Episode 289: Why High-Income Women Physicians Still Live Paycheck to Paycheck

Dr. Latifat is the author of the Amazon bestselling books Done With Broke: The Woman Physician’s Guide to More Money and Less Hustle and The Power to Choose: The Woman Physician’s Guide to Financial Liberation and Life on Your Terms. She is also the founder of MoneyFitMD, a financial empowerment platform designed to help women physicians achieve financial independence without sacrificing their well-being .

In this episode, she dives deep into the paradox of high-income earners—why many women physicians who make hundreds of thousands still feel broke. She explains the mindset, systems, and steps needed to break free from the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

Key Takeaways:

1. You can earn a lot and still feel broke.
2. Awareness and clarity are your first tools for change.
3. Budget systems build lasting freedom.

Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome to MoneyFitMD
00:45 Why doctors feel broke at $500K+
01:58 Understanding your financial behaviors
05:10 The power of clarity in money management
09:22 Emotional safety vs. financial security
12:50 Practical steps to shift your money story
17:30 Building systems, not just saving money
20:15 Final words of encouragement from Dr. Latifat

Connect with Dr. Latifat:
📖 Power To Choose: https://a.co/d/76tiNbC
📝 Done with Broke: www.moneyfitmd.com/dwb
☎️ Book A Call: www.moneyfitmd.com/call
💡 Instagram: @moneyfitmd
🔗 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-latifat-akintade-0137b5200
📩 Email: drlatifat@moneyfitmd.com
👥 Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/164eQz53kD/
💸 Youtube: www.youtube.com/@moneyfitmd

Resources Mentioned:
Bank Rate: https://bankrate.com/

The Power to Choose: The Woman Physician's Guide to Financial Liberation and Life on Your Terms
🔗 https://moneyfitmd.com/ptc/
🔗 https://a.co/d/76tiNbC

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Transcript

1:23

welcome to Money Fit MD the podcast for women physicians who are ready to reclaim their financial freedom grow their wealth and create the rich life they deserve without sacrificing their joy and sanity I'm your host Dr Latifah a physician a mama a money coach for women physicians and your biggest cheerleader on this journey to building not just wealth but time freedom confidence and a legacy that you'll be proud of enjoy this episode it doesn't take a lot to live paycheck to paycheck regardless of how much you're making you could be earning $400,000$500,000 and million dollars and it could still feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck in this episode today you're going to learn and understand why that may be the case for you but also some practical things that you can do right now so that you can change the narrative I'm Doctor Latifa and I'm a physician founder of Money Fit Andy author of Dawn with broke and the power to choose which was our recent best selling book that we released on Amazon you can find it there and on this episode I really wanna help physicians women physicians learn what they can do if this applies to them you know as someone that has had the pleasure of coaching like so many physicians I've coached hundreds and hundreds of physicians we have a money school for women physicians one of the things that I realized when people join our community or one of the biggest complaints that I hear is I'm earning money I'm earning more than I ever thought I was gonna earn I don't feel like I'm splurging or doing anything special yet it doesn't feel like by towards the end of the month I'm seeing that I'm getting low I'm getting low I'm getting low right to the point where that may now start to affect you in ways that you don't want and so in this episode today I'm gonna have a sample of a hypothetical budget that actually is not a typical for physician families you know for some of you guys that may be watching or listening to this episode if you're not a physician you may not get it you could go oh my goodness 300,000 and you're living paycheck to paycheck listen coming closer you don't know it until it actually has happened to you so it takes a lot of humility but also it takes understanding of the lives of physicians because it takes a lot for physicians to show up in clinic and not be able to pick up their kids early it takes a lot like you are seeing doctors seeing you in the hospital that means they may be on call in order for a doctor to be on call if they got kids they need like child care all of those things are not luxury especially if you don't have family around especially if you don't live in a place where you know anybody it doesn't oh you may have family and they just got their own lives you know you have parents that are like you know we raised you we're out of here right and so it does not take a lot and so I'm gonna go through all some parts of a budget it's not a complete budget but I'm gonna give you just an idea of what a theoretical one looks like based on what I've heard people tell me and for some of you guys that are listening to this episode it's gonna help you realize like oh I am normal I am not a typical there's nothing wrong with me and there are things that we can do things that you can do to change the narrative you know as someone that didn't know a lot about money no one taught me about finances you know like many physicians I thought once I started earning six figures like you can finally stop getting paid like way less than I would if I was working the hours I was at McDonald's and what I realized was that earning a good income high income only does not make the biggest difference it has to follow with the management of the money and decisions that can make a difference when it comes to your outcome so if you're a woman physician and you're ready to have money you're ready to stop living like you're earning resident salary when you're an attending this is an episode that you want to listen to the end but also I want you to do me a solid and also the physicians in your life I want you to make sure you share this episode because there's so many people that are feeling alone there's so much judgment and shame when it comes to money and people are not even speaking out like literally people are now speaking out but this is more common than you know and as someone that has the privilege of hearing so many physicians share their inner thoughts with me just know that this is more common and in fact if you were gonna do a good study and on honest study and really see the data among women physicians which is my audience you will see that this is more the norm than a typical but that's part of my work my job and my work is to make sure that we change the narrative by the way side note if you're looking at my fingers now like Latifa your nails off yes it is off I pulled that sucker out anyway it's time for me to get my nails done but I haven't had a chance yet I will do it at some point but make sure that my nails well I don't wanna stick my middle finger at you make sure that my nose does not distract you from the super duper important information and by the way if you're watching this on YouTube and you have not subscribed yet make sure you click that subscribe button because what it does is that it helps you make sure that you don't miss the future episodes that we do and our goal is to change the narrative for women physicians we want us to be known as people that are good with money but even more so than what people think about us we wanna be great at money we wanna have freedom we wanna learn how to manage our finances so that we can stop worrying about retirement we can start having more security we can start living the rich life we deserve and we can start having the power to choose which is the name of my newest book you can find it on Amazon we'll make sure we'll put a link here but also the idea of the power to choose is that you can start to keep like we need to like change the data around burnout we want physicians to be able to have the freedom to practice medicine and live on their terms you know one more information which is kind of crazy I had the chance to speak at um you know a couple of weeks ago at an event virtual event and I asked the audience how long they've ever taken away from medicine and the the most common answer was less than a week less than a week less than a week 2023 to 2024 I decided that I wanted to take some time off so my family and I I quit my WT job my husband who's an it guy let go of many of his clients who took our three kids that were ages 5 to 10 at that point we took them out of school and we traveled around the world for a year guys this will heal you in ways that you did not even know like this is like healing to your soul and then recently we took some time two weeks traveled in Asia unplugged from almost everything and guys rest is not a luxury rest is needed and in fact if you've never taken more than one week more than two weeks and if you haven't taken if you can take six weeks off to like recover heal defrost it's the best gift that you can give yourself so part of all of this is how do you take the income that you're earning right now the $300,000$250,000 $500,000$1 million that you're earning right now and how can you actually make it work for you to help you have all the things that you want in life retirement kids educational funds not worry about money a sabbatical if you choose and most importantly the option to leave if you want because that is the key part and making sure that positions are well okay so I'm gonna turn to this and by the way yes there are gonna be people that are listening to this that are gonna be like all judgy judgy and you what the heck why would anybody earn that money and this ain't about you this may not be the episode for you go sit down in the corner I'm here to help people that need help and we don't judge here no shaming no judgment we don't do that in this space OK so if you're in the YouTube right now make sure that you comment below and let me know your thoughts and if you listen on the podcast I would love it if you left a review about what you thought about this episode OK so the example that I'm doing and I hope you guys can hear me this is a little bit different cause I'm standing moving around but hopefully you can hear me and my audio person will do like some magic to make this work but anyways if I keep if you like this format by the way let me know because I may be doing more episodes like this and if I'm gonna be doing more episodes I may need to get more blingy blingy gadgets to make sure that my audio comes out well if I'm gonna be moving around so let me know in the chat box if you like this format better than the other format and and I admit mix things up a little bit but back to my conversation so here's what we're talking about today this is a typical budget and I'm using this based on someone that's taking home a post tax income of like $20,000 okay I know if you're a resident or a fellow you like 20,000 is a lot of money it is actually a lot of money but again it does not take a lot for money to go down the drain it is harder to make money than to spend it it is easy to swipe swipe swipe to spend on things that don't even feel luxurious don't even feel like extra and by the way when I explain this I went into more details in the Money School for my members and the Money School is our 12 months coaching program only for women physicians where women can learn how to take the income that they're earning to earn more money but also to grow their finances grow their net worth and live the life that they want and one of the things that the doctor said was that this was the knowledge is something that they're gonna be applying even in their businesses okay so just FYI you may want to integrate this into your business your clinical practice but I'm talking about personal finance here so imagine you earn $20,000 post tax you got two kids you know I got three but you know many people have three two kids you have student loans you have rent or mortgage you have food you pay insurance you have utilities and maybe you go to the restaurant this right here does not include investments which is really really important but the point I'm trying to make today is about the spending and how small changes can actually lead to an amplified result so two kids childcare I mean my kids are a little older now but when we were going to childcare with infant education and stuff

so that I could work be on call from 7:00 till 6: 11:43

00 or whatever I needed to do average child was about like a thousand dollars for not like bougie child care like decent child care was like a thousand to 12 so imagine if you have two kids that are less than 5 years old it is not atypical for you to spend 25 to 3,000 dollars yes I'm in California you people that are in Texas you're like let's hear how come you all spend that money in California well you know we pay for the ocean I don't know what else to pay for if it's to be California I have no idea but the bottom line is 25 to three thousand dollars is what I'm estimating based on what I've heard again for family members that are child children less than five for some people your kids may be going to private school and it may actually cost you more than this and that's something that I'll talk about in a second student loans I put two thousand dollars to thirty five hundred for some of you guys you'll be spending way way way more than that if you have average student debt is about $250,000 or so so if you have $400,000 $500,000 you can see how this can actually be higher than that and especially if you're you know depending on what kind of like payment plan or payment options that you're doing that can really be higher or lower if you have no debt rent or mortgage I put 25 to 5,000 some people pay ridiculous amounts and I'm saying ridiculous amounts intentionally because I want you to be intentional about where your money is going I'm not a frugal person I don't even budget strictly I talk more about spending plan and I believe that what you're spending is should amplify what is important to you and not just like what people say is important like what really is important to you but some people pay like $10,000 in mortgage right depending on where they live some people like if you live in San Francisco your home doesn't have to be fancy for it to be like super expensive I went to med school in San Francisco and I remember even back then which is like I don't know 2,006 or so the only place that I could find that was renting for $1,000 less than $1,000 a month looked like a crime scene I did not want to live in a crime scene so I did not rent that place right but those things can really add up and if you have two kids you're not trying to live in a studio with two kids you know you don't need like 10 bedrooms but a studio that ain't it right food wise food can be very very variable depends on like do you have restricted diet like one of my good friends whose kid is very very allergic to things so she has to this is not like uh would be nice this is like critically life saving potentially to make sure that she was getting her food at places that she can trust but for a family of or you could say 15 to 2000 dollars depending on where you are food is important I don't shop at Whole Foods personally cause I don't think it's better than Trader Joe's I love me some Trader Joe's I love me some Costco those are like my mainstay I'm not a representative for them but I really should be so if you know anybody guys not Amazon Costco Trader Joe's and they're looking for like brand partnerships hook your girl up those are my two favorite places to shop I'll talk about them like all day every day so food can get pretty expensive and then insurance I merge them together here but when I talk about insurance it could be life insurance disability insurance it could be car insurance umbrella policy all of that can highly highly range between 700 to 18 hundred or even way more if you're doing things like whole life insurance and guys this is why I'm not a huge fan of whole life insurance for majority of physicians they're only a small sub group of people that actually benefit from whole life insurance before they have wealth yes people would probably like this is one of the strategies the wealthy use not to grow their wealth they use it to amplify to protect their income they use it for like to amplify what has already growing they use it to protect their wealth to grow the wealth that they already have it doesn't help you build wealth if you're in the building wealth category you should probably not have whole life and the thing is this it is more likely to be sold to you than anything else because the people that sell it they get a huge commission off of it right so yes is there benefit to whole life very very small percentage of people that are like super like less maybe 5% of the top I would say benefit from whole life or the lower people that are not going to invest and if you're watching this video you should be investing so if you had whole life I would highly highly consider getting out of it because when you have whole life on yourself and your kids you can easily pay like $2,000 or so a month and again this stuff is sold more than it should be sold so you may need to get out of it so insurance is a huge one and I can see how even that can make a huge difference if you take that money that you spend in a whole life insurance cancel it get term life that cost you maybe a couple of hundreds of dollars you can just by doing that cut down on the expenses by 15 hundred dollars and what does that mean fifteen hundred dollars fifteen hundred dollars means now you can potentially put that money towards investing and growing into something that actually will get you more financially secure and actually give you wealth that needs to be protected so even I don't have whole life insurance am I gonna have it at some point I may when I'm so bored and I like so much money I don't know what to do I've maxed everything else in the world I've maxed my all my pre tax all my post tax I'm like like bought all the properties all of that then maybe I will buy whole life insurance but for most people that are building wealth it is actually not helpful for you except for some small exceptions you know there's like family history or like health issues and you want to get your kids protected because of that maybe there's like childhood ill issues then yes but otherwise if you're building wealth I don't recommend whole life utilities phones I put 700 to 25 I know and again there's a huge range and I'm putting ranges for a reason so that you can see that these things are essential for most people so if you're looking just at what is my money doing you may go it's just child care it's just student loan it's just rent it's just food insurance it's just phone it's just restaurant but then the thing is how much are you actually spending in the category matters and if you can go towards the middle or lower you can see how you can start to like crop out so you know a thousand here 500 there and before you know you may have start having like 500$5,000 more left at the end of the month that you may not even have had before right again guys I think the mistake people make is they focus on this access they just look at the title but they don't actually look at am I spending what feels that is applicable to the season that I'm in and the income that I'm in I'm a huge fan of people earning more in fact when I'm talking to people about money I focus more on like investing and growing than like cutting because there's only so much you can cut and I don't believe in frugality right but but the math has to match you cannot be taking on 20 k and spending like 20 k a month and again we're not even investing which should be the first thing that's happening but I'm just putting this for like you know for demonstration purposes and actually let me go ahead and add up this let me give you the total of what this is so I should have done this before but you know I didn't and it is what it is it is what it is and again the goal is not this is not about race to the bottom this is a matter of like spending in a way that makes sense based on where you are so this right here if I looked at the top of the line this is $19,300 $19,300 so yeah you're like it doesn't feel like you're splurging but there is a range to this right and there are small intentional things you could do like disconnect your Amazon like literally you can I've done that where I canceled my prime like disconnect your Amazon because if Amazon is like it's so convenient there's no friction between you and the purchases it's like oh yeah we well we need some more booties they can't find like their booties or we're just gonna go ahead and like order it you know all of that stuff so the thing is you have to just make sure that you are intentional about what the money is actually doing so that you can you can actually grow your finances so one of the things you can learn from here don't focus too much only on this access focus on where you are what are the small changes that you can make right now that takes things away from where it's not adding value so that you can actually have money that amplifies that grows that goes into things that is maybe important for you so No. 1 is it's not about like just the huge things it's about going deeper and I like to say be like a pathologist what does a pathologist do they look at things really really closely they're like oops I saw one villi that's like turned to an angle at 35 degrees instead of 40 degrees it must be abnormal they're intentional right they start looking global picture first if they see nothing abnormal they zoom in if they see nothing abnormal they zoom in and then they start looking big on segments segments segments right so look at your money like your pathologist because you're gonna be you're gonna thank yourself later for it and the No. 2 is like just don't spend like what everybody and their mama says they should spend because at the end of the day most people in America are broke most people in America don't even have an emergency fund most people in America like are stuck to their job because they are not doing what you are learning to do here which is learn how to make your money work better for you and then the last thing of this is this guys this is not like we're not celebrating the lowest spending month that's not what we're about here but the things that I put here are the cost of living they're not cost of growing they're not cost of building walls they're not the cost of like freedom they're just the cost of living barely living and if you're barely living on $20,000 you're not even able to have any seeds to use to be able to grow anything else to be able to be free pay for educational for them those things are not getting cheaper and most of the guys watching this your kids are not gonna qualify for financial aid so this is about building habits but also it's about generational wisdom because if you don't learn how to do this how are you gonna be able to like help your kids learn how to do this but also remember that when you're spending money for most physicians that are earning money clinically you are exchanging time for money even if you're a radiologist if you're a pathologist about a GI doctor like clinically we are technicians so we're exchanging time for money when we're practicing clinic clinically yes you may have a surgical center and all those which can be passive or semi passive income but when it comes to your clinical skills and your clinical income it is active so you're extending time for money so I want you to start thinking about the money that you're spending on cost of living and liabilities things that don't increase in value over time as literally taking your time away from your family so if you can make small changes and cut and start having $3,000 extra per month that you can invest $3,000 a month for 12 like for 12 years and 10 years is not $300,000 it's way way more than that and I can literally pull out a calculator right now and you can actually go on Google compounding interest bank rate dot com I like their apps their calculators literally you can just go there right now look at the numbers and see what that would look like for you in 12 years it will make such a huge difference that you can see that it doesn't actually take a lot in order to grow your net worth and make sure that you have money for retirement so I hope this has been helpful for you what I'm gonna do is if you really like this episode we're gonna attach another episode that we did in the past about how like two kinds of paycheck to paycheck living cause not all paycheck to paycheck living is the same some of it one is kinda good one you don't want so I'm gonna make sure my team includes the link below so that you can get to that episode and get your learning on and again if this has been helpful for you make sure make sure make sure that you leave us a comment leave us a review on podcast on YouTube and by the way if you have a doctor in your life a physician in your life that you kind of like or love or tolerate you absolutely absolutely have to get them a copy of our newest book this is our best seller The Power to choose this is literally a guide that I wrote that will be the tool to help women physicians in this battle against burnout we're not stuck you're not trapped but if you're feeling like you don't have a choice right now if you believe that you're trapped in your life in relationships that are not healthy for you in a job you hate in a city you hate and you're like but money this is the book you want the power to choose and for those non physicians that are leaving that are watching this if you know any doctors in your life if you know even your doctor get them a copy go to Amazon right now order it and next time you have your doctor's visit just go there and say I thought you would like this and give it to them you may change their life this is better than like Starbucks gift card this is better than a massage if I mean I do love massages so we can do both hahaha but this is way better than so much crap that we buy and this is the gift that literally keeps giving this has been my own recipe that I've applied in my life I've taught women physicians that pay me a decent amount of money to help them transform their lives and now you can get it for just about $20 what's stopping you it's on Amazon power to choose the power to choose by Doctor Latifat Akintade I hope this has been helpful I love you guys I appreciate you I'll see you in the next episode