Aligning Money and Values is Winning

Lately, my wife and I have been discussing more about what money can buy us. It allows us to purchase material goods, obviously. Many of these things we need for daily living. However, as our financial situation begins to change, so too has the lens with which we view our time… and the value we extract from it. 

This week, I wanted to write about a slightly more abstract topic, but one that I think is critical to our happiness. We all will navigate our finances differently. That is because, well, our finances are different. However, the commonality that unites us all is that, overwhelmingly, we are all trying to climb out from under our debt and create a sustainable work-life balance. Whether you are racing towards FIRE or just looking for your lifestyle to slow its pace down a little, aligning money and values is your path to success. Aligning money and values is winning!  

Our Journey Out of Debt

You must first understand my financial situation to understand how I reached this conclusion. I have written a more in-depth post about it; feel free to check it out here if you wish to dive even deeper into my financial backstory.  

However, like many of our readers, my wife and I met in medical school. We were supported by student loans to achieve our dream of becoming physicians. We never gave our debt accumulation a second thought as we trudged through our formal medical education. Like death and taxes, debt seemed necessary to reach our dreams.  

When we completed medical school and started residency, the reality of our decisions and lifestyles in medical school hit us like a ton of bricks. I remember sitting on the phone in my one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with my wife as we each individually calculated how long it would take to pay off our debt. I wanted to cry…

Fast-forward almost a decade, and we are now happily employed at an academic healthcare system, navigating the ups and downs of early attending life. Further, we have made it a pillar of our lifestyle to self-educate on physician and personal finances. We have formulated a well-written financial plan that helps us execute our short- and long-term monetary goals most efficiently. During this process, I turned my passion for physician finance into this blog you are reading now (The Motivated M.D.) to share my journey and help others along the way.  

We may not be completely debt-free yet, but as our net worth has grown and our debt has declined, we have spent more time thinking about how to better spend our money.   

Learning What We Value

There is an interesting transition that happens as your finances improve. Watching your debt fall, your investments grow, and your career take off, you start to see time as a more precious resource than money. To be clear, it is still important to focus on ‘the big picture’ financially. If you still have debt, you should have a strategy for eliminating it (i.e., PSLF or refinancing). You should also still max out your retirement accounts and build an adequate emergency fund. It is imperative to guard against the financially unexpected with disability, term-life, and malpractice insurance. All of this remains sound advice.

However, what I am talking about for this post is knowing that your discretionary income maximizes your happiness. There is an expectation for physicians to play the role of ‘rich.’ You are a doctor, after all, ‘don’t you make a lot of money?’ Society continues to hold physicians to a certain standard, and with that comes an expectation that we appear ‘wealthy.’  

True, we have high incomes. Yet, this does not always correlate with wealth. Though many physicians complete their formal medical training with large salaries, they statistically also carry large debt burdens. The lay community often fails to appreciate this aspect of our education completely. Unfortunately, physicians often feel obligated to portray this projection of wealth, shackling them to their careers just to maintain their expensive lifestyles. 

For my wife and I, as we approach a time when our debts will be eliminated and our discretionary income will skyrocket… how do we best align our spending with our values? How do we know that our expenses will also make us happier? It is this topic that we have thought about for a long time, and here are a few categories we came up with:

Financial Security

First and foremost, financial security remains a top priority for us. It alleviates my stress, knowing that my emergency fund is adequate. I can genuinely feel a weight lifted off my shoulders, knowing that I am maxing out my retirement savings, that my disability policies have been updated to match my current income, and that my life insurance policy is comprehensive. Umbrella policies, malpractice insurance, all these things help me feel that I am (somewhat) better protected for whatever the future holds.  

Being a husband and a father, responsibility weighs heavy on my conscience. I want my money to provide security and protection for myself and my family. This has always remained a top priority.  

Time

To quote Tony Stark, “No amount of money ever bought a second of time.” Though I love this scene from Avengers Endgame, I believe money can (to an extent) buy time. High incomes are a superpower of healthcare professionals. For physicians, dentists, pharmacist, and more, having six-figure incomes allow us to (eventually) use our income to buy back time.  

Once you have eliminated your debt (or have it on autopilot) and are appropriately saving for retirement, you can often consider paying someone to perform activities you no longer wish to do. Pay someone to manage your yard, home, laundry, childcare, and grocery shop. Leverage your income for time. For my wife and I, freeing up our discretionary income has encouraged us to say ‘No’ more frequently. No to administrative roles that would only occupy more time. No to extra shifts and moonlighting. Working more may increase our income, but it costs us time. This is time we can spend doing other things that bring us joy.  

Family

Time in-and-of itself is not the only reason we seek to align our spending with our values. More free time means more time with family. To all my readers who have children, family members, or significant others you just cannot live without, you understand, right? If money was less of a barrier, how would you spend your time? I suspect most would say they would spend more time with the people they care about. 

Medicine has somewhat jaded us. We are surrounded by individuals and families on their worst day. As an intensivist, do you know how many patients lie on their deathbeds saying, ‘I wish I would have worked more’? 

Zero. Zilch. Nada. None.  

Overwhelmingly, patients wish they had more time with friends, family, children, church, etc. We want more human connection, not more money in our bank account (past a certain point).  

Experiences

What does more time with loved ones create? Memories. As you align your spending with your values, money can indirectly buy you happiness. Because you have your ‘financial house’ in order early in your career, you likely free up a significant portion of your income that was previously allocated towards debt elimination or building assets. 

However, now your goal shifts to better optimizing this discretionary income with your goals. Experiences with my wife, family, and friends are where I find the most joy. Hosting ‘Friendsgiving,’ traveling to see family, taking a vacation. Creating memories for myself and my family is now the opportunity I face, and all this has been achievable by focusing my spending and shifting the lens through which I view my time.  

Aligning Money and Values is Winning: A Personal Example

The other night, my wife and I finally got some quality time after our children fell asleep. We were sharing a beer and playing an intellectual exercise. The question was simple: “What would your career look like if you were no longer in debt?” Nothing too extreme. I know we are far away from financial independence.

We were not fantasizing about a world where money is ‘not a problem.’ Of course, it is! Money will always be a rate-limiting step to some extent. However, we are very close to paying off her debt completely. We are currently on track to pay off her six-figure debt in mid-2024…less than a year away. This will likely free up nearly $50,000 of discretionary income.

So I asked, “What would your career look like (in an ideal world) once we pay off your debt?” She did not hesitate to say that she would stop feeling obligated to pick up extra shifts and would step down from some (or all) of her administrative roles. If we are working to align our spending with our values, then time at home is more important.

My wife is an incredible physician. She works hard and is one of the biggest patient-advocates I know. Of all the physicians I am acquainted with, she is the only one who has not lost much of her altruism. However, altruism is a finite resource, in my honest opinion. We give and give as physicians and sometimes without any expectation of return. This can become taxing as years turn into decades in the profession. Meanwhile, we want to spend more time with our children, together, and making memories.  

Our conversation continued into the night, but as fate would have it, just a few weeks later, she was able to genuinely institute some of these very changes we discussed. She had a week where she was scheduled to work roughly five evenings and night shifts in a row. These exceeded her contractual obligation. Further, we did not need the money. We are a dual-physician household, and we are aggressively paying down our debt.

Our lives benefit more if she is at home with family than if she is out making an extra dollar at the hospital. She gave up all but one of the shifts and was able to spend most of the week at home. We went on a date night and caught up over the weekend. As a couple, I am unsure we have ever felt so empowered by our finances. This is what money can afford you when values and money align.    

The Indirect Effects of Value-Based Spending

Intentionally spending your hard-earned income to most effectively align with your values has many benefits. Let me share a few:

Spend Less, Save More

I have found that most individuals want things similar to what I discussed above. Physicians want time back to spend with family and friends. Here is the kicker: these things are not expensive. Executing a financial plan early in your career can help you focus on eliminating your debts and freeing up discretionary income later in life. If what you value is intangible, like time, experiences, or memories… then you are in luck. These things don’t cost much! What they do require is your attention, and your love. Precious items that surprisingly don’t impact your wallet. Align your spending to your values, and you will indirectly spend less. 

Increased Joy

Another important aspect of aligning values and money is that you most effectively make your money work for you. Yes, we must intelligently invest our money to best ‘work for you.’ However, this same concept applies to value-based spending. Putting your money to work to afford you the ability to work less or be on call less will lower stress and increase joy. Having a McMansion or driving around in a $100,000 sports car does not make me happier. Though these things are nice, they do not impact my core values. I will be as happy driving my daughter home from school in my 10-year-old truck as in a Tesla Model S.  

Decreased Burnout

Lastly, as mentioned in our example above, aligning values with spending can help reduce burnout. Physician burnout remains an epidemic. I am not sure anyone has a perfect solution. Still, I can tell you that time away from clinical responsibilities helps. I do not believe that quitting medicine altogether is the solution, but more time away, less time being inundated by patient messages and complex billing systems can do the body good. As my wife gave up shifts and considered lessening her administrative burden, I could literally see a change in her personality. She was happier, more vibrant, more present at home. This balance will allow physicians to better have sustainable and lasting careers.  

Take Home Points

I do not have all the answers. Honestly, at times, I feel I have very little. However, as we have approached some critical financial milestones, I have discovered that I view money through an evolving lens. It is not about how much is in my account. It is no longer about how soon I can afford a home, upgrade my vehicle, or what school I can send my children to.Now, it is about celebrating my financial achievements and using these successes to buy back quality of life.

This may be through fewer shifts, fewer calls, or fewer administrative burdens. I want more weekends off. I want more nights off. At home, I do not want to be distracted by the remaining clinical tasks. I want to feel as though I am more in control of my future, empowered to say yes and no as I please. This is how I will maintain true happiness in my life. This is why aligning values and money is winning. As always…

Stay motivated!

The Motivated M.D.

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