A

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.

B

Welcome to the White Coat Investor Podcast. Today's episode is brought to us by SoFi, the folks who help you get your money right. Paying off student debt quickly and getting your finances back on track isn't easy. That's where SoFi can help. They have exclusive low rates designed to help medical residents refinance student loans that could end up saving you thousands of dollars, helping you get out of student debt sooner. SoFi also offers the ability to lower your payments to just $100 a month while you're still in residency. And if you're already out of residency, SoFi's got you covered there too. For more information, go to sofi.com whitecoatinvestor SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi Bank, NA member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 all right, we have a great interview today. You're going to love it. You're going to love it because you deserve it. You deserve the information you get on this podcast and you deserve the opportunity that we're going to be talking about today on this interview. It's a pretty awesome opportunity. It's going to take a little bit of work, but it may change your life and your family's life in a lot of ways that you may not even think possible as we just get started into this. So thanks for what you do out there day to day and recognize that with a few tweaks, you might be able to have a significantly different life while still doing what you're doing that's so important out there. Before we get into it though, I want you to know about Financial Boot Camp. Those of you who are just listening to this podcast for the first time or relatively new listeners or still catching up to everybody else, feel like you don't know everything. We have two versions of Financial Bootcamp. Actually kind of have three. Cause there's a book called the White Coat Investors Financial Bootcamp too. But the two versions, one is a podcast version and if you go to whitecoatinvestor.com BootcamPodcast you can get all of those podcasts. You'll notice you'll hear some of them. If you listen to the milestones to millionaire podcasts. We tend to tack one onto each one of those. But if you just want to listen to them separately, you can do that. Go to whitecoatinvestor.com podcast Bootcamp or Bootcamp Podcast. Let's do both of those. Can we just set it up so it's podcast bootcamp too? And that way even if you guys screw up the URL, you'll still get to the to the right place. Totally free. Totally free. Education for you, gets you up to speed with everybody else. We also have an email version. If you go to whitecoatinvestor.com Boot Camp, you'll get the email version. And just like the podcast, it's totally free. You can unsubscribe at any time. There's no commitment here, right? 98% of what we do here at White Coat Investor is totally free to you. So these resources will help you get up to speed. In no time you'll get the high yield information that you need to know in order to feel a part of the White Coat Investor community. But more importantly, get your financial ducks in a row so you can start benefiting from the financial freedom that starts flowing into your life the second you start using money as a tool and set it into its proper place in your life. So it's not running your life, but it is enabling you and empowering you to have the life that you deserve. Now let me tell you what a White Coat Investor has done with that financial freedom. This is the best part about this. After we finished this interview we had a long chat about she thanked me for putting the White Coat Investor stuff together and pointed out that the life that she has put together that you're about to hear about is in large part due to getting her financial ducks in a row early in her career. They learn to manage money and they learn to define their financial priorities and spend their money on what they value right and optimize the rest of their finances to allow them to do that. So our discussion Our topic today is long term travel with kids and I think you're really going to enjoy this interview. So let's get our guests on the line and get into it. Our guest today on the White Coat Investor podcast is Sarah Jabour. She is an anesthesiologist and palliative care physician. She's traveled to over 50 countries with her husband and four kids. She has taken three to five month sabbaticals each year for the past four years while working as a partner in a anesthesiology group. She is also a healthcare AI expert, having worked at RAN doing AI model evaluations for national Security and founded Validara Health to help healthcare AI companies with AI governance and evaluation, lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, when she's not traveling, which may not be that much of the year based on how much you're traveling. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

A

Thank you. And thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I have been such a fan of your podcast and your blog and all of the things that you've done over the many years now. So I'm thrilled to be here and with all of your listeners with whom I feel a real affinity because I have been reading their comments and their suggestions and their thoughts on the blog and on different groups for many years as well. So I am one of you. I have been there from the beginning. And so I'm thrilled to be here and to get the chance to talk about really my favorite subject, which is how to explore the world with your family and to do it in a not expensive way, way that will not derail your family's future.

B

Awesome. So for those who are not aware, Sarah has a book out. Those of you watching this on YouTube, I'm holding it up here. The title is go Anyway, the Practical Guide to Long Term Travel with Kids. Pretty awesome book. Pretty awesome title. Sarah, why did you decide to write a book?

A

Yeah, you know, after we finished our fourth trip, what we call our big trips, I had been talking to some. Some friends and some other physicians, and a couple times they said something that really stuck with me, which was these were older physicians, you know, kind of, you know, with kids in their late teens, early 20s, mid-20s. And they said, you know, we always wanted to do that, and we just kind of never. It was never quite the right time. We never could figure out how to make it work from a financial standpoint. There was always some reason that we just didn't go. And now it's one of my biggest regrets. And we miss that window, we'll never get it back. It's something that I'll just have to live with for the rest of my life. That we never had that experience with our kids, even though we really wanted it, we wanted it to happen. And I don't want other physicians to have that feeling. This is something that's very much within reach of normal physicians. We do not have a trust fund. We are totally from normal families who did not help us with anything. And we figured out how to do this on our own. And the impetus for writing the book was really to help those other. You know, I was thinking of the White Coat Investor readers, really, when I was writing it, those other kinds of people who were like, this seems Great. But logistically, it just seems so overwhelming. So I was trying to put together some of the logistic pieces for people to make it seem, because it is really doable.

B

So is this a passion project? Is this a business? I mean, is there a blog and a podcast called Go Anyway or what is this?

A

Not at this point. I was just so excited about being able to help other physicians, and I. The most rewarding thing has been that I've been hearing from physicians and even non physicians, just professionals who say, you know, I read this and now I feel like this is something I can actually do. And that, to me, is. That's what I wanted. If I just helped one person be able to fulfill this lifelong dream that they may have had, that was. That was the reason for writing the book. I am just so passionate about helping people do this because it's been such a special experience for our family. You know, I think many people can relate to when you're. You know, you have. We have four kids, so, you know, they're doing all the activities, you know, all the things they're in. The soccer and the music stuff and the art stuff and the birthday parties, and all of a sudden you're all in different places, all over the place, and you're working, and suddenly you kind of see each other in passing or for a few minutes, even though you. You know, we sit down and have dinner together every night and. But still, a lot of the other time we are in all kinds of places and the travel has been really special because we are forced to be together as a family, whether we like it or not, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and doing all kinds of things that we would never do otherwise and having all kinds of conversations that we would never have otherwise. It's been a really special way to get to know each other better as a family and for the kids to see us in challenging situations and, you know, see us kind of navigate things that we normally wouldn't have to do in our normal lives. And then also for them to ask questions about the world and the people and how people live and why we make certain choices that other people don't make. And that has really brought us closer as a family. So to me, it's the most special time we've spent as a family has been on these trips. And that kind of gift is something that I would love to facilitate other people to be able to give to their families.

B

So quantify this. For the last four years, you've gone for three to five months a Year, Is that right?

A

It is, yeah.

B

That's more than a year of those four years that you were gone traveling.

A

Oh, yeah, yeah. And usually what we do just kind of contextually is we'll leave kind of the latter part of the summer, and our school, especially for our younger kids, is on a trimester system. So we take them out for the first trimester of school and we have them back for the second trimester, which starts in November. In our school system, this year will be gone for the entire semester because our kids are older and they're now on a semester system. But it does add up to quite a bit of time. I've been really lucky to have amazing partners in my private practice group who have been fine with me finding trusted locums, docs who come and stay at our house and work for me and live at our house, take care of our cats. And it's been a great situation for them. They get to live in a, a resort town and they took your house

B

and your job and your cats.

A

Yeah, I know.

B

That's awesome.

A

Yeah. You know, I thought it would never. I always thought that that would just. That was just like pie in the sky would never happen. And I managed to do it, you know, four years in a row. So I think it does make point. There are people looking for these kinds of situations in the world. You just don't know until you start, you know, asking around and really trying to make it happen.

B

You, you are an expert at this. That, that is so impressive that you lined all that up with one person to solve all these issues, because there are a whole bunch of people out there listening to this, going, oh, that wouldn't work for me because of this, this, and this. Right? They've got, everybody's got this, this, and this. My kids are too old. My kids in travel, hockey, you know, I, I, no way would my partners let me do that. You know, I'd have to get a new job. I don't know how we could lose a quarter of our year's income to do this, all these things. And yet you said, despite all that, we're going to solve those problems. And what makes you different, I think, from somebody out there sitting in white coat investor podcast land going, I can't do this. Are you different from them? Do they just need their matrix experience where their mind will be open to this possibility? Or, or are you different from them?

A

I am not different than them. I did not have a passport till I was 20. I did not grow up traveling. My parents still don't have passports. This is not a thing that I did regularly. I did start traveling pretty regularly when I was younger, my twenties, and so I am probably more experienced in traveling than some other people. But foundationally, very much the same. You know, I have a job, I have bills to pay, I have things that, you know, need to get taken care of. And I think the main, the only thing that made me different was just kind of approaching it really kind of how a doctor would approach any medical problem, which is like, okay, what are the issues and how can we figure those out? And so I just kind of went down the list of okay, you know what, how am I going to keep my job? You know, I, we love our town, we love our community. How can I stay there and still do this trip? And so I wrote a sabbatical policy. You know, I have a great group of partners. They were kind of like, sure, as long as it doesn't cost me time or money, you know, that's probably fine. We want to know who's going to replace you. We want to be able to approve that person and make sure it's not a complete, you know, crazy person that everyone's going to hate. But as long as those things are true, then it's fine. And then really rewarding thing has been that now they have taken sabbatical. So they've actually used this policy that they had never really thought about developing. And one of them went on a month long biking trip through the Rocky Mountains. One of them went to visit extended family in Ireland for a month and got to meet her cousins and extended cousins in this huge Irish clan that she hadn't really gotten to spend time with before. So that's been really neat too. I put this policy in place really for me, but it's been great to see the other people in my group take advantage of it as well. And then after that was solved, you know, the money piece is, you know, it's a big piece and we are very, very frugal. I mean, we are, we are white coat investor people, but like the real like almost crazy side of the white

B

coat investor people, optimizers, that's what we call people like that.

A

There we go. Yes, we are, we are real optimizers. And part of it for us is that we don't care about a lot. Like we're not things people. We just don't really care about things very much. And that's been very helpful. So it hasn't felt like deprivation probation at all. You know, I drive the oldest car in the parking lot. And I. You know, our furniture has had many children pee on it over the years that, you know, with four kids like he is.

B

There's no boat, there's no rv, there's no second home, no.

A

No huge toys, none of that. But in exchange, we've had these amazing experiences. And something that's been actually kind of surprising has been that my income hasn't decreased that much on the years that we've traveled. You'd think it'd be a huge difference, especially after tax.

B

Because you're dropping the most highly taxed income.

A

Exactly. So we're dropping the most highly taxed income. You know, we are. We're not taking as many vacations during the year as we normally would. We don't want to. We're happy to be home. We're, you know, and I get settled in and gets to see all of our friends and, you know, kind of get back in the routine of being home. And so, you know, a lot of people might take 10 weeks of vacation over a year. That's a pretty normal amount of vacation for a lot of private practice groups. So if you just saved it all pretty much for one chunk, that's more or less what we're doing. And so that, you know, the income didn't go down nearly as much. I was also happy to work extra, you know, take extra call, take extra shifts both before and after we got back, just because I didn't. I wasn't burnt out or I was excited, you know, I was like, sure, I'll take another shift. I know that'll pay for this flight to Borneo or whatever. It's much more motivating when you have that. Or if I haven't worked for three months, I'm like, sure, I'll take another shift. I don't mind. You know, haven't been working. So it was easy. Easy to make up that difference. I think everyone was surprised. Both me and my partners and my husband, we were all surprised how little that actually impacted, how much I made

B

part of the issue of taking time off. And I've noticed this. When I've had three or four weeks off at a time, I'm not quite as sharp. When I come back, it takes me a few shifts to kind of get up to speed. Have you noticed that at all? After being gone for three to five months? Do you feel like it takes a week to warm back up? Or how do you feel like that fits in with your clinical skills?

A

Yeah, it's a great question. And it's something that I Was definitely worried about. I have not noticed any decrease in clinical skills. What I've noticed is a decrease in my efficiency at charting. So the routine and the flow of the medicine is often the easy part. Or this is what I know how to do. I've been doing this a long time. It's the, okay, now I have to do this computer piece that is new or that I didn't used to have to do or something. So that's been the real. That's been the real challenge going to and from, honestly, otherwise, it has not been an issue at all.

B

Now, Katie and I, we do a lot of traveling. Katie loves traveling. She loves it way more than I do, which is one of the obstacles we have to doing more traveling is that I'm like, a couple of international trips a year, I'm kind of good, you know, and she's like, let's go on a couple more. And I'm like, I don't know how much I want to do that. So that's one obstacle. But the bigger obstacle for us at this stage of life is not actually work. It's kids. Right? Our kids are involved in activities, they're involved in school. So walk us through the kid part of this. I mean, you're taking your kids out for a semester. Are you homeschooling them on the trip? Are they trying to cram it in during the summer? Talk to us not only about their education, but about their activities and their friendships and that sort of stuff and how you work through all that to be able to go on this trip, these trips each year?

A

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's something we were really concerned about when we started this, when we started doing this. My youngest was 6. My oldest was 11. So they were, frankly, probably the best ages to travel with because, you know, as long as they can read and do math, like, they're not going to get that far behind. And so we really just kind of. We homeschooled, but in a. Not very. We were not very adamant about exactly how much they did. We tried to get them to do, you know, half an hour of math, half an hour of language. They had to read half an hour a day. This is stuff they have to do anyways at home for us, regardless of their school schedule. So they're already used to that, and they were already in that routine. That was easy. Once they hit high school, it's definitely gotten harder. I have two going into high. I have one going into freshman year and one going into sophomore year. This year and so they are having to take online high school courses and get the credits and complete those. And that is definitely harder. You know, they have to take exams. They have to be in a quiet room where they can show that they're, you know, they're. They have a proctor, an online proctor that's looking at them while they're taking the exam. So a lot of logistic pieces to that, but also totally doable at the same time. So scholastically, this is going to make me sound like a complete crazy person, but I actually called. But I will tell you, I called a bunch of different competitive colleges because, just because I. I don't know if my kids will want to go to a competitive college. I don't really care, but I don't want to ruin their chances of it by doing this. I want them to continue to have options if they want them. And so I called a bunch of competitive colleges and said, how do you see online schooling versus going to school in a brick and mortar place? And all of them, I called Stanford, Emory, some of our local highly competitive colleges, and all of them said, since COVID especially, we see a lot of kids doing some hybrid learning. Maybe they'll take some classes at high school, some classes online, for a variety of reasons, whether it's competitive sports or they are more advanced in certain areas. And their high school simply doesn't offer that kind of class. So we're very used to seeing that. And they said the main thing is to just make sure that they take the most normal classes possible. So they don't want them to take art and neuroscience and hula dancing and they're not going to know how rigorous that is. Maybe it's harder than AP biology, but the college is not going to look through the syllabus and make sure. So have them take AP classes. If they're on an AP route, just have them take AP classes. If they take AP classes, they do well and they do well on the AP exam. We know that they're college ready and we're not going to worry about them. And so that's what we've been doing. We've just been having them take the classes. Our physical school has a great collaboration with an online school, so they've just been doing that. The credits transfer very easily for our younger kids. We do some online classes and some workbooks and they have never come back behind their classmates. Somewhat depressingly, they have come back ahead of their classmates, even when we've only done half an hour of work a day, which makes me Worry a little bit about our students schooling system, but

B

although part of that might be nature versus nurture, presumably they got a decent set of genes here.

A

Well, I don't know. They, they have forcing them to do things all day, that's, that's for sure. So, and then, you know, I think the, the friendship part is hard. We're, and we're still navigating that as if they become teenagers and want more independence. But part of it is having a big family. They're. They already have friends already built into the family, which is nice. And then part of it is that we return to the same place. And really especially when we only are gone for three months, not that much happens realistically in like August, September, October. What do most kids do during that time? Not a lot. Maybe they play some soccer games. It's probably it. So pretty quickly they realized that they weren't really missing out on anything significant and they've been able to slide right back into their same friendships or same schools, their same classrooms. We are in a smaller town, which helps because when they go back to school they are always in a class with somebody they know just because it's a smaller place. And it's been pretty smooth transitions every time. We thought we were worried about that too. And it has just for all four of our kids, just has not been an issue.

B

This is a good place to insert our quote of the day. Our quote of the day today comes from Lewis Carroll who said actually the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures that was pretty applicable. I think Megan picked that for today's episode. And you think about all the things you could do for your kids, you know, help them get into this top notch, you know, Emory or Stanford or whatever and get them into, you know, some hyper competitive, you know, travel, sports program or, you know, do all these things for them. And you know, it's not like travel has no benefits whatsoever. That's also a pretty awesome gift. You know, our kids have seen many, many countries, you know, and our daughter who went on what I call a boondoggle trip, she actually got 12 or 14 college credits for it. She went on an international business elective this last year and visited 15 countries on around the world trip. You know, and basically she was having to teach everybody else on the trip how to travel that she had learned growing up with our family. And so there are some benefits to getting out and meeting people in other parts of the world and seeing how they live and how they run businesses and how they do all These things. So let's pivot for a minute and tell us about the trips where you went and what you did. And, I mean, everyone's kind of mulling this over in their mind how they could do something like this. But tell us what you actually did and inspire them to make the sacrifices and make the changes it would take to do this.

A

Yeah. So, I mean, the main thing to know is that whatever you plan for your trip probably will change a bunch of times, and that's okay, too. So, you know, do not be deterred if your first plan does not work out exactly how you expect. That is probably how you will have the most fun. Anyways, during the first trip, we went to 17 countries. We spent three weeks. Some just. Highlights are we spent three weeks in the Galapagos traveling to the different islands to your point, about education, you know, learning about, you know, we. We went to where Darwin went, and we saw the finches, and we saw the, you know, the tortoises, and, you know, learned a lot about how evolution was, you know, discovered. And then we went to the Middle east for quite a long time. So, you know, through Morocco and Egypt and Israel, Jerusalem. I mean, the history there is hard to beat. So our kids, you know, learned a ton of history just from doing, like, you're saying. And then we put the kids in a Spanish school, so a small Montessori school for three months in Spain. They had very basic, like, hola, adios, kind of Spanish. And we just put them in school and said, you know, good luck. And they did great.

B

It was just Spanish, or it was standard school in Spanish.

A

Just standard school in Spanish. Just a regular, regular old school. And they came home the first day, and I was like, oh, did you make any friends? Was it okay? And they're like, oh, yeah, we made friends. And I was like, oh, what are their names? And they're like, oh, I don't know. We just played soccer. You're like, okay, that's right. Children do not need this whole, like, social thing. They just. If you play soccer, you have friends. It's great. And then we traveled for another month, went to Australia, saw more penguins. We'd seen some Galapagos. And, you know, our kids love animals. So we did a whole bunch of animal stuff. And then the next year, we did a lot of Asia, so Taiwan, Cambodia, Borneo, Malaysia, Singapore, all of those areas, which are incredible. And we just ate constantly and saw really amazing animals also, as well as amazing public transportation systems. And then the year after that, we did a very. What we call Go, go trip, which is we were in most places for about three nights and we did 26 countries in six months or in three months. So 26 countries in three months. We did all of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, which are. And North Macedonia, which are, by the way, my three recommendations for hidden gem countries. North Macedonia is basically, it's north of Greece, has amazing food, people are very kind and it's very cheap. If I were going to be a digital nomad somewhere, that's probably where I would go. Azerbaijan is amazing because it's between Russia and Iran, so it has this beautiful Russian, French inspired walkways and buildings, but then also the souks and the Middle Eastern food that you would expect there. And then Tunisia has some of the best Roman ruins in the world. So because it is desert and it wasn't conquered as many times as Rome and some, many of the other places in Europe, they have one of the largest coliseums, Roman coliseums in the world is in Tunisia. And we went and we were the only people there compared to, you know, going to the Coliseum in Rome. So that was a really incredible trip. We also spent two weeks driving around France and saw all of Normandy and did World War I history and World War II history. So saw the foxholes that were dug by the soldiers and you know, where you could go and find old, you know, gold and other kinds of, kind of souvenirs just lying around on the streets. And then we spent two weeks in Rome doing all of the lesser known basilicas and Roman history pieces, which were really incredible as well. And then the year, the next year we did a month in Greece doing a lot of Greek history. My husband and I love history, if you can sense a theme here. And then we spent two months in the French Alps learning French as a family. So everyone said that would be a terrible idea. Many language schools said, we do not teach adults and children learn so differently. We cannot teach adults and children together. And I will tell you that I enjoy learning from games just as much as my children enjoy learning from games. And I do not enjoy sitting and listening to someone lecture at me just as much as my children do not. And also that is quite motivating for children to be better at language than their parents, which is statistically the most likely outcome. So they really enjoy correcting you and is actually like they will learn faster if they know that they're going to kind of get one up on you. So we did that, we learned French and then right now we're actually in Morocco for two months. Learning Arabic and French as a family. And we'll probably stay here for. We're not sure actually where we're going to go after this, but it will be fun.

B

Pretty awesome. Okay, so let's talk about finances. I mean, we mentioned that, yeah, you got an income issue. You're going to lose a little bit of income if you take all these months off. But it's the most highly taxed income. But let's talk about the cost of the trip itself. I mean, I guess you have somebody in your home, maybe they're paying your rent. So that helps offset the cost of your life back home. But what's it costing you to be out there doing this?

A

Yeah, this is one of the biggest levers that I talk about in the book and that I think people don't appreciate is that living most anywhere else in the world is going to be less expensive than living in the US So depending on where you live and how stationary you are, you can vastly affect how much money you spend and how expensive your trip is. If you go to a country that has a very low cost of living and just stay there and hang out and enjoy the local culture and eat local food, you will likely spend a very small amount. So just even in Spain, our rent, for example, was $1200 a month for a three bedroom, 1300 square foot apartment in the middle of this small town. So, you know, that was very cheap. Our groceries in most countries are cheaper than in the U.S. so our grocery bill went down. You know, most of the activities, like kids soccer, is not hundreds of dollars. It's like maybe $50 for the whole year or something. So all of the things that you might want to do or think of are going to be less expensive. Your life will cost less. What adds money is the constant travel piece. And we travel very cheaply, so we often take buses. You know, we often stay in hostels. We travel in a very simple way. We each just have one backpack. That's it. And my son has type 1 diabetes, so we have one carry on full of type 1 diabetes equipment. But other than that, we really don't carry anything with us. So just not having a lot of things and not being able to buy a lot of things really decreases cost. I think people, and I know this is something that you really hammer home on the podcast and on the website and everything that you do is that people's lives become more expensive than they realize very quickly, to the point that they don't realize how much they're spending on a monthly basis. And I think if they took a hard look at that, as you encourage them to do, and then they look at what their likely cost of living would be in many other places, they would find that it's going to be much less expensive. A lot of places will educate your children for free, not all of them. You have to do some research which countries will allow kids to arrive and have free education. But many private schools, especially kind of local private schools rather than the big international American private schools, are a few hundred dollars a month for tuition. That's how much it was for our kids to go to Montessori. $200 a month per kid. So the expenses are not nearly as high as people assume they will be. And then, you know, there are other. You can be creative with making money, too. You're a doctor. You can still if. If you want to. You know, you can be working online if you feel like you really can't lose that income. You know, there are things that you can do from abroad to work. You know, just being aware that that means you are still working. I have been working frequently remotely doing healthcare, AI work while I've been traveling. And I love the work and I love that intellectual engagement. But it does mean that I have to miss some family dinners because I have to be home for meetings. And so there is that trade off between, you know, really being able to disconnect completely and spend, you know, focus on your family in some ways and then versus, you know, having that extra income or that, you know, kind of more sustained job if it's something that you want to continue during the year.

B

Okay, well, there's a bunch of people out there going, yeah, she's anesthesia, so she can do this. But I'm a surgeon and I own a surgical practice. What do you think? Is it a legitimate concern? Can they not do it because of their specialty? Or is this something that anybody could bring somebody in locums to care for their private practice for a couple of months, et cetera? What are the obstacles people might have in different work environments or different specialties?

A

Yeah, I think it's a great question, and it is true. It's a lot easier for me or for you to take this kind of trip than it might be for people in more longitudinal specialties. I do see more and more people doing locums in those kind of specialties now and doing locums as their primary job and taking long stretches to do this kind of travel. So having the locums be the primary thing and then the travel be the what they do in between their locums jobs. I have seen actually this, I have seen this work in primary care and when people have especially or in obgyn and other practices where it's pretty common to cover for other people's patients. So you know, a lot of OB practices, for example, will have the pregnant patients see all the obs on purpose because they don't know who's going to be on, on the day that the person delivers. So they want the, the patients to have seen all the providers before they deliver. And so in that kind of practice it's not a huge imposition for someone to leave because that churn is kind of expected and part of the system. It's kind of a feature, not a bug for primary care. I think there's more and more cross cover of patients as well. And so there is more ability to cover those patients. There's also depending on where you go and what patients you're seeing, you know, you may be able to see some of your patients virtually from wherever you are, if that's allowed. You know, you can't see the, you know, the Medicare Medicaid patients from abroad for the most part. But depending on where you are, that could be a possibility as well. So there are again, there are creative ways to solve some of these. You know, I think surgeons that is harder. I mean referral based practices are always going to be a little more challenging. Having said that, if you're an established part of the community and somebody comes and fills in for you for two months and then you come back, I just don't see the referrals completely going away during that two month period. It's a risk, but you know, life is kind of full of risk benefit analyses and maybe you go for a month instead of two months or four months or five months.

B

Okay, so when you come back and you tell people what you're doing, what are the objections that other docs bring up to you? They say I can't do that because of this or that or whatever. What do you hear from your peers and your colleagues when you come back and talk about what you've been doing?

A

So money is a big part of it. How do you afford that? And then my kids don't want to is the other big part of it. I always say, yeah, I mean of course they don't want to. They don't have any idea what it means. It's somebody being like, do you want to do this thing that takes you away from everything you like and puts you in A situation that you have no idea about? Probably not. That sounds pretty bad. So expecting the kids to have some resistance, I think is normal. Our kids didn't want to go. When we talked to them about it, they were kind of like, why do we have to go for so long? I'm going to miss my friends. My daughter was worried she was going to forget how to speak English, which I was like, that would have been best case scenario. And then they didn't want to come back at the end. So after all this traveling, we had a lot of adventures. We had a really good time. They wanted to keep going. So that, to me, that my kids wouldn't want to go is kind of like just an expected step in the process, not the end of the process. And the schooling is the other big objection. So it's, how do you school them? I don't think I could. I hear a lot of, like, I don't think I could homeschool my kids or, you know, basically my kids would be unhappy. And the homeschooling thing just seems too overwhelming. I would assure people that, especially after Covid, there are so many homeschooling and online options that it's, you know, you can kind of choose your own adventure and find something that really fits your family and your kids learning style now in a way that you wouldn't have been able to even seven or eight years ago.

B

Tell us about your spouse and what. What issues popped up there. I mean, it's worked out great for your. Your job. You put a sabbatical policy in place. But what. What happened, you know, on the other half of this partnership?

A

Well, I am lucky. My husband and I met actually walking up to Everest base camp in Nepal. So we met in a very. In a way that would perhaps suggest that we would continue to do this. And he is a photographer and has been staying home with our kids since our oldest was born. So in part to give us this flexibility and in part because daycare is very expensive for four kids and very quickly makes more financial sense for him to stay home with the amount that he gets taxed on his income than it does for him to be working and lose that flexibility. So for us, that's been a great solution. Obviously with, you know, if you have two jobs, it's twice as much negotiation and figuring things out. But I have multiple friends who are both physicians who have managed to finagle this. And maybe it's not for quite as long, like six weeks perhaps, rather than multiple months, but you can definitely still do something a Lot of jobs have, if nothing else, unpaid leave that you can take and you can be creative with some of your vacation time, et cetera. And people have been able to piece it together even in dual physician households that I've known.

B

It feels like a lot of work, right? Not only to arrange everything at home so you can go do this, but while you're out there, you know, you gotta, oh, we're gonna buy groceries now. Where are we gonna eat now? Where are we gonna stay now? Right? It's a lot of work. Is it worth it? Are there times where you're like, maybe that wasn't worth that part of the trip?

A

There have been places that we've gone that we've kind of been like, okay, well, we are ready to go now pretty quickly. But. And it is a lot of work. I mean, that. That is absolutely true. To me, the figuring out where the grocery store is and what's in the grocery store and what I could make with the stuff in the grocery store is the fun part. The finding the restaurants, where are we going to eat? That is the fun part. What is the apartment going to look like and what is it going to overlook and what will my morning routine be like? That is the fun part for me. So I think that has to be part of the package. If you, if you're the kind of person who dreads that aspect of travel, then it's probably not going to be really fun for you to go. Especially not very fun for you to go to many countries. It may be more fun for you to go to one spot that is relatively similar to where you are in. Like, for example, when we went to the French Alps, we live in a mountain town, a mountain ski town now. We went to a French mountain ski town. They spoke a different language and the bread and the cheese were much better. But otherwise it was very similar in terms of, you know, what people did on the weekends and what was kind of available and the services in a similar sized town. So, you know, going somewhere that's in a different place but otherwise relatively similar is probably going to be more comfortable for you if you really dread those kinds of activities and if they feel like work to you, which they don't for me.

B

Yeah, Chamonix and Steamboat are not that different, it turns out. Very cool. Very cool. Well, you know, a couple of experiences that I can weigh in with here. I have not done this. Almost all of our international travel is one to two weeks and we don't arrange anything at home. We just take time off, you know, Just so this, you know, kids might miss a little school or whatever, but it's relatively straightforward, traditional, not long traveler, slow travel or whatever you want to call it, but two vicarious experiences I have. One of the wonderful things about working at the White Coat Investor is that everybody works remotely, and so you're location independent. So our coo, Brett, a couple of times since he's been working here, has gone for months to another country. His most recent one, I think, is three months long in New Zealand. Took the family and he worked from there, you know, and it was fine. He, you know, essentially take any more vacation than he would take it home. But what he found is, with the time zone difference, he could work by getting up early and put in a full day's work. And then, amazingly, because everything else in his life besides work was gone, he had eight hours to go do travel stuff with the family. And so they did awesome stuff because, you know, all of his volunteer work and church stuff and, you know, taking care of the house and all those things were all gone, you know. You know, he wasn't coaching the mountain bike team while he was there, and so it was really a family bonding experience. And he went with fairly older kids. You know, he had kids in high school, one about to graduate that he went and did that with. And so that's one option of how this might look for people. Another option, those of listening to the podcast for a long time have heard Leaf Dahleen on here for a long time, who famously retired from anesthesia at 43. And part of the reason why was so he could do slow travel with his two boys while they were young. And they did. They'd go one place for three or four months, you know, and then they'd go someplace else for a while and someplace else for a while. And as they got into the high school years, they wanted a little bit more stability. And so he's actually doing a little less now than he has in the past. But I think as soon as they graduate, he's going right back to it. But this can look different for different people. It doesn't just have to look exactly like how Sarah has done it. Right. I mean, anybody can do this and make it look like the way they want to. If they only want to go for a month, they can. If they want to go for a year and just do it once, they can. There's lots of different ways to do this. Okay, so we've talked about the book. We've talked about how to take care of your kids when you Go. We've talked about what you can do while you're out there. We've talked about the finances, we've talked about dealing with the job. What have we not talked about when it comes to doing this, adopting this Go. Anyway lifestyle? What have we not talked about that people need to hear?

A

Well, I think a lot of people worry about re entry, which is when people get back, are they going to still be happy where they are? I think there are two pieces to this. One that I hear from people quite a bit is I left because I was burnt out and so, or I'm leaving because I feel burnout. You know, will I be able to come back to my same job? And I think, you know, that's a hard question to answer without going and doing the thing. But I do think that most people I know who have done this have come back and at least had the time to think about do I need to make a change in my life and at least I have the mental bandwidth to be able to think about that in a relaxed way and not just kind of shove that decision into the small pieces of time when I'm not working or being otherwise inundated by constant things that I have to do. And another thing that people really worry about is doctors increasingly, as we all know, are not just clinicians, but they're also managers. They are leaders of their hospital, they are in administrative positions and they are increasingly worried about just like what I would consider a normal job, you'd be worried about losing your kind of spot in a normal job where you're kind of on this promotion track. And what does it say about me if I'm taking this time off? And where am I going to end up? Am I going to end up kind of at the bottom of the pile again, kind of having to fight my way up, basically? Is it going to crater my career? And that's something I was really worried about when I left the first time. I was the medical director of the or. I was a periop service line chair. I was on the medic debt committee. I was in all the leadership. I was doing all the leadership things.

B

Of course, some people out there like me are like, you mean I get out of all that if I go on this trip, they'll sign up to go just to get out of those jobs? Right. But I understand what you're saying. We all have different career goals, right?

A

What really surprised me was that when we were gone and my kids were in school and for the first time since I was probably 12, I wasn't working. And I was like, what am I actually interested in? What do I want to fill my brain with when I don't have to be doing something else? And so I learned about AI just totally for fun because I'm a huge dork. And it was 2022 and I was like, it's so cool you could teach a computer how to, like, how to speak and learn language. That's amazing. How does it actually work? And so I read a bunch of textbooks. Again, this is making me sound ridiculous, but I read a bunch of textbooks and watched a whole bunch of videos from MIT and Stanford and really got into it. And again, this is just for fun. I was just like, this is cool. I want to learn about this in a way that I never would have been able to. And with my super busy, you know, working 50 to 60 hours a week clinically, plus all these leadership roles, plus the four kids and they have all the things to do, and it started a completely new career for me, totally unexpectedly. I was not looking for that. And that was not the reason I started to learn about any of it. But I had a curiosity that I was able to follow because I took this sabbatical, took this time off, and I was able to become an expert in something that other people didn't know much about at the time. And it's really kind of taken me on this path, this career path that has been so amazing. I've met wonderful people. I've been able to learn and grow in my career in a way that I was completely unexpected at the time. So part of what I want your listeners to know too is that it doesn't have to mean that you're giving up on your career. It might lead you into a completely new direction that you are really excited about and think is really incredible that you just can't see quite yet without having that time and space to be able to think about it. So I think that's something that is important for doctors who are very goal oriented and very. I need to know how this will benefit me now in order to feel okay about doing it. Or at least that's often how I feel about things. That, that may, that may be your experience. And that is. It's not just me. I know other people who have had a similar experience that once you're, you're a smart, curious person, you're going to follow your curiosity. Curiosity. And it may lead you somewhere exciting.

B

Yeah, I can relate to that. I once started just kind of reading finance books because I thought they Were interesting. And here we are having this conversation 20 years later. Right, Right. Okay, well, let's talk about the rubber hitting the road here. For a physician listening right now who's never taken more than two weeks off in their life, what's the first concrete step?

A

First concrete step is talking to your partner and your spouse and saying, you know, this is something I'm interested in. What are your thoughts?

B

I mean, maybe have them listen to this podcast. Right? Have them start by listening to this podcast with you.

A

Exactly. I mean, I think that's getting on the same page because, like you mentioned, these trips can look so different. And I think different kinds of. I think a lot of people would be open to. I want to do something like this. It doesn't have to be one specific way for it to be the right way. And so aligning with your partner on, you know, what seems reasonable to you, what kind of link, you know, if your partner is not a big traveler, you're probably going to want to stay put in one, one place, at least for the first time that you go somewhere for a longer period, and they're going to be happier that way. So plan a trip like that. You know, make it as easy for both of you to get on board with and be actually excited as much as possible, because that will translate down to your kids. You know, if, if one person is kind of annoyed that you're doing this, your kids are going to know.

B

Yeah, yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna split you is what they're gonna do.

A

And then I think the other piece is to really take a realistic look at your finances in terms of, you know, what could it actually look like? And with, like you said, an open mind in terms of, you know, what could we do to make this possible? Rather than, I need this much per month to make, to make my life happen. And I think, you know, not contributing, you know, if, if worst case scenario, you know, we always max out of all like a good white coat investor, you know, listener, reader. I maximize all of my retirement accounts every year and always have, even with all this travel. But, you know, if one year, maybe, you know, you can't contribute the absolute maximum, like, maybe that's okay, you know, having. Having a little bit of flexibility in that. And then I think after that is once you make the decision to go, the barriers will start falling away. Like, if you decide this is what we're going to do, then that's when it will actually happen. If you are kind of like, oh, I hope this happens. It's not going to happen.

B

Good advice. Good advice. All right. We've been talking with Dr. Sarah Jabour, author of Go Anyway. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and maybe inspiring some white coat investors to do something similar in their lives.

A

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

B

Okay. I hope you enjoyed that. It's awesome to see what white coat investors do with financial freedom. And I've seen lots of different things. I've seen early retirement. I've seen going part time. I've seen changing to another career. I've seen practicing in the way they want to. I've seen serving a community they really wanted to serve with their life. I've seen slow travel and long term travel and all these things that financial freedom empowers you to do. So get your ducks in a row and go do something cool. Maybe it's living with your family in Belgium for three months. Maybe it's going to 50 countries with your kids before they graduate from high school. I don't know what your thing is going to be, but by managing your money well, you'll be able to do it. As I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, SoFi could help medical residents like you save thousands of dollars with exclusive rates and flexible terms for refinancing your student loans. Visit sofi.comwhitecodeinvestor to see all the promotions and offers they've got waiting for you. One more time, that's sofi.com whitecoatinvestor SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi Bank NA member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 all right, don't forget about Financial Boot Camp. The podcast version totally free. Whitecodeinvestor.com Bootcamp podcast email version Whitecoatinvestor.com Bootcamp these are gonna help you get up to speed with the rest of the white coat investor community in no time. It's like just the high yield stuff. Okay, so if you don't feel like you understand most of the stuff we're talking about in these podcasts and when you read the blog, this is your way to get the base information under you that will allow you to understand all the discuss being had not only on the podcast and on the blog and in the newsletters, but in the white coat investor communities like the forum and the Facebook group and the subreddit and all that. It'll make you feel like you're one with us and you'll be up to speed with the rest of us. Thanks for leaving 5 star reviews about this podcast. It really does help spread the word. That's the way the podcast medium works. If we're going to get anybody else to listen to it, we have to have five star reviews. So a recent one came in from RuralMain Doc who said, help me get on track. This podcast is a practical and pragmatic approach for high income professionals to become financially literate and achieve the financial goals they may not have even known they had. Like taking your kids on long travel maybe. I appreciate that so much of what is discussed here is good sense for everyone to live below your means and to make a plan for the future. The variety of people at many different stages of career brings a depth of perspective. I love and appreciate growing my financial literacy while feeling connected to a larger community. Thanks for all you do. Five stars. Appreciate that review. All right, that's the end of our podcast. Keep your head up and your shoulders back. You've got this. We're here to help. Have a great time this summer. Hope you've had a chance to do some traveling, even if it isn't long traveling. We'll see you next time on the podcast.

A

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.