From Burnout to Financial Freedom

In this episode of Paging Financial Freedom, Dr. Daniel Shin, surgeon and real estate investor, and Lila Kaplan, former Wall Street professional and certified financial planner, sit down with Dr. Olga Deengar, board-certified internal medicine physician, certified life coach, and host of the Coffee Playdate Podcast, to discuss physician burnout, identity shifts, entrepreneurship and what financial freedom truly means beyond medicine.

Dr. Deengar shares her journey from growing up across three countries to becoming a physician, navigating residency and motherhood during the COVID-19 pandemic, and ultimately transitioning from full-time hospitalist work to life coaching and entrepreneurship. She opens up about the challenges of balancing medicine, family and personal fulfillment, including the difficult decision to send her first child to live with grandparents during residency because of the demands of medical training.

The conversation explores physician burnout, career transitions, mindset coaching, financial freedom versus financial independence and how doctors can intentionally design a life aligned with their values. Daniel, Lila, and Olga also discuss entrepreneurship, family goal-setting, multiple streams of income and why many physicians struggle with identity outside of medicine.

Key Takeaways:
03:34 – Olga shares her international upbringing and journey from Russia to Israel, Canada, and eventually the United States.

09:33 – Why success in medicine didn’t fully satisfy her and the realization that something was missing.

13:26 – The DAMA Method and her framework for helping physicians achieve meaningful goals.

22:17 – Treating your family like a business and creating a shared vision with your spouse.

24:05 – Burnout versus fulfillment and the importance of intentional self-care.

27:25 – Building multiple streams of income and creating greater financial flexibility.

29:18 – The difference between financial freedom and financial independence.

37:22 – Olga’s advice for physicians feeling stuck and unsure about their next chapter.

Daniel, Lila, and Olga emphasize that financial freedom is about more than money—it’s about creating options, aligning your work with your values, and designing a life that supports both professional success and personal fulfillment. They highlight the importance of mindset, entrepreneurship, intentional planning, and building income streams that provide flexibility and control over your future.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

• Paging Financial Freedom Podcast on Spotify
• Paging Financial Freedom Podcast on Apple Podcasts
• Learn more about Dr. Daniel Shin’s Real Estate Fund: CereusRealEstate.com
• Learn more about Lila Kaplan’s Real Estate Investment Management Company
• Dr. Olga Deengar’s Podcast: Coffee Playdate Podcast

Transcript

00:01
Welcome to Paging Financial Freedom, a podcast about doctors and spouses and the journey to financial freedom through real estate and tax savings.  I'm Dr. Daniel Shin, a surgeon and real estate investor.  might know me on social media as the Doreenian Doctor or the founder of Sirius Real Estate.  And I'm Lila Kaplan, former Wall Street professional, certified financial planner,  and the person on a mission to retire my orthopedic surgeon husband in the next five years. I specialize in apartment investing.

00:29
helping doctors and their families build true financial freedom beyond their  W-2 incomes.  If you're interested in achieving tax-efficient financial freedom through real estate, you're in the right place.  Let's get started.

00:44
Welcome back to another episode of Paging Financial Freedom. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Daniel Shin,  and I'm joined today as always by my co-host, Laila Kaplan. Hi, everyone. Today we are joined by Dr.  Dhingar. um So I wanted to just do a quick little intro for you, if that's okay, and then I'm looking forward to our conversation today. Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to be here. Dr. Olga Dhingar is also known as Coach Olga MD.

01:11
board certified internal medicine physician, certified life coach, and host of the Coffee Playdate podcast. And I was really happy to go on to your podcast a little while ago. We had a really fun episode together. So I'm really happy to have you back on our podcast today. So, Oka, tell me a little bit about your podcast. It sounds pretty fun to me. Coffee and Playdate? Those are my two favorite things. I love drinking coffee. I'm a cappuccino girl.

01:39
And I love play dates. I have three boys, there's six, three and one. So I'm right in the thick of it. We have a lot of playground time and  lots of different play dates  around our city here. So I just wanted to merge those two things and make the podcast into like a fun game  while we sip on coffee. So as Daniel knows, I ask a few interesting questions to start off and...

02:04
kind of make the mood a little more relaxed. And the podcast really is geared towards  aspiring entrepreneurs  to help kind of inspire them and give them  a little bit of that motivation that they might be missing  by looking at other people who are successful, who have done well  in their respective fields. And most of my guests have been doctorpreneurs,  which has been so incredible to hear their journeys. Okay, I have three kids too,  six,  five,  and  three.

02:34
So we're almost around the same ages. Yep.  How do you like it?  Definitely chaotic. um We do have a little bit of help at home with a live in au pair.  But overall, I love it. I'm an only child. So this whole sibling dynamic is definitely something new to me. But, you know, I came from a corporate career. And so I love doing what I'm doing, you know, transitioning from corporate to, as you put, entrepreneurship.

03:04
And, you know, it's  fun every day. All right. So,  you know, a big focus of our podcast, we talk a lot about real estate and investing, but  at the core of it, it's about this sort of like journey  through life and one's career into entrepreneurship and financial freedom. Really, if we could just go a little bit back to your history, I read that you were actually born in Russia. Is that correct? I was. Yeah, I was born in the USSR, which doesn't  exist anymore, obviously.

03:34
And we moved from there when I was three years old. Then I actually grew up in Israel. So I spent seven years there. And then when I was 10 years old, I moved to Canada and I'm Canadian. That's where I spent the majority of my adult years. And are you still in Canada now? Where are you located? No, I live in Florida. I've been here since 2024. And when I, uh,

03:58
go through the history here. looks like  a lot of the uh background in terms of the training for medicine happened outside of the US and some of it happened in the US. Could you go through that part of your life as well?  Absolutely. So I actually met my husband in the library of our medical school in the Caribbean.  It's a place called Saba University School of Medicine. And um we immediately connected over our interests of music. we  both like electronic dance music. And we had

04:27
literally the exact same iTunes library of our favorite artist. What we didn't know at the time is that we actually lived 10 minutes apart back in Toronto, our parents' homes. But we've never met, which was wild because when we added each other on Facebook, we had like 50 or more friends, mutual friends together. So I think it was really meant to be.

04:52
And then we did our internal medicine residency in Connecticut at a place called Norwalk Hospital.  And that's a program affiliated with Yale University.  It was a great training program. And then I stayed on  in Connecticut to work as a full-time hospitalist in one of their rural community hospitals there. And I loved that job  while my husband was pursuing a fellowship in pulmonary critical care at the University of Connecticut.  So Connecticut also plays a big part in our lives because we spend a lot of time there.

05:22
And that's actually where we had our first son. He was born in the midst of COVID, like the peak of COVID 2020. And we had no family around, the borders were closed, there are a lot of travel restrictions and we didn't know what to do. mean, hiring a nanny on a resident salary is like financial suicide. You know, it's a lot of money, especially with all of the hours that we had to put in in our residency.

05:51
So I decided to take a few  extra weeks off from residency to be able to take care of our son at home,  which was a tough decision. uh once I got back, I had to make up  all of the different ICU shifts. And we still had 24-hour call in the ICU every three days.  We had long ward shifts.  So trying to raise  a little newborn, like a six-month-old,  while working 18-plus hours a day with the commute and everything,

06:20
It was not practical.  we had to,  yeah, we had to actually send our son to Canada for six months. And this is our first son to live with his grandparents,  because we just couldn't do it. That's rough. Yeah. I mean, being a new mom in the midst of all this and then having to do residency, I mean, that's a tough job. At least I had my parents around. man, you guys went through a hard time there, especially around COVID as well. Yes, exactly. oh

06:49
It was  heartbreaking.  I cried for like a week.  really couldn't  believe we had to do that, but it was  in his best interest. And  he came out just fine. He turned out fine. He's very happy now. And  I'm just happy that  we're able to be together as a family. Wow, what a heartbreaking decision that you had to make. I feel like certainly some of that was the particular circumstances of COVID, but

07:16
I also feel like you were both in training at the time  and the medical training system is so unforgiving that it makes you make a lot of these really, really tough decisions.  think  in my family's case, we would certainly have had children, I think a few years earlier, if not for my six year urology residency. We  wanted to wait until years four or five or six before having our first kid because we knew that.

07:44
in the first few years, you're really not,  I was like an absent husband basically. So we waited and then, you you get older, it gets harder to have kids.  certainly that played a role as well. So after  you had that really challenging situation during COVID, how soon afterwards did you decide to more kids and what part of your sort of training or career were you in at that time? Yeah, so our second son was born three years later in 2023.

08:11
And I was a full-time hospitalist in Connecticut still at the time. And I was working a lot of hours. I was putting in about like 60 to 70 hours being a newer hospitalist, getting into the workflow and just trying to adapt. I also was kind of crazy, but I was picking up extra shifts on the weekends because I knew this would help to pay off our medical school debt, which was like over $600,000 combined at the time.

08:40
So I was working a lot  and  when we finally did have  our son when he came,  I actually went back to work exactly 12 weeks later,  but not in Connecticut.  We were transitioning to Toronto at the time because my husband was finishing up his fellowship and we had to wait  for his visa. So we had to go back to our home country.  And so that was...

09:04
It's kind of crazy because I had a weekend to move my entire life from Connecticut to Toronto and I was starting my  job as a full-time hospitalist  in Toronto that Monday.  I think I was,  it's fair to say I was like a workaholic at the time,  but I didn't want there to be any gap. mean, God forbid I miss a single day of  taking care of patients. I was kind of like obsessed  with this doctor identity and I

09:33
I've gotten really good at  being a doctor and taking care of patients and it was fulfilling for some time. But then  I started realizing that something was missing and thinking like, is this really it?  I go to work, I have my set schedule, I see my patients, I do all my notes, et cetera, but  there was something missing. That's what I felt like. And I think that experience really informs your sort of transition to what you're doing now.  And, you know, when I was  reading more about

10:03
your background, sounds like there's a really nice combination of work that you do both in the coaching world now and still in medicine. So could you tell us about that transition? When did it happen and what really drove that decision? Yeah, that's a great question. So in 2024, my husband got probably his dream job in academic critical care medicine in Florida. So we had to move to Florida and

10:31
I became a stay at home mom. So I completely transitioned from being a full-time hospitalist working more than full-time  to  not working at all, being at home with the kids. And I had different responsibilities.  I had to figure out how to do some of the housework that I wasn't used to doing,  you know,  initially. And then we put in systems in place. We have a housekeeper that helps us,  but that was a really tough identity shift for me  because I just wasn't used to it.

10:59
And luckily I was  working with a life coach at the time  and she taught me  the cognitive behavioral  model, is, know, whatever situation, whatever circumstance you're faced with, you can think about it in a different way. could choose your thoughts around that,  which then  reflects what your feelings will be and then translates into what actions and results you get.  And  once you figure that out, I mean, you can transform your entire life. And the coaching is just such a

11:29
powerful tool to do that.  So in 2025,  when I delivered my third son and I was actually hospitalized with a bloodstream infection after the delivery,  I was stuck in the hospital for five days, four nights and broad spectrum IV antibiotics. I felt like a prisoner  because  I just wasn't used to it. I was usually the doctor taking care of the patient. I wasn't  ever really the patient before that.

11:57
um I just felt really trapped. So I had to really  use all of the mindset techniques and all the coaching that I received to try to get myself through that period in my life.  And I did. And that's when I figured out if I can do it, anyone can do it. I can teach others how to do this. And  that's when I started my life coaching business. um I'm a life coach for women  physicians and professionals,  and I use a framework called the DAMA method.  It stands for Driven Aligned

12:26
building momentum and taking action,  which I think are the four main pillars of uh how you can set goals and achieve them  in the way that matters most to you.  So in a way that's very  fulfilling and intentional.  So that's what I've used in my life and I've seen some of my clients, um you know, the big transformations that they had, especially when they were at crossroads  in their lives.  And I love it. I'm just so passionate about it. And I just, want to improve

12:56
other people's lives  in any way that I can. And if there's a way that I can help  and serve others, like that's what I want to do. Yeah. And can you just talk a little bit more about the coaching program? I've never had a life coach. I certainly, you know, have looked into it. um How would your program help these women physicians?  And I don't know if this in particular  practice or internal,  you know, I have tons of

13:26
female doctor, friends as well that have reached out to life coaches. So just would love to hear about your coaching program. Absolutely. So the DAMA method stands for Driven, Aligned, Building Momentum and Taking Action. And that's what it used to help my clients get through any problem or any type of goal that they're working on. So first we become driven. So figuring out what is it that you really want? What outcome are you looking for? And then

13:54
taking a deeper dive in to see  why do you really want this?  I think Daniel has said it multiple times before,  really get honing in on that core why, asking yourself why over and over and over and over again until you get  to the bottom of it, to the core reason. So once you figure out your compass and your North Star, this gives you a direction,  something to work towards.  Whether you have a goal  to improve your relationships or

14:23
change your career or whatever area of your life you're working on,  you need to have a direction. So after becoming driven, we have to make sure that this goal aligns with your core values.  Do you  value quality time with your family? Are you  someone whose  service to their community is very important to them?  So everybody has different core values. And once you figure out if your goal truly aligns with that,  you can then move forward to the next step, which is to build momentum.

14:53
by really taking that very first action step and figuring out like, am gonna make this happen? Well, you gotta work backwards from your goal.  I think that's the key  to really figure out where you wanna be and then what action steps  you need to take in order to get there.  And once you take that first action step, the second one becomes a lot easier and smoother and you just  gain this confidence and your identity starts to shift. um And that's when you get to where you wanna be.

15:22
And then the A stands for taking action. And this is where we take even more action  to get you beyond the goal that you set for yourself. So really keep pushing  for you to  achieve the goals that you want.  Also, the coaching program, of course, has accountability. I think that's one of the most important things  is to constantly check in with yourself,  check in with your coach to see how you're doing. Are you making progress? Are you on track  to achieving your goal?  And if you're not, you need to course correct.

15:52
And that's where being a coach, being more of like a thought partner or a guide helps you kind of pivot where you need to. I'm kind of grinning a little bit because right after this interview, I've scheduled a chat with my coach who I've had a couple of years and, you know, it's really helped me through a lot of this transitional period, especially as I've had a bit of identity shift as well, going from full-time to local attendance medicine and starting my real estate fund, serious real estate. So.

16:21
You know, why do you think that there is such a need for this  in  physicians? Because I know that I wish I'd gotten a coach years ago, but it never even occurred to me. But especially, you know, in year two or three of practice, when I was totally burnt out, honestly, it probably would have been really helpful. So what do you think is it about medicine  and this kind of career path that requires  honestly, intervention and coaching? Yeah.

16:50
That's a great point. I mean, we're so conditioned to follow the yellow brick road. This is how you do things and you go through medical school, the residency training  and  specialty training  and you've always had this kind of blueprint to follow.  But when it comes to life coaching, there is not really a blueprint. You got to come up with it yourself.  And I think that's a place where a lot of physicians feel uncomfortable  is really like

17:16
Sitting down, thinking about what do they really want, what matters to them,  maybe even writing down something in a journal or jotting it down. That's not something that I would have thought about when I was in training and being a full-time hospitalist.  But I think it's important to also seek out the different resources that are out there, especially if you're feeling stuck.  If you're feeling stuck, if you're burnt out, you have to make a change. That's going to be the next step.

17:45
and how you do that is up to you, but  there are all sorts of different resources that you can use. Life coaching is one of them, I think is a great tool  to really change your mindset and change your thinking around certain things in your life. So my husband, orthopedic trauma surgeon,  very, very typical doctor. He is not  in any of the business that I'm currently in, doesn't want to get involved.

18:11
I've always said, you know, let's talk to somebody, let's get you a coach, you know, read some books about, you know, self-help. And he is just not open to that. So Daniel said it earlier, the word intervention. I would like to, you know, intervene into his head and really build a more healthy mental state for him so that he can.

18:37
handle his stress a little bit better since he has such a high demanding job. How do I talk to my husband about  life coaching without sounding like fluff to him? Laila, how subtle can you be?  Not very. ah You know,  it's really hard and I,  you know, I've always thought about what can I do to help him because he

19:07
You know, he works out,  he focuses on his physical strength, but not necessarily his mental health. So  what can I do or say to my spouse to,  you know, get him to look into a different path of focusing not only about his body, but also his mind? Well, it depends what he would be open to. Is he someone that you think would be open to  journaling or meditation or breath work?

19:36
None of  the above.  No. You know, he uh did a marathon last year, which I was very proud of.  I mean, that takes a lot of like mental stamina as well. But, you know, besides that, besides, you know,  maybe doing Peloton, he doesn't do anything else. I think what calms him,  it's really, you know, traveling  and

20:02
He loves cooking and I'm  very blessed to have a doctor husband who actually is almost a Michelin chef.  So, but I still would like to work a little bit up here rather than everywhere else.  So cooking and traveling, those are the two that he really loves. When he's cooking and you'll have a chance to be in the kitchen with him, around him,  you can drop,

20:28
questions and if you ask the right questions, it would get him thinking in a different way.  So you can ask, have you thought about what is one thing that you really want to do this year? Maybe it's a travel trip or  something related to his career and just ask him  kind of where he's at with his goal and then  think about what are some ways that he can take the first action step that's needed. Maybe  he's putting back  a project that he really was passionate about and wants to work on.

20:58
Think about developing a plan for him  to be able to achieve the result that he's looking for. Okay. I like that passion projects. Let me ask. I think it's right to highlight this difficulty because I remember when I was first thinking about investing money and thinking about real estate and investing, my spouse, my wife, you know, she's  not in medicine and full-time employed and

21:24
I think in the beginning really thought that we would just both be full time  in our professional careers for the rest of our lives, uh 30 years, 40 years even.  having a shift of mindset that I sort of went through over  a period of a year or two  to a life where  I think I'm going to be spending a lot of my time outside of medicine doing other things.

21:50
becoming interested in creative pursuits and business creation. I think that was a really foreign concept initially. And it was not an overnight sort of transition, bringing my spouse on board. I think it probably took a couple of years. I mean, I think it's right to bring up that this is kind of a subtle and kind of slow process. It's not necessarily overnight. Yeah, it's definitely more of a marathon than a sprint.

22:17
But Daniel, I am really glad that your spouse eventually got on board because that's not always the case,  especially with having  only one physician  in the family instead of being like a dual  physician family. But even then, sometimes it's hard to get  both partners on board.  one thing that I think would really be important, and I learned this from a very great book, it's called The Three Big Questions for a Friending Family by Patrick Lincone.

22:44
And it talks about looking at your household or looking at your family as a business. So what is your vision? What's your mission?  What is a priority for your family in the next three months? And putting all of that together on a piece of paper,  just writing it down, putting it on the fridge  and looking at it every day.  And then what's even more important and where you actually make the progress is by

23:10
um having like these accountability check-in sessions, so scheduling a 10-minute weekly meeting with your spouse to say, hey, we've made this plan, this was our goal for the next three months, are we on track  to achieve that? Are we gonna get there when we think we're gonna get there?  So,  and if we're not, we need to adjust  accordingly. So I think that's really helpful is to think of  your family as  a business. I love that, I love that. And you know, one thing I wanted to just

23:39
highlight, you I was reading about sort of your approach in thinking about this and we know that burnout is a really big problem  in medicine. I've learned it's actually a big problem in a lot of professional careers. So, but specifically in medicine, a lot of the times I have these  discussions with investors and they're like, I'm really burnt out. I'd like to start investing as way to give myself sort of some breathing room later on, you know, as almost as a path out.

24:05
out of burnout, but what is it about medicine in particular, given obviously  your background and your husband's background in medicine that creates so much burnout? And what do you think is the difference between your  subtle  difference where you think of it as burn out? What is, uh or burn up,  I think is the concept, right?  Yeah. mean, burnout is, think so,  burnout sucks.  Let's be real.

24:35
And the reason physicians get burnt out, and at least in my experience and speaking with my clients and seeing my colleagues go through this,  is that the demands  of being a hospitalist,  being overworked, getting all of these extra patients that you're really not supposed to be getting,  there's just such a shortage and such high demands on  the physicians that it's hard for one person to handle all of the work that's being thrown at them.  And that's where people get very discouraged.

25:04
Why did I get into this field when I'm being overworked, I'm working nights and I'm on call all the time and this is not the life that I set out for myself.  A lot of times, of course, this is more of a systems problem on a bigger scale, but there are things that we can do to mitigate some of the stress  that's being put on physicians.  One of the most important things is to really  focus on your self-care. And a lot of times physicians say like,

25:31
Where do I have time to fit in self care when I'm working 12 hour shifts? Like, are you kidding me? But everybody's got the same 24 hours in a day. It's just what you do with it. Even when I'm working, I still work as a locum hospitalist in Toronto, when I have my 12 hour shifts, I still carve out the 45 minutes in the morning to get my workout in. And it may not be every day, but even those small steps make a big difference. Yeah. I think.

26:00
Just in my experience,  being with my husband through his journey of becoming a doctor, I feel like  in the beginning of this journey, everyone is super motivated. They can't wait to get out residency, even though they're burnt out. And then as soon they become attending, they think about, well, how do I become financially free so I can take less hours? Right? So can you talk a little bit about your

26:29
maybe financial journey from the beginning. um As a resident, you're definitely not getting paid a lot. Our experience has always been that as soon as they get into medical school and residency, you have financial advisors that's coming to you left and right, throwing you free dinner, free gifts, whatever it is,  just to kind of hook you in on buying products.

26:56
um So what does financial freedom look like to you? How do you guys  start and where are you now and where do you want to be in the future? know I asked a lot of questions, but maybe you can just kind of give us your experience.  course. Yeah. So financial freedom  is something that I think we've achieved already in our lives. And I'm really proud of that.  Financial independence is something that we're still working towards. But for us, I think

27:25
Figuring out solutions to the challenges that life presents you with  is very key because you can always find a silver lining in every situation that happens to you.  So for example, when I transitioned to being a stay at home mom,  I still wanted to keep up my hospitalist skills  and  I became a locum hospitalist in Toronto. So I would fly to Toronto  before it was like every month for a week, but now  it's less than that. uh

27:53
What we have, a system that we have in place now is that I spend 10 weeks in Toronto in the summer  with the kids  and I work as a hospitalist there. uh And  it actually is very lucrative. uh Being an internal medicine hospitalist,  you can actually make about $30,000 a week. And even with the exchange rate, it's still good.  So  it's actually something that I recommend for others to explore these.

28:21
alternative opportunities that you may not even think about  because what I make there is what I would make in Florida as a full-time hospitalist working the entire year  and  taking away half of my time with my kids.  So when you find these  new opportunities, you should definitely take them.  Another way to reach financial freedom is to make sure that you have multiple  sources of income coming in. So we have a real estate property.

28:49
That used to be a short-term rental is now a long-term rental. We have a great tenant there. It's cash flowing and that brings in a little bit of money in to our account every month. Investing in stock markets, having a business like a side hustle as most would say, but just something that you're really passionate about and growing that and scaling that can bring in a lot of revenue as well. So figuring out what you're interested in and actually pursuing it.

29:18
taking a few minutes every day to work on a creative idea that  you have brewing in your mind,  that could go a long way. Oh, but you said  financial freedom and financial independence. Can you just define what you consider as financial freedom versus financial independence?  Absolutely. So  financial freedom, what it means to me is being able to do the things that I want to do, like travel, spend time with my family, but  having

29:48
medicine as a job, but working on my own terms. being able to do all of that  financial independence for me  would mean stepping away from medicine completely  because  I would already have all of the finances that I need in order to live the life that I want. really focusing more on the things I'm  passionate about like life coaching. I have some other business ideas  that I want to pursue.

30:18
So financial independence  on my terms  would be to step away from medicine completely.  Yeah, that's totally clear. And I completely agree with you for a doctor to be financially free or independent, you have to have multiple streams of income. And I think I read somewhere a long time ago that the ultra high net worth  have at least seven different streams of income.

30:47
And that's something that we're looking to achieve as well. So I can definitely understand  what  you're saying there. And I really like that concept  of sort of differentiating between  financial freedom and independence because honestly, I think the former is what most of my investors are going for. Most of my investors are physicians. And when I talk to them, it's not necessarily that they just want to hang up the shingle and go sit on the beach and drink.

31:15
tequila all day or something like that. I would.  Well, there's something to that, you know, um but I think they actually just want to get more control  over their day to day and be able to say no to that overnight shift  and say, no, I don't want to cover the weekend. I'd rather be coaching baseball, you know, for my kids or something like that. But they feel trapped both by their financial circumstances, their lifestyle and their administration where they feel like they don't have that control. And

31:45
I think by making some  smart decisions about maybe their  contract or the way they practice medicine or their investments, they can really claw back that freedom, as you put it, to  have better control over  their day to day. So I think you really hit the nail on the head. Oga, who decides  on finances in your household? It's my husband.  So he makes the investment decisions  and does all the finances. oh

32:15
the finances and the numbers much more frequently than I do.  I like to focus on what our travel plan's gonna be, because we love to take international trips as a family,  getaway trips. um I mean, we do know how much money is going in and coming out  on a monthly basis, but he keeps very tight track of all of those numbers compared to me, who's a little bit more  creative and wanting to do all of the things that we wanna do as a family.

32:45
Daniel, I'm curious, what about you guys? uh I presume it's you doing the finances, but  I don't know. I've never asked you. I am doing the finances, but I would say  that if I was honest with myself,  I wish my wife would do it and take it over because honestly, feel like she,  you know, she has an MBA, for example,  she has...

33:10
actually a much more natural aptitude with spreadsheets and things like that. I can do it, you know, and certainly I look at a lot of spreadsheets now in my day to day, but  I  don't like stressing about the details, you know, and by details, I mean, as long as there's the cushion in the account, as long as the credit card bills are being paid, as long as, you know, all of our bills are being paid and we have enough money to invest and take care of our family and all that, that's, I'm happy with that.

33:39
But I think that  probably it would be better if someone with a slightly higher aptitude for the nitty gritty details took a look at it and controlled it better. mean, maybe that's, I don't think it's going to be my wife because she's very busy in her role here. um maybe that'll be AI at some point or financial advisor or something. Well, I do are. So just because I have a financial background and honestly, my husband married just because I was in finance.

34:08
That's at least what he says to me all the time. I don't need to marry another doctor. I need somebody to help me with money. That was a smart decision. Oh yeah. I totally think so. And Lila, do you enjoy doing the finances and managing the finances for your family? I do. I have a passion for it. I have my certified financial planning certification.

34:33
went to college for finance. I was on Wall Street  doing finance for 15 years before I transitioned full-time into real estate. And even in real estate, I'm still doing finance, right? It's a lot of em data analysis, underwriting, but also  business development, relationship management is the entire package. So  I truly, truly enjoy it.

35:00
But what I really feel passionate about is that I'm now working for myself and my family  versus, you know,  working for a corporate boss who doesn't really, sorry, can we say curse? Give a shit,  you know, about me. And I remember one of my bosses has said that nobody  is indispensable in the company. You know, you guys all can leave if you want, we can find a replacement the next day.

35:29
So, which made me feel very  awful, right? Like I worked so damn hard. I used to work very, very hard, long hours as well. Um, but I just felt like nobody really cared. And so I am  extremely happy that I have a husband who has a high W2 income that I am. You know, able to quit my job and pursue my passion of building a business.

35:55
I'm building it for us, right? Not just for myself, but it's really to help him buy back his time at this point. Laila, I think you touched on something that's really interesting that I've heard a lot recently in that a lot of people who are  in the workforce now, they feel a huge disconnect between the effort that they're putting in and the benefit that they're getting from it because, you know, who really benefits from their effort? It's honestly a lot of

36:23
times these days, it's shareholders. It's, you know, this sort of big corporate body that is just taking up all your effort. And honestly, I think people rightly feel in many times like they're a cog in this big machine that is benefiting someone else, honestly. So I think a sort of defining thread that I'm seeing that is common to all of us is actually a desire to build something yourself and put an effort in and get a reward back for it.

36:53
and feeling like you've built something in this world.  Are you guys seeing that these days? I hear echoes of this in the media a lot and a lot of the things that I read. Yeah, I mean,  at least for me, I really want to leave a legacy behind for my kids and to really show them that you can do anything that you want to and you can create and build your own business  in whatever area of  your career that you really enjoy.  So I think that's really important to set that example and

37:22
show them what's possible. In kind of rounding out our conversation here, if you had to talk to someone,  a physician  or  a physician family  or a couple  where  they're sort of in this decision-making phase where they're feeling a little bit unsatisfied and they feel like something kind of needs to change, how would you address them? What are the best ways that they can approach that decision-making process, Dr. Olga Dingar?

37:51
I think the best question to ask yourself if you're in that type of situation is,  what do I want my life to look like? What's most important to me?  And once you figure out what really matters to you, then you can  build on that. You can take the right action steps. You can find a community of like-minded physicians.  Maybe you're interested in entrepreneurship. So you seek out all of the different resources that are available to you,  but it really starts with figuring out what is it that you want?

38:20
Well, Dr. Dingar, it was really nice to meet you and getting to know you a little better. Thank you so much for being on our podcast and we would love to  connect in the near future. Thanks for tuning into Paging Financial Freedom, where we help doctors and spouses like you take control of your finances, invest smarter, and build a life by design.  If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a five-star review.

38:48
and share this with someone who needs to hear it.  And remember, financial freedom isn't just a dream. It's a decision. So let's get there together.