The “Deathbed Toolkit” That Makes Building Wealth Much More Enjoyable

Mindy:
Welcome to The BiggerPockets Money Podcast, show number 319, where we interview Jordan Grumet, Doc G from the Earn & Invest Podcast and talk about his amazing new book called Taking Stock.

Doc G:
It’s much easier to think about money than to do these exercises and think about who you want to be. Money is the low hanging fruit. It might not be easy to accumulate money, but we certainly know the steps. We know how to side hustle, we know how to work longer hours, we know how to ask for raises, we know how to change jobs. These are concrete questions with simple solutions. Maybe not easy, but simple solutions. It’s a heck of a lot harder than saying, “Who am I and what is my purpose in life?” And so we forgo that very difficult process and say, “Oh, let’s think about net worth.”

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my voice of reason co-host, Scott Trench.

Scott:
And with me as always is my sensible co-host, Mindy Jensen. Thank you, Mindy.

Mindy:
I don’t think anybody’s ever accused me of being sensible, Scott. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone no matter when or where you are starting.

Scott:
That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or just back into what the life you want to live when you’re thinking about it on your deathbed, 30, 50, 100 years from now. We’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.

Mindy:
Scott, I am super excited to talk to Doc G today. He is one of my favorite people on the planet. Such a smart guy, such a gentle soul, and he has a perspective that we haven’t heard before. He is a hospice doctor and he is here to talk about the correlation between hospice and end-of-life care and your financial independence journey.

Scott:
Great episode, powerful episode, lots to think about from today.

Mindy:
Lots to think about today. Yeah. It’s a little heavier today. I cry again. So there’s a nice little spoiler for you.

Scott:
You cried three times.

Mindy:
I cried three times. Yes. Jordan just brings that out on me. You may know Doc G as the silky voice behind the Earn & Invest podcast, but the doc behind Doc G is not just a clever moniker. He’s an actual doctor spending time on the hospice side of medicine where he has helped usher people through the end stages of their lives. This is known as the party side of medicine. Right, Doc G?

Doc G:
Most definitely. We have the best parties in the hospice ward.

Mindy:
Yes. And if you’re good as he truly is, you don’t do this without learning a thing or 12. Jordan first joined us … Oh, Doc G’s first name is Jordan. I should introduce you as Jordan. Jordan, whose last name I just learned today. I have been calling him the wrong last name for like the seven years that known him. Jordan Grumet?

Doc G:
Yep.

Mindy:
Okay. Jordan Grumet first joined us on Episode 99 recorded live at Camp Five with Scott. And again on Episode 133 to tell his money story about how he went from a high earning physician who did not like his job to a hospice doc who truly loved what he did. But even doing what he loved as a physician wasn’t really what he identified with. Jordan is a communicator, an educator. His podcast, Earned & Invest, is a truly thought provoking show. And Jordan is back today because he has taken all of the knowledge that he has learned as a hospice stock and through his Earned & Invest Podcast and turned it into a book called Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. And it’s that last part that I really want to talk about because I think everybody in the personal finance space has written a book on financial independence or building wealth. Hey, Scott. Did you write one? Yes, he did. I’ll answer for him.

Doc G:
An excellent book.

Mindy:
It’s an excellent book. I’m not saying that it’s not a good book, but how many books do we need telling the exact same thing in a slightly different way? This is not that book. This is a way different book. If you are watching the video, you’re like, “Wow, Mindy’s eyes look a little red. Is she having allergies?” No. Doc G is going to make me cry during this episode. Spoiler. Because this is really heavy stuff. This is not light fair. This is not just, “Hey, I’m going to pick up this book and like flip through it.” I could not put this book down. When I picked it up I really did just flip through it and just … because it hit at the place that I was at, that I needed to read this book. But this is like you’re answering questions. In the very beginning of this book, you’re asking questions. “Who am I outside of a doctor? What makes my life feel purposeful? What do I consider enough?” I’m like, “Wow, Doc. Really we’re five … not even five pages into this book and you’re throwing all the heavy stuff at us.” Why did you want to write this book at this time?

Doc G:
So I was at this point in my career where I had mostly stepped away from medicine and gone down the rabbit hole of personal finance. And there are such great blogs, and podcasts, and books about how to become financially independent, why we should become financially independent, and will give us the step by step of how we get there. What I realized, when I was burning out of medicine, is I was lucky enough to have great financial modeling as a kid. So I had all of this financial wherewithal, but I didn’t know how to step out of a life that wasn’t fitting me and go to a more purposeful, meaningful life. And so I started getting rid of things I didn’t like in my job because I had the financial ability to do that, but the one thing that stuck with me is hospice. I really enjoyed taking care of people who were dying of terminal illness. And we had so many rich conversations.
As I was listening to these rich conversations about people talking about what they wanted for their short future of six months or less, what they regretted about their lives in the past, and what they could do now with whatever time they had left, it hit me this has so much to do with the financial conversations I’m writing about in my blogs and podcasting about. It was like I had an epiphany that these two worlds actually connected in a way that I had never seen anyone else draw them together. And so for me, it was this moment of saying, “Oh, my gosh. The dying can teach us so much about wealth.” Not just financial wealth, but the wealth of experiences, the wealth of life lived. And really most of our goals is to be able to look at what happened to us throughout our life when we’re on our deathbed and to be able to say it was worth it. Like, “I went after those things that were important to me, I lived a life true to myself, and I’m going to leave a legacy with kids, and grandkids, and family, and friends.” And it just all clicked that the two different parts of my world coalesced and made so much sense together. And so I knew that I had to write that book.
The other point was a great friend of mine, Grant Sabatier, said, “You got to write this book.” So he had read some of my writing. I had real anxiety about this idea of putting myself forward and traditionally publishing a book and taking kind of the biggest deepest parts of my message and putting them together and putting them out there for everyone. That was a scary thing for me. I definitely had a lot of imposter syndrome. And one of the beautiful things about building this community that I had, because I had finally understood my identity and purpose, are the connections. The people I connected to, one of them being Grant who said, “No. You need to do this.” And he gave me permission to go out there and do it. And so I’m really thankful. So that’s why now.

Scott:
Let’s go into that deep question. How do you think about what you want on your death bed? How do you answer that incredibly tough question? Let me give you an example as a doctor. How do you decide whether you want to do something that is more about friends and family, for example, or about saving as many lives as possible, for example? How does someone go about making those kinds of trade offs from a career, life, whatever standpoint?

Doc G:
I love that you asked this question because what you asked is so important. It is difficult to figure what you want. Purpose, meaning, identity, connections. Those are lifelong pursuits. They’re not something we can figure out in a week, or two weeks, or a month or six months. But guess what? By taking care of the dying, I realize a lot of the times people weren’t willing to do that hard work until they had a terminal illness pretty much forcing them to. So ideally we start having those conversations way before we’re on our death beds. We start having those conversations in our 20s and 30. Dare I say, we start having those conversations before we start building our financial plan so that we don’t have to have that plot twist at the end of life that makes everything better.
Ultimately, I don’t want you as a hospice patient, to have that plot twist. I want you to be thinking about these things so far in advance that you discover what your purpose and identity are. You make those important connections and you live them throughout your life. So how do we decide? I can tell you in the young people, what I’m suggesting we do is what we do with our hospice patients, which is something called a life review, where a doctor, a nurse, a chaplain, or social worker sits down with a patient who’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness. After their symptoms are controlled, when they’re comfortable, when they have some time and quiet, we sit down with them and we review their lives. We ask them what was meaningful to them, what did they accomplish, what didn’t they accomplish, what were those relationships that were most important, what do they regret, what would they like to accomplish in whatever life they have left? Those are some of the ways in the dying. We start really looking at purpose and identity and focusing down on what’s the most important.
Think about how powerful it would be if we took your average person and did that life review in their 20s and 30s and we said, “Look, picture yourself on your deathbed bemoaning your life and regretting the fact that you never had the energy, courage, or time to …” Whatever comes next, that dot, dot, dot. Whatever you place after that sentence is probably something we should be thinking about way farther in advance, and that’s my goal. Is to get people to start thinking about those things now instead of letting the mirage of money and wealth get in the way so that we put those things off later because they’re difficult.

Mindy:
You introduce this concept called once I have syndrome. The once I have X, Y, Z, then I can do this. Once I have a million dollars, then I can do X, Y, Z. Once I have this promotion, once I have this job, once I have this status. Once I have. And I love that. I’ve never heard that before, but that seems to go hand in hand with the life review. Once I have this. Well, now, if you’re you’re reviewing your life at the end of your life and you think back, “Oh, I should have done this, I should have done that, but I couldn’t because once I had, I was waiting for this thing.” I’ve never heard that before. I think that’s brilliant.

Doc G:
The once I have and the once I am syndrome, right? Once I have a million dollars, once I am a doctor. You set up these goals to give yourself permission, but in a sense what you’re doing is you’re taking things out of your control and out of your hands. I can’t really 100% control when I have a million dollars. And I might have a million dollars and the stock market go down … goes down and then I might have $950,000. These are things out of my control. What I’m trying to do is give people permission to start taking away those barriers and saying, “Well, why do I have to wait? Why do I have to wait to start living life now for something else to occur that may or may not be under my control? Why can’t we live today?”

Mindy:
As I was reading your book, I felt seen a lot because we were very much like the oldest brother marching towards whatever we were getting. Carl actually wrote a blog post called The Death March Defy. And it was get there as fast as possible and now you can’t.

Scott:
Could you share the story of the three brothers?

Doc G:
I can. Would you like-

Mindy:
Yeah. That’s great.

Doc G:
So part of the hypothesis of the book is that you need to start working on your purpose, identity, and connections. And once you start having an inkling of what those things are, the next step is to really start building your way towards financial independence, building that structure. And so a lot of people ask me, “Well, how do you do that?” And I often refer to the three paths to financial independence or what I call the parable of the three brothers. So if you imagine there were once three brothers who are very different and they set off on a journey of a lifetime by embarking on three very separate paths. Because the brothers were unique, the paths diverged quickly. The eldest brother was known to be very no-nonsense. So he looked for a path that was straight and free from time wasting clutter. And he would often go long periods on that path foregoing sleep or food to get there just a little bit faster because he knew once he got to the end of his path, he would be free. Free to travel to foreign lands or climb the highest mountains.
This was the steam in his engine, the gas in his car. He did indeed get to the end of his path, but when he got there, he was exhausted. Maybe he didn’t have as much energy as he could, but he thought it was well worth the trade off. The path of the eldest brother very much might be like Carl and Mindy. People who were part of that early fire movement who saw that work was not suiting them or fulfilling them and so they tried to reach financial independence as fast as possible. They front load the sacrifice in order to save enough money, put it in the stock market or in real estate, let it compound and then retire early and then they do what they want to do as opposed to doing things that have meaning and purpose while they’re on the path.
Then there’s the middle brother. The middle brother is a lot like the eldest brother, but they don’t really have nearly as much stamina. So instead of doing that Death March Defy, as Carl and Mindy talked about, they take these flights of fancies every once in a while off the beaten path. They go up into the mountains or go into the fields, maybe they do what we now call mini retirements. They give themself a break so they can be refreshed and then they come back and start working again on their path. This is very similar to people who are interested in passive income or often real estate or side hustles. The middle brother probably gets to the end of their path a little bit slower than the eldest brother. They might not as much have as much time to enjoy their freedom, but they have a heck of a lot more energy. And last, but not least there are the youngest brothers. The youngest brothers are like the nonconformists. You see, they love their path, they enjoy hiking on the road, they look up into the trees and at the birds. And something funny happens. When the youngest brothers get to the end of their path, the two older brothers are quite surprised to see that the youngest brother gets there, turns around and starts walking back the way they came because the youngest brother is into the passion play.
See, they get to financial independence by doing something they love. And if you do something you love and you happen to get paid enough for you to cover your expenses, then pretty much you’re financially independent from day one … Yes, you might need some disability and life insurance and some other types of things to protect you, but ultimately you are financially independent because you are doing what gives you purpose, identity, and connections from day one and it also happens to make you enough money to support yourselves. That’s the point of financial independence.
There are lots of different paths to it. And these are just three, but I think they’re the three main ones. Front loading the sacrifice, the traditional pathway, passive income, and side hustles, and then the passion play. Once we have a good idea of our purpose and an identity, then we can be intentional about which path we set off on. And we can keep this in mind because let’s say you have a child, or let’s say you get to that FU money point, or let’s say you have a healthcare crisis, you may decide to go from being the eldest brother to the middle or the youngest brother, but then you’ll have some financial strength to make those changes. The point being is we have to think about purpose and identity when we’re making these financial moves. If we don’t, we find ourselves with lots of money, but little understanding of who we are or who we want to become. And that’s my goal, is to protect people from getting there.

Mindy:
That’s the part that makes me feel the most seen because we were the oldest brother. We marched just push, push, push, push, Carl worked full time and then we were flipping houses and it was just this Death March Defy. And then once we got there, it’s like, “Oh, okay. Now he can quit his job.” And then after he quit his job, he’s like, “Well, what am I going to do?” And he filled his days with things. It’s been five years and now he’s kind of calming down and sort of figuring it out. We just got back from a trip to Germany. If you know Carl, you know that he just wants to do it all. He cannot sit still ever. In the past, when we have traveled, it hasn’t really been relaxing or fun because he’s like, “Oh, he’ll get the books from the library.” And he’ll be like, “Oh, we can see this, and this, and this, and this and this, and this, and this, and this, and this.” And I’m like, “Or we could just relax.” He’s like, “But we could see all these things.” So we don’t just lay on the beach and I would like to lay on the beach and see some of the things.
I think the touristy stuff is kind of fun sometimes, but we would just go always. And it was never about the journey. It was about, I don’t know, checking stuff off or just making sure you didn’t waste the time that you were there. When we were in Germany, he was like, “Oh, we could go to Austria too and Switzerland, and all these countries that are around Germany.” I’m like, “We can’t even see all of one city if we’re in Germany for a week.” We were over there for 10 days. “You can’t see all of Berlin in 10 days. So why would we try to go to all these other different places when we can’t even see all of one thing? Let’s just step it back.” And he’s like, “You know what? You’re right. Say that again, sweetie. What did you say? You’re right.”
So we decided to go to Berlin and Munich and we saw some of Berlin, not all of it. We saw some of Munich, not all of it. And it was far more relaxing because we didn’t try to cram everything because we knew we couldn’t cram everything. When we were there, I was like this is … On our last day, I’m like, “This was the best vacation we’ve had because we weren’t trying to just cram it all in. We should do this again. We should do this slower travel again and we should start making a bucket list about all the things that we want to do.” You don’t really bring up the bucket list a lot in your book. What do you think of the concept of the bucket list?

Doc G:
I’m okay with the concept of a bucket list, but I think it’s limiting because a lot of times a bucket list is a specific trip, or a specific purchase, or a specific idea. I have no problems with those things, but I broaden it out a little bit to purpose, and identity, and connections because I think there are deeper underlying trends that describe us and what we want and what we need. So for instance, my purpose and identity are as a communicator and to have these great discussions for other people to listen to that can help them.
My bucket list item might be to be on fresh air with Terry Gross. That’s the bucket list. That would be like the greatest, biggest, amazing thing that I’d love to be able to do before I die. That may or may not happen, but what really probably will lead to happiness for me probably won’t be that. It’ll be more, am I living a life of purpose and identity? Am I carrying out this role of communicator? Am I podcasting, and public speaking, and writing in such a way that nourishes me over the decades?” And so I don’t always talk about bucket list items because often they’re exactly that items. I think I’m talking about deeper trends, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think we should include the bucket list items in our concept of purpose and identity and what they mean to us.

Scott:
Jordan, what is your toolkit that you use to articulate those deeper trends and items? How could someone who is, “I have no idea what the heck I want my deathbed to look like and I don’t even know how to begin [inaudible] that.” What was your process in toolkit for arriving at that outcome, understanding that understanding I guess?

Doc G:
So a lot of what the toolkit I think young and not people who are not dying need right now actually I got from helping people in hospice. So I think the life review is a huge part of the toolkit. So with people who are dying, we do a life review. And it’s a process of looking at their life and breaking it down into its pieces, and parts, and regrets and what a person has been and what they strive to be. I think a big part of that toolkit is doing a life review when you’re much younger and probably doing one on a regular basis, whether that be every six months or every year as opposed to going into the whole life review, which we do an exercise in the book that takes people through that. I would just say the easy thing is to really give your time … yourself some time and space and imagine. Do that visualization of lying in your deathbed and thinking about what would you regret that you didn’t do, that you didn’t have the energy, courage, or time to do? What are those things? If you can imagine yourself in that place, it frees you of societal demands, it frees you even of this idea of what’s physically or mentally possible. Instead, you just get to open your heart and mind and dream openly.
So when you do this visualization, you really start getting down to what is most essential and most important to you. If that doesn’t work, there’s some other things you can do. One is you have to throw yourself into things. And I know, Scott, that this is part of your history. When you don’t know what you want or what you want to do with your life start saying, yes. Open yourself up to the world, go to places you don’t normally go, meet people you don’t normally meet with, say yes to opportunities you would normally not say yes to, do things that are uncomfortable for you. These are good ways of kind of throwing the spaghetti against the wall and deciding what sticks and what doesn’t. And I think that’s a good started purpose.
Once you’ve begun thinking about purpose, I think the next step is to really incorporate this idea of identity in. And one of my favorite exercises with identity is to say the statement I am and then fill in the blank. And it’s something you have to do over and over again. So when I first did it, I said, “I am.” And the answer was a doctor. Okay. So this was my profession. Something that actually I eventually learned wasn’t the best identity for me, but it was the first thing that came out. Then I had to ask myself further, “Okay. I am.” The next thing that came out was a husband, a spouse, a father. Again, all of these things kind of describe familial relationships, but it’s not the core of who I am or what I dream about. The next thing that came out was achievements. I am a Plutus Award winner for my podcast, Earn & Invest. So this made me feel good. I could look at my achievements, I could look at my job titles, but again, those were just monikers.
By doing this over and over again, I got to the deeper things. “I am a writer. I am a public speaker. I am a podcaster.” Ultimately that led me to the larger idea that I am a communicator and that identity and an identity that I had never really come to terms with, an identity that I would let slip out on odd nights, and weekends, and vacations when I felt like I had enough time to get away from work. I realized that identity that I’d been hiding for so long was actually a little bit more true and fit me much more comfortable than the identity of being a physician, which I had worn so uncomfortable around myself like a cloak all those years. Coming to terms with what was much better identity for me led to getting involved in the financial independence movement, led me to going to these conferences where I met people like you guys, led me to a real sense of connection that I had never had before. So you work on purpose, you start asking those questions about identity like, I am, and eventually those two things lead to better connections in your life.

Scott:
I love it. This is this concept of identity and understanding what you want to back into for, well, how you want your life to look when you’re on your deathbed hopefully 50, 60, 70 years from now is a process, not an event. It’s not going to hit you moment one for most people or at least it didn’t for you. It’s probably going to be evolve over time through this process. Is that fair to say?

Doc G:
It’s fair to say. And remember, this is hard. Think about it. Why do we focus on money so much? I’ll tell you one of my true beliefs is it’s much easier to think about money than to do these exercises and think about who you want to be. Money is the low hanging fruit. It might not be easy to accumulate money, but we certainly know the steps. We know how to side hustle, we know how to work longer hours, we know how to ask for raises, we know how to change jobs. These are concrete questions with simple solutions. Maybe not easy, but simple solutions. It’s a heck of a lot harder than saying, “Who am I and what is my purpose in life?” And so we forgo that very difficult process and say, “Oh, let’s think about net worth.”

Scott:
Okay. Let me ask you another nuance question. So suppose I’m listening to this and I’m a doctor like you. And I think I might be more of a communicator than a doctor. Someone less conviction than you, but they’re not sure about that. When do you make these big existential life changes as a result of this exercise? How certain do you have to be of who you are or what you want in order to make these changes?

Doc G:
So that really depends on two things. And remember, I realized I was financially independent probably in 2014. I would say it took me till about 2018 to really get it under control and know what I wanted to do with my life. So the answer really depends partially on where you are financially. If you are financially independent like I was, that gave me a lot of breathing room. I knew that I wasn’t ready immediately to abandon medicine. I didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but what I could do, because I had some financial fuel, is I could start subtracting out the things of my workplace that were giving me friction. So I could stop working nights, I could stop working weekends, I could let go of my medical practice because it was taking up a lot of time and only work in nursing homes. And then after that I decided I didn’t want to work in nursing homes because I was getting calls at 3:00 in the morning. I could spend more time doing hospice.
I got to this point because I was financially independent. That hospice was the one thing I would do that even if they weren’t going to pay me for, I’d keep doing it. So I knew that was essential, but by getting rid of and subtracting all those other things out, it created space and time for me to then pursue other things. I started a blog, I started a podcast, I started writing and public speaking. And after throwing that spaghetti against the wall and seeing it stick, I started to know I came from a place of privilege. So the harder question is, well, what do you do if you are not financially independent or you are in debt? And that’s where I think you’ve got to really start looking at that financial framework and thinking about the trade offs. We think of the art of subtraction. What I did as something you can do when you have a lot of money. But the truth of the matter is we should probably start looking at ways we can reduce the frictions in our life even before we’re financially independent.
If I hate my job, could I do the same job with a different employer? If it’s the actual activities of work, not the employer, can I do a different job for the same employer? I’ll give you a complete … a perfect example. I had a patient who eventually died of emphysema. He was a math teacher. And if you have kids, you know they’ve changed the way they teach math compared to when we were kids with how they do it with our kids. He hated the new math curriculum, but there was a problem. He needed his teacher’s pension and he didn’t have nearly enough money to retire. So he didn’t have a lot of choices, but he did have some choices. Because he knew that teaching math was giving him friction, he actually applied for and eventually became a college counselor in the high school he worked in and he did that part-time and then he coached the soccer team. And between those two things, he was able to cobble enough together that he could stop teaching math, but he was able to keep his pension and still able to keep his salary.
You don’t necessarily have to be in a strong position always to use the art of subtraction, but we can start making changes in our lives now. And if we don’t know specifically what our purpose and identity is, we can at least get rid of the friction in our jobs or try and try to create some space to then go out into the world and experiment.

Scott:
I think this is fantastic. This is a really good perspective. When I started out on my journey, I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. The problem was I was already grown up. So I was like, “Okay. I’m going to take the first brother’s path to your point. I’m going to go 100% all out and create optionality so that when and if I discover that, I will be able to understand what that passion is or those things are and be able to do them.” What are your thoughts on that? Perhaps it was too extreme. I don’t know. It sounds like there’s a nuance here where you can have elements of that third brother’s journey and still be building that flexibility into your financial position is kind of where I think you’re going with this, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Doc G:
There’s definitely nuance. And so I started out as a youngest brother because I was passionate about becoming a doctor because my dad was. I got burned out in medicine and then I kind of turned into an eldest brother because I was like, “Man, I need to accumulate enough money to retire as fast as possible.” But how did I do that? Well, I increased my practice, but then I started doing side hustles and looking at passive income like real estate. So in a sense, I was also pulling in some of the middle brother characteristics. We don’t have to stick to one path. The key is to incorporate those parts of the path that work for us. You asked at the beginning of this question, “Were you too extreme?” Not really. Basically if you can make enough money to support yourself, then you can be as extreme as you want and see how it feels. Go for the passion play. Do what excites you every moment, something that you would do for the rest of your life, even if you weren’t making money, see if you can make a go at it. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Maybe you do it part-time and make 50% of your income that way and then do a side hustle or passive income on the side and fill in the gaps.
The path for each person could be different. The problem is when we don’t look at purpose and identity first so that we can then toggle those different parts of the path to meet our needs. So if you don’t know what your purpose and identity are, then how are you going to know how much time to put in the passion play? How do you know if it’s worth doing a side hustle? How do you know if you want to grind it out, be the eldest brother because at some point you’re going to have years and years of freedom in the future? You don’t know until you have an idea of what that tool that you’re creating, that tool of extra money and space of your mouth and space in your life. You have no idea what you’re putting that tool to until you figure out your purpose and identity.

Scott:
I think a big motivator for a lot of folks in the financial independence space is this concept of freedom or escape. I do not want to be controlled by my boss, for example. It’s something that really resonated in my head when I was had my first job at least. I think that’s a big motivator for a lot of people. It’s wanting to escape from something rather than move towards something. Was that true in your case or something that you touched on the book?

Doc G:
Oh, for sure. I wanted to escape the burnout of medicine, but I had no idea what I was running to, and that’s what caused so much commotion in my life. Often we find that when we’re looking to escape, we take extreme actions that don’t actually get us what we want. The first thing we need to do is figure out what we want. And once we figure out what we want, it’s a lot easier than not to feel like you need to escape. Let me see if I can get his name right. There was a guy he used to blog about personal finance called The Happy Philosopher. And he was a physician like me. And he used to talk about this idea that he also was getting burned out of medicine and he wanted to escape, but he discovered personal finance financial independence and he realized that I could go part … or he could go part-time and maybe it would take him a few more years to get to financial independence, but it would give him some space in his life, which he so needed.
Just having that knowledge gave him some feeling of control and power. And he eventually didn’t go part-time because he now knew that he could basically take control of his life. And once he did that, he could start seeing the good things about his job, the things he enjoyed, the things that gave him meaning and purpose. And so he didn’t feel like he needed to escape. So I think when we feel that sense of, I need to escape, the big question is what is the friction and how can we either mentally or physically subtract out the friction So we don’t feel like we need to escape anymore?
There are some people who just don’t want to work for someone. I don’t think we’d have such amazing entrepreneurs if there weren’t. But ultimately if you were doing fine at your job and you’ve been working for people forever and then all of a sudden you need to escape, then probably there’s a deeper story going on there. And if you can better understand that story, then you can figure out the ending.

Scott:
Love it. That makes sense to me.

Mindy:
I have long said that the financial independence community, the FIRE Community, focuses too much. I think people who are coming into the FIRE Community focus too much on the RE part and not on the FI part. I’ve had that job where I could not … I got up every morning and I’m like, “Oh, I have to go to work. I hate this job. Everything sucks.” And then I got the job that I didn’t feel that way and it’s like it’s so different. I could be retired. I am financially independent, but I choose to work, and I continue working because I love what I do. I get to talk about money with my friends all day. How hard is that? I get emails from people saying, “You changed my life.” That is purpose. Nobody ever did that when I was selling quilting supplies. Nobody ever said, “Wow, that thread you sold me last week just changed my world.” And that’s okay because that’s not really how that works, but it’s different. You can find a job that has this. You can find something to take up the space in your day that gives you the purpose even if it generates income or not. And finding that can be hard.

Scott:
Jordan, what are some of the things that you found hospice patients most said that they wanted to help people get started thinking about some of the things that they’d like.

Doc G:
So it’s a very personal issue and it can range everything from a trip they didn’t take to a skill they didn’t get, to a person that they didn’t connect with that they wished they had. But I’ll tell you what people don’t say. Almost no one says, “I wish I worked more nights and weekends.” You never hear it. Almost no one says, “I wish I made it to that net worth of $750,000 because I only made it to $500,000 and my life has been bereft because I didn’t meet that goal.” Above and beyond that, it can be just about everything.
I’ll give you an example. I had a patient who had leukemia in her forties. And when we did a life review with her, she realized that one thing she regretted is she had been married in her 20s and she had had two miscarriages. And after the second one, she had gone home early and found her husband in bed with someone else. And they didn’t have many financial attachments, they didn’t have any children. She stormed out of the room, never wanted to talk to them again, filed for divorce, they got divorced and then they moved on with their lives. She was dying in her forties and she realized one of the things she really regretted is that as she got older, she started seeing that maybe that behavior from him was because he was in pain and he was hurting. And because not being able to have children, something you really wanted to do, was weighing on him. She didn’t per se want to forgive him, but she wanted to express this idea that I recognize that this wasn’t the easiest thing for you just like it wasn’t the easiest thing for me. And she actually called her ex-husband before she died and had that conversation. So for everyone it’s different.
I had another patient who was a grandmother and she had lived through the depression. And one of her big fears was money. She had money stashed all over her house because she was used to having nothing and not eating. As we did the life review with her, one of the chaplains sat down and realized her biggest fear was that her grandkids wouldn’t have money for college, or wouldn’t be able to go on vacations, or would lack for the things they needed. This chaplain actually went and talked to her children and her children decided to open up their financials and show grandma that there were 529 plans for the grandkids. And just the idea that she knew they were taken care of really relieved her of a huge life stress. Again, it’s very individual. The point is that to start addressing those things. What if the grandmother had talked to the children 15 years ago or 10 years ago when the kids were born and had that conversation? It might have been one less thing that they stressed about over the years and was weighing on them when they were on their deathbed.

Scott:
That’s so powerful. I don’t even know how to respond to those things there. Mindy, maybe you said you’ve you read the book and it had a really powerful impact on you. What were your thoughts when you were going through this experience?

Mindy:
The homework at the end of the chapter. There’s like a page and a half of homework at the end of every chapter that really gets to the point. The chapter kind of describes all of the things and tells the stories. And then at the end of the chapter, there’s some homework about the life review, the art of subtraction, the discovering identity and purpose. I don’t want to say this book is hard to read, but it made me cry. So thanks, Jordan. I couldn’t stop reading this book. So it isn’t hard to read, but I’m in a place right now where I need to read this book. And it is soul opening if you are in the right place, if you’re in the right time. If you’re feeling stuck in your finances, if you are in a place where you have a good cushion and you’re like, “What is the next step in my financial journey?” This book is the thing that you need to help you move onto your next place because this book will unstick you. It’s not just the prophetic pros on all the pages. It’s the insightful homework that is going to make you think. It’s kind of like a choose your own adventure book. Remember those, Jordan? Where you-

Doc G:
Yes, I do. My kids still have read them in the past. They’re all too old now, but they did.

Mindy:
They’re awesome. You read the book and you’re like, “Oh, what am I going to do now? Well, I’m going to have to answer these questions.” You can blaze through these questions in five minutes. This is, okay, I have to be in the right mind frame to sit down and answer these questions. I have to really think about this. You could take a month to answer each one of these homework questions and you really have to spend the time to think about these. Gosh, Jordan. You really just get to the heart of the point and lay that question bare. Some of these questions are really hard to answer.

Doc G:
Yeah. And it was supposed to be that way. This was not supposed to be light fair, per se.

Mindy:
Mission accomplished.

Doc G:
Yeah. This was meant to leave you thoughtful. And the exercises, I won’t say the exercises were an afterthought, but I will tell you the philosophy and the chapter writing came first. And I very clearly recognized that I had to move from the philosophical, which was kind of at the top of the conversation, and bring it down towards actionable information and actionable exercises. So I wanted to start with philosophy and end with something that people could actually use to help them start making decisions. And so I did put those exercises at the end of each chapter as a little bit of a homework assignment to say, “Okay. You’ve now heard the philosophy and the ideas behind this. Let’s dive into it.”

Scott:
I just want to observe here. What a privilege to live in a world where this is a problem that we can really think about and go through? And how important is it to actually take the time to go through this exercise and recognize you have that privilege and make of your life what you want it to be with that? Hopefully, many of the folks listening to this podcast, not everyone, will have the ability to kind of take a bird’s eye view, zoom back, think about their life from a deathbed perspective and then back into a new course or the course that they think they’ll be happiest with. That is something you can do in 2022 for most of the people, not everyone, but most of the people listening to this podcast with that. That is one that is the point of what we do in this community as podcasters and people who talk about money. At least having a little bit of a surplus and creating that cushion in your life opens this challenge up to you.

Doc G:
One of the most difficult parts of writing this too is I think if you are a person who starts to feel like you have money under control and are trying to look at life and say, “What next?” I think this book really hits you right in the center of the chest. But I also wanted people to realize that there are a lot of people who are struggling to put dinner on the table tonight, but these ideas of purpose and identity are no less salient. One of the things I saw with dealing with the dying is we look at Maslow’s pyramid. Most of us are familiar with Maslow’s pyramid. At the bottom, we look at basic needs, and security, and those kind of things. And we move up to self-actualization, which I would call understanding your sense of purpose, identity, and connections. And we think of these as something we do step wise. But the truth of the matter is in the dying, I’ve encountered people who’ve jumped all over those steps.
I had a patient whose wife died in the nursing home and his health went downhill from heart failure and he had no creature comforts, barely had enough money to keep the lights on, but yet he seemed to have met this idea of self-actualization with family and friends and meaning. On the other hand, I had another patient who was rich enough to afford a wing in the hospital and died alone because his family was too busy worrying about the money and who would get it. The point of the matter is I think it’s important for us to all be thinking about this. Wherever we fall on the economic spectrum, money will no more allow you to figure out your purpose, identity, and connections than having billions of dollars will help you find self-actualization. We need to focus on all of them at the same time.
So I’ve always been lucky enough to have a privilege of having some money, having some extra and eventually meeting financial independence. But I’m hoping too that people who aren’t nowhere close to financial independence can at least start thinking about the framework of what is meaningful to me, what does purpose and identity look like even for people who are still struggling at the basic security and comfort level because I think you can sometimes achieve one without the other. And I’ve seen plenty of people who’ve had very little money, but actually have found purpose, identity, and connections and it has improved their lives greatly.

Scott:
Awesome. Well, Jordan. What’s one other piece of information that we should all take away from the book or know that’s in there as a conversation before we wrap up here?

Doc G:
So I think there are three big points to the book. The first is, think about your purpose, identity, and connections first before you build a financial framework. The second is, think about the parable of the three brothers and then build your financial framework around that purpose, identity, and connections. And the last point from the book, the one we haven’t talked about here, is ask yourself one important question, are you afraid that you are going to die young and rich or old and broke? And depending on how you answer that question, it’ll help you decide how fast you want to get to financial independence. So let me explain this. My father died at 40 and he always had an idea that he was going to die young. In fact, he told my mom that when he married her.
My dad wasn’t worrying about deferred gratification and saving for retirement because he didn’t think he was going to get a retirement. Yes, he bought insurance to protect us, yes, he did all sorts of things to protect his family, but he for went a job in which he could have gotten paid a lot of money to work at an academic center where he made much less money, but his hours weren’t as aggressive. And the reason why is he loved photography, he loved woodworking, he used to study languages. So he built out a life where he didn’t need as much money. He could do a lot more YOLO or you only live once because he didn’t feel he had a lot of time and he wanted to make sure that he didn’t die young and rich. On the other hand, I’m the exact opposite. I feel like I’m going to live to hopefully a gray old age many decades from now. So I wasn’t worried about dying young. So I didn’t mind grinding it out and working really hard and saving tons of money because I wanted that money to go into the stock market and compound so that I could live to 80 or 90 and have lots of years of retirement or at least doing only the kind of work I want to do.
So when you ask that question, what you’re really saying is how fast do I want to get to financial independence? If you’re worried about dying young and rich, you probably want to have a much bigger YOLO fund and a smaller financial independence fund because you want to enjoy every day now because you’re not sure what’s going to happen. On the other hand, if you were like me and you’re worried about dying old and broke, you want a huge financial independence fund and you’re not so much worried about that YOLO fund because later on after the money compounds, you’ll have plenty of time to do what you want. And so you toggle in between, and that really helps you. And if you’re wrong, you really probably don’t lose anything. Especially if you’re worried that you’re going to die young and rich and you not to die young and rich, well, you probably will have to wait longer to retire because you’ve only been saving 10%. But guess what? You’ve been at least really spending your time and money doing YOLO a lot of the time. So you’re at least enjoying yourself. And you can keep doing that to your 65 or 70 and probably feel like you’re living a great life.

Scott:
I love it. I think it’s a really powerful framework to noodle on and a great place to leave the conversation for folks to think about it. So well, thank you so much for coming on today. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and where people can find it?

Doc G:
The book is Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. It is available through Ulysses Press, August 2nd. That will be anywhere you find books online. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, et cetera. An easy way to catch up with me as well as the book is to go to jordangrumet.com. That’s J-O-R-D-A-N G-R-U-M-E-t.com. There, you can see links to where you can buy the book. You can also see links to my medical blog, my financial blog, as well as the Earn & Invest podcast. If you are a big podcast fan, you can also go to earnandinvest.com. Either of those ways are perfect ways to get in touch with me as well as find the book.

Mindy:
Jordan, thank you so much for your time today. This was a lot of fun. This was, well, a lot of fun. It’s always a lot of fun to talk to you even if you make me cry. This was the right book for the right period of my life, and I really appreciate you writing it. It is not something that I have seen a lot or ever. And making the connection between the hospice care that you’re doing and the financial passion that you have was really, really insightful. And I really appreciate your time.

Doc G:
Thank you. And I’m glad it impacted you. That’s exactly what this is for. It’s to help people with some of these deeper issues of, what now?

Mindy:
What now? Yep. Well, that was perfect. Thank you, Jordan.

Doc G:
Thank you.

Mindy:
Scott, that is a lot to think about. Jordan always really just brings it. He’s so smart and his book is going to make you think a lot. I really meant that. If you are in a place where you’re not quite sure where the next step is on your financial journey, this book will absolutely get you unstuck.

Scott:
Yeah. We run into this problem on the Finance Fridays where folks are like, “What should I do with my money?” And we’re like, “Well, what do you want?” And it’s amazing how connected those two things are. And so this I think is a really powerful way of backing into what you want. And we spend a lot of time on it on the money show because everything derives downstream from what you want. If you want the largest possible pile of money in the end state, we’re going to give you one set of advice. If you want time freedom in three to five years from now so you can quit your job and travel the world, we’ll give you a different advice and you’ll have to make a different decision about that and everything in between. And so that is where this kind of discussion is so powerful. Is what do you want? What does a good life mean to you? One way of thinking about that is what will you be thinking on your deathbed in 50 years about your regrets, your accomplishments, people, those types of things, and how do you design a financial plan that allows you to maximize that over the course of your life?

Mindy:
I think by the end of this book, which is not a quick read … It is a quick read in that you can’t stop reading it. The pages are turning. You’re like, “Ooh, what is the next thing? What is the next thing?” But as you do the homework, I skipped the homework and I was reading the book, but as you do the homework when you’re finished with this book, you will have such a clear understanding of where you want to be, where you want to go. And it will be far easier for you to figure out how to get there once you know … That sounds so stupid. When you know where you want to go, it’s so easy to get there. “Hey, I want to go someplace.” Well, where do you want to go?” “I don’t know.” “Well, then you can get there however you want.” How does that go? I can’t remember that. Who said that?

Scott:
Yeah. It’s Alice in Wonderland quote, right? Cheshire Cat?

Mindy:
Yes. Thank you.

Scott:
A badly butchered version of that, which I can’t do any better, but that’s the premise. No. That’s it. So that’s why we spend so much time on this topic. It’s because so many people have no idea what they want. There’s, “I want the pile to be bigger.” Okay. We can generally help you make the pile bigger. If you listen to The BiggerPockets Money Podcast, hopefully that will happen over a period of time for your situation, but to really get the maximum power out of money it’s to know what you want and to back into it. A situation where money is a tool can give you the lifestyle or the life that you want.

Mindy:
Absolutely. And this book will help you get exactly where you need to go. It’ll help you figure out where you want to go and then you can … you will know how to get there. Okay. Scott, should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
From Episode 319 of The BiggerPockets Money Podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, got to go, Buffalo.