Overcoming Student Loans & PT School Debt With Tess Waresmith

I'm telling you on the podcast we have a little bit of a left turn here from the normal gymnastics content and then we're going to actually dive into a bit of content around money and student loan debt and investing .

And the reason I had this podcast put together is every three to four months we get a new patch of students that come through Champion for their doctoral rotations , but then also we have student interns .

We have lots of people that are kind of mentoring underneath us , inside of our crew , and obviously we teach them about , you know , career , life , student loans , all that kind of stuff .

But weirdly enough , almost always there is some sort of conversation related to student loan debt and investing and getting a job and managing money and kind of getting ready for life .

Most of the people that we work with are kind of right at the tail end of their graduate degree and so they've gone through a lot of school , they have a lot of student loan debt and they have a lot on their plate and they're a bit worried , along with , just you know , learning how to be a clinician or kind of exist in the career world .

They're often always asking questions related to this kind of stuff , and so one of my patients actually Tess is a financial educator and she started coming in last year for her rehab . And all of the students that I work with or have started asking Tess questions about like , what do I do with my student loans and how should I do this ?

Should I pay my credit card off ? Should I buy this ? Should I ? You know what about a house ? I want to get married , blah , blah , blah .

And so , like you know , tess was helping a lot of these people anyways and it just kind of brought up this idea for me that you know it's probably really important to have someone to come on the podcast and just help people with this very kind of taboo subject about money and investing and student loan debt .

And you know someone who had a ridiculous amount of student loan debt and had to grind really hard to kind of get my head above water . I appreciate Tess and the education that she's putting out , and so Tess is great . The way she describes stuff is very helpful and I think she gives us a very kind of step by step approach .

So this is really the episode for anyone honestly in healthcare or who just is a new grad who wants to understand , you know , managing student loan debt . What are these kind of interest rates they talk about and should I pay them off first ? Should I start with the , you know , investing ?

Should I do something with my 401k if I'm at a new job and they're giving me these options to work with ? Lots of really good , good kind of conversations around these basics and , I think , honestly , a lot of people I shared this episode with early and they said it was one of those helpful episodes that we've put out .

So I'm all about just trying to help people and , you know , get them good information , and this is a great situation of something where maybe not about gymnastics particularly , or about very specific you know , dorky physical therapy things , but things .

But I think , unfortunately , we'll give a lot of people a lot of help and so , yeah , if you guys enjoyed this episode , just go ahead and tag us on Instagram Tess is a wealth with Tess and then , obviously , shift . We have our account . Tag us , let us know what you think .

I'd love to hear your feedback on if it's helpful and if you like this kind of content . I'm happy to do a little bit more of it , but hopefully this all is a great episode for you with Tess . Okay , hello , how are you ?

Man , I mean this at being , yeah , you're expert at being a patient , that champion and following a rehab protocol perfectly well , um , but yeah , I mean the short story for people listening is that you know , tess was a patient of mine and we treated her , but within 30 minutes of us talking like small talk , we're like , oh , what do you do ?

It's like , oh , like I work in , like you know , education for finance and like investing . I was like , oh , no way , I have an online business . And we just talked way more business and more like the backend work than actual PT and stuff like that . And then the conversation turned into students . This is're always like , oh , what do you do ?

And you tell them and they're like , oh my God , I have so much debt . Like , what should I do ? Like Maddie the other day was like , oh my God , me , me .

And then I started realizing that , like , every student group that comes in has the same exact thing Like they're trying to work hard and get a job and they're like I have no idea how I'm going to overcome $150,000 or $200,000 or $250,000 in debt and I feel like maybe I haven't done a good job or we haven't done a good job as a career profession of helping

people do that . I learned it from Mike because Mike's really good with finance , but yeah , that's the background to this . So can you give people the two minute elevator pitch on like who you are , what you do is like that's different than the normal podcast guest , and then we'll dig into questions .

I am a financial educator , a speaker and an investor , and , at this point , I've dedicated pretty much my whole life to helping the average person that didn't have a financial education just like me learn how to manage and grow their money using super simple financial strategies and simple investing strategies .

And about 12 years ago , I started investing in the stock market and real estate , and I was lucky enough to do that early on . My first job out of college was actually as an aerial acrobat and high diver on a cruise ship , so , weirdly enough , that was part of my financial journey , because I was able to save a lot of money .

And then I proceeded to make all the mistakes , all the investing mistakes . I lost tens of thousands of dollars of mistakes , and what I realized is that the traditional model of finance just doesn't serve most people .

Most financial advisors are working with very wealthy people , and so I wanted to share what I had learned , do things differently and give people the opportunity to take control of their money by providing digestible , jargon-free education . So , as a financial educator , I don't give any specific financial advice .

My goal is to teach people as much as possible and empower them to be able to manage their money and make smart decisions , and that can include finding the right professionals when you need them . It can also include vetting the right professionals , too , because not all financial professionals are created equal . So that's what I do now and now .

I work with organizations , I speak with corporate organizations , I run group coaching programs and I have online courses as well .

I learned a lot in the last two to three years , but also , like , for the first seven to eight years of my career , I was in the camp of like money is like it's such a large number . I had 200,000 in debt . It was such a big number that I essentially just like closed my eyes and looked the other way and just like worked really hard .

I was like I don't know how I'm going to pay it down , but if I just like work in the clinic and I coach gymnastics and then I just start like you know a company on the side , I can make some extra money . I , oh , I can just pay this down fast . I quickly realized that , like God damn it .

As soon as I pay off this , I have to get a house , I have to eventually get married and I'm going to have like all this other shit to pay for . And I was like this is eternal , this , this isn't like a uh , eternal boulder uphill . There is a possible thing to get out of .

So , yeah , I'm probably the perfect uh avatar for someone who's on the other side , Like I once looked up at 200,000 . I just heard in the clinic people are throwing out numbers of like quarter million , 250 , someone in their wife .

They're both in their 300 plus , and so I heard a really sad story on Ramit Sethi's podcast that two physical therapists were considering not having kids because they were so scared of the financial burden that it would take , and so , yeah , I feel like it's a taboo subject that all people in healthcare particularly that's probably the people who will listen to this

like nurses I know you talk to nurses , but PTs , ATs , people just want to work in healthcare and do a good service and help people and they get smacked with massive amounts of debt . So I know you work with a lot of entrepreneurs , but also people who are kind of in this scary situation . What do you see , or what are the things they're telling you ?

Are they similar to mine ? Are they different ? Are there different problems that they have that I don't see .

It's a tough situation , like even if your degree is going to help you have a good salary and job security and do meaningful work , which is amazing . Having debt of that size is very overwhelming psychologically and emotionally .

And it's not like you get this debt and , at the same time , somebody is like also , here's the plan of how you manage this when you're done . No one helps you with that . You kind of like , sign this paperwork , get these loans and there's no conversation around how to actually manage that money and , at the end of the day , paying off debt .

Learning how to invest , learning how to manage your money it's a skill , and so I think , when you have a volume that big , what I'm always trying to tell my students is you're incredibly talented and smart .

Right , if you've chosen this career , you are obviously intelligent and money is just a skill , but it feels like something much bigger than that , because there's so much emotion and psychology tied up in it , and the way you were brought up can impact your relationship with money or tendency to bury your head in the sand If you have a huge amount of debt .

So I guess I would say the thing that I tell my students first is to be nice to yourself , like if you're having trouble paying this off , stop giving yourself so much crap about it , because it's not . You're not like born learned how learning how to do this and how to manage your money .

So while you do have to give yourself grace , then you have to come up with a plan and and take action steps to actually start to pay that down and to make smart financial decisions . And that's where education can come in and really help with that .

And then they have people on the other side of the spectrum who you know I don't want to go into specific educators elsewhere but they say , like you can never buy , anything , like like no , no Starbucks , no coffee , no going out .

Like do like burn it to the ground until you pay off all your debt for at least five to 10 years and just blackout and like . I went through a lot of those podcasts and education and I was like that sounds awful , that sounds like I'm going to get depressed . That sounds like for 10 years I have to deal with mental health and depression .

Not spending money , not going out , not buying anything , just to get ahead on my loan , just to then pick up a house mortgage or something like that .

So you know , I personally found that , like you know , ramit Sethi's work and others was like a nice medium , which is , like you know , spend money on things that you care about but also save ruthlessly on things you don't .

And we'll get into the conversation of like saving and investing is one thing , but if you're spending money on dumb shit , that by the skin of their teeth and not really enjoying your life , is that what you see ? Are there other people kind of like problems with how they cope with it ?

It's easier to do that right , to make a decision , to be like okay , I'm just going to , you know , join the fire movement , which is financial independence , retire early , and that's often associated with people wanting to save every single penny , pay off debt as fast as possible , live a super Spartan , minimalist life , and a lot of those people do end up pretty

miserable , right ? And then some of that advice is really dangerous , because not only is it a miserable way to live , but it's also really hard to sustain . And just like , it's just like a crash diet , right , if you swear off everything sugary for months and then you , you never eat .

All of a sudden you don't eat carbs , and then you like sit down and you're blackout eating like a loaf of bread . Like it's the same with money , right ? So none of that's ever happened to me . Um , so I think , so I . So I do think that there are a lot of extremes .

What I love to talk to my students and clients about is the idea of three to five really intentional years , and how that can change everything .

And so there is something to be said for making some I don't want to call them extreme , but maybe impactful choices , like , for example , if you're in a position where you have a ton of debt and a decent salary but you've got a long way to go and you want to make progress on that , taking some more drastic measures to really move the needle , like , for

example , moving to a place that's a little bit more affordable , getting a roommate trading in your new car for a used car , like those are the things that are going to move the needle , not buying lattes it's a lot of lattes to try to keep up with big moves like that . So that's what I try to tell my students .

So , to answer your question , yes , I definitely see those two extremes and that's where creating an intentional spending plan where you're really clear on what your goals are , what you like to spend money on , and being really intentional at sticking to that to make sure that you stay on track with really what you want . So that's where we start

this whole conversation . Before I even get into the strategies of like debt payoff and how to invest , the first conversation is what do you care about and what do you want to do Like what's important to you ? And if paying off debt is important to you , then let's make sure we prioritize that .

For some people it's like the autonomy to be able to have flexible work hours right , they can work four days instead of five or something like that . So I think the person on the other side of this podcast is don't just think about like well , I need to save it all and pay off my loan just because , like really think down , like what do I care about ?

Is it like a vacation ? Is it helping my dog have to make those hard choices ? Or like make those sacrifices . It's a little bit more resonant and a couple of things I think are really important here . So I can just give the example of that .

When I started out from PT school , I remember not knowing anything about loans or how much I took out , and I realized that I took out 10 grand twice for 10 to 11% loans . So I took heinous loans out .

That's a ridiculous percentage , but in the moment I was like , yeah , I just need to pay for my apartment and my books and I'm going to buy this loan whatever else . And this was in 2008 with a great financial crisis , so that's why it was so bad , but I didn't realize at the time . But then when I got out , I was um coach .

I was doing my hourly stuff at the clinic and it was just breaking me .

Even so , my salary was essentially paying all my living from coaching gymnastics and I was like , okay , well , if I just essentially auto draw out money from every checking account into this like extra on top for Sally Mae at the time it was 300 bucks extra that I had from coaching per month .

That's like , okay , I can live on my PT salary and I can take my coaching money and I can put that towards just a little bit extra .

And honestly , $300 a month on top of I was already paying a thousand for my um my debt , paying a thousand for my um , my debt $1,300 a month , like rip down some of my high interest rates , and I feel like it wasn't a huge . Like , oh , my God , this is so overwhelming .

It was just like I never see this money , like it never hits my checking account because it gets auto drawn out right away and the other things . I think a lot of students or PT people have skill sets , whether you're PT , pa , nursing , like .

I know some people who work per diem one day per month or one day per week and they go to a hospital and drop in for per diem and they make double or triple their hourly rate because they're covering for somebody else or they do educational work . They do some some screening consulting work , they do soft tissue work . They do so much other stuff .

There's so many things in health care that you can do extra hours for or have extra ways to make money . What I highly recommend people don't do is look for volume incentives Like that's . The biggest problem in physical therapy or healthcare is if you're incentivized to see more people or work longer hours per day , you just burn out and you can't do it .

So I personally would say work your normal hours and find a gig on the side strength and conditioning or whatever and use that money to try to pay down whatever the high interest rate is . I'm not the educator here , so that's just what I did , but is that like useful ? Am I an idiot for saying that , or what's the deal ?

And you know , like the side hustle , right , like that's a very popular thing to talk about because , at the end of the day , in order to pay off your debt and plan for the future , you have to be making enough money to cover your expenses and have a difference . Right , there's no magic way to do that unless you're making enough money .

So income is really important . And again , three to five years maybe it's not something you do forever , maybe it's just one year , but a couple intentional years of saying you know what I want to have more financial flexibility and freedom in the future to travel or do a different kind of work or whatever it is , and that's really important to me .

So for this year , I'm going to pick up an extra shift on the weekends and use that money to pay off your debt . That's a luxury that a lot of people don't have . It's harder , it's harder for people to find a decent paying side hustle . A side hustle is , like , pretty easy to find , but one that pays pretty well , that's more rare .

So I think that's an incredible idea for for people in the healthcare space , if that's something you can do .

So I moved here and I was fortunate that this place was just getting like moved out really quick . My dad was a landlord so he helped haggle some like . You know terminology and understand . But I essentially got this apartment for really cheap , right . And then I'm able to kind of be okay . I was like should I buy a condo ? Should I move out ?

But it would have tripled my rent , right , because stuff is so crazy where I live . So I was like okay , I'll just live in this . And it honestly came down to more being like I don't really care how big my house is , I don't care ton of money that I could put elsewhere .

But on the other side , I was very okay with like putting money aside to do things that I enjoy , like every weekend . I like like back , especially when I was like first starting out .

I was like I like want to go to a coffee shop and read and like grab food and go to go out to eat with my friends and my dinner grab a couple month and I feel like , because I had that pressure valve release , like I didn't feel guilty about spending money on that kind of stuff .

It allowed me to be much more I guess rigid is the word or kind of tighten up the hatches a bit more and other stuff . Like I don't need to buy new clothes . Like I buy running shoes here and there but like do I need to buy like watches and jewelry and clothes ? Like not really Do I don't have to impress anybody like that .

So I just want to hopefully give people practical advice . Like on one side you have to kind of strangle yourself a little bit , like you got to . Like tighten up a little bit like four nights out , if you really need to go out four nights out and watch football and chicken wings and beer every weekend , twice a week or three times a week .

But then there are some things that I think people should . Yeah , I just don't know why . I felt like I needed to say that .

What happens to a lot of people is , if you're not tracking how much money you're actually making and you're not really tracking your debt , you could be starting to see a serious increase in your salary .

But if you change your lifestyle , every time you increase your salary because now you're making more , so you think , oh , now I should move into the nice house , or now I can afford to move into the dream condo or whatever it is when you do that , you're not creating any additional space for you to have the flexibility .

And what was so cool about what you decided to do is and it's actually how I reached financial independence too I stayed living in places that weren't the nicest , but I also loved the flexibility to be able to travel and , like you said , go out with my friends , and I knew I could do that and still save a ton of money because my housing expenses were

reasonable and that was okay for me , because I knew later in life at some point , sure , then I'll be able to . If I , if that's important to me and that's something I value , then maybe I'll move into the dream home or whatever , although we could argue of whether that's really a thing or not .

So I think , I think that that is a perfect example of how you have to think about it , like you can buy anything but you can't buy everything , and so your choice was quality time with people and you know , a safe place to live . And that's it , and that that was the trade-off , that that worked for you .

They have to work , uh , worry about Um , and so , like what are some of the things that you are either educating on or talking about ? Not financial advice , of course , but something that is like what are you going to do when someone's like listen , tess , I got a job and it's starting in two months . My loans kick back in .

I don't know where I'm going to find $1,200 to make this work , and that's just the bare minimum to not get more buried in interest and debt .

So this is taking a couple months of your credit card statement or your bank statement , wherever you make the majority of your purchases , and doing a really honest evaluation of how much you're spending in the largest categories so housing , dining , your car , et cetera . And if you've never done that , usually just looking at it , you can find some ways to improve .

It's like awareness is everything . If you are aware of where your money is coming and going , you're likely going to find more space to be able to start to afford those payments . So that is the very first thing . So once you've done that and you've looked at your spending , then you can go back to what we were talking about .

Before is like understanding which of this spending aligns with my goals and values and is important to me , and which of this is less important and not worth my time , so I can make sure that I'm paying down this debt and not ending up holding on to this for a really long time . And so that's the balance .

It is awareness of how money comes in and out of your life , creating a plan and evaluating that plan over time . And the most important thing and you actually already brought this up , because you are , in fact , very good with money , by the way , you could teach this class too is automating this right .

So once you figure out where your money needs to go , you can automate a certain amount to pay off your student loans . You can also automate a spending allotment for yourself .

So you're saying , okay , like based on how much I'm making , I can spend $500 a month on things I enjoy that are not expenses , and then you know exactly how much you have and you can choose however you want to spend that 500 . But if you go past that 500 , that's going to impact your ability to pay down your debt .

So I like to this is the other word , for this is budget , and this is something

that you've . You've mentioned him a few times , ramit Sethi , and I agree on . He was an amazing finance creator and he has a great book . If you haven't read it , I will teach you to be rich .

It's like a fantastic beginner beginner finance book , but I love that he says this and I've adopted this as well is he talks about an intentional spending plan and focusing on how you spend your money , versus creating a budget . The word budget feels kind of restrictive and not fun . What we're talking about is all the money you have .

How are you going to spend it in a way that's going to give you a fulfilling life ? Part of that's going to be paying down the debt , but part of that's also going to be enjoying whatever's important to you .

To like that money is a tool to build a life that you love , like to frame that in a positive mindset of like , if I work hard and I'm able to somehow wrangle this and put in the effort to learn about this and think about this , that I can build a life that I enjoy and that I love . And that's that's different for anybody .

For me personally , it's like time , autonomy , like the fact that I have a very fluid schedule and if I need to go help my mom for a day , I can that's a huge shout out to champion and like Mike and Lenny but a lot and break my leg , I can afford two months without work because I have money saved up or I've paid off a lot .

That , for me , is what is the most like sense of like , why I want to learn so much about it , because I want that flexibility , that autonomy and that kind of like peace of mind . For other people , it's like they want to have the wedding of their dreams . They want to be able to . You know Ramit talks about this .

He's , like you know , see fashionable clothing and I spend a thousand dollars in a jacket and it makes me feel good . So , like everybody has context , specific stuff .

Um , I think also too it's it's like the automation thing , I think for the healthcare people on our side like we didn't get taught about money unless it was like in a running a business or running a clinic .

So I think a lot of people in healthcare just want to work and just want to help people and just want to enjoy their life and they don't want to think about all the buttons to push and the charts to watch .

And so for me it was like , okay , if I just automate this and I do my budget plan and I know that every month , you know I'm going to have the money in my checking account to pay off all these things and do it , I can just focus on learning more and like getting better at my craft and building a business and teaching more and like that actually for me ,

is what made way more money is like that I had the mind share to focus on learning and being a better clinician , which I think paid off in the long run more than like . Do I know what index fund that I'm going to have to find ? You know what I mean .

I actually open most of my corporate presentations or I just did a money mindset presentation for Mass General and one of the things that I always start with is , when we think about money , the first thing we think about is what money can buy , and that's like cars , houses , vacations , whatever when , at the end of the day , even if you do love your job and

you're doing it to be fulfilled , the reason why we want to pay attention to money is so that , exactly what you said that we have the flexibility to take care of ourselves when not if , something happens .

So we have the security and safety of being able to manage difficult situations which are going to come , and then we have the flexibility and optionality to potentially change careers , walk away from a toxic job . These are the things that money buys , that we don't talk about enough and why it's such an important tool .

And so when people pay less attention to it because they're like I don't really care about money , my question back to them is okay , but money actually buys security , safety , optionality , flexibility , freedom , independence and time . All of those things can be bought with money , and every human shares a need for all those things .

We all want to spend more time with our family . We all want to be able to walk away from a toxic situation or a toxic workplace , which is unfortunately very common these days . So those are the things that money can buy .

So even if you're not interested in money or you don't feel like you have a need for luxury items or whatever it is , that's the kind of stuff that money can buy you , and the sooner you start paying attention to it , the easier it is to get to those places where you can really exercise those options .

And let's say , for example , they find $300 from you know one one less night out per week and they find this extra shift . They pick up here on the weekend and they have $300 to put in extra per month , but they're looking uphill at , say , 250 or $200,000 in debt . What do they do with that ? Do they just like put it into anything and hope it works out ?

They oftentimes , I think , with me . I just opened Sally man . I was like that's a lot of zeros and I was like I don't really know what to do with all those things and I just like I was like , ah , that one , I guess , like I didn't know about interest or compounding , or compounding negatively in this situation , but we'll talk about positive .

But like , so say , someone does the harder work of finding an extra $300 , like what's the best approach to that ? Is it just like go for it , or is there a certain way to approach it ?

So if you are in that situation and you don't have a couple months of money in case you lose your job or something happens or you rupture your Achilles or whatever and you can't work like if something happens to you , then you have an emergency fund to take care of yourself . So that is the first thing .

So , even if you are dripping in debt , you need to have that fund , because the other thing that this fund does that people don't realize is when you're already in debt , when you're already living really close to paycheck to paycheck , if something happens and you don't have money for it , you're going to end up putting it on a credit card and then you're digging

yourself a deeper hole . So , even if you have debt and even if you have credit card debt , the first thing you need to do is start to build an emergency fund so that you can cover those kinds of expenses and that way you can at least stay even .

Once you've done that , then it's a matter of what kind of debt you have and the interest rate of the debt you have . So , mathematically , the best option for you to allocate an extra $300 to is going to be whatever debt has the highest interest rate .

So especially if you have rates over like seven eight-ish percent , that's stuff that you definitely want to focus on first . If it's lower than that , then there's potentially an argument to start thinking about investing some of that money and paying off more of your debt .

And the reason for that is because the average return of the stock market over time is roughly 7% if you subtract for inflation . So if you have super low interest debt , there could be an argument to make to use a small portion of that to start investing and then continue to pay off your debt . So the interest rate really , really matters .

You should know those . If you don't know those and you feel triggered right now , don't feel bad . Most people don't . So usually when I get on a call with my students , they tell me all about how much debt they have , but they have no idea what the rate is . So the rate is super important .

Mathematically , the best option is to pay down the highest rate first . Some financial professionals will say you know , if you have like a smaller balance on one loan , to pay that down first and that helps you psychologically . You know , gain momentum to pay that down first and that helps you psychologically , you know , gain momentum .

But I would say if you're really just trying to pay stuff off and save yourself on interest payments . Like go for the highest rate first , start there and tackle that one as fast as you can .

But if you look at the math I don't know the math in my head , but like it's like 20 something months to pay off $300 to seven . But that interest of 11% is going to annihilate you , right , because every time you have more it's like a rolling snowball versus .

You know , leave the bigger one at 5% and pay off the 7% one first , and then you know , work your way down the ladder . So it sounds like and correct me if I'm wrong so first you start with whatever your fixed income is right , so say it's you know , your rent , your food , your whatever .

You multiply that by three and six and that's the upper and lower bound of maybe what you should try to save first , right .

And then from there you look at the ones that are like the definitely double digit interest rates first , and then maybe like the eight , nine , 10 , 11 , 12 is where like , all right , those ones should probably take my focus and honestly , for some people that is going to take a year to maybe three years to like get that emergency savings fund and then also pay

off the bigger ones there . You could just set it and forget it for you know what two years and just work really hard and just think about like okay , every time I get a little extra money , let me just chop down a little more . That probably alone would save people a shit ton in compounding interest down the road .

If you have , you know , the average person I think right now is somewhere between $4,000 and $8,000 of credit card debt , in addition to student loans that you want to pay off even before you pay off your student loans , because the interest on that is likely 17% to mid-25% and that will annihilate you . So that is stuff , to use your words .

So that is definitely the highest interest rate . I think to your point . You see the student loan debt that's at 200,000 and you have to pay six or 7% interest on it . That sucks for sure , but $5,000 at 25% is going to cost you so much in interest so fast . So make sure you pay attention to those rates . It's super important .

You know like it's so easy when you swipe it real quick when you're out with your buddies and you've had one or nine whiskeys , like toss out my credit card and I'll pay it later . You look at the bill and you're like wait a minute . I think , like not living outside your means but also enjoying yourself is important .

But yeah too , I just think maybe I got lucky that , like my dad grew up , my dad jumped between a bunch of different jobs . We moved like seven times when I was a kid so there were times when my dad had , like normal people , money , you know , like enough money to help support , like you know .

Just , you know , this week we're a little thin , so we'll just stay home and play board games . You know , I was like okay , that's like , that's all it was . It wasn't weird , it wasn't awkward . We never talked about it . Weird If he told my mom , like you know , I just don't have the extra money to pay for this thing for school .

It was a very open , honest conversation with a bunch of extra stuff . So I just think , trying to not demonize money and not make it this like gut wrenching , anxiety provoking thing , but like , to your point , a skill right , like healthcare providers are great at like .

If I learned this thing and I understand it and I know what it means , I can then kind of work at it . But you know , if you don't understand it , you don't have time to learn it . It's terrifying , it's really terrifying .

important . Like I host workshops and presentations all the time and every single time I do it , somebody says and this will be a group of highly intelligent people or healthcare professionals , which is more and more common of people I'm working with and they'll say something like oh , this is a super stupid question .

And they ask the question and I am 99% sure that 80% of the people in the room probably have that same question . But because we're not talking about money all the time , it feels like you're the only one that's in $200,000 of debt and you're the only one that doesn't understand how your 401k works or whatever it is right . So you're not alone .

We don't get this education anywhere unless your parents taught you . You haven't learned this . So I love the idea of normally normalizing conversations around money , normalizing debt in the healthcare industry . That's just the thing . That's the way it's been , and so we need to normalize having the conversation so we can solve the problem .

And then the last thing I would say that I think is really , really critical is to make sure that you are being nice to yourself when you have these conversations , when you start to realize maybe some of the mistakes you made . Just try to be nice to yourself , because most people have made those mistakes .

Chop that down first and do that , and then after that the highest percent loan , and then you kind of actually dovetailed us well here .

But the other thing that I think automatically happens when people get their first job is they get enrolled in a Vanguard or Fidelity 401k and they just sign the paper and they're like yeah , that right , I'll do the thing with the retirement .

So me , I worked at my first job for two years and then , when I moved to champion , I had to roll over my IRA into a champion's new one and I only had like $2,000 in there , like maybe a thousand dollars , after working two years and making decent money . And I looked into it why I wasn't doing any matching . I wasn't doing anything .

I was just like , yeah , I just like do that minimum thing and I paid it . And so next step is like okay , so say you have , like those things are not only done , but just they're set Like something is going towards those , and say you have an extra little bit .

That's like okay , I want to either feel better , that I'm doing something with my money to make it grow over time , or what do I look at next ? I'm guessing it's something with IRAs and 401ks , but I mean , this is where you could probably teach better than I could .

That is free money . That's part of your compensation . Think about it this way If you were making $100,000 and you have a 3% match , that means that if you really contribute , that your employer is going to match up to 3% of your salary . So this is an additional $3,000 .

So by not taking the match , you're basically saying , actually , I'd like to make $3,000 less this year . That's really what you're saying when you reject the match . So it's really really important to take the match regardless , because otherwise you're genuinely like leaving part of your compensation on the table , and am I wrong ?

The most common way is that when you contribute , you actually get to deduct how much you contributed from the amount you owe not owe the IRS , but the amount the IRS will tax you on . So if you made $100,000 and you contributed $10,000 to your 401k , you can deduct that from your gross income .

And the government will say oh , I see , you made $100,000 , but you contributed $10,000 to your 401k , so we're only going to tax you on that $90,000 , but you contributed $10,000 to your 401k , so we're only going to tax you on that $90,000 . We're going to deduct that $10,000 .

So contributing to an employer-sponsored plan not only can very often give you a match but also helps you save on taxes and helps you grow your money for retirement . So it's really like a win-win-win and something that you don't want to sleep on . Like we can do a whole episode on retirement accounts .

I won't go like too granular here , but understanding the basics of whatever your employer sponsored plan is so , so important , and I see people all the time not understand the value of contributing to these accounts and that also , by the way , is not your fault .

The education around this is not great , which is why I do what I do and I go into companies and I talk to their employees about their employer sponsored plans . Like HR is not . They're not finance professionals , right . And they're the ones administering the account . It's not their fault that they don't .

They don't have a financial education either , so it's just kind of a kind of a messy situation , because these 401ks are relatively new tool . They replaced pensions and there wasn't the education to go along with them . So it's really important you don't sleep on this .

But this leaning in a little bit is because , to your point , what you're saying is not only are you getting free money from a match , but you're also getting a tax deduction from contribution . That's a ton of money at the end of the year that you can maybe not have to pay to then put more into your , your uh payoffs , right For high interest rates .

So and I reason this is important is because starting something early and automating it right , there's like this compounding interest because you're going to retire in what ? 50 years or 40 years or whatever , something about having anything forward in the market .

Compounding interest , the same way it works against you with a high loan interest rate , will work with you when you're investing in the stock market , because these things are often index funds or things like that . And you said it grows 12% over the year .

So if you just do anything $50 a week or $100 a week and you can spare that that math out over 30 years of compounding interest . Can you maybe just touch upon why people should even think about the thought process for retirement .

But it's hard to even comprehend how powerful it is because when you look at compound interest , it's something we probably learned in ninth grade and skipped over and never looked at again . The way that you make money when you're investing in your 401k is that you're , first of all , your money's invested in the stock market .

So that's the first thing you need to realize is like , your 401k or 403b is an investing account . It's an opportunity for you to make money through investing . So if you have one of these accounts , you want to start thinking about yourself as an investor .

But what's also super important is how compound interest works and the length of time that your money is invested . So we could do a couple of different examples here . But if you start investing a small amount , let's say you invested like $200 a month when you got out of college , when you were 22 .

And you invested that for like 40 years and you never increased how much you invested . You just invested like 40 bucks a month , with the average return of the stock market and doing some like rough math here , you'd have like over 600,000 in retirement just by putting like 200 bucks away . Yeah Right , when you start at 22, .

If you wait and do that , you know in your forties , so you're 42 and you're like , oh , I'm going to start putting some money away you end up with an additional $100,000 . That's a half a million dollar difference , right ?

So the compound interest is tough because when you first start contributing to investing accounts , it doesn't feel like your money is growing that much .

But once you get to like 10 , 20 , 30 years out , your money starts to compound on itself and the money that you earned 20 , 30 years out your money starts to compound on itself and that the money that you earned .

So let's say like really simple compound interest example , let's say one year you contribute a thousand dollars to your account and you got like a 10% return . Now you have $1,100 in that account . If you get the same return on $1,100 , you're going to continue to get more and more money and that's basically like the snowball effect .

So we could do the math and I actually have a compound interest calculator and one of my free mini courses , because I believe that every human should just spend like five minutes playing with a compound interest calculator because it will completely change the way you think about investing and make you realize that that extra like 50 bucks a week into your retirement

account is translating to potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement .

But don't live in a hole and don't spend money , but don't blow your money right on things that are maybe not that important to impress other people or things like that .

Maybe try to pick up some extra shifts or find some hours that you can do some extra work to get a little extra side hustle in Cause if you save 200 and gain 300 , you're at a net of 500 bonus per month that you can do something with .

Right , and then I would even add here too , is that like investing in education and increasing your skillset as a healthcare provider is a huge positive ROI to become more valuable .

Right , and I'll just be very transparent I spent a dumb amount of money on con ed courses my first two years out of school for reasons we go into , but I highly think that the amount of time that I invested into my own education is what ultimately got me a great job working at champion and working with really high level athletes that I love and I enjoy my

job , so I work harder at it and I kind of have that positive flywheel . But I felt like at the clinic I didn't have enough education . So I was like , okay , education is one thing I don't mind spending money on and my employers helped me out , they helped me pay for some of that stuff .

So I think spending less on stupid stuff and then increasing your hours of output for true money in is good . But also don't be afraid to you know , value yourself as a higher skill set and be a more valuable clinician or whatever , and then fight for yourself to get you know more , more money per hour . So I think it's really important .

But then , after that , right the 401k match very important to start early because of compounded interest , and then emergency fund and then high percentage credit card loans and then high percentage loans themselves .

It sounds like those five things for I would say that's at least the first five years you know , for the person who's a new grad , who's just coming out . If you just sat down and figured that out , I think you'd be leaps and bounds ahead of other people or yourself if you didn't do it .

But if you have low interest student loans and when I say low interest I mean like anything 6% or less you definitely should start investing , even if it's small amounts of money , because , again , the average return of the stock market is actually 10% . I like to be extra conservative .

So if we subtract for inflation , it's like 7-ish percent , a little bit more than that . So that's an opportunity

for you to make money . If you have debt that's higher than that . I think the best example of this is like if you have like high interest debt and you're investing , it's kind of like you're running up a really fast escalator , right , like you're making an escalator escalator . Yeah , yeah , you're right , you're right . That sounded so weird in my head .

You don't run up an elevator .

But once you have gotten rid of your high interest debt , you definitely want to start investing , and it can be okay to pay closer to the minimums to your student loans if the interest is really low . So that's one thing I see people do is they wait to start investing until they're in their 40s or 50s because they think they have to be totally debt free .

And that's just not true . And it's not something you want to do because you want to take advantage of that compound interest that we were talking about .

So I think the right answer is that you find just like an index fund and you dump the $50 extra Now you have from working your per diem shifts . After all those other things are taken care of . It's the same compounding interest .

Because the thing I didn't realize is that 401k is an index fund , oftentimes through Vanguard or whatever , and you just have another side . Is it an IRA , like a simple IRA ? Is it like the actual index funds ?

Like , if somebody wants to invest a little bit now they're five years out , they've chopped down a huge amount of this and they want to actually make a little bit of money , what do they do now ?

And then what gets people tripped up all the time is that there's two things you really need to make decisions on . The first thing is what type of account you want to use . So if you are working with an employer and you have a 401k or 403b , the account's already chosen for you .

They've chosen this account that's going to help you save on taxes , which is great . And so inside that account , if you have no idea what you're invested in , you're invested in funds which are groups of stocks , usually inside your 401k or 403b . So 401k and 403b IRAs all these acronyms they're all containers for your investments . They're not investments themselves .

So when you say I invest in a 401k , technically that's not true . You contribute to a 401k and then the money is invested in something in that 401k . And if you don't know what it's invested in , then they've probably chosen a default investment for you , which is something you definitely want to learn about , but we'll get to that .

So that's the first thing to understand is 401ks , roth IRAs , all of these accounts . These are just accounts that help you save on taxes .

So the first thing you want to do when you're starting to focus on investing if your goal is to invest for retirement , investing in accounts that help you save on taxes is a great way to invest , because you're saving money and you're growing your money for retirement , and if you don't need to use that money anytime in the near future , then it's okay to have

it locked in a retirement account for many years . So the first thing you want to do is take advantage of whatever you already have , which is your 401k , potentially a 403b , something like that and then you can look into other types of accounts that help you save on taxes , like a Roth IRA or a SEP IRA if you're self-employed .

One really important thing and I already said this , but I'm going to double tap on it because I've seen this happen a lot is that these types of accounts , again , they're not investments , they're just containers .

So a mistake I see all the time is people will open an IRA and contribute to it for years and think that they're investing , but your IRA , again , it's just a container that helps you save on taxes . It's not investment . So inside those accounts , you need to choose some investments . And then this is where I lose everyone , dave , and everyone starts panicking .

They're like , oh my God , I have to choose investments . This sounds awful , and here's the great news is that there are so many ways to invest that require you to make little to no decisions . There are what I like to call the variety pack of investing .

You can invest in funds that hold a bunch of different stocks and a bunch of different bonds , and all you have to do is pick roughly the date you think you're going to retire and this is called a target date fund or a lifecycle fund and you can invest in that .

And that's an example of something that's super , super simple , that doesn't require you to like pay attention to the stock market and time the market . You just invest in the variety pack of investing .

So that's really important to understand is like if you're like , oh , I want to invest , but I'm really nervous about choosing investments , there are those packaged and prepackaged investments for you , basically , and then , in addition to that , there are also now incredible services that , for a super low fee , you put in some information about yourself when you're going

to retire and they'll choose investments for you . So don't let investing as a whole , like the idea of picking stocks or picking investments , hold you back from this at all , because something I host workshops on this all the time and something I tell my students when they get nervous about this is the average return of the stock market over time is 10% .

So you can invest in an average portfolio that just holds basically all the stocks in the stock market and get the average of the stock market . And that doesn't require timing the market . It doesn't require a lot of money you can start with like 10 bucks if that's all you have and it doesn't require you to pick anything specific .

So just to like myth bust on investing , you don't have to be a genius to invest . You don't need an economics PhD . This is a good metaphor . This is better than the escalator one .

So I think when people think of investing , they think about like if you're thinking about in the context of a car , you have to be a mechanic and you have to understand how the engine works and the I can't even like think of depth carburetor . Thank you Like other pistons , I don't know what else is in the car .

So , like that , you have to be like a mechanic to invest . You just have to learn the basics . You have to be able to drive the car like get in the car , have your license , follow the road signs . That's the level of understanding you have to have to start investing in these super simple things that I'm talking about . So don't let that stop you .

But that's the order really is . When you start to get to a place where you have some extra money , it's taking advantage of those accounts that help you save on taxes first , and then finding super simple ways to invest and then , if you want to get fancy later and do other stuff , that's cool . But don't wait to learn all the things before you start invest .

It's not worth it .

But I was like , if I like there's no amount of investing , I think I can do , or special things I can learn to outpay these 10 , 11 , 9% debts . So for eight years I literally just , you know , worked a bit more , tried to pay a bit more , tried to increase my , my value as a clinician .

And then when I got my job at Champion , you know , I was like hustling like crazy to try to make things work , building like a business in the background or everyone . No one has to build a business , but just different things you can do .

You can teach on the side , Like I know one of our clinicians teaches an anatomy lab like one day per week and that helps them out too as well . So I think like that's the big thing I did for eight years was just like chop it down in a huge dent in it .

And then when the pandemic came , of course everything kind of changed and Mike Reynolds , like three years ago , was like listen , you need to learn everything you possibly can about investing , because the stock market was imploding at the time .

He's like you need to just stop and just take the same approach to your physical therapy knowledge that you have done and just like , inhale podcasts and books . And that's just what I did for like maybe like six months .

I was like all the books , all the podcasts , whatever I can possibly find , Because at that point I had gone from 200 to I don't remember what it was , but the math just didn't make sense to keep paying off the low interest rates when I could be potentially investing in the stock market or doing things with 401ks that would give me a huge return , right .

And so at that point I pivoted and I was like Okay , I have some breathing room , I've done some stuff and now I can think about , you know , maybe maxing out more here or getting an IRA or stuff like that .

So for someone on the other side of it , like it took me eight years before I actually started doing more than the basic 401k and like a little bit of index funds . I literally just did that for eight years . It was not fancy until I found like I got to a point where I could learn a bit more .

Maybe I just had to get to a place where I felt better about it . But yeah , for like five to seven years you could just do that as a new grad and just know you're doing something positive for yourself in the future . And then , when you get to be 30 years old or 35 , and you have a new situation , you can approach it more .

That's a super simple way to describe it , and it's super low on fees . It's a super simple way to invest . That's the easiest way to start investing , and some people will do that forever and they'll never invest in anything else .

Some people will never choose their own investments and they'll go with the robo advisors that will choose the investments for them , and that's also okay . Those people , as long as they're contributing consistently , they're going to do better than the majority of everyone else . That's not doing anything .

So doing something when it comes to investing in the stock market , well , I would say doing something like investing in an index fund or a robo-advisor is so much better than paralysis , analysis and waiting until you learn all the things . You could read one or two books and start to do some of this stuff and implement them .

You don't need to be an expert to be very successful .

And so I think , before we go into maybe the end of this , which is more , not high level , but just like you've gotten farther in your career and you have more options I think something I want to make sure I touch on that I hear that's not my situation is young new grads who happen to have you know they're engaged , they're , they're going to be engaged in

the next three to four years . They're getting a job or whatever , so that you know they have a wedding to plan for , they have a honeymoon , they're maybe going to have kids . You know , when they're in their upper 30s , like their early 30s , they want to have their first kid or second kid .

I don't live in a house , I'm not married , I don't have kids , so I don't empathize with them at all . Obviously it's a little bit different . But what would be the situation for somebody who's that so ? Say they're like 27 or 28 . And they've done some of of a wedding or a honeymoon , like ? I think there's two parts here .

One is how do you have that conversation with a significant other who maybe is that's terrifying to them or like nobody wants to talk about it and it's just an awkward , you know , elephant in the room and then practically maybe like what are the things to approach that ?

This is super expensive things and a lot of us feel pressure from society to get a house Like it's a sign of success , to buy a house that you know that's a marker that you've made it .

Having a big , big wedding is important because our aunt Sue really wants to be there for us or whatever it is at the wedding and Sue just wants to get hammered at the open bar , and so what I say , all this is not to judge , because if you want a big white wedding and that's been your dream since you were young that's fine , but I do think you really

have to be clear that those are all things that you really , really want and that you want and need them in a relatively short amount of time , because there are a lot of people very happily renting , and when you rent you don't have to deal with roofs , you don't have to deal with upkeep , you don't have to deal with a lot of stuff that's very expensive when

you own a house , and so or maybe you get married and you push off the dream honeymoon later , when your kids are older or something . So I think that there's .

The first thing that I want to just say is there is so much pressure from especially social media to do the things , the American dream with the house and the kids and the fence and the dog , and the wedding and the honeymoon and all the stuff , and it is really expensive and it is hard , it's very hard to do all of those things without going into debt based

on just the price of things right now , on the average salary .

So I think you want to get creative and this goes back to what we've already talked about a little bit is your values and what's most important to you and then so now that I've gotten my soapbox out of the way on on choosing what matters to you and not listening to other people , not caring what other people think this that's a really important money skill

actually is not caring and by the way , like when you see , when you see people on Instagram with , like their dream massive wedding at the fanciest hotel or like their beautiful new kitchen , a lot of those people are in debt . We look at those people and we think , like they have made it . A lot of them are in debt .

So try to remember that when you see stuff on social . So that's the first thing . Now I'm off my soapbox . The second thing is that when you have these conversations , if you are in a partnership , same thing getting really clear on goals .

Talking about money can be very tricky and , depending on how you both grew up , you could have very , very different relationships with money . So really important to ask questions of your partner Like what was it like growing up ? And like if your partner is spending a lot of money , before you get mad at them because they're spending a lot of money .

One like find out a little bit more about why they're spending the money . Maybe they grew up really poor and now they have money and they're so grateful for that and they want to enjoy it . Right , that would help give you some empathy and context into what they're doing .

So one I think understanding each other's money stories and money narratives is number one , and that will help frame every conversation in a more productive way . And then , following that is aligning on your goals what's important to you and what's important individually , and how are you going to map that out ?

And and that will help so much so many couples don't talk about money even until not until like after they're married , and so some other advice that you didn't ask before is like have the money conversations as soon as possible , and if you can't have those conversations early in a relationship and you know financial independence and financial security is important to

you , that's a bit of a red flag , right . Like that's something you need to understand , like most relationships , and I think the second most popular reason relationships end is because of money .

So then , once you've done all of that and you've heeded my advice and you remember that your friend's brand new kitchen might've been put on a Visa card , once you've done all that , then you can decide what's important to you and start automatically saving for that .

So if you guys have deciding , have decided like we're gonna have the kids and we're gonna put off the house until later , but we really want to have this like dope ass party for our stew with the open bar , then a part of your paycheck goes into something where you can hold money in the relative short term . That's not at risk .

So I wouldn't necessarily invest that money , but something like a high yield savings account , which is just basically a better savings account that helps you get a higher interest rate . So pro tip if you don't have a high yield savings account , that is a piece of your homework after this episode .

It takes like 15 minutes to open one and you get a better rate on the money that you hold in there for doing nothing .

That's how I was like I was making the same amount that my interest rates were . So I could be like , okay , now I can just , at least nothing's happening , it's paying off the interest rates for these next two years and I can focus on investing . But yeah , go ahead .

But even if it drops to 3% , that's much better than the 0.01% you're getting in whatever regular bank account that you're in . So any kind of saving , like your emergency fund is a great thing to hold in a high yield savings account .

Short term savings , whether it's for like honeymoon planning or down payment for a house , high yield savings accounts are great for that Basically any expense that you want to start saving for in the next , I'd say like three or so years high yield savings accounts Great option .

You're doing the same thing with another human who has the shared goal that you write Like when you have this conversation . The goal obviously is to find what you align on and be like okay , well , we're both committed to . I mean again , no judgment on anything .

Maybe it's like the crazy wedding with aunt Sue and it's the dream honeymoon to go to Italy or whatever , like . For some people , that's just that they want this baller house , house . For some people , they want to work three days and go part-time because they want to raise a kid , like .

I know some friends of mine that the same exact conversation was like okay , we're not going to go ball or wedding , we're not going to go crazy honeymoon , we're not going to do anything too lavish with that , but that will allow me to work part-time three days per week , per diem , and stay home with the kids , cause I want to raise the kids , I want to be

a mom . So that's equally as

okay as the other one . But again the conversation . So if you're going to go for the wedding honeymoon , right , that means that you're going to , you know , be very aggressive in terms of not spending money out right on Uber Eats three times a week . You're not going to be at the bar on Friday .

You're not going to be buying a second dog because you think he's cute on Instagram right , you're not going to be taking Saturdays off . You might each be and basic addition , subtraction If we're going to go 50K wedding honeymoon , it's got to come from somewhere , right , definitely not going on a credit card that's going to be stuck there forever .

So anything is okay . I think that's the key here , that anything is okay . If you're at this point where you've gone through all these things you've recommended and you have these big rock goals that you want , it's totally fine . Agree , that's what you care about and that's what matters to you .

Cause if you're five years in saving for a wedding and your girl goes out and gets like a g-wagon , I don't want to make I don't know why I made it a girl example .

So make sure you talk about money , talk about it all the time . Having a monthly money date is super valuable , like once a month , get takeout , sit down with the person you care about and just go over your expenses , see where you're at , talk about what's coming up for the month . Just doing that alone could change your life .

If you have extra money after that , auto index funds , right then we're going . Six seven is the hold on . I did this . Six seven is the high yield savings . Account for big rocks by yourself or with your partner . Right , we're doing pretty good . This is a pretty solid run at it .

You know , I think ira is in there somewhere too , like maybe that was what I missed like a r IRA . But okay , cool , I think we have all that pretty good . So is there anything else ?

Because I think that's the first 10 years of most people's career is going to be like 20 to 30 , right , is they're going to try to chop down all these things , maybe to 35 ? And then it kind of shifts into a different person who's trying to maintain or make a lot of money in the back half of their career .

So is there any other parting advice to maybe this like 35 , 30 and under crew that's probably shitting their pants at their loans .

One is starting to understand basic economic cycles , because as you start to focus on your money , you're going to hear all this news Like , if you start contributing to your 401k or an IRA , you will hear , inevitably within the next month , all this news that's like stock market crash , global financial market meltdown , and you're going to hear this stuff all the

time and it can sound really scary . You're going to hear stuff about inflation all the time , and understanding really what that means for you is really important . People freak out about inflation , but they don't actually know how it's impacting their money . People will freak out about inflation but they don't actually know how it's impacting their money .

People will freak out about the stock market , like my friend's mom . She was investing in her IRA and 401k and back in August of 2024 , the stock market had like a weird week .

It like dropped by 4% and I actually went on Fox 5 News and they like invited me as an investing expert to come talk about like the crashing stock market and it was very dramatic and all the headlines were like big red letters and I calmly explained , look like the stock market fluctuates , but over time we know the stock market goes up and the newscaster even

commented on the fact that I was calm and by the end of the week the stock market had recovered and was a percent higher than it was before . That doesn't mean it's always going to be great Like we're going to go through recessions , like the stock market is going to crash . That stuff is going to happen

. So , understanding that if you're focusing on your money for the longterm , those things are going to happen and that's okay and you want to stay the course . And that's why education is so important , because it helps you make smart decisions for you and your goals and make sure that you don't react to market news .

So you don't have to be an expert , you don't have to be an economist , but this is the stuff I teach in like free investing workshops or read like one book about personal finance . You'll learn some of this stuff and it'll totally change your perspective .

So that's the first thing I would say is just like a basic understanding of that kind of thing and then really just focusing on controlling what you can control , and then the last thing that I'll double tap on is just really thinking of money as a tool and how important it is for safety , security , independence , all those things that we mentioned and that what's

at stake if you take it seriously and realize that you are completely capable of controlling your money and no one will care about your money more than you do .

So before you go as a cautionary tale , as somebody that did this , before you go give all your money to a financial advisor that's your friend's , mom's financial advisor or whatever you really want to understand the basics , because not all financial professionals are made equal . You can learn a lot of the basics on your own and do really really well .

So before you go out and just hire someone to manage your stuff for you , if you are in a place to start investing , you really got to learn the basics because you can get pretty screwed pretty easily and that's why I love doing education is because I help people not get screwed all the time . So no one cares about your money more than you .

I'll end on that .

You just kind of repeat that cycle , uh , 10 years later or seven years later or whatever , when you're in a different spot where it's not about just keeping your head above water and paying off your loans , it's about actually growing money for yourself over time or kind of growing towards bigger goals . And that's exactly what I went through is three years ago .

I was in a position where I had paid enough down in the first eight years that I was like okay , I think you know one pushed over the hill by the COVID situation and the stock market itself and Mike , but I was like okay . Well , now I think that if I understand how you know liquidity cycles work , or the fed what is the fed ? What is this ?

Like you know boogeyman that makes things go up and down and makes inflation happen , like what is inflation ? I just needed to get like the basics of those terminologies down and understand what was happening with interest rates and what was happening with you know , uh , uh , the fed and stuff like that . And it wasn't like I needed a economics degree .

I just need to know that like , okay , I got it . Like when this , when they do this , it's because of this inflation issue and it makes it so people can't borrow a lot of money , so it makes things like the economy slows down , people can't go on lavish trips .

Like I started to just get the basics of these things and I think that's where most people in their 30 , 35 , 40 will be is . You know , they hear these things on like you know doom and gloom on the stock market , but they don't know what that means to them . They don't know . Like , okay , like , do I invest more now and do I not ? Do I wait ?

Like , do I like sit on my phones ? And it's hilarious ? You mentioned that my mom I love my mom . She's never gonna listen to us in her entire life , right ? My mom is 70 . Right , so my mom's in a different financial spot than me .

She has a lot of money from talk a bit more and she would ask me questions , which was a terrible idea because I just knew just not to be dangerous . But then now she thinks that I'm like a finance person , so every time the stock market moves up and down , she goes . She's like how's the market doing ? How's the NASDAQ ?

You know what's going on with the Fed did interest rates .

All the time , and even after people have learned about it , they'll come back to me and say oh well , my friend said I should invest in this because the stock market is high , or low or whatever , and it's really easy to get influenced by other people , and what I always say is , like look at the end of the day , no one knows what's going to happen .

Like the amount of people that said in January 2023 , we were going into recession , like bank of America , wells Fargo , the St Louis federal reserve all these massive financial institutions with incredible financial brainpower all predicted a recession and the stock market went up like 25% that year . They were so wrong .

So like that's not because they're not smart , it's just because it's incredibly hard to predict what's going to happen in the world every year . And so if they can't get it right , your friend Kyle doesn't know what it is either . So that's the first .

The amount of times that I change what I'm doing because of the news is so infrequent . Yeah that I change what I'm doing because of the news is so infrequent so infrequent almost never . Unless , it's a super small part of my portfolio that's speculative , which means just stuff I'm having fun with that .

I'm not trying to worry about what that return is going to be , but for the majority of my retirement stuff , I don't pay any attention to the news in terms of how I do decision making right , because I'm investing for the long term , for retirement , for flexibility and all that .

So that's really important is to make sure that you learn enough to not get swayed . Negative news sells so well , so you're always going to hear negativity . Like even with the election . People are freaking out about the stock market in an election year . The stock market actually does pretty well in election years .

Usually it's up at like 9% , but everyone's panicking because the news is making it a thing and it's not a thing . So , yeah , that basic education is really valuable and most of the time focusing on your stuff , like just not tuning out the noise , that's going to help you get the furthest .

Or somebody else like Shorts GameStop , right , because of like boring kitty , right , they make a ton of money . Or like , yeah , I think this is the perfect timing not to date this . But it's like all we hear about currently , with politics like the fed and like inflation and trump's tariffs and like the recession coming and like all this stuff .

And you hear all this and you think , oh , my god , I have to do something right now , like this is the moment . But I think that people I didn't realize this until I read more it's like it's all driven by like ai keywords and professional traders with algorithms that like this , then this , then this .

It's not somebody down there , like waiting and like , okay , now , okay , it's not how it works with these people and like the vast majority of these traders , are these people who are getting completely cooked because they're reacting to the emotional news .

They are , you know , either not smart or they're doing it with , like you said , money that is not really unfortunate or , fortunately for them , is not like this , like what they need to survive . So , and fortunately for them , is not like this , like what they need to survive .

So us mere plebs who have normal jobs and don't want to stare at like lines all day , you know we just want to invest stuff and kind of forget about it . And I think for the vast majority of people it's cool to understand what your money's doing with the election or with interest rates , or like the Fed and like all that kind of stuff .

But , like , if you're genuinely interested in it like I was genuinely interested in learning about this it's cool to learn more beyond the basics . But if not , live your life right , the point of doing this is like setting up an auto sale you can enjoy your time with your kids , enjoy your job , go on a fricking hike . Like , go do things you like .

As healthcare providers , we probably don't want to deal with this unless we're really , really interested in business . I own a business , so I wanted to learn . But everybody else like go enjoy your life , go do stuff .

And they envision , you know , sitting at their computer like staring at charts , and the best investors are the people that auto , contribute into these accounts , invest in super simple stuff and like leave it alone and don't look at it for five to 10 years .

There was even a fidelity study where , like , some of the best performing accounts were people that had died because their accounts were just left there and they weren't like messing with them , they were just sitting in the stock market . So , yeah , there there is something to be said for less is more .

I know it's counterintuitive , right , because it's high achievers which many people in the healthcare industry are You're ? like the more I do , the more I'm going to get back , and that's true when it comes to your income .

When it comes to investing in the stock market , it's actually one of the only true ways to build passive income and to do it in a way that's super simple . So there is definitely less is more when it comes to investing it , certainly in the beginning at least .

And then , if you really want to go the extra mile , like get better at your craft , learn more , like be a better job , think about opening a PT clinic or doing something you enjoy in your career , cause that is again how you're going to have a better return .

More so than like pick , like waiting for the next NVIDIA right and staring at your screen all day long , is just like go work on your craftsmanship , your skillset , and increase your revenue that way . And I think that most people in the healthcare industry would be .

You know , between having more time for hobbies , things they enjoy , and then also just getting better at their job or learning new stuff , that's probably what they care about the most . So like that's really the lesson for most people is like just like , it's okay to be . Like okay , I did this thing and it's auto-invested .

Like no , I want to make a good , solid chunk of more money over my lifetime and they've done all the things . Is there any more practical advice for what they do with the next step ? They have $1,000 a month now where they're really cooking and they want to do something with it and not just let it bleed away from inflation on their checking account .

If you're at the point where you're auto saving for the things that you need , you don't have much debt , or at least it's under control and you know when that's going to be paid off , and you're investing and you're doing all that stuff , then it's a matter of what you want to do with that extra money . Depends on what you want to do with your life .

If you want to retire early , maybe you also invest that money . If you want to use that to make a lot more money , then maybe that is creating a business or investing in yourself or upskilling , you know , or getting into other types of investing , like real estate or , you know , investing in other companies . There's so many ways to make money creatively .

But this is the permission slip to do what you want with that . You know if , if you want to retire faster than invest it , if you want to retire faster in the easiest way , like invest it and add it more to your retirement accounts or open up a regular old investing account which is just called a taxable brokerage account .

It's not a retirement account , it's just a regular account . You could open that and invest more of your money in that . You can invest in real estate . You could open that and invest more of your money in that . You can invest in real estate . You could start a business .

Those are all different kinds of things you do , but I also want to give you the permission slip that you don't have to do the thing because you check the box , One of the things that a lot of my students . They get really excited .

They're investing in the stock market , they're maxing out their retirement accounts , they're contributing to a taxable brokerage account which is just a regular old investing account , and then they're like okay , I think I need to invest in real estate . Now . My question is do you want to do that ? Yeah , Cause if you don't cause , real estate is not passive .

I did not have I think thought about it Cause like , oh , this is the next best step , and I was , like I looked at what it was , like I don't wanna be a freaking landlord , I don't wanna like deal with someone's tenancy and stuff like that , like I'd rather just work on my business or like grow more the other way , totally .

Yeah , I want to do real estate .

So I started investing in real estate in 2013 , which was a perfect time to invest , and that's accidental . I wasn't a genius , that's just the way my cards were dealt . So if you wanted to invest in real estate now , you could . It's possible to be successful , but it's not easy . It takes work to find the right property .

It takes work to manage it right property it takes work to manage it , unless you're renting it out . So you might want to do something else , like start a business or donate that money or whatever it is .

So I do think the one thing I will say is that , depending on how old you are at this time does and I should have opened with this to answer this question Depending on how old you are when you get to this place , you might need to catch up for retirement .

So , just because you're contributing maybe like $1,000 to your retirement accounts every month and you have another thousand if you're in your like mid thirties or forties and you're just starting . You want to add as much as you can earlier because again you'll benefit from that compound interest .

So one thing that I actually have a free mini course on this called journey to financial independence and in it you can calculate your financial independence number and that number is the number that you need to retire comfortably , based on your projected expenses . This sounds super hard to do . It's actually really easy .

I'm not going to go into the math just because it's hard on podcast , but it's not hard to do . But you want to make sure the first thing before you get fancy with your investing is make sure you're on track for a comfortable retirement before you take a hard left and buy a laundromat or whatever your dream business is .

I don't know why that would be a dream business .

You know like the world's gonna end , america's gonna end , the economy's gonna fall apart , we're all gonna lose our savings , like it's gonna be fine . You know like it's gonna work itself out like I don't know , like the closer and closer we get the election , the more and more I run away from it , like you know .

But yeah , so my parting advice would be like the election years themselves and the year after it always seem to be the most insane because of what you know .

Either you're pissed that somebody didn't win and you say this person's going to ruin the you know the economy , or the other way , you say this person won and you're so happy they're going to make your economy life like a dream come true , but neither is going to matter in the long run . So , yeah , that's my only

other thing I want to add in . But to end , are there any other things that we missed or things that you have on your mind or things that are important ?

So I would say , pick , pick the thing that , based on what we talked about , that you want to do , and take it one step at a time . You don't have to do all these things at once .

So if you're listening and you don't have an emergency fund , in case you run over some nails and you have to get new tires , that's where you want to focus your energy first and get a month or two of savings and start there and break it up into little goals . If you have high interest debt but you have an emergency fund , that's where you go next .

So I think , not getting too overwhelmed with the amount of things that you can do and really focusing on , just like , mastering the skill of creating a spending plan and then you know if you're , if you're good with that , focusing on your 401k . You don't have to learn everything about investing Like .

You can just start by understanding the account you already have . That's going to be really valuable education opportunity for you . So that's the last thing I would say is we talked about a lot and for money is so overwhelming and psychological and complex . And then the last thing I would say is get help .

Like there are so many great , there's so many great free and paid resources out there . Like I offer tons of free education and people benefit from that and take great moves . Obviously I offer paid education to you , but , like both of those things are really valuable . There's so much good information on YouTube . Of course , trust and verify , like always .

Trust and verify , like don't . If you see something once , that does not mean that it's true .

Like I tell people all the time , like even me , like if I say something and you're like go research it , you should always trust and verify anyone you hear online .

And the other thing that comes to mind that I just like here there's I think the important thing to just remind people of is that it's so context specific of what is the most maybe triggering to you , like not having an emergency fund for one person , having this huge amount of debt on a credit card , not being able to pay for a wedding , so like maybe

whatever the biggest like mental lead domino is for you that's a big Tim Ferriss thing is like what is the one domino you can push over ? First that makes you feel like you got to win and like , okay , at least I'm doing something , at least I paid off this $3,000 , 10% loan versus this $20,000 , 4% loan because I learned something .

Let me just start with something and then you can kind of get positive momentum that way . I think that's pretty good .

And yeah , like PT school , which is like AT school , which is like a lot of people have no problem paying $300 for a dry kneeling course , but like $300 for a financial education course or like something related to that is probably like foreign to them , but like it's the same thing . You're increasing your skillset to improve your life down the road .

That's the same reason you would get a dry kneeling courses to treat more people better . The same way you'd get a financial education courses to help yourself , you know , take care of your life better down the road . So I think the guardrails are in place for people to do that . It's just a matter of like knowing . It's a valuable skillset .

Well said Well said and that said where can people find a free course they should take right

now ?