Nobody teaches you money in PA school. Then you graduate with six figures of debt and a real salary for the first time.

Kristin Burton is a PA who runs Strive with Kristin, and she came on to talk about the stuff we all avoid. Student debt and how to think about paying it down. Investing when you're starting late because you spent your twenties in school. And salary transparency, which is still weirdly taboo in medicine.

That last one matters most for new grads. If you don't know what the job is worth, you will accept less than it's worth. Talk to people. Ask numbers out loud.

Standard disclaimer, and I mean it: I'm not a financial advisor and this isn't financial advice. Kristin shares her approach and her experience. Talk to a professional about your specific situation before you make big decisions.

What we cover:

• Why financial literacy is missing from PA education
• Approaches to paying down student loans
• Starting to invest when you feel behind
• Salary transparency and knowing your worth as a new grad
• Negotiating a first PA contract
• Building habits now that matter later

Resources:

Free PA School Application Timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Free Resume Download: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-resume-download

Pre-PA Counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Mentioned in this episode:

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If there's anything we don't talk about enough in PA school, it is finances.

That's why I have Kristen Burton from.

Strive with Kristin on to tell us her insights into how we should be thinking about money and investing as future PAs and practicing PAs and her wisdom.

Guys, it is so good.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

Alright, guys, before we get into the podcast, I wanted to tell you about a new course from Roche Review, which is a blueprint prep company specifically for PA students who are about to take pants.

And then there is an option now for current PAs who are recertifying with the Panry or Panre La, which is what I am currently doing.

But this review course is live and the first one is June 12th through 15th.

It's very dynamic.

There are two instructors who will be leading you through all of the information you need to know for boards.

And you know, the pants can be a little bit intimidating.

It's a lot of information and everything you've learned during PA school, so it's tough.

There is a 100% pass guarantee and there will be future dates if the June date doesn't work for you.

This is a course that will be offered monthly.

It'll be four days that you can sit and learn and take in all of this information to make sure you are ready to go for boards.

So this is a really great option, especially if you're someone who needs that intensive learning experience to make sure that you feel confident on test day.

I would not underestimate the pants and Roche Review is definitely proven in this space to have the best study resources and knowledge as far as what you need to do.

Well, their QBanks are amazing and so this course is a really, really great way to kind of condense everything and give you the information that you need to get a jump start on studying for either the pants or the pantry.

So, yeah, it's a great value.

It's $350 for the course, which is fantastic for a live course.

And if you have any questions about it, feel free to reach out to me.

I'll put links in the description with all the information so that you can find out more about the live Pants Review course and I might even see you there.

First off, thank you for having me again.

I really appreciate it.

I'm Kristen Burton.

I am a PA and practice in critical care medicine.

I've been a PA for seven and a half years.

And for the last five years or so I've also been the founder of a business dedicated to teaching medical professionals all things personal finance.

And so that's my passion and that's what I'm really here to talk to you guys about.

Mostly.

That's why I think we connected on.

Yeah.

A long time ago because I also have an interest in personal finance.

I don't have your expertise, but I think it's interesting to learn about and talk about because nobody does or not enough.

And that leads to a lot of problems.

Yes.

And the nature of our profession for unfortunately a lot of folks is a lot of student loan debt.

And so really knowing how to manage money right after graduation is actually really big deal.

Yeah.

Because it's debt.

But then it's also we have fairly good salaries.

Yeah.

And the balance between how to manage both of those things can be a little tough coming out of school.

Yep.

For sure.

So just a little bit tell us which I also just love.

PA I'm not side hustle.

I don't know if that term is still relevant, but PAs who are doing other things and who have passions beyond just medicine or the patient care side of things.

So tell us, just like what does a week look like for you when you're working and then also doing kind of your finance stuff on the side.

So I actually work kind of an atypical schedule.

Up until just last month, I would work seven 12 hour shifts in a row at night, 8p to 8a and would cross cover three different ICUs and the rest of our pulmonary critical care service.

So that's the main gig.

And then I would have two weeks off.

And so to be honest, working seven 12 hour shifts in a row, if anyone's ever done that, it doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else.

And so most of my business happens when I'm not working clinical shifts.

And that's just kind of how it goes.

We I just dropped down to a 0.6 FTE or part time last month and so now I'll have fewer clinical shifts and still very similar job, fewer shifts and have more time for the business and more time to do other things.

So yeah, the, the creative outlet side of it is a lot of fun.

Yeah.

So since we last talked, which I have to look back and see how long ago was.

It was right after.

I feel like you started.

It was a while.

It was a long time ago.

Yes.

But after.

Since we last talked, you have paid off all of your student Loans.

And it was a very impressive number.

Talk us through that process of how you did that, how you navigated learning how to do that, and maybe share some of your favorite resources for that.

Yeah, I think I had paid them off when we talked last time.

Really?

Maybe had just.

I just remember seeing your Facebook post and it was so exciting.

Oh, thanks.

Yes.

So I, like most folks, graduated with $161,000 in student loan debt.

The bulk of mine was actually private, some was federal.

And I really didn't know what to do with it per se, but I had this sort of desire to build wealth and have financial freedom.

I just didn't know how to go about it.

And so.

And at the time I felt the main barrier to this is my student loan debt.

And so I'm going to attack that.

And that's what I did.

I treated work almost like a residency or fellowship.

I worked 80 plus hours a week.

We lived off of about 35, $40,000 during this time period.

And so a lot of extra earning, a lot of extra work and put all of that money to the student loan debt and paid it off in 16 months, which was really exciting and it increased a lot of cash flow.

But I pretty quickly realized that it wasn't exactly what I had been after the whole time and that there was going to be more to the process of creating the lifestyle I wanted to than just getting rid of the student loan debt.

So I kind of went down the rabbit hole of learning how to invest in not only the stock bond market, but investment real estate as well.

And we've been channeling that ever since we hit the millionaire mark when I was 31.

And it's still onward and upward for us as we continue our wealth building journey.

But then also help other medical professionals learn how to do the same thing.

Yes.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Why do you think it's still kind of taboo to talk about money and salary and have transparency around financial stuff?

I think it's getting less, but I feel like it's still there.

Yeah, part of it is that money for most people isn't ever just about money.

It's about a lot of other weird emotions and baggage that we carry from maybe things growing up or maybe shame surrounding a partnership or you have debt and the other person doesn't.

You feel uncomfortable with that or there's all sorts of layers to it.

It's never really as simple as the numbers.

And I think that's what spills over when people feel uncomfortable saying my salary or whatever.

Maybe they are afraid that it's higher than everyone they grew up with, and you know they're going to make other people uncomfortable.

Or maybe they feel like I'm not earning as much as my counterparts.

Are they going to think that I'm less valuable or that I'm not as good at my job because I feel like my salary is lower?

There's extra pieces to it.

It's never about the number, though.

I think it really, genuinely is always about underlying emotion and really, ultimately a lot of shame surrounding all things finance.

Yeah.

Somebody feels like they're not doing enough.

I'm in a.

You probably are.

To the PA Moms Facebook group, and there's one about money.

And I see the flip side.

I see people posting anonymously because they're like, I have this much saved, and this is how well I'm doing.

But they don't want to publicly say that.

And then on the flip side, I don't feel like I've saved enough, and I feel like I'm behind, and they don't want to publicly say that.

So it is a kind of weird thing.

And that's something I found even talking with very close friends, sometimes it's hard to break down those barriers.

Let's really talk about this.

That we can help each other and make sure we're on track and share tips.

Yeah.

Because that's the only way that we can learn and try to do as well as we can.

So with paying off your student loans, I know you worked super hard.

Was it hard afterwards?

I know you said then you realize that's not just the final goal to shift out of that grinding mentality or what steps then, did you take to make a financial plan?

Plan, Yeah.

I will say the main part of that, for me, that was the grind was the extra hours.

And I really stopped doing that after I paid off my student loan debt.

I worked some extra during COVID That was really mostly to help my team.

Obviously, we work at icu, so we were drowning and less about money.

And so from a financial standpoint, the lack of extra shifts, that made a big difference in feeling the grind.

But what I had also learned through that, throughout that process, was that there was a lot more to creating the life I wanted than just the lifestyle that we all see.

And so we actually didn't make a lot of big lifestyle changes in terms of upgrading the house, upgrading cars, things like that, because I had figured out that those weren't the joy creators in my life.

And so I ended up having the ability to take that sort of skill Set and then go, okay, I really.

We can continue to live on less than our income even without all these extra shifts.

And all we're doing now is just redirecting that money into something that's honestly way more fun to building wealth versus paying it towards the debt that's already there.

And so it didn't feel in any way negative, to be honest.

We still to this day allocate at least 50% of our income towards the wealth building process.

And we probably will always.

We did that.

And everyone said, oh, as soon as you have a child, you'll stop doing that.

Our daughters too.

It's still, we're still doing it.

And so it's just one of those things where I think I've realized the things that really matter to me are time with family, intentional moments, experiences, and some of that lifestyle stuff never mattered to begin with.

And I got lucky because I learned that early.

It's harder when you've made those big lifestyle changes to then go, oh, wow, I'm creating a life I don't love.

I can't afford this.

I'm stuck on the financial hamster wheel, always having to work just to keep up.

It's hard to undo it.

So if you can be one of those people who on the front end says, let me figure out how to really create a joyful life without spending 100% of my income, you'll be light years ahead of the rest of us.

Yeah, let's talk through.

We have an audience of healthcare professionals who, who is.

Who you talk to and PA specifically.

Yeah, can we talk through even from the beginning, pre pa, either in undergrad, saving for PA school, getting ready for that process, and any thoughts or advice you have from that stage PA school to that new grad stage, and then we'll go.

But yeah, the number one thing I see people doing that's a, honestly, a huge mistake in the pre PA phase is just having this assumption of, well, I'm going to have a lot of student loan debt and I'm going to have a good salary and it will all work out.

That is a pretty bold big assumption that doesn't have any sort of mathematical support for it.

And so then the big thing you need to do is go, okay, my big goal in the back of my mind is to have a debt to income ratio less than 1.

I think I mentioned that last time.

Meaning my total student loan debt when I graduated would be less than my first year annual income.

Those things are easy to figure out.

You're applying to schools, you look at what's the tuition, what's my living expense going to be, Add it all up and then you Google average PA starting salary in the state I think I'm going to work in, and you have the answer.

And then if you get that number and you're pretty close to the mark, close to, let's say, make this up, you're going to owe 115k and you're going to earn 110, then you go, okay, I'm pretty close.

This is a pretty good plan.

Like this.

I like this.

This is going to be something I can deal with after graduation.

If you're looking at that and you're like, wow, this number is going to be 3 to 1, meaning I'm going to finish everything, the final graduate program and I'm going to owe 330k, but now I'm going to earn 110, then you need to realize that you're putting yourself in a situation where you're going to be four forced to really consider things like public service loan forgiveness or maybe taxable loan forgiveness, which isn't the best plan for most folks.

And so if you're doing that, you need to recognize at the very outset I'm going to be making some sacrifice later because I'm going to have to seek out qualifying employers so that I can do public service loan forgiveness and address this big mountain of debt I'm creating.

Otherwise, the.

My.

Your financial life for those first five, 10 years out of graduation is going to be really hard if you don't have something like that to fall back on.

And so having those conversations with yourself before you step in the door of PA school is way more important.

And then just signing up for stuff and going, oh, it'll be all right later.

I think very few people realize how truly difficult it is to make a $3,000 a month minimum student loan payment for 10 years.

That's a big cash flow suck.

And so you, if you're one of those people where you're like, I know I'm going to be in private practice dermatology, I know I am great.

You can't afford to have a debt to income ratio of three to one or your life's going to be pretty hard and your life's going to be hard enough through the program, you want things to be easy post graduation.

I feel like that would still be pretty tough.

Yeah, yeah.

Do these things on the front end and if you get into a program, be excited, but then really count the cost and look at it and Go, is this the right move?

Do I need to take a gap year and reapply and try to have some ultra options that maybe aren't a private program, aren't so expensive so that my post grad life matter and can work that season matters too just as much as getting in, getting into a program and doing the program.

So don't negate that.

Don't just go, oh, blinders on, everything's going to be fine.

Let me where do I sign for the loans?

Well, I think that comes down to deciding between programs also and looking at financially, is there one that makes more sense?

So two of the programs I got into, one was a state funded school.

The tuition was a third of the private school I got into.

And then on top of that, the city was a smaller, more suburban city versus a larger, more expensive city.

So it would have been closer to probably a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 ratio versus going to a state perm, which a state program is not always an option.

But when you're looking at them, you can.

I wouldn't say money is the first consideration or maybe for some people, but it should be considered.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

On the flip side, like when you graduate too and how long a program is, are you going to have more earning potential?

Are you going to graduate sooner versus taking longer or having a longer graduate?

Like there's so much to at least look at and at least think about.

Yes.

And really run numbers, actually get out calculators and literally have numbers on paper.

It will really solidify your decision making process.

And I don't tell you this as someone who did this.

Well, I went to a private PA program.

I did this very poorly.

I had no planning whatsoever prior to going.

I did exactly what I'm saying not to do.

I'm just like, oh, where are the loans?

Where do I sign?

I need to get in, I need to go.

And so I'm telling you this only from life experience and working with a whole bunch of medical professionals and the problems that they face after graduation.

So if you're thinking like, oh, wow, I'm not doing that.

Right.

Neither did I.

You're in good company.

It's, oh, somebody wants to give me money.

They believe in me, they know, they just want to support me.

No, they want you to pay them back.

But yeah, okay, so then in PA school.

School.

And I think just because you have talked to so many people and seen all these stories, what should people be doing or thinking about as far as their loans or things they can do to Set them up.

It's hard because you can't work like you're not working in PA school.

How can you set yourself up for success in that stage?

Yeah, you can't work.

And honestly, trying to work would for.

For some people, it works out, but for most people, it's a recipe for disaster.

So you kind of have to accept that you're on a fixed income, so to speak, based on your loans, but you can effectively budget your loans on a monthly basis throughout the entire PA program.

And that's probably the most important thing that you can do to actually graduate and be off to the races.

I'll say 95% of the medical professionals I talk to don't budget on any consistent basis.

And it shows.

And where they're at financially, really, the habit being built, a keystone habit of having some type of consistent budget or cash flow system that you use, you can start that in a program, and in some ways it's a more important time to do it because you really don't want to be running out of student loans, and you also don't want to be taking out more than you need just because you're disorganized.

The other part that's interesting is PA program is a season where you feel as though you cannot get anything else done.

The idea of keeping a budget feels like something that you'll never have time for or never be willing to go, okay, I can spare these 30 minutes.

But I'll tell you, even though some of that gets better in seasons of life post graduation, that feeling never really fully goes away of like, gosh, this is one of those tasks that I just don't have time for.

And so if you can train yourself and in a season of a lot of work to go, I've got 30 minutes, I'm going to keep a budget and do it every time.

Then the second you graduate and you get the big income, all of a sudden you're like, okay, I've got this figured out.

This is ingrained.

And so now I'm just looking at different numbers, but I have the process.

Yeah.

Are there any tools you love for budgeting?

Are you like a spreadsheet girl?

Are you a.

What do they say?

Ynab?

Is that the one common one?

It varies.

I personally use every dollar.

But I will say, if you really want to be the most effective budgeter, I have a system that I'll have people use at the beginning of the process.

It's actually an Excel.

And the reason for it is I'll separate out what I kind of call progress dollars, which is money that you're allocating towards your financial goals, whether that be additional non minimum debt payments, money towards savings, money towards investments.

Now, of course in PA school you're not gonna have progress dollars.

You're just gonna be getting by and that's okay.

So you could use every dollar.

You could use Ynab Mint, any of those are totally fine.

I've used the free version of EveryDollar for probably 10 years.

But if you're post grad life and you're looking at this and you're going, why aren't I getting ahead?

Why aren't I getting the traction?

How did that lady say she became a millionaire?

Like, how does that work?

It's because of the progress dollars being too small.

And so having it separated out on your budget into a section where you can truly see, am I allocating 20% of my income towards financial progress, which is always the goal?

And if not, if it's not set up that way, it's very sometimes difficult to tell if you're doing that.

Most budgeting apps will put savings together and debt together and they might even give you a pie chart of this much went to savings, this much went to debt.

But if all the debt payment was a minimum payment, that's different than if a fourth of it was a minimum payment and you made a big extra.

And so those apps don't always help you with viewing the 30,000 foot view of where the money's allocated.

Okay, that's helpful.

So, yeah, so budgeting, I would say, would be helpful.

I had a weird PA school experience where I lived at home, my parents were my budget, but I didn't really have for the first year expenses because of that.

They I was living there, I didn't pay rent.

Yeah.

But after PA school, getting married, I definitely had to.

We had to look at that a lot when my husband said med school.

But I saw classmates who would not like throw them under the bus, but they would eat out every single day.

Yeah.

I'm like, how are you going to Starbucks every morning?

How are you going to eat lunch every day?

Like, how is this happening?

What are you doing?

And I think it was that thing of like almost a feeling that money's not real.

This is.

Yeah, it doesn't add up.

And I know people have said if you cut the coffees out, it doesn't save that much whatever.

But I feel like in that phase of life, yeah, being a little frugal can.

Yes, A big difference.

And I think I learned that afterwards.

And I would love to know what your interest is on your loans was.

There were times I didn't have that much.

I took out about $49,000, all federal, and I ended up paying back with interest.

When all was said and done over, I paid mine about 14 months.

I think it ended up being around like 75,000 that I paid back.

Yeah.

And the reason I started paying it back is I looked and I was.

It was adding $100 a day.

Yeah.

To what I owed.

I was like, what is happening?

What?

This doesn't make sense.

I don't understand this.

Yeah.

I didn't even have that much in the graduation.

I'm gonna go.

I know.

We cannot keep doing this.

So that was like a eye opener.

Yeah.

It's like, don't think about the loans at all during PA school.

Then afterwards, I was like, oh, no, these are real.

And now this is coming out of my paycheck.

And I don't like was a good investment.

It was a good investment though.

Of course.

Yeah.

And for most of us, we're not getting into graduate school and through it without some type of student loan debt.

So you can't create that narrative of, oh, you should never have it, or this is horrible that you took out student loans.

It's really a matter of your situation and how it compares to your income.

But I do want to say we both are sharing the story of paying off student loans really fast, which is cool, but that's not the norm.

If you're listening to this and you're like, what very short periods of time.

Both of us under two years.

Most medical professionals take quite a bit longer.

Obviously the standard term is 10 years.

And even people doing an accelerated pathway of paying extra every month and trying to get it done sooner tend to be on the five to seven year time horizon.

You have to make big payments to.

Unless you have a very small amount of student loan debt, which would be great for you if you did.

But unless you have that, you have to make really big payments to do it the way that we're talking about.

And so most medical professionals, 95 out of 100 should be already investing and building wealth as they deal with the student loans.

So don't miss that piece.

Don't listen to this and go, oh, I've got to pay them off super quick.

If you can, great.

What I'll kind of tell people is, hey, if you can do it in less than two years and you want to hold on investing, there's opportunity cost to that.

But hey, you can do it.

It's a reasonable choice.

But if you say, I'm going to pay off my loans in six years and I'm not going to do anything else with money that whole entire time, I'm not going to invest, I'm not going to do any of that, you're going to put yourself in a spot where you're going to have a hard time even retiring at 65, 67, and let alone ever having the opportunity to retire early or do things like that.

No.

And that's good.

I want to move on to that because I feel like we have talked and focused on, on student loans, which are important, and that's a piece of it.

But that second piece, and when this whole financial education comes in is understanding what you're going to have to do to invest and set yourself up.

So this is different.

So my parents were both teachers, they both got state pension plans, so they worked there 30 years.

They both retired in their 50s and get money, and that's fantastic for them.

But for medical professionals, that's not a common setup for us.

So we have to figure it out on our own and build our wealth and learn about it.

And it's difficult and there's so much kind of being thrown at us.

And then you're not sure who to ask or who to trust.

And you.

There's a lot to it.

So when it comes to investing, are there pretty standard everyone should do this kind of thing, or what are some thoughts on how everyone approach that part of it?

Okay, so I'll give some general rules of thumb, knowing that they're not going to be applicable to every person in every tax bracket and every scenario.

But general rules of thumb.

Every single person should get 100% of their employer match in their 401k or 403b.

And when you're looking at jobs, you should very much consider that employer match an important part of your compensation.

So if one job offers you a 10% match, the other one offers you zero.

That's a big change in your pay.

So that's going to be a very important first step for everyone.

It doesn't really matter what the rest of your financial situation looks like.

That's an easy decision because it's in a 100% return on your investment before stock market returns.

So very easy.

Almost every single medical professional should do that.

The second thing almost every medical professional should do, especially early in their career, is start investing in a Roth IRA.

The way the Roth IRA works is fundamentally different than the way traditional 401k works where you're investing money after you've paid income taxes, but then you get tax free money on the back end in retirement.

And so that should be most people's next step because as your career moves along, your income increases, your tax bracket will increase.

And so the earlier you are in your career, in theory, the lower tax bracket you'll be in relative to future.

And so it makes the most sense to be making stacking those dollars into your Roth ira.

Now, a lot of folks don't do that part because the 401k is easy.

You go to the HR people and they kind of hand you everything you need to do and they're like, what do you want to select?

And you do it and that's that.

But a Roth IRA is not associated with your employer.

So you would be doing that on your own and opening that account and investing outside of work and that extra piece and feeling like this is a hurdle that I don't know how to overcome.

Sometimes that's just enough to stop people from moving forward.

But those are probably the two things that almost every single medical professional in the first year of practice should be already up and running on.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think hopefully most employers are offering something along those lines or it's something that people are looking for as part of their benefits package.

I want to know a little bit more.

You touched on a little bit at the beginning.

So I feel like you're in an interesting spot where you've paid back your loans, hit some of your financial goals.

What are you doing as a real life example, what are you doing to build wealth?

And what does that look like?

Is that retiring early?

Is that setting your kids and future grandkids up?

What are your realistic goals?

Because we hear that a lot.

I want to retire at 35.

I want to do all these crazy things.

But as a normal person doing this, what are your goals?

I'm glad you think I'm normal.

It's funny.

So they've changed.

When I first learned about investing and wealth building, I heard a rule is actually from Rob Berger from the book Retire before Mom and dad.

Hey, if you want to retire in 15 years, then you would invest 50% of your income.

And we can probably do that.

And so we did.

That's what we started doing, was investing across multiple accounts.

So we use for two 4 1ks, two HSAs, two Roth IRAs, a taxable brokerage account, and a solo 401k to meet the goal.

But we were investing 50% of gross income across those accounts so that we could retire in our 40s if we wanted.

And then as you learn and grow and life shifts and changes, I realized, I don't know that I want to retire in my 40s.

I'm a person that's really driven by growth.

I'm like, I don't know what I would do.

I would have small children at that time still modeling their lives after me.

And I thought, what if she doesn't ever see me working?

That could be odd.

So that's changed right now.

What kind of the focus is creating the best lifestyle for our family.

And so that requires creating income sources outside of our W2 jobs so that we can say, okay, it's time to reduce hours, which I just did, or it's time to change jobs to something that's a smaller time commitment or more flexible or gives us the ability to do more prolonged travel.

Not so much to retire from everything, but to retire from the things we don't want to do.

And we're also really interested at this phase and creating generational wealth.

So all we've done so far is focus on the generation below us.

But our ultimate goal is to go at least two generations, if not three.

And then the third thing that we've been building is our charitable impact.

So every year when I create our financial goals, that is just as important to me as the other stuff.

And so every year we increase what we do charitably and put a lot of thought into where that money should go so that we can not only build wealth for our family, but also see, you know, what can we do to improve the community around us?

So it's multifactorial, it's changed over time.

But if you're someone who does like, hey, I want to be one of those crazy people and invest and retire really early.

You can, but you got to put up some big numbers investing wise.

If you're throwing 6% in your 401k, that's not going to do the trick.

That's what it's funny because my husband thinks I'm crazy for just.

I'm very interested in it.

So I'm always reading and learning and looking at stuff and I'll be like, oh, I like, I want to make it so you could retire if you wanted to.

And you're 40.

And he's like, I don't want to.

And I'm like, I don't really want to either.

I would like the option to.

I would like to know if something life changing happened and we wanted to change something we could.

I'm not saying you have to retire, but I feel like having those goals in mind does make it a little bit easier to, I don't know, not feel like I'm missing out now, looking towards the future because there's a lot of fomo, other people doing things and think, oh, I do that.

I could buy that.

I could buy this thing I don't need or do this.

And having to really decide is it worth it?

Which I don't know if you do this, but one thing that we do is if there is something that I want to buy or a trip or whatever.

I think of it in terms of how much I've had to work for that lifts and hours and I'll be like, okay, that that was like eight hours work and that was a whole month of work.

Is it worth it?

And for me that puts it in perspective to decide if it's a good thing to move forward with or not.

That is a very good life hack.

Things feel a lot differently when you think of it in terms of time spent instead of just swipe the card and it's over and then that's that.

Yeah, it's too easy to swipe the card.

Or if you memorize your card number like me, that'll get you.

Make online shopping very simple, doesn't it?

It does.

I'm like, oh, I can't sleep.

Let me just do a little shopping.

No, that's terrible.

Don't do that.

If anyone is okay, this is interesting.

I'm overwhelmed because I feel like that's where most people are.

Yeah.

Where do you recommend they just kind of go to start learning stuff about money, finances, personal finance to start that process.

So there's a lot of different ways.

Honestly in the kind of pre PA space I think that the easiest thing to do to kind of have trickle information and not the fire hose.

I actually have a free guide for students and people pre medical professional.

So we can link that here, you can download it, but when you download it you'll be on my email newsletter.

So it's literally one single time a week on Mondays.

And I will put some links to longer form content like blog stuff if you want a deeper dive into some of these things or links to live event that we live events that we do with other financial industry experts as well.

But then I'll just put them Pearl of education and personal finance for that week.

And.

And if you just start to read those, I think you'll get some information and get your feet wet and feeling okay.

This is a really low energy for me in terms of time spent activity where I can learn and grow over time.

If you want some books to take into to dive into, the Simple Path to Wealth by J.L.

Collins is a great book.

It's very introductory, but it's a great introductory investing book.

Retire before mom and dad by Rob Berger is a really good book as well.

The Dave Ramsey book will help you from a debt standpoint, but they tend to kind of go in the hey, stay in your lane, do debt only, don't do anything else.

And that's very dangerous for people with multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.

So you have to kind of take that for what it's worth.

In terms of podcasts, I like the Money Guy show as well.

So those are some other resources you can dive into if you just want to get more information and learn and feel like you're moving through your education with a little bit of financial education on the side sides.

Perfect.

That gives people a place to start and of course they can come follow you.

I love your little graphics.

I think those are the most helpful for me.

I always save them when it like pairs and it'll just kind.

I just think seeing that if you invest this way versus this way, what that's going to look like.

Yes, it's just a good reminder and I think when you're again scrolling through your feed and all the things you can buy to have that and be like, oh yeah, we don't need to do that right now.

We need some investing.

It's perfect.

So thank you for sharing all of your information and getting it out to everybody.

Yes, thank you for doing this.

I'm so glad there is someone like you helping the pre PA space.

I know I definitely needed this when I was at that phase of my life and it didn't exist.

And I hope everyone listening is as grateful as I would have been had I been in your shoes for this level of information and insight.

So really cool what you do.

Yeah, I'm grateful I don't ever have to apply to PA school again after seeing everything they have to go through now.