Ep 32. Jason Mizell, MD -- Teaching medical students about finances

Doctor Money Matters

Episode 32 Jason Mizell, MD

First I would like to thank you all for continuing to listen to the podcast and also for those of you who have joined the Doctor Money Matters facebook group. Group has grown by nearly 50% last month and the discussions have been spirited. Please continue to add your physician and medical professional colleagues so they can join in the conversation. Some of the popular topics recently have been determining your retirement number and Dr. Meru, an orthodontist in Utah who was recently profiled in the WSJ about having $1M in student loans.

On this episode, I interview Dr. Jason Mizell, a colorectal surgeon at University of Arkansas Medical Center. He started a class to teach 4th year medical students about finances. As I mention in the intro to this show, most of us were never taught these subjects in medical training leaving us to figure it out for ourselves, often at great expense (in terms of fees or mistakes).

Dr. Mizell like many of us felt lost in dealing with finances when he first came out of training. I will let him discuss that during the show, but he realized that he was probably not alone and decided to do something to help his colleagues and students. This has become a very popular class and hopefully spreads to other schools. Perhaps we should have some of these topics addressed before medical school starts to avoid a Dr. Meru situation.

Thank you Dr. Mizell for starting this conversation with medical students. It’s great to see someone taking initiative to help educate our younger colleagues. Doing it in the structured way he does really brings value to these students. Maybe some of you are already helping out by informally bringing up these topics with your students. If you do please let me know how, you can tweet to me or send me an email.

Sometimes once you start learning about financial topics, the basics such as interest, inflation, compounding can seem very simple but there is an article I read recently that had 3 quick questions about these topics and the vast majority of people could not get more than 2 of 3 correct. If you don’t understand these fundamental concepts, you will have a hard time getting ahead financially.

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