Meet the New Guy: Dr. Matt Huckabee - The FinancialMD Show - Ep 034

noemedagatan
Aug 5
18 min read

Summary:

· How I Got Here: Matt’s Story [0:00:40]

· The Military Doctor Setup [0:04:01]

· From Residency To Active Duty [0:06:41]

· Biomedical Engineering To Psychiatry [0:08:35]

· Matt’s Interest In Personal Finance [0:11:07]

· Getting Ahead [0:14:29]

· The Power Of Time And Discipline [0:17:15]

· Accountability Matters: The Value Of A Financial Planner [0:19:17]

Jon Solitro: All right. Well, welcome to today's episode of The Financial MD Show. We're so excited today. We are bringing in someone that you're going to see a lot more of. Today, we have with me, Dr. Matt Huckabee. He's a psychiatrist in Alaska, and I won't give away too much more than that. He's going to share a little bit about himself and how he ended up there, how he ended up here, on The Financial MD Show, and everything in between. So, without too much further ado, we're psyched to hear your story, Matt. Tell us about yourself.

Dr. Matt Huckabee: Jon, thank you so much. I appreciate that kind introduction, and I just want to say I'm really excited to be partnering on this project with you.

Jon: Yeah.

How I Got Here: Matt’s Story [0:00:40]

Matt: I think this is a great platform, and I think we can do some great things with it. So yeah, I appreciate your kind introduction. I do practice in Anchorage, Alaska. I'm a board-certified psychiatrist. I do outpatient psychiatry, and then I run our Electroconvulsive Therapy service here in Alaska. I'm the only psychiatrist in Alaska doing that service. So, pretty proud of that. And I've been here about five and a half years. Just a little bit about me: Before that, I did my residency training at Michigan State, which is where I believe you and I met and partnered together on a couple of other projects and connected through residency didactic. So that was a great partnership in the making and we didn't even know it.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: Prior to that, so I am a DO. I know we're calling it The Financial MD Show, but that's okay. I'm a DO. I trained at Lincoln Memorial University, which is a small school in East Tennessee. That's where I grew up. So, I did my college at Vanderbilt University. I'm an engineer by training and found my way into medicine. I went to high school. I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was raised there, but born in Florida, but I kind of claim Tennessee as my home turf. So, yeah, that's sort of the short and sweet about me. I'm married. I have four kids. My wife is an Air Force pediatrician. We met in medical school and that's why we're here in Anchorage. So, she got sent up here and we've been here, like I said, about five and a half years now. And, yeah, four kids. The oldest is eight and the youngest is one, so it's a pretty busy time for me so.

Jon: Oh man. So, about how much do you work up there? What's your schedule like these days?

Matt: Yeah, so I have a pretty great schedule. I work 4/10s, so I work Tuesday to Friday, which is really nice. So I have Mondays off which is great; allows me to spend some time with my kids to have that day off and then, you know, if my wife is post-call or something like that, we each kind of get the Monday off and it's nice to spend some time together. So it's a pretty great schedule for me.

Jon: Yeah, excellent. Okay. And your wife, Lindsay, being in the Air Force, what is her day-to-day? What does work for her look like as an Air Force physician?

Matt: So, you know, every Air Force base is different in terms of what they offer, and I'm going to talk specifically about pediatrics, of course. Their specialties are different. But for pediatrics, you know, some of the bases are just outpatient clinics. Some of the bases around the world have, you know, like a nursery where they actually deliver babies and the pediatricians take care of the babies in the nursery. And then some actually have an inpatient service as well. So JBER, which is the base here in Anchorage, has all three of those. So it's a small inpatient service. Mostly, their inpatient work is like a nursery, so that's babies just born and then outpatient clinic. And so, they're mostly in the clinic, and then they alternate weeks on call and weekends on call. So, she'll either have, you know, it's like every month or so, she'll have a week of call and then same thing with a weekend, and so, rounding on the nursery, being on call for the ER, that sort of thing. But when she's in the clinic, it's pretty much, you know -- I don't know -- 7:30 to 4:30, that kind of thing, standard work hours.

Jon: Yup. There are usually people asking and wondering about the military doctor setup. They cover med school. You go to residency wherever you match, but then, essentially, you've got to work somewhere. What's that look like?

The Military Doctor Setup [0:04:01]

Matt: So, the whole process was foreign to me. So we met as first-years in medical school. So she was in already before we even got together, so I kind of married into her choices, which is totally fine, but I can outline the process in real brief. And you know, actually, I was kind of thinking it might be helpful to do even an episode on that.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: And there's a lot more detail we can go into because our process actually was pretty unique, and that involved both the military match system and the couple's match in what was then the DO-only match exchange now. So, essentially, the way it works is a program called HPSP (Health Professions Scholarship Program), you typically join that program and join the military before you enter medical school. You can't really start that particular program, to my knowledge, once you've entered medical school. So she signed on with the Air Force prior to enrollment in medical school that summer before first year.

Jon: Yup.

Matt: So then you get a sign- you know, you have to go through checks and, you know, there's like a physical and all kinds of stuff. But, you basically sign on, you get a sign-on bonus, and then they pay for your entire tuition and then they give you a stipend while you're in school, presumably, to cover books and room and board and that kind of thing.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: So then you pay back your four years of school. So you're in school for four years. You're technically in the reserve during those four years in school.

Jon: Okay.

Matt: And then you enter… and then you enter the military match, which occurs in the fall. And the way it works basically is -- and I'll speak for pediatrics again. So pediatrics, say -- and I'm making up numbers here so bear with me but -- say the military wants 10 pediatricians in so many years. They'll say, "Okay, we'll allow 10 pediatricians to… 10 medical students to be matching to peds."

Jon: Yup.

Matt: Well, the military maybe only has space to train five of them -- let's just, again, making up numbers. Well, those extra five well then what they'll get, that's called a civilian deferment. So those first five might match at one of the military pediatric sites and then the extra that the military needs above their own ability to train, they'll allow a civilian deferment. And what that basically means is the military is giving you permission to enter the civilian match or the regular match.

Jon: Okay.

Matt: Then you go and you do the exact same process you do as a regular medical student. You do your interviews and you go through the regular match, and then if you match peds wherever you go and you do it and you're still, you know, you're in the military. You're in the reserves, like I said, but you're training at that place. And so, to make a very long story short, Lindsay ended up doing that and trained at Michigan State for pediatrics.

Jon: And then they get… they have to do four years after that then, correct?

From Residency To Active Duty [0:06:41]

Matt: Yes. So basically, you're correct. So the active duty payback is year for year after residency. So when you're finishing up your residency, you meet with someone that's called the consultant and that's kind of a fancy term, but basically, they're the person in the… and again, Air Force, so I only speak for them. But you talk with this person who's the consultant. They manage the pediatrics placements worldwide.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: And so they say to you, "Okay, here are all the bases worldwide that we're going to have open for a pediatrician in your cycle and then you rank those.” And you rank, I think -- I forget how many you put on your list -- 20 or something.

Jon: It's kind of a similar matching process, so to speak.

Matt: Yeah, similar except, you know, the process is shrouded in even more mystery. But, you know, they give credence to like time in service if you've had prior time in service, all those kinds of things, similar the- I was talking before about the military match system. If you want one of those civilian-deferred spots as opposed to the military training site, obviously, there's points in the military system and that is if you have prior service, like if you were prior enlisted or something like that, you get more points basically.

Jon: Okay.

Matt: So, anyway then, you make this wish list of sites and then they tell you, hey, you're going wherever. And that could be Germany. That could be, you know, Alaska.

Jon: Yeah, okay. Very cool. So she's working on base now. You guys have four kids. What are the ages?

Matt: Well, let's see if I remember. My wife will kill me. No, I'm just teasing. It's eight, five, we just had our boy turned three, and our other boy turned one.

Jon: Okay. Is it two boys and two girls?

Matt: Yeah, two girls first and then two boys, so we had a nice mix.

Jon: Okay, that eased you into it. Yeah. We had the one girl and then three boys and…

Matt: Well, they're all unique and challenging in their own right, let's just have that.

Jon: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. So, you yourself, you said you did, was it Vanderbilt was undergrad?

Biomedical Engineering To Psychiatry [0:08:35]

Matt: Yup. I went to Vanderbilt for undergrad. I studied biomedical engineering. And at least at that time, a third of the biomedical engineering undergrads went into medical school, third went to industry, and a third went on to grad school. So, I was part of that third that went on to medical school. You know, interestingly enough, an engineer is not the sort of personality type that you would think would go into psychiatry.

Jon: Psychiatry, right. Maybe…

Matt: Here we are, you know, and my journey to psychiatry might be a worthwhile story to tell at another date because I think, you know, as another part of my job, I also precept DO students from Pacific Northwest University in Yakima, and I tell them a lot about… I talk a lot about psychiatry, of course, but I talk a lot about other stuff because I think it's really important for them to understand that their preceptors were just like them and went through a lot of the same stuff. I mean, this stuff is unique to medicine. The match and specialty decision, it's very unique to medicine and scary, and finding somebody that kind of gets it and has been there and found a path to a specialty that was not on their radar can be really validating for the students. So, maybe another topic, but just, yeah. So I found my way from engineering to psychiatry, so here we are.

Jon: Okay. So you're working. You've got the kids. You're doing life in Alaska. You and I got introduced in residency and you were already pretty adept at personal finance at that point. I think you were probably a PGY-4 then, and I had done one of our lectures and you guys had said, well, we at least need to get our disability insurance. So I remember going through that process and loved that we kept in touch and, you know, kept talking; did a little background work on the Financial MD Residency, which is our online course -- still in the works -- but still excited about that. But, you know, continued to send stuff back and forth and talk about different things, personal finances, and here we are today. Share with me why you're interested in this because you definitely have… you know, you have personal finance as more of an enjoyable hobby than most physicians for sure.

Matt: Yeah.

Jon: You've read up on it.

Matt: More than most. Yeah, more than most people I would say.

Jon: Probably, yes.

Matt: Yeah.

Jon: To where… you know, you just love to talk about it and we just chat about and it's something fun for you to do, and for a lot of people, that's not the case. Hence, why I have a job but…

Matt: Fair enough.

Jon: Yeah. How'd that all come about?

Matt’s Interest In Personal Finance [0:11:07]

Matt: Well, maybe I'm a nerd. I'm not sure, but you know, I flew into it, you know. So for -- it's funny because I've thought about this question. I figured you were going to ask this question and I've been thinking about it. And there wasn't sort of this like moment that opened my eyes or anything like that where I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have to get to know this." I think it was kind of a series of things. I think probably one of the earliest memories, when I graduated 8th grade, my folks -- let me preface this by saying -- my folks are not… my folks are not super personal finance-savvy. They're not bad at it. But they're not into it, you know? So, they're just kind of average folks. And they gifted me $1,000 into an E*TRADE account.

Jon: Hey, okay.

Matt: And they each picked an individual stock. Now, we'll talk about the pros and cons of picking individual stocks, right?

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: But it was Disney; my mom emotionally picked Disney, and my dad picked I don't even know what the company was. Some tech company, right? So, it was my first sort of foray into this and, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. I was a freshman in high school, right? Like what kind of an idea was that?

Jon: So, this would have been late ‘90s?

Matt: Oh, something like that. I don't… I don't know. I would hate to do math.

Jon: The tech boom is still going on, you know.

Matt: Probably so. Yeah, probably so. Yeah, maybe pre-Google IPO, if I remember correctly, right? So anyway, long story short, probably day traded, I don't know, lost the money, put it in some other individual stocks. It was terrible, right. It was terrible. And so I was kind of like, okay, I got to learn how to do this right. You know, fast forward, doing odd jobs in the summer and working… I worked in an ice cream shop in high school and that kind of thing and sort of started thinking like, hey, I kind of want to do something with this money, and you know, started, you know, asking questions of people, like my grandpa had a financial guy and started asking him questions. And then found my way to another guy who is actually still active in the personal finance world. Ramit Sethi runs a blog called, “I will teach-” or at the time, ran a blog called "I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” and he subsequently segued that into a Netflix special and now another successful podcast called, "Money For Couples," which is really great, by the way.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: Psychology and money -- another time. But anyway, so I started listening to him. I read his book and that just, you know, sort of lit me on fire and I guess the rest is history. I found Jim Dahle early on and then…

Jon: White Coat Investor, yeah.

Matt: White Coat Investor. So the rest is history and it was sort of one of these like, you know, I think the math and engineering nerd in me sort of something about, you know, compounding interest and we're off to the races.

Jon: Yeah. And I think not only that, but like your interest, ability to enjoy reading up on it and getting into blogs early on, a lot of that stuff, I think, added to it because you just… you know, when you get into a topic, you just, you know, you devour it. You like really get into all sorts of stuff about that and that was just about the time when some things were getting big like Ramit Sethi and Jim Dahle and things. So it was kind of a perfect storm in that sense it sounds like.

Matt: Yeah.

Jon: And so, what are some things that you feel like you were able to do then because of that knowledge that maybe put you ahead of some of your peers?

Getting Ahead Of Peers [0:14:29]

Matt: Well, I mean I think the easy answer is, you know, save early and often, invest early and often. I mean, I remember… so a little bit of my backstory. I took some time off between undergrad and medical school. So I took a few years off and I worked a research job at Vanderbilt. So I worked in a research lab as like a technician kind of thing.

Jon: Okay.

Matt: And I distinctly remember having a conversation with other research assistants. So these are usually, you know, post-baccs or PhD students or folks like myself kind of doing some lab work as a way to kind of boost their resume post-college.

Jon: Okay.

Matt: And I distinctly remember having conversations with multiple of them about, you know, putting money in the retirement plan and taking advantage of the match. And, you know, we're all young and broke at this stage of our lives, right? Like very little money we're talking about. But that adds up, right? And when you figure it in, you know, the compounding interest of even a few years, it makes a big difference. And so, you know, the ability to recognize the value of that early on, I'm certainly seeing dividends from it now.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: So that's been huge. I think, you know, yeah, it just… it's just one of those things that knowing that you need the time and that the time is just really, really invaluable, especially in those early years, you know, just sets it apart.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah, and I tell the story, I see more and more stories as I go on. I met with a pathologist. You know, pathologists make fine average money. It's nothing that's typically going to blow the doors off or anything, but he was 62, 63 and had accumulated between 10 and 12 million at that point from nothing other than just saving what he could and, you know, was a good saver, lived a fairly frugal life, and look back and as we were chatting about it, he's like it's not. It wasn't that complicated. And, you know, when I saw what he was doing, it was still just in index funds and, you know, and it was great. So it was just a really cool success story to see, you know, when you kind of set it and forget it, stay the course and let time do its work and compound this. It’s just every single senior physician or retiree that I talked to looks back and says, "Man, if I had started earlier." "Man, if people just knew the impact of time."

Matt: And I think you hit the nail on the head, you know. Any physician, I mean, I'm going to… I'm going to go on a limb and say this. Any physician, you know, that gets to mid to late career, you know, without a significant nest egg, it really has a spending problem. I mean, honestly, that's what this boils down to. I mean, any physician; even my wife is a military pediatrician, right? So, we're not… you know.

Jon: Yeah.

The Power Of Time And Discipline [0:17:15]

Matt: It's not like her salaries in the top tier of physicians, you know, but understands the value of that compounding interest and those small sacrifices over time, right? I mean, we're not talking about, you know, huge incremental numbers, but over time it adds up to be a lot and especially when you factor in that time. So you're right, I think, and mastering that discipline is super critical. And I think that's part of the passion of this project, right, is because if we can catch med students or residents.

Jon: Yes.

Matt: Because I'll tell you, coming out of residency -- and Jim likes to say this -- when you come out of residency, you know, he says, I can track the trajectory of a physician's financial life by what they do with their first paycheck out of training.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: And I think it's so true. I think it when I… when it happened to me, it's so true, right, because that first giant paycheck hits your bank account.

Jon: Your money, yeah.

Matt: Whoa, this finally, and I think it's, you know, there's an element of delayed gratification, of course. No one's going to… and no one's going to dispute that. But forcing yourself to have that discipline is critical because going backwards and trying to work backwards is a lot harder than saving early and often upfront, then you just get used to spending less.

Jon: Yup. Absolutely. And it comes down, and we say this in our lectures and we say this wherever we go, of just that discipline of, you know, whether you're born with it or you learn to grow your discipline or you just find some ways to use technology to automate and make yourself look more disciplined than you really are like, whatever.

Matt: I will say that's one thing I learned from Ramit, you know; automation, automation, automation. I teach my med students the same thing. You know, when you set up your direct deposit -- and we're getting in the weeds a little bit -- but when you set up your direct deposit, there's nothing to say you can't set 15 percent, 20 percent, whatever, to that side account that you don't see. And then you're kind of, you know, forcing yourself to realize that you're, you know, you're what goes in your normal checking account is a lot less and that's what you get used to. So it's still a lot more than residency but, you know, you're actually, you know, sort of saving on the side secretly kind of thing. And that makes a huge difference.

Jon: Yeah.

Matt: You know, nothing about this is complicated but it's not easy.

Accountability Matters: The Value Of A Financial Planner [0:19:17]

Jon: Nope, yup. Absolutely, 100 percent. And that's what, you know, and any of these guys would say, not to toot our own horn, but just the value of a financial planner. Sometimes it's just if you know, hey, it's just going to be valuable to have somebody else that's keeping me accountable, that's pushing me to take some of these steps that I might, I'm going to be honest, I might not take on my own, you know. So, it's a lot of self-reflection and just being honest with yourself to say, can you do this on your own? Some people can, you know. Dahle would say, what, maybe 15 percent, 20 percent of physicians can really be a do-it-yourselfer. And we run into those from time to time, and that's great. But there's enough that just realize, hey, I'm too busy or it's just not my thing.

Matt: Totally. I mean, you know, look at all the people. I mean, the COVID pandemic was a perfect example of people panic selling. I mean, I'm on social media. I'm on Reddit and these places and people talking about, you know, going to cash and sitting out and all these kinds of things and it's, you know, you're exactly right. Somebody to kind of protect you from that emotionality, especially in swings, is a really critical thing for sure.

Jon: Good. Well, anything else you'd like to share with us for our intro to Matt episode here? Any final thoughts?

Matt: No. I'm really excited to get this project started. I've got some, you know, some great ideas for the podcast, kind of, as we already talked about. I'm really excited to, you know, push this project forward and see where we can go with it.

Jon: Awesome, yeah. Well, we're super excited to have you. I'm glad to be partnered up with you again and excited to see where this goes and just continue to get some great info out to young physicians and residents and students and see if we can start to make some impact in the financial lives of these folks.

Matt: Sounds great to me, Jon. I really appreciate it.

Jon: Okay. Well, it sounds great. Well, guys, we will wrap up then. We will see you guys in the next episode. Make sure that you're checking this out. If you're listening on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts, please leave us a review. Let others know. This is how it gets shared. Five-star views are great. And if you're on YouTube, you know, comment, share, like, subscribe; do all that kind of stuff. This will also show up on Instagram and TikTok. So if you need even shorter stuff, then get on Instagram and TikTok. We'll put 30-second videos, 2-minute videos, whatever you need there to squeeze in some good financial information. So, check us out at financialmd.com. You'll get links to all of that. With that, we will see you guys next time.

Thanks for joining us for another Financial MD Show. Be sure to head over to financialmd.com to get more in-depth resources on financial tips for physicians and don’t forget to join the Financial MD community group on Facebook, where physicians at all stages of their career gather to share tips and get ideas on achieving true financial success. We’ll see you next time.

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Resources and Links:

· HPSP Fact Sheet: Air Force Medical Service -- https://www.airforcemedicine.af.mil/Media-Center/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/425437/hpsp-fact-sheet/

· E*TRADE | Investing, Trading & Retirement -- https://us.etrade.com/home

· I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi -- https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/

· White Coat Investor -- https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/

· Financial MD Email Address – info@financialmd.com

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