Speaker 0 00:00:08 What's up everyone. Welcome to the finance for physicians podcast. I'm your host. Daniel written join me as we dig into what it looks like for physicians to begin using their finances as a tool to live better lives. You can learn more about our
[email protected] let's. Jump into today's episode today. I'm talking with Dr. Jordan Fry. Jordan recently finished up general surgery residency and a one year microsurgery fellowship at NYU, and is now working as a plastic surgeon at Erie County medical center. University of Buffalo. Jordan is definitely doing great things as a physician, but actually what we're going to be talking about today is what Jordan is doing on the side. The prudent plastic surgeon, as a blog Jordan started to share all the ups and downs of his personal finance journey from going through training, burying his head in the sand and now being in practice and having great control over his finances, all with the ultimate goal of helping his colleagues gain greater financial literacy. We explore what caused Jordan to wake up to proactively managing his own personal finances. And we discuss how he's been able to maintain it over time. We also talk about how getting your personal finances in order is not a one-time thing. And in reality requires ongoing attention, which we both agree is well worth. The effort. What's really cool about Jordan, which you'll understand after listening is how willing he is to own his mistakes, learn from them and even teach others from them. What's up, Jordan, thanks for hanging out and chatting today.
Speaker 1 00:01:31 Hey, no problem. Thanks for having me Daniel. So just
Speaker 0 00:01:34 To start, can, can you tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1 00:01:36 Yourself? Yeah, so I I'm originally from Buffalo, New York and that's where I just moved back to after finishing my residency and fellowship, uh, which is total seven years in plastic surgery at NYU. Uh, so New York city and I sort of just like four to five months ago started this kind of financial journey where, you know, at the end of my training, I sort of got there and realized that I was totally like financially clueless. Like I always say my kind of strategy up until that point was just burying my head as far in the sand as I could. And I sort of had this misconception that, Oh, once, once I graduate and become an attending and start making more money, all, all this stuff will sort of sort itself out. And then I got to the end and realized, well, that's, that's not going to be the case. And kind of, you know, decided to really focus on, you know, becoming financially well or achieving financial wellbeing as I sort of phrase that. Um, and then I've gotten really passionate about that and kind of sharing my story as I'm actively sort of, uh, you know, climbing out of the hole I've jogged. And, um, yeah, so that's kind of, it, it's been a lot of fun
Speaker 0 00:02:53 Burying your head in the sand and I I've, that's a good kind of way to explain it. And I've heard people describe themselves in that position, but I'm
Speaker 2 00:03:00 Just curious in your end, when you were kind of in the moment of it, did you describe it that way when it was actually happening or,
Speaker 1 00:03:05 You know, I, in some ways, yes. And in some ways, you know, the, the main way that I described that I knew I was just burying my head in the sand that's I, I have like a ton of student loans, like my college and medical school. I paid for completely with loans, aside from a few like minor scholarship kind of things. And like every year of my training, I basically would just defer the loans. And so once a year I would kind of log on to all my like loan sites and fill out the paperwork as quickly as possible, and then try to just forget about it, but I'd see these huge numbers and just be totally freaked out by them. And so that, in that sense, I definitely knew I was burying my head in the sand, but the other part I didn't really know is like, just in terms of kind of mindset and managing finances and investing, I just sort of had this very, um, you know, naive kind of conception that, Oh, like investing in the stock market or real estate or whatever is really risky. And like, I can't, that's not for me, I can't do it. And even just the mindset of sort of, you know, like not spending up to your paycheck and creating a margin to invest. I totally lacked that. And it seems so simple now, but yeah, I, I was not even aware of that in the littlest bit. And it was just completely like, uh, you know, mindblowing sort of coming around to that. And it's, it's still something that I obviously work on, but, um,
Speaker 2 00:04:31 Yeah. Yeah. I definitely, I definitely want to talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but I was one of the posts I was reading on your blog. That was super interesting. It was, I think it's like the introductory posts and you talked about struggling with perception of success and you said, um, so you said specifically, even in training, working long hours and making less money, this standard that equates wealth with expensive things seem to seep into all of us. And so now, now you're the prudent plastic surgeon. It's like a huge mindset shift, right? You guys should check out that post. It kind of explains his journey really well, but I'm curious on your end, like what was the trigger point or was there a trigger point that just because it seems like you did it really quickly.
Speaker 1 00:05:13 Yeah, it was, you know, it was kind of a lot of stuff building up to that because you know, it is funny cause I was a resident in New York city. It's obviously very high cost of living area in the area that's, you know, very kind of focused on the material and I'm also in a specialty plastic surgery, which, you know, sort of by it stereotype, but, but also kind of what I've seen being a part of it now for a long time is, is more prone to being sort of materialistic. And so, you know, I, I was in residency and seeing, you know, people in similar position to me with like Rolex watches or these expensive suits and I just didn't have that. There was no way I could have that. And I, I sort of felt bad that I didn't, even though I realized I didn't care about that stuff, like it's funny, I don't even own a watch just because I don't like wearing watch, but I felt like I needed like an expensive watch.
Speaker 1 00:06:06 Right. That's what every successful plastic surgeon has. And so just coming to realize kind of like, I don't need to focus on the stuff that's not important to me. That's not actually what wealth is, what wealth is, is sort of, again, gaining that financial wellbeing and freedom to like live the life that you want to live on your own terms. And that was so freeing for me because for so long, you know, I think a lot of us get caught up in sort of this culture of consumerism of, you know, we are what we buy. And so to be free from that just felt really good. And it just made sense.
Speaker 2 00:06:41 Was there like a time, a specific time you can think of, or was it kind of finishing training and having more time to kind of dig into things? Was there like a, a book that triggered your shift or,
Speaker 1 00:06:54 Yeah, there's a few one, one that really did was the millionaire next door by Thomas Stanley. And that's, it sort of just talks about how, you know, they did a ton of studies and I'm sure you've got a lot of your listeners are familiar with it, but you know, they looked at kind of like, who are the millionaires in America? And it wasn't necessarily exactly the most common watch they had. It was like a Timex or the most, most popular car for them was like a Ford Explorer or something like that. And again, it just like I was reading this and I was like, yeah, that makes sense. Like all this other stuff that didn't make sense, it created this kind of disconnect with me. So that was definitely a huge one. My wife and I both read that one kind of simultaneously. And we're like, yes, yes. This like, this is making sense.
Speaker 2 00:07:40 Yeah. Well that's perfect example of a book that kind of hits on what is true wealth and what translates to net worth and is it really status and some material stuff. Exactly. It's not what was also interesting about this, this post. Um, it kinda blew me away a little bit cause I was, I thought it was interesting. It was very transparent and telling of your journey. And then the first comment on the post is another physician telling you the reason you're doing it as narcissism, which just blew me away. I'm like where in the world did that come from? Like, do you know, do you have any idea of the mindset I was trying to wrap my head around what the mindset was of that and where it was coming from. Do you have an idea of that?
Speaker 1 00:08:23 Yeah, it's tough. I did. That was actually really early on in my blog and for awhile, that was just the only comment on my whole blog. I actually, I was like, well, this means people are reading and kind of like thinking about it a little bit, I guess. But yeah, I tried to email him and actually talked to him because it didn't necessarily make sense with me either, because for me, the way I looked at was, you know, by looking by looking inside and trying to improve ourselves, I don't see that as narcissism. And then I, what I want to do and what my passion is instills is to try spread this because I think, you know, as I became, I haven't achieved financial wellbeing or freedom or anything like that. I'm still very early on in my path. But as I sort of got on the right path, I realized like I became a better doctor.
Speaker 1 00:09:10 I became overall I improved wellbeing because I wasn't constantly worried about my finances. I had a plan. And I think that makes sense for a lot of people, you know, a big thing in the physician community, uh, now is burnout and that's something to some degree I was experiencing, but I think that across professions, you know, that's a fairly common thing. And I think, you know, financial well-being is an important mechanism in combating that. And I think that, that, you know, really can improve people's people's lives. So I don't know, you know, there's a lot of people within the physician community that sort of look at like, Oh, if you're thinking about money, that's like a dirty thing or that's not why we got into medicine. And I agree, that's not why I got into medicine, but I also realized that by completely neglecting it, I was, you know, not being as good a doctor.
Speaker 1 00:10:04 And I mean, this has happened my case, but I mean, I've heard people confide and be pretty transparent in that. Oh, because you know, they felt that they had to make ends meet financially that they were trying to rush through and see more patients and things like that. And you never want to have a situation like that. So, so yeah, I think, you know, people obviously are going to, there's going to be people that feel differently or maybe they're not in a position that they're super happy about. And so, you know, they sort of hold on very tightly to this idea that physicians shouldn't worry at all about finances, but I, thankfully I think, you know, a lot of people are coming around to that.
Speaker 2 00:10:40 Yeah. It almost felt like shame. It was like work harder, no complaints allowed no introspection, let yourself fall apart. It doesn't say anything about it. It's like, that's just part of it. And otherwise you're narcissistic. And, uh, I was surprised to see that someone was bold enough to say that, but I think in, in, but the more I think about it, I think there, there's definitely a subset of those kind of people in many professions and especially in medicine it's I could see that being the case, but I don't think, I thought it was a great post and I was just, it was unfortunate. It was a first, uh, post or first comment on it. Um, but it, luckily if you read down like second, third, fourth comments of people like back you up, they're like, dude, don't listen to that guy. So yeah,
Speaker 1 00:11:23 Yeah, yeah, no, that was good.
Speaker 2 00:11:26 I also said it was not like it was, it was exactly like all the other blogs and I completely disagree with that too. But what I found unique about what you're writing is you talk about your failures and you're quick to admit what you don't know, which I have found that pretty rare. Most of the financial blogs are physician financial bloggers are not, uh, I mean, some of them are talking about mistakes, but it seems like you really kind of own that and talk or open about, I guess, your failures and financial mistakes. And so I'm just curious what, what is motivating you to do that? Why do you think it's important to share mistakes?
Speaker 1 00:12:03 Yeah, it was, you know, I got started reading a lot of the other, you know, finance bloggers or especially physician finance bloggers and like love their stuff. And they were very inspiring, but a lot of them were sort of already at the position where they had been successful in this journey and sort of looking back retrospectively. And so there's always sort of this like, you know, Rose colored glasses kind of bias when you're looking back. Like, so I just, I wanted it to be unique in that, you know, I was still going through this journey and was very early on in this journey and, and made a ton of mistakes and I'm still going to make mistakes. I come to peace with that and, but I wanted to really share everything because there's so many people in that position, you know, I started the blog just because I sort of gather this information then slowly a bunch of other residents and stuff like that at my institution were asking me about things.
Speaker 1 00:13:02 And I realized like, you know, there's a lot of people in this position and that are sort of feeling the same way and have made these mistakes and feel like they're sort of insurmountable. And like I wanted to show no, they're not. Cause that's, I thought there's, they're so insurmountable almost. Why do I even try? Because I didn't have any of the tools to approach them, but they were right there waiting for me. And so I want to give other people those tools, what kind of first you have to show them like, yeah, this person was just like me, you know, they're not, you're a human being. Yeah, exactly. So, so that's why I wanted to focus on that. And you kind of always give a very authentic, real sort of picture of my situation.
Speaker 2 00:13:42 Yeah. It is easy to evolve over your mistakes when looking in the past and talk about, and you also kind of want to show people the right way to do things too, but right. But there's definitely lots of learning from, from failures. And sometimes that's the best learning in your experience. I'm just curious about the culture in training is particularly with finances. Is it something that comes up all the time? Is it what's the conversation in the culture like in training, especially regarding personal finance?
Speaker 1 00:14:10 Yeah. It like, it doesn't come up at all, which is really kind of crazy. Like it's not, it's certainly not apartment part of the formal curriculum or anything like that. And it's even informally, you know, you'll, you have some attendings who may sort of talk about it or allude to it, but honestly, a lot of them are not managing their finances. Well, because again, they didn't have training either. And so yeah, it's, it's something that, you know, I want to be more transparent. I've talked to, you know, program directors and chairs of department and stuff. And it's hard because you know, you have six years, which seems like a long time, but in those six years you have to teach someone to be a fully independent and you know, not just competent, but you know, very talented plastic surgeon in, in that specific example. But you know, this is also very important stuff just for the wellbeing of the physician, which, you know, impacts medicine as a whole. So I've been trying to push for it to be more covered.
Speaker 2 00:15:14 Yeah. I would argue that responsible, personal finances makes you a better physician. Now there's always the exceptions. People are like, you know, I want to have the best, the best of the best doctors. Aren't always necessarily great with their personal finances, but in general there. And there's also a lot of negative consequences associated with just stress that comes from poor personal financial management.
Speaker 1 00:15:36 Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:15:40 And training though, I think I have heard a big constraint is just time. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of spare time. Do you think that's an excuse or a reality
Speaker 1 00:15:51 There? There's always not like a lot of spare time in life in general. And I think that's always kind of like the fallacy because you know, there's, there's time for anything, but there's not always, you know, there's not time for everything. So it's sort of about what you prioritize. And I think this is an important thing and you know, for me, it's, uh, it just started like I would wake up and for 10 minutes, you know, before I like got in the shower or whatever, I would just read one blog post from a selection of blogs that I had found in. Like, and then I started saying like, okay, I'm going to read 10 pages of this finance book before I go to bed every night. And then, you know, you, all of a sudden, you look over a month, then over a few months and you know, a lot of stuff just because you found those little kind of cracks of time.
Speaker 1 00:16:40 And it's like, I know you have kids. I know my wife and I like before we had our first kid, we were sitting there and going, Oh my God, how, how are we ever going to do this? Like, we barely have time as it is. And then you just, you have a kid and you, you just figure out a way. And then we had a second kid and went through the same thing. Like, how are we gonna deal with two kids? And you just find a way, so it's kind of like that if you, if it's important and it should be, then you kind of just find a way that sounds very vague, but that's kind of how it works.
Speaker 2 00:17:09 Yeah, it is. It's been my experience. The more children, I have three kids now. So I'm like, how in the world, what do we do with all our time before we have had children?
Speaker 1 00:17:16 Yeah. I know. You're like, I could be the most productive person in the world if I didn't have kids, but you have to have kids to realize that
Speaker 2 00:17:24 Seems like you tend to fill up your time, even if you're on your phone three hours a day or whatever. Exactly. So did you enjoy when you started reading about personal finances, did you enjoy it right off the bat or did it
Speaker 1 00:17:35 Take a minute? It took a minute. I think because I was so like intimidated by the topics and also just like scared to look at my mistakes in the face, you know? And I thought that it would be just super stressful. And I found like the opposite after I started reading a little bit more like maybe a few days or after I finished the first book, it was just so empowering because I was like, I can do this. You know, I, and that's what I tell everyone. And that's another point of, you know, pointing out my mistakes as most people are going to look at my situation and go, well, you know, I'm not that bad, thankfully. And if I can climb out of it, then by definition, they can too. And so I found it like super empowering that, okay, now I have the tools and I can start now and you know, I can do this. And so it was almost relieving and exciting.
Speaker 2 00:18:30 Yeah. Yeah. And if he can do it, I can do it. Exactly. It sounds like you were pretty attuned to mistakes that you've had. And I guess more in general, what would you say are the biggest mistakes in training? Maybe you've made some of them maybe, maybe not, but what, what would you say are those kind of biggie mistakes people tend to make in training?
Speaker 1 00:18:48 I think the biggest is like we, we spend up to our paycheck and, you know, that was something that my wife and I just kind of did without realizing, you know, we always obviously had enough to pay for the important needs, but sort of that extra money. It just sort of like went away, you know? And I can remember like even times looking at my check account, being like, Oh, we're doing okay. I have, we have like a little more than we usually have at this point. And then by the end of the month it would be gone just because I think, you know, my mindset, I was like, Oh yeah, it's okay if we order out tonight or, Oh yeah, I'll buy this thing or not. And just sort of like starting to strengthen those financial muscles as a trainee and getting in the habit.
Speaker 1 00:19:30 I tell them, even if you're just saving, like save a hundred dollars a month or, and then after a few months, see if you can save $200 a month and like, you'll kind of realize you're living without even missing that money because you're, you know, kind of either putting in the savings account or investing it and paying yourself first before it kind of gets to the checking account. And it's not much money to start with, but then, then soon you're going to be making a lot of money. And if you establish that sort of habit, you're going to keep doing it. And you're going to set yourself up to be in a great position versus, you know, you think, you know, once you start making like, uh, an attending physician salary, Oh, I can never spend that amount of money, but it's, it's like so easy, so easy to fall into that trap.
Speaker 2 00:20:16 Yeah. It's uh, incredibly easy. It happens. And you said, similar thing we see is if you spend up to your paycheck, no matter where you're at and you do it without realizing it, like, like you said, we, we call lifestyle creep. Exactly. Yeah. But so starting small is a, is a big thing. You mentioned just doing a little bit at a time, re you in residency, you get a raise every year, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:20:41 Yeah. You get a raise every year. The other thing too is like you generally as a resident get a tax refund cause you're in a very low tax bracket and that again was stuff like, we just spent it every year and I can't even remember what now. And that's easily, even if you just say, Hey, I'm just going to save it investment a tax refund, like yeah.
Speaker 2 00:21:00 Yeah. And so do you see, did you know residents in, uh, in credit card debt, was that an issue with people you had associated with or heard about?
Speaker 1 00:21:10 Yeah. I mean, even, even me, you know, I still have credit card debt that we're paying off and you know, we used it really stupidly because we thought like, Oh, we're getting points. This is great. Not realizing, you know, obviously the interest we're paying is way more than the points we're getting. So I usually try to like help residents. Now there's some, some expenses that you may have to put on a credit card. Like for instance, you know, our boards fees that we have to pay to take our boards while we're in training is like ridiculous. It's thousands of dollars. And a lot of people don't have that. Like I didn't have that just sitting around. And so that was something I put on a credit card and I sort of say like, well, that's sort of a necessary evil kind of thing, but putting like, you know, expensive dinners out and like vacations on credit card is not smart. And I know a lot of other residents that did that like me. Um, so that's, that's definitely a big thing.
Speaker 2 00:22:05 I could see it being super easy though, to kind of fall into the mindset of even, especially in a high-cost living city. It's like, okay, well I'm making a minimal salary. It's barely enough. I'm just gonna to use that for now. And my income is gonna go up a ton in a few years and I'll be able to catch up on everything then. And so I need to at least enjoy life a little bit and just, you know, with every extra dollar I have and I could see that mindset kinda translating to, you know, spending what you make. But
Speaker 1 00:22:38 Yeah, absolutely. And that's, it's a huge thing too, because you know, you spend however many, you, you spend four years in medical school and then years and years in training and you, you kind of, at times, it's, you know, it's natural to say like, well, I deserve this. I deserve to have something. And it's definitely true, but you want to, you want as difficult as it is. You want to manage sort of what, and when you treat yourself with, and it is important to, to treat yourself, but it, that it gets totally easy to keep doing that and to build it up exactly. As you said.
Speaker 2 00:23:11 Yeah. So how do you do it? Like how do you do it in, in training if you're, if you're talking to yourself early in on, let's say you're talking to yourself first year and in residency, what would, what advice would you give?
Speaker 1 00:23:22 Yeah, I think like first and the first thing I tell her when it's like, you need to establish your, why kind of like, why, why do you want financial wellbeing? Or why do you want financial freedom? And for me, in, in very broad terms, it's, it's basically just to be able to live my life on my terms. I love, I love being a surgeon. I love practicing medicine and I plan to do that for a long time, but I want to be able to do it again because I want to not because I have to, and to be able to say, if I want to, you know, only do it three days a week or whatever that I can, that I can do that. And that gives me more family time. And it gives me more time to spend on my own personal health and wellbeing.
Speaker 1 00:24:02 And, you know, it can be different things. It's going to be a different for every single person. But once you establish that, why it makes the, how a lot easier, because you know, when you're deciding like, Oh man, I really want to order out. So I don't have to eat like, you know, peanut butter, jelly sandwich for dinner tonight or whatever. And you know, like ordering out New York city, you couldn't do that for like less than like $30 once you got all the fees out of that. And so, you know, you just think like, all right, well, is that like whatever pizza or Chinese food is that worth, you know, kind of jeopardizing my why, and this is a small example, but, but it does add up. Cause I, I calculated like for every dollar in the beginning of my residency that I didn't pay towards my loans or my debt, like essentially that that dollar would have becomes like $8 and 75 cents or something like that. So even you $30 that becomes like $250 a future that you're talking about. So by just saving that money, your, your net worth goes up by $250 and your debt goes down by $250. So I think having that why, and sort of thinking longterm it's difficult, but that, that's what I wish that, you know, I'd done earlier.
Speaker 2 00:25:20 Yeah. So having purpose and then mixing that with the fundamental education exactly. That you kind of have the tools and the motivation underlying.
Speaker 1 00:25:30 Yeah. That's exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:32 So it seems like financial literacy. I mean, the why is definitely important. I agree completely. I think a lot of people, even that have complete financial literacy are missing the why, and there's sometimes like robotic and they could benefit by taking a minute and saying, you know, what's my purpose behind this. But the financial literacy part is unnecessary. I think personally you have to have that too. So it seems like that is missing. At least the surveys I've seen or the research I've seen in for physicians is there, the that's lacking. Is that been your experience just with
Speaker 1 00:26:07 Yeah, totally. It's lacking. And then there's, you know, obviously physicians are kind of quote unquote, easy Mark for, you know, non-fiduciary kind of advisors and things like that because, you know, obviously we make a lot of money. Our, our attention is very much split. Um, you know, from finances, even, even in the best of circumstances because you know, our jobs require a lot of attention and we have like no formal or informal education to know if we're getting good or bad advice, unless we take it upon ourselves to educate ourselves. And that's like obviously really important. So yeah, I've definitely, definitely seen that in, in my field medicine as a total.
Speaker 2 00:26:55 So what do you, I know you're writing this, we have a podcast we're trying to get the word out and other ideas on your end for like increasing awareness or helping to kind of spread that or improve financial literacy in medicine.
Speaker 1 00:27:07 Yeah, no, I think like, like what you're doing is, is amazing and, you know, there's, the space has definitely become bigger in just the past few years and, and, but it's still such a minority of people. So I think like exactly what you're doing or what I'm trying to do, just trying to get information out there. And even if someone just sees it and you know, maybe they're in training or maybe they're at a super busy point in their life or something where they just go like, Oh yeah, I have to take a look at that in the future. And then that leads them to do that. It's just a small, small little snowball can start that avalanche, hopefully. So I think that's the biggest thing and I'm trying to push for it to be a more formal part of the curriculum I think is, is huge. There is for the, um, one of the big societies and plastic surgery as the, um, aesthetic society. And they, they do have like a two day kind of retreat type thing for residents that focuses on sort of, they call it starting your practice, but a big part of it is personal finance as well. So that's good. And I think like more and more, um, societies or institutions should follow that lead.
Speaker 2 00:28:16 I think it really is just wellness overall. I think there's a void of that. We've seen, uh, we've come across people that just approach us and they're like, I just, I don't want to mess with it. I kind of want to give you the keys and you just drive our finances and I'm just going to not pay attention to it. And it's especially, um, I kind of started out in the industry and the other side of it in insurances and all that kind of set up the non-fiduciary advisor set up you're in buying or talking about. And we had a lot of people that would just want to hand over the keys and didn't want to pay attention at all. And I think that is really a big issue because you can't. So as an advisor, we can't really do everything. It's impossible for us to do everything.
Speaker 2 00:29:04 Now, some advisors kind of imply that they do everything, but at the end of the day, none of them do everything. Nobody's going to care about your money more than you will. And you have to handle the basic, you know, at minimum you have to handle the personal financial aspects of your life, like, um, you know, keeping things organized and tracking things. And so what I was going to ask you about that I was curious about on your end, like, what do you think are like the most foundational things to track for people like just to keep stay organized or kind of keep a pulse on their finances? Like what would be the kind of most important, um, metrics you would pay attention to? Yeah, no, that's great.
Speaker 1 00:29:42 Great question. Great point for me, what I started doing is I, it seems obsessive, but like I check my checking account every day and the reason, especially at the beginning and the reason that me and my wife did that was just because it would give us kind of immediate feedback, like what our expenses were and what we could cut back on. Because again, we were obviously paying up, spending up to our paycheck. And so that, that was super helpful. And I think also as we, you know, jumped to a higher level salaries recently, that's something we've done again in that health and kind of dovetailing off of that. Like we do keep a budget and the first of every month we'll just go through our bank account and go through every expense that we had and sort of categorize them. And we have like an Excel sheet with what our budget for each category as each month.
Speaker 1 00:30:35 And we look and compare it and see if we were, you know, that positive or negative and where we can save and how much we paid off a debt that month and things like that. And I think that's super helpful. I know there are people who sort of talk about the antique budget, which is essentially, you know, you set your savings rate, let's say it's 20%. And so, you know, every time you get a paycheck, you basically take 20% and, you know, save it or invest it. And then you just spend the rest feel free, which I'm not opposed to that necessarily. But I think, I think you, I think traditional budgeting serves like a really important role, especially in the beginning, you might eventually get to some steady state where you're like, okay, I kind of know each month, like, you know, how much I have to spend and I can kind of keep track of that in my head where you may not need to go through, you know, an Excel sheet every month. But I think at the beginning, that is variable.
Speaker 2 00:31:29 The problem with that is you is you can nowadays you can spend more than you take it. So if you save 20% and spend the rest, it's super easy to spend more than the rest with credit cards and not quite realize it right away, then all of a sudden, you kind of you're like I saved it, but yet I transferred back from my savings account. A few months later, the credit card bill that was a little bigger than I expected is your, is your budget like spot on pretty, pretty accurate? Like, would you say you're fairly close to your targets that you establish or,
Speaker 1 00:32:00 Yeah, yeah. We're pretty close. We actually, we've in a lot of categories. We like spend less than we have budgeted and we sort of like leave the, you know, the, the target purposely higher, even though we know we kind of spend less just cause it's nice to just sort of have that cushion and feel like, you know, you're almost rewarding yourself at the end of every month. We've been pretty spot on since we started doing that.
Speaker 2 00:32:25 Yeah. And that I wasn't so lucky when I, early on in budgeting, I was, I was, I'm kind of analytical and I would always set this very specific budget and, and we would never hit it because life is not perfect. Yeah. I had a perfectionist budget basically and perfectionist budget is doomed from the get-go and it sounds like you've kind of built in margin, which is, I think extremely smart because, and then it's also depressing to see yourself fail every time you kind of have to set up these systems so that you can, it provides positive reinforcement.
Speaker 1 00:32:56 Exactly. Yeah. And then we like every, every few months we also just track our net worth, definitely low it's like negative.
Speaker 2 00:33:06 Uh, it doesn't matter, man. That's the key is to track it.
Speaker 1 00:33:09 Exactly. Cause that's kind of like, I take a lot of this from like the millionaire real estate investor by Gary Keller, but he's like net worth is your scorecard, which makes total sense. And if you, if you check it every few months, you can at least see like, okay, I did, I did this thing. Am I not worth like, went up like that, that really helped. And you know, or I did this and my net worth went down. Like that's not such a good move. And the most interesting thing that I saw and realized was that I was like, you know what, nowhere on that worth is your salary. Like it doesn't matter. Cause again, if you're making a million dollars in spending a million dollars, your net worth is still zero. So I think that that's a great thing to do too.
Speaker 2 00:33:48 Yeah. Dragging net worth is it's V what was the book? The millionaire real estate.
Speaker 1 00:33:53 Yeah. The millionaire real estate investor by Gary Keller. It's my wife. And I just started investing in real estate, you know, actively and are really interested in that. But for anyone who's interested in that, that book is definitely the go-to. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:34:07 Yeah. So I'm also curious, you are being someone that is more in tune to their mistakes than the average person. My, at least my opinion is that if you're human, you're always going to make mistakes. And so the challenge is more of, um, seeing those blinds blind spots or identifying them sooner than later. And so I'm just curious, looking forward in your world, how do you try to stay on top of those sorts of things? How do you keep an eye on blind spots? How do you kind of stay out of trouble? Keep yourself out of trouble?
Speaker 1 00:34:43 Yeah, I think I'll answer it a couple of different ways first, you know, I think doing like continuing financial education, which like we have to like continuing medical education, you know, like it's never, financial literacy is never like never someone we reach. Um, you know, you're, you're constantly trying. So just like I try to read, you know, I still try to read 10 pages of a book every night. And so, you know, like taxes, for instance, that's something that I need to understand a lot more. So. Yeah, exactly. So it's a strategy it's really strategy. And so that's something that I'm going to try to read more on. So it's just constantly trying to learn. And then the other thing is, is like mindset, you know, like I before was really scared of investing in that kind of stuff because I was like, I don't want to just lose all my money.
Speaker 1 00:35:36 I'll make some mistake and lose all my money. And that sort of fear then leads to the inaction, which that inaction is actually what keeps you from being successful. So you're sort of like, you know, by trying to avoid mistakes, you're actually making the biggest mistake of all. And so I've sort of accepted that, you know, like at some point I'm kind of lose money, I'm going to make a mistake in the future. I'm going to, it's impossible. And you know, I look at all of the most successful people in the world and they, they have all lost money and they've all made mistakes. No one, no one's ever like if I made a million dollars without ever losing a single dollar. So, you know, I'm not like excited to lose money or something like that, but I do accept it. And that I've determined that that will not stop me from, you know, moving forward or from, from trying and from, you know, from being successful. So I think, I think there's, you know, mindset course. And then there's also a practical portion where you do, you have to keep learning, you can't ever, and you can't ever think that you're like smarter than everyone else, you know, because no one is and you know, so you can never get, never get over competent. You always have to kind of do your, do your homework and any investment, do your due diligence and things like that.
Speaker 2 00:36:54 Yeah, for me, uh, one of the recent ones I've done along those lines is reading biographies of people like, you know, successful people that I admire. And they're always so interesting because especially biographies because it's another person telling the successful person's story. And so every single one I've ever read is just totally filled with failures and probably it's balanced, maybe failures and success and, and the it's almost like they have to do the failures to get to the success.
Speaker 1 00:37:27 Yeah. That's awesome. I'm going to have to start doing that. That's a really good,
Speaker 2 00:37:30 Yeah. And then my wife and communication, I know you do this as well. I have from one of your articles, you talk about communicating about your finances with your wife. And that's been kind of my other way of having another person to provide accountability and call out my wife's very direct and it's, it's actually a blessing for us is, is she will speak honestly, I guess. And so she'll kind of shed light on things that I might not be seeing. Totally. Yeah. Same. I like how you said it's kind of an evolving thing to continuing education or continuing financial education. I have heard, uh, people physicians say kind of like, show me what I need to know so that I can kind of check this off the box. And I think that's not a good mindset necessarily, or it's maybe just, I don't think that's reality because things change and you change, you change your life, changes your values change and, and you know, it's going to be an evolving thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:38:28 It's like, it's true in any field, but in medicine it's like, okay, are you gonna, are you gonna finish your training? And then just say, okay, I've learned everything I need to learn. I'm not going to learn anything more and continue to practice for 20 years or something. You know, there's always new things that come up and you have to stay on top of it. That would be a total recipe for disaster. So why would you do that? You know, with your finances and your money.
Speaker 0 00:38:51 Yeah. Awesome. Well, as we wrap up, can you share with people how they can find you?
Speaker 1 00:38:57 Yeah. So you can find me. My website blog is www.prudentplasticsurgeon.com. And you can reach me through there and there's a contact form as well. Or you can email me anytime. It's prudent plastic
[email protected] and I'm usually really good about getting back. And so any questions or anything, feel free to reach out.
Speaker 0 00:39:20 Awesome. Jordan, thanks so much for taking the time with me today. It's been, it's been fun talking through them.
Speaker 1 00:39:25 No problem. I had a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 0 00:39:27 Thank you so much for joining us today. If you found this valuable, please give us a review on iTunes and share with a friend. Also check out our
[email protected] for all sorts of additional content. See you. Next time. Finance for physicians is not an investment tax legal or financial advisor. All content included in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial tax or legal advice. Material presented. It is believed to be from reliable sources and no representations are made by finance for physicians as to another party's informational accuracy or completeness, all information or ideas provided should be discussed in detail with an advisor accountant or legal counsel prior to the implementation. You don't have an advisor or like a second opinion. Feel free to check out our website for recommended advisors.
