By Dr. James M. Dahle, WCI Founder
Long-time readers know we've done The White Coat Investor Scholarship for years, giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and prizes. In 2019, we started another award, one for attending-level physicians and dentists. This is the Financial Educator Award for people who are trying to boost financial literacy among their colleagues, trainees, and students.
In 2019, Dr. Gaurava Agarwal received this recognition. In 2020, Dr. Jason Mizell won the award. In 2021, Dr. Scott M. Truhlar took home the prize, and in 2022, Dr. Stephen Pamatmat was the one to be honored.
The primary mission of The White Coat Investor is to “help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street,” which primarily means boosting financial literacy among professionals like physicians, dentists, trainees, and students. Many of these people can be reached with what we are currently doing—a blog, an email newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube channel, books, online courses, social media, CME conferences, the Financial Bootcamp email course, the WCI Forum, the r/whitecoatinvestors subreddit, and the White Coat Investor Facebook Group.
However, some of them can only be reached face to face, one at a time.
You, my readers and listeners, have been promoting this material (I can't really say it is mine since most of it is just a rearrangement of material developed by others and blended with common sense) to your colleagues, trainees, and trainers for years. Sometimes it can happen a little more efficiently than one on one. For example, I go out and speak to groups of docs about a dozen times a year. It's not a very profitable use of my time, and the traveling isn't particularly enjoyable. But I love to meet you individually and stay in touch with the concerns of the “doc in the trenches.”
How to Teach Personal Finance to Doctors
However, I can't even come close to keeping up with the demand for this sort of in-person financial education by myself. We turn down several speaking invitations a week, and that's without even trying to get them. With this Financial Educator of the Year award, we have been enlisting your aid in providing this education to your peers. We have made this as easy as possible for you. We get requests all the time to “share our slides” with people. For years I've told people, “No. If my slides get out on the internet, nobody is going to hire me to come speak.”
Well, it's gotten to the point where I don't care if anyone hires me to speak. So, we've put together some slide presentations for you to use when educating your peers and trainees. While it is only common courtesy (and always appreciated) to give WCI credit, I know that some people will not, and I'm OK with that. These are canned (bottled?) lectures that many of you can give with little preparation. Seriously, I cannot make it any easier for you without getting on a plane.
Each presentation is designed to last 50 minutes, leaving 10 minutes for a Q&A. Don't be intimidated. I know you're not a professional financial advisor. After the first time, you'll realize 90% of the questions are ridiculously easy to answer. You'll be embarrassed for your profession when you realize the simplicity of most of the questions you get. Seriously, you've got this. And, if by chance, they come up with a real stumper, tell them you'll get back to them, and shoot me the question by email. Together, we'll find the answer, and you can get back to the questioner within a couple of days and be their hero.
Yes, it's this easy.
Just click on the links below, download the file, read through the slides to make sure you're familiar with the material, and look up anything you're not familiar with on the blog or elsewhere. Then, you're good to go. One doctor's financial lecture coming right up. You can give it to two people or 1,000 people. You can send it out via email. You can give it over Zoom. You can post a link to it on your blog. You can modify the slides, but please do include the disclaimer slide unmodified in your presentation.
The slides presentations below were all updated, as of April 2023.
Presentation for Attendings
Topics covered:
- Financial literacy
- Student loan management for attendings
- Financial advisors
- The five insurance policies you need and two you don't
- Basics of retirement accounts
- The benefits of index funds
- Basics of estate planning
- Basics of asset protection
Presentation for Residents
Topics covered:
- Financial literacy
- Student loan management for residents
- Disability insurance
- Term life insurance
- Know your retirement accounts
- A written financial plan
- Contract evaluation
Presentation for Medical Students
Topics covered:
- Financial literacy
- Living frugally
- School/residency choice
- Specialty choice
- Student loan management
- Owning vs. renting during residency
- Financial steps as you leave medical school
If you would like to do a deeper dive on student loans or have someone do it for you, contact our in-house student loan expert at studentloanadvice.com, Andrew Paulson.
Financial Educator of the Year Award
In addition to providing you with the resources necessary to give a presentation to your trainees, I'm also going to provide an incentive to do so. Again this year, we are going to give out the Financial Educator of the Year Award. We will start taking submissions immediately. You have until May 2, 2023, to fill out this form and make your nomination. A few weeks later, I'll run a post on the blog announcing the winner and the person nominating them. So, you get mentioned on the internet, and you get a nice certificate. Oh yeah, and $1,000 cash money from WCI. As an incentive to put together a nice submission, the nominator who writes the best nomination of the winner will get a free WCI online course of their choice.
Here Are the Criteria:
- You can't nominate yourself. (Sorry, get one of your colleagues or trainees to do it.)
- Include the nominator's name, the nominee's name, and a way to contact both of you.
- Nominator must attach a 200-600 word explanation to this form on why the nominee should win the award.
- Nominee must be a practicing attending-level physician or dentist.
- Nominee need not necessarily be an “academic” doctor.
- Nominee need not be an American, but you must speak and write reasonably competent English.
- Nominee cannot be a financial professional OR have a business that compensates them for teaching doctors about personal finance. No financial bloggers, financial podcasters, financial advisors, insurance agents, etc. Anybody can submit a nomination.
- The nominee must agree to be named and pictured on the blog. The nominator cannominate without permission, but the nominee must give permission to us before they can win. (The $1,000 and CV entry will hopefully be enough incentive.)
- The nominator's name and submission will be published with the name and a picture of the nominee and perhaps a few words of advice from the nominee to their fellow educators.
- There will be only one winner.
- A nominee can only win once. Sorry Gaurava, Jason, Scott, and Stephen, you're done.
- Make sure to fill out this form to nominate someone.
The selection committee consists of the WCI staff. Yes, we're completely biased in favor of those who are dedicated to teaching personal finance and investing to doctors without regard to specialty, gender, race, religion, nationality, skin color, or sexual orientation. In fact, don't even tell us about any of that stuff in your nomination because we don't care. We want to hear about what your nominee did to help doctors become financially literate. If you are nominated independently by multiple persons, that nomination will carry additional weight.
What do you think? Can you think of someone who should win this award? Should somebody nominate you? What's keeping you from teaching your peers and trainees basic personal finance and investing? What else can we do to help? Comment below!
