WMMD Ep4 - Student loans made simple
SPEAKER01: Got student loans and want a good plan for how you can pay them off or get them forgiven? Keep listening and we'll share our plan to help you get started. Hello, and welcome to the Wealth Minded MD podcast with your money best friends. I'm Dr. Lisha Taylor. And I'm Dr. Brittne Halford. And of course, we are here to help you build wealth and make good money decisions so you can create the life you desire with more control over your time. But before we get started, we got to pay some bills. Hey, Alicia, did you know that about one in four physicians experience some disability during their career? Yeah, you know what? It's so striking to me, the numbers of how common this is. In fact, that's what happened with Dr. Stephanie Pearson. She was this super passionate OBGYN physician at the height of her career, and then ended up having a shoulder injury during a precipitous delivery that basically shattered all of her dreams, prevented her from being able to practice medicine in the way that she wanted. She then was determined to make a difference for other females. And so she became a staunch advocate for her peers and helped guide them through the disability insurance process. She even teamed up with expert Scott Ravitz. They founded Pearson and Ravitz. It's basically this company that is determined to approach insurance differently. They're physician founded and physician focused, which is what I love about the company. Make sure that you visit PearsonRavitz.com today to schedule your consultation with a Pearson Ravitz advisor. All right, so this is segment one of our episode today called Life is Lifing. And as always, we are going to kick things off with a little peek into our lives. Yep. So, Lisha, I'm sighing because oftentimes I feel like I'm just on this hamster wheel and in the thick of things. I'm trying to find more rest and relaxation, but I want to know from you, like, how are you doing with this? You know, it's interesting. I think that when you're ambitious as you and I are, oftentimes, you have a lot of roles and you can find joy in those roles and joy in those jobs. But then it can be tiring. There's like this two sides of the same coin where if you're not super productive, then you can feel like, man, I'm not being productive today. And that can cause some guilt. And then if you are super productive, then you can start to feel like, man, I'm super tired. And maybe I don't have the right amount of rest that I need. And so I do think that it's a balance, if you can even say that, if that's even possible. But in regards to your question about resting and recharging, in the past, I've felt really guilty about taking time off because I've kind of felt like I should always be productive and Whenever I would try to rest or watch TV, I would inevitably be on my phone still working on something so that I could still feel productive. But lately I've been trying to do a better job at focusing. Some of the things that I do, I think to help me is, you know, sometimes I'll have a glass of wine. Not saying that alcohol should be your main go-to. Sometimes I'll have a glass of wine. I will spend time with family and friends and loved ones. That always brings me joy. It helps me kind of just escape my world of busyness into their world and be able to really just shower them with love. So I like doing that. I am a sports person and I end up watching a lot of sports games on TV. That always brings me joy. What else do I do? I love eating. Again, not saying that food should be like your remedy for like needing to relax but something about a fantastic dinner or Some high-quality chocolates or whatever. It's my bougie side coming out. It relaxes me I don't know. Why don't you go cuz I'm talking about like alcohol and food and we want to get people actually like good strategies Go ahead, Brittne. Maybe what one of the things that I wanted to mention? There's no judgment here So she says that before she judges y'all No, seriously, when I listen to you, it actually brings me back to a moment in which even recently, like in the past two weeks, I was on my phone scrolling and shopping for some new outfits for the conferences, our photo shoot. And my husband asks me, he says, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm just wasting my life away, scrolling, buying some things that I probably don't need. And he said, hold on, let's work on a reframe. Her husband's a psychiatrist. He is. He is. He's like, you know, you're giving yourself a mental break and you might buy something that you desire and deserve. OK, kudos to your husband for the support while you went shopping. I love that. And then he made you feel better about the shopping. He needs to kind of talk to my people over here and like. I'm pretty frugal and I typically don't spend a lot of money on clothes, but just hearing you say about like being productive and how we have defined productivity. There was a moment in my life that I felt very unfulfilled and oftentimes there's this pressure that I need to do more and that I haven't been productive. And one time, a woman who helps us, she was speaking with another woman in Spanish and they're like, okay, DILA, DILA. I'm like, what, what do you want to tell me? And she's like, why am I here if you're not working? It took everything in me to say, OK, because I actually just want to take a nap and I deserve some rest. And if somebody else is here helping me, then whatever I'm doing is deserving enough for me to spend that time to give myself a break. But I didn't always feel that way. I felt like I needed to always be doing something. and that rest in itself was not productive. Now I've shifted my thinking. I still have a hard time resting, but I see the benefit of resting now. Yeah, no, and it's so interesting because you were talking about your encounter with, what do you call her, house manager? Yeah. House manager, because she manages the house. And basically, that encounter of your house manager saying, why are you paying me to be here when you're here, right? And I don't think that she meant it disrespectfully, but I think a lot of people, a lot of women, particularly in medicine, can feel the same way. Like, oh, I feel guilty about having a maid come clean my house when I can clean. I feel guilty about having someone helping me cook meals or having meals delivered when I can technically cook. And it's not necessarily about what you can and cannot do. It's about how are you spending your time, and is that task a good use of your time? Or is it better for you to potentially pay somebody else to do that so you can get more rest and relaxation? And it seems like once you had that mind shift of, no, I'm going to choose to spend my money in this way to give myself rest and relaxation, then it was almost as if you were able to enjoy things a lot better if things worked out a lot better. Yeah. And even you're like, I'm paying someone, but then you actually get more money back because now you have the energy to be productive because you've actually rested and you're not doing things tired and unfulfilled.
SPEAKER00: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's you got more in return than what you spent, which I think allows you to justify, or at least me in my mind, helps me to justify that expense of like, oh man, I'm spending more money. Because what you could say is, oh, I'm just spending more money. That's not a good use of time. And what you're saying is, actually, if we think about it differently, you're actually getting your money's worth and some. Yeah. Because you taking that hour or two or however long it is to rest and relax while paying somebody to do the other things that maybe don't bring you joy, now you're able to show up to the things that do bring you joy with even more energy. Definitely. And be more productive. So I think that that's great. So basically, that's what's going on in Brittne's life is she is basically paying people to do her house chores. And I am stuck still doing them myself because Brittne's richer than I am. But anyway, so. And I have two kids who make a lot of crumbs and put toys in every part of their house. No, I'm giving you a hard time. I'm giving you a hard time. It's really interesting. I'm glad that we are doing this podcast together, because in a lot of ways, people can look at us, and they can think, oh, these two people are so similar. We are both of the same race, and we come from similar backgrounds. And we're both in medicine. We're both physicians. And people can say, oh, man, that's just basically two girlfriends talking together. And maybe it is. I think also we're different enough in that you're married, I'm not married, you have children, I do not have children, and you live in the Northeast, I live in the Southeast, and so there are some differences there that I think make the way that we spend our time a little bit different and our perspective on things a little bit different. And so it's nice to kind of hear you talk about that because As someone who doesn't have children, that's not on the forefront of my mind. But I can see now as you tell your story, as you talk about, hey, I need some rest and relaxation. And I can see how that's probably harder to come by with two young kids. And so just kind of hearing you talk about the different things that you've done that have been particularly helpful for you really kind of gives me some insight. So I appreciate you sharing. But anyway, this is not a podcast about Britney's life. So anyway, we're going to get into our main segment of today's show, which is our financial focus. And we are going to talk about student loans. I know, your favorite subject. Brady, why don't you tell the people a little bit more about why we're talking about student loans right now. Yeah. So I think the main reason, at least for me, I don't have student loan debt. But I know that many people do. And I also know how much that impacts your life, how much it impacts your mental health, your physical health, your spiritual health. And so this is to provide you with some insights on student loans to empower you to actually start to create a student loan strategy. Because oftentimes we feel like we are relegated to pay what is dictated to us. But there's some modifications that you can make to really leverage that debt and make it work for you. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Absolutely, absolutely. And so we're going to give you sort of this four-step student loan plan to help you get started. So if you're somebody who you're thinking, you know, I have student loans. Yeah, I'm enrolled in some plan. Yeah, I'm hoping for some sort of forgiveness. Or yeah, I'm planning to pay it off myself, but I'm not really sure if I'm doing the best thing. I'm not really sure if there's something else that could be better for me. this episode is for you. And even if you don't have student loans, you probably know someone who does. And so I think that you listening to this episode and really kind of getting this four-step plan just to help you get started so that you can actually assist other people with this area. Because it tends to be something that a lot of people, especially people who went to college and for those of us who ended up going to grad school or med school or whatever, tend to really face. And so, yeah, we're going to talk about this student loan plan. And so step one, I think, is really having people verify how much money they owe. You know, I give a lot of lectures and workshops and things on student loans. And one of the things that I always say is that the amount you borrowed is not the amount you owe. And for a lot of people, they hear that and they go, what? I don't get it. The amount you borrowed is not necessarily the amount you owe. And that is because you need to account for interest. So interest, I always tell people, is the fee that you are charged for borrowing the money in the first place. And it's not a set fee. It usually continues over time until you pay off the debt in full. And so your interest rate, so the amount of money that you're paying, the amount of that fee can vary. Some people have a lower interest rate, 2% or 3%. Some people have a moderate interest rate, 4%, 5%, 6%. Some people have a higher interest rate, 7%, 8%, 9% or more. When you account for that fee, oftentimes the amount that you end up paying back is much larger than the amount that you borrowed. And so what you need to do is actually take a look, log into your studentaid.gov account if you have federal student loans and see how much do you actually owe. And if you're like me, doing that can even be daunting. Yes. Right. Because you're like, I know it's a large number. It's going to scare the crap out of me. I don't even want to look at it. It's just like it's even hard to even get yourself to log in and then figure out all of the steps. And so I would say, you know, it's hard to tackle a problem. It's hard to deal with a problem. that you're not willing to face. And the first step of really tackling these student loans so that you can eliminate them is seeing how big or small the problem is. And that requires you really just figuring out how much money do you actually owe. Yeah, I love that. You can't strategize around the problem if you can't face it. Yeah. And really, what I would also encourage you to do is when you take a look at that number, it's just a number. It doesn't mean anything about yourself or anything like that. So it's just a number. And when Alicia talks about the interest rates, what's really great about that strategy is because each of your student loans may have a different interest rate. Two or three of them may have the same interest rate. But that helps you to start to think about your strategy. If you wanted to do, and we'll talk about this, like a refinance, or if you wanted to consolidate some of your student loans, you can make that decision incorporating that interest rate, and that will allow you to leverage some of these other benefits of student loans later on. Then you also want to think about, are your loans private? Are they federal? What is the composition of that makeup? because the strategy that you employ might be a bit different. So for example, with federal student loans, federal student loans have more of a safety net than private student loans, right? And so, and you think about during the pandemic, there was a federal forbearance. Some private companies may have allowed for a forbearance, but it wasn't ubiquitous against all student loans. So when you're thinking about federal versus private, you definitely want to incorporate that into your strategy so that if you want to refinance, then maybe you refinance the private student loans instead of the federal student loans so that you can still maintain some of the benefits of the federal government. Yes, I think the take-home point here is, number one, check how much you owe, and number two, check your loan type, right? Because what Brittne was articulating was that the kind of loans you have may really dictate the strategy that you take to get rid of them, whether that's forgiveness, whether that's you paying them off yourself, or something else entirely. And so you really need to check and see what kind of loans do you have. Did you get all of your loans from federal student aid, right? Are all of your loans federal student loans, or did you already refinance some loans in the past? You know, I'll give you a personal story. You know, I took out most of my loans from the Department of Education, so they were federal loans, but some of them qualify for loan forgiveness programs and some of them don't. due to no fault of my own, they were just the type of loans that were given to me by my medical school. And that might be the case for you. And so I always tell people, you know, you may have loans from undergrad, med school, grad school, whatever, you need to see how many loans you have. And more importantly, you need to see what kind of loans those are. Are they still federal loans? Or are they private loans? Are they subsidized versus unsubsidized loans? Are they FFEL loans? Are they Perkins loans? Are they PLUS loans? Are they health professions loans? I won't get into the nitty gritty of what all of these different things are right now, but I just wanted to articulate and give you an example of like, there are many different kinds of loans. And one of the first things that you should do when you log in is see what kind of loan do you have. And if you're like me, before I really started studying this stuff and doing a ton of student loan consults, I didn't pay much attention. I knew I had a federal loan, I knew it was on the federal website, and I really didn't want to know much more than that. And you may be in the same boat. But the reason why this is so important is because it dictates your strategy, and also it dictates what repayment plans you're eligible for. And so certain people with certain loan types may not be eligible for certain repayment plans. They may or may not be eligible for certain loan forgiveness programs. And so a lot of that is kind of dictated by your loan type. And so if step one is seeing how much you owe, step two is definitely checking to see your loan type. And I would say, Brittne, that step three is identifying your loan servicer. So I always tell people that, you know, even if you have federal student loans that you took out from the Department of Education, The Department of Education does not have the manpower to individually service everybody's loans. And so they contract out that work with other companies. And those companies are called loan servicers. And so you need to check to see who your loan servicer is. You know, I'll give you some examples. It's Mojila, it's Nelned, it's Navient, which used to be called Sallie Mae. There's all of these different kinds of loan servicers. And the loan servicer is actually who you pay back when you're repaying your loan. It's not like you're going to send a check to the Department of Education. you send in their check to your loan servicer. And if you went to different schools, if you have different loan types, you may have more than one loan servicer. And so it's important to see how much you owe, check your loan type, and then see who you're supposed to be repaying. So you need to identify who that loan servicer might be. And this comes into play too in strategy. And I'm not gonna talk about all the nitty gritty details of this, but Lisha was talking about your loan type. So say for example, you have Parent PLUS loans. And this is the loan type that at least when I have worked with clients that they often forget about because they're not in their name, they're in their parents' name. But now that they're a physician or nurse practitioner or whatever, They're like, oh, I don't want to leave my elderly parent who's now retired with this loan. So if you want to help your parent or to pay back that debt for your parent that they helped you with, then that is imperative that you know that information. And the loan servicer comes into play too when you think about consolidation. which company do you actually want to consolidate those loans with? And there's like a loophole for Parent PLUS loans. We're not gonna get into the details, but you have to do like this double consolidation. So if you consolidate with the wrong company, then you're basically going to screw up the process. And what I always tell people is if you have an option to do a consolidation with another loan servicer, it could be helpful to know which one you want to work with. Like call them up, see what their customer service is like, because this is likely going to be somebody that you'll have to deal with for years, depending on your student loan strategy. I totally agree with that. I think if we were to wrap up this four-part strategy, the last one would be understanding your options. Once you know how much you owe, once you know what kind of loans you have, once you've identified your loan servicer, you need to now understand your options. How do you get rid of these things? Are you going to be like Brittne and pay them all back yourself? Are you going to be like me and bank on forgiveness? Are you going to be like other people and do a hybrid of both? What is your strategy? And more important, what are your options? What's available to you? You know, unless you live in Braid Student Loans, you may not be aware of the different programs that you may qualify for. You know, oftentimes as physicians, we see a lot of doctors entering the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which is fantastic, by the way. It's fantastic. But that's not the only loan forgiveness program that is out there, and I find that a lot of people solely focus on that one, and they're not aware of the other ones that they may qualify for. And so I would really encourage people to really understand their options, especially their options for forgiveness that don't that aren't as dependent on where they work or how much money they make or whatever. And so, you know, you got to figure out, are you going to get your loans forgiven or are you going to pay them back yourself? Are you going to refinance your loans with a private company because you know you're paying them back yourself? Or are you going to keep your loans federal and try to enter these loan forgiveness programs? And so I think that these are some things that we got to start thinking about when it comes to these student loans. Unless you start to think about what are the available options to me, it will be so challenging to figure out if you want forgiveness or if you want to pay them back. Like Lisha said, public service loan forgiveness is not the only option. When I had my student loans, no one had received public service loan forgiveness. And I'm a little bit of an anxious personality, so let's just get that straight. And I'm like, OK, I don't know if I can rely on the government to do this. Thinking about my interests, thinking about how that interest is compounding, et cetera, I decided to refinance my student loans. But if you don't know what your options are, you don't know what the interest rates are, then how can you make an educated decision? Because it would not have been wise for you to refinance federal student loans during the pandemic, right? Another thing you want to think about is where do you land on this forgiveness thing? For me, like I said, I was anxious about it. And so if the forgiveness doesn't serve you, doesn't serve your personality type and your debt to income ratio and the numbers make sense, it might be wise for you to pay them back just for your own mental health. This is just really important. What we're saying is that you can't make a plan unless you educate yourself on the plan. And you can only educate yourself by really diving into your student loans, right? And getting familiar with your student loans. You know, I used to do a ton of student loan consults. I still help people from here and there. And, you know, me and Brittne are about to drop a debt reduction course and help people with some student loan assistance. And so we'll be helping people and providing some resources that we think could be really beneficial. But I think it really starts off with these four things. It really starts off with understanding how much money do I owe? What kind of loans do I have? Who's my loan servicer? And what are my options? And when we talk about, you know, what are the options, one of the things that oftentimes is getting talked about now are these different repayment plans. You know, and they change often and they're relatively new. You know, these plans come out every five or so years and then they get revised and it's kind of hard to keep up. And, you know, the Biden administration has released a new plan called the safe plan, which I'm sure a lot of people have heard about. And you may be thinking, OK, how's this different from the old revised page you were in plan? How's this different from the three other plans that are existing? Some plans are phasing out, some plans are coming in and it can be hard to keep track. And I would encourage you to really look at the nuances of those plans. We won't get into it too much today, but a lot of people I think will benefit from the SAVE plan just because one of the benefits of that plan is that any unpaid interest gets forgiven. And that means as you've got interest accumulating on your loans, if your monthly payment does not cover the interest that's accruing on your loans, all of that gets forgiven. And that's a huge perk for physicians in training, for nurses, for people in healthcare who maybe aren't making a super high salary. and their monthly payments are relatively low, that might be a great plan for them. You know, on the flip side of that, there's there's these other plans that have caps in place. So for people who on the opposite end of the spectrum who maybe make a ton of money or a lot more money, there's a limit to how much they'll pay. each month that isn't dependent on their income. And those would be plans like pay as you earn or income based repayment. And so there are these different nuances of the plans and sometimes it's hard for us to really explain them well in a podcast format. But I really encourage you to kind of take a look at the resources. You can go on our website, we'll release some new stuff for you just to kind of break down these plans a little bit more. and help you out, but I think part of understanding your options is not only figuring out if you're gonna get your loans forgiven or not, figuring out if you're gonna refinance or not, which most people probably should hold off on the refinancing, but the third part is really making sure that you're in an affordable and feasible repayment plan for you. I just did a student loan consultation recently. In this case, and we'll talk a little bit more, but the IDR waiver came into play, public service loan forgiveness came into play, and also thinking about the SAFE plan using not only the interest subsidy, but also thinking about the increase in the federal poverty line deduction versus the pay as you earn, getting your loans forgiven after 20 years versus 25 years, right? And so you have to incorporate all of these calculations. And when I thought about it with this individual in the consultation, is he has some public service, and I said he, yes, it was a guy. I know I'm all about women in medicine, but he had some public service loan forgiveness time, basically, where he worked for an eligible employer and then he had some time with his undergraduate loans and we're trying to figure out what would be best the save plan versus the pay as you earn plan and sometimes we think about the immediate things like okay the save plan is going to be a lot cheaper for me but that five years makes a difference, not only from just a cost perspective, but you also have to think about your freedom. And so we're thinking about one student loan plan, but all of these are based on your income. And so he's trying to keep his income low, But after these student loans are done, then his income can skyrocket, allowing for more flexibility, allowing for him to do a few other things. And then thinking about, OK, how much will you have to pay in taxes versus not if you do one forgiveness program over the other? This can get quite complicated as you just as Brittne is kind of like giving this example about all of these different factors that she had to consider when she's doing this consult. And so the purpose of that is not to confuse you or anything like that is really just to highlight how nuanced this can be and how personalized oftentimes this is and how if you may need to elicit some help in doing so. And we obviously are used to helping a lot of people, but it's really kind of starts with having that beginner step or having these beginner steps done of like, OK, how much do I owe? OK, who do I owe? OK, what kind of loans do I have? What are my options? Let me just start looking into what my different options are and getting some feedback. and running the numbers and figuring out what are these different things that I should consider. So I think that's a great kind of start to handling the student loans and as Brittne alluded to we're going to drop another episode that's a little bit more detailed talking about these different waivers and some of the nuances but we just wanted to give you all kind of like a high-level view of like these are some things that you can do to get started. Definitely. awesome well i think i think that's enough you know i think that's enough loans we're ready to get back into the fun yeah right all right so let's move on to some health care hustle. Now, Lisha, I have to say that I am learning a lot about you and your health care hustle, girl. You're always, yeah, I am. OK, I don't know what she's going to say. No, seriously. Because you're always like, OK, well, I need to think about the timing of the reimbursement. Let me negotiate this. And honestly, as a new attending, I was just like, yay, give me my job. So tell us a little bit more about negotiating more paid time off, because I know personally as a hospitalist, my schedule is erratic, but I appreciate that there are frequent breaks. We opened up this episode talking about rest and relaxation. And so this will help to facilitate some of that. Yeah, of course. I mean, I don't know if I consider myself an expert on negotiating, and we probably need to do a whole episode on different things to negotiate in a contract. But no, I mean, I'm a big proponent of paid time off. I think that it helps to increase longevity and decrease burnout in medicine. And I think that the prevalence of burnout and people just feeling fatigued and people feeling like, I'm not sure if I can do this for 30 years. Significant, yes. That's really increased. And I think one of the ways to mitigate that, one of the ways to kind of make your job more sustainable is to have more paid time off and I realize Brittne that you're a hospitalist and so it's a little maybe less common in your field than it is in mine where we're doing a lot of outpatient medicine but Pay time off is really integral and I find that is, at least in the line of work that I do, there tends to be a certain amount that's standard. I don't know if you can think back to your residency, Brittne, but you probably had two, three weeks off or something like that for vacation time. And when I was negotiating my job, I had actually four weeks. from fellowship. And so I was thinking, well, I certainly don't want to decrease that. And so for me, part of the thing when I was going into my department chair, we were having these meetings, and we were talking about compensation, was me really articulating the different things that I was bringing to the table, and how important schedule flexibility and pay time off actually was, and being able to negotiate and ask for the additional vacation time. And you know, at a lot of jobs that could be standard, so you may not have as much room to negotiate that. But then you can do things like changing up your work schedule and adding more administrative time so that you can kind of still have some of that time off or a little bit more flexibility in how you spend that time. But yeah, I mean, the paid time off is really important to me. One of the things that I always tell people is to really see how they're classifying that. At my job, it's actually not called paid time off. It's called vacation time, sick time, and holiday time. And so they separate it out. And I actually prefer it done this way. Because I know that I'm going to get a certain amount of days for vacation. I know that I'm going to get a certain amount of days for sick days. And the sick days actually roll over. The vacation days, at least at my job, do not. And then the holidays, so I don't have to count that as part of my vacation time. And so for me, it was looking to see, okay, what's the total amount of time off that I can take? And am I penalized for doing so? Or am I okay if I take this time off? So I know when I was looking at contracts for some of my friends and their jobs, the jobs basically lump it all together. And so it'll say something like, you get 37 days off a year, 40 days off a year, which sounds lovely until you realize, okay, well, that's your sick time, that's your holidays, that's all of that. And I know as a hospitalist, you're probably staring at me going, girl, that's good. But in the primary care, at least in the outpatient world, you want to make sure that you have enough time off. And for at least from my perspective, I think that four weeks is the minimum that I'm even willing to consider at this point. I love that. The thing that I love most about what you're saying, not that pay time off is not important, but the fact that you went to articulate your value. Yeah. And I think anytime we're negotiating anything, It's all about that articulation of value that you bring to the table that has some type of consideration interest that appeals to the interest of that person you're negotiating with or the C-suite. And I think oftentimes when we're negotiating, sometimes we center in ourselves and what we desire or we forget about what that other person desires. And so it's the combination of both. You wanna look for a win-win and I think that there definitely is a win-win. Unfortunately, studies have shown that women don't negotiate and that we feel more gracious or grateful for what is being provided to us. But Lisha, take Lisha as an example. Embrace your inner Lisha and go and negotiate what you want. It's interesting, when I was getting this job, I actually, I had a set number in mind that I wanted to get paid. Okay. There was like a minimum number that I felt like I needed. Yeah. You know, I wanted to make sure I was getting paid my worth and my value. And so I said, okay, this is the minimum amount that I'm willing to accept. And then there's this other amount, this is what I desire, right? And obviously, there's a gap between the minimum amount that I would accept and the amount that I desire. Yeah. And when I was discussing negotiation, you know, I felt like the department chair was negotiating with me in good faith, but she was really honest, like, hey, you know, we had budget cuts, you know, we have these constraints, there's only so much room that I have, and if I had more, I would give it to you, but I'm just, I'm not in a position to do so at this time. And so I had a choice to make, am I gonna accept this job that I think maybe pays me a little bit less than I desire, or am I gonna work with it? And one of the things that I decided was, let me be creative. I love that. One of the ways that I was creative was saying, OK, if you can't pay me more than this and I feel like I'm worth more than that, then one of the things I'm going to try to do is negotiate more time off. Yeah. Negotiate more admin time so that in my mind, I'm still getting paid a high amount per shift or per half day or clinic day or whatever. But now I have a little bit more flexibility. And so, you know, if let's say I wanted X amount of dollars per year working four and a half, five days a week. OK, you can't pay me that. I got you. OK, well, now I'm going to work three and a half or four days a week. So I'm going to go down in time and have a little bit more time for admin time, right? So I'm still getting paid full time, still classified as full time, but I have fewer clinical days. Yeah. And now I'm willing to accept that salary. And so it actually worked out in my favor because when you have vacation days, you got to schedule it in advance. You got to ask for it versus if you have more schedule flexibility, like me, where I have a little bit more admin time each week. Yeah. It's not something I have to ask for. It's given. It's noted. Everybody knows, okay, Alicia is not going to be in the office during this time. Right. Yeah. So yeah, no, that's good. That's really good. And I just want to say, you know, I feel like I always come in with the wise voice trying to clarify.
SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't do anything wrong. I think exactly what you said of articulating your value and determining your numbers is like the great position to come in for a negotiation. Yeah. The one thing that I want to say is Oftentimes I feel, I have felt, and I know many of us feel, that what we get paid kind of dictates our value or our worth. and nobody can pay you what you're worth. Nobody can pay you what the value that you bring to the table because if they were, they wouldn't be able to employ you. So my husband and I have this conversation all the time that they're paying us this amount, how much more are we producing for them if they're able to pay us this amount? And it just argues that, okay, there's definitely more room for negotiation. I sit on the finance committee for the Department of Medicine where I work, and yeah, I definitely get the budget cuts and all of that. But somehow there's a way for them to hire new people, for them to bring people on. You think about how much the CEOs are getting paid compared to how much we're getting paid. And not to say that they don't do phenomenal work, you know, I'm not trying to undermine any CEO, but what I'm saying is that There are always things that we can negotiate that have monetary value that may be different from your salary. There are other benefits and things that you can negotiate. So definitely look into your packages and just, you know, say in demand, but you definitely want to do your research beforehand and making sure that you understand what is already offered to you, what might be offered at other places so that you can use that as leverage for negotiation. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. You know, one of the things I used to tell people is businesses aren't charities, right? They wouldn't be employing you if they weren't profiting, right? Yeah, right. They're not in the charity business. They're not just giving out of the generosity of their heart. Usually they're employing you because you are making them more money for themselves and they are paying you out. And so I think when we remember that, it helps us think, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can ask for that raise. Yeah. And not even just say, hey, can you pay me more money? But really going to the table strong and negotiating well, which we'll probably need to do a whole episode on because the art of negotiating well, especially as women in medicine. But no, that's our health care hustle is trying to get some more paid time off, getting some more vacation time, holiday time, sick time, that sort of thing. And now we're going to go into one of my favorite segments, which is fun money. Some fun money, some fun money, some fun money. Well, Alicia, tell us, have you been spending your money for fun? So I have been spending my money on way too much fun. I, you know, I don't know when this episode is going to drop, but I will probably either be in South Africa or have just come back from South Africa. No, I know your girl is living well. So I, I'm going on a family vacation to South Africa. And so, um, that trip is coming up and it's my parents, my brothers are significant others. It's going to be fun. And I also just purchased some flights to Europe for my Cole fellows wedding. Wow. Where is it? It's in the south of France. Doesn't that sound rich? It just sounds fancy. Like I got the best friends. Like even my co-fellows are like killing it. But yeah, no, he's getting married in the south of France. And of course, your girl was invited because, you know, I'm the life of the party. It's like, we got to have you there, Alicia. I was like, I'm pulling up overseas. I'm going to be there. And so I'm pulling up. That pull up, though, was very pricey, Brittne. I got to say, it was not. My gosh. Well, I just want to say, I feel like I always say this, I'm so happy that we have this segment, honestly. Breaks up some of the other stuff when we're talking about student loans. It does. But also, not only that, I always say, actually, I had a conversation with my friend today. She's like, oh, you're not frugal. I'm like, no, I'm frugal. She's like, well, you didn't judge me or say anything when you heard me making this reservation for, She was making some reservations for her husband, and it was a gift. And I said, Oh, well, frugality doesn't mean that you just don't spend money on things. It means that you are making the decision to spend the money on the things that matter to you. And then you save money everywhere else. So I just love that we are giving women like Not that we have to give you permission, but we're giving you permission to have some fun with your money. We are. To have some fun with your money, too. As you get all these other things in order, you can enjoy your life as well. What do you do in fun with money, Brittne? So this is just a fun purchase. I don't spend much money on getting my nails done or getting my hair done, my eyebrows done, like most of that stuff I do myself. But this time, I actually spent some money on getting my nails done. And what's even best about that process is that you can't be on your phone, so you either have to connect with the Nail Tech if you can, relax in the chair with the massage, or in this case, I don't watch much TV, but they had White House Down with Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum. Oh, my nail salon is different. They don't play those kinds of… I've been watching Grey's Anatomy reruns every time I go in there. Oh, my goodness. I was so into that movie. And it's an old movie that I've seen before, but because I just don't watch much television. And if I do, it's like Number Blocks or Thomas the Tank Engine.
SPEAKER_00: Cocomelon for kids.
SPEAKER_01: You know what? I don't let my kids watch Cocomelon because the eyes are so big. There's been like studies that show that kids get addicted to it. Is that what it is? Okay, so we're gonna segue. Um, I went I think we were talking about this how I went to go visit my friend. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he has two young kids. And he's like this like one of her kids is like this lively little something. He's like the cutest thing. And then you put on Coco Mountain. It's like he just sits there and he's like paralyzed, but he doesn't look he's like, mesmerized. I was like, is there something in there?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's because the eyes are so big and then the frequency in which the scenes change, it just kind of triggers this thing. So my kids have never watched Coco Melon, we'll listen to it. That way they can get the songs and things of that nature. But I try to be selective in their screen time. So one of my goals is to raise parent one on one no screen. Oh, Brittne, I heard about this thing. I think it's called the tiny box. I haven't heard of this. No. Okay. It is like this is spoken from someone who does not have kids so take everything i'm saying with a grain of salt but it is like a sound box it's like a sound box and so it's like if you don't want to give your kids screen time i'm probably butchering this somebody who's a parent is probably going to listen to this and be like Lisha does not know what she's talking about but it is a thing and it's they tell you stories, they can sing to you, like all of this stuff. And like you buy little characters and each character has like different stories and songs and stuff. So it reminded me of it when you said that you don't want your kids to watch the Cocoa Melon and you let them listen to it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Yeah. Tanny box. You know what?
SPEAKER_01: So we do that on our iPads and their podcasts. So there's Thomas the Tank Engine podcast. There's a Disney podcast, and they really love listening to it. Also listening to the YouTube videos, either in Spanish or in English. And my kids pick up on a lot of learning that way just by listening to it. I mean, as we do, right? That's why we're doing this podcast. We're teaching you and you're absorbing it via listening. So that's the same thing for kids.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_01: I love that. I love that. So you're spending your money on? My nails. Your nails. And I'm sitting on vacation. Who has a better life? No, I'm kidding. All right, now for our last segment of today, our wealthy mind's top five. And we kind of alluded to this earlier. Brittne, what are your top five things that you like to do outside of work? That's really good. OK, so I like to run. I always take my running shoes wherever I go. So I would say running. I also really enjoy just sitting down and reading books to my children and cuddling with them. This sounds kind of weird, but I like making muffins. I'm not a great baker, but I've become a better baker because my kids enjoy so much. Like KJ will eat a muffin for every meal. But it's really a good way for us to spend time together, for us to cook something that's healthy. and for me to help to encourage like that healthy behavior for them. Spending time with my husband. So we when we do hang out, just watching a good movie. As I said, I don't watch much TV, but I like watching it with him because he's like also very cozy and cuddly. You got to alter your motives. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with no muffin in hand. I didn't get anything like what is happening. Anyway, keep going. Or is that is that you're sorry? I don't know. I lost count, too. The last thing that I would say is Just, you know, as I said, I don't spend much money on grooming, but the time that I can take to just put my music on or put a podcast on and do some self-care definitely helps to build that confidence so I can show up in the world the way that I want to show myself. No, I love that. I love that. I think I talked about my some things that I do outside of work as we started this podcast. But yeah, you know, I like to work out. I used to work out significantly more than I do now. I think that as my life has gotten busier, it's been a little bit more challenging, but I still try to fit it in. And I it's one of those things where when I'm getting ready to do it, I'm like, I really want to do this. But then once I'm done, I'm like, Oh, I did that. So it's very, It's one of those things that I'm like, it's I like the feeling of once you know, it's over. And so working out, I love to eat, as we talked about, you know, it's funny. So Brittne's here in person, which you probably can't tell by listening, but he's here in person. And I had eaten before she came. And then we were here hanging out. And then she got hungry. And I was like, I'm not hungry. I'm not hungry. And then guess who got food and just tore it up me. I was hungry, apparently, or maybe I just like to eat. I don't know. But eating is on that list. I love eating, especially around my friends and family. I just I kind of grew up with this whole Sunday dinner vibe where you Yeah. fellowship and you talk with people and hang out and doing that over food has just makes the experience even more enjoyable. Definitely. Maybe I'm just greedy. I don't know. But I like to eat, love to watch sports, as I was talking about earlier, you know, hanging out with my partner, hanging out with, you know, my brothers, my parents, it's just so rewarding. I think whenever you're able to be around the people that you love and You know, my partner's busy. He's also a doctor, but it's fun whenever we can find some time for ourselves. That's always great. Drinking wine, as I talked about earlier. I also love to drink some wine. So that's our Wealthy Minds top five for today. Hopefully you all enjoyed the pod. And of course, we'll be back next week. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye. Everything you hear is for education and entertainment. It's not strict financial advice, you know. So use your best judgment. Chat with a checked professional and all those other people that you need to talk to. Thanks for tuning in today. Keep cruising on your journey to wealth and wellness. Bye-bye.
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