Category: Investing

Creating a Dynasty: Building Family Wealth Across Generations

don quijote art

When I think of building family wealth, trust funds and inheritances are the first things that come to mind. What else is there? When Dr. Jim Dahle contemplates a family dynasty, he’s got a lot more than trusts and inherited money in mind. There are many things one can do while alive to enhance the wealth of future generations. Follow the principles outlined below, and you can be sure to set up future generations with more money than you had, […]

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When Your Portfolio Makes More Money Than You

hard not to smile

I was twelve, maybe thirteen years old. Our elderly neighbors could no longer keep up with the flower gardens and shrubbery surrounding their country home, and I somehow found myself employed. The job paid $2 an hour. I was small enough to easily squeeze in between and underneath the flora to pull weeds and I knew how to work a hose to keep everything green. A few hours of work earned me enough to buy a stack of wax packs […]

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Is It Better to Invest Early or Late in Real Estate Funds?

Dr. Peter Kim is back with a Saturday Selection educating us on investing in real estate funds. As he explains below, these pooled funds can remain open to investors for a very long time, and the risk / benefit profile can change when you invest early versus late in the fund, the difference of which can be months or even years. As an investor who has focused primarily in index funds, I’ve never had to contemplate such a question. You […]

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The Marble Movers: A Jarring Dividend Parable

Marble Movers

It was unseasonably warm for late September in Portfolia. It was the time of year when the leaves began to change, the harvest was in full swing, apple orchards thrived, and the Marble Movers would make their quarterly rounds to the homes of each and every villager. You see, in Portfolia, currency came in the form of marbles, and the villagers kept their marbles in fanciful jars. There were two types of jars. Everyone had a Spend Jar. This was […]

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Cap Weighted Versus Fundamental Index Funds

VLCAX PRF

The equity index funds that I invest in and recommend are comprised of a “basket of stocks” that are purchased all at once in the fund. These funds carry a proportionally larger amount of stocks of companies that have the highest market capitalization, or total value. The smaller companies in the index make up a tiny fraction. For example, the S&P 500 holds 500 publicly traded large-cap stocks. As of June, 2019, the largest 5 companies, while representing only 1% […]

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A Two Million Dollar Book: The Physician Philosopher’s Guide to Personal Finance ​

TPP Book

Early in 2019, Dr. James Turner, an academic anesthesiologist, published The Physician Philosopher’s Guide to Personal Finance: The 20% of Personal Finance Doctors Need to Know to Get 80% of the Results. He had been writing under the moniker “The Physician Philosopher” on his own website for over a year prior to the release of his book, and his articles fit the Pareto principle theme. He teaches people the most important aspects of personal finance to understand that will get […]

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The Backdoor Roth Point / Counterpoint: A Must-Do or Meh?

BDR-featured

Is the Backdoor Roth one of those moves that every high-income earner should be making? Or is it a marginally beneficial play that you can take or leave as an investor? I made an argument that suggested the latter, showing that the marginal benefits of doing the backdoor Roth paled in comparison to other smart money plays like taking advantage of travel rewards. However, when I later ran the numbers over many decades, I was able to show that the […]

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How Are These Physicians Creatively Generating Passive Income?

I used to think that passive income was more or less a myth. I was so down on the concept that I would usually put the term “passive” in quotes when talking about this so-called “passive” income, like I did just now. It’s not that I didn’t believe in it; it’s just that I thought the term was overused and not representative of the active manner in which people set up these income streams. Dr. Peter Kim changed the way […]

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Teach Your Kids About Money with the Bank of Mom and Dad

How do you teach your kids about money? It’s a great question. We all want the best for our children, and that includes not making the same money mistakes we’ve made in our own lives. I don’t have all the answers, but I feel we’re doing a few things right. We’ve been parents for eleven years now, and we’ve got about nine years left with at least one child at home with us. I can’t believe these years are more […]

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Investing in Retirement: The 3 Big Issues

SWR

Your job as an investor isn’t done the moment you stop earning a paycheck. You may have reached your magic number in terms of a retirement nest egg or monthly cash flow, but you’ve still got to manage that money throughout the rest of your life. Hopefully, by the time you are ready to retire, you’re aware of the potential pitfalls and how to handle them. Life can throw curveballs, though, so it’s best to be prepared for both the […]

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Practical Investing Advice for Doctors: The Pareto Principle

pareto principle

Simple investing is smart investing. I don’t apply the Pareto principle to my investments, but if I did, I’d still be in a good place financially, and it would save me a fair amount of time. Instead, I put in the additional 80% of the effort to hopefully eke out a slightly better result. I enjoy the challenge and like to tinker and optimize. I also realize most people are not like me. Dr. James Turner describes the Pareto principle […]

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Investing with Alpha Investing: An Overview

Alpha Investing

Last month, I made my first investment with Alpha Investing, a private real estate crowdfunding platform that focuses primarily on private multifamily and senior living real estate investment opportunities. They have also offered investments in student housing, self storage, office, and have made one investment each in each of two real estate funds (as opposed to individual projects), one multifamily and one commercial real estate debt. Value-add multifamily investments are the most frequent type of investment available via the platform. […]

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Understanding The 4 Main Commercial Real Estate Investing Strategies

four real estate strategies

Today, I present an educational post from Dr. Peter Kim. I certainly learned a lot just reviewing it and preparing it for publication. Rather than focusing on the different types of deals (debt, preferred equity, equity), he’s focusing on the different types of strategies. Value-add is pretty self-explanatory, but the others have meanings that are not obvious from the names, and nomenclature is important in real estate investing. It’s a whole new vocabulary. If you’re interested in learning a whole […]

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Stupid Doctor Tricks: Physicians’ Biggest Financial Mistakes

stupid doctor tricks

Listening to The White Coat Investor podcast the other day, I heard him talk about how there are brilliant physicians out there who scored 270 on Step 1 of the USMLE that cannot invest their way out of a paper bag. It’s sad but true. Intelligence and success in one arena does not foretell success in all aspects of life. In fact, the more one focuses all energies on one discipline, the more likely other areas are going to be […]

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Why Paying Down Debt Aggressively Was the Worst Financial Decision I’ve Ever Made

This weeks guest post is written by Matthew White with White and McGowan. Their firm is unique in that they handle financial planning exclusively for physicians and dentists. Equally distinguishing, is that Blake McGowan is not only a financial advisor with the firm, but he’s also a practicing physician. You can read Matthew and Blake’s story here at KevinMD.com to see how the two came together to form White and McGowan more than five years ago. The firms’ vision aligns […]

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What You Need to Know about Fundrise and DiversyFund

crowdfunded

Today’s guest post comes from Fred Leamnson of Money With a Purpose for the Money Mix website. I met Fred briefly at FinCon, and we’ve communicated several times since then. His well-written posts have landed on The Sunday Best several times now. Fred is an advocate for those dealing with opioid addiction, the effects of which have greatly impacted his family. He devotes an entire section of his website to overcoming adversity. I respect his willingness to share his son’s […]

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Life Goal: To Lose a Million Dollars

In the Great Recession, I lost tens of thousands of dollars. I was just a few years into my anesthesia career and hadn’t had a lot of time to build up my investment accounts. I had been maxing out a SEP-IRA and setting aside a bit of cash, but that was about it. The backdoor Roth didn’t exist, I didn’t have an HSA, and I wouldn’t start a taxable account until after the market had started to rebound in 2010. […]

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Top 5 Lessons from Sports on How to Be Better With Money

Minnesota Hall of Fame

Alright sports fans, listen up! Dr. James Turner has been listening to more than his share of SportsCenter, and believe it or not, he’s learned a thing or two about how to be better with money in the process. You see, the keys to success that apply to one discipline often translate to numerous other endeavors. Do you think Shaquille O’Neil was more successful on or off the hardwood court? It may be true that one thing led to another, […]

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