So it wasn't like I hit this financial independence number. Probably could have used a year or two more or three years more of earning income to feel like really safe. But it was just that the timing was right and we as a couple decided to take a leap of faith and just jump off the Phi cliff, I guess.
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C
Now, George Foreman famously said, it's not at what age you retire, it's at what income? Right? And I think a lot of people hear about someone retiring in their, you know, early to mid-30s and they're like, oh, well, those guys are just super frugal. They live on like $25,000 a year. Can you give people a sense of what financially independent meant for you? How much did you need to be able to spend to have enough money to support your spending in order to say, okay, we don't have to work anymore?
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D
Yeah, this is a good question. And it's changed. Like, life is changing. So when I left the workforce, I didn't have children. I didn't have. I wasn't married yet, in fact. And now I have a two year old and one on the way. So at the time, we had been exploring the idea of what it would mean to spend between $60,000 a year to $80,000 a year and what the differences would mean between like, how many more years do we have to work to spend 60k vs 80k? We ended up breaking it down and using the like the Coast Phi model. Do you talk about that a lot?
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C
Sure, I think it's worth explaining. I think there's enough people on this podcast that don't know what it is that we should explain what it is?
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D
Yeah. Do you want to take a stab at it or. Sure.
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C
I mean, coastfi is simply when you get to the point that you have enough money, that you don't have enough, you can, you know, actually quit working, but you can quit saving and your money will do the rest of the growing until when you plan to quit working, that you'll have enough at that point that you'll quit working so you can coast to, to your early retirement.
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D
It's coast by Right, exactly. So we were well beyond that coast by number, but like a sub number within that is how much active income do you need to earn each year to supplement the income from your portfolio if you're not quite there yet? And so at the time we were living in the box Boston area, but we were looking at moving to the
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C
mountains with you, Jim, and everybody else
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D
during COVID it seems, and everybody else. So sorry, I'm sorry that we're here, but we basically looked at these, this list of 6 cities and we're like, okay, what would it cost us to live there? And that was largely would be impacted by the value of a home, the cost of a home, and the expenses associated with that. And so what we did is said, okay, here's a scenario. If we lived in city A, city B, city C, city D, what does our active income for each year needed look like depending on which city we lived in? So instead of being like, oh, I need to work an extra three to five years to be able to afford to live in, say, California versus Utah, it ended up being more of a discussion around, oh, I need a couple of thousand dollars a year to supplement my income versus $10,000 a year. And that made the conversation much easier when we're just focusing on these much smaller numbers. So like I said earlier, we looked at FI, our FI number in the range of like spending 60,000 to $80,000 a year. Since then, though, it's been like four to five years now we have moved from Ogden, Utah to Salt Lake City, Utah, and we went from owning a house outright in cash to spending the most on rent we ever have. And we have a children, a child in daycare three days a week, week. So we've gone from spending 65ish k a year to over a hundred thousand. And with baby number two on the way, probably closer to like 110,000. So the thing is, we're okay. I, I know it's like for so many people that are not there yet, for me to be like, oh, we're, we're basically increasing our spending by 40%. Seems like a scary concept, but we're doing okay. The thought process being, we have this huge pot of money. If we have to go back to work for some reason, we absolutely can. And the stakes are much lower because we don't need jobs that pay us $200,000 anymore. We don't need those things. The stakes are way lower. So I see spending as a spectrum.
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C
Jim, well said. And often on this podcast, we talk about the five money activities in life. Earnings, saving, investing, spending, giving. And I encourage people to get good at all of these things. But today on the podcast, we're going to mostly focus on giving and explain to us, Rebecca, why that is so important to you. Why is giving such an important part of your life?
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D
So I didn't grow up in a household that gave. I didn't grow up in a household that was incredibly generous. This wasn't something that is built into me. It was something that always was nagging, guilt ridden, being pushed in the back of my mind. And it didn't really come to the forefront until I started exploring all this financial independence stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, right, I pulled the early retiree trigger during COVID This was a time where so many of my friends had lost their jobs. People were struggling, and, you know, we're. We've all struggled, we'd all have hard times. But really, for the first time, this was truly, truly smacking me in the face. And so I was spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to be so, quite frankly, like, privileged. And I was really overwhelmed with guilt. And instead of letting that take over, I kind of channeled it. So I started reading a lot about philanthropy, you know, how to point my moral compass in the right direction. And I found myself locked really into the idea of donating and giving effectively to charities that could have an impact on the world. And I realized that, like, you know, your community is full of people who are like or who are helping people on a daily basis. I worked in commercial real estate. There's probably a chance that I was hurting people, you know, based on the negative developments happening in the world. And so for me, knowing that I could use money and use money as a really effective tool to help people not only helped alleviate this guilt, but made me feel really good and gave me a lot of purpose. And from that personal development, I realized that there's so much opportunity to help others and shine a light on, A, how much good we could do, B, help those who are maybe feeling similar feelings, like, what's the point of this whole personal finance thing? Is it just for me? Is it just for my family? Is it for anyone else? And since then it's just really, it's been six years and it's been this labor of love trying to figure out how yield and spread can have the biggest impact on the personal finance world.
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C
Now your plans, as I understand, are to donate 10% of your income and, and eventually upon your death, 80% of your wealth. Is that right?
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D
That's right.
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C
How did you end up with those numbers?
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D
So I took early on when I was exploring giving and looking for habit formation and wanting to really cement, like cement a number for myself that made sense that I could build a financial plan around it. I took a giving pledge and I started out with 5%. And the idea would be, let's give 5% of our income. And at the time it was just our retirement income, which is pretty doable based on the numbers I shared earlier. Let's see how we feel. And I did that for a year. And then each year we grew to 6% and 7% and 8%. 10% is ultimately rooted in religious teachings, right? Like for centuries and centuries, many people around the world have been giving 10%. It is also a very easy and tangible number to understand. It's also doable, but meaningful. Right? So I think the stats are something like the average American in this pretty wealthy country, in this high income country, we give about 0.7% of our income to good causes, which I actually was like surprised by. I'm pretty hardened by that number. So moving the needle to 10%, that's 10 times greater than the national average. And this I think meaningfully shifts the way that I would approach big world problems. So for me, 10% is doable, very doable, but also meaningful. It's somewhat. There's a sacrifice behind it. And then as for the 80% wealth, and by the way, I think this could change. Like we're doing, we're doing our estate planning now. If I were to pass away tomorrow, I maybe wouldn't give away 80% of my wealth because my children would be below 3 years old and I would want to make sure that they're set up for success. But assuming that they're adults, they're on their own, they're sufficient. That 80% for us is rooted in the idea of, wow, we could have a really huge chunk of money and make a huge difference on a certain project or cause area. And the 20% is still incredibly generous to our kids. And as you and I both know, if you have a $2 million portfolio now that you're sitting on and you run a financial simulation, you do the Monte Carlo simulations. Yeah, Maybe there's a 2% chance you run out of money, but there's a 25% chance that you're a DECA millionaire. Right. That's a lot of money. So I think sometimes we forget to look at the other end of the spectrum where we could end up with, like, a lot. A lot of money in our portfolio when we die.
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C
Now, I think a big question a lot of people have about giving is they tell themselves, I'll give when I'm wealthy. I was kind of the opposite we've been given since we had a net worth of zero. And so this has been part of our lives for our entire life. So it wasn't unusual when we became wealthy that we started giving more, and it became an even more important part of our life. Money, for the most part, makes people more of what they are, in my experience. So for someone who's didn't, you know, start this way, that has never really been a giver. Can you talk a little bit about how to get started, maybe how to experiment with donating, maybe how to build a habit so it sticks.
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D
I think it's a really useful way that you frame that, that there are people out there that are like, I'm going to wait till I'm wealthier or at a certain point. And like, what is that point for people? It's probably largely personal. One of the things that's really beautiful, like, about people like you or other people in the personal finance world who give is like, we see that. We see people like you leading with that, but sometimes it does ultimately create this little space for other people to say, well, Rebecca and Jim have done it. They're super wealthy. I'm not there yet. So. So it's okay for them to give, but I. It. It's not for me. So I understand that argument. When we see, like, peers who are much wealthier than us giving money away, the converse argument to that is habit formation. If you are waiting until you're wealthy and maybe that point of wealth for you is 45, and then you're going to try to give away money, man, oh, man, is it going to be really hard. It's like the same thing as going to the gym and eating well. If you haven't gone to the gym in 35 years, it's going to be really hard to start the Habit formation, the physical ability to show up to the gym and to take care of your body. And so I think exercising this muscle early on, building it into your financial plan early on is important. So it's been years since I've been giving away 10%. I don't think about this. It doesn't require any energy. I have a plan set up for this already. So, for example, every month, me and my husband sit down, we have our personal finance meeting, and we do a few things. Quite frankly, this is the only time we really look at our portfolios once a month. So we look at our portfolios, we look at what we spent, we prepare for our spending for the next month, we sell from our portfolios if needed, and then we also donate. So every month, we make our monthly donation. We don't wait till the end of the year, like a lot of people do, give around giving season. We do it every single month. And it's just part of this habit that we already have. So I would say to your listeners, what positive habits do they have already? Like, when are they sitting down to talk about finances, meet with their partner about their goals in life? Can you incorporate the giving in there? Because the hardest step is always the first one. And now for me, it's just second nature. I think more about how to get extra items in my shopping cart to get free shipping than I do about how much I'm donating each month.
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C
You've said before that a formal call to action is crucial to actually change the tide of giving. You've mentioned that some people have a skill of actually being able to help people to give. Tell us a little bit more about that. And also, I think it's probably a good point to introduce the philanthropy pledge, if you would.
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D
Let's take a step back for a second. Right. Which is the idea that, like, should you donate and if you donate, can you have an impact? Right. And so I think that, Jim, we're both personally of the mindset that donating money to charities that will use it effectively and in a positive way generally helps the world and that it's our moral obligation as citizens of this world to help others. Right. Like you've said that before.
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C
There's something to that effect, I'm sure.
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D
Yeah. So for me, the idea of knowing where my money is going and getting reports back from that charity saying, hey, Rebecca, this is the good, all the good that you are doing really helps me part with that money. Right. I just don't want to give my money to anyone asking me on the street or to a charity that I don't know anything about. Like, I, I spend a lot of time researching the causes that I care about and the charities that I think will do good. And so it's like the same idea of like where you're investing, right? Like, we want to invest in a conservative, risk free approach that gives us some returns. We want to apply that to charity as well. So I'll start with that and we should talk about that a little bit more. The call to action, which is the philanthropy pledge, comes in three options. So the first option is this classic 10% pledge. 10% of your income. It's very straightforward, it's very clear. The philanthropy pledge works in partnership with this organization called Give Me what We can. There's over 10,000 people around the world that have taken this. And so for many, many people, it's doable and real and clear. If you're not quite ready for 10%, which is absolutely understandable, Rome wasn't built in a day. There's the trial pledge. So you could say, pledge 1% of your income for as little as six months and just see how you feel. So if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year and you want to just take the 1% trial pledge, that's $1,000 a year, that's very doable, right? That's less than a hundred dollars a month. So that could be like a great starting point for someone who's thinking about it. And the last option is a wealth pledge. So that's donating a percent of your overall portfolio. And the reason why this exists is for a lot of people in the personal finance world, they're no longer thinking about traditional forms of income. Or maybe their traditional forms or income are kind of like wild and all over the place. Cause they have multiple income streams. The wealth pledge allows people to think about their entire portfolio and say, okay, I'm going to give away half a percent of my wealth every year. So that might look like, if you're looking at the 4% safe withdrawal rate as a future analysis for your projected financial safety, you might look at 4.5%. And so I think that we probably are gravitating a little bit more towards the wealth pledge ourselves as a family. But those are the three options. And the idea behind a pledge is that you are making a commitment. You're being part of a community that values the same things as you, right? You know that from your community, right? Like the things that, that doctors think about, the things that dentists think about when it comes to personal finance. There's kind of this thread underneath of personal finance teachings, but it's specific to them. So people who are generous, charitable to be part of something that people are thinking about in the same way. And the last is culture. I really think it's important to normalize giving and to talk about it because typically we don't talk about it because it's seen to be more virtuous if we're not talking about it openly. But when I see people like you or other people that are giving and I see that they're happy and healthy and wealthy and doing well, it just creates a safer space for others to give. So if my five best friends give between 1 to 10% of their income a year, I'm way more likely to give money myself. So that's kind of what I'm working on with the pledge. It's like this call to action to make it real, but to also showcase to others like, hey, look at all these people who have pursued financial independence or financial freedom and are giving away 1%, 2%, 3%. And my hope is that 10 years from now we just see this huge community in the fire world of people who are donating and early retired and living great lives and having their cake and eating it too.
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C
Let's talk for a minute. And this can't come from me because this is if anything, preaching to the choir. I'm a huge fan of giving personally, but I want to give you some pushback and I'm going to quote from a fellow by the name of Phil DeMuth. And it's really funny that he said this because he said it before. He later wrote a book called the Tax Smart Donor. But this is what he had to say about charity and I want your reaction to it. He said, I love charity, but taxes aside, we get our charity feel good afterglow buzz on too cheaply. It's safest to assume that any charity is a well meaning scam until your own research proves otherwise. Of course, the people running the charity don't think of it as a scam. They think they're Mahatma Gandhi. All that proves is they're experts at rationalizing their self interested behavior just like the rest of us. Here's an instant screen I copied from Nassim Taleb. Does the charity have any salaried officers? If so, look elsewhere. The next question to ask is whether they do more harm than good. I count wasted money as a positive evil. The same money could have been left in a tip jar at Starbucks where it would have gone to hard working young people starting out in life. As Milton Friedman says, the most efficient operation is where you have people spending their own money on their own behalf. The least efficient operation is where you have a group of people spending other people's money on behalf of yet a third group of people, which is how charities and governments operate. If a charity has a cost benefit analysis of all the good they are doing per dollars spent, bring it on. In the absence of such evidence, which they would certainly be motivated to supply if it existed, it is safe to assume the money was wasted. Like I said, I, I find that quote hilarious. Now, given that he later wrote this book about donating money. But I want your reaction to that kind of anti giving mindset, because I think it's fairly common. He was just daring enough, I think, to verbalize it.
- [34:15]
D
So when it comes to the philanthropy pledge, I don't know if it's going to be presented to someone who's completely anti philanthropy and they're going to be stoked to take it, Right. I imagine the type of person who's going to take a pledge like that has something inside them that says, I have something to give others. Right? So in terms of the conversation of trying to convert others to believe in philanthropy, this is, this is a different conversation than cementing like a financial plan around it. I know a lot of people, and I myself have been asked for money on the street and felt wary of that. Like, how many times have you checked out at a store and they're like, do you want to donate to X Y? Cause it's uncomfortable to be asked on the spot. You're not knowing if your money's doing any good. You weren't prepared. You were just trying to buy some groceries to make dinner that night. You're just trying to get home, but someone in a green vest is stopped stopping you. And people ask for money because it's a meaningful and real way that people receive money. If you don't ask for it, you're not going to get it, right? So with that said, I understand the skeptics, I understand the skeptics, and there are charities out there that are not effective, that do cause more harm than good. And so I think for me, what really flipped the sweat was learning about charitable organizations that do rigorous research on the outputs of their work and so that I can look at it like an investment. So when I give this charity a thousand dollars, this is what I'm getting back from them. So let me frame this another way. So in the quote I think the language was like the cost benefit analysis of it. How much you donate to a charity and how much money ultimately goes to a cause is only one measure of efficacy. What I want to see is, what is that charity doing? So this is an example I've given before. Let's say someone comes up to me on the street and says, hey, do you want to donate to our local high school? What we're doing is we're providing books to kids and it will cover the cost of their books for the next four years of high school. And you might walk away from that and be the type of person that's like, oh, I love kids. I absolutely want them to do well in school. Let me give them some money. Or you could be the skeptic that's like, okay, are these even gonna buy books? Like, who are the kids? What's going on? A much better representation of impact would be if someone explained to me, okay, here are the books that you're buying for these kids. And what we have found is when you supplement this resource for them, they are five times more likely to graduate. They are seven times more likely to earn a higher income and provide from their. Provide for their families. They are four times more likely to not end up in jail. Right? These are like real statistics that I can lean on and understand and decide whether or not, A, do I want to donate to this cause, and B, does this cause do any good? So I think most charities try to do some good, but they end up in that category of, hey, will you give some money so we can buy textbooks for kids versus, here is the real output and impact of the efforts we have. And when I can see that impact, I'm much less focused on how much the executive director of the organization makes or what percent of money is actually going to the causes, which, by the way, I do think is valuable. I don't want all of my money being blown on glossy brochures. But again, thinking more about what's the cause area and the effect from that will be relative to that cause area. So if you're donating to prevent homelessness, the impact or the effectiveness of that is going to be different than if you're donating towards lobbying for a certain cause.
- [38:30]
C
Yeah, it's very interesting, right? Everybody wants to give in as high an impact way, as high yield of a way as they can. And it turns out it's a lot of work. Our family, we tend to do most of our giving at one time period during the year after having a family giving meeting and we require each of the family members to not only bring the charities they want to support that year, but they've got to have an argument for why they think we should be supporting this charity. And they've, you know, got to do some research and get some ratings and find out how much of this money is going to go to administrative and how much of it is going to go to fundraising, how much is actually going to go to the cause, not to mention the cause itself, you know, and whether the cause is worthy. And the biggest complaint we have about the meeting is, oh, dad, this is taking so long. Right. And even after the meeting, there's an hour of work at least, and we've, we streamline this as much as we can, just doing the actual giving, just moving the money to the charities. So I think part of the reason people don't do this is they're afraid they'll do it wrong. And they recognize that doing it right does require some work. Just like spending well, just like investing well, just like saving well, you know, and budgeting and earning well, it's not simple. It does require a little bit of work. What are some of the ways you found to be able to be, you know, high impact and high yield while maybe minimizing that work as much as possible?
- [40:06]
D
So I have two thoughts here. The first is you're asking your family to go out. Well, first of all, I think this is a beautiful exercise that you do and I hope to deploy something like this once my kids are older. You're asking your family to go out and bring to the table, well thought out research. My first thought is, can you roll with that? Right. Like, does it always have to be a new charity? If they've done the research and they like that charity and they want to continue supporting them, what's wrong with a five year plan with continuing to support that charity?
- [40:36]
C
So yeah, for sure. And, and to be fair, the majority of the ones we support each year
- [40:40]
B
are the same charity.
- [40:42]
D
So just for your list, right? So like that's actually what's happening in your family. And just for people who are listening to this, right, like I always say, the work is up front, right. So we spend time once a year researching the charities that we want to donate to in a proactive way. Because I already shared, I donate on that monthly basis. We spend time once a year to decide and then that's our giving for the year. So I'm not doing this each and every month. I'm just clicking the buttons on the forms for which I Donate appreciated stock every month, but the strategy's figured out. And then at the end of the year I say, okay, let's reevaluate and are we going to go with the same strategy again or not? I will say that that's about 80 to 90% of our donation strategy. So it's a proactive donation strategy then 10% for reactive stuff. Like a friend's running a marathon or someone's asked for money to support some cause that we, we feel like we're happy to support. So it's again like this. 90% of the work is proactive, 10% of the work is reactive. And maybe a little less diligent around, like how effective the cause is to give us some freedom to be normal people. I don't want to go to my friend who's running a marathon and say, hey, your cause is ridiculous. I haven't researched it. There's no way I'm donating towards it. Right. That's not very fun and friendly. So again, coming up with a system throughout the year for which you evaluate, which you have. Jim, I have as well. The second is how many people, and I'll relate this back to, I'll relate this back to personal finance. How many people are we actually going out and encouraging them to research which stocks to buy or which bots to buy? We're largely not doing that because it creates this system of winners and losers. We are kind of saying, look, these smart people, Jack Bogle, right? Like these smart people and others have done the research for you and here are your more appropriate options. We've done this for you. If you want, you can look into it more or you could just buy this three fund portfolio or four fund portfolio. How many people in the personal finance world just go ahead and buy that because it's been so researched and so well trusted. So there are other organizations that do this with charitable giving. So they've done the work for you and they've done the research for you. You've mentioned this on in your work before. Charity Navigator. They have top lists of charities by cause areas such as homelessness, emergency disaster relief. We have other charity aggregators like the life you can Save, which lists about 20 charities or so that are rigorous, rigorously researched by third party parties. And they cover causes from combating malaria to educating girls in India who otherwise wouldn't be able to have access to direct cash transfer. So the causes vary widely, but they kind of highlight these very incredible charities that are doing a lot of great work. There's other aggregators like giving green if you care about climate change or an animal charity evaluators if you're a vegan or vegetarian and you want to think more about how you can put your money to use versus your consumerism. So those are just a few places to start where people have done the work for you and you can explore what speaks to you within their platforms.
- [44:10]
C
All right, let's talk a little bit about the mechanics of it. It sounds to me that you give in a similar way to we give in that you donate appreciated shares you've owned at least a year. That of course has significant tax advantages. Neither you nor the charity ever pays any capital gains taxes. You can still take a charitable donation for the entire value. And, and presumably I'm assuming you're using a donor advised fund, is that true?
- [44:36]
D
The last one I'm actually not using a donor advised fund on.
- [44:39]
C
So tell us what, tell us about that decision and why you're going that route.
- [44:43]
D
Right, okay. So in the realm of, in the simplest realm, there are lots of options. You have the option to donate cash, not, yes, real cash, but, you know, paying with your credit card or from your checking account. You have the option to donate appreciated securities. You have the option to use either of those types of assets and put it into a daf, get a huge large front tax deduction, and then slowly make those grants set over time. The way that we've modeled our giving is we just donate appreciated stock on a monthly basis directly to the charities. Directly to the charities, and all the charities to which we donate to accept appreciated stock. Not all charities do, by the way. So for us, we're getting the same tax deduction by doing that as if we were to put that money into a DAF and then donate it. So for me, the DAF is just an extra step. And also I'm free to invest in whatever I want when I'm donating appreciated securities from my regular brokerage account. Whereas a daft, there tends to be these more limited options and then this slight additional fee. Although you can get around if you use a good DAF provider like Fidelity or Daffy, for the most part, it remains pretty low cost. But for me, the DAF is just an extra step. It's not a harmful tool, it's just not a helpful tool. So instead I'm just choosing to, to donate my stock that's appreciated the most and just slowly roll through that strategy over time. I don't think a DAF is out of the question for us, it's just not a Very useful tool.
- [46:19]
C
Okay, I'm going to take about one minute and talk you into using a daf.
- [46:24]
D
Okay? Okay.
- [46:26]
C
I had a problem with the daf. The problem I had with the DAF is what I call the jerk move, right? The person who puts their money in there gets their tax deduction and never actually gives the money to charity. I have a real problem with that. But I eventually came around and started using a Daft for a few reasons. Number one, I can just do the transfer of the shares at, you know, one time a year or whatever, and that's all I got to keep track of for my taxes. I don't have to keep track of all the different charities we're given to and all the multiple donations. It's just a super paperwork saving step. So that's reason number one. Reason number two is I hate charity porn. And what I mean by that is those glossy brochures that show up in your mailbox when a charity knows you gave to them. And worse, they make some money by selling your name and address to other charities. And so you don't just get one glossy brochure, you get 10 glossy brochures in your mailbox. And that kills me to know that charitable dollars that people are not spending, they're not giving to their heirs, they're not investing for their future, are being spent just trying to raise more money from me that I'm already in the habit of giving. So those two things are enough to cause me to say, you know what? This is easier to just use a daf. And you don't have to dole the money out in small chunks. You can donate it a week after you get it in there. You know, as soon as everything kind of settles, you can take all the money out of the daf. So we don't keep a huge balance most of the time in our daf. We are keeping a little bit more this year just because the charitable rules changed last year. So we put a little extra in there last year, but typically we pretty much clean it out every year. We're not keeping it for giving over decades or anything. We just run the money through there for the convenience and for the anonymity and so far, given to, I don't know, 30 or 40 or 50 charities a year, whatever it is, we have yet to have one we couldn't give to through the Daft. There was legitimate charity. Now, unlike a charitable foundation, you can't just give to an individual with a daf. It has to be, you know, a registered charity. But I would encourage you to reconsider it. It wouldn't surprise me if you change your mind on that at some point in the next few years.
- [48:39]
D
These are good selling points. I think the DAF will become more prominent for us as we think more about this, like, net worth. And drawing down on our portfolio concept. I also think, you know, my parents are still young, but in the event that we come into an inheritance, I definitely think that that's when we'll deploy it. But your selling points are great and I hear them.
- [49:00]
C
Yeah. All right, let's talk a little bit about this book by Bill Perkins. It's come out in the last few years called Die with Zero. And in that book, he talks about not only giving to heirs when the money will be most useful to them rather than trying to die the richest doctor in the graveyard, but also giving to charity now instead of waiting until you're dead. And, you know, one of the concerns is everyone's worried, well, what if I need that money, you know, and then I've already given it to charity, I can't give it back. And he's not talking about that. He's saying, once you know, you have enough, recognize you have enough, and the charity could sure use the money now rather than later. How do you propose people decide whether to give now versus later?
- [49:42]
D
I don't think it's an either or. I think it's a both. Right? So giving now reflects upon this concept of like, right, the habit formation. I go back to, like, if you're 65 years old and you've never given a dollar away, it's gonna feel really, really hard to give money away outside your family. It's just like a full, full stop answer. And it's funny, a lot of times when I want to talk about philanthropy with people in this space, they'll be like, wow, my audience isn't. They're really young. They're not in their 60s. They're not ready to give. And I'm like, that's not necessarily the people who are giving. We don't actually have a lot of data out there that suggests that people who are 60 give way more than people that are 30. So again, I go back to this give now to create a habit A, for yourself, and B, people need the help now. Right? People are suffering now. And so what can you do to help now? And then you can look at your portfolio as this kind of idea of, like, invest to give, right? So you're like, investing these assets for your future. You're covering your butt, right? You're like creating this financial safety security nest egg for yourself, which you need. And you shouldn't feel bad about that, right? At some point, you are going to grow old, you're going to have to stop working, and you have to support yourself. You have this nest egg, let it grow, and then maybe down the line, there's other causes that didn't even exist before. And so you have an opportunity to grow that portfolio and give even more. So I don't. A lot of people try to model this, like, how much could I give now versus if I invested it and then gave it later? And would it be more money to give to charity? And there's a lot of discussions around that. My thought to make your life simple is to do both. And I would keep it really, really simple because there's all these discussions around, like, how much should I give, when should I give? I mean, to me, there's basically like four stages of how you should think about giving when it relates to the path of financial independence. The first stage is you're just unstable financially, you're in crippling debt, and it just may not be your time to give until you get your act together, and that's okay. The second stage would be stable. You know, you're covering your life expenses, you have regular income, you can pay the bills. You have an emergency fund. At this stage, at this early stage, I would consider taking a 1% pledge. So if you make 60k a year, that's $600 a year, it's $50 a month. Right. So when you break down the numbers that way, it's really doable. The third stage would be momentum. I can handle curveball. Your cash flow is predictable. You have a decent savings rate. You can, like, see this path forward. Maybe you up it from 1 to 2% that pledge. Just see how you feel. And I think at the last stage, this sort of sufficient stage, meaning I have enough, there's a path to fi, or I'm close to fi. I think this is when you switch from giving when being asked to giving by design. And you're really thinking about, okay, how am I coming up with a research planner on the charities that I want to give to? The cadence, what types of assets I'm going to donate to. And I think really, most of us at this stage could be giving 5%, 10% and live a really great and happy life.
- [53:18]
C
All right, let's talk for a little bit. We've mostly been focusing on charity. Charities are not the only things you can give money to. I mean, you can give money to support your alma mater college. That typically qualifies as a charity as well. But you can give to people directly. You can give to work associates, you can give to people you meet on the street. You can give to family, you can give to friends, you can give to somebody in the neighborhood that something bad happened to. There's all these GoFundMes that pop up from time to time. Obviously you're not getting, you know, tax deductions for this non charitable giving, but sometimes it feels like you can make a bigger impact with people that you care about a lot. So any tips on how to balance, you know, how much goes to a formal charity versus giving to people you already know that you know, maybe haven't been as fortunate in life as you have.
- [54:12]
D
I'd be curious to see what your thoughts are on this. I was, I like this three pot idea. So you have three pots of money in your life. The first is for you and your loved ones. Right. And so that could be your kids, it could be your aging parents, it could be like immediate family or what's, you know, close to family. The second is like an emotional connection. The second pot is like, it could be local, it could be a gofundme. It could be things that you just like feel like are really tearing on your heartstrings. And then the third bucket is this impact bucket that you know, when you put money towards this bucket and like, theoretically it could be a 501C through charity, but you could give money directly to someone and have a huge impact on their life too. Right. That could fall into that bucket that, you know that when you give money here, it's damn sure gonna do something good. So it's kind of like this diversified charitable strategy that works somewhere within your emotions, but also roots in like the idea of, well, if we're going to give money, we just really want to make sure it does them good. So that's how I kind of think of it. Luckily for me, most of my giving has of the second bucket and the third bucket have overlapped. Like the causes that I donate to that I know to have a positive impact also pull on my heartstrings. Right. They also make me feel connected to them and emotional and emotional about it. I'm curious how you think about giving outside of 501 charities, Jim.
- [55:44]
C
Yeah, I think we've taken a very diversified approach, for sure. Like last year, some of our giving included, you know, obviously charities. We gave a lot of money to charities. We gave a Fair amount of money to our church. We endowed a scholarship at our alma mater. We gave to people in need in our neighborhood that we knew of. We gave money to family, we paid out bonuses to employees. You know, and you look at all these different ways that you can give all these people and all these causes you care about, and it's really challenging to decide, well, how much goes to these folks and how much goes to this charity. And, you know, it was surprising how, how hard it is to do, even though, you know, none of it's going to you, none of it's, you know, really being invested. I mean, they might be investing it, but we're not investing it. And still it's complicated to make those decisions. And oftentimes, especially if you're married, this is a give and take with your spouse and deciding, well, how much are we going to give to them? And so that's kind of been our approach, but I think we're getting better at it as time goes on, for sure. Now this is a financial podcast, so I think for just a minute we got to take a break and talk a little bit about the tax advantages of giving. And with some of the tax changes recently, you can give a certain amount of money to charities without itemizing and still give to them in a pre tax manner. Basically, you get a tax deduction for your entire contribution. I can't remember when that changed. That just changed last year in 2025.
- [57:20]
D
Yeah. So come 2026 tax year, there will be an $1,000 deduction for single filers, 2,000 for married. Finally, jointly, if you donate cash to 501 C3 charities only. So it's not going to apply to your DAF and it's not going to apply to appreciated securities. It's just going to be for this $1,000 and it's technically a below the line deduction. So it's not going to lower your AGI or lower your maggie, but it
- [57:52]
C
will lower your taxable income.
- [57:54]
D
But it will lower your taxable income. So that, to me, it's a no brainer. Yeah, right.
- [57:58]
C
I think for a lot of people in our audience, they're high earners, you know, they've got a bunch of mortgage interest, maybe they have some other itemized deductions. They're often getting a deduction for their entire charitable donation on their Schedule A as well. And so as long as you're itemizing and you're itemizing more than the standard deduction, that amount is of course a pre tax amount as well. One of my favorite ways to give though is for people that are at least 70 and a half, you can use a QCD, a qualified charitable distribution, which is awesome if you're of RMD age, you know, 73 to 75, whatever it's going to be when you get there, you know, this takes the place of your RMD and basically goes directly, you know, to the charity from your ira. And so it's awesome that way in that it fulfills your RMD and you get to give in a pre tax way and you don't have to itemize, you can still take the standard deduction and use that qualified charitable distribution. So if you're at least 70 and a half, that's probably the best way tax wise for you to give to charity. And it's a little bit of a pain to get a QCD check sent, but it's not that bad, particularly if you're only doing it for one or two charities.
- [59:13]
D
And my husband and I have been talking about this a lot in the world of now that we're early retirees, our income's quite low. So one of the things that we focus on is Roth conversions quite a bit. Right. So getting money out of our traditional IRA and into our Roth ira. Luckily, most of our funds are not sitting in that traditional bucket. But the QCD thing comes to mind for me, even as someone in my 30s, because I'm realizing, like, I probably don't have to put such an emphasis on getting this money out of my traditional IRA because I plan on making such large charitable contributions later on in life anyways. So it's given me a moment where I'm like, maybe I'll stop with the conversions for now and just leave it for QCDs later on.
- [59:56]
C
Yeah, we've decided we are not doing any Roth conversions because we anticipate leaving more to charity than we will ever have in those tax deferred accounts. So that's absolutely the right mindset. Okay, let's talk about another issue I'm seeing in the statistics. Fewer people are giving to charity. If you look over the last 10 years or so, the number has decreased from something like 91% to 81% of the affluent and from something like 56% to something like 45% of the general population. Why do you think fewer people are giving?
- [60:29]
D
So I can't speak to the statistics. But when in other countries, when we track charitable giving, religious giving or religious based giving isn't included in the statistics. In the US though, we do include that typically in those statistics.
- [60:45]
C
And people are becoming less religious, maybe.
- [60:47]
D
And people are becoming less religious. And so it's not. And by the way, I didn't look up this data, but that's probably what my hunch says, that some of that's happening. I think a lot of people in these younger generations who are facing like a really expensive world that maybe some of your listeners, or even I wasn't facing, are struggling with the concept of the costs of goods and services and how expensive life is. But I also see a lot of incredibly opportunistic people that do give meaningfully and regularly. I mean, I know hundreds of people personally who have taken a 10% giving pledge. So I think it's a function of who you are surrounding yourself with and what communities you're choosing to be a part of. So, like when I go Through My Links LinkedIn feed, or I go through the people that are real in my life, like the majority of them are giving away money and in some sort of meaningful way, even if they haven't taken the pledge. So I'm not, I'm not saying that, like, the cost of the world isn't an issue or that maybe some of the standards or like societal expectations for giving are changing based on what we discussed earlier. But my hope is that we can create a space to normalize this more and more, to have people to be able to put one toe in the water and just to see that other people are giving and doing well and doing okay.
- [62:15]
C
Let's talk about one reason why maybe the financial independence community and giving don't necessarily have lots of overlap. And this criticism, for lack of a better word, probably doesn't apply to you, given what you've chosen to do after retirement, that you're here on a podcast trying to persuade other people to do more giving in their lives. But if you continue to work full time after you don't need the money, you could give your entire after tax income to charity. That would be the way in which you could maximize your giving. And thus a firing person, a retiring early person, in that way, is not giving as much as they could. In some ways, it's inherently a selfish act to fire. Do you think there's any interplay there between the fire community and in giving that maybe has an effect?
- [63:12]
D
I've literally had college students ask me why I'm not doing this. Like, why aren't you? They'll call it quote unquote, earning to give. Like, you've reached five. Why don't you just keep working and give all your money away? Well, one, I didn't pursue Fi just to do that. So I think I do get to be a little selfish in that, you know, I, for example, am a new mom.
- [63:38]
C
Turns out you're human after all.
- [63:40]
D
Yeah, it turns out I'm human. I am not. I mean, like, you can ask my family. I am not a saint, you guys. I am, you know, a mom. I have two kids and that's a lot of my time and energy in this world. And I want to spend time with these children, right? So, you know, I pursued five for a whole bunch of reasons. Being financially comfortable to give is one of them. Spending time doing other things I love. Like, we have a lot of shared interests, Jim. Like a great love of the outdoors and then my family. And that's okay, right? Like, I think that's the idea that I'm trying to present is like, let's have our cake and eat it too. Like, let's live these lives that we want to live. And by the way, I also am giving away 10% each year and I feel really great about both options. So that's the core message I'd want to send. And then I think separately, when I think about giving in the Fire Community, it makes sense that there's a natural friction here, which is we have all these really smart, influential people out in the world, whether they're authors, bloggers, influencers, what have you that are building their platforms on how to build wealth. How do you accumulate wealth? So it's a no brainer that it might be hard for people to be like, by the way, think you should give some of that away? Because that's not exactly why they came to the Fire space. But the fire community is, and you've been in it way longer than me. Like the fire community has evolved. Like I think we had the first stage, which is, you know, invest in low cost index funds, save as much as possible, sacrifice and early as retire as you can so you can find freedom. That's probably stage one. Stage two now is really how do I design a life I really want to live using money as a tool for freedom. This is uniquely different than the first stage, right? We have people telling us or people showing us how to use money to take sabbaticals. The concept of co spy, right? Like, how can you find freedom and happiness before you reach this full phi number? I do really think that we can reach this phase three, which is like a legacy. What, as a personal finance community are we doing right? What is the whole point of all this? And right now it's just a few of us crazies like me who have reached early retirement in our 30s. But at some point when people have these tools and have access to these tools, we're going to have millions and millions of people and we see it already that like, are prepared for early retirement and we're just going to be sitting on these nest eggs. What are we going to do with them? Right? And so I do think there's an opportunity to shift this mindset of I'm pursuing financial freedom, I'm pursuing financial freedom to like, what are we doing as a community to live the best lives we possibly can while helping others.
- [66:45]
C
Is it morally wrong to not leave as much as you can to your kids to make their life as easy as it could be? Especially in today's world where housing prices are going through the roof and so many people, you know, even on a doctor's income in high cost of living areas can't afford to buy a house. Do we have an obligation to leave as much as we can to our kids and thus not give so much money away to charity either now or later?
- [67:12]
D
I think this is a great question. I'm from New York, I'm from one of the most expensive states in the US And I have little kids and I haven't had to talk to my son about money. So I think I would be remiss saying, like, I figured this piece out, right? I guess the idea is we can iterate on it. I feel very confident if I, if you do something like you take the 5% pledge again, assuming you're in that sufficient stage, which is a lot of your listeners, that you will have plenty of opportunities to support your children. And that goes back to those three buckets the like give to you and your loved ones, the emotional connection, the impact. So I think that you can do both. I think if you're really trying to optimize and die with zero, then we do get into these like deeper questions of like how or estate planning, right? Like how do. What am I specifically giving to who and to when and how. But I, I, I mean, I'll be candid. I think I, I have to explore that. I, I don't really know how much money my son will need to buy a house in the future. Will he want to buy a house in the future? Will renting be the way those are? The world could change a lot 30 years from now.
- [68:26]
C
There's data out there. And let me make the case a little bit very directly to podcast listeners for giving. There is Plenty of data out there that if you give money away, yes, it helps these charities and these causes and these people you're supporting, but it makes you a better person, too. It makes you happier, it makes you healthier, it makes you wealthier. The data is very clear. The givers are all three of those things compared to non givers. And I think part of that is you're sending a very subtle, maybe not so subtle message to your psyche. When you give money away. You're saying you have enough and to spare. And I think that's very powerful in creating happiness in our lives. So many people I run into are anxious about running out of money, and I ask them, well, how much do you have? 7 and a half million. Like, you are not going to run out of money. You know, what do you spend? About 140,000 a year. Right. They're not even close to being running out of money yet. They lay at night worrying about it. And I wonder how many of those people, if they would give more money away, would literally have happier, healthier, more enjoyable, less anxiety ridden lives than they have now.
- [69:43]
D
I love that sentiment. I think it's such a signal to your brain, I have enough. I am okay. And by the way, you can iterate. It's not stuck. It's not like you make this decision and stuck in cement, you can iterate. If you're not sure, just try. Just do something like give 1%, give $100 a month. Do you miss the money? If you put 10k in a daf set some time on your calendar for 3 months from now, do you miss that money? Have you thought about it? What did it do? Where did it go? Just. Just take the step and try. And especially if you're that person with seven and a half million dollars in their portfolio, just please give it a try.
- [70:26]
C
All right, well, Rebecca, this is a topic I feel very passionately about, and so I don't mind. This has gone a little bit longer than most of our typical interviews on this podcast, but it's probably time we start getting closer to wrapping up. If somebody wants to take the Philanthropy pledge, how can they do that?
- [70:43]
D
So the easiest way to do it is to head over to my website, yieldandspread.org and on the website, you'll see at the top, the pledge. You can learn more about the pledge itself. You can learn about other people who have taken it. You can see the differences between the trial pledge, the 10% pledge, and the wealth pledge. And you're also very welcome to reach out to me and ask me any questions. I'd be happy to chat with you personally. And then also on my website, there's other free resources, for example, the philanthropy calculator. So you can put in all your information in there and say, I'm thinking about taking the trial pledge. And you can see actually how it would impact your timeline to fi. And then I also do some light coaching with people who are exploring taking a giving pledge and want to understand how it impacts their plans for financial independence and financial freedom. So lots of good stuff on yieldandspread.org, okay?
- [71:39]
C
We'll include a link to that in the show notes if it's hard to remember while you're driving, of course, as it often is as a podcast listener. Rebecca Herbst, we've had on here, thank you so much for being willing to come on and encourage us to maybe be a little more charitable than we have been in the past. And thank you so much for what you've done for your family and for the world and for the financial independence community.
- [72:05]
D
Thanks, Jim.
- [72:08]
B
Okay, I hope that was a helpful conversation for you. Like I said, link to her site if you want to take the philanthropy pledge will be in the show notes. There are lots of ways to give, right? Not just the money that we talked about today. You can give time. You can give, you know, stuff you're not using anymore. You can give that to charity, whether that's goodwill or, you know, in our area, it's an organization called Deseret Industries that most of that stuff goes to. Whatever you can give is wonderful. There are times, however, in my life when I've said, maybe I'd retire and then I can volunteer more and I really support the food bank. I go down there and pass out food. Then I got to thinking, well, maybe I ought to just see patients, do a lot of good there, make the money, take the paycheck and give that money to the food bank. That's probably doing more good for the food bank to have them get a check for what I would have earned in that shift than for me to actually have spent that shift down there passing out groceries to people. So there's lots of different ways to do this. If you're not in a position where you can give money or give much money yet, consider giving some of your time and maybe some of that stuff that you're not using anymore. It'll free up space, maybe reduce your housing costs because you don't need as big of a house to store and heat and insure all that stuff. That you don't actually need at all anyway. The episode was brought to you by
- [73:29]
C
KeyBank, one of the nation's largest full service banks offering banking, lending and financial solutions for healthcare professionals at every stage of their career. Key's suite of services includes student loan guidance and financial education tools to help clients find financial peace of mind. To learn more and for terms and conditions, please visit whitecoatinvestor.com KeyBank okay, don't
- [73:53]
B
forget about our CFE 26 course sale now through May 12th. Save $100 off it going to wcicourses.com use code CFE100 to get 30 plus hours of financial and wellness sessions from the latest Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy conference, all using your CME money or at least being able to purchase it with pre tax money just like when you give to charity. Thanks for those of you leaving five star reviews, that does help spread the word about this podcast. A recent one came in that said I was so angry. But then for the first 10 years of my career, after finishing internal medicine residency, I was working for another doctor as a W2 employee. Then in 2015, I started working for myself as an owner of my small primary care practice. When I had to pay my first tax bill, I was in disbelief. Then it turned into anger and frustration. I was in my early 40s and I had never learned or been exposed to basic investing and personal finance topics. I immediately started researching on how to lower my tax bill and to begin saving for my personal goals and even retirement. This is when I found White Coat Investor. Now I can easily say that my personal and financial life has improved immensely because of the simple but powerful principles discussed on the podcast and the forum. Thank you WCI for helping us become better doctors by securing our financial futures five stars. Thank you so much for that kind review. All right, this podcast has gone on long enough.
- [75:16]
C
Keep your head up and your shoulders back.
- [75:18]
B
You've got this. You need some help. Come by whitecoatinvestor.com and we and the entire White Coat Investor community will do everything we can to help you be successful so you can be a better parent, better partner, better physician, better at whatever it is you do. Thank you for what you're doing. It's important work. See you next time on the podcast.
- [75:36]
A
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.