Interview with Dr. Latifat Akintade
In today's episode, Dr. Latifat Akintade describes how to generate more money with less hustle as she tells us about her newly released book, Done With Broke: The Woman Physician’s Guide to More Money and Less Hustle.
Dr. Latifat is a Gastroenterologist and founder of The Money Coaching School for Badass Women Physicians. She combines her interest in personal finance, her training as a certified life coach, and her passion for physician wellness.
Our Sponsor
We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.
The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete.
By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.
Building Wealth as a Physician: The Hustle and Broke Mindset
As physicians, we often find ourselves caught up in a hustle of energy where we're always searching for the next big thing to make money. This mindset can be detrimental, leading to a fear of missing out and causing us to focus on short-term gains rather than building wealth in the long term. However, with focused energy and strategic planning, there are many ways to build wealth and achieve financial stability.
This mindset can be changed. By acknowledging our past experiences and focusing on simple, timeless principles of investing and building wealth, we can overcome our fear of financial instability and live confidently with our money working for us. By cultivating new habits and a wealth-building mentality, we can live our lives without ever being afraid of being broke again.
Done With Broke: The Woman Physician’s Guide to More Money and Less Hustle.
Dr. Akintade wrote a book to share her wisdom on wealth building and money management, which is accessible to many people and inspired by her own journey. It advises people to identify their risk tolerance and invest based on the seasons of life they are in.
For those who are busy and don't have much time to actively invest, passive investments such as the stock market or partnering with trusted people could be a good option. Diversification is crucial, and not just in stocks and bonds. One should consider conservative and less conservative investments, short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
Summary
With her extensive knowledge and experience, Dr. Latifat is a trusted expert in the field of personal finance for physicians. She has been featured in several media outlets, including KevinMD, and has spoken at conferences and events on the topic.
If you are a woman physician looking to take control of your finances and achieve financial freedom, The Money Coaching School for Badass Women Physicians is the perfect place to start. With Dr. Latifat's guidance, you can achieve your financial goals and live the life you've always dreamed of.
NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.
EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.
Links for Today's Episode:
- Dr. Latifat Akintade's Website
- Link to Done With Broke: The Woman Physician’s Guide to More Money and Less Hustle
- MoneyFitMD Podcast
- Dr. Latifat Akintade's LinkedIn Page
- How to Run Your Business and Master Your Finances – 176
- How to Prepare Financially for a Career Pivot with Ryan Inman – 071
- Do You Want to Live Life and Practice Medicine on Your Own Terms? – 237
- NewScr!pt
Download This Episode:
Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.
Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton
Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 300
Top Advice for Generating More Money with Less Hustle
- Interview with Dr. Latifat Akintade
John: Well, I love to bring guests on who are doing non-traditional or nonclinical jobs, side jobs, side gigs, people doing interesting things and particularly a physician who has written a book or is getting ready to release a book. And so I want you to welcome Dr. Latifat Akintade today. Welcome to the show.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Thank you so much for having me here. I feel privileged to be here and almost feels like an imposter because I don't think about myself as being cool enough to be considered nonclinical by the way but I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
John: You're welcome. That's going to be fun. You're an ideal guest for us here because we're going to learn a lot from you. And then at the same time, I just love promoting physician's books because writing a book and getting it published is not an easy task. And of course, a lot of my listeners like to learn about side gigs and you talk a lot about making money and some of the traps that physicians fall into.
So, before we get into that though, why don't you tell us about yourself, your story and what you're doing clinically and nonclinically. And then we'll get into some of these more pertinent topics related to your book.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. Thanks everybody. I'm Dr. Latifat. I'm a GI Doc. I'm a mama of three little ladies, ages five to 10. They keep me really busy and alert and I'm also the founder and creator of MoneyfitMD, which is a platform that is focused on helping women physicians create true financial and life freedom, to be honest with you.
I've been talking to people more recently because of the book that's coming out and it's really gotten me to reflect even a little bit more on my journey than I may have had in the past. And sort of going to how did this journey even start? How did I get here? How did I even think that financial and the life freedom was something that was important to me? And I think for me it goes back to, I moved to the US about 25 years ago. I moved from Nigeria with my siblings. Our parents stayed back in Nigeria at that point and we were staying with family members that were kind enough to house us and all those sorts of things.
I went to undergrad in LA, I went to UCLA and then med school in San Francisco at UCSF and then New York Mount Sinai and then fellowship at UC Davis in Sacramento. And what that meant was I was dragging myself around student loan and debt and all that stuff. And I literally hit some of the most expensive cities, which means that I was hecka broke at the end of all this stuff.
But at no point did I actually think that money was important. At no point did I really sit down to think about it because I was just busy with my own family responsibilities. When I was in med school, five of us, my siblings will live together, the youngest was in high school. And so, the focus was on making sure she did okay in school and didn't go to school without clothes on and all those other stuff. I had a lot on my plates. So I wasn't really thinking about money per se.
It really wasn't until fellowship that I'm so grateful I had this moment where I just saw my attendings who are amazing, smart, intelligent, loved humans, but I just noticed that I was seeing that people were having the slump on their shoulders where they were tired, not advocating for us completely in a way that we felt like they could advocate for us. And it almost seemed like they had given up and they were part of a system where they're just doing what they were told to do.
And for me, my path to medicine, my journey here wasn't like smooth sailing. There were sacrifices that I made, there were sacrifices my family made and people that I loved. And the worst thing for me was that I was going to be in medicine and not have a choice in how I lived my life.
At that point I knew I was going to be a GI doctor with an emphasis in Crohn's and colitis and the best settings that I wanted to do that in at that point was going to be academia or a large hospital system. So, I knew that I was probably not going to be my own boss. Somebody was going to tell me what to do and God forbid they tell me what to do with my patients and I hated it. I don't agree with it and I think I'm stuck. That was going to lead to me regretting my journey and literally burning out because that's not who I am.
And so, for me that was my motivation that okay, how do I always make sure that I have a plan B? How do I make sure I figure out my money stuff? And so, my journey literally to money started seven years ago where I decided that my fear of living a life of regret, my fear of not having a choice in how I took care of my patients, was the biggest factor for me.
And so, everything else, like my fear of not knowing money, my fear of how hard it was going to be to learn money, all that became silent relative to my fear of living a life that was dependent on anybody else and not being able to live in the way that I wanted to practice my life and be a parent. And so, that was my story of how I decided that money was something I needed to fix for myself at that point.
At no point did I think I was going to teach people because I knew zero. I didn't even know what I owed. I didn't know how much student debt I had and none. I didn't have a 401(k). I knew zero. I didn't even know what a 401(k) was. And so, all this idea about being able to teach people didn't start until years later when I realized that I'd really figured out how to understand money in a way that made sense to me in English in a way that was didn't feel like a conflict to my goal of serving and helping people and hopefully creating a better world.
And that's when I realized that okay, more people like me needed to learn money, more people that were not like me needed to learn money so that we could have more things to fight about because that makes life more interesting. And that is what led me to now doing what I do with MoneyfitMD through the podcast and also through my community for women physicians.
John: Very nice. When you're talking, I'm thinking back. I remember after being in practice for three or four years and I realized, I looked at my partners and we were in a private practice. We have no pension plan. I knew what an IRA was, that was about it. I didn't know about stocks, I didn't know about mutual funds. So, I spent the next two or three years learning everything I could. And just to get to the point where we could just start at 401(k), let's at least do the basics.
I think as physicians we just put all that stuff off. We go into huge debt and then some of us get more interested in others in learning this stuff, which obviously you have spent a lot of time doing and helping others, which once you become a teacher then you really learn more because you know you have to know what you're doing. That's a really interesting story. Okay, I'll stop talking. I need to get to some practical things because I want to pick your brain a little bit and help our listeners here. First tell us about the podcast. What kind of topics do you do and do you have guests, do you do solos?
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Yeah, absolutely. I have a mixture of solo and guests. What I talk about is all things money and mindset, which means anybody that I know, especially women physicians or physicians in general, to be honest, that are doing interesting things, creative things when it comes to building their own money and also the mentality and habits that helps build wealth. And that could be decreasing burnout. That could be health in terms of our physical health, could be mental health. It's wealth in the way that I think about it, which is expensive and goes beyond money.
But the episodes are either myself or I have someone come in and talk about it. And the way that I think about it, it's building wealth from the inside out as opposed to outside in, which is how most people think about it. People think "When I get to the certain number, I will finally have wealth, I will finally be wealthy, I will finally be considered rich." And for me, I believe that's an internal job that we start first and then that trickles into external where that affects how we spend, how we invest, how we spend our time, how we practice our medicine so we can actually live a life of wealth and not waiting for some magical light at the end of the rainbow when we're going to be able to consider ourselves wealthy.
John: Okay. So, let's get into that a little bit because the title of today's episode also includes a part of the title of your book. I guess that's one thing. In a nutshell or how would you create more wealth with less hustle? Because those are two things, more wealth but less hustle. That I would like to know how you would do that.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. I'll start with the hustle part because as physicians we go from this, "No one has taught us about money, we focus on everything else, but how to be the CEO of our finances" to now, "Okay, I want to figure out my finances and everybody says I want to make money, I want to diversify." And there is this energy, that hustle energy is very different from working hard and diligently. I'm very pro working hard focused diligently, but what I'm not pro is this hustle energy where it's like eyes darting everywhere trying to figure out like, "Okay, what am I missing?" It's like this FOMO, fear of missing out energy where it's okay, is it crypto today? Is it gold tomorrow? Is it this little thing tomorrow? And what that does is, number one, it's almost like when you think about being in a basement with your phone and it's trying to find reception. That kills its battery faster, right?
That's the same thing that happens when we have that hustle energy because our energy has not been spent productively moving forward. It has been spent focusing on what we don't have, focusing on what the next secret is. What the key is, is there are so many different ways you can build wealth. There is almost nothing you can do that will not lead you to wealth if you continue focusing on it diligently and spending your energy going forward as opposed to that darting energy.
So, that's what I focus on because again, we are busy as physicians, we're taking care of patients, we're taking care of our families. When we start to think about how we can build wealth, it's important for us to be strategic. Focused energy, not looking for short term gains only, but understanding that wealth is something that is built in the long term so that we can stay the course regardless of what's going up and down and be able to create it.
Because whether you're doing e-commerce or you opening your own business or you investing in other people's business or you do in real estate, all of those individual ways can lead to you having a lot of money if you're willing to focus your energy and be able to build behind it. So, that's a hustle part that I think is important for us to talk about.
And then the broke part of it, the way I think about it, broke is a mindset. Let's look at the landscape of medicine today. Let's look at burnout in medicine. Let's look at the fact that physicians are practicing in systems and structures that doesn't always have the focus of the patient and physician wellness in mind. If we look at that and we are smart humans, we've sacrificed so many years to be where we are today. There is no question about our commitment, but the reason why we stay in situations that is not in line with what our patients need, what we need is because of that subconscious and sometimes conscious fear of the fact that "If I leave this, I'm not going to have money. I don't want to be broke."
So you don't have to be broke to decide to be done with broke. And that's why I didn't call the book "Done Been Broke" because this is not for people that are been broke, it's for people that have that subconscious or conscious worry that they will be broke. And I want to make sure that I'm being understanding of where people are coming from because your audience are very genius.
There are some people that grew up having lots of money, there's some people that grew up not having any money. And if you're someone that grew up not having money or you grew up in a family where conversations about money is not being had, it is completely logical and understandable that you may be living your life more in fear of the thought that you maybe broke at some point.
And I think part of it is acknowledging that part of your story and knowing that everything that we are today is the result of everything that we've learned throughout our journey. But now it's time for us to be conscious about, "Okay, what do I now want to create? Do I want to train myself to understand that I can learn how to do money, I can learn whether I like budgeting or not? I can learn how to see my money as seeds that I can plant into trees. I can start to see my money as something that can serve my life's purpose as opposed to something that's just happening by default because I'm not telling my money where to go. I can learn how to invest in a way that is simple and diversified." And simple can be as simple as the index funds that we're just talking about right now, about how I can invest in a way that is diverse, simple and successful. Do I want to work for my money? Do I want my money to work for you?
A lot of these are simple, timeless principles that we were never taught in medicine and has nothing to do with what the climate is or what the sexy thing that people are talking about when it comes to investment. If we can learn the foundations, if we can learn the principles, if we can change our own mentality and get new habits that build wealth in the long haul, we will live our life not being ever afraid of being broke ever, because we know how to do it forever.
John: Okay, that is a lot to think about. I'm just going to paraphrase here. Basically I hear you saying your relationship with money, the fear of going broke, some of it is just mental and saying, "Look, we do have a lot of control. We're physicians, we make decent money." Does it get into the podcast and possibly in the book, does it get into "Should I just become an investor and a startup?" That sounds a little bit extreme as opposed to, "Let's be conservative, let's save so much money, let's put this money in really logical places." Tell me more about the philosophy that you follow.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. I don't go into specific details of this is what you should invest in specifically, but what I do tell people in the book is the way that I think about it. And the way that I think about it is deciding what your risk tolerance is. What your risk tolerance when it comes to investment is. Also trying to decide based on the seasons that you're in in life, what makes more sense for you to invest in.
If you're a busy resident or you're a busy fellow or you're a busy attendant with four kids at home and you are a single mama may not be the best time to necessarily start thinking about doing something else actively. It may be time for you to think about passive things like again, set it and forget it in the stock market or now learning how to partner with people that you can trust to the best of a human ability and you can leverage their own time because they may have time to look into investments. How do I invest with them passively?
Even if it's things like syndications. How do I do things? Do I want to be a hard money lender knowing that now this is more risky? It may have a higher return but it's more risky. But the main thing is choosing how to diversify not just in terms of stocks and bonds, but also diversify in terms of conservative, less conservative. Investing for short-term, medium-term, long-term. Those core principles are the ones that I believe that when we learn, then the answer becomes really easy for our own individual specific scenario based on what season we have, what season we're in, our risk tolerance and those other things.
John: Okay, that makes sense. And that's an approach that pretty much everybody can take and not be afraid of making some of those decisions. Well, I have a friend, he's retired now, but I swear, he only put cash in the bank and he never invested in stocks, never invested in real estate. And I'm thinking, "Boy, you're going to have to save half your income for the next 30 years if that's going to be your approach."
I know you're covering a lot of these things in the book, so tell me more about the book. Maybe there's some things in there that you haven't mentioned yet and then we need to learn how to find the book. So, tell us about the book and what led you to write it and how did that go and all these kind of questions.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. And I love that you shared about your friend because there's an example that I shared in the book specifically about that. It was a fact that if I'm trying to go from California to New York, there are many ways to do it. I can go by train, I can drive, I can fly. My condition at the end is going to vary based on what route that I take and how quickly I get there is also going to be affected. And in my opinion, flying is a compound interest. It's a gift that we've been given. So I do talk about that in the book.
And honestly, the reason why the book came about was I have this knowledge that I'm so grateful for and I take credit for some of them, but there's some of it that I don't take credit for. I believe it's just a gift to be honest in terms of the people call it sage wisdom. I have a lot of sage wisdom when it comes to money and wealth building in general and life to be honest with you.
And so, when I think about the people that I can't help, physically in my own time limitation as a human being, that is going to be less compared to the number of people that can grab my book, that can get an audiobook and get some of this wisdom at a really cost effective 20 something dollars or so is what the price is going to be. And a lot of us are driving, we're taking the train and all those things and those are the times where we can start to build our own knowledge and start to change the foundation of our knowledge. So, in my opinion, the best way to be able to make this accessible is what you're doing through podcasting and getting information to people easily. And that's why I decided to write the book.
The funny thing is, that I'm going to share this because there are people that are going to be listening to your podcast that may want to do different kinds of businesses or follow different pathways and maybe thinking that I'm not equipped for it, I don't know how to do this. I've never done something like this before.
And that was my story even with my business with MoneyfitMD but even with the book that I'm doing. I thought I was a bad writer. For the longest time I had the story in my head that I don't know how to write, I have too many memories of being in college in the bathroom crying over English papers. And so, to think about writing a book seemed impossible, but what I try to remind people of is we are physicians and we are expert evidence for ourselves of someone that can go from knowing little or nothing about a topic and become a master of that topic. Because we've done that with medicine.
So if we can take that same skillset and reproduce it into anything because the only reason why we may not be able to do it or be good at it is because we haven't focused on it. It's literally just as simple as that. If we focus on it, we will learn it. So, whatever skillset that is for you, whether it's to write a book, whether it's to start a podcast, whether it's to start investing, whether it's to start your own company, the only reason why you may not be good at it yet is because you haven't focused on it. And all you have to do is focus, learn, find people that can mentor you like this podcast you're listening to, find communities that can help you, whether it's money you want alone. Find those people that speak your language and that can help you. And for me, if you take anything away at all from the book and this interview of me and my journey is the fact that there is literally nothing we cannot do. We just need to decide and fuel that journey and it will happen.
John: Excellent. Now, one thing I have failed to do at this point is I haven't told people where to find you. So, let's start with the website. You're at moneyfitmd.com, correct?
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. You can find me on the website.
John: And they can find pretty much everything there I'm thinking.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Exactly. You can find the information for the podcast and the book is going to be on Amazon, but you can get it directly from my website as well.
John: Okay, good. So we can go to the website, I got it pulled up right now and there's the book. We could get the book there or we could go to Amazon and I'll have links for that as well. Of course, you can look up MoneyfitMD podcast on any podcast player, correct?
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely.
John: Okay, that's good. We know where to find that. Now the book is not actually out as of the recording. It will be out when this is released. It'll probably be out for about a week. So, we need to pile on and get as many by five or 10 of the books. You got to get a little bit of action going on Amazon and other places so that our physician friends can do well with their books.
You've told us a lot so far. This has been very interesting. I usually go to last minute advice for our listeners, but I think they're going to be a little more motivated if you could share with us what we talked about before we got on here in terms of what you're doing right now at a high level because I think they'll get motivated if they understand what you're up to right now.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely.
John: If that's okay.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: No, that's definitely okay. I am currently in the middle or at the beginning of a year-long family sabbatical that I'm taking with my family. We have three kids, my husband and I. And honestly, this was not like a dream list thing. A year ago I would not imagine that I was going to take a sabbatical. I love medicine, I love my patients, I have the best colleagues. I was not burned out at work. I just decided that I wanted to take time away for my family to explore the world. And that's what I did.
And the only reason why I could give myself that gift was because of the investment and the prep that I had done even before I knew that this is going to be something that I wanted to do. And that same thing is learning where my money is going, diversifying my income so that I'm not tied to clinical income only.
And if you are a physician, this is so, so important for all of us because in order for us to be well in anything, we want to have the freedom to be able to do what we want and that's a gift that we can give ourselves. But right now we're encourage out, I wish I could show you my view, but the light is so bright outside, the camera doesn't do a good job, but the goal is just to slow down. In my opinion, we're not taking a vacation, we're just leaving through the world. So we've been in New York/Jersey. We're in Carissa, we're doing Aruba, we're doing Europe, we're doing Nigeria, we're doing Southeast Asia. And I'm just excited about who my kids get to be at the end of this. I'm excited about who I get to be at the end of this. And I'm also excited about what the practice of medicine is going to look like for me when I go back next year.
John: Oh, this is fantastic. And I'll tell you what it reminds me of. I read a book, I don't even remember the title of it. But one of the principles of the book was one of the things we do in life is we create memories. And what is the value of a memory? It's hard to put a dollar value on that, but one part of the value of a memory is how long you have the memory. If you make a memory when you're 83 years old and you die when you're 84, that memory has a very low value. But if you make memories in your 30s and 40s, we have to carve out that time to make some of those memories, whether it's at home or elsewhere. And I think that's what's impressive to me is you are making so many memories over this next year that they have an immeasurable value.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Thank you for sharing that. I hadn't heard about that memory in terms of the length and that is going to motivate me to gather even more memories. And honestly for me, I've always had the intentionality about life because I truly believe that our life is a gift and all of us went through the pandemic and a reminder that life is a gift.
And for me, I lost my dad about two years ago. He died at an age that you would call three years after what you'd consider a traditional retirement age. And it wasn't like that changed me dramatically, but it just became another evidence of the fact that it's not our money or our life, it's not our career or our life. It is both, both of those two things.
I think I need to make a recording on my podcast about this, but I really believe that we're mentally five lifetimes in one, which is where we give ourselves the permission to reset sort of our seasons of life, whatever that is. Maybe the season I'm going to be a hundred percent full-time, maybe the next season I'm going to be part-time, maybe the next season I'm going to do something else. And just give ourselves the freedom of living life fully and like you said, creating even more memories for a longer period of time for as long as we give to be on this planet. So I love that you added that on.
John: Well, you're welcome. And I had never thought of it that way until I read that book. I have done that a little bit. I'm not going to get into that. But I think looking back, those memories are still there and I really enjoy thinking and sharing those with people when I do.
Again, moneyfitmd.com, that's the website. The book is called "Done With Broke: The Woman Physician's Guide to More Money and Less Hustle." That sounds like a good combination there. More money, less hustle. I will still ask you if you have any last words before we let you go today.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: No, I want to say thank you for what you do for bringing guests on here to share. The way that I think about it, there's a lot of noise about medicine and whether it's worth the debt that we get and all the sacrifice. And I honestly am a firm believer that it is. It is if we truly understand the gift of our degree. Our degree is not a terminal degree. Whether you're MD, MD-PhD or whatever you are, in my opinion, our degree is a potent seed that we can grow into any avenues that we want.
My hope is that more physicians will start to see that, so that when and if we decide to stay in clinical medicine, we know that we're there by choice. And that way we are living our life and we get to serve our patients at the highest level. So, thank you for doing what you do and thanks for serving us this way.
John: I love that, what you just said. Again, I thank you for being here on the podcast today, Dr. Latifat. It's been fun and we'll talk again soon, I'm sure.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Thank you so much for having me here.
John: Bye-bye.
Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!
Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.
Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 300
Top Advice for Generating More Money with Less Hustle
- Interview with Dr. Latifat Akintade
John: Well, I love to bring guests on who are doing non-traditional or nonclinical jobs, side jobs, side gigs, people doing interesting things and particularly a physician who has written a book or is getting ready to release a book. And so I want you to welcome Dr. Latifat Akintade today. Welcome to the show.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Thank you so much for having me here. I feel privileged to be here and almost feels like an imposter because I don't think about myself as being cool enough to be considered nonclinical by the way but I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
John: You're welcome. That's going to be fun. You're an ideal guest for us here because we're going to learn a lot from you. And then at the same time, I just love promoting physician's books because writing a book and getting it published is not an easy task. And of course, a lot of my listeners like to learn about side gigs and you talk a lot about making money and some of the traps that physicians fall into.
So, before we get into that though, why don't you tell us about yourself, your story and what you're doing clinically and nonclinically. And then we'll get into some of these more pertinent topics related to your book.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. Thanks everybody. I'm Dr. Latifat. I'm a GI Doc. I'm a mama of three little ladies, ages five to 10. They keep me really busy and alert and I'm also the founder and creator of MoneyfitMD, which is a platform that is focused on helping women physicians create true financial and life freedom, to be honest with you.
I've been talking to people more recently because of the book that's coming out and it's really gotten me to reflect even a little bit more on my journey than I may have had in the past. And sort of going to how did this journey even start? How did I get here? How did I even think that financial and the life freedom was something that was important to me? And I think for me it goes back to, I moved to the US about 25 years ago. I moved from Nigeria with my siblings. Our parents stayed back in Nigeria at that point and we were staying with family members that were kind enough to house us and all those sorts of things.
I went to undergrad in LA, I went to UCLA and then med school in San Francisco at UCSF and then New York Mount Sinai and then fellowship at UC Davis in Sacramento. And what that meant was I was dragging myself around student loan and debt and all that stuff. And I literally hit some of the most expensive cities, which means that I was hecka broke at the end of all this stuff.
But at no point did I actually think that money was important. At no point did I really sit down to think about it because I was just busy with my own family responsibilities. When I was in med school, five of us, my siblings will live together, the youngest was in high school. And so, the focus was on making sure she did okay in school and didn't go to school without clothes on and all those other stuff. I had a lot on my plates. So I wasn't really thinking about money per se.
It really wasn't until fellowship that I'm so grateful I had this moment where I just saw my attendings who are amazing, smart, intelligent, loved humans, but I just noticed that I was seeing that people were having the slump on their shoulders where they were tired, not advocating for us completely in a way that we felt like they could advocate for us. And it almost seemed like they had given up and they were part of a system where they're just doing what they were told to do.
And for me, my path to medicine, my journey here wasn't like smooth sailing. There were sacrifices that I made, there were sacrifices my family made and people that I loved. And the worst thing for me was that I was going to be in medicine and not have a choice in how I lived my life.
At that point I knew I was going to be a GI doctor with an emphasis in Crohn's and colitis and the best settings that I wanted to do that in at that point was going to be academia or a large hospital system. So, I knew that I was probably not going to be my own boss. Somebody was going to tell me what to do and God forbid they tell me what to do with my patients and I hated it. I don't agree with it and I think I'm stuck. That was going to lead to me regretting my journey and literally burning out because that's not who I am.
And so, for me that was my motivation that okay, how do I always make sure that I have a plan B? How do I make sure I figure out my money stuff? And so, my journey literally to money started seven years ago where I decided that my fear of living a life of regret, my fear of not having a choice in how I took care of my patients, was the biggest factor for me.
And so, everything else, like my fear of not knowing money, my fear of how hard it was going to be to learn money, all that became silent relative to my fear of living a life that was dependent on anybody else and not being able to live in the way that I wanted to practice my life and be a parent. And so, that was my story of how I decided that money was something I needed to fix for myself at that point.
At no point did I think I was going to teach people because I knew zero. I didn't even know what I owed. I didn't know how much student debt I had and none. I didn't have a 401(k). I knew zero. I didn't even know what a 401(k) was. And so, all this idea about being able to teach people didn't start until years later when I realized that I'd really figured out how to understand money in a way that made sense to me in English in a way that was didn't feel like a conflict to my goal of serving and helping people and hopefully creating a better world.
And that's when I realized that okay, more people like me needed to learn money, more people that were not like me needed to learn money so that we could have more things to fight about because that makes life more interesting. And that is what led me to now doing what I do with MoneyfitMD through the podcast and also through my community for women physicians.
John: Very nice. When you're talking, I'm thinking back. I remember after being in practice for three or four years and I realized, I looked at my partners and we were in a private practice. We have no pension plan. I knew what an IRA was, that was about it. I didn't know about stocks, I didn't know about mutual funds. So, I spent the next two or three years learning everything I could. And just to get to the point where we could just start at 401(k), let's at least do the basics.
I think as physicians we just put all that stuff off. We go into huge debt and then some of us get more interested in others in learning this stuff, which obviously you have spent a lot of time doing and helping others, which once you become a teacher then you really learn more because you know you have to know what you're doing. That's a really interesting story. Okay, I'll stop talking. I need to get to some practical things because I want to pick your brain a little bit and help our listeners here. First tell us about the podcast. What kind of topics do you do and do you have guests, do you do solos?
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Yeah, absolutely. I have a mixture of solo and guests. What I talk about is all things money and mindset, which means anybody that I know, especially women physicians or physicians in general, to be honest, that are doing interesting things, creative things when it comes to building their own money and also the mentality and habits that helps build wealth. And that could be decreasing burnout. That could be health in terms of our physical health, could be mental health. It's wealth in the way that I think about it, which is expensive and goes beyond money.
But the episodes are either myself or I have someone come in and talk about it. And the way that I think about it, it's building wealth from the inside out as opposed to outside in, which is how most people think about it. People think "When I get to the certain number, I will finally have wealth, I will finally be wealthy, I will finally be considered rich." And for me, I believe that's an internal job that we start first and then that trickles into external where that affects how we spend, how we invest, how we spend our time, how we practice our medicine so we can actually live a life of wealth and not waiting for some magical light at the end of the rainbow when we're going to be able to consider ourselves wealthy.
John: Okay. So, let's get into that a little bit because the title of today's episode also includes a part of the title of your book. I guess that's one thing. In a nutshell or how would you create more wealth with less hustle? Because those are two things, more wealth but less hustle. That I would like to know how you would do that.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. I'll start with the hustle part because as physicians we go from this, "No one has taught us about money, we focus on everything else, but how to be the CEO of our finances" to now, "Okay, I want to figure out my finances and everybody says I want to make money, I want to diversify." And there is this energy, that hustle energy is very different from working hard and diligently. I'm very pro working hard focused diligently, but what I'm not pro is this hustle energy where it's like eyes darting everywhere trying to figure out like, "Okay, what am I missing?" It's like this FOMO, fear of missing out energy where it's okay, is it crypto today? Is it gold tomorrow? Is it this little thing tomorrow? And what that does is, number one, it's almost like when you think about being in a basement with your phone and it's trying to find reception. That kills its battery faster, right?
That's the same thing that happens when we have that hustle energy because our energy has not been spent productively moving forward. It has been spent focusing on what we don't have, focusing on what the next secret is. What the key is, is there are so many different ways you can build wealth. There is almost nothing you can do that will not lead you to wealth if you continue focusing on it diligently and spending your energy going forward as opposed to that darting energy.
So, that's what I focus on because again, we are busy as physicians, we're taking care of patients, we're taking care of our families. When we start to think about how we can build wealth, it's important for us to be strategic. Focused energy, not looking for short term gains only, but understanding that wealth is something that is built in the long term so that we can stay the course regardless of what's going up and down and be able to create it.
Because whether you're doing e-commerce or you opening your own business or you investing in other people's business or you do in real estate, all of those individual ways can lead to you having a lot of money if you're willing to focus your energy and be able to build behind it. So, that's a hustle part that I think is important for us to talk about.
And then the broke part of it, the way I think about it, broke is a mindset. Let's look at the landscape of medicine today. Let's look at burnout in medicine. Let's look at the fact that physicians are practicing in systems and structures that doesn't always have the focus of the patient and physician wellness in mind. If we look at that and we are smart humans, we've sacrificed so many years to be where we are today. There is no question about our commitment, but the reason why we stay in situations that is not in line with what our patients need, what we need is because of that subconscious and sometimes conscious fear of the fact that "If I leave this, I'm not going to have money. I don't want to be broke."
So you don't have to be broke to decide to be done with broke. And that's why I didn't call the book "Done Been Broke" because this is not for people that are been broke, it's for people that have that subconscious or conscious worry that they will be broke. And I want to make sure that I'm being understanding of where people are coming from because your audience are very genius.
There are some people that grew up having lots of money, there's some people that grew up not having any money. And if you're someone that grew up not having money or you grew up in a family where conversations about money is not being had, it is completely logical and understandable that you may be living your life more in fear of the thought that you maybe broke at some point.
And I think part of it is acknowledging that part of your story and knowing that everything that we are today is the result of everything that we've learned throughout our journey. But now it's time for us to be conscious about, "Okay, what do I now want to create? Do I want to train myself to understand that I can learn how to do money, I can learn whether I like budgeting or not? I can learn how to see my money as seeds that I can plant into trees. I can start to see my money as something that can serve my life's purpose as opposed to something that's just happening by default because I'm not telling my money where to go. I can learn how to invest in a way that is simple and diversified." And simple can be as simple as the index funds that we're just talking about right now, about how I can invest in a way that is diverse, simple and successful. Do I want to work for my money? Do I want my money to work for you?
A lot of these are simple, timeless principles that we were never taught in medicine and has nothing to do with what the climate is or what the sexy thing that people are talking about when it comes to investment. If we can learn the foundations, if we can learn the principles, if we can change our own mentality and get new habits that build wealth in the long haul, we will live our life not being ever afraid of being broke ever, because we know how to do it forever.
John: Okay, that is a lot to think about. I'm just going to paraphrase here. Basically I hear you saying your relationship with money, the fear of going broke, some of it is just mental and saying, "Look, we do have a lot of control. We're physicians, we make decent money." Does it get into the podcast and possibly in the book, does it get into "Should I just become an investor and a startup?" That sounds a little bit extreme as opposed to, "Let's be conservative, let's save so much money, let's put this money in really logical places." Tell me more about the philosophy that you follow.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. I don't go into specific details of this is what you should invest in specifically, but what I do tell people in the book is the way that I think about it. And the way that I think about it is deciding what your risk tolerance is. What your risk tolerance when it comes to investment is. Also trying to decide based on the seasons that you're in in life, what makes more sense for you to invest in.
If you're a busy resident or you're a busy fellow or you're a busy attendant with four kids at home and you are a single mama may not be the best time to necessarily start thinking about doing something else actively. It may be time for you to think about passive things like again, set it and forget it in the stock market or now learning how to partner with people that you can trust to the best of a human ability and you can leverage their own time because they may have time to look into investments. How do I invest with them passively?
Even if it's things like syndications. How do I do things? Do I want to be a hard money lender knowing that now this is more risky? It may have a higher return but it's more risky. But the main thing is choosing how to diversify not just in terms of stocks and bonds, but also diversify in terms of conservative, less conservative. Investing for short-term, medium-term, long-term. Those core principles are the ones that I believe that when we learn, then the answer becomes really easy for our own individual specific scenario based on what season we have, what season we're in, our risk tolerance and those other things.
John: Okay, that makes sense. And that's an approach that pretty much everybody can take and not be afraid of making some of those decisions. Well, I have a friend, he's retired now, but I swear, he only put cash in the bank and he never invested in stocks, never invested in real estate. And I'm thinking, "Boy, you're going to have to save half your income for the next 30 years if that's going to be your approach."
I know you're covering a lot of these things in the book, so tell me more about the book. Maybe there's some things in there that you haven't mentioned yet and then we need to learn how to find the book. So, tell us about the book and what led you to write it and how did that go and all these kind of questions.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. And I love that you shared about your friend because there's an example that I shared in the book specifically about that. It was a fact that if I'm trying to go from California to New York, there are many ways to do it. I can go by train, I can drive, I can fly. My condition at the end is going to vary based on what route that I take and how quickly I get there is also going to be affected. And in my opinion, flying is a compound interest. It's a gift that we've been given. So I do talk about that in the book.
And honestly, the reason why the book came about was I have this knowledge that I'm so grateful for and I take credit for some of them, but there's some of it that I don't take credit for. I believe it's just a gift to be honest in terms of the people call it sage wisdom. I have a lot of sage wisdom when it comes to money and wealth building in general and life to be honest with you.
And so, when I think about the people that I can't help, physically in my own time limitation as a human being, that is going to be less compared to the number of people that can grab my book, that can get an audiobook and get some of this wisdom at a really cost effective 20 something dollars or so is what the price is going to be. And a lot of us are driving, we're taking the train and all those things and those are the times where we can start to build our own knowledge and start to change the foundation of our knowledge. So, in my opinion, the best way to be able to make this accessible is what you're doing through podcasting and getting information to people easily. And that's why I decided to write the book.
The funny thing is, that I'm going to share this because there are people that are going to be listening to your podcast that may want to do different kinds of businesses or follow different pathways and maybe thinking that I'm not equipped for it, I don't know how to do this. I've never done something like this before.
And that was my story even with my business with MoneyfitMD but even with the book that I'm doing. I thought I was a bad writer. For the longest time I had the story in my head that I don't know how to write, I have too many memories of being in college in the bathroom crying over English papers. And so, to think about writing a book seemed impossible, but what I try to remind people of is we are physicians and we are expert evidence for ourselves of someone that can go from knowing little or nothing about a topic and become a master of that topic. Because we've done that with medicine.
So if we can take that same skillset and reproduce it into anything because the only reason why we may not be able to do it or be good at it is because we haven't focused on it. It's literally just as simple as that. If we focus on it, we will learn it. So, whatever skillset that is for you, whether it's to write a book, whether it's to start a podcast, whether it's to start investing, whether it's to start your own company, the only reason why you may not be good at it yet is because you haven't focused on it. And all you have to do is focus, learn, find people that can mentor you like this podcast you're listening to, find communities that can help you, whether it's money you want alone. Find those people that speak your language and that can help you. And for me, if you take anything away at all from the book and this interview of me and my journey is the fact that there is literally nothing we cannot do. We just need to decide and fuel that journey and it will happen.
John: Excellent. Now, one thing I have failed to do at this point is I haven't told people where to find you. So, let's start with the website. You're at moneyfitmd.com, correct?
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. You can find me on the website.
John: And they can find pretty much everything there I'm thinking.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Exactly. You can find the information for the podcast and the book is going to be on Amazon, but you can get it directly from my website as well.
John: Okay, good. So we can go to the website, I got it pulled up right now and there's the book. We could get the book there or we could go to Amazon and I'll have links for that as well. Of course, you can look up MoneyfitMD podcast on any podcast player, correct?
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely.
John: Okay, that's good. We know where to find that. Now the book is not actually out as of the recording. It will be out when this is released. It'll probably be out for about a week. So, we need to pile on and get as many by five or 10 of the books. You got to get a little bit of action going on Amazon and other places so that our physician friends can do well with their books.
You've told us a lot so far. This has been very interesting. I usually go to last minute advice for our listeners, but I think they're going to be a little more motivated if you could share with us what we talked about before we got on here in terms of what you're doing right now at a high level because I think they'll get motivated if they understand what you're up to right now.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Absolutely.
John: If that's okay.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: No, that's definitely okay. I am currently in the middle or at the beginning of a year-long family sabbatical that I'm taking with my family. We have three kids, my husband and I. And honestly, this was not like a dream list thing. A year ago I would not imagine that I was going to take a sabbatical. I love medicine, I love my patients, I have the best colleagues. I was not burned out at work. I just decided that I wanted to take time away for my family to explore the world. And that's what I did.
And the only reason why I could give myself that gift was because of the investment and the prep that I had done even before I knew that this is going to be something that I wanted to do. And that same thing is learning where my money is going, diversifying my income so that I'm not tied to clinical income only.
And if you are a physician, this is so, so important for all of us because in order for us to be well in anything, we want to have the freedom to be able to do what we want and that's a gift that we can give ourselves. But right now we're encourage out, I wish I could show you my view, but the light is so bright outside, the camera doesn't do a good job, but the goal is just to slow down. In my opinion, we're not taking a vacation, we're just leaving through the world. So we've been in New York/Jersey. We're in Carissa, we're doing Aruba, we're doing Europe, we're doing Nigeria, we're doing Southeast Asia. And I'm just excited about who my kids get to be at the end of this. I'm excited about who I get to be at the end of this. And I'm also excited about what the practice of medicine is going to look like for me when I go back next year.
John: Oh, this is fantastic. And I'll tell you what it reminds me of. I read a book, I don't even remember the title of it. But one of the principles of the book was one of the things we do in life is we create memories. And what is the value of a memory? It's hard to put a dollar value on that, but one part of the value of a memory is how long you have the memory. If you make a memory when you're 83 years old and you die when you're 84, that memory has a very low value. But if you make memories in your 30s and 40s, we have to carve out that time to make some of those memories, whether it's at home or elsewhere. And I think that's what's impressive to me is you are making so many memories over this next year that they have an immeasurable value.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Thank you for sharing that. I hadn't heard about that memory in terms of the length and that is going to motivate me to gather even more memories. And honestly for me, I've always had the intentionality about life because I truly believe that our life is a gift and all of us went through the pandemic and a reminder that life is a gift.
And for me, I lost my dad about two years ago. He died at an age that you would call three years after what you'd consider a traditional retirement age. And it wasn't like that changed me dramatically, but it just became another evidence of the fact that it's not our money or our life, it's not our career or our life. It is both, both of those two things.
I think I need to make a recording on my podcast about this, but I really believe that we're mentally five lifetimes in one, which is where we give ourselves the permission to reset sort of our seasons of life, whatever that is. Maybe the season I'm going to be a hundred percent full-time, maybe the next season I'm going to be part-time, maybe the next season I'm going to do something else. And just give ourselves the freedom of living life fully and like you said, creating even more memories for a longer period of time for as long as we give to be on this planet. So I love that you added that on.
John: Well, you're welcome. And I had never thought of it that way until I read that book. I have done that a little bit. I'm not going to get into that. But I think looking back, those memories are still there and I really enjoy thinking and sharing those with people when I do.
Again, moneyfitmd.com, that's the website. The book is called "Done With Broke: The Woman Physician's Guide to More Money and Less Hustle." That sounds like a good combination there. More money, less hustle. I will still ask you if you have any last words before we let you go today.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: No, I want to say thank you for what you do for bringing guests on here to share. The way that I think about it, there's a lot of noise about medicine and whether it's worth the debt that we get and all the sacrifice. And I honestly am a firm believer that it is. It is if we truly understand the gift of our degree. Our degree is not a terminal degree. Whether you're MD, MD-PhD or whatever you are, in my opinion, our degree is a potent seed that we can grow into any avenues that we want.
My hope is that more physicians will start to see that, so that when and if we decide to stay in clinical medicine, we know that we're there by choice. And that way we are living our life and we get to serve our patients at the highest level. So, thank you for doing what you do and thanks for serving us this way.
John: I love that, what you just said. Again, I thank you for being here on the podcast today, Dr. Latifat. It's been fun and we'll talk again soon, I'm sure.
Dr. Latifat Akintade: Thank you so much for having me here.
John: Bye-bye.
Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!
Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.
Disclaimers:
Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.
The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.
The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career.
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.