Full Transcript for Why High Income Isn’t Financial Security with Dr. Bill Yount

parents didn't tell you to do something or but you had to make it. How old were you? speaker-0: Yeah, college wasn't that because we didn't talk about money for it. It was not a conversation for one of the biggest financial decisions an eighteen year old makes. And it was just an expectation that my father, who was a doctor, was just going to pay for it. And there was a bait and switch because of the lack of this conversation. He wanted me to apply to everywhere. Harvard, Cornell, all this stuff, all the prestigious schools, because it was going to be a feather in his cap. It was going to be a feather in his his resume when he said if you're going to go to Cornell, you're paying for it. But if you go to your state school, which at the time was in Chapel Hill, UNC, then I'll pay for it. And I got pissed off and I said, I can't use the words I exactly said, but darn you, I'll pay for it myself. That was the biggest decision. speaker-1: eighteen year old decision senior in high school that said, Now we're going to have this conversation or this surprise, like you said. speaker-0: yeah, there was no conversation about college. And I went to Duke and you know, I had scholarships and loan a few loans that weren't big and the cost was mostly covered for Duke. It was much cheaper at that time. It's now what, a hundred thousand dollars a year? I can't remember what it was then, but it was definitely under like thirty or twenty five thousand dollars a year with educational inflation being seven percent a year over the last thirty years. So college was taken care of, but mid school, I took care of speaker-1: All right, two more numbers questions. What's the highest interest rate you've ever had to pay for a debt? speaker-0: Again, I was financially illiterate. I didn't pay attention to this stuff. Debt I was kinda numb to it. It was like a way of life. And I got my first house, you know, the big doctor house right out of residency. Four hundred and sixty two thousand dollars is what it cost in nineteen ninety six or seven. And the interest rate on that it was in the mid high single digits, I think, at that time. We weren't in the three, four, five percent interest rates. It wasn't over ten, so it was probably between five to ten. speaker-1: God. So not like the teens of the eighties. All right. And then last number question. How old were you as a dad when you had your first real money conversation with your own kids? speaker-0: Yeah, the conversations were generally around I want this, I want this, and needs versus wants weren't really discussed because we were at that point high income professionals. My wife was working part-time in her field of child psychiatry. I was in emergency medicine. So we could pretty much cover everything. We had twins. We completely overdid it with regards to consumption, birthdays, Christmas. speaker-1: And this was before Pinterest and gender reveals and first birthday smash cakes and all the things, right? This was just what

you saw other people in your profession doing. Yep. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, kind of. But it was kind of we just wanted it. If we saw it, we wanted it, we bought it. There was no, you know, intentionality or conscious nature to it. I mean, this was in the era of dial up phones, tube TVs, no cell phones, no internet, and I had no idea what our savings rate was. So to give you an example, I know that at some point we were saving single digits probably and spending everything. It was spend first, save last. We saved whatever we had left over at tax time. It was not a priority. And as far as conversations go, serious money conversations, our kids pretty much got everything they wanted without question. You know, or we would have a dysfunctional conversation where they would go, I want this, I want this, and we just go, No, we can't afford it, or no, we don't want you to have it. It wasn't like redirecting them as we've talked about on our show into we can talk about how can we afford this. Because as Paula Pant says, you can afford anything, but not everything. And everything is a trade off. Whether it's time or money, savings rate and fire and when you retire, all these little decisions, they compound against you. speaker-1: They do, they do. So I think what I'm hearing is that we can take this conversation in so many different directions. And on this show, I want to go back to the very beginning. I want to not just take the answers you gave for right now and the reflections and the wisdom you have of, you know, your years of hard knocks, but let's go back to childhood. Let's go back to what was money like growing up. What were the money stories that you were kind of surrounded with? speaker-0: I don't think there was really a relationship, but I do have stories. my father was an academic physician, didn't earn the high salary. We were sort of middle class, upper middle class. My mom was a nurse that quote unquote retired and was a stay at home mom after she started having kids. And what I realized we weren't wanting for anything, but we weren't living lavishly by any means in retrospect. And what I only found out later was they were pretty frugal. my mom was the spender. My dad was pretty frugal. There was a lot of no, there was a lot of arguments. It was all pretty negatively directed, emotional. And unfortunately, money was a weapon. It was, you know, withheld at times between parents. No, you can't do that. It was a stressful experience. It was not Pleasant. There was not abundance really. We shopped pretty frugally, you know, sears for a lot of stuff and big box department stores. There wasn't brand labels or anything like that going around. I did not know that they paid cash for cars and generally were, you know, frugal with that. So there was not much money awareness. There was kind of a a big scarcity going on. When I was nine years old, I Rather than go to day camp or camp as a kid, as a participant, as a camper, I worked at camp. As a nine

year old, I earned five dollars a week going around with the four year olds at camp, which is functionally a summer daycare. And so that's when I started my working trajectory and Yeah, speaker-1: Nine years old. speaker-0: and I had jobs all the time. I I guess I felt the need to provide as the oldest child. whether it be for myself and my wants, I don't know where all the money went. There was certainly no jars. There was no saving, spending, giving or investing jars. Th there was no money education. Absolutely none. I remember as I think you do, rolls of pennies, stacks of dollar bills, piggy banks or little boxes where I would hide my money. And then, you know, the jobs got bigger and more robust. But the minimum wage back then was like Two something, three something. I was a grocery checkout person. I stocked the shelves. I washed dishes in my teens. I don't know what the child labor laws were, but I was had to be fourteen to sixteen. at a local breakfast place, Yield Waffle Shop, very famous in Chapel Hill. Worked very hard. speaker-1: So I'm here in like a lot of early trades, transitions of time for money. And then that did that bring you maybe a sense of purpose and productivity, or do you feel that it was still kind of from that place of scarcity like you had mentioned because asking mom and dad meant no, but when it came from the own money that you earned, how did that feel or was it not even a thought? speaker-0: There was a certain powerful feeling in it because I didn't I wasn't beholden to my parents for allowance or a family paycheck or whatever you want to call it. So yeah, there was it was rewarding, but it felt like also a necessity. It didn't feel like I could not not do it and kind of enjoy my childhood a little more. Go out and play in the sand lot and do all this stuff. I was parentified, is the way I would call it. before I was ready for it, there was sort of an urgency. Like I said, a lot of negative emotions wrapped up around it, but independence to some level. And I worked through college, I worked in med school. There was never like I wasn't working. It felt like a a need. I was driven to do it, but it was not entrepreneurial. I was very much a an hourly based you know, minimum wage employee, so to speak. speaker-1: What an interesting reflection because I wonder if the perception, maybe if you're listening and you're like, well, if you grew up with a physician household, that would make sense that you're a physician and then everybody kind of has this like hand-me-down mindset of like physician and affluence. But I'm not I'm not hearing that from your childhood. I'm hearing a lot of kind of grind and a lot of hustle and a lot of just hard work. So I'm wondering. How did that serve you when it came time for your own kids to have these same conversations now that, you know, Bill is the parent? what's that like t for them and your kids? Like did they get to have that childhood and play in the sand lot? Or did you find that that was a value you pushed on to them to say, hey, you are going to start working? Maybe it wasn't at nine because it might not have been allowed. But what was that like for the next generation? speaker-0: Money trauma was a part of my life between my parents about it. The dining room table was kind of a war zone. It wasn't a place that I really wanted to go. And I was very escapist to get out of the household. My parents later, because of money and other things, got divorced in a very traumatic ways. And I remember my dad getting lost in his office to do the taxes every year, trying to milk the government for every penny that he could for or like a month at a time and he got audited. So this day I'm scared of taxes. speaker-1: During your childhood you found work early and sounds like you've worked your entire career. How is that similar or different than the childhood and the relationship with work your twins are experiencing? speaker-0: That's why it was important to tell you that story. Because I was afraid of money. I didn't want to talk about it. It hadn't been talked about and it seemed to have a lot of negative connotations. I definitely learned a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. And I guess in some ways I felt deprived. So it flipped and it inverted when it came to my kids. And it wasn't just my decision. My wife and I were kind of on the same page. she'd gone through the deparation of being a physician, but was used to nice things. We didn't want our kids to go through those feelings. But what it led to was kind of a inadvertent entitlement because they didn't really want or need for anything. The conversations really didn't happen again. So the generational wisdom, as you like to talk about, did not transfer at all. There was no transfer of money knowledge or money skills, money goals, money values. There was no family constitution. All things we've talked about on the show with you on catching up to Fi. And I realize that now. And then we're recovering that. Because as late starters, our kids got the same message. We were mentoring a an abundant money environment without sort of conscious or intentional conversations. about the trade-offs that were involved. They learned that there really weren't trade-offs. And the problem later is they're going to go out into the world. They've lived this life of a dual income position family with all the trips, all the things, buying a car for them at 16 where they didn't have skin in the game, because this is what we want to do. We don't want them to have debt, which is a gift for sure. But yeah, on the backside, how do you recover? And that's sort of my focus. And you talked about it in your intro with regards to the mentorship. There was dysfunctional mentorship. And then we flipped our equation into savers, not spenders, into investors, not spenders, into focusing on the fact that nobody was going to save us for our own retirement but ourselves. So they th saw the trauma of that when the

wake up. It was pretty much a cold shower for everybody. It's also difficult because I talked about money all the time. I was focused on it after that. It became a part of my identity. I was afraid We weren't going to get too fi and I was going to work longer than I wanted to. And we probably need to talk about my story about the wake up because that in of itself is a story and it traumatized them. Just like my dad and his taxes traumatized me. speaker-1: And I think it's important to identify our intentions as parents are always in the best light, yet the impact can still be negative. And so if you're listening and you're like, I said I wouldn't do that, or wow, this is a story that's bringing up lots of feelings for me, we all have those. That's that's kind of life, right? And so holding a little bit of space and a little bit of grace, but also kind of poking that bubble or popping that balloon that Just because you have a high income doesn't mean you have automatic financial security. Would that maybe be the best way to transition into your wake up? speaker-0: Absolutely. speaker-1: How old were your twins when you had this wake up? Because there is somebody listening right now that is like, my kids are 13, my kids are 15, we are having this wake up, we are talking about money in new, unfamiliar, kind of weird, scary ways. We're listening to this show and talking about money at a table that used to be a war zone, as you called it. So what were their ages and what is life now compared to before the wake up? speaker-0: This story has a happy ending. And we all like happy endings to stories. I woke up at fifty. I had been trying to out earn our financial problems and you can't no matter how many zeros you have in your salary, you just cannot earn out earn and you can't run fast enough on the hedonic treadmill. Eventually you burn out. You just do, depending on how you're living, with lifestyle inflation. And it's really hard to deflate once you've inflated. There are a lot of hard decisions you have to make. To to get back on track. But I woke up at fifty because I got sued. that was very traumatic. Unless you've been sued, you cannot imagine what you go through. Just like being a late starter, you're alone, you're isolated, you're full of shame, regret, remorse, and anger. How could this happen to me? I'm a perfectionist and I don't make mistakes, nor can I afford to make mistakes as a physician. But they do. Fifty percent of physicians get sued in emergency medicine. It's a fact of life. And so all of a sudden I woke up and realized I want out. I can't get out. We require my income and my wife's income. And she went back to full time work, which is one of the main reasons we caught up in ten years. So there's a happy story there. But it was a shock, big time. And then money shocks are prov you know provoke profound change. They really do. And in some ways, without the shock, you don't change. You're living in comfort. No, you don't no pain, no

gain, really. And so my kids were ten years ago, so sixteen. Is when I woke up, they woke up and was talking about it all the time, learning, I had to be perfect again. I had to read two shelves of books just to feel like I could manage my money. So there was some analysis paralysis probably for a year before we really took back our money, built the skills to manage our money. And so the kids saw this. I became something known as my nickname is Lecture Daddy because If if you try and tell people what to do, it just doesn't work. There's a a wall there, it creates shame and blame and nobody wants to be lectured to. You have to look for the opportunities when they're listening and asking questions to have what we call point of care knowledge transfer. When it's like, okay, they're interested in this, and then it maybe it's five, ten, fifteen minutes before they glaze over. Their eyes go blank and they're like, I don't want to hear this anymore. I've shut speaker-1: I know the glaze, which sometimes it's not fifteen minutes anymore. It might be five, but keep going. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean there as we talked about on our show, I if you may have a captive audience in the car when you're on a trip. They may listen to a podcast, for example, or they may ask a question, but you can only get so much information across before there's overload. And it it's still kind of a problem because we inherit habits from our parents. And when we inherit money stories, generational trauma that may have nothing to do with money, but it spills over into money and I buried my head in the sand, didn't want to look at it, didn't want to look at bills or what was in my account. It was just it was taboo, not only to talk about, but I didn't want to know and out of sight, out of mind, well it that'll catch up with you, and it did with us in a big way. So we had to buckle down and we made big mistakes too. At that time, just before that, we had not only been in a private bank with salesmen who had what's called an AUM assets under management approach, did not save us from selling out at the bottom of the great financial crisis from stocks to bonds, the almost financial malpractice to to let somebody do that out of fear. We had renovated a house to the nines, our quote unquote forever house. It was a great experience. Don't get me wrong, all these things had potentially negative financial connotations, but along the way, we hate lived a great life. We traveled with our kids, we did things, we spent a lot of money on Experiences and relationships. speaker-1: Fun as a family. Yeah. Which maybe is a stark contrast to maybe how you were raised. speaker-0: Well, yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. And there was certainly stress and trauma. Every family has it. You don't see it behind the curtain of what goes on in public by any means. So and there was one more mistake we made. Because we were house poor at the time with the the big financial shock, we couldn't save during the great bull market for the first three, four, five years because we had no gap to put into investments. We were trapped in a big mortgage. We'd sold at the bottom. It it became code blue. As I call it. speaker-1: And at sixteen, the twins would be getting ready for college. How did that wake up affect how you chose to invest in their futures compared to your retirement? I know that's a question I get all the time. What what did you do and what were the lessons you learned from that kind of awakening right at such a critical time? speaker-0: Well, luckily we had a little help. The grandparents really helped out with school. We were very fortunate. We'd save some, but not enough for college. But they they were well enough off that they were interested in giving living with warm hands, as I call it, for education or health care, for example, whatever the case may be. So education got largely taken care of. And they exited college debt free. They don't have car debt. They don't have college debt. So there has been this generational gift. For a healthy start without being in a financial hole. So that's good. We're proud of that. speaker-1: Probably also a stark contrast to maybe how you left medical school. speaker-0: Yeah, it was very important to us, one of our family values. I think you said your values are love, learning and speaker-1: Experiences. You got it. speaker-0: Yeah, love, learning and r and experiences. So we hit their experiences. We hit the love. learning, we didn't transfer any generational knowledge that we didn't have with regards to money until more recently. and I do have a fun story to tell you there. The happy ending to, you know, the recovery of poor financial mentorship and becoming lecture daddy. And my son told me that and and I I started a Facebook group and a blog and he said, You need to start a podcast because you need to talk to somebody else about money. We don't need to hear it all the time. You gotta, you know, talk to and so built a community there, which was great for me. But it sort of rubbed off after some time, and they're out in the working world now after college. And my son, after a little bit of a prolonged college experience, came to me with his first job and said, Okay, Dad, I got this for MK. There is Immediate ving. There's a four percent match and I need your help figuring it out. And I was just like, that's one of those love conversations. And then, you know, and he's like, I love and respect you and I'm willing to let you help me with my finances now because I know you know what you're doing. I don't completely understand this. Please help. And asking for help is like a critical value to transfer to your kids. If you feel ashamed and that you don't know something and you don't ask for help. Well, you're going to be lost for a while. But that feeling of aloneness when you get sued or you wake up as a late starter and you think you're the only one that did it. Well you're not. Sixty percent of the nation probably does

it. Most of our nation is is is least started. speaker-1: child who had abundant blessings until the age of 16 and then a quick pivot into we're going to tighten up our financial buckle to I've graduated from college debt free and am now entering the workforce and I want to come to you to talk about money. speaker-0: It wasn't just that. The best part of the conversation was well I'm like, okay, we can take care of the f but this came on recently since we became FI after ten years, financially independent. we did catch up. And I do want to say we didn't frugal down to rice and beans. We went from a single digit savings rate to forty percent, dual income, saved all of my wife's and then some income. And Market blessed us. We caught up. And so there's a silver lining to this. It's imminently possible. I want people to know that when you get your mindset right, you understand your money story, you shed your history of shame and ignorance and leave it behind that's dragging you back. You focus on the present and look forward to the future. Well, guess what? My son, well, I w we can fix this one thing with your 401k, no problem. It'll be very fun. But you know, what we really want. For you is to for you to become good stewards of wealth, because there will be wealth coming your way. And as you say, and I completely agree, without generational wisdom, generational wealth is wasted. And the shirt sleeves in three generations, we are at risk for that. I don't want to see that happen. But we're going to flip the script. We all want to do parenting better. We all want to do things better than our parents, but you're kind of a victim of the things you learn, the reflex behaviors, the habits. And to change this stuff, well, guess what? I came up with a new term. There is financial neuroplasticity. And you probably rewired your brain because there was a vision issue, a healthcare issue. And I'm rewiring my financial brain. And that will translate down to the kids because we can change. We don't have to be victims of our circumstances. It is sort of the noble and higher thing to do as we move through our heroes' journey of You know, being in the woods, going to the land of Oz, realizing that the Wizard of Oz isn't going to save us and we need to save ourselves, and then coming back after this hero's journey to the real world of Kansas, and you become Fi. And then guess what? You can bridge to the next chapter where you get to share your wisdom. You get to fill up the vessel that you've built with wisdom and give back to your kids, to your community, to anybody that. has a need. I mean, I'm at work with nurses that are in financial distress. They come to me and say, please help. We look at their 40Ks. We say, okay, we need to do this to fix it. You're at 30 and they've defaulted you at 2% savings rate into a dysfunctional target date fund where you're retired now with 40% bonds. Let's fix this. And so you get to share this stuff. People realize that, you know,

they come to you with they maybe have their own shame. But they recognize the deed and that you may be Yoda now. You're not young Luke Skywalker. You become hopefully Obi-Wan or Yoda. And the gift you give in your second chapter is generational wisdom. That's what you have to give. If you've matured through the stages, the seven stages, as George Kinter said, of money maturity, you want to get there to the highest stage, aloha, abundance, where money is no longer holding you back. And it unleashes your potential as you are a TED talk speaker or a a lecturer that has gifts to give of knowledge that people are hungry for. You become a creator. You exit the consumption world of whether it be knowledge or things, and then you get your act together. And if you become a creator and are creating new things, whether it be speeches or blogs or podcasts, boy, does life explode. It really explodes into abundance in a big way. And my son, to come back to that, he had gotten the message about generational money stewardship. He has some entrepreneurial goals, which we want to help support as long as he has a good business plan. he has for longevity. He wants to manage money prudently and he had been a spendthrift. We were very worried because you have sort of your genetic predisposition to money. Then you have your epigenetic sort of environmental influences. And so he had maybe gotten, you know, spendy genetics and definitely spendy epigenetics we call it, fancy word for environment or nature and nurture. But in spite of that, with the last ten years of tilling the soil, flipping the script, he got the message. And that's what he told me when he asked that question. One of the proudest moments I've ever had as a father. I mean, if your kid comes to you and says, I love and respect you, will you help me with this knowledge deficiency? Because I trust you and I'm willing to listen. I mean, my God, that's the best. speaker-1: Wow. Well done, Dad. Well done. I think what you said, you said like several different things that I want to call out. I love how you talked about tilling the soil. We'll start there because as parents, our jobs, we can't make the seeds grow, right? But we can kind of cultivate their environment. And seeds are pretty resilient. Kids are resilient. And if You're that parent that is waking up to a money story that you have s found yourself in that you're like, I don't like this story. I want to rewrite it. I want to use your term of financial neuroplasticity. That money story might be what was last chapter, but as of today, we've turned on the lights to a new chapter and figuring out that that can mean new abundance, new possibilities. And it just starts with that decision to talk about money. So you you mentioned some statistics, you mentioned like the amount and the percentage, and I think that numbers are important. Numbers can potentially scare people, or numbers make people bury their heads in the sand because they're like, I don't do math. But what I really liked of everything that you've said today has been the story, like telling stories and opening up about yes, it was hard and here's the silver lining. Yes, it was the hero's journey. Every hero has a challenge, has a mountain to climb, has something to overcome. And for each one of us, that might look different, but at the end of the day, it's our stories that not only do our kids want to hear, but that's what they're going to be telling well after we're gone. It's not going to be how much money we gave them or didn't give them or how many times we said yes or no. It is going to be how we made them feel. And who's read a great story and you remember not exactly the word for word lines? Except maybe we just watch The Princess Bride and now everyone is like, My name is Enigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die. So but when when you're not in that exact scripted world, how do you feel when you're sitting on the couch and you can feel their feet touching you? Maybe their feet were kicking you. Or maybe you miss those feet because now they're no longer off the couch and they're in the world. So wherever you are as that parent in the journey. I want to call out financial neuroplasticity, the chance to not just read a new story, but to write a new one for your family and for your legacy. So thank you for for that perspective, for that piece. My kind of question then becomes: what is next? You've reached financial independence, you've got kids that are funding their own retirement. You've you've you're launching kids, right? What parent doesn't want to have launched kids, right? What is next and how are you having different conversations now than you were ever had with your own parent? speaker-0: When we became FI and I was surprised by FI, we took on a a very wonderful financial advisor, low cost, flat fee, fiduciary a hundred percent, unconflicted, that was a partner in making our life robust and helping us reach our goals using money as the tool that it is. The first thing that came to my mind was giving. Now that our oxygen mask was on, we were taken care of. How can we help the world? Our kids, our community, our charities, and I know you're very focused on giving. And that was hard for us for ten years, because you you can still live and give, but we needed to take care of ourselves so it wasn't so easy. Although we did establish a donor advice fund to create generational giving. You can create your own trust that's accessible to everybody, put it in investments and they grow for you. And so your giving grows as your investment grows. It's just a you know, a wonderful giving machine for generations to come that your kids will inherit, that they will see that you're doing, that they can participate in. It's a social activity. And so giving has become very important. It also became important for us to give to our kids. Because in your twenties, you have the biggest need for wealth, I'm not going to say money, with

the least capacity to create it. Yes, you want to el escalate your income as much as possible. Our kids are earning in the fifty isty thousand dollar range. It's you know, and housing's expensive foods, expensive cars, all this stuff. But they don't have debt. But you know, for them to scrape together five to seven to maybe ten percent savings rate when they're told they need to be fifteen and twenty, that's really frustrating. And they have the biggest speaker-1: thousand dollar for a deductible. That was a conversation we had of, you know, minimums in your your savings account can't go below your deductible. But what's going on? Yeah, it it's hard. speaker-0: Well, over overdrawing your checking account. I'm like, okay, we need to tell you we need to reset zero to five hundred or a thousand so that you have your built in you know overdraw. speaker-1: While they're living, I love that. When they potentially need it the most but have the least capacity to do something about it, right? speaker-0: We don't give them money. We transfer wealth. And so they have the biggest opportunity because I learned all about tax gain harvesting because they're only earning fifty to sixty. We can transfer low basis shares that we bought years ago. They tax gain harvest them. It's like giving to a charity because we don't pay tax on them. They don't pay tax on them as long as we watch the ceiling of the zero percent capital gains rate. So we transfer wealth at no tax cost to us or them that they roll into their Roth and HSA, which they have access to. And you can talk about the details of those accounts, but those are very tax advantaged accounts. So we're going to help them, they'll have skin in the game, but we're going help them fill up those buckets. Because now that I know what I'm doing, for me to see a Roth bucket or an HSA bucket go empty at the end of a tax year, it just makes me mad because you know. That is a huge opportunity to build wealth early on. And there's other ways you can do it with five two nine plans that function as a retirement account, actually. You can do it with what I call a tax efficient income replacement plan where you give them cash, but then they have to put that cash as a deduction on their paycheck and it goes into their four own K. So they're saving into all their accounts and not just one or two. So there's lots of ways you can give and using playing by the book, using the tax code to your advantage. And we talked about optimizing taxes because that's an expense that you control at some level. So it's really fun to do this. They understand it. We've created a little mini simple portfolio for them. They now get to practice the skills of managing money, which they didn't start doing earlier, but you can't practice the skills unless you have money. So it gives us the advantage of saying, okay, watch what happens here. Yes, it's about maybe six years later than we could have done it, but you know what? You're in your 20s. You're not 50. This is going to be fine. So in our retirement budget is to make sure that their Roth IRA and their HSA are full. And then they can be responsible for their workplace plan. We can do a little bit with the 529 plan. They'll have what's called balance accumulation across a lot of accounts. With optionality for healthcare, for education, you can build generational educational wealth. When we have wealth transfer of windfalls of inheritance, which we will have, it's not in the plan, but it's coming. There's the greatest wealth transfer in history from the boomers to the to the Gen Xers, for example. We'll see it in our sixties and seventies. Thank God our parents are doing well. When we don't need it, but where it's going to go is to them. We're going to front load a five two nine to create a generational wealth education machine for their kids and grandkids. speaker-1: Almost, because at FI or financially independent, that doesn't serve you now. And yet, how are you talking to the kids about that you you said it's not a guaranteed, I don't want to call it a windfall, but how are you building those conversations now? I love the buckets. I love the HSA, the Roth buckets. And yes, if your kids have any capacity for earned income right now and they are not maxing out those Roths, please, please. Talk to somebody that can help you do that and do that in a wise way. But what are the conversations so that they are then building that maturity muscle? like you said, those seven steps of maturity? Because yes, now that they're over 18, legally they could access it. Legally they could take it out. That is a question I get a lot, is I'm afraid of what they would do. How how would you kind of answer that question of like, are you afraid? If they had access to it, what they would do? Why or why not? And what are the conversations you're having that say, That's not going to be the case in our house and here's why. speaker-0: Well, building trust is critical to this process. And we have a generation of boomers that are hoarders. They don't believe that anybody's going to manage their money better than them. They don't need it. They could transfer it efficiently to younger generations, whether it be kids or grandkids. And we've had those conversations with the older generations now that we're fi. We don't need your money. But why don't why don't you look at your grandkids and see what you can do for them to help build wealth so that it crosses generations in an efficient way. With money they don't need, I mean, don't die in a golden coffin with your highest net worth. That is not a good goal. That is not a good identity or a good value in my mind. When you identify with money growing throughout your lifetime to the end, well you've left life on the table. Not only for you, but for other people. And you haven't created generational wealth. And they're going to make mistakes. You know, we'll help to guide them. I've sort of said, Yeah, this is not money that's

to be spent. This is money for the future, your future you that you've got to get to know. We're going to help you take care of the future you so you can retire earlier. Not that you don't have to provide value to the economy, the nation, the world. Yeah, it's a transfer of wealth, not money. It isn't a lifestyle piece. Yes, we're going to take them on trips that they can't afford. We went on spring break with my son and his girlfriend. They couldn't afford going to New York on their salaries of sixty, seventy thousand dollars. They bought their plane tickets, but we paid. For the experience of New York, went to shows, went to restaurants. We didn't overdo it, but gosh, you got to spend time with them. That is invaluable as adults because when they leave the nest at 18, you may have spent 90% of the time with them that you're going to spend. And if they want to spend time with you, that's like one of the best things ever. You want your kids to want to spend time with you. And so, you know, paying for trips and experiences, giving. Buying your time back by getting somebody to mow the lawn, friendships and relationships. These are the four things you spend money on in retirement when you're five. That give you value, joy, abundance. You know, please don't hoard. It's sad when I see that happen. speaker-1: And I think it's important to call out that at sixteen, now ten years later at twenty-six, they are choosing to spend time with you. You are now in a place of abundance, not just with your financial status, but with your mental mindset, your money story, right? You're choosing to bring them on these experiences and you're choosing to invest in those things that really kind of bring that intangible value and that intangible wealth. And those are the stories that I bet that they are going to be passing on. It's not going to be this yes or that no. And so thank you so much for sharing that gift. And imagine a spring break when you're, you know, early in your working career, when you thought spring breaks were over and you were never going to have a spring vacation again, right? So w what a neat, neat experience. What is next for you when it comes to big pie in the sky, you know, things that you're going to do. with your money story. Like if you had to write another fun chapter, you said we love stories with happy endings. Like write that last chapter and take us home with that one. speaker-0: Well, we're sixty, we're in our go go years, and life outside of work is starting to squeeze out work, which is motivating me to exit work. It's kinda funny. I was burned out in emergency medicine. I wanted out, but now I'm having a hard time getting out. I call it the fog of fi, fear of getting out. That transition, that bridge to the next life was created in your childhood. You know, you reach back to your childhood to find your way in retirement. It comes full circle. Create the life of how you're going to structure your time and audit your calendar, not just

your money, so that you have purpose meaning identity that has nothing to do with your genetically entit entwined identity as a physician. It has everything to do with your identity as a father, as a friend, as a creator, as wise elder that has a lot to give. And you have to figure out how to curate your message. I want to get into public speaking. You're a great public speaker. I I want to learn from you and overcome my new imposter syndrome and fears. I want to migrate from emergency health care to not only emergency wealth care, but preventive wealth care, the transfer of wisdom to stamp out one starfish at a time, financial illiteracy for younger generations, for my own kids or others. There's a great parable, as I mentioned, the Starfish parable. I don't know if you've heard it. Have you heard about it? speaker-1: I have not, and I would love to hear it. speaker-0: A child is walking along the beach, and this is a poem or a little story that's in a short story that's in a book. I just stumbled across it in the last few years because a friend of mine told him about it. This is one of his reasons to be in retirement. So the little boy's walking along the beach. There's a million starfish on the beach, the tide's out, they're all going to die. It seems to be inevitable. And the little boy's walking along, he picks up a starfish, he throws it back into the ocean, and he does another one. He he knows he can't save everybody. An old man, an adult who was adulting here and had lost a little bit of the child in him. It was walking along. He comes up to the boy and he says, What are you doing? And he says, Well, I'm helping the starfish. And he's like, Well, you're throwing one back at a time? He said, Yeah. And the old man says, Well, you're not going to make a difference. And he goes, No, I am going to make a difference. Because it made a difference for that one starfish. And if we can save one person from financial distress, or I save lives potentially in the ER, everybody thinks it's sexy and great. Well, yeah, and then it's fun, but there's not as much gratitude as you would think in the ER. It's more of an expectation. And when you're helping people with their wealth, with their life, with their life trajectory and, you know, purpose, meaning, identity, values, love. space, time, the big issues in life. When you help them with that, you get so much gratitude. It compounds for you. It isn't just, you're not doing it from a selfish place. You're doing it from a giving place. It's an internal thing. You love yourself, you want other people to love themselves. And you want them to feel empowered. You want all the tide raises all boats. You want to bring people with you. This is a great journey. Let's do it together. We say let's catch up to Fi together. You should not do this alone. You should not do life alone. You know, people in retirement are depressed and die sooner because they feel alone. Loneliness is a huge thing. You gotta cultivate community. And so that's what I'm doing now. The podcast started three years ago. It was a hobby. We thought we'd do 10 episodes. We knew that nobody was talking. To the late starter population. Nobody was really speaking the language of this is how you overcome your shame, remorse, regret, as we talked about, and get your financial life on track so that you can start your second chapter. You can get to the top of money maturity, personal maturity, and then exit into this wonderful world, the land of Oz, but you created it. So that's what I'm about. And being a creator as opposed to a consumer is just so robust. Bust. I am so excited about it. My brain is exploding with ideas. And the podcast has been a great conduit for my energy and attention. Two assets that are really important time. There's really four assets time, energy, attention, and money. But money is the least important. It's it's the least important. It's the twenty percent. the rest of it's the eighty percent, and it supports the other three. So the podcast, we now have, God. One point six million downloads. We started with two, three, four. It had an exponential trajectory because there was a ton of people in the financial independence community. And we want to reach the ones outside of it because there's a huge population. This this is like everybody's journey. We're speaking to most of the population, but they just haven't found us yet. But there is so much gratitude in our Facebook group, which is twenty thousand. People say all the time they get to be very vulnerable, and that's important. Being vulnerable with your story, you know, coming out of the closet in twenty twenty three as a late starter physician who'd gotten money all wrong felt really good. It was cathartic. It was transformational to my journey to the next chapter. And and people trusted me. And you have to trust that people aren't going to, you know, tear you down, tear you apart, shame you. It r it really felt good and then you take that energy into the creative domains. Because vulnerability breeds trust. When you're vulnerable with your kids, when you say, I'm sorry, I didn't get it right, I apologize. And there wasn't a lot of apology in my family growing up. This wasn't. And you forgive yourself, they can forgive you. And then they'll listen to you. Flipping the script, inverting it, inverting yourself from the inside out and showing your weaknesses. my gosh. In our population, I've had so many people say you saved my life. Thank you so much. You've changed my life. The gratitude in financial wellness, preventive wellness, emergency wealth care is exponentially larger than the gratitude I've gotten in medicine over thirty years. speaker-1: And that is exactly why this show exists is having that very, very first conversation, putting it out there that you can tell someone your money story and they can receive it and they can connect with some similarities or some differences, but there's not a right or a

wrong to a story. There's only a lesson. Right. And so I just love the comparison you talked about. And there's a framework I have is when you move from being a consumer. To a creator and how you kind of can balance being in both worlds all at the same time. But when we're in the grind and we're sometimes just in that hustle or that hamster wheel of parenting and working and saving, and it's easy to kind of get lost in what is the ending to this story. Thank you for for sharing that. Thank you for sharing your experiences, your vulnerability. Thank you for the work you're doing to shine a light on a corner of kind of the population that maybe doesn't get as much attention as it could or should when it comes to talking about freeing yourself from a money story that maybe is holding you back and opening you up to all kinds of possibilities that at the end of the day, that's what we want, right? We want it to be better for our kids than what we had growing up. speaker-0: I am convinced that we've accomplished that actually. And that is feels really, really rewarding. I want to cl I want to help end here by the hardest thing we do as kids or young adults is realize or understand our future selves or understand this last chapter. We're invulnerable, we're immortal, you're full of potential and human capital, we call it, but we need to reverse the secret. The secret to life. I've got it for you today. It's an open book test. It's not hard. You gotta read Bronny Ware's book, The Five Regrets of the Dying. There's more than that, but there's top five. And let me see if I can recount them. One of them is I work too much. I just worked too much. I was too focused on money, growing my wealth, and I didn't focus on time outside of work, the limited resource. I mean we spend a third of our lives asleep, a third of our lives at work. Well we've only got a third to play with that we have to maximize for life, as we talked about it. Not maximized for money, maximize our life wealth. But anyway, the other regrets. I didn't live the life that was true to myself. I skied in the tracks of somebody else and I didn't carve my own path. I didn't focus another one on family and friends. The important thing is to reverse engineer your life. If you optimize for not having inverted the regrets of the dying, then you will be on your deathbed. You will be at peace. And this can happen at any age, because you don't know when it's coming. And you have to do it throughout life. And you're going to make mistakes. You won't always get it right. You may not optimize for this at one point or another and have regrets. But you want to know that you left the world, you left it all on the table, you left the people in your life feeling good. I mean, you can talk about what's your epitaph on your tombstone. Well, you know, it's not going to be that I was a great doctor and this and that and everything. He was a good father and he had good relationships. And you know, for me, I don't want a tombstone. I want to be cremated. And I want my ashes to be spread in the most important experience of my life almost was where we got married in the mountains of Colorado, where we stood when we got married, to spread the ashes there, because I don't want my kids to go to a tombstone. You know, that's not so much fun. I want them to go have lunch at the little cookhouse where we got married that's up in the mountains at ten thousand feet with a beautiful backdrop. Have lunch and then think This is where my parents got married. You don't need words on a tombstone. And we talk a lot about legacy. Your legacy is what you leave in people. Your legacy is how you made them feel. You're not going to be remembered in two generations. I don't know who my great-grandparents are. I didn't really have a relationship with them. We will ultimately be forgotten, but you don't need your name on a building. That's you need To leave positive energy in the world, good relationships, your legacy has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with money. speaker-1: And with that, your legacy is exactly that. It's what you leave in them. And so, as a honorary kind of guest on the show, I have something for you. A new part of closing out the show, and it's a tradition. It is an amount of money that you get to choose how to use it, and then tell me why. So Your amount of money that was left to you by the previous guest is twenty six thousand dollars. What do you do with it and why? speaker-0: Great question. One of my most important personal finance books was Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. And one of my favorite quotes in that book is: between stimulus and response, or action and reaction, in that space, we have the choice, the important choice, and we need to expand that space to consider how we're going to react. So I'm pausing to think about what I would do with $26,000. And maybe in the grand scheme of things it isn't a lot, but I know what you would do because you've told me. And for any inheritance or wealth transfer that your kids get at your death, they're going to and look forward to give half of it away. And half of it is for them. Giving will be a part of it. I think somewhere between ten and twenty-five percent would go to our donor advice fund. That's where it would go, and probably first, because without Giving you can't receive abundantly, and you will receive in life so much more, exponentially more in giving you will receive more. And then the rest of it, I would go on a trip with my kids and my wife to a place that we'd all want to go. It doesn't have to be fancy. It could be a national park, but this summer we're taking our kids on a two week trip because they happen to have the time and the interest to in traveling with us. They can't do it on their own. We're going to Norway for two weeks. We're going to drive around and go through the fjords, figure out what Norway is about. And that's how the rest of it would be spent. speaker-1: I love it. And we were in Norway as a family last summer and it was fantastic. So seeing a glacier in real life is just priceless. So thank you so, so much, Bill. I'm going to close this out because there is just something that you said that stuck with me. It's that the kids are not just watching, but they're always learning. And what I heard from you today that stood out the most is You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have it figured all out. You can be a late starter and still make generational impact wherever you are in that journey. You just have to be willing to like be seen doing the work, be willing to have that very, very first money conversation. I want to invite you to step into your own money story today. You get to write what happens next. God's the ultimate author of your life. And you are the co-author of this money story because wealth without wisdom is wasted. So legacy again is not what you leave to them. It's what you leave in them. And so this week, have one money conversation that you've been putting off. We gave you several examples of just simple starters throughout our conversation today. I know it sparked something in you. So what I want you to do is not just consume information. Don't be a hoarder. That's what Bill said, right? Be a learner and learners mean that we apply and take action. Whether it's the dinner table, whether it's the carpool lane, wherever it is, you and someone that you want to share this money story with, have that conversation today. You don't need all the answers. You just need to open the book. I'm your host, Julia Myers, and we'll see you next time. speaker-0: Thanks a lot. This was great.