Do THIS to create financial FREEDOM with Dr. Latifat Akintade

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in a cycle of living paycheck to paycheck?

No matter how much you earn..

It's like the money flows in, but before you know it, it's gone.

Leaving you feeling financially insecure and reliant on that steady paycheck.

But what if I told you there's a way to break free from that cycle and live life on your own terms?

That's exactly what I discovered in my conversation with Dr. Latifat, Money Coach for Women Physicians.

She went from living paycheck to paycheck as a new gastroenterologist attending to taking a year-long sabbatical traveling the world with her family.

How did she do it?

By changing her relationship with money.

And in our conversation, we didn't just talk about budgets and investments;

We talked about how to trade a good life for a great one. How to live in such a way that you have NO regrets.

If you're tired of feeling financially stuck.

If you are ready to start using money to design your dream life,

then this episode is a must-listen.

Tune in and discover how you can transform your relationship with money and unlock the freedom to live life on your own terms.

GUEST LINKS:
How I took a one-year Sabbatical as a GI Doc
Website: www.moneyfitmd.com
Linkedin: Dr Latifat Akintade
Instagram: @moneyfitmd
Facebook: MoneyFitMD

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Transcript

0:17

Do you feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck? That even if you are earning a great living, have a great salary, the money goes out just as fast as it comes in. And on some level, even though you're not the struggling student or the struggling trainee, you still feel broke, you earn a great income, but you don't quite feel financially secure. Maybe you feel like at any moment it could all run out or go away, and so you still feel reliant on your steady paycheck to feel secure. But because of that, you don't feel free. You still feel baroque. So this exact scenario is why I wanted to sit down and have a conversation with Doctor Latifa, money coach for women physicians, host of the Moneyfit MD podcast, and author of the best selling book done with broken. I wanted to get her expertise on how she's created this financial freedom for herself, how she went from her own experience of living paycheck to paycheck as a new gastroenterologist, attending to then just recently taking a year long sabbatical, traveling around the world with her entire family. And so initially, I was starting this conversation to go into the nuts and bolts of how she created financial freedom for herself and how you too can start using money as a tool to create freedom. But then the episode and the conversation takes a whole new turn when we start talking about how you can trade a life that is good for a life that is great, how you can live a life that you can look back on with no regrets. And so, in this conversation, we don't just talk about money. We talk about how you can use money as a tool to create your absolute best life, whatever that looks like for you. I'm so excited for you guys to hear this conversation. If you want a chance to ask Doctor Latifa any of your burning questions after the episode, I will let you know what to do. But for now, let's get to the show. You're listening to life after medicine, the podcast for health professionals who want to make a difference, make a living, and still have the freedom to enjoy their lives. My name is Chelsea Turgen, and my mission is to help you, the lost health professional, find your authentic path to helping others and generating stable income without having to sacrifice your own health and happiness in the process. Hello, my loves. We are here with Doctor Latifat, founder of Money Fit MD, and we're going to explore how you can change your relationship with money to live life on your own terms. And so I want to just jump right into the good stuff. So in this sabbatical guide that you have recently come out with, you said seven years prior to this, I had woken up and decided that I didn't want to keep living Paycheck to paycheck as an attending physician at that time, I knew nothing about money or wealth building. I knew I loved practicing medicine and that I would like to practice for a long time. But I was broke later. Living paycheck to paycheck, and despite earning a good income as a gastroenterologist, it just felt like the math was not mathic. So why were you living paycheck to paycheck despite earning a good income? Tell us more about that. The reason why I was living paycheck to paycheck was because I knew nothing about money. I was not looking at my money. Like many physicians and like many Americans and humans, to be honest with you, I thought that the most important thing was to earn more and everything else would take care of itself. And the reason why is that's a fallacy that we've been taught, right? Because went through training med school, you're like, I'm broke because I'm earning nothing. You went through residency, I'm broke because I'm not earning a lot. You went through fellowship. I'm broke because I'm not earning a lot. Because there's this light at the end of the tunnel where you will now be earning more as an attending physician and suddenly your problems would go away. And what I think is actually not, number one is keep people that are telling you that don't probably are broke as well. That's number one. But also, number two is many times, as humans, we think we don't have time, but we may not think in consciously that we don't have time, but we make excuses that translates to at all that's not yet, not now, later. And so for a lot of us, that's what it was. So as an early attendant physician, I still didn't know anything about money. And now what I felt was going to help me was earning more money. And now I was faced with that, and it didn't feel like it. And part of the thing, too, is, if you think about it, most people don't necessarily think I want to have more money. But what people want is I want to not have to worry when I'm buying something. I want to not want to worry when I'm writing a check or swiping my card. I don't want to think that it's going to bounce. I want to think about my future and know that my future is secure. I want to make sure that if something was to happen to my income right now, I would be okay. But also I want to be able to have a choice in how I spend my life and my time. So when you now have that income and you don't think or feel like those other things are happening, you feel like you're as broke as you were when you were a medical student. So that was a come to Jesus moment for me, and it was not a fun moment at all. But it's been one of the best things that could have happened to me because I did not ignore. I did not ignore that realization. I chose to go from that realization and go. I did not want to be in the space thinking about that one year from now, two years from now, three years from now. And I also knew that the longer I was in that space, that mental space, the more I was going to have regret. And the risk of regret was going to be incremental with every single year. That was what was going on at that point, and that was what inspired me to change my direction. Yeah, I love that. And was it just like one moment that it all hit you, or was it like a gradual buildup? It were two main moments that I can think of. One was that. And the other one, I really do remember it really well, was my kids at that point. I had two kids. I have three kids now. And I remember being at the park. I don't even remember what park it was, but somewhere locally, and my kid was playing. And I just realized that a lot of the time that I was spending was either away or feeling guilty or when I was present, I was feeling guilty about. I did not have a choice but to be away. And then also at that moment, I was like, wait a minute. There are people that have gone before me, my dad, my mom, my great grand, you know, everybody that my ancestors really that had gone. And I know that there were things that they did, sacrifices that they made so that the next generation could be better. And I didn't want my kids to have to go back in time and do the work that I could have done to help make their future better. So those two pivotal moments where I really had no choice but to get my ish together. And so then what was the initial step that you took in that direction? The first step that I did was gather knowledge because I knew zero at that point. So I was like, okay, every single thing that I've avoided, I stopped avoiding them. So how to budget. Google how to budget. I hated budgeting. I still don't like traditional budgeting, but because I was committed to not running away, I was committed to solving the problem. When I realized that trying to do traditional budgeting the way that it's been taught, felt like I was trying to poke my eye out. And I knew there had to be a way that did not require me forcing myself to love spreadsheets or booking my eye out. So it was really about now going, okay, there has to be a solution. So how do I translate this thing that's not working for me into a language that can work for me? So it was literally as simple as that. Definitions was another thing that I just sucked at. I had been trying to memorize things like all the money lingos that I thought I needed to know in order to actually do money, because as physicians, that's what we do. We learn, we have to memorize the renal pathway, we have to memorize this medication, the side effects, so that we can pass the test. So we think memorizing is a precursor to success. And when I actually told myself that was not the case, that I did not have to remember any definitions to actually be good at money, that what I needed to do was treat any knowledge like up to date. I needed to know where to refer. And if you think about it, when you're looking at up to date, yes, you need the baseline knowledge that we gathered as physicians in medical school. That is not replaceable. But there are some things that I look to up to date or whatever resource to guide me. And I'm not trying to memorize up to date. When I'm doing that, I'm using it as a guide, and then I'm taking actions based on my underlying knowledge. So I started treating money and nomenclature around money and wealth building like that. So that decreased the pressure that I was putting on myself, that decreased my procrastination of actually taking action, because it's not just knowledge only that's going to create money and freedom, it's an action. So what that did was I was now able to take action without waiting to memorize first. And the benefit of the side effect of that was I actually acquired more knowledge. And the more I actually did it, the more I'm building this knowledge into my subconscious, not just my brain, but my subconscious. So I even got way better than people that were memorizing. I achieved results faster than people that were waiting to memorize. And now it's like, oh my goodness, how come nobody taught me how to do things this way. And that's really what started my journey to money. It can feel so daunting. There's a lot of procrastination and avoidance that comes into the idea of, like, trying to get on top of finances or figure out money or figure out budgeting. And all of those words can feel so big and broad. And so is there initial action steps that someone could take if they're in a place where there was no knowledge and no actions, that really just makes them feel like they're getting started in doing something? Absolutely. The first thing is always awareness, looking. Just look. Looking is what most people don't do. And the reason why is because we're afraid to look. We don't want to know what we're afraid of, what we're going to find, right. So just looking. Number one is many people don't actually know how much to earn. Number one is, how much do I earn? Look and know what you earn when that money drops into your bank account. Where does it go? Forget spreadsheets, I don't love spreadsheets either. I do them as needed or whatever. But, like, where is the money actually going? Do you like where it's going? Does where the money, where it's going? Is that in line with where you're going? Because if you're like, I want to have seven figures by the time I'm, like, 35, I want to have seven figures by the time I'm 40. Or you're like, I want to be able to work part time in three years, is where your money going right now? If it keeps doing that, is that going to lead you to the goal that you actually want? Because if the answer is no, ain't nothing wrong with that. Now it's just time to course correct. Right? The other thing I want to ask people is, when you look at what your money is going, are you happy with what you're spending the money on? Or if you look forward to six months from now, will you wish you had your money back? Right? So maybe you're spending away in the way that you're giving all your money to credit card companies through interest that you did not even know you're paying. Like six months from now, are you going to wish you had all the interest you paid in 2023 back, which may be thousands and thousands of dollars? And it's not about good with money or bad with money. It's a matter of, are you letting your money do the work that it's meant to do for you in your life? The answer is no. So just course correct. So that's, like, literally, really basic, really fundamental. That works with human psychology. That doesn't make you kick yourself in the groin because you're trying to do better with money. And the other thing that I always tell people is less judgment, more curiosity. Less judgment, more curiosity. Like, judgment is part of what we don't do what we want to do. So, for example, when I started doing money, one of the things that we taught traditionally is to hate debt. Hey, debt. Debt sucks. When you pay it off, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief. So what I knew then was that. And so I did what I knew. And if people could actually do what they know, that would actually make a difference because they're at least moving. And movement makes money. Movement brings wealth where movement brings freedom, right? You don't wait until you get money, wealth, and freedom to move. You move, and then you get that. That's the precursor to the things that you want. And so my goal was I wanted to pay off my student debt. I said, I'm going to pay it up in five years because I hit a traditional budget in, because I made money make sense, because I stopped working against my psychology and instead worked towards my psychology. I paid it off in two and a half years. And then when you know differently, that in line with the future you want. Because what I realized there was, okay, now the debt is up, and I still don't have a choice in how I practice medicine. I still would not like for my paycheck to go away because I still don't feel like I'm free. How can I actually get the freedom that I want? Because being debt free doesn't create freedom. And that's just the truth. And so what I had to do then was how to learn how to use my clinical money to make it, make more money for me. And the way to do that is by investing. So now I had to learn how to invest. And what I tell people that come into my community and the women that I coach is because I know that paying off debt slowly, quote, unquote slowly, not really slowly, because I did it fast, is not the key to freedom. Investing is actually the key to freedom. So now what I teach people is bringing that earlier in their journey where they can invest faster instead of waiting to be done with their six figures in debt before they start investing. And I teach women physicians that it's not about getting rich quick overnight. I'm not for that. You will not catch me doing that or teaching that. It's about starting to plant seeds urgently so that you can actually now create a field that's going to make you more money. There's so much power that can happen in just looking at what is going on with your money, understanding where your money is going, and checking in with that. And like you said, coming from a place of curiosity instead of judgment. Because I do think when we lay it out on the table, like we're not dumb, we can understand math. And, like, it is actually simple, like, the numbers are simple. But then I think what makes it complicated is our emotions around it. And there can be shame around it, or just lots of feelings around money. So how do you recommend working through that and all the emotional pieces that make it seem more complicated than it needs to be? It is hard. It feels hard for most people. And the reason why it feels hard for most people, including myself in the past, is that people teach us that certain emotions are good and certain emotions are bad. There's positive emotions, quote unquote, and there's negative emotions. You go towards the positive emotions, you avoid the negative emotions. And I don't believe that. I think that emotions can be foil. Emotions are foils that can help you move. If a positive emotion helps me move, then it's productive. So I like using words like empowering emotions, productive emotions. And the reason why I like using those words is the same emotion can be productive in some instances and not productive in other instances. And if your goal is to be productive, then it doesn't matter whether it's positive or negative. It's just a foil. And a very concise example is regret. Most people do not like regret. I hate regret. I live my life avoiding regret. Some people will say, well, let's work on that, because you should not avoid regret. But for me, avoiding regret, it's been the best foil of my life because I don't want to go through regret, is why I learned how to do my money and refuse to work 1.0 full time fte because I don't want to regret. The reason why I quit my job that I love and had to break up with my patients that I love and say goodbye to the friends that give me life in the best ways, was because I didn't want to have regret. So I traveled for ten months, visiting 19 countries of my family because I didn't want to have regret. And now that I'm back, I'm living my life in a way that I don't have to have a lot of regret. When I look back at my life, do you get what I mean? So the whole idea of whether it's positive or negative is useless. It's whether it's productive or not. And until regret becomes not productive for me, I'm gonna keep using it as the blessing that it is in my life to help me make the best decisions. We can learn how to think about emotions differently. Whether it's positive or negative doesn't matter. It's just, is it helpful for me right now and use that as the flow and the blessing that it could potentially be in your life, and when it stops being helpful, then you ditch it and you move on to the next floor. I love that, like, thinking of it as is the emotion generating momentum or movement in the direction that I want it. We tend to get paralyzed with certain emotions, and then it's like, okay, that's not a useful one. So then what is a more useful emotion I can tap into to kind of move me in the direction that is line with where I want to go? So you referenced your sabbatical, and that's something I really want to talk about now, especially as a fellow traveler. I love the way that you did that, and you created a whole guide, which we'll put links in the show notes around that, because it's so helpful. And the guide itself gets into a lot of the details and the tangible step by step. So we don't necessarily have to go into so, so much detail here. But I want to talk about one. When was the moment that this idea of a sabbatical went from this, oh, must be nice pipe dream to let's sit down and start planning to make it happen? My life was good, and I think that's important. I mean, no one's life is ever perfect. It wasn't perfect, but I was living a rich life. I worked a job that I love, people that I love, serving the people that I love. We have the kids. We have a community here. I have a great husband, great human that I happen to be married to, which I'm so grateful for. So I wasn't running away from anything. I went to go give a talk at a event in Aruba, at a women's event in Aruba. And it was there that the idea of, like, it would be nice for our kids to be around different languages like this, imagine what it would do to their brain to be able to interact with and be exposed to different languages. And that was literally six months before we started our sabbatical. So this was not like a big pipe dream, but I decided that, you know, it's all right. It's. This is not what we do. It wasn't a familiar thought at all. And so I just went about my life like normal. And it wasn't, like, onto two months after that drop in thought that we decided that maybe it's just something that we actually wanted to do. And to be honest, I will be really, really honest with your audience. One of the best things that I did in my life in 2022 was decide to shift from my brain a little bit more to my, you know, some people call it intuition. For me, it's my faith. God died in my journey and silencing my brain a little bit and letting God guide me more and been willing to take the steps even when it doesn't make sense. And so that was the decision that I made before all this, because my life was good. But the difference between your life that is good and your life that's great, greater than your thoughts, is silencing your thought and letting your heart, your spirit, lead you. That was honestly the precursor to all this, was based on my brain. There was no reason to leave. But based on my heart, based on my spirit, based on God guiding me, that was going to be the next extraordinary, because we're already living a really good life. Well, again, not perfect life. And I want to make sure that's clear. No life is perfect. My life was not. It is not. It would never be. But I want to look back at my life at the end of the day and go, oh, crap, we did that. And that is something that's not going to happen based on the best late plan. It's something that's going to happen. It needs a different layer for you to access that point. And so me saying yes to a sabbatical was me willing to obey, willing to honor the journey that was ahead, even if I did not know what that journey was. Yes. So you're totally speaking my language right now, because this is exactly what I talk about with my clients. I hold, like, intuition activator workshops for all of my clients. And that's something to help them silence their brain, get in touch with their heart, their gut, their intuition, their God, however they want to conceptualize it. But it's really that concept of trading the best laid plans and the mind which can give you a good life, things can be good, and then surrendering that a bit to make room for the great life which is coming from your heart and soul and all of that. So what is the difference for you when you live following your God, when you live more from that place versus from the minds. What is the difference? We're having a conversation about things that I don't talk about much on other people's platforms. I talk about it on my platform because it's my house. If you don't like it, you can go away from there. But I will be honest with you and your audience because I'm really hoping that this helps them. These are my beliefs and they don't have to be anybody's. But I will tell you, because we're talking about my life and my direction here, but I believe that God made me believe that God made us. I believe that if I want to learn about my Apple computer, if I want to learn about my MacBook, I can go talk to Microsoft about it and they're going to be confused. Or I can go talk to Apple, the people that actually created it. And so for me, the best plans that I could ever have in my life is by accessing and having an intimacy with a person that I believe wrote the mantle of my life. And for me, that's God. And so there's no amount of amazingness that I can come up with. There's no amount of genius that I can come up with that could ever be better than that of the person that decided that I was going to be placed in where I grew up, in the circumstances, for good, for bad, and all the processes that's gone towards coming together to create who I am today. So if you ask the question of like, what's the difference? It's hard to find the right words. Again, it's not perfect. That is important. I don't think it's helpful for people to make up stories about me that is not helpful for them. It is not perfect. I'm a normal human being that has limiting beliefs that I work on it every single day because I believe that the life that I have that's in front of me, that's yet to come, is so much more better than the life that I've lived so far. And because I believe that I'm willing to discover it. And in order for me to discover it, it has to do with me staying connected to the source of the person that I believe created me so that I can continue to get the guide. And when I execute that guide, I look like a genius. Guess what? Because that's the person that created me, right? My life is never going to be better than the original design that the person that created me and said, I birthed you to have an amazing life. That's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be your best life ever. There's no ideas that I could have that could be better than that. Thank you for sharing that perspective. I love the way you worded it. To create an intimacy with the person who made you. Like, that's probably the best way to figure out how you can best use your life. It's smart, it's efficient. Literally, it would take me my entire life to discover the things that I've discovered in, I don't know, I'm turning 40 may things that I've discovered by myself in the last couple of years. It would take me my entire life. So I'm a physician, I'm a mom. We like efficient. Just be real. The people are after, which is efficiency. I totally love that. I'm just being real. I can waste a lot of time or I can be more efficient and get the script, execute the script, do the things that I need to do to like, remind myself that Latifah is not the smartest person about her life and be efficient. I'm all about efficiency. Totally resonate with what you said about, like, life is not perfect now because I'm on a quest as well, to continually try to live more and more from my heart, from my intuition, and that's not even perfect. Like, there's plenty of times or I'm stubborn and I'm just doing what my mind wants to do. But when I do connect to my intuition and I do take steps from that place, even when things are hard and scary and there's tears or pain, I still feel a greater sense of peace when I'm living in alignment and making decisions from that place than when I'm super in my mind trying to control and make everything the way I need it to be in my head. Has that felt true for you? 100%. 100%. And I think the key is realizing that they have different roles. They work together, they have different roles. The goal is for your, you know, my faith, for me, I'm the Holy Spirit, my guide, my intuition, my God. Those are all gifts from God, in my opinion. And the goal is for them to, they're like my gps. They tell me the direction and the goal of my brain and my mind is now to build around that. So my mind is going to, my mind, the badass read the, you know, like the savviness that I have, the stuff that I teach, all those work to build, but in terms of, like, do we make a right or do we make a left? I have to tone down the construction part of my brain, let those parts I was just talked about lead, and then I use those other things to build so they work together. It's not one or the other, but the same way. There are times when you drink water, there's times when you eat food, they work together and they're both gifts that we need to optimize differently. We get those muscles stronger the same way. When you're working out, you don't want to work out your arm and never work out like your legs. You're just going to be like, awkward looking, right? You're going to have no legs to carry the body. We're meant to work, strengthen both of those muscles so that they can do the work that they're meant to do together. I know you've given us so much advice throughout this conversation, but if you had one piece of advice for the health professional who is in that place where you were, like, living paycheck to paycheck, kind of wondering how much longer they could keep doing this, what advice would you give someone to just really get started with taking control of their money and taking control of their life? What I'm going to tell them is pattern disruption. Disrupt the pattern. If you want something different, you cannot keep doing the same thing. If you keep doing the same thing, you will be comfortable with the same thing. But we know that doing the same thing leads to the same outcome and that's comfortable. So pattern disruption is do something different, break the cycle. Break the pattern. If you normally never look at your money, break that pattern by looking at your money. If all you do is invest in assets and you never enjoy your money, break that pattern. Disrupt the pattern. If all you do is spend on Yolo things only or spend only on things that differentiate over time, disrupt that pattern and do something differently. When you do something different, it's going to feel uncomfortable. And I want you to start recognizing that that discomfort should be an indicator of you to stand up and applause for yourself because it means I am changing my outcome. Most people, when they get there, they think it means, stop, don't do it, we're going in the wrong direction. No, it means we're changing the pattern. We're disrupting. And that is exactly how you change your life. That's how you change your money. That's how you create something you've never created before. So this is not just what I teach, this is what I live by, this is what has changed my life. This is what is going to change my life in all the seasons and cycles that I'm going to be disrupting for myself as well and the people that I've been called to serve. I love that pattern disruption and then embrace the discomfort that comes along with that. That's so powerful. Latifah, thank you so much for coming on today. And we'll put a link in the show notes to your sabbatical guide because I just found that so impactful. Do you have anything else that you'd like to share with the audience or anything else that you kind of like to direct everybody to? No, I think it's a great place for them to start. They can go to my website, moneyfitmd.com, or even on my podcast, which is the Money FitmD podcast that they can literally scroll and go find right now. And you will find the resources for the things that I do that help women physicians literally transform their lives. Thank you so much for everything that you do and for coming on here and sharing it with us. Thank you for having me. Thanks for doing what you do and thank you for being an example of what is possible for many humans out there. So how can you start using money as a tool to create freedom? How can you start to use money to actually create your best life? As Doctor Latifa shared in the episode, you have to start taking action because as she said, movement creates freedom. You don't wait until you get money or wealth or freedom to move. You move and you create that freedom for yourself. And you have to move in a way that disrupts the patterns that you're currently stuck in. So if the pattern that you're stuck in is staying paralyzed in emotions, you stop allowing yourself to stay stuck. And you stop labeling emotions as good or bad and start viewing them from the lens of useful or not useful. Are the emotions useful to helping you create the movement that you want, the freedom that you want? If not learning how to process those and choose different emotions, movement creates freedom. That's what I want you guys to get from this episode. And if you want to take this conversation deeper and ask Doctor Latifa any of your burning questions about how she created freedom for herself, how she's using money as a tool, how she created a sabbatical, then I would love to invite you for an exclusive opportunity for a Q and a inside the life after medicine Facebook group. So all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to join the Facebook group and there will be a q and a thread pinned to the top where you can drop a question. You can ask doctor Latifa any question that feels relevant for you. I'll see you inside the life after medicine Facebook group to take this conversation even deeper. Because remember, you deserve to make a difference, make a living, and still have the freedom to enjoy your life. And I never want money to be the reason that you feel stuck in a life that you don't love. So let's change that reality together.