Doctor Reacts to Multi-Millionaire OB/GYN - Dave Ramsey

Welcome back to the channel everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael aka Dr. Cellini and I am a diagnostic and interventional radiologist in New York City. On today's video we are going to be reacting to a video from one of my favorite people, Dave Ramsey, who is a straight shooter. I watch this guy pretty frequently. He has some pretty good tips on financial success and financial freedom. The video that caught my eye today and the reason I'm reacting to it is because the title of this video is, I'm a multi-millionaire doctor unmotivated to work another 13 years. I don't know why it's 13 years but I guess we'll find out. I have not seen this video so let's go ahead and get into it and see what it's all about. All right, let's go. Good afternoon, Dave. Thank you for taking my call. Sure, what's up? I'm 47 years old and I need help finding motivation to work for another 13 years until I'm 60 years old. I have about 2.1 million in various 401ks and I have no debt. My three houses are paid off and I've paid off my medical school loans. I mean this is impressive. This is very impressive especially for a doctor because there's a lot of doctors out there who due to their salary increase they just overspend and match their increased salary and that's exactly what you're not supposed to do and it sounds like this woman did everything right. I'm about 1.6 million in stocks and bonds and a 20k savings emergency fund in my bank. As I said, I'm 47 years old, I've never married, no kids. I support my parents who are in their 80s. I make about 200k a year as a doctor. And that's actually on the low end of a doctor so she's probably a pediatrician or family medicine or internal medicine doctor. I met with a financial advisor last year and she said I could stop working and have enough money to support myself. What do you like about your work? What do you not like about it? Oh, I'm curious to see the answer to this. She's pretty much financially set up for retirement. It's very strange to me that she wouldn't want to just work another 13 years. I bet it's burnout and I haven't seen this video but she's probably just burnt out. What do I not like? Well, work is overwhelming these days in the setting of COVID. I always work more than my paid hours and I accept that. If I truly didn't feel the need to work, I might go to music school. I play the piano and the violin and it's always been a dream of mine to apply to a... Alright, so we're missing something here. There's something she hates about work because obviously she loves taking care of patients. That's what we all love to do as doctors. That's why we do what we do. Working during COVID as a physician, the PTSD has been real. A lot of physicians have talked about it. I saw a really good article from a I believe at Harvard who posted about PTSD from COVID and how it's affected her working going forward. It's been quite a stressful year for every doctor but I'm curious to see. Something we're missing here. But there's some sort of guilt or shame that you have when you allow yourself to envision not being a doctor because you do love taking care of patients but you've got this other side of you that you want to explore. This is what I've talked about in my prior videos. It's almost like physicians as a whole feel guilty for doing something else other than their life's work of taking care of patients. The thing I've stressed on this channel, I've even spoken about it on a few videos recently, is that you have to take time for yourself and do other things outside of medicine. Explore other fun hobbies and whatnot. You have to take your mind off of it. Yes, this is your life's work but at the end of the day you have to enjoy your life as well. It's very important and it's how you not become burnt out. If in the next 13 years I develop arthritis or lose my hearing, will I regret not having taken the chance of getting my skills in place? The answer is yes. I think the answer is yes. That's what I hear. But see, I don't understand this because she's clearly set up going forward, especially for retirement. Why is she asking if she should... I don't understand. Why doesn't she just do music on the side and also be a doctor? I mean, I have a full-time YouTube career and also working 80 plus hours a week in fellowship right now. In my job going forward, I'll have at least twice as much time, maybe like four times as much free time to do other things. So I don't understand why she can't just do music on the side. It's really odd. Something we're missing here. I wouldn't call it guilt or shame. What would you call it? Lost opportunity. Yeah. All right. There's a high chance I would regret it. I mean, there are other outlets for music. It's just that our local orchestras and string quartets aren't meeting currently. All right. Let me ask you this really quick. Let me ask you this. What kind of a doctor are you? General practice is a specific type of medicine you do? I'm an OBGYN. I deliver babies. I almost said OBGYN, but that's a low salary. Oh, it's because it's California. For as high as it costs to live there, their salaries just do not match it. It's very similar to New York City, actually. The salaries in New York City, most of them are academic. The salaries just do not match the cost of living here. You can go outside in like the southeast or midwest and make easily twice as much as you would in New York City, but New York City cost of living is crazy. And so is California and San Jose. I think you're in a position professionally and financially where you could draw back a little bit. Cut your practice in half. I agree with that. And pursue the music. And get the best of both worlds. She probably has patients that she's seen for decades, if she's been in practice that long. And you feel bad leaving that practice because then all of a sudden, those patients have to go find a new doctor. And they've already connected with her, and you feel bad making them leave and go do something. But at the same time, you have to take care of yourself. So I don't know why she doesn't just go part-time. She clearly doesn't need the money because she's financially set. Go part-time, enjoy your time, pursue music, and do something you like. You're a financial advisor's right. You can quit your job and, you know, you figure out a way to live on $3.7 million. I think you struggle through here. The only reason I wouldn't quit completely is I also think you'll regret that because I think you get a level of joy out of this. The interesting thing is she has $3.7 million in retirement. So there's a rule, the 4% rule. You can continue to withdraw 4% of your retirement account per year, and it won't affect that principal balance. So she could essentially live off 4% of $3.7 million, which is what? Let me see. Which is $148,000 a year, roughly. She makes $200,000 a year now. She could pull 4% of her retirement every single year for the rest of her life at $148,000 a year and never have a problem. So I don't really understand this. It's almost like it's kind of braggadocious. I don't know. It's weird. This is a weird call. I used to make over $300K, which was my base pay. And I have given up operating, which is doing surgery on women. And as of last year, I did give up labor and delivery. See, that's why her salary is low, because that's what I was confused at. And then a lot of OBGYNs do this. They give up obstetrics because you're there overnight. You're on call a lot delivering babies, and it can wear you down and burn you out. So she's cut down on surgery. She's cut down on delivering and makes $200,000 a year. I don't understand what... She probably has all the free time in the world. I'm really confused. So I'm no longer on call on weekends, nights, and holidays. So I went from full-time, which is in doctor's world, 80 to 90 hours per week, to part-time, which is about 50 to 60 hours per week. I would parse it out in some way where you cut back to, I don't know, whatever you want to call it, 30 hours or whatever. I would keep my toe in that water though. I don't think I would walk away cold. So obviously I didn't watch that video before, but that's a little strange. She was almost like asking for permission to go even further part-time or work less so that she could take care of her parents and enjoy hobbies. That was really strange. She was like asking for permission. So this is what I cannot stress enough for people who are in medical training and those who are becoming a physician. We work so hard in our job throughout residency, throughout medical school, throughout fellowship. You have to spend some time enjoying your life and doing other things. Travel, pick up a new hobby, meet people, socialize, go out. Yes, we take care of patients and we should devote our life to that, but it doesn't have to be every hour of our life and you shouldn't feel guilty for not doing that every hour of your life. So I just want to stress that. Enjoy your life too, because at the end of the day, you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of other people. On that note, make sure you smash the like, subscribe button, follow me on Instagram and TikTok if you don't already, and I'll see you all on the next video.