The Scope of Practice Podcast

Turn Your Financial Dream into a Plan - Dr. Jimmy Turner

• Brent Lacey • Episode 84

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Episode 83 - This week's guest is Dr. Jimmy Turner. Dr. Turner is a practicing anesthesiologist. But you might know him better by his online personality, The Physician Philosopher. Dr. Turner has been one of the most popular physician bloggers for several years and has helped thousands of physicians to turn their financial dream into plan.  Dr. Turner was in an ocean of debt just a few years ago, but he climbed out of that hole and is helping others do the same. If this situation sounds familiar to you, it's not a show you will want to miss. 

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Meet Jimmy Turner, M.D.

On the outside, Dr. Turner looked like he had it all together. From his days as the student body president of his medical school to the teaching awards and randomized control trial publications as an attending physician. He even had a successful online business as a podcaster and course creator.

But, on the inside, he was miserable. He constantly felt stuck. Burned out and overwhelmed, he kept looking for the next accomplishment or achievement to make him happy.

Dr. Turner didn’t realize until much later that there is a name for this. It is called an Arrival Fallacy – The idea that the “next thing” would be what finally makes him happy. He felt trapped in a life he didn't want. 

It was through mastering his mindset and his financial situation that he was finally able to live his life on his terms. Now, through coaching for physicians, Dr. Turner helps other doctors find the freedom he has found by helping them master their mindset, their money, and their balance.

 Connect to Dr. Jimmy Tuner 

Turn Your Financial Dream Into A Plan

2021, Brent Lacey And The Scope Of Practice Podcast
The Scope of Practice Podcast


Transcript

[0:00] Have you ever seen the movie or read the book Alice in Wonderland one of my favorite characters in that story is the white rabbit.
And in the movie version we first meet him as he scurrying away in a frenzied shouting about how he's going to be late no time to say hello goodbye I'm late I'm late I'm late he's running around like a chicken with his head cut off.
And I think that's how we often feel about things like our personal finances.
We come out of med school so far behind our peers buried under a mountain of debt and we just don't know where to start but we're running around we know we've got to get started we know we've got to do something we know we don't have a plan and we just and all of a sudden were just spinning in circles.
And sometimes we just have to stop take a deep breath and make a plan.
And that's why I'm excited about today's episode Our Guest today is going to walk us through a plan and philosophy to help us Achieve Financial Independence so that we can start moving toward our goals without ending up in the Mad tea party or something let's kick it.

[0:54] Music.

[1:01] Welcome to the scope of practice podcast where we help busy Healthcare professionals learn to manage their businesses successfully in master their personal finances now here's your host dr. Brent Lacey.

[1:14] Hey all thanks so much for joining me for the scope of practice podcast where you can get the knowledge and resources you need to grow your leadership skills your business and your personal finances.
Welcome to episode 84.
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It's a free 3 Day online event that we give physician families the tools resources and encouragement they need to strengthen their marriage and build wealth so that they can have the happy family and financial Independence they deserve.
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[3:39] My guest today is dr. Jimmy Turner dr. Turner is a practicing anesthesiologist but you may know him better by his online personality The Physician philosopher.
Dr. Turner has been one of the most popular physician bloggers for several years and he's helped thousands and thousands of Physicians to achieve their dream of financial Independence this concept of financial Independence.
Can be an elusive one but it's not as unattainable as we might think.
Dr. Turner for example was in an ocean of dead just a few years ago but he climbed out of that hole and is helping others to do the same so I'm excited to have him share his story with you
and hopefully you'll be able to take away some good ideas about you can achieve Financial Independence for you and your family so here is my conversation with dr. Jimmy.

[4:23] Music.

[4:29] Hey y'all I am super excited to welcome my guests today to the scope of practice podcast this is the physician philosopher himself dr. Jimmy Turner - Turner thanks so much for joining us
yeah thanks for having me on I'm super excited to be here yeah this is gonna be a lot of fun I'm excited I'm
you've been reading your stuff for quite some time I know we met for the first time last year at white coat investor conference but I've been following your stuff for you know for awhile before that.
And I really really love a lot of the the stuff that you have the content generally but more importantly I think what I really like about all the stuff that you write is
you've got the right polarity you've got the right attitude when it comes to money it's not
making money for the sake of making money it's making money so that you can provide well for your family so you can have Financial Freedom so you can develop
autonomy for your for your life you can have flexible choices you can have the career that is most fulfilling and I really really love that approach because I find that you know a lot of financial bloggers a lot of financial podcasters it's all about
it's all about the almighty dollar and you know we never really talked about the purpose behind it but I guess that's probably why you picked the name physician philosopher was because it was more than just about the bottom line.

[5:41] Yeah it's a funny story so you know I was a philosophy major in undergrad I was a double major in philosophy and chemistry and if I could go back I probably would have just been a philosophy major because it turns out that
I care a lot more about that stuff than I do about chemistry although I'm an anesthesiologist so I need chemistry I can I guess I can't throw it out completely a hundred percent
Brent like I mean I've always viewed that money is a means to an end it's not the end itself and.

[6:03] You know it's the gas that you put in the car to get your ideal life but it's not the end-all be-all and having a balanced view on that is super important and it's what's allowed my family to live the life that we live now and
at the same time I also found out on my journey that money didn't end up being the answer so you know it kind of validated it in my own life when I found that out after going part-time and I was like oh I still have lots of work to do.
Well and this is something that you didn't exactly come up with this you know that is a you didn't grow up with this stuff I mean you started out not even that long ago just I mean if people read your story I mean hundreds of thousand dollars in debt and just had a major major turnaround aside you know Financial Independence is worth pursuing so
flip the ship around and let's move in another Direction so I would love for you to share your that story with our listeners because I think there's probably some people that aren't familiar with it you know how did you go from where you start it to where you are now
yeah so I guess it depends on how far back we want to go but the the two stories that I like to share our first.
When I was a kid my dad was a nuclear engineer in New Jersey and I had two very.
Stark Christmas Seasons back-to-back so like basically
the first season we got everything that I wanted I mean I lived my dad made six figures back in the early 1990s which is a really good income back then and you know still is still much larger than the median income in our country but even back then it was even you know
larger in comparison and.

[7:32] And so that was kind of my experience for most of my life growing up and then the next year I was like on a pull-out couch listening to Pocahontas CDs with my sister like the night before Christmas and.
Living in my grandparents living room
and the reason why is because my dad got let go from his job after reporting a safety concern and racked up six figures credit card decks he got blackballed from the industry couldn't get a job.
And so ended up liquidating is 401K which would have been protected in the event wrapped up that six figures credit card debt and the bait and basically declared bankruptcy and so I went through bankruptcy before I was the age of 10.
And all I knew is that money just meant pain and so like I just had this like ignorance is bliss money mindset towards things and and honestly I.
I just ignored it because I knew that someday I was going to make attending physician money and all these mistakes would just be a drop in the bucket and then I made lots of mistakes
screwed up my disability insurance situation when I apply for that as a fourth-year medical student even though I have an essential tremor and so I didn't know that the guaranteed standard-issue policy was the thing and training that didn't require a medical exam or underwriting and I could have gotten it without
having any of that and they would never have known about my Tremor and so I to this day can't get disability insurance because I ignored my money ignored finance and ignored personal finance
and then you know I ended up for bearing on my debt for five years during training because I didn't figure this stuff out and so my my fellowship here and so you know my debt increased by a hundred and fifty percent.

[8:55] And finally after all that you know and a few other awesome stories I ended up
read the blogs I end up reading the books I ended up listening to the podcast I really started just chewing through this tough day in and day out and it became.
You know just a fascination of mine and I finally I figured it out you know mastered my money and so yeah we pick we paid off three hundred grand and
thirty months and increase your net worth by over half a million dollars in the same timeframe after I finish training and we're well on our way to being financially independent just from a pure saving standpoint borrow mid-40s.
And that's after screwing all that up so you know I love telling people like just because you've made some mistakes doesn't mean you can't turn it around because I made a lot of mistakes and we're going to be okay
and so it's been quite the journey
well so Financial Independence is this very nebulous concept I think to a lot of people I would love to have you as the philosopher tell us your philosophy of what does Financial Independence actually entail because there's a lot of different ways that you can Define that but how do you define Financial independence and why is that such an important
marker for us to be striving towards
yeah so the way that I teach teach this to my clients now for coaching experience my coaching clients is something called the hybrid Financial Independence model and so there's two schools of thought
and I combined the two because I think neither is right in and of itself so one school of thought is the traditional.

[10:13] Hey if you just save enough money some point you're going to have you know 25 or 30 times your annual spending and then you can draw down 4% of that based on the 4% rule in the Trinity study which said that you can safely do that and it will last 30 years
and that's kind of the traditional way of defining Financial dependence so if you want to spend a hundred grand a year you need 2.5 million dollars that's 25 x and that will allow you to retire,
around 60 65 I think that if you're in retire sooner and that numbers probably 30 to 33 and that will allow you to have a longer safer drawdown now there are people out there that think differently so let's just.

[10:47] Call 25 and make the math simple but that's one school of thought that's the traditional save you a passively managed index funds and accumulate your wealth until you get to
the point you have 25 times whatever your annual spending is when you want to retire
the other school of thought is more and I'll throw throw bloggers out there that people you know that when people know of rice that's that's Leaf a physician on fire right that's his like you know 25 x
kind of model and you know he obviously got that from a variety of other bloggers in the space to and I love Leaf right so Peter Kim over my buddy at passive income and D he's on the other side of the tracks where he says you know what I mean saving and passively managed index funds like those are all wonderful things but
I think that if you have enough cash flow coming in from any source of any kind
and it pays for your lifestyle that annual spending we were just talking about so $100,000 you use that example again if you have a hundred thousand dollars in real estate income coming in every year,
you're technically financially independent so long as those real estate properties are solvent and stable and continue to spit off that that money and so I think that a combination of those two things is probably right
where you can save you know and do diligently through passively managed index funds while you also build cash flow outside of Medicine.

[11:57] And that any combination of those two things it could be fifty thousand dollars from the saving strategy and fifty thousand dollars from the cash flow strategy and you're still financially independent so that is.
I call the hybrid Financial Independence model where you're combining any sort of combination of those two ideas I like it
so before we get into the nitty-gritty of it and really kind of drill down on some of these practical action strategies we can take I want to talk a little bit more about the philosophical side of things since I got the philosopher with me here so so I want to talk about
Building Wealth and what that looks like in terms of how it translates into Wellness or improved health I know this is something that's really big for you
with all of your coaching stuff is you know like we were talking about the beginning that it's not just about building money for for Building Wealth for Building Wealth sake it's for purpose and so I know you've experienced and seen a lot of people I'm sure through your coaching that have experienced you burn out and,
have you know struggles relationship struggles Health struggles things mental health struggles in a lot of cases and so I would love to hear from your experiences either for yourself or maybe with some of your coaching clients.
How do you see Building Wealth translating into Wellness or improved mental health improved physical health how does that Financial Independence really help us get to that.

[13:10] Yeah so I guess I'll finish my story first and I can tell you about some of the clients that we have
but you know after I paid off all that debt and increase my net worth and I you know have a multi six-figure online business now and I practice part-time on Thursdays and Fridays I was still miserable so it turned out that money money was not the answer.
Yeah I did a lot of soul-searching man I you know I got really burned out I had a couple of leadership positions passed me up in my hospital and I'd really kind of you know that's where my career was going and I really plan on that for a long time
and got passed up for that position multiple times and so yeah I just felt really unappreciated and burned out and undervalued and and so I ended up,
in the midst of all this I was starting to have some symptoms and I didn't I didn't connect those dots yet.
But you know I'm starting to sweat when other people weren't I couldn't sleep at night and my Tremor that I had already was getting worse I had my first panic attack on a golf course when someone teed off into a buddy of mine and me when we're standing in the Fairway
and ended up getting diagnosed with Graves disease so I was burning out had Graves disease.
And I was just a giant train wreck I was you know I got to the point I was possibly suicidal I was on antidepressants I was in therapy and yeah so money is not the answer and and you know being a God-fearing
you know husband and father like I knew that from the get-go but for some reason money seemed like The Logical way out of medicine because it's a financial problem.

[14:34] Write your.
Trapped by your student loans your non-competes and contracts the the other host of things that make doctor's feel trapped in medicine and so it's like oh well if I just get enough money then I can walk away or.
Say no or you know feel empowered to go part-time or what have you and then I found coaching and coaching kind of taught me that what I've been doing for so long was.
Basically being the victim of my story instead of the hero of it and I was giving all of my power over to the very system that was burning me out.
Instead of saying that I didn't have to let it be that way.

[15:08] And so we walk a lot of our clients all of our clients through basically that process of how to separate.
Your thoughts from the facts and the story and narrative that you're telling yourself that you are a victim of a system that can't be changed because the second that you accept that that like you're a victim of a system that can't be changed there's nothing left like there's no other options that's it.

[15:29] Because you've just admitted that the system is the problem and you can't do anything about it
and so I used to get really pissed off when people would say things like that when I was when I was burned out but like I can't believe you're blaming me like I'm the burned-out doctor it is the system's fault and and I get emails about that from time to time even
but I think what people fail to realize is that it is a system problem like the system's broken medicine is broken but that doesn't mean that you don't have any solutions that you individually can employ
through your mindset through your money through designing A Life That's balanced and so it's those three combinations of things that we walk or clients through and I've seen it happen and you know we've had over a hundred clients come through the alpha coaching experience at this point
and doctor after doctor after Doctor Who has fallen back in love with their job they have made a change and change to a different job based on you know.
Making a decision from a clean space some of left medicine together some of quit.
And you know walked into their their boss's office and said hey I've asked a couple of cut down my hours from 80 hours to 60 hours and you said no and so I'm leaving.
I know my self-worth I'm walking out this door.
And they went and got locums work you know two weeks later and and they're doing great they're happy and so you know we had family members cry.

[16:40] When doctors have done that and said.
Like this is like literally spouse told their physician counter spouse I want to name any names here give me identity but basically said like hey this is the best gift you've ever given me like you quitting medicine was the best gift you've ever given me because they were so miserable.
In their situation and so you know it's just
really about all of those things and like there's more there's more to this life than just making Bunches of money right I mean there's other things that fulfill us as human beings and finding balance and creating a life that you love a certainly you know part of that.

[17:13] Well and it really needs to be because like you said like you.
Instead of the beginning your experiences that you know there is no such thing as permanent Financial Security experience that when you're a kid I think a lot of people experience that last year with covid-19.
For for I mean for our practice we had we have a group of 22 docks and
from last April through last June everybody every dock was working for free.
I mean the doctor taking no salary we had to furlough or layoff 90-plus percent of our staff just to keep the lights on.
Everyone's doing Telehealth as much as possible just you know
just doing Telehealth as many possible points as we could cram in a day just to keep the lights on and pay anybody anything that we possibly could and keep the business running until the state let us open up again and
you know you can't do that forever and you can't do it at all if you don't really care about and really believe in what you're doing so I guarantee you that if there were people that were in our group that were there were struggling
you know for sure for sure last year would have been the final nail in the coffin for them as far as ending their interest in medicine but like you said I think it takes it takes a deliberate mindset shift you have to decide what your priorities are going to be and where you're going to place your faith.

[18:28] Yeah and I honestly Brent I think that's a great example of like why the narrative matters right people like no like there are facts and there are things that I believe and they're just they're just true.
And you know it's not the narrative and it's like okay so I can't tell you how many doctors I know that we're like you know what I don't even see the purpose of an emergency fund like I'm a doctor.
And my income is secure and I'm just going to be completely fine because I'm a doctor.

[18:52] And then a pandemic hit and they were still a doctor and now they're like I need 12 months of an emergency fund and like they're off the other end of the spectrum
and like the situation and being a physician and making money as a doctor that hasn't changed you know the pandemic changed.
But really their thoughts about like an emergency fund in like the fact that like oh maybe this isn't always a secure as I thought it would be you know is is different now it's kind of an interesting thing because people have gone from one one end of the spectrum to the other like having no emergency fun because their doctor to having
12 months which is.

[19:23] Unnecessary well it's been interesting to actually observe so I do a lot of coaching on business and Leadership and one of the things that's been very interesting is to see the shift from people who are
looking for an employee to model employed physician model to more of an employer physician model in 2018 was the first year that,
National surveys have Physicians showed that more than fifty percent of Physicians were employees rather than employers and
if you want to be an employee that's that's fine if you want to be an employed physician that certainly find nothing wrong with that but
there was a huge shift that direction over the previous about 20 years and I'm starting to see that tide turn a little bit I think
a lot of people are experiencing after last year that okay maybe the financial security is not quite so secure as I thought it was I saw articles from like Chicago for example that there was there was one series of urgent care centers or ERS where they legitimately let go of
all other ER Doc's like 25 docs or something and replaced everybody wow with nurse practitioners and PAs and listen I have NPS and PAs to work for me and I think they're great and I love.

[20:27] But the the point is not you know who's better the point is that the air ducts all of a sudden lost all their lost their job and their no one else is hiring
because there's nobody can pay anybody so it's definitely important for us to recognize that you know we're not as recession-proof we're not as recession resistant as maybe we thought so I think this idea of
becoming financially independent is super valuable if for no other reason than it gives you choices that gives you security and gives you confidence that when
crisis hits you like okay well you know what if I lose my job
okay well I've got I got money coming in from various other income streams and I'm going to be just fine and so you make different decisions when you're not panicked and you're not stressed you can make more informed more wise choices,
yeah and I think that you hit the nail on the head so if you ask people that are burned out like even before the pandemic like why are you burned out that they'll say.

[21:22] 17 different things but they all come down to autonomy I feel like I don't control my job and my life and financial Independence this is why it.
Becomes the automatic aha like this is the answer because this provides autonomy and control in your life and so it I think that.
We believe that so strongly and you're right I think that you know it's kind of like getting mad at a car because you need to put gas in it like money is the
the gas you put in the car to get to the destination you want to go I can't get mad he got to put gas in the car maybe he's not as good of an analogy now today that we have you know Tesla's and Vivian's and all sorts of crazy electric vehicles but you know the point was standing like we use that.
Autonomy and control because we're not happy and then you know we get we do we we go and we buy a house we buy a car and we put the kids in private school because we want those things to make us happy suffer from an arrival fallacy because we believe that idea so strongly
that you know one day will arrive with all these purchases and I'll make us happy but I think that money.
Is a tool and it absolutely can provide you autonomy if it's wielded properly.

[22:25] If it's not it can destroy you just as quickly on the other end by using it to buy things that aren't going to you know provide that long-term sustained happiness and this is coming from and unabashed.
Admittedly car guy like I love cars so I'm not hitting a car spelling well I want to ask you about some specifics now so let's let's
really drill down and give people some practical action things you've mentioned a few different things that are maybe common mistakes that people make with money so you mentioned you know not having an emergency fund you mentioned the arrival fallacy which is a really really helpful thing I call it the my turn fallacy you know
what is it going to be my turn oh my gosh it oh every time I hear that as soon as I hear that that phrase I think it's my turn now you know for whatever a vacation of new car a bigger house a private school whatever none of which are evil by the way but as soon as you start saying those words I deserve it it's my turn I've waited long enough
as soon as I hear that I'm like oh someone's about to make a mistake so what are some of the big mistakes that you see Physicians make with their money
I mean the biggest one honestly is just not caring about it so I mean nobody should care about your money more than you do
like I don't care if you have a financial advisor and I'm not anti financial advisor if you have a financial advisor
you should still care more about your money then your financial advisor that's by far and away the most common so you know I like to I like to break doctors up into three different groups because.

[23:51] It's a philosopher me like to categorize everything right so it's like the you know the group that is the DIY
personal finance person writes like I don't have a financial advisor I probably never gonna have a financial advisor I eat breathe and sleep.
Personal finance all the time and so but that's a very small fraction of doctors and I don't expect most practicing Physicians to become that kind of doctor.
Second group is the dot the I's cross the t's so you're you know you're making sure that things are taken care of with a financial advisor but you're actually probably smart enough to do it yourself you just want someone to dot the I's and cross the t's make sure not do anything stupid I want every doctor to at least be in this group.

[24:26] And third group is the you know.
The Outsource Group that you know they outsourced like their Lawn Care their child care or anything else that they Outsource and like I got a money guy got a money gal they're just going to deal with my problems for me.
And so most doctors unfortunately are in that third group and so they're like oh no I just trust my financial person and it's unfortunate because the financial industry.
Time and time again with doctors.
Has a long and storied history of just hosing Physicians and in like I used to be kind of like worried about saying that behind a microphone but like honestly it's the truth
and there's data to back this up like they they spend much much much more money and time on marketing products than they do on helping educate people including doctors and so I think that's the probably the biggest problem that is the most common as well but then.
A close second is probably asset protection so most doctors for some reason or the other think that they don't need to have proper disability insurance they don't need to have proper life insurance.
And it's for a variety of reasons sometimes we're like oh well
you know I'm in training I'm young and healthy like I'll just get it later you know and then they get diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder or they get cancer or they
get hit by a car I mean like everything like things happen I was I was in my early 30s I got those diagnosed with Graves disease and had anxiety and depression and became uninsurable by every
measurable standard and so I like it happens and all the reasons to like you're like oh yeah well I'm married to another physician so I don't need disability insurance like they're my disability insurance policy and it's like that works until you both get in the car.

[25:55] That you're driving together because you're married or you know one of you loses your job and the other one gets disabled I mean like there's a variety of things like you.

[26:03] Just having proper asset protection.

[26:06] To protect your most important asset which is your income is for some reason something that doctors skip all the time but.
Yeah I think that those are probably the top too you know I've taught my head that I think well there's a close third student loans so I mean the amount the amount of student loan problems that people make I mean I was sitting brow sitting at appreciate this is surgery.
Is it
my hospital is awake or I'm an anesthesiologist and one of the surgery residents like hey I read your book I was like oh great I hope it wasn't terrible I hope you got you know some some help from it he's like nose is really good it was depressing I was like depressing it's a it's a personal finance book.

[26:44] And he's like yeah I realized that I was in the wrong program he's a single guy nail surgery resident.
And had been for five years and wasn't in revised pay as you earn and so he calls himself something like 40 Grand.
In the last five years by being in the wrong person in the wrong refinancing program right the wrong income-driven repayment program
and so my $25 book would have saved him 40 Grand 5 years ago and so he was kind of depressed that he hadn't read it sooner and and like that's the importance of not being you know the ostrich that puts it you know your head in the sand says I'm just gonna think about this stuff later because it will come back to cost you and people that decide to.
Refinance their loans when they should do Public service loan forgiveness that's a six-figure some mistake you know that's a hundred two hundred three hundred thousand our mistake and so.
I think those are probably the big ones asset protection ignoring things completely and then your student loans
so I want to talk about debt and the role of that plays in getting to financial Independence because there is
robust I'll say sometimes the right word would probably be angry debate that exists in the blogosphere about paying down debt investing and the Wendy start both of those.
You guys your for your family decided to really attack that very early on I mean you mentioned three hundred grand and 30 months I mean you guys went
after it is absolutely crushed it why was that such an important part of your financial plan and do you feel like that's something that should be important to everybody or is it just.

[28:09] Your personal choice but maybe everyone's a little bit different so this goes back to the narrative right so my narrative growing up was my parents going through bankruptcy.
And my parents spending every dollar I've ever seen them spend so this day on credit cards.
Now they pay them off now but back then they didn't and so everything was debt in my life I was fortunate I got a full ride in undergrad.
And I actually believe or not burn I had a full tuition scholarship medical school all of my debt came from living expenses I lived it up and then that compounded.
And so it's an interesting thing but what I realized is that debt meant shackles dettman enslavement.
And I connected that dot really quickly when I started learning about personal finance and was like oh so if I make $300,000 a year.

[28:59] And let's say you know let's say I bring home let's rough back the napkin math let's say use $15,000.

[29:04] And six thousand dollars of that or 5,000 dollars of that is going towards debt payments.
House car student loans so on and so forth that means that five thousand dollars every month is.
Something that could go away and that in fact if I paid off that five thousand dollars a month in debt I can go part time and bring home $10,000 a month.

[29:26] And still live the same exact lifestyle and so I learned pretty quickly that paying off my debt meant freedom.
And I did that I went part-time because I started struggling and I thought part-time work was the answer by the way that turns out that's not also not the answer that is a tool you can use but that mindset stuff you're not getting around it you can you can figure it out now or figure out later but
it is freedom and so I recognize that you can leverage debt I recognize that you can you know buy a property.
Have dead on that property and make more money because you have more debt but for me.

[29:59] That wasn't the narrative that I grew up with and honestly even after working through my own Financial mindset because.

[30:05] Their coaches out there that just do money coaching and they'll tell you like this idea that debt is bad is it's just a thought like it's just something that you think and it doesn't have to be that way and you can think differently about debt as an opportunity and none of that's wrong
but for me when I realized how much freedom I could get from paying off my debt and still live the same lifestyle and still save a bunch of money after paying off that debt
it just made so much sense and so you know I don't think that one's one's right and one is wrong I think you have to figure out what resonates more for you
but I will tell you that it is a slippery slope for some people when they start going into the debt mindset and they're like oh I can use this to do great things and it's like well yeah but then
quickly debt kind of become something you're numb.

[30:48] And you just make it worse and worse and worse until like it is actually a problem well it only works as long as it works so if you're if you're leveraged if you're leveraged to the hilt and you're just
barely making enough to cover all your financial obligations and
your living expenses and all of a sudden your hours get cut by 50% or you lose your job or you have you know something major that happens where you don't have an income stream coming in anymore then.
You have no cushion you have no margin and I know for me and my wife that was kind of the same thing for us we decided very early on that we want to debt to be out of our Lives because.
Like you said I think the number one thing for us the number one thing that we valued for our family in terms of money was autonomy and flexibility we wanted to be able to be the masters of Our Own Destiny and so.

[31:35] Your listeners to the podcast I've heard the story from you before but you know when we decided we were going to pay off all of our debts before we before my wife and I both finish fellowship and we finished paying off all of our debts with about.
A year and a half to go on her fellowship or so and we honestly could have paid it off a little bit sooner but I had a loan at like two percent and so I just wasn't in as big a hurry as I otherwise could have been but I was in the Navy and had a pretty steady job and felt like it was.
Reasonably secure and then once it got down to about 50,000 left I was just so annoyed looking at that on my network spreadsheet every month okay this is ridiculous we're not going to sing out I don't want to look at this red number anymore I'm just sick of it and it ended up being incredibly valuable because when we got
close towards the end of Fellowship you know that was when my first son was born and.
We were a year apart on our fellowship my wife and I we were here behind him she's here behind me in med school and so we were so I was finishing my fellowship.

[32:30] When she was getting ready to go in her third year.
And so that's when the Navy moved me to Pensacola and so we were moving from San Diego California to Pensacola Florida that is too
thousand that's a smart move that is a serious move and sew
the problem with that is that Katherine was still going to be stuck in California for for the next year doing her fellowship and so we were left with a choice of okay is she going to stay because.
I'm the property of the government at that point I had no choice I am going to Florida and either she's coming or not and so either so the choice was go to Pensacola where she's not going to be able to do a GI Fellowship because there's nothing close I mean we look there was nothing with him
the closest thing was New Orleans 3 hours away and wow you know you can't really function that way.

[33:15] And so either she's going to stay in California and basically be a single mom for a year and we'll try to see each other every 6th weekend or whatever when we both have the calls schedules aligned and money and whatever else and or she's going to decide you know what I am just going to take a break from fellowship for a while and come back to it later or whatever
and one of the things that was really great is that
she was in a position where she was able to make a choice to not only stop doing her fellowship and she decided she wanted to take a break from medicine for a little while because you know she was definitely struggling and she's written about this before that.
It just wasn't the.

[33:52] The excitement and the there are all say this way the reality of medicine was just not living up to the ideal of medicine like she just doesn't like writing she doesn't like you know a lot of the administrative stuff she's amazing with her patients and it's just an amazing person and just.
You know just drained with all the writing all the admin stuff and so we were able to make a choice to have her stop working for a while.
But we had deliberately structured our lifestyle to where we were living on only my income we were saving 20 we were saving twenty percent of my income and living on the other
80%
and we were saving a hundred percent of her income and so from a financial standpoint it was a no-brainer we didn't have to think about it for two seconds all we had to think about was What mattered to her and what matter to our family and having that autonomy
you can't put a price tag on that I wouldn't trade the last five years that we've had where she's been able to stay home with the boys for anything it's been fabulous been fantastic
yeah we did something similar so we saved Christians entire income whenever she.
Todd she's an educator and and we've always we've always done that ever since I started learning about this stuff so she's
she's never really brought him well actually that's not true because because we maxed everything out she had to bring him something and so she brought him like I would say like a hundred bucks a month or something like that.

[35:08] But we filled up her her 457 and her 401k and she also has you know a pension from the state and so like it was kind of the way that we did things too and.
And you know and it's an interesting thing because like if you figure this stuff out early enough.
Like you can't get back your time like if you're listening to this like I mean that's the most important thing I can teach you about money is time.
Start early as the saying right like the best time to plant a tree was a hundred years ago the next best time is today like you just have to
you have to start you're not getting your time back and if you just start early.

[35:40] The earlier you start the more amazing compounding interest is and it's pretty incredible but yeah I mean it sounds like you guys were just hammering away and and able to,
you know take a step back so you didn't need the money your lifestyle didn't dictate you needing that money well and none of this is
easy but it is simple I mean it's this is all sixth grade math it's very basic concepts but it's not easy I mean you have to make individual choices a thousand times a month you know to not spend here to save a little more there or to you know choose to invest or you know or pay attention to what your taxes are doing and things like that so one of the things that I find that tends to paralyze people is lack of a plan and so whenever I'm doing coaching with folks one of the things that
tends to come up over and over again is when people come in they have all these different things so you have got these student loans here and I've got this
practice I want to buy into but we're also kind of in a place where we want to buy a house but but you know then we have this opportunity for this real estate and they've got 25 things that they want to be able to do with their money
and all of them are good but not all of them are necessarily good right now and for sure you can't do a hundred percent of them all at the same time so
when you're sitting down with someone for some was first coming to you to establish a long-term financial plan and figure out how do I put all these things together.

[36:58] Where do you start with folks you start with the mindset you start with a practical I mean how do you how does that first coaching session go what are you what are you working through.

[37:07] Yeah so the coaching Inn in Aces is
it's kind of interesting so we have three different things that we teach people about so there's this tire video course library that talks about mindset money and then your ideal life and inside the money pillar there's structure to it.
And actually one of the most painful things and it's kind of funny because this is very anti coaching so typically in coaching my job is to be a non-judgmental mirror because like.
The people that I'm coaching or educated intelligent Physicians.

[37:36] And so I don't think that I can tell them what to do I think that they probably know what to do they just kind of need the framing and the questions and the right sort of thoughts to be out there in order for them to make the right decision.
But it's a bit Socratic in terms of like hey have you thought about this like oh I haven't thought about that.
That's a good idea like yeah well I mean something to chew on right and but I don't tell them what to do.
But I will say that that inside the the money pillar there is definitely like a step-by-step and the reason for that is because I can't tell you that I'm or times like I would try to help people parse through that process.

[38:10] And ultimately there like Jimmy Mac I like legitimately the mindset stuff I want you to do what you're doing but can you just can you tell me what to do and.
It's really it's really pretty interesting because I agree with you that you asked 12 people you're going to get 12 different answers.
And you know what a great example of this honestly.

[38:30] Is someone that I think is by the way and I'm going to find a bunch of people right now sorry Brett terrible for Physicians so Dave Ramsey great great.
Work that he's done in the general American population but has you know examples where he's told people basically like just don't trust Public service loan forgiveness he's so anti-death they like he tells people just to refinance their debt and then just to pay it off and live on Ramen.
Ah but like I gots a real program it really does benefit Physicians and people are actually having their debt forgiven right now so
don't do that but the beauty of this system is that it is very step by step.
And so like there's no question about it okay I'm on Step 1 and step 2 then step 3 and so people love his stuff because it's so just.
In order and you know whether it's right or not it's in order and you know where you are and you know clearly what the next step is.
And when you're a busy physician sometimes you just want somebody to be like.

[39:23] Like what is a reasonable thing to do here right and so when it comes to debt everyone's got a different opinion like at what point
is it okay to have debt around like you mentioned earlier you like I had this 2% thing and like I was just like you know and so everybody's got a number is it three percent is it four percent is it five percent I don't know I bet you ask 10 of us and you get 10 different answers for me it's for
I bet for others it's three and four others still it's five and for you know people that love debt it could be 10 I have no idea but you know I.
Absolutely start with the mindset part because.
And this is where my personal finance curriculum at wake for the medical student starts to is with that exact concept because unfortunately most people and a book great book if you haven't read it how to think about money by Jonathan Clements fantastic book on Personal Finance but.

[40:10] I can teach you everything you need to know about money from like a numbers standpoint and like the order in which to do everything but if you don't know why you're doing any of it it doesn't really matter.

[40:18] And so the first thing that we go through is the three Kinder questions in my personal finance curriculum and basically drill down on what is most important to you and then.
Point out the discrepancy between what you just said is most important to you know your family your faith your health being able to travel spend time with friends and family and the discrepancy between those things and what you actually spend your money on.
Which is a bunch of stuff that's not in that list and so we start there but then yeah we eventually get to a point where like it's a step-by-step process.
I love it well and having the step-by-step plan is certainly super helpful but you know I hope that as people are listening to this or really getting a good sense for
why we are talking about the philosophy it's not just because I'm talking to the physician philosopher but because the stuff actually matters I mean this stuff if you don't have the right reason it's the same kind of thing like for.

[41:09] You know whatever I've got pre-med students that are working with me or that are shadowing me one of the things that I try to do is,
I try to make it just a little bit painful for them or just give them a glimpse into the challenges that we have to go through as Physicians so that they can sort of peek behind the curtains because what I always tell people is
if it only takes me a week of you shadowing me for me to convince you that you want to not be a doctor you needed to be convinced.
And so it's you need to not do it for your parents you need to not do it for your for the money you need to not do it for the prestige you need to do it because it's something that you feel like
the fates have called you to it like the destiny has aligned to bring you to that place and I feel like it's the same thing with money if you don't have your mind wrapped around money the right way if you don't have your
your philosophy said if you don't have your value set if you don't have the understanding of where you are going and why then a you'll
quit when the going gets tough and be you may find that you know you've climbed the ladder only to realize that you had at leaning against the wrong wall the whole time.

[42:13] Yeah and that's a painful lesson to learn.

[42:16] Well this has been a great conversation Jimmy I'm really excited that you were able to come on the show and we've tried to schedule the several times yeah like so I'm super happy we were able to get this to come together but,
you know I know you've got a lot of other great stuff on your website and your podcast I would love for you to tell people how you they can connect to you and get.
More content continue the conversation maybe get some coaching if that's something that they're interested how people can how can people connect to you.

[42:40] Yeah so you're listening to this on a podcast and so my presumption is that.
Podcast for your thing so there's two one on mine set that's called The Physician philosopher podcast and the others on money it's called money meets medicine and where I get to make fun of my co-host every week while making money entertaining.
And so those are the two podcasts and of course you can find me at the physician philosopher.com as well.
Awesome I'll make sure I have all the links for that in the show notes for people to go check out those dr. Jimmy Turner The Physician philosopher so be sure to go check out the website the podcast
he's got a lot of great articles on Personal Finance very practical stuff in addition to some of the philosophical stuff and definitely pick up a copy of his book it is a
fabulous fabulous book I've read it and I highly highly recommend it with our Turner thank you so much for joining us on the scope of practice podcast see we really appreciate it.

[43:27] Yeah thanks for having Brent.

[43:28] Music.

[43:34] Financial Independence doesn't have to be a pipe dream after all a dream is just a goal without a plan so maybe you just need a plan.

[43:43] And I hope this conversation with dr. Turner is giving you both some abstract Concepts some philosophical ideas and hopefully some really concrete practical suggestions
to help you construct this plan for yourself now if you need additional help constructing a plan and figuring out how you're going to achieve this dream of financial Independence you can always contact me at Brent at the scope of practice.com or click the links in the podcast description to email me and I'll be happy to help you myself another great resource for you don't forget
you can sign up for free for the marriage and money MD Summit which is taking place November 15th through 17th at www.marriageguy.com money MD.
Cam seriously guys don't miss out on this amazing Summit it's free and it's full of amazing speakers and phenomenal.

[44:31] Sign up today just click the links in the podcast description
and don't forget if you upgrade to the all-access VIP pass by November 14th one day before the conference you get lifetime access to the presentations
10-plus hours of bonus content of free online financial planning course to give you a concrete step by step plan for Building Wealth
MP3 files of all the talks and exclusive access to join the live Q & A sessions after the summit presentations each night
tickets are $99 until November 14th so take advantage of great savings and upgrade now before the price goes up on November 15th either way sign up for free and make sure you join us it is going to be an awesome
awesome set of three nights just click the link in the podcast description register for free today.

[45:14] Hey thanks so much for joining me on the scope of practice podcast today you can also find all those resources in the show notes at www.scopemonth.com
/ episode 84 that's www.thekingofrandom.com episode 8 4 or again just click the link in the product description.
Thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to the scope of practice podcast at www.viscambio.net.

[45:42] Music.