MtoM #284: How This Doctor Paid Off $313K in Student Loans in One Year

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This is the White Coat Investor Podcast, Milestones to Millionaire, celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.

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Welcome to another episode of the Milestones to Millionaire podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Bob Vaiani 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@whitecoatinvestor.com Protuity by emailing infoorotuity.com or by calling 973-771-9100. Okay, those of you buying houses there are doctor mortgages, physician mortgages. You know, sometimes you can get them if you're a dentist or even a physical therapist or a nurse pract or something else, too. But you can learn more about those by going to whitecoatinvestor.com mortgage. The benefit, of course, is you're putting down less than 20% but still not paying private mortgage insurance. They'll just look at your contract. It's a little harder if you're a 1099 doc, but they'll just look at your contract. Rather than asking for tax statements from past years or looking for your statements from your employer after they pay you, they'll just accept the contract and they'll only look at the student loan payments you have to make rather than your total debt. So it works out very well for lots of docs buying their first home. You can check out the options for your state@whitecoatinvestor.com mortgage. All right, we've got a great guest for this podcast. Let's get him on and hear his story. Our guest today on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast is Jake. Jake, welcome to the podcast.

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Thank you, Jim. Excited to be here. Honored to be here. I've been a fan of the show for years, so I'm just so excited to. To jump in and celebrate the milestones.

B

Well, it's your chance. You're the next guest on the Price Is Right. Right? Come on down. Tell us what you've accomplished.

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Yeah, my wife and I paid off $313,000 in medical school student loan debt in less than one year after graduating from residency.

B

Wow, that's something. Okay, give us the background. What do you do for a living? And what part of the country are you in? And what's your wife do?

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You. I'm a private practice psychiatrist. My wife is a primary care Physician. She works at the va. We met in med school, first day of med school, and then we both graduated together in 2021. From med school we went and couples match into residency together. I finished psychiatry residency June 30, 2025. Which is funny, because today, as of this recording, it's June 30, 2026. So full circle moment, one year later. I've been running this practice for about a year now, and we live in San Diego. We trained in Miami, and now we live in San Diego.

B

Very cool. Did she come out the same year as you, or did she come out

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a year earlier in internal medicine? Three years. So she came out one year earlier. So this is now her second year as a pcp.

B

Okay, and how did she pay for med school?

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So, fortunately, she had zero med school debt, and that's. I mean, such a blessing. I took out, obviously, full loans.

B

If.

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If we would have had her loans on top of mine, this would be a whole different picture.

B

Yeah, it would have taken you two years instead of one. Okay, well, tell us about. I mean, I'm assuming you guys started paying these off before a year ago. Is that not the case? You didn't pay anything toward these until the last year?

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No, we didn't. This was. This is brand new.

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What would you guys do with her income the first year that she was out? I guess is my question.

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Yeah, that's a good question. So I was still in residency. She was in her first year of attending hood. We really got aggressive with investments. We basically saved up the down payment for our home. That's a. That's a big one.

B

Okay. You invested it, you saved up down payment, and you're like, these are your student loans, buddy. We're waiting till your income comes in, and then we're paying them off.

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In our. In our marriage certificate, it says, I, Ariana, do therefore claim to pay 50% of the medical school loans to my loving husband, Jake Goodman. No, this has always been a team effort. And we just decided once the COVID restrictions came off and my loan is going at 6%, we're like, all right, let's kill this thing.

B

And you guys did. Okay, so combined income for the last year, how much did you guys make?

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20, 25. Income looks about 700,000.

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$700,000. And you sent 313 plus of it to the lender.

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So that's the unique part. And this kind of goes into the story. First of all, for anyone that's listening that lives in the state of Florida, there is something called Frame Jim, have you ever heard of this?

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I have not, but we just got done recording a podcast that I think actually will run after yours of a doc in Texas who got some help with their student loans.

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Yeah. So probably similar story. I'm in my second year of residency, and I get an email from Florida's frame department. Frame F R A M E stands for Florida Reimbursement Assistance for Medical Education. So I received this email, and it basically says, look, if you are a medical provider in the state of Florida and you work in an underserved area, the state of Florida may take a portion of your principal off your loan for serving sort of a safety net hospital. And I'm reading this email, I'm like, this seems too good to be true. So I call them, and I'm like, hey, I'm a resident doctor. Does this apply for residents? And they're like, oh, yeah, sure. It's for dentists and veterinarians and everybody. So I'm like, all right. So I filled out the whole application. It was a really challenging application. Actually took me like 10 hours in total to complete.

B

Wow.

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I submit the thing, and then a year later, I got $17,000 knocked off my principal.

B

Hey, it's better than kicking the teeth.

A

Exactly.

B

That's a pretty good rate of return for 10 hours of work.

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I'd say 100%. And then a year later, another 15,000. And then a year later, $70,000 off of my principal.

B

Wow. And was at the end of it, or would it have kept going?

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We moved. I probably could have kept going. I don't know the limits. You guys should. Should search this if you live in Florida. But if I didn't see that email, though, all those years ago, I would have to pay 313,000 off myself. But it came out to be about $213,000 that we actually had to pay.

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Yeah, they paid about $100,000 of it off for you. That's way better than a kick in the teeth.

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100%.

B

Okay, so. But you still paid off $200,000 in a year.

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Yeah. So that's where I think the story comes into play here. So back in 2020, I just finished my third year of med school, and I decided to start posting on social media. My goal was pretty simple at that point. I just wanted to help future doctors, and I'm the first doctor in my family. The road to med school is super confusing and overwhelming. So I just wanted to kind of share the advice that I learned along my journey to future doctors. I had no idea what I was doing when I first started. I mean, truly, I started from zero. My OG followers were like, my mom and my dad and my sister and my girlfriend at the time, now my wife and a couple friends. And this app called TikTok came out and I was curious about it. So I downloaded it and I started making some videos. Previously, I was just on Instagram, and then over time, the account started to grow. Eventually, some brands reached out to me and said, hey, we want to pay you to promote our products. So I remember the first brand deal I got was like a thousand bucks to promote an MCAT prep course. And I remember just thinking like, oh my gosh, I just made $1,000 from a video. I'm a med student. You know, like, a thousand dollars for a med student is like $50,000 for an attending. So at that point I'm like, all right, there's something here. And I decided, okay, I'm going to really take this seriously. This is a business. And so I got serious about it. I started creating more content. I started partnering with more companies like usmle, test prep companies, scrub companies, healthcare brands. By the time I graduated med school, this was a full fledged business making about six figures. And then I started residency. So the content really evolved. At that point, I was in psychiatry residency. I was immersed in mental health every single day. So I started to do a bit of a rebrand of my content to really focus on mental health. So mental health education, mental health awareness. And this is the part where, where like, the mission of the social media account became, like, way more personal. So during my first year of residency, I experienced depression for the first time in my life. And that was a super challenging and difficult time for me. And I decided to just share my mental health journey just openly online. You know, just about going to therapy, about seeing a psychiatrist, about taking medication for my mental health, because I wanted. I wanted other docs, other healthcare workers, other med students to feel less alone in what they're going through. And that really changed the whole direction of my work, because then it really came to be not just like helping people get into medicine, but like, how do I help people in medicine feel less alone and how do I help them get the support that they need? So the long story short, as the years went on, the work that I was doing on social media opened up all these doors that I never expected in a million years. I ended up giving a TEDx talk about how to change the culture of residency. I started doing all these public speaking gigs across the country consulting work, nonprofit consulting. At one point, this sounds really wild to say out loud, but this actually happened. I was invited to the White House by then Vice president Kamala Harris to help spread the awareness about national mental health initiatives that they were doing, like the 988 campaign, which is the national mental health crisis line. So I just say that because I was living kind of like a double life. When I was in residency, I was training full time as a psychiatry resident, and then I would get home from work, and I was building a business around content and speaking and brand partnerships. So each year that income grew. And by the time I was in my last year of residency. I don't think I've ever said this out loud before, but I was making more than my attendings, probably. And the last piece of this whole puzzle before I finish my TED Talk here is that when I graduated residency one year ago today, I launched my own psychiatry private practice, and I decided to specialize in caring for doctors and other healthcare workers. And that practice has grown a lot and has become a major part of this overall picture. So, in summary, three revenue streams. My wife, she crushes it. She's a primary care physician at the va. My private practice, which is new, I'm one year into practice now, and then my media company.

B

Yeah, you add all that up and it adds up to 700ish.

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Yes, yes. And the thing is, we were making a decent living in our first year of residency, so that allowed us to kind of enhance the trajectory of our career.

B

How reproducible do you feel like your business as an influencer is?

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Yeah. Like, going into this podcast, I kept saying to myself, like, my goal is not for people to hear this and be like, I want to be an influencer, too. If that's what you want to be, awesome. Like, you'll crush it. You can do great. It's totally possible. But the goal is like, your degree, your expertise, you can do anything with that. You could become the white coat investor. You could become Dr. Jim Dali and open up, you know, your own business. Talking about personal finance. You can do real estate. You can do content creation. You can do consulting if you want to just see patients. That's awesome. You can make an amazing living doing that, but you can do so many things that are sort of outside the traditional path. And that's sort of the overall message here. So to answer your question, it's possible for sure. I think I got lucky in a few areas. Like, TikTok came out, and then we hit a pandemic. And then everyone jumped on their phones and started scrolling. So, like, there are some things working in my favor, but it can be done.

B

Yeah. Very cool. Okay, so what's next for you guys? I mean, you've still got these three sources of income. Now your student loans are gone. Where's the money going to go next year?

A

That's a great question. We're kind of talking about that now. So a couple things. We. We're building an adu, an accessory dwelling unit. I didn't know what that meant until this year, but it's an in laws suite in the backyard so that my. My parents and my wife's parents can come stay. And, you know, I have. We have a almost 10 month old baby. This is like the joy of our lives. I guess he's an infant at this point and we just want grandparents to be around. We want the whole family to be together. So that's. That's something that we're saving for right now. You know, we. We keep things pretty frugal. So, you know, I'm looking to get another raised garden bed so I can continue to garden. I'm looking to get some chickens. My wife is not a huge fan of that, but we're gonna get some chickens in the backyard. Ari, if you're listening to this, it's too late. I've already made the purchase. And then just vacation and travel and enjoy our lives. Okay. All right.

B

Well, the vacation and travel might, you know, make some sort of a den. 700,000. I can't imagine the chickens are gonna make a very big dent.

A

The chicken coop, you'd be surprised. The chicken co pretty pricey.

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Yeah. Those are expensive eggs. Well, if you like your child as an infant, wait till they're five and you get into those magical years. So congratulations to you both on your success. Well done. We talk a lot about the importance of frugality, and it is important. And we talk about the importance of managing your money well, and that is important. But boosting income makes this all a lot easier. It's just way easier to pay off debt faster. It's way easier to become financially independent when you make more money. And you've given a good demonstration of how a family can work together to make more money. When you find some sort of side gig that's working, you stick with it for a little bit. And it can be pretty amazing what it does. So congratulations to you both. Well done. Thank you for being willing to come on. Do you have any last minute parting advice for others who are listening to this?

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Sure. I would say two things. First of all, it's okay to make mistakes. And I definitely made some mistakes early on. First year, I was able to do a backdoor Roth ira. I was super stoked to be able to do that. And I put the $7,000 in there. I did the traditional, and then I converted it to a Roth. I followed all the steps. I came back a year later. Ooh, this is going to be probably $8,000. I check it. $7,000. I didn't invest it.

B

Yep. It happens a lot, actually. Okay, what was the other mistake?

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Mistake number two, I got too bullish, as they say, into cryptocurrency. So, you know, I think I made some of those mistakes early on that some docs make when they become attendings, because I was making a little bit more than the average intern. And so I was like, you know, I got some extra money. This crypto thing is pretty interesting. And look, people are listening to this. They might have made a million dollars off of crypto. And that's awesome. I'm not coming on here to hate on crypto, but I got way too overconfident, and I was not prepared for the volatility of living in the crypto market. And I just kept putting money in, and crypto just kept going down and down and down and down. I got to a certain point where my wife was like, hey, did we max out our Roths this year? Maybe this was, like, halfway through the year. Normally, I'd try to do it first thing. And I was like, not yet. She's like, well, let's do that. And I was like, I need some cash on hand. So I sold all the crypto, and I had, like, almost one bitcoin, which, you know, you can go back and see what bitcoin was worth. I mean, today, compared to when you hear this podcast, compared to six months ago, it was a whole roller coaster, but it was a sizable chunk of money, and I sold it for a loss, and that sucks. So I guess the lesson there is, like, if you're going to play the crypto game, you got to hold out and wait for the cash out. Lastly, I hired a asset under management Advisor. I think a bit too early in my career. Maybe not too early, but just, like, I wasn't super comfortable with it. And some of these advisors are super savvy in the way they talk to young docs. And I just didn't really like the way that I didn't like someone basically taking 1% of my assets. And so I stayed in that for maybe six to eight months and then eventually fired him. And now I work with a financial advisor, a fiduciary financial advisor. So I made mistakes, but I made them early and I learned from them. And none of them, thankfully, were catastrophic.

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Yeah, for sure. Make your mistakes early and often and recover from them quickly and try to make them with as little amount of money as you can. So, well done. Congratulations to you on your success and thank you for being willing to come on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast to share it with others.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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Hope that was helpful to you. You know what happens, I think when people hear these stories about influencer making it big is they go, well, I should do that. Well, it kind, kind of reminds me of back in 2016, 2017ish, when there were a hundred physician financial blogs. Well, there's like five right now. Right. And most of them don't make very much money. So keep in mind, it's actually pretty hard to be a successful social media presence, influencer, blogger, podcaster, et cetera, and actually have it make enough money to not only change your life as a doc, but to be able to hire people to help you and carry on your mission. It's harder than it looks, I assure you. But don't be afraid to get started. You know, obviously it worked out great for this doc, but probably just as importantly, he paid attention to everything else, right? So even if it didn't work out, his finances were going to work out fine either way, which is actually the case with our family and white coat investor. Even if white coat investor had never done anything good financially, we still would have been fine and I'd still be working part time at this point at 51. And we'd still be multimillionaires at this point and certainly closing in on financial independence. Either way, one of the most common questions we get is what does a good financial advisor look like? Or what should we look for when we're hiring a financial advisor? And the truth of the matter is, you shouldn't start this search or this question by asking about the advisor. You should start it by asking about yourself and knowing yourself and what you need and what you're looking to have done. In my experience, there's basically three kinds of investors. There are do it yourself investors, and my guess is this is something like 20% of doctors. These are people that do it themselves in lots of things in their life. Sometimes they'll watch a YouTube video and fix a little thing on their car. They'll often mow their own lawn or shovel their own driveway, or they tend to maybe prepare their own taxes, those sorts of things. They're do it yourself type. They tend to be fairly fee sensitive and don't mind learning new things. They're not afraid to make a few mistakes and they view finances as one of their hobbies. They like learning about this stuff. They like reading financial books. They like listening to the White Coat Investor podcast or reading the White Coat Investor blog, or they're in members of our communities on the subreddit or the WCI forum or the Facebook group. Right? Those are the sorts of people that tend to do well as do it yourselfers and very reasonable. If you're willing to learn how to be your own financial planner and be your own investment manager to do this yourself, that is not crazy at all. But it's not for everybody. So I figured the do it yourselfers are about 20%. On the other end of the spectrum are people that the industry refers to as delegators. These are people who are not financial hobbyists. They're not that into this stuff. They don't want to read financial books, certainly not more than one of them. They want a financial person to help them. They want to outsource all these tasks. They want to outsource acquiring this knowledge to somebody else. They hire somebody to do their taxes. They hire somebody to mow their lawn. Why wouldn't they hire somebody to also do their financial planning and manage their investments? I figure this is probably about 30% of doctors that are delegators. And the good news is the financial services industry is very well set up to take care of delegators. And there's a lot of great people that we can send you to. You know, if you go to the recommended list of whitecoatinvestor.com that can serve delegators very, very well. Unfortunately, that leaves 50% in the middle between the do it yourselfers and the delegators. We call these people validators, maybe you can call them consultants, people that want to consult with somebody from time to time, that want some financial services, they want some financial advice, that want some financial assistance, but they don't necessarily want to pay for full service financial advisor that's going to do all their financial planning, that's going to do all their investment management. Maybe they're a little more fee sensitive than typical delegator might be. And they look at the price of financial advice and go, wow, that's a lot of money. I bet I could learn to do some of this myself to save that money. They're not necessarily hobbyists, but they're usually willing to learn a little bit if it's going to save them a bunch of money. And the problem with the validator spectrum is there's a whole bunch of different kinds of validators, some who are willing to do quite a lot, some who are only willing to do a little bit. And finding a financial advisor that matches exactly what you want to do as a validator is actually pretty challenging. So the good firms offer some sort of option for validators. Maybe they will just do financial planning with you and help you put together a financial plan. Then you've got to implement it and maintain it. Maybe they just consult with you for an hour about one subject, like student loans. Maybe they are available to meet hourly, for an hourly rate to answer your questions. Now, a lot of people think they can ask their questions in about three minutes and get answers in about five more minutes. The problem with that approach is the advisor actually has to know a whole lot more about you to give you the right answer. So even what you might think is a simple question might require three or four hours of financial advisor time. And at 200, $500, $800 an hour, that's not necessarily super cheap either. The common questions we see out there is, should I do this Roth conversion? Should I make Roth or tax deferred contributions? Should I invest this money or use it to pay down debt? Right. These all sound like simple questions, but it turns out they're the most complicated questions out there and nobody can do a really good job answering them without really getting to know you well and your financial situation. That just takes time. So the main problem with validators is they think the services they want should be a lot cheaper than they actually are to provide those services. But whether you're looking for a financial advisor as a delegator, or whether you're looking for a financial advisor as a validator, the key is to know what you want, what services you value enough to pay for them, what services you need, what you're not good at, and make sure the financial advisor is going to be providing those services. But as you look at financial advisors, some of the things to look for is you want to have a financial advisor that is a fiduciary. What that means is they've essentially agreed to act in a Hippocratic manner, right? To put your needs and desires ahead of their own. So to do the right thing for you, even if it's not necessarily the right thing for their pocketbook we're talking about people who are fee only advisors, meaning they just get paid to give you advice, to do service for you. They're not getting paid commissions from somebody else. They're not a salesperson masquerading as a financial advisor. This is part of the issue with the financial advisor industry, right? There's no legal definition of financial advisor. So somebody that is an insurance agent can call themselves a financial advisor. Someone who is a mutual fund salesman can call themselves a financial advisor. And so it's difficult to distinguish the real financial advisors from those who are just masquerading as one, especially if you're not particularly financially literate yourself. The second thing you ought to be looking for in a real financial advisor is an up to date academic understanding of the field. Okay? If they don't have any idea what the papers in the financial journals are saying, you probably don't want to be taking advice for them from them. Right? For example, one of the biggest issues out there that there's very good evidence for is that index funds are generally the preferred way to invest in stocks. And so if you have a financial advisor that's recommending another way, you got to really wonder about their actual understanding of the academics in finance. A third thing that's nice to see in financial advisors is some sort of meaningful designation. The most common one out there is a CFP Certified Financial Planner. It requires three years of some sort of experience, often that can be in a sales position, unfortunately, and it requires them to pass a test. And that test typically requires a couple hundred hours of studying or so. Now, a couple hundred hours might not sound like a lot to somebody who's been through a medical residency and worked 80 plus hours a week, but it's better than what a lot of people out there calling themselves financial advisors have. Some of the other more high level designations include a cfa, Chartered Financial Analyst. Although don't expect to see this in a lot of people working as a financial planner, a CHFC is often somebody who came through the insurance industry and now wants to do real financial planning. And so those are the more meaningful designations in the field. Personal Financial Specialist PFS is something you often see that's similar to that from people coming from the accounting field. So somebody with a CPA may also have a pfs and those are generally the meaningful designations. But there's another hundred other designations out there, some of which take only a weekend course to acquire. So keep in mind, you know, there's often lots of letters after the names of financial advisors, just like There are after nurses. And don't be impressed by the number of letters unless you know what the letters actually mean. In general, you want an advisor that works with clients that are at least some clients that are like you. If you're a doctor, there are a few, not a lot, but a few unique financial things in your life. Big debt burden, some asset protection concerns, maybe a complicated retirement account situation, a late start. You know, these are sort of, you know, high tax bill. These are some of the, you know, doctor specific stuff. It's nice if you're a doctor looking for a financial advisor if they have at least a few other clients that are doctors like you are, because that means they'll have been through some of the concerns that you're likely to have. I mentioned earlier about the importance of them having an academic understanding of the field. You want them to have a reasonable investing strategy. They need to be putting your money into things like stocks and bonds and real estate and those sorts of things. Not some crazy strategy involving options on crypto assets sold short with high amounts of leverage or something crazy like that. You want a reasonable investing strategy, preferably, I like to see them using fixed or static asset allocations or mixes of investment types, and using low cost, broadly diversified index funds. If that's the mainstay of the portfolios they're putting together, you're probably in good hands. You want your financial advisor to be unbiased. I mentioned they need to be fee only. You can't have somebody who's got a duty to somebody else they might be putting in front of you. You don't want them to be thinking, boy, I'd like to tell them the right thing to do, but I got to send my K to college and put food on my table too. You want them to be true fee only, unbiased, or at least minimally biased. You know, anytime money changes hands, there's some biases, but minimally biased advisors. My mantra over the years for financial advisors has been good advice at a fair price. Unfortunately, there are all kinds of prices being charged for financial advice and services. And so I think it's worthwhile understanding what a fair price looks like. And what that typically looks like is something between $5,000 and $15,000 per year. The fewer services you need, the closer you are to that $5,000 mark. The more you need, the closer you are to that $15,000 mark. But my point is, it shouldn't be $50,000. It shouldn't be $100,000. And this often happens when you're paying an industry standard 1% asset under management fee. It's a very fair price when you have $200,000. That's only $2,000 per year. It's a very unfair price when you have $20 million. Right? 1% per year of $20 million is an awful lot of money. Way more than you need to pay to get financial advice. It's also helpful if the financial advisor is tied in with other services you might need. For example, if you have a need for tax strategizing tax preparation and they can also provide you at least good for people who can do that. If not bring them in house as well. That might also be something that you consider valuable with a financial advisor. If you need help selecting a good advisor, know that we do some vetting for you. We have a recommended list@whitecoatinvestor.com under the recommended tab that will help you to sort through what a good financial advisor looks like. And you can just go down that list and find the person that looks like they will work best for you. Knowing that we've already taken a look at them and they're required filings with the government and had other white coat investors working with them for many years. Certainly if we get complaints, we take people off that list. If something changes, we take them off that list. But if you want to shortcut this process, that's a great shortcut. Recognizing that we've already taken a look and tried to line you up with good financial advisors. Hope that's helpful to you. Good luck out there figuring out who you are most importantly and what you need, but also connecting with somebody that you can trust and work with long term to help you reach financial success. This podcast was sponsored by Bob Bayani at Protuity. A listener sent us this review. Bob's been absolutely terrific to work with. Bob has always quickly and clearly communicated with me by both email and or telephone, with responses to my inquiries usually coming the same day. I have somewhat of a unique situation and Bob has been able to help explain the implications in the underwriting process in a clear and professional manner. Contact bob@whitecoat investor.com Protuity today you can email infoprotuity.com, you can call 973-77-19100. Either way, make sure you get your disability insurance in place asap. All right, that's the end of our podcast. Keep your head up, shoulders back. We'll see you next time on the Milestones to Millionaire podcast.

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The White Coat Investor Podcast is for your entertainment and information only and should not be considered financial, legal, tax or investment advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.