The Grow Your Wealthy Mindset Podcast

For many people, the largest amount of money spent in a single purchase is buying real estate. The average home price in the United States is around $420,000 in 2024. In high cost of living areas, the average single-family house can be over $1 million dollars. There are people who think that rent is throwing away money, and if a mortgage is less than rent, you should buy.  What those people don’t...

This episode discusses the adjustment in tax brackets and changes in contribution limits for tax advantaged accounts for 2025.  Marginal Tax Rates for 2025  37% for single taxpayers with incomes over $626,350 and $751,600 for married couples filing jointly 35% for incomes over $250,525 and $501,050 for married couples filing jointly 32% for incomes over $197,300 and $394,600 for married couples fi...

In Episode 131: Escaping the Hedonic Treadmill, we learned that hedonic adaptation is the tendency to return to a relatively stable level of happiness. People tend to have a baseline or set point level of happiness (or unhappiness) that hey return to. There are ways to adjust that baseline.   In the book, The How of Happiness, Dr. Sonja Lynbomirsky outlines 12 activities to increase overall happin...

Flexible Spending and Heathcare Savings Accounts are both ways to pay for your medical expenses with pre-tax money. Anytime you can use pretax money to pay for anything, you are getting generally getting a 22% discount or more depending on your tax bracket.  Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) are benefits that may be provided by your Employer. Not all Employers will provide this benefit and with som...

The roots of making New Year Resolutions can be traced to Ancient Babylonia and well as Roman traditions. It’s still something many people do today. However, many people who make New Year Resolutions don’t end up keeping them. In this episode, I talk about goal setting an what can help you to accomplish those goals.    I am also happy to announce that for the new year, I will be taking a limited n...

Some of us are spenders while some of us are savers. Personally, I’m a saver. I like to always have a money cushion. The idea of living paycheck to paycheck freaks me out. I like to get good value and prefer to buy any big-ticket items on sale. That being said, I do like nice things and spend a lot on experiences/travel. It can be hard for me to buy something nicer than what I already have which s...

Amy Vertrees, MD is a board-certified general surgeon, Army veteran, certified coach, author and founder of the BOSS Business of Surgery Series. She served 17 years in the Army, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel, and deploying 3 times to Afghanistan and Iraq as a general surgeon. After leaving the military, she was an employed surgeon then created Columbia Surgical Partners, a private practi...

Most physicians will change where they work at least once during their career. Some estimates are as high as 70% of physicians leaving their first job within 2 years. If you have been at a job for a while, hopefully you have an employer sponsored retirement account like a 401(K) or 403(b). Your may also have a 457 plan. This episode discusses the options for what to do with these accounts when you...

 While filing taxes may still feel like a long time away, December is the time to strategize what you can do before the end of the year to decrease your tax burden. In this episode, I review actions you may want to consider to decrease your tax bill.    Maxing out your employee contributions to your employer sponsored retirement accounts, your 401K or 403B Donate to 501(c)(3) charities if you item...

Hedonic adaptation is the tendency to return to a relatively stable level of happiness. Good things happen and we may be happy but over time, we return to our baseline of happiness. Bad things happen and we may be upset, sad, or angry but over time, we return to our baseline of happiness. If that’s the case, are we stuck where we are? In this episode, I talk about Hedonic Treadmill, it’s similarit...

Many people have a hard time saying no and this can affect multiple areas of life related to and not related to money. In this episode, I talk about reasons we may not be saying no as often as we should and how to get more comfortable saying no.    Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite Podcasting platform.  Get 12 Financial Mistakes that Keep Physicians from Building Wealth at https...

Many people are interested in investing in real estate but don’t want the hassle or headaches of being a landlord. This week’s episode talks about how accredited investors can invest passively in real estate syndications or real estate funds. It explains what a real estate syndication represents and compares investing in individual real estate syndications to real estate funds. If you are interest...

I know everyone does love learning about finances and investing. Some people just want to know what they should invest in. In this episode, I talk about mutual funds that are one stop shopping where a single fun could meet your investment goal as well as putting together a diversified portfolio with three or four different funds.    Recommended funds to build your portfolio as mentioned in the pod...

When it comes to planning our spending, we often what we need, what we want, and what we can afford. Sometimes, we conflate things we want as things we need but when we step back, we realize a lot of things we feel we need are really things we want. Then there are things we want that we may say we can’t afford. Paula Pant is known for saying “You can afford anything, but not everything.” As physic...

I have often thought of the 403b as being the non-profit version of the 401K but through recent events, I’ve learned some differences that may affect those working at non-profits. This may be especially true if your spouse is a teacher or works for a school system.  I found https://403bwise.org/ to be a helpful website. They rate different 403b providers at https://403bwise.org/advocacy/rating_sys...

In 2022, women in the United States earn 82 cents for every dollar men earn. This has been called the Gener Wage Gap or the Gender Pay Gap. This gap appears to be potentially higher for women physicians, and persists even after controlling for age, experience, specialty and other factors. Over a simulated 40 year career, women physician are estimated to earn $2 million less than male physicians. W...

This week’s episode comes from a talk I gave at the Women in Ophthalmology Conference. I was given the choice to speak on any financial topic as part of a financial wellness panel but with a very limited time of 8 minutes. I thought really hard about what would be the most important message I could deliver in 8 minutes and when it came down to it, it’s why becoming financially literate is so impor...

Dr. Nneka Unachukwu is the founder of EntreMD, a company on a mission to help 100,000 physicians build profitable 7 and 7+ figure businesses so they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms. She does this through the EntreMD Business School, the only school of its kind for physician entrepreneurs, the EntreMD podcast, a top 1% podcast, and her best-selling books. Dr. Una,...

The 4% rule is probably the most talked about method when it comes to how to plan to withdraw from your retirement portfolio. However, when it comes to actually withdrawing from your retirement portfolio, there are a lot more options, and nuances. If you're not near retirement, why learn about these different methods now? Using different methods can give you a better idea of how large of a st...

No one wants their retirement portfolio to run out of money before they die. Many retirement calculators use static assumptions, like a constant growth rate or inflation rate. The stock market may have average returns of around 10% per year but in any given year, it’s rarely a 10% return. Some years it can be up 18% and other years down 10% or anywhere in between.  If you really want to put your r...

The goal of retirement calculators is to help you answer three questions:  1.      How much do I need to save and invest for retirement?  2.      How much money do I need in my retirement portfolio to retire?  3.      How much can I realistically expect to spend once I am retired?    In this episode, I review the following free retirement calculators available online.  https://investor.vanguard.co...

You may have heard that your retirement portfolio should be 25 times your spending or your income for you to retire. This is actually derived from The 4% Rule, which is the commonly held belief that you an safely withdrawal 4% from your retirement portfolio invested in stock and bonds and not run out of money before you die. In this episode, I look at the original published research where the 4% r...

Summer vacation is coming to an end. While physicians don’t get summer vacation like students and teacher do, we may think that vacation will come when we retire. While the first few months, or even years, or retirement might feel somewhat like vacation, retirement is not an endless vacation.  In this episode, I talk about Ty Bernicke, a Certified Financial Planner, who believes people need less f...

This episode is really targeting to those physicians who have recently finished training but will be helpful to anyone who is debating between deciding to pay down debt versus investing. There are multiple factors when it comes to figuring out the best place to put your money. When looking at whether to pay down debt, things to consider include the interest rate, whether or not the debt has the po...

Qualified dividends are taxed at a lower rate, similar to capital gains tax whereas non-qualified dividends are taxed at the ordinary income tax rate. This episode goes into detail what makes a dividend considered qualified to help you make choices to lower how much you ultimately pay in taxes.  Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite Podcasting platform.  Get 12 Financial Mistakes th...