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Money Meets Medicine Podcast

MMM 72: Dangerous Money Thoughts

What if the only thing holding you back from financial freedom was your mindset? When it comes to your money mindset there are two main schools of thought – the Scarcity Mentality and the Abundance Mentality. There are some dangerous, limiting money mindsets that can come from a place of scarcity. What could happen if you traded these thoughts out for ones of abundance instead?

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Today You’ll Learn

  • The difference (and importance) between a money mindset that is scarce versus abundant
  • Common money thoughts that are dangerous
  • How to replace your dangerous money thoughts with abundant money thoughts

Resources 

Money is the root of all evil. It's what they say, at least. But is it true? Or, is this just one of the many dangerous money thoughts we all hear that can lead to major money problems if left unaddressed? Let's figure it out.

[inaudible 00:00:20], it's true. Oh, wait. Hey, welcome to the Money Meets Medicine Podcast, where we talk all about the personal finance topics you'd wished you had learned in medical school. I'm your host, Ryan Inman, and here's your co-host, who went through bankruptcy before the age of 10, but who turned around and paid off 300,000 of his own debt after finishing training, Dr. Jimmy Turner.

Yeah, that one's true. When I was a kid, my dad ended up getting let go from his job as a nuclear engineer. They racked up six figures of credit card debt, liquidated their 401(k)'s that would have been protected during bankruptcy, and then they went bankrupt. That was the beginning of my money story and, honestly, it impacted me for a good 30 years. I knew that money meant pain, and if I just ignored it, I had this ignorance is bliss mentality towards money for a really long time. It also led to, probably still contributes to some extent, my hatred for debt, because I know what debt can do to people and so I'm not a fan of debt. I'm never going to encourage people to take it on unnecessarily. But I eventually overcame that story, I overcame the thoughts that I had about money. I overcame a lot of the dangerous money thoughts that we're going to talk about today to pay off 300 grand in 30 months after we finished training, finished fellowship. That was all because we reshaped our money mindset.

So today, we're going to talk about some of the other really common, dangerous money thoughts that we hear from MMM listeners or FR listeners or clients or whoever, and how you might possibly replace some of those thoughts with some better thoughts about money that actually lead to results that you want.

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So Jimmy, when I hear your story about going through bankruptcy and you learned very early in life, how that was and it shaped, I think, a lot of how you view money, your relationship with money and debt, and all those things. Sometimes it doesn't happen till those later in life. I was exposed, like I've mentioned, I come from a whole family of entrepreneurs. Everyone's always running their own business. I was in business meetings. This is like back in the '80s, when the cell phones were those big clunky, gray brick.

Bricks.

And they had me in the little holder, sitting on a table, and they're doing a deal because my parents do real estate. So I've been exposed to this my whole life and that's how I think I view money very differently. We had a bankruptcy story that it came out later in life, and I never really talked about it on air cause it's not my true business to talk about it, but it's my dad. My dad is a real estate developer. He's developed 7 million or almost 8 million square feet in Las Vegas. Been doing it 50 years. During the downturn in 2008, where everyone basically lost a lot of money. Anyone in development lost almost everything or did lose everything. So they were developing 12 projects at the same time, they had pre-sold everything even before, like plans were done, like money was moving, times were good. They had, between him and his partner, about $300 million in loans that they were working through and working through 12 projects in two different states.

All of a sudden, things changed on a dime, and banks weren't funding some other draws ... I'm going to get a little in the details of like how real estate development works. Weren't funding draws over 15 cents of discrepancy. The draw would be like $9 million. Obviously, something was wrong at that point and you couldn't turn and get out of it. He ended up filing bankruptcy for about $170 million. That was his portion of the debt on that because you scale and grow business with hundreds of employees, and in multiple states that's what happens. That piece is what I was then exposed to, like the real negative side of what personal finances could do if you don't have everything in order or you do leverage and take too much risk. It was really hard to fault him by anything. It wasn't his fault that 2008 happened or anything, but he wasn't financially prepared because things were so good. I see it a lot with our clients. I'm making 800,000 or 600,000 a year. Money is basically getting thrown at me to go to work and, yes, I work hard and all this, but I'm saving so much, like why do I have to do anything? Why do I have to cash flow plan? Why do I have to save all this? I can just work one more month and it covers massive amounts of savings.

It's because you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know how things are going to shift. You don't know how things are going to turn. We didn't know that COVID was going to occur. Some of those people who are making 600,000 in derm, kid you not, 45 days later, were making zero, because everything shut down and they couldn't do anything. All of a sudden, physicians, in general, I think, and it depends on field and specialty, woke up and was like, "Oh wait, I'm not completely immune to all of this stuff," and that shapes thoughts around money. So I'm really excited to talk about this topic because even if you're 35 or 45 or 55, you will still learn lessons about money and things that you didn't know even about yourself as dynamics change and things you didn't think up.

I think that's so true. Like, your experience going through your dad's bankruptcy or even hearing his story, impacts how you view money. The dermatologist who made 600 grand and was then making zero, that's going to impact how they view money and the decisions that they make. Really, I want to broadly take this into two concepts. This actually comes from Richard Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I think is the name of the book. But, really, what happens is you have a, what's called for him a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset, and I didn't really know these things existed until I got into coaching. I started becoming a client myself to get coaching that I get for me and really started learning and hearing so much more about this abundance mindset or some people call it a growth mindset.

It's super interesting because in the online space, sometimes there's this scarcity mindset that comes from people being worried about competition. Like, they're being worried about the faucet being turned off. If you're a dermatologist who's making 600 grand and all of a sudden wasn't, you're probably going to be worried that the faucet is going to turn off at some point in the future. I bet your emergency fund is a little bit bigger now.

I can tell you, Jimmy, I fought so much with our clients on you need a three-month emergency fund. Why? Like, "I make so much," or "I'm married to another doctor. Why? We make this. There are also my disability policy." I'm like, "No, they're not. You're getting one. This is how this works." Now, our conversations are "No, you don't need a two-year emergency fund." It went the exact opposite way. Now, coming back to, "I know this occurred; it could occur again. We have no idea what the future hold, but let's be rational. Let's sit down and think. Yes, I'm stoked you want a plan, but you don't need two years of emergency fund now." But the three months, I have no pushback now. It's funny.

That's what I want to get at with people, because people ... It's really interesting going into coaching because people are like, "Oh, that sounds so woo-woo." Like you're talking to people about their thoughts about money and about business and about their mindset, and burnout and being trapped in medicine and all the other stuff that we talk about in the Alpha Coaching Experience, and I always go back to real world examples of this, like you just mentioned. All of that has to do with what they thought. When things went bad, they're like, "Oh gosh, I need to have a two-year emergency fund." Why? Because they thought it was going to happen again. Like your entire life is dictated by your thoughts. So it is such a fascinating thing that people fight about that. They're like, "I just refuse to believe that working on my thoughts is really going to make a difference," and you're like, "Oh, I don't know if anything else actually makes a difference.: That's probably the one thing that-

That was the thought you have to just give me that example, by the way.

That's right, and my thought is the only ones that count though.

Ooh. Guys, do you see what I deal with? Like I'm waving the white flag. Help me.

He's got the white flag up.

I don't, but I need a white flag. I really need that in my life.

It's like the ESPN show. What's that one? Pardon the Interruption, where he's got the flag?

Yeah. I need that. I'm totally doing that.

Yeah, when we get back on video, we'll do it. So scarcity money mindset versus an abundance mindset. So basically, the idea ... a scarcity mindset would be worried about competition, that things are going to end, that the money is limited, that you might not have the opportunity at some point to earn more. That there's a limited amount of pie and you got to fight for your piece. Whereas an abundance mindset is the idea of like a rising tide raises all boats. So this is the idea that the pie, believe it or not, can actually get bigger and your slice can also get bigger. Just because you're having a piece of pie, doesn't mean someone else's not having a different piece of pie down the road, right? That's an abundance growth mindset.

I mean my pie tastes better, but we can each have pie.

That's right. I'm a key lime pie kind of guy personally.

I'm going to interrupt real quick to think about this for a second. Jimmy and I, we do this every week for you, guys ... Jimmy runs his own show as well, Physician Philosopher Podcast. Cool named podcast, like this guy is just awesome with naming. And I run Financial Residency and we do two shows a week there. The concept is, is we're trying to teach you guys everything we know. Now, do you think that maybe is in our best interest if we had a scarcity mindset and said, "Oh my gosh, if I turn around and I tell everyone and I try to distill all this personal finance stuff down to plain English so everyone can understand it, I'll never have a client again"? Absolutely not. What I view this as, is if we give you the education, some of you will never need to hire a financial planner. That's awesome.

Some of you are going to get really educated and go, "Oh man, I'm making some really big money mistakes. I'll try to fix them." Some of you won't be able to fix them on your own, and that's okay, but I'm not coming from a scarcity mindset of like, "Well, I got this black box over here that I'm not going to teach everyone." No, I want to give you guys as much as I possibly can. Money Meets Medicine, we talk, and TPP's show, we talk about mindset and all these things. Jimmy's basically doing free coaching for all of you. It is super cool. Oh, I'm about to like put my foot in my mouth, but I'll do it anyway. I actually learned stuff from Jimmy from the coaching side and he helps my mindset a lot-

Well, I'm sorry. Can you say that again? I'm sorry. One more time?

I'm sorry, the connection's breaking ... Anyway, and I learned some stuff from Jimmy, and I'll say it again, and Nathan, if you repeat this over and over ... Nathan's our editor ... I'm going to kill you. But the idea is that Jimmy is giving away all of his coaching stuff. He's trying to help all of you work through it because that is who he is. He's not coming from a scarcity mindset. If we can all look at it from abundance in everything that we do in life, the world would be such a better place if we all did that same concept. So I'm interrupting. But I love this whole concept of just coming from abundance versus scarcity mindset. Like Smeagol holding my precious. There's a Lord of the Rings reference, but whatever.

That was a pretty good impression there.

I've been practicing for days.

So yeah, no, I completely agree and it's an interesting thing because once you understand this concept, you will notice scarcity everywhere.

It's everywhere.

So we're going to give you some examples of scarcity money thoughts, and how they're not very helpful and potentially what you might consider thinking instead, a thought you might replace it with. So yeah, this show is basically a miniature coaching session, except we're not going through it together. So first one, and this one is so common, it's a euphemism in money, like money doesn't grow on trees. If I stop right now and ask you that, have you ever heard that saying? A 100% of you are going to say yes. Just think about it. Money doesn't grow on trees. Like the entire emphasis behind that thing is money's hard to get. Money is something that you don't just walk outside and find on a tree. It's a limited resource. The pie is only so big and you got to fight for your piece. So if someone else gets in there, you need to throw some elbows and protect the paint. You're not letting anybody get near your goal, your prize.

And some basketball references in here? Whoa.

It's getting deep.

This is hardcore.

This is really a helpful idea. Like when our parents told us, like, money doesn't grow on trees, they basically were insinuating, "Hey, making money is really hard." Well, it's no surprise then when physicians ... Last week, we talked about physician side gigs, but when physicians transfer from medicine to entrepreneurship or having a business, they will work themselves into the ground 60 to 80 hours a week. Why? Because they have this idea that you have to work really hard because money doesn't grow on trees. Has it ever crossed your mind ... we'll talk about this a little bit later in the show ... but you can actually work less and make more. That's totally a possibility. I know people that have $30 million businesses that work 10 hours a week. Just because you think you need to work 60 hours a week to make good money doesn't mean it's actually true. That's a thought.

So this one is something that I really love to talk to people about just to point out to them like, "Hey, is that really true?" Like, yeah, obviously, money doesn't grow on trees, but is the idea behind it true? It begs the question: how do you make money? When I ask people that, you can pause the show, you can think about it. How do you make money? What do you do that makes you money? Most people will be like, "Do surgery. I see people in clinic. I do financial planning." That's not why people are paying you. They're not coming to you and being like, "Hey, I want to have surgery today." They're paying you because they have a problem that they want you to fix or to help them fix. So they're paying you for a solution and that solution provides value in their life. They're basically giving you a thank you note called money for the value that you've provided to them.

So it doesn't come from hard work. It doesn't mean it's hard. Like you just have to provide something that's valuable intrinsically to someone else and, amazingly enough, human beings will thank you for that with money. So provide someone else value, given the opportunity, have that abundance mindset so give it to everybody. The world will eventually give back to you. That's the way that it works and so I would argue that money comes from value, and maybe it's a better thought to stop thinking about money not growing on trees and say, "Hey, I've got tons of value to offer to people. Since I provide value and value is what makes money, I can basically print my own money." It's a different thought.

The hardest part about that though, is when you're working through, and this is something that I am still perfecting, absolutely still have lots of issues around this, is the process around that. I have value. I want to give value. Some of that value we give away for free. You're listening to it right now. This is what we do. We love doing this. We love educating. We love coaching. We love all these things. So Jimmy coaches on a lot of the pieces that he's been talking about. You could call it coaching, if you will, like from a financial planning perspective even though I'm technically an advisor and there's a lot of things that go around that piece, but it still is, I view it as like coaching accountability and putting together a financial plan and all that stuff. But it all boils down to when you can earn more, that person who has a $30 million business and works 10 hours, they didn't do that because they had just so much more value than all of us. They figured out a process, and they figured out a way to repeat that process using other people, having other people help them to increase their capacity. That is the hardest part with all of this.

What I'll tell you is it took me four years to learn this, but if you're in an online business, you know what, your sole responsibility is to market. The reason I say that is because the reason that people will not buy something from you is because they do not see that the price is worth paying. So your entire job is to help people get past their limiting beliefs, their beliefs about scarcity, and help them step into that abundant mindset as they enter your financial planning practice or your coaching program or whatever it is.

It can literally be anything though. You could be a florist.

Yeah, 100%.

You could sell books, like anything. It's not coaching and planning. That's what we referenced because this is what we do, but it is not that. It is literally everything. It is what Jimmy is referencing here.

So what I tell people, because they'll balk. I'll go ahead and mention it because many people listening, you're going to find out the Alpha Coaching Experience is launching in June. So we're super excited about that and helping doctors find the financial freedom that they need to practice medicine however they want. When we get there, people are going to see the price tag, and guess what? It's a four-figure price tag. So people are like, "Oh my gosh, that's a lot of money." That, my friend, is a thought. That's not a fact. That is a thought. The way that I show that to people is I'll give the same example every time because it is just good, but I always tell them, "It's not really about the price. This is an investment in you. It's about value. And so if I told you that I had a stethoscope that I was going to sell you for $5,000, you'd look at me like I have seven heads and be like, 'Well, unless that thing's plated in gold, I am not buying a $5,000 stethoscope from you.'"

I still wouldn't buy it if it was plated in gold.

Yeah, it is really big stethoscope. If I had a Porsche 911 Turbo parked outside my house and told you that if you pay me $5,000, I'd give it to you, even if you're not a car person, even if those words that just came out of my mouth mean nothing and you heard the word Porsche, you would find $5,000 because you'd look it up and realize that's a $100,000 car. You would find $5,000 because you recognize that the value of the car is worth the investment. It's just like anything else in life. So people get stuck on price. So how did I learn that? Well, I learned because I tried to go and help people and told them that a coaching program costs $5,500 and they're like, "Wow, that's really expensive." I didn't really understand at the time like, "Oh, I have to help people recognize that this is about value. It's not about a price," because I've gotten coaching and I used to pay $15,000 a quarter. I paid 60 grand a year for my own coaching. Why? Because I would get 10X the benefit from it.

Like Ryan said, I'm talking about coaching, this is what I do, and Ryan talks about planning, but this applies to everything. When you focus that money is about value and when you can provide value to other people, you will make money. When you recognize that money doesn't grow on tree, that thought is not very helpful, and that in fact you can create more money, even in your own job as a physician. So if you're like, "This is just what doctors make in my specialty." They stop their thought right there. This is just what doctors make. It's like, you can challenge that, right? Like you can go do other things. You can go do locums. You could go to your CEO and point out like, "Hey, we're in the 25th percentile, but we're billing in the 90th. Just because it is that way , it doesn't mean it has to be. So challenge these thoughts. Like they're just thoughts. You get to choose whether you want to accept them or not. So that's number one.

Number two is this, and Ryan, I imagine you hear this maybe more often than I do, but people will say all the time, "I don't have enough money to," and enough, by the way, is a thought. "I don't have enough money to save 10% or 20%, or I don't have enough money to retire or to invest in X, Y, or Z that will be really important for my mental and personal health or for my kids. I don't have enough money to pay for that soccer tournament," or whatever. The danger is that mentality can be adapted to anything.

Oh, yeah. I'm guilty as charged. I say it all the time. "I don't have time to work out." I say it all the time and I know that I technically do, but I'm not prioritizing it in my life. So if you're over here going, "I don't have enough money to save 25%," which is what we recommend. I would beg to differ. It's you're just not prioritizing the saving for your future self; you're prioritizing your current self. Maybe you dug yourself into a giant hole by living in a monthly payment mindset and signed up for all these fixed expenses and have all these issues. Very few of you had this extenuating circumstance that was out of your control. Almost every decision that you've made about money, you could have made yourself, or to do it or to not to do it. If you're waking up now and going, "Okay, I want to do this, but I can't do it," that is a limiting belief and I think that there's a way out of there. Again, coming back to abundance, it's just, do you want to do the hard work to get there? As much as I want to look like, I don't know, Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime-

I thought you were going to say me, but.

No, that would be horrible mistake. But if I wanted to do that, like I don't have the drive. My wife's probably like, "Why not?" But I just don't have the drive to be a big, giant bodybuilder with a 20 pack in my abs situation.

It's not a priority.

It's not a priority, right. So I can't say I don't have enough time to do whatever it is, and I really worked on what is it that I want to do and what is it that I don't want to do. If I don't want to do something, I just say, no, and I have to be okay with it.

Yeah, and I think this applies, like for the medical student in residency listening to the show because we get emails from you guys, too. We love that you listen to this. I wish that I had something like this when I was in training. But people say, "I make resident money so I can't save 10%." I always tell him like, "Look, it just happens to be that filling up a Roth IRA is about 10% of what you make. Just magically, those numbers happen to be about the same, and if you can learn to flex that muscle now and to work it out now, saving when you become an attending is going to be part of your DNA, it's going to be automatic, it's going to be simple. It's going to be part of who you are. So if you can learn to do it now, because, believe it or not, your residency income is around the median income for our country. You do have enough money to save and thinking otherwise is a thought. Like that's not actually true, it's not a fact. I know it feels like a fact. The difference between a thought and a belief is that a belief is something you've told herself so many times you accept it as fact. Take it away, it's not a fact, and recognize that saving now is going to build for later.

I think that really has helped because I've actually had a lot of money scarcity in my life because of the bankruptcy story I talked about earlier, but ultimately, at the end of the day, like I have all the money that I need right now. I have enough right now. Like, I go back to those all the time, like I've got enough right now for today. Just getting away from that scarcity mindset that scares you from doing really the things that you ought to, like saving money. I have enough, got enough, and just reminding myself that's where my family's at. That saying, "I don't have enough," is almost never helpful and/or True.

One of the ones I hear a lot, and I know we're going to talk on this one, is that I'm not good at money. I agree, you're probably not very good at it and it's not your fault. You were never trained in finance. You never took a class. I think, as a nation, we have done a giant disservice to our future population, our current population, all the kids, we should all be talking, even if you don't fully understand money, you need to be talking to your kids about money right now. I don't care if they're two years old. Talk to them about money. Do it in a way that your kids won't do what my son's doing, where he's like, "Now I learned about taxes, I no longer want to make income." He'd straight up said this. "I don't want to work so I don't have to pay ..." I'm like, "Ah, crap, I went the wrong way with this because I introduced daddy tax when we talked about candy for Halloween." Great idea, I need to perfect that pitch and delivery, if you will.

We do daddy tax all the time.

We should be talking about this stuff with our kids so they understand, but it's not your fault that you're bad with money. It truly isn't. Yes, there's mindset and, yes, there's reality. I think that we've done a giant disservice. It should be in grade school, should be in high school, should be in college, should be in med school. I really think that med schools need to step up and offer one semester class just in money because a lot of you are going to go off and start your own practices. You've never had a class in money for personal finances, how the heck are you expected to figure this out as a business too? I mean, this is really, really tough stuff, but right now you can decide to say, "Well, I'm always going to be bad with money," and that is your actual conscious choice to say, "I'm just going to suck with money and it is what it is." Or you can say, "You know what? I'm going to be better with money and every week I'm going to try to get 1% better." In two years from now, you won't even recognize yourself from prior because you've been slowly making these incremental process to make it better.

But by telling yourself like, "I'm not good with money," you've made that conscious decision to say, "I'm not good with money. Fine. Point blank. But I also am choosing to not get better," and that is really, really tough when we're talking about like finances, because this is what I do and I'm like, "Please get better. Please take control over this because no one should care about your money more than you do." This is why we see so many physicians get screwed by people in my industry that take advantage of that, knowing that you're super smart, you're super busy, you have a fantastic income. Literally, I pick on peds all the time because of my wife, one of the lower paying fields and specialties, but you have a fantastic income even in peds, and they know when you line all those up, you're susceptible to be sold a whole bunch of products.

So I am borderline begging you, all of you, do not say, "I'm not good with money," because you're acknowledging that maybe you're not, but you're also giving up the fact that I don't want to learn in the future," and I really, really don't want that.

I think that implicit second thought is the big one, right? "So I'm not good at money and I can't learn about it either." It's a choice, like, "Well, if this is not something that you know a lot about right now, you have a choice. You can either continue to live in that ignorance, like I did for 30 years because I knew money meant pain, or you can choose to get the education and to learn about money." People are like, "Oh, but money's hard to learn about." I always laugh at that because I'm like, "You're a physician, like learning about medicine is so much harder than learning about money." Like it just is.

I got destroyed in an email from a listener on FR because I say this all the time, and I truly believe it, this is the hill I'm going to die on: physicians are the top 1% of brain processing power in our population. You guys, are the smartest of the smartest. You put it all together. No kidding. You're all going to be type A's and compete like crazy with each other, but you are so freaking smart. Money is tough to understand, but you, again, understand way more than the average person, you are significantly smarter than the average person and you can do this. It just takes time and dedication and a desire to want to learn.

So an abundant money thought there, my friends, is if I can learn medicine, I can learn money. Just hang that one out there and just, as you're learning, if I can learn medicine, I can learn money and then go learn. Encourage yourself to start that direction, and recognize you don't need to get to like, "I'm an expert in money." That doesn't need to be the thought right now. It needs to be, "I'm learning more about money."

Well, hold on real quick, you don't have to be an expert. You don't have to know as much as Ryan does. It's maybe a little egotistical, but you're listening to me so I'm just kind of taking that for granted for a second. You don't have to do this all day every day. This doesn't have to be your only passion ever, but you need to be educated enough to go, "Yeah, that guy or gal pitching me this insurance product," or "Hey, like I'm in the doctor's lounge and some physicians pitching some real estate thing or some random investment or whatever," you have to be educated and confident enough to go, "Yeah, I've built a plan," whether you use the plan or not, doesn't matter, just as long as you have all have plans, I'm super happy. "But this isn't part of my plan. That doesn't make sense. I'm not doing that." You're confident enough to look at it and think through it and go, "Nope," or "Hey, that actually would fit my plan. Let me look more into that."

But a lot of you do the [inaudible 00:25:35] and it's like, "Oh, I'll just figure it out another time," or, "Hey, that sounds good," or, "If it's good enough for Jimmy, it's good enough for me." Those things should not exist. We want you to be able to think for yourself to be very confident in your finances. Why we're doing all these things here on our respective shows is to help educate you all so you get to that point, but you don't have to be the expert and you don't have to do everything perfect. I know all of you like want everything in your nice little check boxes and be perfect and know every single thing when you make the decision, it is completely right, and that was because most of your dealing with life and death stuff that you have to be perfect. Jimmy, how's your book title? What is it?

The 20% of Personal Finance Doctors Need to Know to Get 80% of the Results.

There you go, right? If you can get 80% of the way there, you're way above your peers. That is still very sad, but at least you're moving in the right direction. But it takes that conscious thought of saying, "Yeah, maybe I suck with money now. I'm not going to be this bad with it a year from now." Keep listening. Keep doing things. Keep reading books, shameless plug for our books, that will teach you. Jimmy's a lot of behavioral pieces. Mine is literally how to build a financial plan for $20. Like between the two of those, you're going to be well on your way to understanding money.

Yeah, and I want dive into this last one as we round out the show, because I think this one is important. Now, for the listeners that don't know or can't tell, I'm from the south. I'm from North Carolina. I live in Winston, Salem. I was born in Raleigh. My entire extended family is from Savannah, Georgia and I grew up in Florida. So I'm from the south. This is where I've been for the majority of my life. There's this thought out there, and it's not just from the south, but it's a biblical reference so I'm just going to throw this idea out there, but money is the root of all evil. So it comes from First Timothy, and people misquote it all of the time, I just love to point out this discrepancy because people accept this as true, Ryan, and it's really scary. Money is the root of all evil and so therefore I'm not going to make life about money. That line of logic starts with a flawed thought because, First Timothy, where that comes from, is that the love of money is the root of all evil. The reason I point out the difference is because I don't think that money is the root of all evil. What I think a lot of money does is it amplifies who you already are.

That is exactly true.

So if you are a generous human being, I love giving to other people. I love it. I've loved it my entire life. I got paid the GI bill in college. I got $700 or $800 a month, every single month, and I spent the majority of it on my college roommate from Papa New Guinea who had nothing. I've always enjoyed giving to other people. That's just who I am. I get it from my grandfather who sent that same guy checks every Christmas. So like, it's just like in my DNA. So more money means I'm going to be more generous, but yet we have this idea tucked away at certain subcultures in America that like money is the root of all evil, and so therefore I'm not going to learn about it. Keeping money and hoarding money and like saving for the future, those are all bad things because money is evil and I just want to point out that if you love money, more than other things that are more important, I don't know people, or things you believe in or your work or your family or whatever, and money is your master, it can be evil.

But I just want to throw this idea out there that money is an amplifier. It is not evil itself. Loving money more than everything else, that's a problem. But as I like to say, and I say this quote all of the time, that money isn't everything, but it is the tool that lets you do anything including being more generous. For those of you who don't know, I went into medicine to do mission work. So at some point, my kids are getting old enough now that I probably need to start living this promise, living this idea, this calling that I came into medicine for, but like part of the reason I want to go part-time because I want to go do mission work in countries where they don't have anesthesiologists. They don't have the same medical resources that we have here and really get things set up or help a business or structure that's already going. I can do that with financial freedom. That allows me to do that. I just want to point out this last one, because I think this one is kind of sneaky and people don't think about it a lot, but it's totally there.

So it just reminds me, this is more than 10 years ago, it was right as I was probably entering the financial planning space. God, I'm trying to remember where I was, but someone asked, "What do you do?" I was like, "Well, I'm a financial planner," and they literally, I mean it was like I told them I was the devil himself. They looked at me and just like, "How could you have your whole life revolve around money?" and I knew where we were going with this so I just jumped right in, I was like, "I love money. I love money." I mean, it was like they saw a ghost, and I was basically told I was a horrible person for loving money.

Now I don't spend that much money. I like making money for the sake and the process. I'm one of those people that like, I enjoy the journey, and I don't really care for the result. Yes, it's nice to have made money and if you had Bill Gates net worth and could do whatever you want to do, and coming back to some of the life planning questions we've talked about now, what would you do? I would be doing what I'm doing now. I turned down and left a six-figure job to start my own planning firm seven years ago to make nothing for many years, but I did it because I love it. I want to work with people who are like us. If you hear people that say money is the root of all evil, they truly don't understand, I think, how it amplifies out. I think Jimmy brought up a really good point. It will show you the true colors of people.

If I said, "Hey, Jimmy, in the next 12 months, you're going to make $10 million if you do X, Y, Z," you're going to see how cutthroat Jimmy is to make that $10 million. If Jimmy is still the same person we know love and trust 12 months from now, which I firmly believe after spending so much time with Jimmy recording and doing these things that he would be, you're going to be able to tell that he's still generous with his money. He's still a good person. But we hear about people and usually on the news when it's a lot, the Bernie Madoff's of the world who steal money and do all these things and harm people, and people have lost lots and lots of money listening to gurus or different things because they have a course to sell or a thing to pitch or whatever it is and they're just going to sell you out just because they can make some money. Obviously, those people are just evil themselves. It's not the money. The money didn't make them evil. It just amplified who they already were. So don't get stuck, I think, in this piece. I like chatting about this one. But what are some abundant money thoughts, Jimmy, that they can leave with, I think, to round out the show?

Yeah, so I think that the one to think here, really, is about using money to the highest and greatest good it can achieve, whatever that means for you. Personal finance is personal, so instead of thinking about money as being evil, choosing to think about money as an opportunity, a tool that you can use to achieve the highest good that your life, your calling, your purpose, your mission, your reason for being here on this earth is-

Unless you're Dr. Evil, and then it's $1 million.

All right.

Well, we love all of you. Thank you so much for being here. Hopefully, this type of stuff is entertaining and helpful. Like, we're really trying to bring a lot of value to you, guys, that abundant mindset. We want you all to feel more confident, more in control, overall live better lives. I look at it, I think, a slightly bit different. I know that if I can help one physician, then I'm really helping thousands of people because you will help thousands of people in your own practices with your patients. So I look at the kind of amplifying the voice out and trying to help all of you feel more confident, more comfortable, enjoy your careers, what you set out to do. We need all of you more than you could ever imagine, so thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for being here. Before we leave, thank you so much to our sponsor this week. We appreciate them for sponsoring the show so we can keep doing these things and bringing you guys some awesome content.

That sponsor today was Panacea Financial, and they provide banking for doctors. It was founded by doctors and they have a specialized suite of financial products that give med students, residents, fellows, attendings greater freedom to forge their features at affordable rates. So if you're looking for a new home for your banking needs, go to PanaceaFinancial.com. Again, that is a link in the show of the description here that you're listening to us in, and they are division of Primus, Member FDIC.

All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to the show. We look forward to seeing you next week. Until then, my friends.

Cheers.

Cheers.

My dad, Dr. Jimmy Turner, is a practicing anesthesiologist. Mr. Inman is a fee-only financial planner. You should know that this show is not personalized financial advice for you. In fact, this show is only for your general education and entertainment purposes. So keep listening to learn how to become a do-it-yourself financial guru, or go find a great fee-only financial planner like Mr. Inman to create a personalized financial plan for you.

There's a bug flying, I'm going to catch it. Nathan, if you hear a clap in the middle of the recording, it's because I caught the bug.

So funny. I hope this goes into a blooper and everyone hears what I have to deal with.

You're welcome. All right, three-

[crosstalk 00:33:59]

Two, one.

TPP

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