Why do physicians making six or seven figures still feel financially trapped? In Episode 3 of Direct Well-Being Podcast, Dr. Anders Apgar talks with longtime friend and Certified Financial Planner Brian Case about the hidden financial stress many physicians face. From massive student debt and “negative millionaire” years to lifestyle creep, delayed earnings, and the emotional toll of financial illiteracy.
It starts in medical school with stacks of loan papers and the societal promise that “it’ll be fine.” But years later, many physicians wake up feeling trapped despite high incomes, crushed by debt, lifestyle creep, taxes, and the reality that personal finance was never taught.
In this candid conversation, Dr. Anders Apgar sits down with Brian Case, CFP, to unpack the real drivers of financial stress in medicine; why high-earning physicians hide their struggles, how financial uncertainty shows up in clinical decisions and at home, and why breaking the taboo around money conversations is essential for well-being. Brian shares practical early-career advice, the power of building trust with a financial professional, and hopeful paths forward, including the importance of starting now, no matter where you are in your career.
This episode is filled with honest reflections, hard truths, and actionable wisdom for residents, early-career physicians, and seasoned clinicians who want to move from financial anxiety to agency.
Episode Highlights:
About the Show:
Direct Well-Being is hosted by Dr. Anders Apgar, MD, FACOG, M.S., An Ob/Gyn physician leader and nationally recognized voice in clinician well-being. The show is a trusted, peer-driven space for honest conversations about what actually supports physicians, beyond resilience training and surface-level wellness.
Each week, Dr. Apgar sits down with physician leaders, partner organizations, and frontline clinicians to talk about the real drivers of distress: financial stress, mental and emotional health, family dynamics, and the systems in which physicians practice. Conversations are evidence-aligned, research-informed, and grounded in lived clinical experience, never promotional, always physician-first.
Produced as a Direct Self Care production in partnership with the Doctor Podcast Network, the show draws on insight from the Well-Being Index, Champions of Wellness, Tend Health, and the broader Direct ecosystem to move listeners from awareness to agency.
About the Guest:
Brian Case is a Certified Financial Planner with decades of experience working with physicians and healthcare professionals. He first connected with the Apgar family during his wife’s OBGYN residency, where he began offering free financial literacy sessions. Brian is the CEO of Saveology and a key leader in Direct Wealth Care. He is passionate about breaking the taboo around personal finance for physicians and helping them move from financial stress to confidence and capability.
Connect with the Guest:
About the Host:
Anders Apgar, MD, FACOG, M.S., is a physician leader dedicated to transforming clinician well-being. As host of the Direct Well-Being Podcast, he leads honest conversations about the real drivers of distress : financial stress, mental health, family dynamics, and broken systems, for physicians and the organizations that support them.
A trusted voice in health care, Dr. Apgar blends lived clinical experience with evidence-aligned insights. He’s part of the Direct Ecosystem (Direct Self Care, Direct Wealth Care, Direct Practice Care), partnering with organizations like Tend Health, the Well-Being Index, and Champions of Wellness to move the conversation from awareness to agency.
Connect with Dr. Anders Apgar:
Websites:
directwellbeingpodcast.com , dwbpodcast.com
Emails:
[00:00:00] welcome back to the Direct Well-Being podcast. I am your host, Dr. Anders Apgar. Today we have the wonderful pleasure of having Brian Case with us. Brian Case is a certified financial planner and he's here really to help us flesh out really what is going on with financial stress with our physicians.
Brian, thank you so much for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Been a long time coming.
Yeah, To your point, Brian and I have known each other for about 30 years, when Brian stepped into my wife's residency program as an OBGYN. Brian's wife is also an OBGYN. The two of them were in a residency class together.
Brian stepped in to provide some free financial, literacy and financial help for residents. And that's when it all started. My wife actually said to him, "Hey, can you actually help my husband? He doesn't know what he's doing." so that's kinda how we got started. The burning question that I have, Brian, that I think a lot of us have is, you look out there and you got these rich physicians and all that.
Why do physicians making [00:01:00] six or maybe even seven figures sometimes still feel financially trapped?
Well, there's a lot there, Anders. I think it starts with what you said, the whole rich doctor thing. Because, from the moment you decide you're gonna go into medical school, society starts calling you a rich doctor.
Most everybody takes down a lot of debt, two, three, $500,000. The whole time society and even residency programs are telling you it's gonna be fine. So you just put your heads down and power through it, and you get out of residency, and there's so much momentum to go do what you said you were gonna do, including pay back those loans, that you just put your head down and get it done.
And you know, like we've talked about very often where it shows up is later in life when things aren't working out exactly the way, your version of it'll be fine was way back when. And, you start feeling trapped by the decision you made when you were, getting outta college and getting on this mission to help other people.
And the other word that you used that [00:02:00] really plays into this is literacy. I learned a little while ago to stop calling it a literacy problem. You and I can talk about it being a literacy problem, that's fine, but most people don't like being called illiterate.
Yeah.
The fact of the matter is you guys put your heads down when you're training and pay attention to taking care of us, not taking care of yourselves, and one of those things that gets skipped is personal finance. You know- Totally ... unfortunately in our country it's skipped in general.
But you start talking about physicians and other healthcare professionals that are going from making no money in training to being in some of the highest tax brackets instantly out of training it's hard to navigate. And- I guess to answer your question, I think that's where the feeling stuck or feeling trapped is, is you wake up one day and you realize this is not what I signed up for.
Yeah, You brought up a lot of very good points there, and we've got a lot to talk about with that because as an OBGYN physician myself, you go to medical school, you gotta [00:03:00] go to residency. You start medical school with... Basically, you just sign paperwork. If you wanna go to school, you gotta sign this paper that,
none of us can really afford it out of our pockets, so basically you're signing loan papers from the minute you get there. and then those loan papers pay for everything from food, housing, to education as well. And you do, you put your head down. Because if I don't sign this paper, I can't go to school.
so it doesn't really matter what the number says on the top of the paper, you just sign it. And then four years goes by of signing papers, I think every six months if I remember correctly. And then you get to the end of it and you're thinking, Whatever, these envelopes are coming in and, we had that joke about how I don't wanna throw your wife under the bus, but she and I, I'll throw both of us under the bus.
We both put them in unopened and we put them in shoe boxes and shove them under the bed and just wait for it. Because you do, you have to put everything aside to get through medical school, and you really have to put everything aside to go through residency. but once it happens, I'll tell you, the first financial literacy term that I learned, the first financial term was deferment.
it was just push it away, which, again, you brought up. This is probably a problem not unique [00:04:00] to physicians, but to Americans. But then all of a sudden you get to that fourth year and look, I was an in-state school. I had in-state tuition. I had it cheap, by all standards, and I think it was started at about $22,000 a year.
So at the end of it's $120,000 with everything else. But then you start the deferment process, and then deferment gets you a lot into the compound interest. There was the other one. But I'm on the wrong side of compound interest. I'm on the compound loan interest. But, where do you go from there?
How do you change that narrative of, look, if you wanna go to med school, you're signing loan papers for the vast majority of people. Where do you start with that?
Well, I think it starts with education. Going back to how I met Jackie you know, people like me used to be asked to go into residency programs and buy pizza.
But, try to get people thinking about their personal finances when all they're really trying to do is get through the day. So I remember walking around the hospital basically with three messages. One was, "Don't let anybody [00:05:00] ever talk you out of your disability policy that the hospital provided," 'cause that might be the only one you can get.
Yeah.
The second was, "Just put 50 bucks a month in your 403. Just trust me, it'll pay back in spades. It's a good habit."
Yeah.
And the third was, "Don't sign a freaking contract until somebody who looks like me has taken a look at it," 'cause you get to the end of residency and all you wanna do is get a job, so you'll sign just about anything to get on with things.
So, unfortunately there's no time in the day anymore to be on campus for that kind of education, and it's not happening regularly enough in any of the medical schools now. There's some that are trying, like we're working with the AAFP now to try to introduce personal finance as part of what they bring to the table.
but it always takes a backseat to things you need to learn. Like you need to learn how to be a doctor. You don't need to [00:06:00] learn, for your job, you don't need to learn personal finance. You need to learn it for your overall health and wellbeing and all the other things that come along with being a human being.
But as far as medical schools, they're not taking the responsibility for it. Yeah. So that's basically become our mission, is to figure out how to get ahead of the curve , start these conversations make it less of a taboo subject to talk about personal finance. 'Cause we've talked about this, but
One of the biggest problems is there's just not a safe place in the world to complain about making a half a million dollars a year. There's a lot of people that you can't talk to about this problem of, deferring your life for 10 or 15 years for accumulating a whole bunch of debt, and then trying to play catch up on top of all that, right?
So I know I'm just rambling now, but, I think like you said, there's just layers and layers to this.
Well, I feel like the hidden message, you're gonna throw me under the [00:07:00] bus. I feel triggered by that first contract because as you and I know, and I'll share with the audience, is that the first contract that I signed was actually, if you break this contract, you owe all the money that you earned back.
And it was a massive contract of $200,000, which 30 years ago was a massive contract. It was the biggest one that I could get for where I lived and what I did. And it also included a $25,000 bonus, which I also didn't read that part, which it came in halves. And I also didn't think about taxes for that either.
there was no thought. This was just a huge number. It's gonna outplay or outkick anything I've been making, and so everything's gonna be fine. And that's when loans come in, deferment process stops, and you start paying loans off at the beginning of your career.
And I'll tell you, Brian I just finished paying them off about five years ago at the age of 50. It took 25 years to pay that off. Yeah. They're huge. and then you don't understand what you're signing up for when you sign up for it, and so to that point, how do things like debt, [00:08:00] lifestyle creep and delayed earnings, how does that affect wellbeing?
The one-word answer is deeply. But the hard part is like I said earlier, it's a tough subject to talk about, especially if you don't know the language.
Like, you and I have talked about money enough that it's not a taboo subject. We get to talk about it. You know me, I know you.
But getting started and over that hump where everything in personal finance feels like sales it's really hard to get started. And especially for a physician who... I mean, you guys spend so much time becoming the experts in your own room that it's really hard to admit when you don't know something.
Yeah. Right? We're used to being the smart guys or gals in the room, and it is very difficult to admit you don't know something. And nowadays with the internet and everything, you should be able to know everything. You should know everything. Why don't you know all this stuff?
And you don't wanna talk about it. And you don't wanna talk about the shoebox and the unopened envelopes, and I think one of the questions you asked me a long time ago, "Why the heck did you not open these?" Because I didn't wanna know what was in them. you kind of [00:09:00] knew I didn't wanna see the number, and I didn't wanna see the add-on interest.
But literacy is a huge thing. And, but when you think about that literacy, it's just a language. Math is a language. Medicine is a language. Finance is a language. And so if you take it on like a language, like you're learning a foreign language, was taking up German or Spanish or something like that, once you get the hang of it, you get a lot of roll on that.
And the other point I wanna flesh out too is that you brought up the word trust. And I remember from the beginning of our financial relationship, which we no longer have, you fired me, 'cause I'm so bad at this. But at the very beginning, you were asking very personal questions. "What do you wanna do?"
Where do you see yourself in some time?" And they felt very invasive at first, but you learn to trust somebody. And honestly, I didn't have good answers to that either. I was, what was I? 20, 26, 30 years old. and, "Okay, what do you wanna do from here?" I have no idea.
I just wanna get to the end of the week.
you know, your question was what does personal finance have to do with, overall wellbeing or burnout or whatever. And, first answer is, it's hard to talk [00:10:00] about.
The second answer is you guys are busy. There are most specialties, you have call schedules. you're seeing 30, 40 patients in a day. You're just trying to keep up. So anything new that you're inefficient at in your week there's just no room for it. So it just gets put off and put off till it becomes a real problem.
Yeah. And to the old adage, time is money. So time is money, and either because you're wasting time or because you're losing money, by not addressing the issue. And it is, it creates sleepless nights trying to pay off those bills and knowing that's coming out of your paycheck for people who do it right, maybe 10, 15 years.
For people like me who don't do it right, it's gonna be 30 years. It's it's a long time. 20- maybe it's 25. Maybe I'm doing the math wrong. but it comes out of your paycheck at all times. And it's the first thing that comes out. And you sit there at night going, how am I gonna pay for this college?
How am I gonna pay for this vacation? How am I gonna pay for this car?" At the same time [00:11:00] that I've got this chunk coming out every week, every two weeks, every paycheck. And it keeps you up at night. And that's just the bottom line.
I mean, personal finance is the leading cause of divorce in the country, right?
I mean, that extends to physicians. I'm part of a physician family. We're not immune to that.
Yeah.
And frankly, it's bigger numbers, bigger taxes, bigger consequences, and you throw higher expectations on top of all of that.
you know, the rich doctor, everything's gonna be fine. society's view is everything's fine. And it's hard not to adopt that, especially when you don't know better. until you know better, and you wake up one day and you realize, oh, this is not really what I signed up for.
What I got to see for years was people that would finally come to me when they realized it wasn't what they signed up for. those are the good, outcomes are people that ask for help. The bad outcomes are the people that feel stuck and end up killing themselves.
Yeah. And that's devastating. That's a tough one to even open. To crack that can of worms open with when you start [00:12:00] talking about physician suicide and financial stress being a huge part of why people just find themselves at a point where they can't correct, and it becomes the end.
that's way over,
Well, and the good news and the sad part is that it's rarely true. I mean, it's certainly how somebody feels, and if they feel stuck or trapped or whatever, you can't tell them how they feel.
Mm-hmm.
but the reality is when you kind of get past that and look at, you know, is there a way out of what's making me feel this way? I've got lots of great examples of folks that we got unstuck and moving in the right direction.
And that's kind of my hope and my mission here is to get ahead of the curve enough to create some financial literacy, break the taboo around personal finance, but also be there for folks when they need somebody they can trust to help them get out of whatever situation they feel like they're in.
'Cause again, it's rarely the truth that there's no way out. [00:13:00] Like, there's not a lot of bankruptcy issues cause there is income
Yep. And you always told me that the paycheck will make up for a lot of financial mistakes that you can make.
To a point, that's true.
To a point, yeah. You have to have some reality to it. But I think that's the lesson here really, and clearly the theme of this episode and program, quite frankly, which is breaking that taboo and getting people to talk about finances openly. Even finances that, "Hey, I've messed this entire thing up.
I have no idea what I'm doing. Here's my shoebox." Open up the shoebox, open up the letters, get through them, and just don't feel bad about it, 'cause I would submit to you that a large majority of physicians, once they get to that first day in the office as their own practicing physician, a large majority of those people probably have shoeboxes.
I would agree. I've seen lots of shoeboxes and equal parts shopping bags full of unopened stuff.
Wow. Any other vessels? Shopping bags, shoeboxes .
[00:14:00] Those are the two that come to mind, . Actually , it's more bankers boxes- ... than little shoeboxes that I've got in my head, and yeah, lots of just shopping bags
and it makes sense. Again, I'm lucky I get to see the perspective, but you guys are busy. There's no time for anything that doesn't fit into, the first thing for all of you is taking care of your patients, closely followed by your family. But- that's the battle, and anything else, it takes a second seat, like it just has to.
Sure. And I think you've touched on this too, is where does that financial uncertainty show up in the office and where does it show up in the family? You mentioned divorce but short of divorce and short of everything like that, if you will, short of divorce, what does... How does that show up in the family?
How does that show up in the office?
The office is an interesting conversation because we're old enough that we remember primarily independent practices.
Yeah.
[00:15:00] And you've been in both worlds, so you understand-
Yeah ...
what I'm talking about. My wife's still in private practice.
So the illiteracy or the taboo part of it shows up in just inability to have conversations.
I wanna talk about financial uncertainty showing up clinically and then I wanna talk about the family too. but clinically we're gonna talk about making mistakes, basically shortcuts, mistakes maybe even taking on too much work. And so let's do this. Let's go back again So Brian, short of divorce how does financial uncertainty show up in the family? Well, can you talk about two things? How does it show up clinically? And , that one I can talk much on . But clinically financial stress shows up as taking on too much, taking on an extra patient, extra call, and taking shortcuts quite frankly, that may sacrifice patient safety or clinical care.
And so, quality will suffer if people don't address their financial stress. But even at home, how does that work for you at home?
Let's stay on work for a minute because I think it not only shows up with you as a clinician, but you've been part of independent [00:16:00] practices where there's that taboo or financial illiteracy shows up in just running the business.
and the financial stress of medicine is huge. And if you don't know how to address it, you end up in blind trust situations an awful lot of the time, and those don't usually work out well. You know, in that regard, the good news is a lot of physicians are now working for institutions and everything's very prescribed
And to answer your question about how it shows up at home, I think in very traditional ways. I think it's, stress about things that you thought shouldn't be stressful, it comes down a lot to you get out of training, you get into the real world, everything's supposed to be fine, so then there's this relief.
And before you realize maybe everything isn't fine, you buy the big house, you buy the third or fourth, in your case, car[00:17:00] Or, you just aren't paying attention, and that's pretty typical. Causing fights, causing stress on top of all these other things.
And again, I know, and this is one of those things that society just doesn't understand, is that very often, depending on the situation, the patient has to come first above everything else, above marriages, above children. We'd like to think that's not the way it is, but there are at least moments in most physicians' times, days, that everything else is secondary.
Yeah, and that medicine is all-encompassing, so you're hoping that people will take care of you. And that's why the other thing that happens a lot is embezzlement. A lot of private practitioners who are trying to run their offices, they just get wiped out.
They just get stuff stolen from them. You mentioned that trying to run a business And even when they are corporate-owned, you still have to run your practice, and you still have to understand things like profit and loss and statements, and it's really difficult, and no one teaches you that stuff.
We talked a little bit [00:18:00] earlier, I think, or either on or outside this episode, we talked about what learning happens and, You get a little bit in high school or middle school. You remember home ec? I remember learning more about baking a muffin than I did about literacy and finance.
we talked a little bit about how your dollar is your vote, and go ahead and open a savings account, and that was it. Yeah. So yeah, I remember being in private practice. I also remember paper charts for that matter too. But, ... that's for another podcast. But I remember, not understanding that stuff and even getting into board meetings with other physicians and just not understanding what the heck was going on with some of these terms. In your experience, Brian, what financial mistakes do physicians make most often?
I think the generalization I could make would be that deferred life plan and playing catch-up. To already have, like you were saying earlier, some big debt payments, and then to take on the big house, and to take on the second house, and to take on the fourth car.
it's [00:19:00] hard to peel that back.
Yeah.
it's hard to undo some of those things. And they're a problem.
A lot of us don't understand how much of the paycheck and future paycheck gets absorbed when you do buy those things. and when the kids need a car too, that's why there's four cars in the driveway, I'll have you know.
the other one's got trade. When the kids need cars and things like that, in planning for the future, you don't understand, I think as a clinician, you don't really have a concept of how much your paycheck gets eaten up and how quickly it does, and that's even before you start understanding taxes.
because you do, you mentioned it earlier too, you get into the highest tax bracket, say that easy, maybe probably something Freudian about that slip. But you get into the highest tax bracket, and all of a sudden it just goes away, and you're like, "Wait a minute, why do I owe all these taxes at the end of the year?
I thought I was W-2'd. What's going on?" You know, and that's the simplified form. Once you start to get into some of these other things like investments, and start getting K-1s and other terms that you just have no clue what's going on, you're way out of your league. [00:20:00] And time goes by, you know, you're 30 and you're trying to play catch up with that, but you've also lost investing time too.
You got your friends who went into law school, got through in three years, and they've got seven years of investing in you before you even get there. Absolutely crazy. Think back in your archives, and don't use me as an example. Tell me about a physician who looked successful, Brian, but wasn't sleeping because of money.
Oh, I've got plenty of those. Yeah, I mean, the first one that comes to mind is somebody we got really close to. And, which, back in my wealth management days that was most of my clients. And objectively everything was fine. So society's saying everything's fine. But the reality was everything was fine, but this particular doc was in charge of a bunch of other physicians both through a residency program and the practice, and was having a really hard time watching other people navigate what they had successfully navigated and carried a lot of that stress himself.
[00:21:00] And, the good news is I think he was trying to do something about it. The bad news is I know it really stressed him out- ... that it was a systemic issue. And it wasn't something he could just fix.
Interesting. So what are we not talking about here that we should be?
What are we not bringing up? you've mentioned it, financial literacy is a taboo subject, so we've exposed that. Let's uncover that rock. let the worms go all around. Is there anything else we're not talking about that we should be?
No, I think that's just being too general. I think what we've done is tried to break down the problem into kind of the three stages of your career.
and I think we can have the most impact in having these conversations is medical school or even the decision to go into medical school, just setting expectations on the way in, I think will go a very long way. And then that transition from medical school to residency is another opportunity to reset.
It's a noisy time. It's a tough time to get people. You know, they just wanna know how to find the bathroom and where to eat, but it's [00:22:00] also a critical time to start having those conversations because the time goes very quickly. I'm not sure how it felt to you doing residency at the time 'cause it's long hours and a lot of work, but, that time goes by pretty quickly, and pretty soon, by your third or fourth year, depending on what program you're in, you're gonna be asked to make some pretty big decisions.
Yeah. getting on top of that in medical school and residency, I think is the biggest impact we can have. And then I think, like I said earlier, having a safe place when you're in practice to have these conversations 'cause when you're... on one hand again, like I said earlier, you can't just go to Starbucks and start complaining about- making what you guys make. On the other hand, it's hard to talk to your, you know, immediate contemporaries about it, too. Yeah. Like, it's a tough thing to share. So I think having a community, having safe places to have these conversations and to get education that's [00:23:00] not, more sales material is really, you know, kind of the third leg of that stool.
So what I hear about time too is time flies, but I wonder if that's actually true. Time doesn't necessarily fly. Time just keeps going. So every day, 86,400 seconds go by and you've lost the opportunity to catch up on bills, to create a savings vehicle or an investment vehicle that's gonna mature basically.
So time flying or time just moving on I think is one of the more important things that people deserve to understand when it comes to financial literacy. You start now. Start now, start yesterday. Even if you should have started last week, now's okay. Last week would've been better. 10 years ago would've been better.
Before you went into medicine may have even been the best thing. But any time is a good time to start. and that conversation really could begin. Boy, I wonder what... I actually did have those conversations with people about becoming a doctor when it came time to become a doctor, but those conversations weren't necessarily financial.
They [00:24:00] weren't financial at all, quite frankly. The question was, I work for a lot of bitter folks, and pretty bitter myself, but when people ask physicians, you know, "Hey, what's it like being a physician? I wanna be a physician, too," they start telling you, "Don't.
Don't do it. Don't go near it." But they don't say because of the financial stuff. They really start talking about the hassle and the stress. There was a recent article that came out from Dr. Maida. It was a study that she did from physician side gigs and they said that 86% of their group, their team, or 86% of those people who they interviewed or surveyed were thinking of quitting by the age of 55.
and again, that's probably you're in a group that's already looking at physician side gigs, and they're doing that for a reason because they're trying to get out. But, so the cohort may not be true, but time definitely goes by. It goes by quickly, and then all of a sudden you're like, you're too far in it, so then you're like, "I'm just gonna quit."
What else do you think is getting in the way of fixing it? Is it also arrogance? It's clearly a literacy issue. It's not an intelligence issue. It's a literacy issue, but what gets in the way of fixing it?
I [00:25:00] feel like I correct somebody every week that, when I say I work with physicians, they say, "Oh, I couldn't do that 'cause they're too arrogant."
I get that all the time, and part of it's true. I'm sure just like in the rest of our world, there's plenty of arrogant people. But the misperception that physicians are arrogant, I think is worth talking about because what I know is it's not arrogance.
Actually, the guy who introduced me to my wife was training her at the time and he was a partner in one of my businesses, and I remember him pulling me aside at one point saying like, "You gotta give us a break. Like, we think we should know what you're talking about." and I think that's the truth is, you guys all spend an awful lot of time being the experts in your room, and you get out of that room and it's really hard to admit to yourself when you don't know something.
Like, I don't think you even recognize it. I think you just assume, "I should know this," or maybe, "I'll figure it out later," but it's really hard in the moment. [00:26:00] I was lucky because, one on one with clients it's easy to see when I'm talking over you. But you start talking in groups of people and, if I realize I'm talking over you, the good ones are gonna backfill it and make sure you understand what the heck we're talking about.
Yeah.
the bad guys in the industry are just gonna keep talking over you and play on the fact that you don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. and I think it was, Tate Shenefelt from the Mayo's Well-Being Index. I mean, he concluded that 50% of physicians are basically doing nothing for personal finance.
And I think that's my experience for sure, but it's good to have a researcher kind of back that up. But, the reality is everything feels like sales and personal finance, and if you're intelligent you can smell that. You may not know exactly why. But what it does is, as soon as you feel like you're being sold something, your guard goes up, your trust comes down, and often do nothing.
And so to your point, if you do nothing for [00:27:00] 10 years, you've lost a lot of time. You've lost a lot of that compounding interest that should be working for you, not against you. And I think the longer you do nothing, the longer you're in that denial or deferment or whatever you wanna call it- it gets even harder to get started.
Yeah. It's like putting off your homework until late Sunday night, and it gets even harder. Yeah. I would submit to you too that I think that arrogance is actually just insecurity that gets played off- That's right ... as arrogance. And I think doctors oftentimes are asked questions that they may not know the answers to and they fudge the answers, and they're medical questions.
in the medical questions do you get used to fudging the answer? Maybe. but when it comes to finance, all you can think of is, "This guy's trying to take me for something." and it becomes, to your point, trust is a really b- hard thing to gain, but when you, when there's that much, quote unquote, money at stake, when it feels like there's that much at stake, nobody wants to give up an edge.
And so I think [00:28:00] that arrogance really is built from insecurity.
Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. I think you're very secure when you're with a patient or doing whatever you do and whatever your version of medicine is 'cause you're so practiced at it. That's the whole point is you go to school, you go to training, and here you are, able to move from situation to situation or whatever it is.
You're able to think on your feet and get stuff done. Take you out of that environment, throw a different language at you. That's one of my favorite jokes that I ended up making actually a few years ago. You guys are all taught Latin, right? I mean, everything in medicine is Latin this and Latin that, right?
Finance is Greek. Like, literally we're taught Greek symbols to represent a lot of what's going on in finance. And somehow we're supposed to communicate with each other.
Yeah.
And much like many languages, it's very difficult at first and then it actually becomes almost a rote memory, or it becomes much easier as you do it more and [00:29:00] more.
It's not rocket science, it's just a different language, the cool thing if you're me, is that once you get a physician literate, the concepts come quickly 'cause you're the most practiced learners in our society. That's all you did for 15 years was learn.
Yeah.
So you wouldn't have gotten to the point you're at, if you weren't able to learn. Yeah. That's again, where it becomes this literacy. Very clearly you just haven't been exposed to the language. Once you understand the language, the
concepts are- Not complicated.
yeah. Yeah, unlike SpongeBob, who's unteachable.
Poor Mrs. Puff- ... couldn't teach him a thing. we can. We can actually learn these things. And I think that's a really good point to bring up to anybody who might be listening, and that is that you can learn this from a physician's standpoint. I'm no expert, but what I like to believe is that I'm clearly not an expert, I'm very far from it, and I make a ton of mistakes when it comes to finances.
But I have that trust with my current planner, I got that trust [00:30:00] that if I don't know what they're talking about, I'll stop and be like, "I don't know what the heck you're talking about." And so I would like to give that encouragement to anybody listening, which is just keep asking questions.
That's how you got through medical school. You asked a ton of questions and sometimes it did make you feel really stupid. but when it comes to finance just be stupid. Just be stupid for a little while, 'cause you won't be stupid for very long. I think we talk about burnout and wellbeing but I think
part of burnout at least is a financial problem, just wearing a different disguise. And so it just gets put off as, well, this is burnout. No, it's not burnout. I've got bills stacking up and I have no idea how I'm gonna retire and keep people... And so you get to that age, you get to my age, you get all the gray hair, and you start thinking, "How am I supposed to retire?
I have no idea what I'm doing." You know, we created that graph together where that line goes all the way down. When that line hits zero, you've got no life left. and it's a scary thing to look at. but it is one of the better financial tools that you can use that will give you that plan.
You don't have to learn it all at one time. [00:31:00] You can learn it piece by piece. You can save 50 bucks, to your point. You can save 50 bucks in your 403or whatever, you know, savings vehicle, retirement vehicle that you have, and then you can watch it grow. And once you start watching it grow, it actually becomes very exciting to be a part of.
You actually find yourself saving more and more instead of spending, thinking, "Well, if I save this now, it's gonna become $51 next week or next year, 52, and then all of a sudden it's gonna double in seven." So I think those are fantastic points. Brian, would you make any suggestions for books?
if someone was just getting started? I heard this great podcast and they're talking about literacy and apparently it's really easy." What book would you have people read? What book or two?
I'm not a fan of personal finance books. I've read a bunch of them. I used to recommend a bunch of them.
So I'll admit that I'm not current on them 'cause I haven't tried. And this is totally self-serving, but one of the reasons I took over as CEO of this company, Saveology, is because I think that's the right way to become financially [00:32:00] capable and confident. The problem I have with books or searching the internet or asking somebody like me a random question is that it's impossible to give somebody good advice in a vacuum.
So what we do is make sure that everybody spends 10 minutes filling out a survey that creates a financial report card. Then we know where a person is and what education to provide them. So if I just gave you a book and it's got 20 great topics in it, and the first two don't land with you,
it's not gonna be interesting, it's not gonna be helpful. But I think everybody should get a financial report card and then share that with whoever they trust to give them good advice. And you know, we have a platform set up to do that, to create education and to create action items.
You can really get very capable and confident just on our platform. Or [00:33:00] you can take that same platform, share it with an advisor, share it with somebody who can then understand where you are without going through some big, long fact-finder fishing for pain points, which unfortunately is most of my industry.
You know, we're all trained to look for what we can sell you. And I think that's where guard goes up, trust comes down, and people do nothing. So the whole idea of our report card is not to ever send your guard up, not to ever undermine trust, and just meet you where you are and give you a report card and give you education on what to do about it.
Well, the names are similar for a good reason, right? The Direct Wellbeing Podcast is part of Direct Wealth Care and Saveology's an offshoot of that too. And I think you know, first of all, let's get the website up there. It's, www.saveology.com, right? and tell us about your role with Direct Wealth Care.
Yeah. So Direct Wealth Care came from spending 25 years advising folks like you and Jackie and feeling like I wanted to have a bigger impact on physician wellbeing than I was able to have just kind of [00:34:00] client by client. We were lucky, we were able to touch a few hundred clients. But because of all the conflicts of interest in financial services, it's pretty hard to scale it, and touch a lot of people.
I sold that a few years ago now, and I've been focused on partnerships with folks like the Wellbeing Index and other large groups of physicians to try to make personal finance less of a taboo subject, and frankly, get people off the sidelines and doing something. For me, it's a big win if I can get somebody to spend 10 minutes filling out a survey and get them a report card, I feel like I won.
So that's the whole premise behind Direct Wealth Care is off the sidelines, doing something good for you and then creating capable, competent consumers that can then decide how they wanna attack this personal finance stuff. But at least they're doing it on their terms.
They're not just, blind trust, trusting an advisor because of their credentials or because their neighbor sent them [00:35:00] there or because they're a good golfer, any of that stuff that happens. And, yeah, so that's the long story short. And like I said, I
Launch Saveology a couple years into the direct healthcare journey, and took over recently, I guess going on a year ago as CEO, and we're focused the company primarily on physicians and healthcare professionals with some great partnerships
Yeah. First of all, no one would accuse me of being a good golfer, so I have that going for me.
Thank you very much for being here, Brian, a lot of good content, a lot of good information here. You may have answered this question, but if every physician could do one thing this month financially, aside from Saveology, spend 10 minutes that could change your financial future.
I think that's a small investment, right? But if they could do something this month that would impact their financial future, aside from Saveology, what would that be?
Yeah. it goes back to... I know I sound like a broken record, but it's such a personal question. So where my head goes is, are we talking about a student, resident, fellow, attending? Like, [00:36:00] who are we talking about? Yeah. 'Cause it's different. What I would love to see happen, besides everybody that doesn't have their own plan or have an advisor that they're working with on a plan that they're collaborating on, what I would love to see is that there's more mentoring by the attendings that understand what this could look like, good and bad, back to the medical students.
Yeah. So it goes back to making it less of a taboo subject. I'd love to see physicians talk openly about money with the younger generations, 'cause it's only getting harder. Especially with all the institutionalized medicine, like the disparity between the cost to become a physician and the financial outcomes, they're getting worse, they're not getting better.
Yeah. That's a fair point. But I also think your answers your own question of who we are talking to here. If you create a mentor, if you create a conversation between people, you can answer that question for the medical student. You can answer that question because the resident can talk to the medical [00:37:00] student, or their professors can talk to the medical student, and the attending physician can talk to the resident, and the career physicians can talk to the rookie physicians.
and the retired physicians could even come back, and maybe we should do that on this podcast, is talk to retired physicians and see what they did right and wrong. But If you create that conversation, you answer that question for every person that you were wondering who you're gonna answer the question for.
Yeah.
That's great. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time, Brian. Thanks for being here, and there's more to come, I hope.
Yeah. Thanks, Anders. This was great. I appreciate you taking on the challenge of the podcast, and look forward to what you end up doing with it.
We'll keep going.
Thanks, Brian. Take care.
Yeah, you too.