MtoM #293: $250K Net Worth During Residency

White Coat Investor Podcast

In this episode, orthopedic surgery resident Aaron discusses how he achieved a net worth exceeding $250,000 while still in residency. He det

Key takeaways

• Aaron began investing in an IRA at age 18 using savings from a summer job.
• Attending the University of Arizona allowed for in-state tuition rates, significantly lowering medical school costs.

Main topics

• Achieving net worth during residency
• Early retirement and IRA contributions

Notable quotes

The first $250,000 is the hardest $250,000.

Conclusion

The episode serves as an inspiring case study for how disciplined savi

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This is the White Coat Investor Podcast, Milestones to Millionaire, celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom. Speaker 3 (0:13) Welcome to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. Since April 2021, more than 650 physicians in the White Coat Investor community have invested over $300 million with DLP Capital, a 12-time Inc. 5000 honoree that offers four private real estate investment funds, one of my favorite ways to invest in real estate. If you're eager to achieve success as a private real estate investor, DLP's impact-focused sponsored funds offer the potential to earn double-digit returns, while making an impact on America's affordable housing crisis. Interested in learning more? Head to whitecoatinvestor.com slash DLP today. Welcome back to the podcast. This is the podcast where we celebrate what you have done and we use it to inspire others to do the same. There are milestones in our financial lives. Maybe one of the first ones for most docs is just getting back to broke since so many of us started our careers in a pretty big hole. But there are other milestones, right? It might be paying off a car or paying off a house or paying off your student loans or becoming a half a millionaire or a deca-millionaire. And we want to celebrate those with you. If you'd like to come on the podcast as a guest, you can apply at whitecoatinvestor.com slash milestones. By the way, one of my favorite things that we do every year is give away copies of the White Coat Investor's Guide for Students. I wrote this book a few years ago. We try to keep it updated as best we can, but I wrote it to give it away. We do sell some of these. Some people do buy it on Amazon. It's worth your money. Don't get me wrong if you buy it off Amazon, but I wrote it to give it away. My goal is to give it away to every first year medical, dental, and other professional student in the country every year. And we will do so. All we will require is a champion, a champion in that first year class. And all you have to do to be the champion is pass out the books. That's it. That's the whole job description. Right. You got to tell us, well, how many people are in your class? We got to make sure you're actually in the class and not just planning to sell these books on Amazon or something. And if you pass them out and take a picture with a few of your classmates, we'll even send you some WCI swag. But literally, it's really all we need to know is that you're in the class and what your mailing address is. And we'll send you enough for everybody in your class to pass them out to everybody. So if no one in your first year class has handed you yet the White Coat Investor's Guide for Students, please volunteer as the champion. You'd be surprised how hard this is to give away books sometimes. We only managed to get them to about 70 % of the first year students each year. That's still a lot of people, right? We're giving away. tens of thousands of books every year, but we'd like to give it away to everybody because we know getting this information, becoming financially literate at the very beginning of your career, not only helps you make better financial decisions in med school and residency, but will help you to be a better doctor later. You'll be a better partner, parent, and physician if you keep your finances in their proper place in your life. So they're a tool to help you have freedom. to be able to concentrate on things that really matter in life. So we want to get it into your hands as early as possible. We do so by making this totally free, right? We pay for the printing of the books. We pay for the shipping of the books. All you got to do is pass them out. So apply to be the champion for your school, your class at whitecoatinvestor.com slash champion. All right, we've got a great guest today. Let's get into the interview. Speaker 2 (3:46) Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Aaron. Speaker 3 (3:50) Aaron, welcome to the podcast. Speaker 2 (3:51) Hi, thank you for having me. Speaker 3 (3:53) Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're at in life, where you are in your career, what your spouse does, and what part of the country you're in. Speaker 2 (4:01) Yeah, so I'm a current third-year orthopedic surgery resident. I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I originally grew up in Evansville, Indiana, so from around the Midwest, and then went to undergrad there. Met my wife there. And then we got married, moved out to Phoenix for medical school, lived out in Phoenix for four years. I had our first daughter, my fourth year of medical school, and then decided for residency, wanted to come back, be closer to family. So I came back to Louisville, be close. My wife, she's worked throughout residency. She got her degree initially in accounting and then started working in accounting. Eventually transitioned more to the loss prevention finance side. So now she works for a corporate office and has been working full-time for the past, I guess it would be seven years now. Very cool. Very cool. Sounds like she's been along for the ride the whole time. Yeah, she's been along for a long time. So it's been great. Very, very lucky. Speaker 3 (5:00) Very Speaker 2 (5:01) cool. Well, let's talk about what milestone we're Speaker 3 (5:03) celebrating with you today. What have you accomplished? Speaker 2 (5:05) Yeah, so I guess the reason why we're chatting today is we recently hit our net worth as being north of $250,000. Yeah, Speaker 3 (5:13) quarter millionaires. Yeah. We're only halfway through residency, so that's pretty awesome because most people halfway through residency have a net worth of minus a quarter million dollars. So you're dramatically better than that. Obviously, you have someone helping along the way. which is never a bad thing. But tell us the journey. Tell us a little bit about your financial life and how you've gotten to the point you're at now. Speaker 2 (5:36) Yeah. So I would say, I think, you know, even in high school and towards in the middle of college. So I didn't really have, I guess, I had a unique job throughout high school and college. I worked at a power plant for multiple summers throughout college. I Speaker 3 (5:52) thought you were going to say you were a clown or something. I didn't know what was coming out after that. I Speaker 2 (5:56) did do inflatables, so I guess you could say it's a glorified carnival. Speaker 2 (6:02) Yeah. So throughout college, I started my IRA back when I was 18, after my first semester of college. So I think that summer, I lived at home, helped pay for some of college. But I think I had to put away a couple thousand dollars into the market. So that was my first time investing. And then even before my wife and I got married, she had her IRA. So she was investing. She worked. throughout college, worked at Chick-fil-A, did internships. So she also worked throughout college and saved money then and got started. Yeah. So early on, I knew I wanted to go to medical school when I was in college. I've always been interested in finance, economics, the way money works. Initially, I almost went to college for economics and investing and that route. I decided not to do that. But that being said, so I've always had an early interest in it. And then... Through that, I think you're always interested in investing, how markets work. And then when I found Dwight Coat Investor, and I knew I wanted to go to medical school, I started reading that early and often. And I think that helped too, is just having that early mindset of saving, investing time in the market. And one of the things I want to talk about today is how much time in the market and how it really quickly compounds after 5-10 years. It really starts taking off at a rapid pace. Speaker 3 (7:25) Yeah, especially the last few years, if you've had any money in large cap stocks, for sure. You know, listening to your story, I feel kind of old because I realized the white coat investor was around for five or six or seven years before you started college. Speaker 2 (7:39) Yeah. Speaker 3 (7:39) And, you know, I think of it as something we just started yesterday. And, you know, it's pretty wild to think that it's been there for your entire journey Speaker 2 (7:47) in relatively mature form, which is which is pretty wild to think about. Speaker 3 (7:52) Okay, so, I mean, you had this interest in finance, but you still had to go to medical school. How'd you pay for medical school? Speaker 2 (8:00) So luckily at University of Arizona, where I went to medical school, is if you had, basically, if you had a state income tax, the Board of Regents would qualify you as