Money decisions shape who we are and help form the values we hold dear. That goes for physicians like you. That goes for business owners like me.
Let me show you how.
A few months back we sold one of our family cars. It was a Honda CR-V, base model with no frills and an earthy brown color to boot. The back door rattled when we drove it around town. The driver’s side AC vents didn’t blow cold air. The tires were balding and the brakes were whistling. The power lock option on the key no longer worked, so we had to lock and unlock the car the old-fashioned way. The black interior made me dread taking it out during Fresno’s hot summer months.
But my kids LOVED that car. And as ready as my wife Cara and I were to move on to something a little nicer and newer – deep down – we loved that car too. The car my brother-in-law so perfectly named “the glitter turd” (remember the earthy brown color? It was a little sparkly too). We called it the GT for short.
That car carried us through life. One of the most special times of life that we will experience.
You see, back in January 2016, Cara and I needed a replacement car fast. Our Ford Escape’s engine was failing. Our daughter was about to turn three, and we had just found out we had another baby on the way. We also didn’t have a penny to our name, as we were still working through the start-up phase of Panoramic (which I started in the summer of 2014). There was a lot of promise in Panoramic, but little cash. It became necessary for us to trade in the Escape and find the most reliable small-sized SUV we could find, to carry us through the next few years. Thankfully, I found the GT online at a local dealership and was able to leverage our trade-in for a 7-year loan costing us less than $200 per month. The GT only had 20,000 miles on it, so it had plenty of life to give.
It wasn’t the prettiest or most comfortable car. It didn’t have any bells or whistles (just the eventual rattling sound). But it was affordable and reliable. It brought our kids to daycare, preschool, grade school, family events, hangouts with friends, dinners out, and frequent trips to the grocery store and Target.
We took several vacations up and down California in the GT. San Diego. Carmel. Disneyland. Palm Springs. Napa. Hollywood. Yosemite. Sequoia National Park. It shuttled us back and forth to my parent’s cabin in North Fork countless times.
And it never let us down.
It was a refuge for my kids. A place they could listen to their Music Together songs and early educational CDs from Auntie Stellina. It was a place for Cheerios, Goldfish, fruit strips, granola bars, and candy (and inevitably tons of empty wrappers). It was a landing spot for church crafts and school papers long forgotten. It sheltered small plastic figurines, old Happy Meal toys, and magnetic tiles that Dad (that’s me!) also liked to play with.
It was the vessel of so many memories.
So when I handed over the keys to the new owner, I wasn’t just saying goodbye to a car. I was saying goodbye to a part of me. To a piece of our family. It made me feel truly sad.
But this sadness wasn’t brought on by just the nostalgia of family memories.
And that’s when I realized. This car was also a symbol of the sacrifice Cara and I had made for Panoramic.
Let’s rewind to 2014.
Cara and I were facing one of those pivotal moments in life. Cara was a history teacher of eight years at the time, and was surprised to find out she wanted to be at home more with our daughter Elle, who was 10 months. I was working with a local investment management firm that served high net worth households, and was also starting to realize I wanted to experience the lives of my kids as they grew, to be “present” and not a slave to my job. So, we started asking ourselves questions.
“Why” are we doing what we’re doing? What’s important to us? If we kept living the way we are, would we have any regrets?
It’s at this moment that we made the difficult choice to place a higher priority on time and flexibility over success and money. It’s one of those things you hear centenarians say you won’t regret, something they wish they had done when they were younger. But still, when you’re seeing most of your peers go about it the tried-and-true way of working a 9 to 5 job to have a better life, to be able to afford a better life for their kids, and setting themselves up financially well for the future, it makes it hard to deviate from the norm.
It’s not like we didn’t want any of those things, either. Those things are great! But we were just hoping there was a way we could find a better balance of both. A balance where we had a little bit more time making those fun memories with our kids, and participating in those key milestones.
And that’s something our current jobs couldn’t offer. Even though we tried. Cara tried asking about a part-time schedule. I asked about working from home and getting more vacation time. To no avail.
And so, we said goodbye to money.
Cara resigned from her teaching job. A few months later, I left my job to start Panoramic. And even though my name is registered to the business, Panoramic was our firm. It was a joint decision.
And it was a joint sacrifice…
We said goodbye to Cara’s $60,000 a year salary (very nice in a moderate cost-of-living area like Fresno in 2014). And on top of that, we lost the school district’s amazing healthcare benefits (this one really hurt – we never had a copay!). We said goodbye to my $55,000 annual compensation, as well. If you’re doing the math, this meant we had a net income of zero dollars!
Then we cut EVERYTHING from our expenditures that wasn’t pure necessity.
That included our cable subscription (we were one of the early trendsetters), meals out, and any form of entertainment that had a price tag. We learned how to play cards, cultivated our enjoyment of reading, and old DVDs. We mastered low cost home cooked meals. We traded vacations for long walks on local trails.
But that wasn’t enough.
We had to change the way we even thought about necessities. Clothes from Target or Walmart weren’t the cheap option anymore. We turned to hand-me-downs and consignment shops. We programmed the AC to come on at higher temps and the heater at cooler temps. Fans and blankets filled the gaps. We stretched all of our home supplies further so that we had to buy them less often.
At this point, you’re probably thinking this sounds pretty uncomfortable. Why would anyone do this in exchange for more time and flexibility? Well, we weren’t planning on this being our life forever. But it was necessary if we wanted to give ourselves the best chance for this business endeavor to succeed. So, we sucked it up and pushed through.
This is no different than what many of you did through schooling. You delayed gratification because you had an end goal in mind. The cost seemed worth the benefit in the long run. It was the same for us—We had approximately $15,000 sitting in our savings account at the bank. We ended up blowing through that quickly in the coming months as we covered our meager living expenses, and I paid the startup fees for the firm.
Thankfully, I had the bank of Mom & Dad to lean on as I tried to grow the firm. But as you know, that comes with its own strings attached, no matter how you slice it. My parents were very gracious in giving us money, but we felt a strong desire to pay that money back as soon as possible, just like any other debt. Whether that’s debt aversion or gratitude, the emotional toll the debt held (until it was eventually paid off years later) was a notable one.
Again, just like many of you whose parents help foot the bill for college or even med school. Even though it might have been a gift, I see so many physicians with a financial goal to try and pay their parents back for their generosity.
Panoramic had an extremely tough first year, as you might imagine. Shockingly, few people wanted to entrust their finances with a new firm headed by a wrinkle-free 31-year-old without gray hair. But I stuck with it and continued immersing myself into the world of doctors, learning as much as I could about the demands you faced financially and in life. I worked hard to understand the most optimal financial strategies for doctors and developed actionable advice to your many questions. By the end of the first year, I was bringing in just enough money to cover my business expenses. Unfortunately, that did not include a salary for me to take care of the family. So, we were still broke (and therefore still borrowing).
Panoramic made a bigger leap in year two and I was able to cover about half of our very meager family expenses. Thankfully, with the momentum I had been lucky enough to build, I projected that we would be able to fully cover all of our expenses by the end of year three. I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But of course, year two was the year our Ford Escape broke down. Horrible timing, right? We had already given up so much and needed every break we could afford. Having a car break down was not what we had in the cards. It made for a very stressful situation, and I wasn’t sure exactly how it would end up.
Thankfully, that shiny brown CR-V showed up in my Cars.com search. It saved the day for my family and provided a path for Panoramic to survive, and eventually thrive. Little did I know that that car was going to provide for us way more than we bargained for.
And I’m forever grateful.
While we couldn’t see the finish line, and had no way of predicting how everything would turn out, our mindset was resolute, in that the chance we were taking would be worth it no matter what. That the regret would have been most strongly felt had we not attempted to pursue more time and flexibility through leaving our jobs and starting a new business. Despite the hardship. Despite the debt. Despite the sacrifice.
And that has helped shaped who we are as a family, who I am as a business owner, and the values that together we hold dear. We value time over money. Experiences over things. Relationships over screen time.
As my favorite financial author Carl Richards puts it, money equals feelings.
So as you walk through this journey we call life, I encourage you to make money decisions you’ll be proud of someday. Choose the path that most aligns with your values and leads to a life with fewer regrets, even if it requires you to be bold or take a risk. Life is too short not to.
And as I’ve come to learn since starting Panoramic, many of you have your own “old car” stories. I’m talking about the cars that brought you through schooling and training. I think even a couple of you still drive those cars! So I encourage you to post what color, year, make, and model that car was that helped get you through those tough years. But remember, it got you where you are today!
Panoramic helps physician families through pivotal life moments like this. We leverage our deep experience working with physicians to help you align your financial plan with what’s most important to you. If you’d like to learn more, please click “Work with Us” at the top of the page.