The Money Script

Between Two Advisors - A Conversation with Jamie Hopkins

• Yohance Harrison • Season 5 • Episode 27

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In this episode of The Money Script Podcast, host Yohance Harrison is joined by Jamie Hopkins, financial thought leader and author of The Soul of Wealth. Together, they discuss the unique financial challenges faced by medical professionals transitioning through medical school, residency, and into practice. Topics include the power of delayed gratification, aligning spending with personal values, and avoiding the trap of keeping up with the Joneses. Jamie shares actionable advice and insights on building a life of purpose and financial well-being. Tune in for lessons that apply to doctors—and anyone navigating major life transitions.


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Yohance Harrison 0:02

All right, welcome to the Money Script podcast. It's your host, Joe Hunts Harrison. So happy to be with each and every one of you today. I have a special treat. I have the one of my favorite authors in Financial Services, Mr. Daniel Crosby. Good afternoon. How are you, sir?

Jamie Hopkins0:22

Good afternoon. Good to be with you.

Yohance Harrison 0:24

Yes, yes, thank you. We have been waiting for this for a long time. I am going to admit I'm still in a bit of fanboy mode here. Was actually rereading one of his latest books. Here you have one. You were the author of one of my favorite books there was the Behavioral Investor. Did I get that right? Investor. One of my favorites. Still pick that up every now and then because especially when I need a refresher, when I need to get some of my biases out the way because I'm an advisor and guess what? I'm human. I have biases as well. So you're tuned into the Money Script podcast. This, this segment of the Money Script podcast is specifically for those individuals that are managing that transition in the medical field. Meaning you're going from being an undergraduate to going into medical school. You're going from medical school to going into residency, fellowship, and then from there going to an attending. And managing that transition can be tough because life keeps changing in those transitions and everything that you expected usually is not. And you're dealing with a lot of delayed gratification. And that's actually something that Daniel writes about in his book. So I want to start with your latest book, which is the Soul of Wealth. And again, for my physicians out there, and soon to be physicians, you're going to have to deal with a lot of money. Okay. Some of you are dealing with debt of being in school or the pressure of finding the money to pay for school. And then when you become attending, you're going to be some of the top paid people in America. And that comes with a lot of. How do they say, the spider man would come with great power, great responsibility. Okay. Okay. So. So, Danny, let's start with the. The Soul of Wealth. And this is a little bit different from the other books that you, that you've written. What, what inspired you to write this book in this method?

Jamie Hopkins0:40

Yeah, got it.

Jamie Hopkins2:03

Yeah.

Jamie Hopkins2:16

Yeah, man. The, the, the method itself I'll speak to a bit. So the method, it's 50 chapters and they. Each one has sort of a story, a little bit, a little bit of a narrative, a little bit of research and a little bit of application, and they're all about four or five pages long. I actually completely Ripped this idea off from the producer, Rick Rubin.

Jamie Hopkins2:38

I had written about 80 pages of this book in a traditional format, much like the Behavioral investor. It was 10 or 12 chapters, 20, 25 pages a piece. And I got about 80 pages in, and frankly, it just kind of sucked. It just wasn't that good. And I knew I had to scrap it. I knew I wanted this to be my best work yet. So I went back to the drawing board. And while I was in that hiatus period, I read Rick Rubin's book, the Creative Act. And he did, I think, 75 chapters of about three pages apiece. And as a guy with a big job and a big family, at the end of the day, I want to read, but I'm tired. And Rick Rubin's book was perfect for me. And I knew I wanted to write something with short informational essays. And people have been loving it, so that was the approach. As for the content, this is the richest the world has ever been.

Jamie Hopkins3:39

When this country was founded, 85% of the world lived in poverty. Today that number is 9%. We are living in the richest part of the world at the richest time in human history. The size of the average American home has tripled post World War II. And yet a majority of people say that they're lonely. The modal number of friends that a man of roughly our age says they have is zero. And people just aren't doing well. So we've got all this material abundance, but all this spiritual poverty. And so I wanted to write a book that said, look, how can our psychology be this broken when we've got it this good? And that was effectively the. The question I was trying to answer with this book.

Yohance Harrison 4:30

And I believe you tell some great stories in this book that help get to the heart of it. And I, I found myself checking myself as I was reading a few of the stories. And I appreciate the, the shorter nature. And you mentioned Rick Rubin. I'm a huge fan of everything Rick Rubin has ever touched or inspired. I loved his show that he had on. I think it was on hbo. And when you just do that man, his.

Jamie Hopkins4:56

His hbo, I, I've never wanted another person's job so bad as I wanted Rubin's job. When I watched that Shangri La documentary on. On hbo, it was absolutely incredible.

Yohance Harrison 5:07

Yes, yes, yes, I agree, I agree. Now, the. Again, we want to. As a psychologist, which you are my. Correct, yes, Psychologist, trained psychologist. I'm sure you can relate to that transitionary period. Can you tell the audience a bit about your transition from undergraduate to graduate and Studies and so forth.

Jamie Hopkins5:30

Sure. So I started my PhD three days after I finished my undergrad. So it's very little, there's very little transition. I went to Olive Garden with my nana to celebrate graduate, to celebrate graduating and then it was off to grad school. So really no transition there. But when I graduated with my PhD, I was, I was originally going to be a clinician and I did that for just a moment. I mean my, my degree is in clinical psychology. I went to be a psychotherapist and I did that for just a moment before I thoroughly burned out. So I can empathize with the folks that listen to your show who are working in heavy parts of the world where they deal with emergency medicine, where they deal with people in distress. And you know, I was 23 years old when I started my PhD program, a couple years older than that when I graduated. And I frankly, I had, I had poor boundaries. I had, I think, inaccurate expectations about what it was going to be like. And I just didn't do a good job of maintaining a distance between my clients lives and my own. And I was taking their worries home with me. And it, it just kind of broke me candidly. So I, I knew that I wanted to think deeply about human behavior. That was something that I loved and have always loved. But I knew that I maybe wasn't cut out to do it in a clinical context. And so I quickly, I quickly transitioned to, quickly sold my soul to Wall street and have, have been in that space ever since.

Yohance Harrison 7:04

And we are grateful that you did. I, I mean, I mean we're not grateful for the pain you suffered, but we're grateful for the lessons that you brought from it and now the lessons that you teach us all. So I'd like to dive into the book a bit because again, in working with emergency physicians through that transition, I found that a few key chapters in your book really pointed to some of the things that I hear from them. I've been questioning my ER docs that I work with now and asking them what are the things they wish they knew? What are the things they wish they'd known while they were going through those transitionary periods. And time after time, I'm looking at my notes here. Time after time they say they wish they started investing earlier and not thinking that they need a lot of money to start investing multiple times they say that they wish that they weren't comparing their journey to someone else's or their status to someone else's. And, and they wish that they had a mentor earlier that would that didn't just mentor them in just their clinical studies, but also mentor them just in, in life and in finance and, and things of that nature. So there's a few chapters that I, that I picked that I'd like us to just have some discussions about. And the first one is, let's see, where was it? Oh, the, the one on delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is the ultimate life hack. Can you talk to us a bit about your inspiration on that? And then I want to share a couple stories with you on it as well.

Jamie Hopkins8:36

I will. I'm going to take a quick aside on the things you just mentioned, because I thought they were really good. There is a chapter in the Soul of Wealth called Comparison is the Thief of Joy, which I won't give it away, but I mean, it's one of the most damaging things you can do to your happiness is to pick the wrong reference classes or try and run someone else's race. And then with respect to mentorship, this was one of the things that excited and surprised me. There's a chapter on investing in yourself and we found that people who go to therapy make 10% more money than their same education peers and people who have a life mentor make more money, are happier and are more likely to get promoted. So I just, I don't know. I mean, I've stumbled onto a couple of mentors in my professional life, but I don't think I ever. Oh, I know, I, I didn't, you know, seek that out at a young age. And it's one of the best things you can do for your life and your money. So quick aside there, but on to onto the chapter on delayed gratification. The research here is really fascinating and a lot of it comes from the world of physicians are doing a lot of the research. They, they found an unusual link and they found an unusual link between body mass in wealth that you wouldn't necessarily expect to exist. But in general, people who had, you know, more, more average to low BMI also had average to high net worth. And so basically people who are in better shape were also in better financial shape. And so in that chapter, I talk about a lot of the research about how this ability to say no to

Jamie Hopkins10:29

a present happiness in exchange for a future joy, and I use those intentionally because a lot of, if you think about a lot of the stuff that brings us happiness, that immediate burst, that dopamine hit, that momentary high, a lot of that stuff isn't good for us long term. You know, whether it's, whether It's a splurge with the wallet. Whether it's, you know, chocolate, a chocolate, a donut, a date with someone you're not married to, all these things are probably fun in a moment.

Yohance Harrison 11:06

Yeah. Go on and on. Yeah, still going. Okay, sure.

Jamie Hopkins11:11

Like, I mean, it's, it's fun in a moment, but it's long term deleterious to your health and your wealth. And so that's what that chapter is all about. And you know, the other thing that I talk about there that I, that I've really tried to, to bring in that I think is powerful for your audience is the power of small splurges. Small splurges are the most powerful and it helps when they're infrequent and they're small. So, you know, I, not to the degree I didn't assume the levels of debt of your listeners, nor did I ascend banks of income as quickly as your listeners will, but I know what it's like to go from being broke to being well compensated effectively overnight when you, when you become a doctor. And one of the things you have to be careful about is that lifestyle creep or that sense of entitlement that you've been in the wilderness for so long that now you're exactly, you know, now you're owed something big. So know that those small infrequent splurges are the ones that bring you the greatest joy long term.

Yohance Harrison 12:21

So in that, one of the things that I've mentioned to some of my physicians and I learned this from another client that was actually in tech and this was something that he did

Yohance Harrison 12:32

instead of buying the luxury car, he would rent it for a week and drive around in it and enjoy it. Because like, he was like, I don't need the Porsche or the Lamborghini or the Ferrari sitting in my driveway because that's, it needs to be in a, in a garage. It needs all these other things that come with having the, the very high luxury vehicle, high class luxury vehicle. But renting that vehicle and enjoying it for a week is, you know, 1/50 of the cost or maybe 2/50 of the cost of actually owning it. Because you can take the insurance and all that stuff and it would satisfy that desire of I want to drive really fast. Or going, if you live in LA or visit la, going to the, the Porsche,

Yohance Harrison 13:19

they have the driver speedway, the driver's experience. Yeah. And go spend a few hours and drive your Porsche.

Jamie Hopkins13:26

Atlanta has one too.

Yohance Harrison 13:27

Yeah. And then drive home in your Camry. Perfectly Fine. But I find that, that physicians,

Yohance Harrison 13:36

because like you said, that delay. Because it's the, in some cases we're talking 12 years of paying the income and the ability to spend. Yeah, you feel, yeah, you feel old and you wake up one morning with a fifty thousand dollar paycheck which is more money than you've ever seen in the positive column of your net worth of your balance sheet. And that. Oh, I just. And then it turns into I deserve. Yeah. And you know, the waiter says, would you like shrimp? Yes, I want shrimp with the salad. I don't care if the lobster's market rate bring it all to me. And, and yes, and I, I see the overindulge. I see that all the time in first year doctors within that first two, three months. And they tell me, oh, it's just the honeymoon phase. I've been delayed for so long. But it, those, the, the dopamine becomes very addictive and it is so hard.

Jamie Hopkins14:31

To go back to. I know you know this. It's so, it's so hard to go back. So there's a, There's a principle here. The principle is habituation. And this is one of humankind's greatest gifts and greatest detriment is that we are so adaptable and this works in our favor because like if, you know, I'm. I'm married with three kids. And as I sit here today and I say, look, if I ever lost my wife, that's it. Like I couldn't, I couldn't go on. Like I couldn't put one foot in front of another. And yet the world is full of people who have lost people that they love and they figure it out. Like as, as impossible as that sounds today, people find a way. They habituate. Like, we can overcome really tough things because of our ability to habituate, but it works the other direction too. That Porsche that you buy that seems so incredible that first week, by week three, it's just your car. Like, it's just the thing that you drive to Publix to get your groceries, right? So it very quickly just becomes your car. That beautiful mansion you bought that was so incredible to you the first time you saw it. Soon it's just where you throw your dirty socks and where you get ready for the day. I mean, it just. We can get used to anything. And if you get used to the, if you get to. Used to the V12 and the first class and everything else, it is very hard to go the other direction. It is much easier. It's much better to climb that ladder Slowly than to go to the top of the mountain and then try and walk it back down.

Yohance Harrison 16:06

Indeed. I agree. And that leads into the. The next chapter. And again, all of these chapters or stories are great. I tried to pick my favorite three and. And you just in the beginning of our call, you gave me two that are just as wonderful that I had. I had one of those on the list, but one of my favorites that I like to share with clients. And this is something that you didn't teach me, this one. I. This has been my favorite saying for a long time. Show me your budget and I'll show you your values. I joke with clients that, that in the, in the old days, you would think of the private investigator going and going through your trash and finding everything out about you by going through your trash. And nowadays, just show. Show me your budget and I'll tell you so much about yourself and what you truly value. And you had an exercise in here that I hadn't done myself in a long time. And I did it. And it. It. I was ashamed. I felt I had imposter syndrome. All of a sudden I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm horrible. But the. The example was. Or the exercise was to take your. To pull out, look at your budget, look at your top spending areas in your budget or all of your spending areas, and then put your values right beside it and then ask yourself, are my money and values aligned? And I was looking at. Now, it was before the holidays when I did it. Now I think I've caught up a little bit because I was looking at my values of family, and I was looking at where I was spending my money. I said, other than keeping a roof over their head, I did more things for myself than I did for my son, than I did for my daughter. I did for my wife. I was like, and now again, Christmas is around the corner. As we're recording this, it was like, all right, let me catch up a little bit. But it made me consciously think that, okay, you know, it's not, you know, my, My. My relationship isn't just defined by the things that I buy, but I was looking at the trinkets and toys. And because I'm a bit of a techie, the things I accumulated in the third quarter as compared to what I purchased for someone else. Or a family member. I was like, ah, okay. I guess I could do a little bit better with this. So when I got my new keyboard, I also upgraded my wife's keyboard. It's like, hey, it's a twofer why not? And she was very pleased. I said, oh, that's so sweet you thought of me. I was like, yes, I'm always thinking of you, honey.

Jamie Hopkins18:03

Yeah.

Yohance Harrison 18:26

So that one, I find is very powerful. However, the struggle with individuals in that transition is that typically the budget changes dramatically because med school may be in Florida, residency might be in West Virginia, or it could easily be in San Francisco. And those are two different budgets that you have to live in. And then when you're actually practicing, that could be in New York or it could be in Atlanta or it could be in Texas. And again, the budgets can adjust as well. So how, what are your thoughts on how one can manage their values and their budget in a more peaceful way?

Jamie Hopkins19:13

Yeah, yeah, there's certainly, look, there's certainly realities. And I went through a residency matching program much the same as your listeners, and had this list of, you know, well, I'm going to live in one of 20 places and it might be Manhattan and it might be Ames, Iowa, and it ended up being Atlanta, where I, where I stayed. But shout out, shout out to Emory. Thank you for the match. But, you know, it's, there's realities, right? And I don't want to go too far down because you, you just got to do what you got to do and there's times and seasons in life and you, you have to figure it out then. But, but the larger concept is that we are prone to self deception as a human race. We are wired to think of ourselves as smarter, better, faster, stronger, kinder, more virtuous than we actually are. And, you know, it's been, it's been fascinating. I've been on a health journey this year. I've lost 60 pounds this year.

Yohance Harrison 20:12

And I would, you did look a little different. I was thinking that and I was like, okay. But I didn't say anything, but, yeah, thank you.

Jamie Hopkins20:19

So. But it's, it's been fascinating because if you, if you had asked me forever, I would have said I have bad genes because I was, I was regular, I worked out every day, literally every day, seven days a week, and I was still overweight. And I would have said, look, I just, bad genes, unlucky, bad metabolism, middle age, whatever. When I started tracking everything that went in my body, the weight started falling off because it called me on my own self deception. It called me on my own bs. And I went, oh, I'm just eating too much. I'm just eating more than I was sort of counting or giving myself credit for. And the same thing is true with our money. We are wired to think of ourselves as righteous and kind and benevolent and all these things. And until there is some factual piece of evidence that calls that into question, we're just going to kind of proceed on our merry way. And the tendency will be to do what you did, which is maybe to put ourselves first, to let the people around us fall to the background a little bit. And that's not who we want to be. People mean well, but they don't know well sometimes. So money. There's. There's two points I'd make here. First is that money can call you on your own bs, right? Do you. You say you value fitness. Do you belong to a gym? Are you paying a coach? Right. You say you value spirituality. Are you investing in your personal growth? Are you tithing? Whatever, you know, whatever that looks like for you, Whatever you say you value. See if there is evidence of that in your budget. The second thing is, every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in. You know, this is another chapter. Yeah, it's another chapter in the book. But if you look at every human and civil rights movement that has basically existed in modern times, whether it's. Whether it's Rosa Parks and a Montgomery boy bus boycott, whether it's apartheid South Africa and people divesting of diamond mines and not playing their rugby team, people can use economic levers to bring about the world they want to bring about. And I had this conversation with my kids the other day. We go to this. We go to this farmer's market here locally in the suburbs of Atlanta. And my kid the other day is old enough now that he's like, hey, the spaghetti sauce that we buy at the farmer's market is way expensive, you know, compared. Compared to the prego we get on, you know, on other days of the week. This is, you know, Bob the farmer's spaghetti sauce is way expensive. Why do you do that? And I said, look, I want to live in a world where Bob the farmer can come out on a Saturday morning, make a living, and give me somewhere to go with my kids. So, like, I'm going to pay up. And so it's a. I think it's a powerful way to think about money both in terms of who we want to be and the kind of world we want to live in, you know, at the holiday season. Like, do you want to live in a world where you tip the doorman and you're generous with the people in your life? Like, I think you do. So how can you spend money to Vote for the kind of world you want to live in and to be the kind of person you want to be.

Yohance Harrison 23:45

I love it. I love it. And I, I agree with you in how we vote. Voting with our dollars, it can be just as powerful as the votes that we make at the ballot box. I'm curious for our the last chapter that I wanted to discuss and this is for those that have, have transitioned into attending and are making the good money. One of the fallacies is to keep up with the Joneses as they say, or what some people like to say now because we have folks to relate to is the Kardashians keeping up with them.

Yohance Harrison 24:29

And a quick story I'll share with you that a physician shared with me. She was driving her

Yohance Harrison 24:38

2000, I think two or three Honda CRV to work and parking it in the physician's parking lot. And one day another physician that was driving in a BMW, Mercedes, whatever it was a very expensive car, basically told her not to park that piece of crap in the lot. She can park it somewhere else. And you're a doctor now, act like one. And, and she did. And this is before I met her. And so she, she went out and she went and bought a new car and as you stated earlier, immediately regretted it and had to it was actually got a lease. So I was like well at least it's not going to last forever. That's what I like with lease. At least it doesn't last forever but. But immediately regretted it. So this, this whole idea of keeping up with the Joneses as you were sharing with in the book or in that chapter, it doesn't lead to a lot of happiness.

Jamie Hopkins25:40

No, no. Materialism you'll read about in that chapter. Materialism is a recipe for misery. And there's these different facets of materialism. They break it down into these different facets. It's things like envy and possessiveness and non generosity so you don't share you benchmark to other people and you're. And you're just sort of stingy, right? These are sort of the three facets of materialism. But I tell you, you know, I was lucky to grow up with a dad. My dad was and is a financial planner, a financial advisor. And when I was a kid and I would grow up and I would see a sweet car, I would go, you know, hey dad, check out that whatever, right? You know, check out that car. And he would say to me, he goes, that's not wealth. That's a substitute for wealth. And I have never, I have never forgotten that. Right. I've never forgotten that. And as someone who drives, you know, as someone who gets paid okay and drives a 12 year old car myself, there's a certain freedom that comes with not caring. I mean, there's a. There is a freedom that comes with knowing I can park my car at Target and not care if it gets dinged by a shopping cart. There is freedom that comes with that. Now, I like nice things too, and I'm sure my next car will be nice. But just know that you need to engage with luxury or nice things on their own level and not to do it for another reason. There's not to do it to impress someone. In the book, I cite a statistic that 27Americans have gone into significant, like meaningful consumer debt specifically to try and show up someone else. 27% of Americans have gone into significant debt to just try and flex on somebody or, you know, show out for their neighbor. And almost 80% of them said they immediately regretted it. It is. You have got to. One of the themes that you'll see in the book again and again is to run your own race, figure out who you are, be that person, own that, and just be who it is that you are and not try and impress someone or live up to some preconception of what it is that a doctor looks like or a doctor does.

Yohance Harrison 28:08

Run your own race. That, that's a great way to sum this up, a great way to sum it up. And for those of you that are in that position where you're thinking about the medical school you're going to get into or the residency program, or even where you're going to get your next job. It's your race. Run your own race. You're not trying to keep up with the person that just graduated a year earlier. You're not trying to keep up with the person that's already been in the job five, six, seven years, go at your own pace, you're going to be okay. And as we talked about earlier, find a mentor. Find a mentor, one that's in the field and find one that's not in the field as well so you can have someone to talk about some of these strategies and ideas with. And if nothing else, pick up a copy of Daniel's book, Soul of wealth. As a matter of fact, at me on X or wherever you at people now get to me on social media first. Five people do. I'll make sure that you get a copy on me. So I want to thank Daniel for joining us on the Money Script podcast. This was awesome. Danny, I could talk to you for the next, like, two hours, but I only reserve 30 minutes of your time. And it's a Friday and we both have families to get to. I look forward to seeing you at the next conference, because I'm sure that I will. And please, do yourself a favor and do a friend a favor. Go talk to one of your fellow residents or fellow classmates or that brand new doc and say, hey, I've got a little insight for you that you might find helpful on dealing with money because you're going to save a lot of lives. You will. You're going to help a lot of people. You will. You're going to have to do something to help yourself financially because you can't do this forever. So with that, we'll see you next time on the Money Script podcast. Everybody take care.