MtoM #294: This Couple Paid Cash for a $200,000 Camper Van

White Coat Investor Podcast

Physicians Teresa and Pete share their experience of paying $200,000 in cash for a custom camper van. They detail how they prioritized stude

Key takeaways

• Paid $200,000 cash for a custom RV to avoid 9% APR financing interest.
• Prioritized full student loan repayment before making large luxury purchases.

Main topics

• Cash purchases vs. financing
• Student loan repayment strategies

Notable quotes

We poured everything into what's the most important. We poured everything into the passion.

Conclusion

Strategic delayed gratification and disciplined debt management can en

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 4 (0:13) Welcome back to the podcast. We love doing this podcast because it gets to celebrate you. I mean, all of our podcasts are driven by you, your questions and what you want to hear about and learn about. But this one in particular, where we feature you and the things you've accomplished and use them to inspire somebody else to reach their own financial goals. We call it the Milestones to Millionaire podcast, although truthfully. Half the milestones we have on here are people that are already millionaires, and that's okay, too. It seems like we've had a rash of decamillionaires this year with how well the stock market has done in the last few years. But we'll celebrate any milestone. And we love unique ones. Today, we've got a unique one I think you're going to enjoy quite a bit. Before we get into it, though, I want you to recognize that we are here to help you with everything in your financial life. And one of the things that is kind of a no-brainer when it comes to physician finances is getting your employment and partnership contracts reviewed. The point of a review is twofold. One is to make sure that you're not being taken advantage of, that it's not a bad contract. And two, to make sure that you understand what you're signing, right? That you understand the non-compete, if any. That you understand who's buying the tail covers. You understand how this... how this thing breaks up and it costs a few hundred dollars, but it's totally worth it. You're signing for a job that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that you might be in for 10, 20, 30 years. We might be talking about 10 or $12 million here, right? Is it worth spending a few hundred dollars to get that reviewed? Of course it is. And too many physicians end up with poor contracts. And when the job doesn't work out, they end up saddled with high costs and burdensome non-compete agreements and unfair treatment. So spend a few hundred bucks up front, get the contract reviewed. It's well worth it. We keep a vetted list of these firms that do contract reviews at whitecoatinvestor.com slash contract review. Today, we're excited to have the wins on the podcast. They have done a pretty unique milestone. My favorite part about it is they did it with cash. And part of that was because the interest rate they were being offered was terrible. But the truth is, you know, when it comes to wants, most of the time we probably ought to be paying for them with cash. Occasionally, we have to use some debt for a need. You know, if we have to borrow to get through med school, it's probably a good investment to do so. Most of us have to borrow something to buy a house, at least our first one. And that's probably a good investment to do so. Occasionally, somebody's got to have transportation. Well, I hope you don't ever have an $80,000 car loan. You know, an $8,000 car loan is certainly something that's not unreasonable. But these guys didn't do that. They saved it up while meeting all their other financial goals. So let's hear the story. And I think you're going to enjoy it. This podcast is sponsored by Bob Bionni at Protuity, an independent provider of disability insurance planning solutions to the medical community in every state. and a longtime White Coat Investor sponsor. He specializes in working with residents and fellows early in their careers to set up sound financial and insurance strategies. If you need to review your disability insurance coverage or to get this critical insurance in place, contact Bob by emailing info at protuity.com by calling 973-771-9100 or by just going to whitecoatinvestor.com slash protuity. Speaker 3 (3:36) Our guests today Speaker 4 (3:37) on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast are Teresa and Pete. Welcome to the podcast, guys. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Okay, let's introduce you a little bit to the audience. Tell us what you do for a living, how far you are out of training, and what part of the country you live in. Speaker 2 (3:53) I guess I'll go first since I was the one that brought us into this. I'm Teresa. I'm a child and adult psychiatrist. We're from Southern California. Yeah, I finished my training in 2015. And right now just doing tele psych work part time. Yeah. Yeah, Speaker 3 (4:14) I'm Pete. I am family practice. I am from originally I grew up in Ohio, but I consider myself Southern California. I am about four years out of training. I graduated residence in 2022. Speaker 4 (4:31) Very cool. Now you guys have a kind of a unique milestone. You know, this is episode, I don't know, 300 or something. And we have never had this milestone on the podcast. So tell us what you guys accomplished. Speaker 3 (4:43) Okay. So I guess for context, I had always been interested in the idea of being sort of a traveler where I could have like my own sort of RV that we are our own. bedroom, bathroom, kitchen that we can take with us when we travel. I love to drive long distances. So one day, I think back in 2018, my wife showed me an Instagram clip of tiny homes. And that kind of led me down a rabbit hole into these bands that are exactly what I was hoping for and dreaming about. And so I kept following on YouTube these different influencers who... who like set off in band life and they just live out of their bands. And we don't do that, but we do take it out pretty frequently. And so we made a very concerted effort to save and be diligent about the things that we can save on and really point ourselves, orient ourselves towards this milestone of getting a band one day. And yeah, the stars aligned. We're in a good financial place at the moment and we pulled the trigger and we were able to pay cash for what I consider the dream RV that we didn't have to compromise on. We got everything we wanted. We still use it to this day pretty much on weekends with kids as well. So it's been a huge milestone for us. What Speaker 2 (6:17) inspired us towards this van life was that we're very... big travelers. We lived in Arizona. We lived in Southern California. We've done rotations pretty much everywhere because we just finished our training. So we're constantly traveling. At the time, we had a dog. And so, as you know, it's really hard to find hotels or places we can stay that would allow for our dog. So we wanted the ultimate freedom vehicle to visit, to work, to travel and be anywhere on our terms whenever we wanted to go. This was our freedom vehicle. So that's what inspired me. getting us a van and we saved hard for that. We saved so much money. It took years to get. Speaker 4 (6:57) Okay, so tell us how much this awesome van cost you. What did you actually write the check for? Speaker 3 (7:04) So I think all in and we did not compromise on any of the features. We got all-terrain tires. We got the maximum battery pack. The air conditioning runs off-grid for a week at a time. I think all in was close to 200 grand and we were able to not finance it. We just, we just signed the check and we went home with it that day with the pink slip. And that was, that was pretty incredible to, that was an incredible feeling when Speaker 4 (7:34) we did Speaker 3 (7:34) that. Speaker 4 (7:34) Awesome. So I assume you've got Starlink in it as well. Speaker 2 (7:40) That's on our to-do list. You know, our phones have been pretty good hotspots enough. Yeah. Speaker 3 (7:46) So Speaker 2 (7:46) we haven't needed to jump to Starlink yet. Yeah, Speaker 3 (7:49) but when we go out into the middle of nowhere, which we haven't been yet because we still have two small children, but when we do that, probably we'll install Starlink, yeah. Speaker 4 (7:58) Yeah, you won't go back. I can tell you that. Having used it in some pretty wild places, it's, you know, basically if you can do telehealth. you can do telehealth from anywhere with Starlink. So it's probably the next installation on that, I'll bet. Well, okay. This was important to you to pay cash for it. You saved up for it, which is like an idea that apparently seems old-fashioned in today's world. Everyone says finance everything, right? Why did you want to pay cash for it? Speaker 2 (8:30) So I looked into the APR at the time. It was like 9%. It was above. It was so expensive. And I was just like, why take out a loan if we don't have to? And we weren't owning property at that time. We didn't have a house. We didn't have a permanent residence yet. So I'm like, well, this is money that we were saving for a house. Why don't we just pour it into the van now? And then eventually, once he graduates his residency, once we have a permanent job, then we'll allocate funds to a home. So this was kind of our pre-home. Home on wheels, if you call it. And Speaker 3 (9:05) we recognize that by all accounts, like if you go through any like financial like forum online, Reddit, they kind of universally say,