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The many paths to financial freedom

Posted on April 5, 2019January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

The challenge in achieving financial freedom is that there is no single route to reach your goal. This means that there is no single cookbook to building wealth, only a countless number of recipes that others have written accounting what has worked for them. The frustration that many of us have in reading about others’ success is that there is never any guarantee that you or anyone else could replicate the outcome. But that is life; we just have to learn from others and make the best possible decision for ourselves.

Doctors are fortunate in that their occupation tends to be relatively stable despite the growing factors that erode physician satisfaction or autonomy. To this end, most doctors can just work hard at their day (or night) jobs for income and focus on controlling expenses. Controlling the doctor financial freedom pathway is actually pretty simple in theory. Let’s see how we can stratify the trajectory to financial freedom below:

Allergic to debt
The majority of students, residents, and early career doctors I encounter fall into this category. They are debt averse, maybe because they have read so many accounts of others who have been in their shoes go through living a bare-bones existence. Discounted Pop-Tarts, 12 for $1 ramen packs, leftover grand rounds meals—you name it, these guys have done it. Some of them avoid getting traditional loans for their education by borrowing from their parents at a set interest rate. Some of them carve out their homes and apartments into rentals. It’s quite creative and impressive some people go about cutting costs and avoiding debt.
The reward? Being debt-free confers a good deal of psychological affirmation. It also gives you absolute control of where you income goes (none of it goes towards repayment of debt). As your income rises in your career, you can put more of it towards your final net worth. Is this method the fastest way to get to financial freedom? Some people would think so.

Career workhorse
You went into medicine because you like stability. No gambling, no risk taking…just good ‘ole fashioned intelligence and hard work. If you can grind through the high volume of patients and put up with ever-increasing administrators, you can get a good income. Save as much of it as possible, and you’ve got yourself a good nest egg.

The career workhorse is not debt averse; she borrowed for her medical school education and for her home and vehicles. There is nothing wrong with leveraging capital in order to live a lifestyle that you worked hard to earn. The way to financial freedom through this trajectory is simply to automate a fixed amount of savings from your paycheck. Set your savings rate to 20% of your paycheck, go for a standard career in medicine, and you will reach financial freedom. Period.

Income and side-hustle focused
There are also physicians who are keen on focusing on ancillary income. Real estate, book deals, courses, and whatever else that can generate income is fair game. There is a fascination with passive income these days, where the effort is put forth ahead of time to generate income with little upkeep indefinitely. Some of these are low yield; others, like real estate can be high risk and high reward. Many of my colleagues have been fortunate to bet big on ancillary investments outside of their profession and built up a revenue stream independent of their work.
The very fortunate side-income physicians have been able to supplement and subsequently supplant their primary working income as a doctor. How common is it to be able to achieve financial freedom through this route? You be the judge.
Conclusion

The majority of doctors are going to be career workhorses. There is nothing wrong with that—that’s how we advise students. You should choose a career that you actually want to focus your time on. If you happen to find another calling to supplement your income, so be it.

Why doctors aren’t entrepreneurial

Posted on March 23, 2019January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

The Hippocratic oath says nothing about taking out a bank loan to outfit your own office to start your practice, nor does it include investing in real estate to diversify your income. Of course, most doctors didn’t opt to enter medicine with the intention of building an empire of medical care (although some end up doing so anyway). Large hospitals, insurance-run medical groups, and entities that operate with high revenue healthcare dollars all consider this perceived aversion to business an advantage for them—if doctors or “providers” don’t want to worry about running the business side of medicine, then it is the role of the entities to handle the “grungy” part. The cynical side of me keeps reminding me that much of healthcare functions on the backs of the physicians.

Student loans plant the seed for debt aversion

It would be unfathomable for a business owner to fund a venture entirely out of her own savings. Our tax system is structured to allow businesses to leverage and borrow. Cash flow allows these financial structures to self sustain. Medicine, on the other hand, is a conservative field. Doctors are debt averse. Look at all of the articles on Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). If you can strategize and plan meticulously where you train and work, you can find ways for Uncle Sam to pay for your education.

Sure, we’ve all had patients who seem to take advantage of our health insurance system and other social support systems. There are people who have a seven-figure net worth who pay zero taxes or are able to structure their taxable income to allow for federal support services. It would only seem fair that doctors try to use PSLF to help the cause, especially if that is the only tax strategy we have.

Most business types wouldn’t bat an eye going into a low six-figure debt in order to build up their entities. Many businessmen/women leverage far more than that without the concern that doctors have about debt. Doctors? No way! Most of us will cringe at five-figure loans and will try to find ways to get that number to zero. There’s nothing wrong with hating debt, but this might also prevent you from making the appropriate decisions to become a successful entrepreneur.

What about other health professions?

There are many health professions who are also “doctors”. Some of them are very good at business. Dentists, chiropractors, and optometrists are a few groups that come to mind who are incredibly politically and financially savvy. These guys also rack up a huge amount of educational debt but they aren’t afraid of going more into debt to build up their practices. This business success comes in part from a strong professional organization that encourages practice building outside of mastery of the science as well as the nature of the profession.

These health professions are largely outpatient based without having to rely on unwieldy equipment or hospitals. Some of these doctor professions don’t even deal with medical insurance, which allows them to offer services without full constraints of the healthcare system. Who knows.

There is nothing wrong with marketing your own mustard.

Overall risk aversion

The reasons why doctors shy away from business in general are nuanced and complex, but common barriers include:

Variability in practice modality among specialties — This prevents you from getting adequate business training from medical school. In residency, you are likely too busy to be able to learn anything outside of the medical knowledge. You might not have had access to the right mentors either.
Health insurance complexity — This may indirectly limit doctors from being their own bosses in their practices.
Fear — No one likes to be put outside of her comfort zone. What’s it feel like owing a huge chunk of change in student loans, and taking even more risk in real estate, outside investments, or other gambles that might amount to total loss?
Stable income in context of employment — We went into medicine to run a stable career. Why risk blowing the earnings so that you could do something outside of what you already know?
Lack of [perceived] time and/or ability — Unfortunately our profession tends to leave little time left to do anything outside of medical practice. Most doctors would prefer to do their work and spend the rest of their free time with their families.

What other reasons make it difficult for doctors to become entrepreneurs?

How not to overthink your investments

Posted on August 4, 2018January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

I cringe every time patients pull out the non-traditional medicine card, and use their experience as proof that they have discovered a natural elixir that modern medicine has selfishly kept under wraps. If you deal with direct patient care, then you’ve seen it.

“Your misaligned vertebral body is causing that searing back pain, paresthesias, and borderline paralysis. Let’s fix it by realigning that bone. Never mind the metastatic disease that’s going on.”

“Sure, those thirty nutritional supplements aren’t really medicines, and your primary care physician has personally approved every single one of them. “

Doctors, unfortunately aren’t immune to lapses in our judgment either. When ideas catch on, whether they are right or wrong, it is difficult to be convinced that there is an alternative. When these judgment errors involve financial decisions, the consequences can be be devastating.

One of the doctors who I work with really has his head in the right place. He knows that the most common money issue that doctors struggle with is spending. He is a single doctor within the first five years of his career, and has a frugal mindset. As a single-person family, he gets to call all of the shots. Expenditures, earnings, and savings. Financially this might be the second best scenario, aside from having a partner who can also contribute to the family net worth.

This guy rents a flat in a modest part of the city, drives a beater car, and has no educational debt. He has limited living expenses otherwise, and even wishes to become financially independent early in his career! He saves a remarkable 80% of his income! I wished that I had as much insight back then that he has now!

The alternative investment bug

For some reason, he is suspicious of the government, the stock market, and common real estate dynamics. It is always good to have a degree of skepticism in big brother, but we also aren’t necessarily living in a completely lawless society [yet]. He contributes to his 403b account, but that is the extent he utilizes tax-advantaged savings. Fair enough, as most employed doctors aren’t going to have that much tax-advantaged space anyway.

Where does he invest his earnings? It was fascinating to actually learn about what non-traditional options we have to keep our hard-earned cash.

Gold and precious metals

Precious metals can be traded directly on the stock exchange. The ticker symbol for gold is GLD. I suppose that precious metals are generally a stable commodity, although I don’t foresee anyone truly hitting pay dirt on these investments. He tells me that he keeps some precious metal investments in the form of jewelry, and the rest in various secondary exchange markets.

Diversifying in the wrong options can be harmful to your health

Speculative land investments

Land is plenty, and you will always be able to find someone who is willing to sell you a part of their land. Some of this land could theoretically be used to develop housing. More rural parcels can also be rented out for hunting grounds as a means to generate revenue. The true speculators are looking for land that might have valuable resources that could be harvested. Maybe your plot of land has unknown shale reserves for natural gas. Think big.

Cryptocurrency

Yes, let’s find the hottest unregulated currency and bet big. Think Bitcoin. We all wished that we had started mining Bitcoins when the concept was first discovered. Wouldn’t it have been great to have had a lot of Bitcoins when each was trading for $1000?

Local Business

Local businesses helping each other out can help communities thrive. We see this in local banks offering loans to small businesses as a way to stimulate the local economy. You can actually be the bank for local businesses by investing in their success. Perhaps one of your friends is building the next brewery in town, and needs a backer. That backer could be you.

Can you be too clever with your financial future?

My financially conscientious colleague actually invests in all of the aforementioned categories. It is very impressive that he has had the energy to research the options and pull the trigger to make the purchases. All of the investments were made using all-cash offers. Nothing is leveraged, but he also keeps a relatively narrow emergency fund which he justifies by having a stable job.

I have a difficult time reasoning through this logic. There is little liquidity or cash flow in his investments. The investments themselves are working passively through appreciation. Aside from cryptocurrency, there is a low but real chance that any of the alternative investments will result in complete loss. However, it is also possible that none of investments will amount to much. Appreciation of property, land, or even stable currencies like precious metals may never materialize. Land is only worth as much as what someone else is interested in paying.

I asked him about bonds, CD’s, T-bills and other fixed rate investments that require essentially no legwork. “Too boring, and too risky, ” he says.

Clearly there is a disconnect. Fortunately he is early in his career, and he is yet to accrue the bulk of his net worth. My take? If you’ve put in the effort to enter a stable career in medicine, you’ve won the game. There are always opportunities to be creative but it would be prudent to make sure you don’t flush your potential down the drain with diversifying too much.

Do you have coworkers who invest heavily in alternative investments?

Why it is nearly impossible for doctors to amass ultra wealth

Posted on September 17, 2017January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

I’ve been relatively quiet on the online frontier as of late, owing mostly to work-related insanity and also helping out family affected by the recent hurricanes. Fortunately, everyone is safe and recuperating from mother nature. It is also eye-opening to be reminded how dependent we are to electricity and modern amenities.

The online financial community tends to be a unique bunch. Very resourceful. Innovative. Self-sufficient, to say the least. Most of the modern world isn’t. Mr. Money Mustache is able to construct a fancy rental property out of materials harvested out of craigslist. The average American probably wouldn’t even think to own a generator (myself included) let alone know how to operate one. Case in point. What happens when you lose electricity for two days? All of your food spoils. What happens when your local supermarket also loses electricity for two days? All of their perishables perish. Boy is it challenging to rebuild that infrastructure. Best of luck to those affected by the recent hurricanes…

Back to the finance world.

The curse of high income earners

High earning families can consider themselves blessed and cursed simultaneously. High earners, by default, have a good velocity of income. Income is a good—it helps pay the mortgage, bills, vacations, and food. Doctors, for instance, are the quintessential white-collared service worker. In exchange for a decade of subpar wages and long hours, we all will typically enjoy very comfortable wages and long hours. I guess that this is a formula that isn’t necessarily a bad trade-off. However, having a stable income and long hours actually prevents you from becoming wildly financially successful.

I know that we all have different ways to define success. My view of success is more of a balance between being financially comfortable and having the health to enjoy it. Fortunately most people in my profession will be able to achieve this. However, we will never be able to buy this home in Malibu:

This average looking house will cost you a cool $8 million.

That’s right. How many Whipple surgeries would you have to do in order to afford this house? Answer: Not enough.

And that is the sad truth. Our level of ability ensures that we can enjoy a good living, but it also prevents us from reaching the extreme levels of wealth. No amount of hustle where your hustle translates into direct income will allow you to achieve this.

Let me reiterate.

If you have to exchange your time or expertise for money, you will never have the time or energy to amass insane amounts of wealth.

How to overcome the curse of high income earners.

There truly aren’t many secrets to success. If you want to own that chateau in Malibu, you have to come up with a plan and keep executing until you achieve it. You must also have luck (lots of it), but it’s all about creating opportunities.

Motivation — You have to be motivated. The problem with motivation is that other aspects of your life will be sacrificed the more motivated you are, and the higher the goal that you wish to achieve. We’ve sacrificed a lot to become physicians, but that sacrifice actually had a clear cut timeline (medical school, residency, and fellowship). Most of us make this sacrifice in our twenties. This is a time in our lives where we might have the energy and ability to sacrifice family, friends, and health to reach those goals. Our goals may change as we get older. It’s a whole lot harder to come up with a plan to own a $22 million home in your thirties with a family to support when you earn $200,000 a year than if you were 22 years old with only a smile to your name. Think about it. The stakes are different, even though the challenges are the same. The blogger who earns over a $1 million a year probably started out with no career path. Where you start out can dictate how much motivation you can funnel into your goals.
Realistic Income strategy — You have to come up with a plausible plan to hit that goal. If you want to afford an $8 million home, you won’t get there selling lemonade. You need to own a franchise of lemonade stands. Likewise, you need to develop a means for your income to be generated passively and reliably. What’s the secret to a reliable strategy? That, of course, is the million dollar question.
Luck — You’ve got to have some luck. The beauty of luck is that the more frequently you put yourself out to risk, the more chances you’ll have to get that break. It all boils back down to how motivated you are to do it, and how much potential there is in your game plan.

What are your thoughts on amassing ultra wealth?

How good is the real estate market now?

Posted on January 6, 2017January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

I love watching those home renovation shows where investors buy a run down crackhouse, bring in their demolition crew, and sell the property a three-times the original purchase price. Amazing eh? We know these situations are the exceptions, but how good is real estate for building wealth?

I’ve certainly zero experience in the rental or the buy-and-hold markets. The only real estate I deal with is my own home (which I sunk a foolish amount of money into fancy kitchen appliances) and a REIT fund that’s losing money in my IRA. Is real estate an investment vehicle that I hope to venture in one day? Sure. Everyone else including my mother-in-law dabbles in it and is convinced that it will be the savior for my retirement.

I believe that the financial freedom advocates are divided in their opinions of real estate. There are plenty of early retirees who are convincingly opposed to owning any home—I think several have written manifestos against property ownership. Whether or not their math is sound, the opponents to home ownership are typically the ones who basically spend their days traveling the world and country hopping.

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Sure, but what if I wanted to stay put? Is it worth sinking in a chunk of change to own a piece of America? Let’s see:

Scenario 1: Upper East Side Manhattan Co-op

This unit is in a prime location on Park Avenue in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. You can run to Central Park and exercise every day if you’d like. I wished that I lived in a place like this. This is a 1000 sq. ft unit on the market for $1.1 million. This is more than twice the size of my apartment rental in NYC! This is actually a reasonable price per square foot. Let’s look into some statistics:

Prewar building with an HOA of $1,582 a month! If you owned this unit outright, you’d still be contributing about $2000 a month for HOA and utilities! The property tax on this unit will run about $90,000 a year. So all in, your annual upkeep on this co-op will be about $114,000! Oh yeah, don’t forget that it is also customary to tip the doorman during the Christmas holidays too. A look at the Zillow pricing history shows that the pricing for this unit has been relatively stagnant over the past few years. So much for appreciation of this property’s value:

We love dealing with 7-figure properties!

In fact, a recent report by the Eliman Group shows that Co-Op sales in Manhattan for Q3 2016 has been declining:

Courtesy of Douglas Elliman Q32016 report. High profile real estate guys in the city. www.elliman.com

Let’s suppose that you are looking at this property for investing in cash flow. I’d say that the unit could command perhaps $3000-$3500 in monthly rent as a one bedroom unit given its great location and building amenities (read: doorman).

How can one possibly get positive cash flow on this unit?

Answer: You can’t.

The rental income wouldn’t even be enough to pay for the taxes, let alone the doorman’s salary through the HOA fees. This is the sad truth of about the NYC real estate market. Many of the owners are either holding companies or longstanding owners who bought the units decades ago at the fraction of the price. Fortunately with the prime location of this co-op, the value of this property will not diminish significantly over time.

Lesson learned: If you have a huge chunk of change that needs to be parked somewhere, New York City isn’t a horrible place to put it

Scenario 2: Condominium near the University of Indiana Campus in Bloomington

I arbitrarily picked a college town in a relatively inexpensive city. Consider that you’re trying to find a unit near the university to rent to graduate students. A quick find shows that there is a condominium within walking distance of the campus:

You can get a whole lot of land for little money in the Midwest!

This is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit for $105,900! Modest amenities, great location, and in a relatively good complex. I would be great for two graduate students or a small family. Further details show that the unit does have an HOA of $245, which I am not thrilled about in a small suburb, but not the end of the world:

Sewage and trash are included in the HOA, so that might shave off $60 in utilities a month.

How can I get cash flow out of this property?

With a downpayment of $20,000, one could probably negotiate a 30-year mortgage to cost a little less than $400 a month. If you include the HOA fees, you’d be paying about $600 a month at the minimum to maintain. I think that one could rent out each bedroom for $500, or the entire unit for $950 a month.

Let’s say that you rent out this unit for $950 a month, and your costs are $650 a month for mortgage, HOA…etc. Assume that you only get to rent this unit for 11 months of the year. With $300 of ‘net-profit’ per month for 11 months of rent, you get about $3,300 per year. With an initial downpayment of $20,000, you’re actually getting a 15% return annually. Not bad!

This amount is not going to fund your doctor lifestyle, at least it’s positive cash flow. Let’s say you buy five or ten of these units and rent them all out. You hire a maintenance person or even a property manager. You suddenly have $10-15k a year of extra cash flow for owning approximately $1 million worth of properties that you’ve leveraged with a little over $100,000 in parked costs.

Not bad, eh?

How have you used real estate to fund your cash flow? What suggestions to you have for me to get started with real estate?

Ways to generate ancillary income as a doctor

Posted on December 31, 2016January 30, 2021 by SmartMoneyMD

Diversification is a path to reduce risk. This applies not only to our investments, but also our income. As doctors, we are sort of like one-trick ponies. I pretty much only do a handful of procedures and clinic-related activities. Most doctors are paid based on their clinical productivity.

If you are injured and cannot perform your typical duties, you are screwed. Sure, there’s disability insurance, but the cost of coverage does balloon up for most doctors in mid-career. Many of us pay almost a full month’s salary towards disability premiums in order to cover one year! This is not insignificant especially if you are trying to repay loans or build up a nest egg.

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What can doctors do to diversify their income?

Keep your primary profession

Okay, so this isn’t diversification, but it does boost your income stream, allowing you to have more to invest. The easy option is to do what you are already doing. You can rarely find something outside of your medical profession that can offer you a similarly high hourly rate. And it won’t be anything new that you’d be doing compared to your primary job. Add some shifts if you are a shiftworker. You can opt for locums opportunities or moonlighting (working a second part-time job) if your primary employer allows for it.

Some radiologists that I know actually do locums opportunities when they’re on vacation! There are many primary radiology jobs that offer significant amounts of time off. Sometimes family schedules prevent you from taking off for vacation (spouse’s job or kids’ school schedule)

One of my friend’s spouse is an ER physician. He lives in the Bay Area, but actually has several part-time options in the midwest, where reimbursements are higher!

Do things that are peripherally related to your career

I frequently receive surveys conducted by medical consulting firms with monetary compensation. Sure, the surveys will never replace your day job, but it can bring in another $50, $100, or even more depending on how involved the questionnaires are, and how well research in your profession is funded. I have noticed that professions that utilize medications more frequently will have more options for medical research related survey work.

Speaker fees: Let’s say that you are an expert in G6PD deficiency. There is a new medication on the market to treat it, and the company needs experts to vouch for their product. Yes, you will become a shill for a faceless corporation, but you can get paid for giving a talk. You won’t get rich off of these events, but it does add ancillary income.

Consulting: Likewise, you can either be an expert in the science or an expert in the process of certain treatments or specialties. You can start your own company and offer your technical knowledge of a particular subject. I have seen full-time clinicians start side consulting businesses, only to transition to them full-time when they become busier!

Find occupations outside of your primary career

I once met a doctor who ‘retired’ from clinical care at age 42 to start his financial corporation. I’m not sure what he actually does, but perhaps he sells insurance vehicles or offers wealth management services. That’s a significant 180 degree change, but I guess he likes what he is doing and is probably good at it.

From seeing what other money bloggers out there are doing for ‘side hustles’ or ancillary income, there is a wide range:

Food delivery / messenger: Delivery services like Postmates, UberEats, and other startups need drivers and messengers for the lazy! I’m not sure what the going rates are for messengers, but based on the pricing for customers, I’m assuming that one could command anywhere from $10-$15/hr depending on your region. @financialpanthe has reported doing this on his free time, and also the consequences of looking like a lawyer in the process! Kudos to him. I would assume not to risk running into my patients while I was making a delivery.

Uber/Lyft driver: This is the foundation of food delivery. I suppose that this is a fun way to meet interesting people while making some money. Sam @FinancialSamurai appears to have an interesting arrangement to activate his Uber activity whenever he wishes to drive across town to run an errand anyway. Nice. It is also less stressful since he already has multiple income streams that don’t require a set time commitment. Would I want to pick up an Uber passenger on my way to work? Uh, probably not.

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Real Estate: This is a big one. If buying your shares of VNQ (substitute your favorite REIT) isn’t active enough for you, you can invest in the real estate market. Plenty of money bloggers deal with real estate, like @FinancialSamurai @RetireByForty and others. There is definitely more involvement (or headaches) in real estate, but you can leverage your investments and generate significant cash flow while having a physical piece of investment property. I certainly have not had the energy to dive into the real estate market, although I would be willing to venture into this source of income if the right opportunity comes around.

Online sales: eBay, Amazon, and Etsy will have you covered. If you have a source of items that other people might want (like your handmade Russian-style finger puppets), you can have a wide audience with limited initial investment. There is still a cost of time involved in the sales process that can be time consuming. Remember, as a doctor you are trading your time and skills at a relatively high hourly rate for your services. If you are making online sales, you are doing the same thing at a lower rate. But hey, diversification is diversification.

What other means have you discovered to generate ancillary income?

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

How Shark Tank Makes You A Better Doctor

Posted on June 5, 2016 by SmartMoneyMD

shark tank will make you a better doctor I like watching the business ideas pitched on Shark Tank. In this weekly show, aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their services and products to wealthy investors. Not only do I feel inspired by the entrepreneurs while watching their pitch, but I also learn about the thought processes of successful businessmen (women).

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“You’re dead to me.”

Kevin O’Leary, one of the investors, has a demeaning quip whenever the potential investment opportunity is no longer viable to to him. It sounds horrible, but it is an effective approach to running a business. You can’t take things personally in business. What are your goals? Do you plan to make friends or run a profitable endeavor? Don’t expect that you’d be able to run a successful business AND run a profitable business all the time? The last thing you want is to dwell on issues either out of your control or not in keeping with the plan.

This mentality also works in medicine. We are bombarded with information overload—an excessive number of clinical patients, excessive e-mails, and hiring/firing of staff. Prioritize and only sweat the details that you have control over. Even those issues under our direction need to be prioritized. I’m not a big fan of last-minute decision making, but trying to do everything at once is also a recipe for disaster.

Set your plan. Automate, and reassess frequently.

Learn to Hustle

Successful entrepreneurs hustle. They work out of a corner of their living room or build their businesses out of their garage. They eat and sleep their work. Some of them put their families’ livelihood on the line. As a doctor with a stable income, you probably don’t need to be so extreme, but hopefully you understand that there is a correlation between hard work and success.

You will be more productive in your work if you hustle. It may be more stressful, but remember that you are always compensated at a rate that is dictated by efficiency. I have seen plenty of Internists spend an extra 2-3 hours closing notes and following up lab work after they’ve signed out. This is mostly a problem with our healthcare system, but we still have to adapt. How can you function during your work day more efficiently so that you don’t have excess work to deal with after hours? Are you able to take a short lunch break? What about following up on labs in between patients and consults? If you are a dermatologist seeing fifty patients a day, can you get a scribe?

Hustle while you are at work. You might need to do it for a few years, but no matter how much you work, you probably still have a better lifestyle than you did while you were in training. After you hit your financial goals, you can cut back.

What characteristics of an entrepreneur do you mimic?

(Photo courtesy of Flickr).