Reader

If you are reading this and feeling a bit tired from your weekend, I promise you, I am right there with you. We just wrapped up an absolutely wild, sleep-deprived 72 hours, and my body is definitely feeling it.

It started on Thursday night. We had received a quote of over $1,600 to clean and stain the accessible walkway at our Highland Orthoapedic Institute clinic. Naturally, Katie and I looked at that number, looked at each other, and decided we were doing it ourselves.

After we both finished our respective work shifts on Thursday, we grabbed the hose and scrubbed the walkway down to beat the rain in the forecast. On Friday, after another day of treating patients, we headed back to the clinic to finally lay down the stain. (You can check out the video and pictures of the process below—not too bad for a couple of amateur painters!). I made sure to reward Katie’s serious sweat equity with some much deserved Pho afterward.

Then came Saturday. We were up early to head into Toronto for Blossom Con. Now, I have a notoriously iron stomach, I get a stomach bug maybe once a decade. But of course, my body decided that being out of the house for 12 hours at a networking event in downtown Toronto was the perfect time for that once-in-a-decade bug to rear its ugly head. I was fighting for my life in between conversations, but we survived.

Saturday night, we rallied and met up with 14 other Fund Clubbers, an awesome group put together by Mal Rowan and Josh Reyes focused on how to get wealthy in the new age. It was an incredible night of high-level conversations, but we didn't get to bed until 11:30. For Katie and me, who strictly guard our 9:15 bedtime, 11:30 basically feels like a 2:00 am club night.

Today, running on limited sleep, Katie was an absolute trooper. She powered through a workout (fueled exclusively by a Pitbull playlist, obviously) and then went back out to the clinic for touch-ups and more landscaping. We also did a final walk-through of our rental property as our tenants moved out this morning, so we could lock in the scope of work for our upcoming renovation.

To say thank you to my amazing wife, I treated her to a massive Chicken Souvlaki Pita and a Chicken Dinner from our friends at Greek City Grill (which easily gave us enough leftovers for three meals).

We traded a massive amount of our physical time and energy this weekend to save cash and improve our assets. But while sweat equity is great for weekend projects, it is a terrible long-term retirement plan.

That brings me to two massive financial concepts I was reading about this week.

The Net Worth Reality Check

This week, MarketWatch published an article detailing the exact net worth you need to start 'getting ahead' in your 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond.

Whenever these benchmark articles come out, I immediately hear from clinicians who feel like they are completely behind. Here is the reality: as healthcare professionals, our financial timeline looks different than the general public's.

We spend our 20s in school, racking up massive student loan debt while our peers in the corporate world are already earning salaries and matching their 401(k)s or RRSPs. It is incredibly common for a new grad clinician to enter their late 20s with a negative net worth of -$100,000.

My Insight: Do not panic about being 'behind' at 28. Your clinical degree is an incredibly powerful shovel. You have a high-income skill that allows you to dig out of that hole faster than almost any other profession.

However, you must transition your focus. Stop measuring your financial success by your gross clinic billings or your hourly rate. Start meticulously tracking your Net Worth (Assets minus Liabilities). That is the only metric that dictates when you can finally put down the stethoscope and step off the clinical treadmill.

Boring Always Beats the "Experts"

So, how do you actually grow that net worth once you start making good clinical money?

A fascinating piece from the Wall Street Journal this week posed a great question: Is passive investing sabotaging fund managers?

For decades, the financial industry has convinced people that they need to pay expensive 'experts' and active fund managers hefty 1% to 2% fees to pick winning stocks and beat the market. But the data proves otherwise. Trillions of dollars are moving into boring, low-cost, passive index funds, and those simple index funds are consistently outperforming the highly paid Wall Street managers.

My Insight: The best thing you can do for your wealth as a busy clinician is to be incredibly lazy with your investments.

You do not have the time to sit at a computer analyzing stock charts between patient blocks. Instead, set up automatic, recurring contributions into low-cost, broad-market index funds (like the S&P 500) on a platform like Wealthsimple (the only one I use). Let the compounding math do the heavy lifting while you focus on enjoying your weekends (or, you know, painting your clinic walkways).

We work hard in the clinic (and on our driveways/walkways) so that our money can work hard for us in the background.

Make sure you are investing it wisely.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Time for me to catch up on some sleep 💤

​@financiallyfulfilledpro and Certified Financial Counsellor CFC™

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