On this episode of The Long View, Bill Yount, a practicing emergency physician and co-host of the podcast Catching Up to Fi, discusses his biggest financial mistakes, how he found financial independence later in life, and the importance of planning the softer side of retirement.
Here are a few excerpts from Yount’s conversation with Morningstar’s Christine Benz.
Why Financial Independence Is a Tonic Against Career Burnout
Christine Benz: I wanted to talk about the news that you were financially independent. It sounds like it was anticlimactic, but you also said that it was a great tonic against career burnout because you are continuing to work. It sounds like you really like your work as a physician, but can you talk about that, how crossing that threshold and hearing that you were financially independent was kind of energizing?
Bill Yount: Interesting question, and it’s an important one, because I think a financially independent doctor or at least one who has control of their finances and realizes they’re going to be independent is a better doctor. They don’t have the stress of having to go to work and earn more to pay for their financial, say, indiscretions or lifestyle issues. I know that the solution of a doctor is typically, OK, I’m going to earn more, work more, to outearn my problems. Well, that’s not a good solution. That’s a hedonic treadmill solution, as we talked about before. And so in order to stave off burnout during the journey, I actually cut back on work, and I changed my location, and I knew that it would extend my journey, but I knew that I had to maintain at least that level of income to meet our lifestyle expenses over the course of 10, 12 years. But I worked a little less, it enabled me to work longer, and so I didn’t burn the candle at both ends, and I was prepared to work to 63, 64, 65 and be patient, but it came sooner, and it is a tonic. All of a sudden, I went to work—it’s really funny—our financial planner said, yes, you’ve made it, you’re financially free, and my wife looked at me and said, when you go to work tomorrow, you can’t complain anymore.
And that’s true. It’s still something that I value. I do want to migrate out, and I think retirement is more of a glide path than a cliff. The one change I’ve made after three months of reflection and digestion was I’m going to cut two shifts. I’m a shift worker, so I have the ability to do so, which is a little different from, say, a corporate person that’s 9 to 5, but I’m peeling away shifts, and it feels good. It feels right. And there will be a point where maybe I continue to do three or four shifts of emergency medicine, and I can negotiate day shifts. Financial independence gives you leverage. You don’t have to be there, so you can have healthier conversations with your oversight. You’re more present for your patients. You’re more present for the staff. They’re asking me all these questions about how they can help with their finances. There’s a lot of distress out there, so there’s a lot of value in staying but working the optimal amount.
Wealthcare vs. Healthcare: Planning the Softer Sides of Retirement
Benz: I wanted to ask about being a physician in particular, but it would apply to anyone with a job that’s physically and/or intellectually demanding. What will be your cues to say, you know what? It’s time for me to step away, or you know, maybe not be in this part of practicing medicine anymore?
Yount: Well, as you’ve talked about with Fritz Gilbert, there’s a lot of soft sides to retirement. That’s the 80%. The math is 20%. It’s Pareto’s Principle all over again, and you have to work on the soft sides leading up into retirement. You don’t want to be caught with your pants down with a cliff like retirement and you don’t have a plan for how you’re going to spend your time. You’ve got to start developing those hobbies, developing those relationships, leading up into retirement. Fritz Gilbert has 20 steps to help you get there in a great article on The Retirement Manifesto, but it is a process. It is a project, and you have to take it seriously, just like you take the math seriously.
And for me, I’ll peel it back to, say, four shifts. I’m going to negotiate day shifts only. They’re 12-hour shifts. They’re long. I’ve been doing nights, weekends, and holidays and missing out on things for 30 years. And let me reach the point where I say, you know what, I don’t want to miss Christmas this year because I have to work. I’m going to just say goodbye, and I’m working toward that point over the next one to three years—actively doing so. And I may reach the point where it’s like, you know, it’s enough, because what happens is your life outside of work starts to crowd out work. Your life becomes so robust outside of work, and in my case, it’s Catching Up to FI and wanting to work on financial wellness instead of physical wellness. Wanting to work on mindset wellness and money, wealthcare as opposed to healthcare. And I don’t want to have it be an emergency that I have to exit work.
When you hit your 50s and 60s, all of a sudden the dings of life physically and mentally accumulate. And for me in emergency medicine, if you’ve ever watched The Pitt you understand, there’s kind of a PTSD that goes along with this. And it kind of builds up and letting go of this—I look forward to that day, walking out of my last shift. You know, I’ll be replaced as a cog in the wheel. I’ll hand off the torch. But the thing that keeps me in there now are the relationships at work, the mentoring of younger colleagues as well as the patients and the value I provide. But emergency medicine is a sad field. We’re giving out bad news. It’s the worst day of somebody’s life, a big anxious moment. And when you focus on financial wellness and health, you get so much gratitude—people saying from our podcast, “You’ve saved my life.” And that has nothing to do with physical health. So I really look forward to the next chapter.