RPF0338-Jeff_The_Happy_Philosopher_Interview
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00:00:29.440 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:33.040 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now
00:00:37.760 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:41.360 | On today's show, my guest is Jeff, the happy philosopher.
00:00:44.800 | Jeff is a physician who faced a significant challenge in his career.
00:00:49.200 | Facing burnout and depression, he had to learn new skills and new tactics
00:00:55.440 | to build a happier life for himself, even though he wasn't yet financially free.
00:01:00.400 | And on today's show, we discuss his journey and the specific action steps that he suggests
00:01:07.440 | you consider taking so that you can avoid depression and suicide,
00:01:14.160 | which faces so many people when they face career burnout.
00:01:18.640 | Jeff, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:01:20.880 | Joshua, thanks.
00:01:22.400 | Glad to be here.
00:01:23.440 | So you reached out to me and said, "Joshua, I don't know if you're giving a fair shake
00:01:27.360 | to all the physicians and I might have a little bit of a different take on things."
00:01:32.480 | And you certainly have put together your own little philosophy.
00:01:36.400 | You've built your own little niche in the financial freedom physician world.
00:01:41.040 | Share with us a little bit about your story, especially as it relates to money and your career.
00:01:45.920 | Sure. So let me just give you a brief background of how I got to be a physician.
00:01:56.000 | It's a pretty typical path.
00:01:58.800 | I grew up just regular, normal middle class, did all the sorts of things a kid did.
00:02:05.840 | Did well in school.
00:02:08.240 | School came pretty easy to me.
00:02:09.680 | When I got to college, I decided to become a physician.
00:02:15.200 | I liked science.
00:02:16.400 | I wanted to do something to get involved in helping people and a physician seemed like a good fit.
00:02:22.880 | So I went to medical school, did a residency, did fellowship, and at the young age of,
00:02:29.440 | the young old age of 32, started my career as a physician.
00:02:34.480 | Everything up to that point was pretty routine.
00:02:43.280 | My first couple years of practice were busy, difficult, but about what I expected.
00:02:51.840 | What I didn't expect, however, was about probably four or five years into my practice,
00:02:59.920 | I started noticing that I was becoming pretty burned out.
00:03:04.240 | And I didn't really know it was burnout at the time.
00:03:06.560 | I sort of diagnosed that in the rearview mirror.
00:03:10.640 | But I noticed that I was becoming less and less satisfied with my job as time went on.
00:03:15.920 | I had less energy.
00:03:17.120 | I was anxious.
00:03:18.560 | I was stressed out, becoming cynical, less efficient,
00:03:22.880 | and I just couldn't recharge on my days off and on my weeks off.
00:03:26.960 | So I knew something had to change.
00:03:31.280 | My life just didn't feel right.
00:03:33.760 | And I kind of lashed out at the one thing that I thought it could be,
00:03:40.080 | and that was my job.
00:03:41.040 | And at this point, I was in my mid-30s.
00:03:46.000 | I was really confused and in a pretty bad place
00:03:50.960 | because I was doing everything that society told me I was,
00:03:54.800 | I should do to have a happy life.
00:03:57.600 | And I was doing everything that I thought I should be doing.
00:04:02.000 | But yet I was quite miserable in many ways.
00:04:08.000 | So a couple of things happened that sort of nudged me in the direction that I ended up going.
00:04:16.240 | Well, first of all, stepping back.
00:04:24.080 | When I came out of training and got into practice,
00:04:29.440 | in spite of being pretty frugal and careful with my spending,
00:04:34.080 | and we funded retirement accounts and did all that,
00:04:38.640 | I still had a net worth of about zero coming out of training.
00:04:41.920 | [Laughter]
00:04:42.720 | Welcome to the world of six-figure student loans, right?
00:04:44.720 | [Laughter]
00:04:45.200 | Right.
00:04:45.680 | So I thought I was doing pretty well, and by comparison, I was.
00:04:49.840 | But I had a net worth of about zero,
00:04:52.000 | that the student loans about zeroed out with the retirement savings
00:04:57.200 | and everything I had done up to that point.
00:05:02.240 | In 2008 or 2009, whenever the middle of the financial crisis,
00:05:10.880 | that was a pretty stressful period,
00:05:13.840 | as I sort of watched 25% of my net worth just kind of evaporate there.
00:05:18.240 | And at the same time, I was burning out.
00:05:22.480 | I had a couple of events in my life,
00:05:27.200 | a couple of people that either died or had near-death experiences
00:05:33.840 | that were around my age or a little bit older.
00:05:36.640 | And so I kind of had a midlife crisis.
00:05:39.520 | I was not happy with the way things were going,
00:05:46.160 | and I decided to look into early retirement.
00:05:51.520 | That was my solution.
00:05:53.200 | So I went on the internet and started searching early retirement.
00:05:58.480 | And as you know, there wasn't a whole lot back in five years ago or so.
00:06:07.600 | There just wasn't a whole lot out there
00:06:09.120 | when you typed in early retirement into the search engines.
00:06:13.920 | You got the big brokerage sites giving you advice on how to retire at age 55 or 60.
00:06:22.080 | And that was not what I had in mind.
00:06:24.240 | So I typed in extremely early retirement into the search engine.
00:06:30.080 | And I know you know what came out of that.
00:06:35.280 | So I stumbled onto early retirement extreme, which is Jacob's site.
00:06:44.400 | And that was my first glimpse into sort of something that I had never even given thought.
00:06:54.480 | Let me guess.
00:06:55.040 | You walked into the kitchen, said to your wife,
00:06:57.200 | and said, "I'm going to live on $7,000 a year.
00:07:00.720 | Forget this physician lifestyle thing."
00:07:02.480 | That's not exactly how it went.
00:07:05.200 | So everything about the website was just awesome.
00:07:09.040 | Even the website was extreme.
00:07:10.560 | I mean, it's like two colors.
00:07:12.160 | There's no fancy graphics.
00:07:14.640 | It looks like it was coded by Jacob himself.
00:07:17.520 | Just awesome.
00:07:19.600 | And I absorbed the whole thing and read his like, I think he had a 30-day plan.
00:07:25.840 | And after I was done, I was thinking, "There's no way I would be able to sell this to my family.
00:07:33.440 | I'm just, this is crazy."
00:07:34.640 | And I don't even think I could sell it to myself.
00:07:38.160 | It was pretty radical compared to the lifestyle I was living.
00:07:43.280 | Even though by comparison to my peers, I was still living a pretty reserved, frugal lifestyle.
00:07:49.200 | So I was going through his site and I saw a guest post by a ridiculous sounding guy
00:07:56.880 | named Mr. Money Mustache and wandered over to his site.
00:08:01.440 | And his site is quite popular and was a lot more accessible.
00:08:07.360 | It just made a lot more sense to me.
00:08:11.760 | It was closer to what our lifestyle was.
00:08:14.320 | And I started going through all of the financial articles and financial independence, early
00:08:24.240 | retirement blogs and pretty quickly realized that it wouldn't be difficult to retire early
00:08:32.480 | with such a high income and a frugal lifestyle.
00:08:37.200 | So after researching this for a few weeks or a few months, I can't remember exactly,
00:08:44.720 | and having a particularly stressful, horrible week or weekend of call, I kind of had a breaking
00:08:54.000 | point.
00:08:54.640 | I went to my wife and I said, "I'm retiring in five years.
00:08:58.880 | I'll give five more years to my career and I think we'll have enough money."
00:09:05.680 | And I went through the math and just said, "That's all I can promise."
00:09:09.360 | And how many years ago was that now?
00:09:14.240 | That was five years ago.
00:09:16.240 | And so now you've walked into your boss last week and you said, "That's it.
00:09:20.960 | I'm done.
00:09:21.360 | I'm quitting."
00:09:21.840 | Right?
00:09:22.000 | That was the plan?
00:09:22.720 | No.
00:09:23.760 | So what'd you do?
00:09:25.920 | So after I made that conscious decision, actually my life, it was very relieving to make that
00:09:35.600 | decision.
00:09:36.080 | I felt good about it.
00:09:38.560 | But after really sort of thinking about it for a while, I started diving into some deeper
00:09:49.040 | philosophical topics and started asking myself what I really wanted.
00:09:53.120 | Was this what I really wanted?
00:09:55.280 | Did I want to retire in my early 40s?
00:09:57.600 | What would I do?
00:10:02.800 | And there's a lot of literature out there and I think you've probably even interviewed
00:10:06.560 | people on your podcast, I know you have, that talk about retiring to something rather than
00:10:13.120 | retiring away from a job that you're not satisfied with.
00:10:17.600 | And there were things that I did enjoy about medicine, about my job.
00:10:23.120 | So I ended up looking into engineering a job share, part-time work.
00:10:31.120 | And after about three years, I made that happen and that's what I've been doing ever since.
00:10:38.560 | So you're still in medicine, but now instead of working full-time, you work how many hours?
00:10:44.560 | How many days a week?
00:10:45.280 | I work half-time, basically.
00:10:48.640 | So a job share and we split up a full-time equivalent.
00:10:53.840 | And how do you actually set this up?
00:10:55.600 | What was the arrangement that you found in the field of medicine?
00:10:59.760 | So I'm in radiology.
00:11:02.720 | And that's where you're looking at x-rays?
00:11:04.960 | Right.
00:11:06.160 | X-rays, CT scan, MRI, all that stuff.
00:11:11.120 | So some specialties in medicine lend themselves a little bit better to job share or part-time
00:11:21.680 | work and radiology happens to be one of those.
00:11:24.960 | So there was a situation where somebody else who complimented my skill set also wanted
00:11:35.520 | to be part-time and we just took my full-time position and now we share it.
00:11:41.520 | And was this other physician was facing a similar thing or how did you find them?
00:11:50.000 | She was working, so she was doing a teleradiology job, which basically you just kind of work
00:11:58.480 | from home.
00:11:58.960 | It's shift work.
00:12:01.280 | You work typically for large companies that are covering other radiology practices.
00:12:05.600 | And it was a job that she really wasn't very satisfied in and she was looking for a more
00:12:12.480 | traditional radiology practice.
00:12:14.960 | So it was just kind of a unique situation.
00:12:18.560 | It was a good fit.
00:12:20.160 | How common is burnout for physicians?
00:12:22.000 | So burnout is actually incredibly common for physicians.
00:12:29.040 | If you look at the most recent statistics, I think it's about at any time 50% of physicians
00:12:37.760 | are exhibiting some symptom of burnout.
00:12:42.880 | And just anecdotally, I think that every physician is on the verge of burnout or frankly burned
00:12:51.600 | out at some point in their career.
00:12:53.120 | So it is a big problem.
00:12:55.440 | It seems to be increasing over the last five or ten years as medicine has changed.
00:13:04.640 | I think some of the structural changes to medicine have contributed to physician burnout.
00:13:11.600 | So it's a pretty big problem.
00:13:14.160 | And one of the problems with talking about physician burnout is it seems like such a
00:13:24.080 | first world problem.
00:13:25.360 | I mean you have a very high income, a great stable job, but yet you have physicians that
00:13:31.600 | are burning out.
00:13:33.280 | And it's easy to sort of reduce it to, well, you know, you're very lucky to have this job
00:13:38.000 | and you shouldn't be burning out and just kind of suck it up.
00:13:40.960 | But having gone through it, those sort of rational discussions, they don't make it any
00:13:49.440 | better.
00:13:50.000 | So I can understand why they wouldn't make it, rational discussions wouldn't make it
00:13:54.400 | better.
00:13:54.960 | But what I don't fully understand is the causative factors.
00:13:59.840 | Because people have been doctors for a long time and you're right.
00:14:03.200 | It's very time we say suck it up, people have been doctors for a long time and you
00:14:08.240 | ought to be thankful to have a nice fancy cushy job.
00:14:11.680 | What is it, what are the changes that are happening or what's going on or what has
00:14:16.240 | changed that's led to this endemic sense of burnout that you're describing?
00:14:22.960 | So I mean that's a great question and I'm not sure I have all the answers, but I'll
00:14:29.360 | certainly try to address it.
00:14:32.960 | So when you talk to, when you survey physicians, some of the big reasons are loss of autonomy,
00:14:42.880 | increasing caseloads, you know, just being busier and more administrative tasks.
00:14:54.000 | So loss of control, going faster and spending less time actually healing people and doing
00:15:03.280 | medicine and more time doing administrative tasks.
00:15:06.880 | I think those are probably the three big things.
00:15:12.480 | Some physicians, maybe it's about loss of income and reimbursement, but I don't really
00:15:21.280 | believe that.
00:15:23.200 | Just anecdotally and talking to people.
00:15:27.760 | I think it's something people worry about, but I don't think it's real because I've
00:15:34.240 | noticed that a five to tenfold difference in my income from medical school to private
00:15:41.920 | practice didn't really make a difference in my level of happiness at all.
00:15:45.840 | That's really hard for a lot of people to believe.
00:15:48.480 | I know.
00:15:51.280 | It was hard to convince myself that it was real.
00:15:56.560 | Tell me more.
00:15:58.320 | So, I mean, some of the happiest times of my life were in medical school when I was
00:16:06.000 | living off of almost nothing.
00:16:07.280 | Medical school is very demanding and most people don't have an income.
00:16:13.280 | Your only income is student loans.
00:16:16.080 | And so you're living like a college student.
00:16:21.680 | I didn't have much, but I was happy.
00:16:28.160 | I mean, that was a great time.
00:16:30.320 | And then residency, you make a little bit of money in residency enough to live a very
00:16:36.880 | comfortable middle class lifestyle.
00:16:38.880 | And then when you get out into the real world of practicing medicine, your income goes up
00:16:44.080 | substantially.
00:16:45.520 | So physicians get to experience a wide range of income in a very short period of time.
00:16:55.120 | And I think for some people that the money is important, but for me, it never seemed
00:17:01.200 | to be that correlated with happiness.
00:17:04.640 | And if you look at the happiness/money literature out there, you know, above a certain level,
00:17:15.120 | above a certain amount of needs, of basic needs being met, you really don't increase
00:17:20.560 | happiness.
00:17:21.360 | You know, when you look at people and study them and do survey data, I think, you know,
00:17:28.080 | looking at all the studies I read at about 70 or $80,000 a year of spending, you really
00:17:34.560 | don't buy a lot of happiness after that.
00:17:36.960 | You may actually be buying unhappiness in terms of complexity and obligations and such.
00:17:44.480 | What was the thing that you bought or the thing that you did or what was the financial
00:17:49.680 | transaction that when you were not earning much, you thought, "Well, this will be great."
00:17:54.320 | And then you got there and you experienced it and you found out that it didn't do much
00:17:58.480 | for you.
00:17:58.800 | What stands out in your mind?
00:17:59.840 | You're talking about something that I bought like in…
00:18:08.160 | Yeah.
00:18:08.640 | Did you buy a BMW?
00:18:09.760 | Did you go on a fancy trip or something or do something that you thought, "This is
00:18:17.200 | going to be great."
00:18:17.840 | And then you went on and realized, "Wait a second.
00:18:19.200 | This is not all that great."
00:18:20.240 | You know, nothing is jumping out at me.
00:18:25.840 | But I do, you know, I know people that as soon as they got that signing bonus for their
00:18:34.160 | first job went out and leased a new BMW, for instance.
00:18:39.520 | But I've never been that kind of guy.
00:18:44.400 | I mean, I've always been pretty careful with my money, even as a kid.
00:18:49.360 | So, but I guess in retrospect, yes.
00:18:58.720 | I mean, just recently, and I even wrote a blog post about this, we went through this
00:19:05.120 | massive decluttering sort of minimalism phase.
00:19:10.480 | And that seems to be all the rage these days, you know, getting down to like a suitcase
00:19:16.240 | full of possessions and traveling the world.
00:19:18.800 | We didn't quite go to that level.
00:19:20.640 | But we went through everything and got rid of, you know, maybe a third to a half of our
00:19:27.120 | stuff.
00:19:28.320 | And thinking of all the money I spent on that stuff and how little of it actually brought
00:19:36.160 | me any happiness and what such a large percentage of it I never really even used.
00:19:42.960 | So I guess in that respect, I was a typical consumer, although not to the level that I
00:19:51.440 | could have been with my income.
00:19:53.600 | And taking van loads full of my possessions to charities and just giving them away made
00:20:03.600 | me realize how much money I wasted on things that just brought me no happiness.
00:20:07.440 | So it was a good exercise.
00:20:10.080 | And I can't think of any one thing, but it's just sort of that experience and looking at
00:20:17.840 | all of the things, all the little things.
00:20:22.640 | Now that you're working in this part-time job share arrangement, do you perceive that
00:20:28.160 | this is a lifestyle that you can sustain for the long-term future?
00:20:34.240 | Absolutely.
00:20:36.480 | For me, it was a great change.
00:20:42.320 | I don't know that this would be the number one thing that burnt out physicians should
00:20:49.200 | do.
00:20:49.760 | I think that it's going to be a small percentage of people that this is going to be the right
00:20:53.680 | decision for.
00:20:54.400 | It'll be very situation dependent.
00:20:57.120 | So after I went through the financial side of things, as I said, I started going into
00:21:05.760 | the philosophical side of things and really trying to figure out what I wanted.
00:21:09.120 | And really what I wanted more than anything was more time with myself and my family and
00:21:16.960 | more freedom.
00:21:17.920 | So that's what I bought by getting rid of half of my income.
00:21:24.800 | I bought that freedom in my life.
00:21:28.240 | And it does feel a lot more sustainable for me.
00:21:30.800 | I have a lot more energy for work.
00:21:35.840 | I'm a lot more excited about doing it now that I have cut back.
00:21:41.680 | How have you filled those hours that you were formerly working?
00:21:46.400 | You know, the time just seems to fill itself.
00:21:51.840 | People ask me that all the time.
00:21:54.480 | And I just, I, so for my personality, I enjoy the space between things just as much as I
00:22:04.320 | do the things.
00:22:05.280 | So I know there's some people that just love to go, go, go.
00:22:10.320 | But I like to just go on walks, go hiking, go running.
00:22:14.800 | I like to read.
00:22:16.400 | I like to write.
00:22:17.120 | So mainly, mainly those, those little things.
00:22:24.240 | Being, being with my family, I like to have more days that I am here when my kids get
00:22:31.680 | home from school.
00:22:32.480 | Go on field trips if I want to volunteer at the schools, things like that.
00:22:40.080 | So at this point in time, financially, how have you adjusted your financial goals to
00:22:46.000 | fit your new reality?
00:22:46.880 | So I really haven't adjusted much of anything.
00:22:55.200 | I haven't changed my, my spending patterns.
00:22:58.720 | They've, they've drifted down to a level that are, that are comfortable for me.
00:23:03.600 | And in spite of still working half time, I still have an abundance of time.
00:23:09.040 | An abundance of income to cover my, our, to cover our needs.
00:23:14.080 | So really the only thing that going part time changed for me is lengthening my, my
00:23:22.320 | career and, you know, working towards the, the number, whatever that, wherever, wherever
00:23:28.560 | I hit that and having a much more sustainable path going forward.
00:23:32.240 | I don't, I don't really worry about it too much anymore.
00:23:35.360 | I don't think about it.
00:23:36.160 | Do you still care about medicine?
00:23:38.400 | I do, but I have a different, a different attitude towards it.
00:23:46.320 | Tell me more.
00:23:50.800 | So I enjoy what I'm doing, but I look at it more, more now as simply an activity that
00:24:03.680 | I, that I trade my time to do for money in return rather than a calling or my, one of
00:24:15.040 | the big problems I think physicians have and, and actually let me take a tangent.
00:24:21.280 | So one of the things that really affected me happened a couple years ago.
00:24:30.240 | A good friend of mine from, from medical school died by suicide and he, he was a physician.
00:24:38.640 | We were about the same age and it got me really thinking about the topic and I started really
00:24:46.720 | diving into it and physicians in addition to having a very high rate of burnout have
00:24:50.960 | a very high rate of suicide.
00:24:52.480 | They commit suicide or die of suicide at about a rate two times the national average.
00:24:59.280 | And it's really quite amazing when you think about it.
00:25:01.840 | It is, absolutely.
00:25:02.720 | And it's, it's, it's just horrible and tragic.
00:25:06.880 | And I think part of the problem is that we get to a point in our career as a physician
00:25:18.320 | where we, we maybe hit burnout.
00:25:22.400 | Maybe we start to get less satisfied with our work.
00:25:25.280 | Maybe the administrative realities of practicing medicine and the, the monotony of it and the,
00:25:32.320 | the, it starts to wear us down.
00:25:36.320 | But our ego is so tied up in our career.
00:25:40.640 | Being a doctor is very different than being, you know, than any other job I've had.
00:25:45.920 | So for instance, when I was, you know, waiting tables or, or, or bagging groceries or it
00:25:54.000 | was even a door to door salesman for a while in college, when, when I walked away at the
00:26:00.800 | end of my shift, I didn't identify at all with being whatever I was doing at my job.
00:26:06.640 | I just, I became, became me again.
00:26:09.520 | But physicians and ego are tied up.
00:26:14.640 | You become a physician and you're always a doctor even when you're not working.
00:26:20.400 | So I think that tying your ego to a career like this and having it become you, you become
00:26:29.040 | the physician, it can be destructive to you when, when things fall apart and they don't
00:26:34.400 | go well.
00:26:35.120 | And I think that's one of the big reasons why, why suicide and burnout are so high.
00:26:39.200 | So I think subconsciously I just kind of untied my ego to my career.
00:26:47.760 | And I think that in some ways it's just made me a better physician because I can go
00:26:54.960 | just do my job and not, not be so tied up in, in, in being a physician.
00:27:02.000 | I can just go be the same guy I am sitting here talking to you and just go do my job
00:27:07.120 | and be excited about it and do it well.
00:27:08.800 | So I don't, I don't know if that answered your question.
00:27:13.520 | Meandered a little bit there, sorry.
00:27:15.920 | You've written your advice for physicians, not, not who are necessarily seeking, who
00:27:23.600 | are in the most acute stages, having suicidal thoughts, things like that.
00:27:27.600 | But you said you've laid out five options for people who are in similar situation to
00:27:36.640 | where you once were, should consider.
00:27:38.880 | Walk us through those five options and five ideas of advice.
00:27:43.120 | Okay, sure.
00:27:45.600 | Yeah, I think that's a good, I don't know if it's the only framework, but it's, it's
00:27:49.840 | the framework that I, that I like.
00:27:52.160 | And as, as I go through the five, really it's only three, but I divide them out.
00:27:58.400 | There are kind of three things that you can do.
00:28:01.280 | And this isn't just physicians.
00:28:02.720 | This is anybody really that's, that's burned out with their career.
00:28:05.360 | You can change yourself and work on yourself.
00:28:08.880 | You can find another job where you can change the job you're in.
00:28:13.360 | That's, those are really the only three things.
00:28:16.240 | But I've sort of have a framework of about five things that I, that I think are helpful.
00:28:23.120 | So number one is to just work on yourself.
00:28:27.760 | So if you're in a high stress, high burnout career, it makes sense to make yourself the
00:28:35.120 | best version of you in order to withstand the rigors of that career.
00:28:41.040 | And it's usually the simplest and easiest because it requires no one to change, but
00:28:46.480 | you, you don't have to change anyone else's mind or, or, or change their attitudes.
00:28:52.640 | So the things that have, that have helped me and the things that I've read about include
00:28:59.120 | just mindfulness and meditation and that those sort of practices, time management skills,
00:29:05.680 | becoming effective at saying no.
00:29:09.360 | That's a very important thing for a physician to, to learn how to do.
00:29:13.040 | We tend to want to do everything and that is a recipe for disaster and burnout.
00:29:20.000 | We need to learn to say no and to delegate, delegate things.
00:29:23.280 | Becoming better at using EMR, electronic medical records, getting plenty of sleep,
00:29:31.360 | exercising, eating better, getting rid of addictive substances from our lives.
00:29:37.840 | We can do all of these things and in order to help us and we should probably be doing
00:29:44.800 | these regardless of the other four things.
00:29:48.080 | I would say a good book that I read on this and probably has a lot more information than
00:29:56.880 | I could ever give you in a podcast.
00:29:59.200 | It's called Stop Physician Burnout by a guy named Dyke Drummond.
00:30:03.760 | He's an MD.
00:30:05.120 | He burned out.
00:30:06.160 | He now coaches and the book is great.
00:30:09.040 | His website is great called the happymd.com and has a lot of tactical information about
00:30:14.880 | these little things you can do.
00:30:16.880 | So for me, this, this was a big part of what I did.
00:30:21.600 | I worked on myself and even before I went part time, I had fixed a lot of the structural
00:30:28.640 | problems with just my attitude and having more gratitude for my life and so definitely
00:30:37.760 | everybody should, should do number one, work on themselves.
00:30:41.280 | Getting into some of the other things, number two is just to change your job.
00:30:48.080 | Sometimes the job is just not the right one for you.
00:30:51.680 | It's not a good fit.
00:30:54.080 | It's less easy than working on yourself because it can be pretty disruptive to your
00:30:58.320 | life.
00:30:58.640 | You may have to move.
00:30:59.600 | You may live in a community that doesn't have a lot of opportunities, especially if
00:31:05.840 | you're a highly trained subspecialist.
00:31:08.560 | You know, there may not be more than one job for a neurosurgeon in a geographical area,
00:31:14.800 | for instance.
00:31:15.440 | This also includes creating your own job though.
00:31:20.560 | There's another doc that I'll mention here.
00:31:22.480 | Her name is Pamela Weibel and her website is idealmedicalcare.org and she is sort of
00:31:29.280 | a pioneer in addition to talking a lot and writing a lot about physician suicide.
00:31:33.840 | She is a big advocate of creating your own, she calls it the ideal practice.
00:31:41.520 | So finding a practice that really fits you and that you'll be happy with.
00:31:47.440 | The third thing, and this is probably the thing that I'm least knowledgeable about,
00:31:53.280 | but if you decided that you've done all you can with yourself, you don't want to
00:32:00.720 | change your job or you can't for whatever reason, family reasons, etc.
00:32:05.440 | You can work on the system that you're in.
00:32:08.960 | Now the problem with this is that it requires other people to be cooperative.
00:32:15.360 | So in order to change a system, you have to get administrators on board, you have to get
00:32:22.000 | support staff on board, you may have to go through a process.
00:32:25.680 | And physicians and administrators speak a different language.
00:32:31.120 | We oftentimes are very ineffective at communicating with each other and this is just, I think,
00:32:37.360 | how we were trained, the educational system we went in.
00:32:41.440 | So this area would require a skill set that I don't have.
00:32:47.040 | And many physicians probably don't have the skill set and this is a good, good, changing
00:32:56.720 | the system is something that may require coaching or outside consultation really to be effective.
00:33:02.400 | The fourth one is what I did and that's a part-time or job share situation.
00:33:09.760 | Sometimes, and for me this is true, it's simply about having more time and more space
00:33:14.960 | in your life.
00:33:15.520 | And if you're over all satisfied with your job and you just want more time, this is probably
00:33:21.440 | the best option.
00:33:22.480 | Certain specialties lend themselves very well to this, certain specialties do not lend
00:33:28.880 | themselves well.
00:33:29.840 | So a lot of primary care where you have a set amount of patients and they expect to see
00:33:39.200 | you when they come in for an office visit, it's a lot harder to do shift work or job
00:33:46.160 | share in that scenario.
00:33:47.360 | But it can be done.
00:33:48.480 | This is pretty destructive to your finances.
00:33:57.120 | So you have to be willing to be frugal and live a life of reduced consumption and reduced
00:34:05.920 | spending to go down this path.
00:34:07.360 | It doesn't have to be that bad though.
00:34:09.280 | We're talking for some people about going from, I don't know, 400 grand a year to 150.
00:34:16.000 | It doesn't have to be that bad.
00:34:17.040 | That's true.
00:34:18.160 | That's absolutely true.
00:34:19.200 | But a lot of times people are, especially in like a primary care where they're starting
00:34:26.480 | out at a lower, if they're starting out at 150 or 180 and going to 70 or 80, that may
00:34:35.280 | be, it all depends on the level of spending that you're starting at.
00:34:40.800 | So I know people that, you know, these financial independence bloggers, they're living off
00:34:47.840 | of $25,000 a year and they feel like they couldn't spend another dollar if they had
00:34:52.320 | to because they have abundance.
00:34:54.560 | And then I know people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, $500,000, $600,000
00:35:00.560 | a year that never have enough.
00:35:02.480 | And I think it's worth going, it's worth cutting back on your spending and seeing if
00:35:10.640 | you can live off that before you take the plunge or else you just may not, it may not
00:35:15.040 | be for you.
00:35:15.600 | You may be extremely unhappy.
00:35:17.360 | I don't see how somebody, you know, making half a million dollars a year could not cut
00:35:26.480 | in half and be completely happy.
00:35:28.640 | But everybody's different.
00:35:31.520 | It requires a philosophical change.
00:35:33.840 | That's the difference.
00:35:34.880 | If you, many people have a philosophy of hedonism where the goal is pleasure in all
00:35:42.400 | of its variations and all of its forms.
00:35:44.320 | In that context, extra expenditures mean additional pleasure.
00:35:51.520 | That has to be replaced with a completely different philosophy.
00:35:57.840 | There would be a few options that we could go through that would replace it.
00:36:02.320 | But ultimately, to put it simplistically and to keep the conversation fairly mainstream,
00:36:08.640 | you would have to go to, you have to have some sort of philosophy that doesn't have
00:36:17.600 | hedonism as its primary core goal.
00:36:20.880 | And that runs absolutely counter to the mainstream US-American culture around us.
00:36:27.680 | Yeah, you're absolutely right.
00:36:28.880 | And the, and I think this is what's so great about like Pete's blog, Mr. Money Mustache,
00:36:37.840 | is that he, he talks about these issues in a way that's very accessible to people.
00:36:44.000 | And, you know, guys like JD Roth and, you know, I write about this stuff too.
00:36:49.200 | I'm trying.
00:36:52.480 | The framing it in terms of freedom, I think, is something that people understand.
00:37:00.960 | People understand freedom.
00:37:02.880 | Nobody wants less freedom.
00:37:04.960 | So when, instead of framing something as deprivation or cutting back, I look at it as buying my
00:37:13.680 | freedom.
00:37:14.720 | And I think that, I think that's the sometimes the easiest way to go from hedonism to frugality
00:37:24.800 | is to think about it that way.
00:37:27.040 | You are being hedonistic, but it's not about pleasure or materialism.
00:37:34.560 | It's about your freedom.
00:37:35.760 | You're being very selfish about buying your freedom, if that makes sense.
00:37:41.360 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:37:42.640 | So I cut you off on number four.
00:37:44.560 | What's number five?
00:37:45.600 | Right.
00:37:46.000 | So number five is the nuclear option, and that's just to quit medicine.
00:37:51.120 | And I, this would be something that hopefully not many physicians are going to do.
00:38:02.240 | But, you know, I've met some physicians that they just, they're just not a good fit for
00:38:12.320 | medicine.
00:38:12.720 | They don't enjoy what they're doing.
00:38:14.880 | And the problem is that there is such a fixed high cost in terms of money and time to become
00:38:22.240 | a physician that you get so far down this path, you know, after training that you're
00:38:29.120 | 30 years, you're in your early 30s, you have a ton of debt, and you've got one skill.
00:38:36.880 | And usually you can't even pick which part of medicine you're going to work in.
00:38:41.920 | You've got, you're very specialized.
00:38:44.240 | So you're pigeonholed into a very specific career.
00:38:48.800 | And if you don't like it, it can be quite distressing.
00:38:52.560 | This is probably the most destructive to the ego and the finances, unless you have some
00:39:03.520 | other skill set or you can leverage being a physician to become something else.
00:39:09.440 | And I know people who've done this, who've gone into consulting with like biotech companies
00:39:16.160 | or have gone into the financial planning or financial space.
00:39:22.240 | But I only know a couple people and I don't think that a lot of people end up doing that.
00:39:31.040 | But that's certainly a possibility.
00:39:33.360 | Let me run an idea past you and I'm interested to know if, I'm interested to know what you
00:39:38.000 | think.
00:39:39.200 | I'm relatively ignorant with regard to the screening that medical schools do to determine
00:39:47.840 | whether or not the field of medicine would be an ideal career choice for varying personalities.
00:39:53.360 | But it seems to me like one of the contributing factors is the young age at which many people
00:40:03.440 | pursue medicine and the absence of life experience that they have to identify whether or not it
00:40:10.640 | might be a good fit.
00:40:11.520 | And I'll give a couple of examples.
00:40:13.200 | There are two friends of mine.
00:40:16.080 | One of them is presently in medical school in his mid-30s.
00:40:20.800 | The other one was a peer of mine who went through medical school under the ideal, excuse
00:40:29.200 | me, under the standard bright academic track.
00:40:34.880 | And so the first option, my peer, and this is probably indicative of several of my friends
00:40:41.360 | who've gone into medicine.
00:40:42.560 | They seem to be, number one, academically extremely capable.
00:40:46.000 | You have to be academically capable in order to pass the vetting process to get into medical
00:40:52.400 | school.
00:40:53.040 | So very, very focused, work hard in high school, good grades, good student, move into college,
00:40:59.040 | pursue the biology track or related to biology probably in some way because of the focus
00:41:04.480 | and intense academic focus.
00:41:06.080 | My observation is that many of these students, their primary expertise and skill is in academics
00:41:13.280 | and that limits some of their extracurricular activities, some of their extracurricular
00:41:16.960 | exposure.
00:41:17.520 | They just don't have, they're not working a lot of times in varying jobs.
00:41:22.720 | They're just focused on academics.
00:41:24.080 | Perhaps they come more likely, my guess.
00:41:27.360 | I could be wrong.
00:41:28.240 | I'm just guessing.
00:41:29.120 | It's more likely to come from an affluent family who's supporting them financially.
00:41:32.560 | Just focus on your studies.
00:41:34.080 | I've watched a few of my friends go right in, get their undergraduate degree, get the
00:41:38.400 | biology degree, move into med school, right through med school, right into specialty,
00:41:43.840 | right into residency, right into all the stuff you guys do to get the highly specialized.
00:41:49.280 | And here you come out of school at 30 and the very first thing is that highly placed
00:41:56.240 | specialty, but the number of, the amount of exposure to different fields, to different
00:42:01.200 | things.
00:42:01.520 | I remember talking with several of my friends who've gone through med school.
00:42:04.880 | They're trying to figure out what they want to specialize in.
00:42:06.720 | So they're interning here, interning there, but it's all related to medicine.
00:42:10.080 | And it seems to me like a lot of physicians jump into that path because they have the
00:42:17.200 | skills for it and they're academically and intellectually suited for it without really
00:42:22.160 | getting a chance to test drive it or without being aware of all of their other options.
00:42:26.720 | Now, if I compare that to a friend of mine who never had any interest in pursuing medicine,
00:42:32.560 | has worked at, supported himself at different things, became an EMT, was a firefighter,
00:42:38.880 | working with various ambulance companies, et cetera.
00:42:41.680 | And then later this particular person recognized they really wanted to be a doctor and they
00:42:46.880 | wanted to be an emergency room physician that had been proven out through years of focus
00:42:51.680 | and now this person in their mid-30s is putting their way through med school to become an
00:42:57.120 | emergency room physician.
00:42:58.320 | I am much more confident that that career is going to be a perfect fit for this particular
00:43:05.440 | friend because they've test driven it for years.
00:43:08.400 | They know of this interest.
00:43:09.600 | It's an interest that has survived for a long time and I think their career will be long
00:43:14.480 | and appropriate for them.
00:43:16.400 | And I feel like we do, especially physicians, a disservice because we do college students
00:43:21.600 | in the US American system a disservice because we send them right into school and then they
00:43:26.160 | come out and you're starting and just trying to figure things out at 22, 25 years old.
00:43:32.000 | Whereas physicians even worse except there's another decade of school on top.
00:43:35.920 | And we know that a lot of people, very few of us, use our college degrees in our current
00:43:41.920 | careers in any capacity.
00:43:44.080 | And so it's a little easier though if you just switch from, "I got a four-year undergraduate
00:43:47.360 | degree in this study over here and I'm just switching to something else."
00:43:50.320 | That's less costly than it is as you described if you've invested 15 years.
00:43:54.160 | Do you think it would help if we approach the career process a little bit differently?
00:43:58.560 | Yeah, I mean those are really good observations, Joshua.
00:44:04.400 | And I agree with a lot of what you said and a lot of the sentiment.
00:44:10.960 | For sure, one big problem with medicine and actually a lot of careers is that you're forced
00:44:19.440 | to make decisions about things before you really have all the information.
00:44:24.480 | And it's hard to get all the information.
00:44:26.240 | It's very difficult to know what it's like to be a physician without actually becoming
00:44:36.080 | and being a physician.
00:44:37.600 | And I think some careers are just like this, like a firefighter or police officer or a
00:44:44.720 | soldier.
00:44:45.280 | You know, you can intellectualize it and imagine what it will be like.
00:44:51.440 | But when you start getting into these very stressful kind of different careers, it's
00:44:59.520 | hard to know.
00:45:01.600 | And certainly, I think like your friend you described who was an EMT and then decided
00:45:10.320 | to become an ER doc.
00:45:12.320 | I mean, that's a great way to become a doc, I think, because you know exactly what you're
00:45:19.360 | going to get.
00:45:20.080 | You've worked around the system.
00:45:21.520 | You know what to expect.
00:45:24.880 | And for me, I know that every step of the way was different than I thought it was going
00:45:32.480 | to be.
00:45:32.720 | That being said, I think there's a lot of people, in fact, maybe most of my medical
00:45:40.320 | school classmates, I mean, they just knew that they wanted to be a doctor.
00:45:44.800 | And even in practice, they couldn't imagine being anything else.
00:45:52.480 | The big problem I see with careers that require so much upfront investment is, number one,
00:46:01.760 | you don't know how the industry is going to change.
00:46:04.640 | I mean, medicine has changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years.
00:46:08.000 | It's really, if you talk to docs in their 50s and 60s, medicine, practicing medicine
00:46:14.960 | is very, very different now than it was.
00:46:16.880 | So you don't really, you can't really predict how the industry is going to change.
00:46:22.000 | And you can't predict how you're going to change.
00:46:24.000 | My attitudes and philosophies and things that are important to me have changed a lot
00:46:33.600 | in the last 10 to 15 years.
00:46:36.480 | Not the core things, but a lot of the things that I thought, like I said earlier, would
00:46:44.400 | make me happy ended up not making me happy.
00:46:47.920 | So I don't have a great solution for that other than the fact that knowing yourself
00:46:56.800 | and knowing, trying to figure out what you want from life, knowing your personality,
00:47:02.560 | whether you're introverted or extroverted or what your tendencies are, knowing that
00:47:07.440 | stuff as early as possible in life, I think, can help guide you into a career that will
00:47:12.160 | be appropriate.
00:47:14.160 | And maybe interning or shadowing docs early on as high school students or in college is
00:47:23.200 | a good idea.
00:47:23.920 | Hard to think, hard to implement on a large scale.
00:47:29.840 | I think a few people do that, but it would require big structural changes, I think, to
00:47:36.400 | really have it make a big impact.
00:47:38.000 | And it's across our society.
00:47:39.520 | My own anecdotal experience corroborates what you said, that many of my friends who've
00:47:43.840 | gone the medical route, they always knew that was what they wanted to do.
00:47:47.440 | They were very focused.
00:47:48.560 | They knew that this is going to be what I'm going to pursue.
00:47:51.360 | And sometimes you got to do that.
00:47:55.520 | You got to follow it, of course.
00:47:57.840 | But it is daunting to me when you look at, exactly as you described, the costs that are
00:48:03.840 | involved.
00:48:04.320 | And on the concept of knowing yourself, there's a philosophical distinction.
00:48:13.360 | And even though your blog is called The Happy Philosopher, I'm trying to rein in myself
00:48:22.720 | in and not pursue these philosophical rabbit trails that we could.
00:48:25.680 | But first, I'm not philosophically aligned with the idea that introspection is the – that
00:48:33.040 | truth is not found internally, which is a major philosophical divide.
00:48:36.400 | But the biggest practical application is just simply without a diversity of life experience,
00:48:42.320 | you don't have anything to know.
00:48:44.400 | You can't without – I mean, I can't say it any better.
00:48:51.520 | Without a diversity of life experience, you don't have anything to draw on.
00:48:54.720 | The most boring people in the world are those who've done just one thing and pursued one
00:49:01.520 | thing because they – and they can talk about their unique specialty.
00:49:05.120 | The most interesting people in the world – think of a Dos Equis commercial.
00:49:10.800 | The most interesting man in the world was a man of diverse experience.
00:49:14.240 | And I'm judging by my own experience here, but I can't imagine knowing who I am, knowing
00:49:24.480 | the things that are a fit for me, and having any confidence in that if I didn't have a
00:49:30.080 | broad and diverse experience.
00:49:32.160 | I know we can't create a rule for society, but I see it as a major challenge that the
00:49:38.720 | medical field faces with such a focus of – such a long-term focus at the beginning of a career
00:49:48.640 | without a broad and unique and diverse life experience.
00:49:51.680 | It's a tough career fit.
00:49:52.880 | Yeah, I actually agree with that. I think that's what caused me to introspect and
00:50:01.760 | try to figure things out and look around and scratch my head in my mid-30s.
00:50:05.440 | I'm not sure knowing what I know now if I would have chosen medicine as a career.
00:50:14.160 | I don't have regrets about it.
00:50:16.640 | I'm not unhappy.
00:50:17.840 | I mean, I'm really the happiest guy usually within arm's reach of myself.
00:50:23.920 | I'm a very happy guy.
00:50:25.920 | I don't have regrets, but I'm not sure had I had more knowledge when I was in high
00:50:35.120 | school and college that I would have chosen the path that I did.
00:50:38.720 | I mean, it's a paradox.
00:50:41.200 | It is.
00:50:41.920 | I'm glad I am where I am because all of my – who I am today is a result of everything
00:50:49.520 | that's happened to me.
00:50:50.400 | And I wouldn't change anything.
00:50:51.760 | I mean, because I love my life right now.
00:50:54.320 | So I'm glad that I went down that path.
00:50:56.560 | But I guess for my clone in another universe, maybe I would advise him to do something different.
00:51:05.440 | I don't know.
00:51:05.920 | We're going to start talking about the multiverse next.
00:51:09.520 | The reality is two roads diverge in a road – two roads diverge in a wood and we took
00:51:14.160 | one of the roads and you can never go back to that point in the past.
00:51:17.360 | We can only go forward.
00:51:18.400 | Have you seen being connected to the practice of medicine and also paying attention to finance,
00:51:26.320 | have you observed anything about physician financial behavior that for you stands out?
00:51:35.600 | I've got some opinions on the subject but coming from the financial planner background
00:51:39.840 | is – I'm probably more biased than as a physician.
00:51:42.560 | But what do you think about the way physicians handle money?
00:51:44.800 | I think physicians are some of the worst people at handling money.
00:51:50.160 | Why?
00:51:51.380 | So there's a bunch of reasons.
00:51:56.000 | So first of all, doctors are really smart like intellectually.
00:52:00.800 | But they're not smarter than anybody else with money.
00:52:04.240 | They just have more of it to make mistakes with.
00:52:06.960 | And when – like I alluded to earlier, in a very short period of time, you go from being
00:52:16.400 | broke to being middle class to being rich for all practical purposes.
00:52:22.400 | And you have this length of training, medical school and residency which is anywhere maybe
00:52:31.200 | 7 to 12 plus years where you're working hard, you're not making a lot of money,
00:52:38.880 | you're working incredible hours and it's all about sacrifice and delayed gratification.
00:52:44.560 | And then when you get out of training, there is all this pent up demand for consumption
00:52:53.040 | because you deserve it and you're fatigued of delayed gratification.
00:52:59.280 | So a lot of docs come out of training and just go crazy which is the absolute worst
00:53:04.800 | thing to do.
00:53:05.600 | The best thing to do is to come out of training and slowly ramp up your lifestyle or keep
00:53:11.120 | it how you had it as a resident and kind of grow into it.
00:53:15.360 | But a lot of docs don't do that.
00:53:17.440 | So that's the number one thing.
00:53:19.440 | Number two, and this goes back to kind of basic financial stuff, is when you look at
00:53:26.640 | your biggest financial expense, for most people it's their house.
00:53:31.040 | And physicians for, in my experience, most of them buy way too much house.
00:53:37.600 | They just, they love buying land and building houses and spending a lot of money on housing.
00:53:45.040 | And that can, so that can be pretty, pretty destructive.
00:53:48.160 | The, also buying vacation homes, this seems to be a very popular thing for physicians
00:53:55.360 | to do and that's probably never a good financial decision.
00:54:00.400 | I've seen it work out a couple times where they've used them more as rental properties.
00:54:04.400 | So going crazy coming out of residency, buying way too big of a house.
00:54:10.560 | You know, this is not unique to physicians but divorce is a financial weapon of mass
00:54:19.200 | destruction.
00:54:20.160 | I mean, it is just, it's horrible for finances.
00:54:24.320 | Even the best planned divorces are incredibly destructive.
00:54:29.520 | So choosing a spouse who aligns with you on your major philosophical issues like money
00:54:36.960 | and things like that is very important.
00:54:40.720 | Do you know anything about the divorce rate among physicians as compared to other professions?
00:54:44.960 | I don't, actually.
00:54:48.800 | I don't either.
00:54:49.680 | I'm just, I was just curious.
00:54:50.720 | I don't have any insight into it.
00:54:52.320 | My hypothesis would be that it would be perhaps slightly higher than some others simply due
00:54:58.480 | to the stresses of the lifestyle and the stresses of the job.
00:55:00.800 | I could be mistaken in that I have no data to support that.
00:55:03.440 | But it certainly seems like it can be a very difficult, especially when you're a physician
00:55:10.480 | who's on call, things like that.
00:55:11.840 | It can be very taxing on relationships.
00:55:13.600 | Yeah, it is.
00:55:16.720 | I mean, it can be.
00:55:17.840 | I'm going to look that up after this podcast because that's an interesting question and
00:55:24.800 | I don't know the answer to it.
00:55:26.000 | But yeah, divorce is not good for finances.
00:55:31.760 | It seems to me the biggest challenge of being a physician and what you described about time
00:55:36.240 | at house or divorce or vacation homes or any expenses associated with lifestyle is the
00:55:43.280 | problem of your reference group.
00:55:45.280 | And most, we all have a reference group.
00:55:49.200 | We all hang out with people and our lives are going to reflect other people's, our lives
00:55:56.800 | are going to reflect the people with whom we associate predominantly.
00:56:02.480 | And as a physician, your group of association, physicians just like financial planners, I
00:56:09.360 | understand other financial planners better than people who aren't financial planners
00:56:12.720 | are.
00:56:12.960 | Physicians are going to understand each other more than people who are not physicians.
00:56:18.480 | You're going to be able to discuss the normal daily challenges of life.
00:56:22.400 | And how that impacts financially is if you're accustomed to going on snow ski vacations,
00:56:30.320 | you can't just talk to everybody at your workplace and say, "Hey, by the way, would
00:56:35.280 | you like to go to Utah this year or go to Colorado?"
00:56:38.240 | And yeah, to take the family, it's going to be 20 grand, but that's all right.
00:56:41.360 | We're going to do it.
00:56:42.320 | You can only do that with your certain reference group.
00:56:45.040 | And what happens is you wind up, most of us, we don't wind up intentionally choosing our
00:56:51.200 | peer group.
00:56:51.760 | We wind up in a peer group or a reference group just simply after the fact by happenstance.
00:57:01.200 | It's where we've landed.
00:57:03.840 | And then we unconsciously start to adopt the habits and practices of our peers.
00:57:10.400 | It's harder to say no when you are invited on the snow ski trip than it is if – it's
00:57:18.640 | just harder to say no.
00:57:20.000 | And so when you add on to it, like you talked about of the intelligence, the status, the
00:57:27.360 | ego, and I'm not being disparaging here, just recognizing that you are a different
00:57:32.160 | type of person.
00:57:33.360 | You also have the need to maintain impressions.
00:57:38.400 | And we want to be with people who are like us.
00:57:40.240 | So all those things can very easily lead to a high consumption lifestyle.
00:57:46.240 | And unless you're very proactive about consciously choosing something different and unless you
00:57:52.160 | have the self-confidence to be the weird one, it can lead to a high consumption lifestyle.
00:57:58.480 | Yeah, you're absolutely right.
00:58:00.960 | I mean, I think that summarizes a lot of the problems in not just positions, but a lot
00:58:07.840 | of high income earners is that the human mind really is pretty poor at absolutes.
00:58:15.680 | Like we don't know whether we're happy or comfortable or doing well in a vacuum.
00:58:23.920 | We have to look around and who do we look around to?
00:58:27.280 | We look around to our peers.
00:58:29.200 | So if all of our friends are driving $50,000 luxury SUVs and going on five trips to Europe
00:58:38.880 | every year and living in 4,000 square foot homes, that's our norm.
00:58:45.520 | We're going to associate with that group of people.
00:58:50.000 | So I think it is very important to stay grounded and to not get sucked into that.
00:58:57.360 | And unless it's something that's your thing, fine.
00:59:01.040 | But if your goal is financial independence, then those two things are not compatible.
00:59:10.400 | Right.
00:59:10.640 | And I want to point out two additional thoughts on that because I think it's important.
00:59:14.160 | First, to affirm what you said, it's not just positions.
00:59:18.080 | It's the same in financial advice.
00:59:19.440 | I can't tell you how many financial advisors, and there's tons of people listening to this
00:59:24.160 | show, who this will happen to.
00:59:26.640 | So many financial advisors come into the business of financial advice with a practice of frugality
00:59:35.920 | because they recognize that your expenses need to be lower than your income.
00:59:40.000 | So they practice frugality.
00:59:41.920 | They get pretty good at handling their own money.
00:59:44.240 | They say, "I'll go be a financial advisor.
00:59:45.840 | I'll help other people handle their own money."
00:59:47.600 | And then they come into the world of financial advice.
00:59:49.920 | They begin from frugality.
00:59:53.680 | But over time, as they start to adjust, they start to feel weird and start to feel weird
00:59:58.880 | and say, "Wait a second.
00:59:59.760 | I'm not so sure."
01:00:01.040 | I could list several stories.
01:00:02.640 | I won't to protect the guilty, but I could list several friends of mine who I've watched
01:00:07.600 | systematically come into the business being very frugal and wanting to help people and
01:00:13.040 | preach frugality.
01:00:14.480 | And a few years later, they're justifying to me, because they have a guilty conscience,
01:00:20.160 | not that there's anything wrong with a BMW, but they're justifying to me that buying a
01:00:23.280 | BMW is an intelligent financial decision.
01:00:25.680 | Now, ignore for the moment the importance of signaling theory and all of that of trying
01:00:30.080 | to project a success.
01:00:31.360 | They are not thinking about that.
01:00:34.080 | They're telling me, "Oh, it's a good buy," blah, blah, blah, and they're justifying to
01:00:40.400 | themselves.
01:00:40.800 | And I recognize it because I almost did it myself.
01:00:44.320 | And I always thought I was pretty inoculated against it, and I almost did it.
01:00:48.240 | So it's very, very difficult to do it.
01:00:50.880 | The second major thing, and this affects financial advisors, it affects physicians, it affects
01:00:54.640 | attorneys, it affects high-income professions when you have this peer group.
01:00:59.680 | It's important to point out that some people can easily afford five trips to Europe every
01:01:05.600 | year and a brand-new BMW every year and a brand-new luxury SUV every year.
01:01:11.440 | Some people can easily afford that while still becoming massively wealthy because of a high
01:01:18.480 | income.
01:01:20.080 | If you are a trial attorney and you're making $5 million a year, a $150,000 vehicle is meaningless
01:01:30.400 | in your financial life.
01:01:32.080 | But the problem is that trial attorney is sitting with other attorneys who go by the
01:01:38.080 | – who have – their business card says attorney, but they're not making $5 million
01:01:42.640 | a year.
01:01:43.120 | They're making $350,000.
01:01:44.560 | And now all of a sudden, they feel that pressure of the peer group, but they don't have the
01:01:52.080 | same financial opportunities.
01:01:53.760 | The neurosurgeon is in a very different financial state than the primary care physician.
01:01:58.320 | And so you don't actually know who can afford it and who can't.
01:02:02.800 | Same thing in financial advice.
01:02:04.240 | Remember, 20% of the financial advisors are going to make 80% of the money.
01:02:07.680 | 4% of the financial advisors are going to make 60% of the money.
01:02:10.720 | So you walk into a financial advice office and the guy sitting on one office is making
01:02:16.000 | $2 million a year and the guy sitting in the next office is making $130,000.
01:02:19.920 | But yet the reference group is next door and that's one of the – is the guy in the
01:02:24.400 | office next door.
01:02:25.440 | That's one of the reasons why it's so destructive because you start to add that gentle social
01:02:29.600 | pressure of, "Hey, you bought a round of drinks.
01:02:31.760 | I'll buy a round of drinks.
01:02:32.800 | Hey, we'll go out to the fancy place and maybe you're the – I was here.
01:02:37.520 | I was this guy."
01:02:38.240 | You don't really particularly want to be the – go out to the fancy dinner but now
01:02:42.320 | you've got the social pressure to accept the invitation and you don't want to look
01:02:45.200 | like the cheapskate.
01:02:46.000 | You don't want to look like you can't afford it, blah, blah, blah.
01:02:48.720 | And now you wind up spending $200 on a night out when you prefer to do something different.
01:02:53.680 | So it takes a lot of self-confidence to stand against the tide.
01:02:58.720 | It takes a lot of clarity of your own goals and vision and self-confidence to come against
01:03:04.080 | these social forces.
01:03:05.600 | You're absolutely right.
01:03:08.080 | I mean, that's spot on.
01:03:10.320 | Life is so easy when it's on paper.
01:03:14.000 | But we unfortunately have to live our lives in the real world.
01:03:17.680 | So things that are rational and make sense, once we start really living it, it breaks
01:03:25.200 | down a little.
01:03:25.840 | And yeah, you're absolutely right.
01:03:30.080 | I mean, our reference group really influences us.
01:03:35.200 | And that's what was so great for me and I think for a lot of people.
01:03:41.600 | They get a lot out of the Financial Independence, Financial Freedom blogosphere and the podcast,
01:03:49.200 | your podcast and others that expose other people that are doing things that are totally
01:03:56.640 | different.
01:03:57.520 | So we can read about these and we can hear about these people and we can use those
01:04:05.120 | people to associate with.
01:04:08.880 | You know, even though they're not our peers that live down the street, it was very comforting
01:04:15.040 | to me to read all of these Financial Independence blogs and Mr. Money Mustache and all the blogs
01:04:24.720 | that I'm sure everybody reads who's interested in frugality.
01:04:28.320 | You get involved in that community and that becomes your reference point.
01:04:33.680 | It becomes a counterbalance to the consumerism and just the craziness that we're all exposed
01:04:40.080 | to.
01:04:40.560 | So yeah, I mean, your podcast is great, Joshua.
01:04:47.200 | And you get a lot of these people on, a lot of diverse opinions about things.
01:04:50.800 | And you open up a lot of rabbit holes to explore and go down.
01:04:55.680 | I appreciate that.
01:04:57.040 | Good, good.
01:04:58.720 | I love your podcast.
01:05:00.800 | So you've been blogging for a little while now and I think I had at least some influence
01:05:05.200 | on your beginning your website to some degree, thehappyphilosopher.com.
01:05:10.160 | Tell me what you've learned since starting to put your ideas and content out there into
01:05:15.360 | the world of the internet.
01:05:16.800 | Yeah, real quick, just to let people know.
01:05:21.280 | Yeah, I did write a blog post where I referenced to you how a podcast can change the world.
01:05:27.760 | And it was an interview you did, who was that guy?
01:05:31.760 | JB Glassner, was that his name?
01:05:35.040 | Mm-hmm.
01:05:35.520 | Yeah, MorningCoach, the morningcoach.com.
01:05:38.080 | Yeah, and I was just listening to the podcast and just kind of walking.
01:05:42.960 | I was on a walk actually and he told the story about how his writing and his online presence
01:05:50.960 | had really impacted somebody and made a huge difference in their life.
01:05:55.920 | And I thought to myself, I mean, I actually stopped.
01:05:59.360 | I stopped the podcast, I sat down, I had to absorb it, listen to the story again.
01:06:04.480 | And I said, "You know, I think everybody should do this.
01:06:11.360 | Everybody should tell their story," or as I refer to it as just downloading my brain
01:06:16.240 | on the internet and see if somebody can make use of it.
01:06:21.760 | Blogging has been pretty cool.
01:06:25.840 | I'm not sure, I've learned to be a little bit better of a writer.
01:06:31.520 | I think to get my ideas a little clearer, it's made me more disciplined.
01:06:36.960 | I've never been a disciplined writer and having a blog sort of holds you accountable,
01:06:44.160 | as I'm sure you can attest with the podcast.
01:06:46.240 | It kind of holds you accountable to create.
01:06:50.160 | And I think that either a blog or a podcast is creating something, it's creating art
01:06:57.440 | in a way.
01:06:57.940 | And it's been pretty therapeutic for me to write and get my ideas out there.
01:07:05.120 | I've had a lot of fun.
01:07:06.640 | - Good, and I'm glad that you're doing it.
01:07:08.400 | And I'm glad that my show was able to be some encouragement in that direction.
01:07:12.720 | I'd love to see, I want to see every listener of the audience begin some form of
01:07:20.000 | expression.
01:07:20.560 | Blogging, podcasting, video, whatever, making local speeches to your local Rotary
01:07:26.720 | organization, whatever it is that is appropriate and whatever the next technology is.
01:07:32.640 | Because if nothing else, it forces you to be a better learner.
01:07:38.560 | You're going to go, because of the thoughts that you've expressed on this show, you're
01:07:41.760 | going to go and research physician rates of divorce and you're going to be thinking about
01:07:45.040 | that subject.
01:07:46.160 | And I'm forced and held accountable to being a better, more effective learner because I'm
01:07:51.840 | forced to share my thoughts and I don't want to sound like an idiot.
01:07:54.240 | So it's a good impetus in our lives.
01:07:58.480 | And also you can help another person.
01:08:01.200 | And that person to person contact can be tremendously, tremendously valuable.
01:08:05.840 | - Yeah, and I think just one last comment on that.
01:08:11.600 | I think people are nervous about starting a blog because they don't think it's going
01:08:17.040 | to be that popular and you know what, it probably won't be.
01:08:20.640 | But even if you reach just a few people, I mean some of the coolest things I've learned
01:08:27.360 | are on blogs that are pretty tiny and that have sort of nudged me in a direction and
01:08:35.200 | made me think about something in a different way.
01:08:37.760 | So you don't have to reach, you don't have to have a blog like Mr. Money Mustache where
01:08:43.520 | I don't know how many page views he has.
01:08:45.600 | But you don't need that.
01:08:47.920 | That shouldn't be the goal.
01:08:48.960 | The goal should be in the creation itself of content and making you a better person and
01:08:57.120 | maybe helping somebody else.
01:08:58.560 | I think we're all, or most of us are wired to want to help others.
01:09:02.720 | And I think blogs and podcasts are really a great way to do that with a very low barrier.
01:09:08.160 | - Yeah, and two suggestions for you and for anyone else.
01:09:13.040 | First, I agree with you with regard to numbers.
01:09:16.720 | Unfortunately, we have a tendency to always think that big is better.
01:09:20.160 | But any person who's writing something, just imagine yourself simply writing let's say
01:09:27.360 | on your Facebook feed and you write something that gets 40 likes.
01:09:31.600 | So you know that maybe a couple hundred people have read what you've written.
01:09:36.800 | Imagine yourself in a room speaking to a couple hundred people.
01:09:39.200 | First, that's a place of incredible privilege.
01:09:42.160 | To be honored by the attention of a couple hundred people who are looking at you and
01:09:47.360 | listening to you is a tremendous honor.
01:09:51.600 | And it's also pretty scary for many people.
01:09:55.040 | And yet people discount the value of having a couple hundred readers of their thoughts.
01:10:00.640 | It frustrates me because we diminish, many people diminish their impact because they
01:10:10.800 | recognize that they're not the most popular.
01:10:12.880 | Popularity is fickle.
01:10:15.680 | It comes and goes.
01:10:16.720 | And it's not even particularly valuable.
01:10:19.040 | It can be valuable if you've been able to stay authentic and true to your message, which
01:10:24.960 | is the second danger I'll talk about in a moment.
01:10:26.960 | But it's much more valuable to impact a few people with something that matters.
01:10:32.640 | And the second point is that popularity brings with it a whole set of problems and a whole
01:10:37.920 | set of dangers.
01:10:38.800 | I actually prefer generally to read unknown sources and not popular publications because
01:10:47.440 | people are generally more willing to be honest and they're more willing to speak clearly
01:10:52.400 | based upon what they believe.
01:10:54.400 | Where when you go into mainstream popularity, the danger is instead of speaking clearly
01:11:00.560 | and directly about what you believe, you start to have a desire to be popular and you start
01:11:05.520 | to modify your message with the goal of maintaining popularity.
01:11:09.600 | And this has happened, you can see it in the lives of many, many, many people.
01:11:15.200 | They become prominent because of their ideas, but then they abandon their ideas with the
01:11:20.240 | goal of maintaining their fame and their prominence.
01:11:24.240 | It happens, I mean, you could see this every day in the political sphere.
01:11:26.800 | How many times have you been disappointed because you saw somebody that stood by their
01:11:32.000 | ideas, you thought, "Wow, this person will stand by it."
01:11:35.520 | You vote for them and all of a sudden a few years later, they've completely buckled.
01:11:39.600 | The fame and the popularity got a hold of them and it's a real challenge to maintain
01:11:45.120 | your commitment to your ideas and your ideals in the face of losing that popularity.
01:11:51.600 | So, why did I go into that?
01:11:54.960 | Simply to say that don't judge your success based upon the large numbers.
01:12:00.640 | Recognize that statistically it's improbable that any of us will ever have large numbers.
01:12:05.840 | However, that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
01:12:07.680 | Mike Alfred: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
01:12:10.320 | It's just a win-win to write and to create, I think.
01:12:17.280 | You know, when I first started, I was very, you know, looking at the statistics and I
01:12:23.520 | was worried about them and, you know, how do I grow the blog?
01:12:27.200 | But now I have a much more relaxed sort of zen attitude towards it.
01:12:34.080 | I mean, I'm just, I realize you should do it for you, not to please other people, I
01:12:41.760 | think.
01:12:42.240 | Is that why you do your podcast?
01:12:45.200 | It is and everything I just shared is from personal experience.
01:12:50.160 | I started the podcast because I felt it needed to exist.
01:12:52.640 | But as the show has grown and become more popular and more mainstream, I often find
01:13:00.000 | myself wrestling with that problem of should I take this tack?
01:13:04.160 | Should I do a show on this topic, et cetera?
01:13:07.680 | And I have to continually, consciously lay aside the desire for mainstream acceptance
01:13:13.360 | and stay the course to what I believe should exist.
01:13:18.160 | The allure of fame and fortune is strong.
01:13:22.320 | It's a siren song that many sailors have succumbed to and it's extremely challenging to
01:13:32.800 | withstand it.
01:13:36.000 | And yet, one thing that I find helpful is I respect people who stay true to their opinions
01:13:48.720 | or beliefs or convictions or philosophy or whatever word you want to insert there.
01:13:54.400 | I respect people who stay true to those things even in the face of difficulty, even in the
01:14:00.160 | face of the fading fortunes.
01:14:03.920 | And so, among other things, I remind myself that if you respect those people, you've got
01:14:11.600 | to – it's easy to respect other people but yet not want to do it yourself.
01:14:16.400 | But it's important to do it.
01:14:17.680 | And the only way that – I mean, one of the ways that freedom and liberty are advanced
01:14:23.120 | is by many more people doing that.
01:14:26.080 | That's why we live in the golden age of this and I'll wrap it up.
01:14:31.920 | But we live in a golden age but it only happens – of freedom to express and influence and
01:14:37.200 | impact at very little financial cost.
01:14:40.560 | And I want to see more people do that.
01:14:42.320 | But it's certainly – it's a challenging process.
01:14:45.840 | It's a challenging growth process to stay true to.
01:14:49.440 | RIDGEN: It's unbelievable how many opportunities are out there.
01:14:52.560 | I agree.
01:14:53.040 | It is.
01:14:54.720 | We live in a remarkable time and yet it's our responsibility to maintain it and to be
01:15:03.440 | faithful in this time.
01:15:04.480 | So, Jeff, thank you for coming on.
01:15:06.000 | Any final words of advice that you'd like to share about and any particular content
01:15:12.080 | or resources that you'd like to share with my audience?
01:15:14.480 | JEFF BOOTH: Well, I'll just give you my blog.
01:15:20.800 | It's thehappyphilosopher.com.
01:15:22.560 | I have a contact form on there and all the social media buttons if anybody wants to reach
01:15:27.360 | out to me or tell me their story.
01:15:29.040 | I would say that anybody who is on the edge, either suicidal, pre-suicidal, depressed,
01:15:41.920 | burned out, don't give up.
01:15:46.400 | There are a lot of resources out there.
01:15:49.360 | Seek them out.
01:15:50.480 | Seek out the people that really are passionate about this stuff and care about it and get
01:15:58.000 | out of that spiral because it's really quite fantastic on the other side.
01:16:04.320 | I can attest to that.
01:16:05.280 | RIDGEN: Yeah, absolutely.
01:16:06.800 | And I'll say, if anyone – I'll just say personally, if anyone is in that situation,
01:16:11.760 | call me, email me.
01:16:14.800 | And I mean that sincerely.
01:16:18.240 | In closing here, it is very important to be in that situation.
01:16:22.640 | I don't know that it's – I think the – I don't know.
01:16:27.840 | Maybe you've got a magic philosophy or formula, Jeff, that results in your continually being
01:16:33.120 | up, but I don't have one.
01:16:34.880 | I find that life is cyclical.
01:16:37.120 | But oftentimes, when you're in a period of challenge – if you're in a period of
01:16:42.640 | challenge and – when you're in a challenging period, it can feel very difficult and especially
01:16:52.000 | difficult if you stay in your own head.
01:16:53.600 | The last few weeks, up until the last couple weeks for me, were very challenging weeks.
01:17:00.480 | And you can't stay in your own head.
01:17:02.240 | You've got to involve other people.
01:17:04.480 | It's dangerous to stay in your own head and to try to go it alone.
01:17:07.600 | So I mean I haven't talked about suicide on the show, but if any listener is number
01:17:15.120 | one, if you're just feeling down or if you are – hey, if you're suicidal, I'm
01:17:20.000 | not – I'm not counseling or anything, but call me.
01:17:21.520 | My phone number is 561-386-6034.
01:17:25.440 | Text me.
01:17:25.840 | I don't answer the phone.
01:17:26.800 | Text me and I'll call you.
01:17:27.840 | So 561-386-6034 is my cell phone number.
01:17:32.240 | Anybody can ever reach me if they're ever in a difficult situation and they just need
01:17:36.400 | a friend to talk to.
01:17:37.200 | It's an important subject.
01:17:39.520 | We don't talk enough about it, but it's an important subject.
01:17:43.760 | Kind of a downer to end on, but it is important that we talk about it.
01:17:46.160 | Yeah, I know it is important.
01:17:47.040 | I mean suicide is a medical emergency.
01:17:49.040 | I mean and you're absolutely right.
01:17:50.400 | Don't try to get through it yourself.
01:17:54.800 | Reach out to somebody – a physician, a counselor, a suicide hotline, a friend.
01:18:00.960 | You're a person who cuts your hair.
01:18:04.880 | Reach out.
01:18:07.120 | Get help.
01:18:07.600 | Depression and suicide are horrible.
01:18:11.360 | And my friend from medical school, I mean that was awful.
01:18:17.360 | Yeah, I guess we'll end on that high note.
01:18:23.280 | Jeff, thanks for coming on.
01:18:25.760 | It's not a high note, but it's real life and that's what podcasting is about.
01:18:30.560 | So thank you so much for coming on today.
01:18:32.480 | Joshua, thank you so much.
01:18:34.320 | Thank you for listening to this episode of Radical Personal Finance.
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01:19:09.120 | enables me to bring you this content.
01:19:11.200 | In addition to your voluntarily paying for the content you've just heard,
01:19:15.360 | as a supporting patron, you will receive a number of member-only benefits,
01:19:19.200 | including a private Facebook group, access to our weekly Q&A calls,
01:19:23.040 | and discounts on future products and services.
01:19:25.600 | Details can be found at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.
01:19:29.520 | Again, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.