People ask a question in the context of both personal and professional relationships.
They don’t usually say it out loud.
But it’s always there.
Am I better off with you… or without you?
Today, I want to explore that question from both sides of a specific relationship—the relationship between a physician and the financial advisor who helps them build wealth.
“Am I better off working with a financial advisors or building wealth on my own?”
The reality is that few medical students or residents or fellows work with a financial advisor. However, once they step into their true earning potential they quickly see an explosion in the complexity f their financial lives. Plus they have more to lose.
Physicians reach milestones in which they ask, “Right now—at this stage of my career–am I better off working with a financial advisors or building wealth on my own?”
So today let’s have a conversation comparing and contrasting wealth-building as a DIY project vs working with a professional financial advisor you hire.
I’m firmly on doctors’ side.
And because money plays such a powerful role in physicians’ lives, my work also includes helping financial advisors understand how doctors actually think, decide, and experience trust—so they can serve physicians ethically and effectively.
Everything I’m going to share today comes from that lens.
DIY is Always an Option
Doing tasks yourself instead of paying someone is always an option. You can clean your own house, fix your own dripping kitchen faucet or file your own taxes.
I’m a DIY gal myself. I love home improvement shows. More than once I’ve taken on remodel projects, like the time I took sledge hammer to sheet rock to expose the brick of the original fireplace built in 1930.
Then I decided to take out the French doors that separated the dining room and the den. I thought it looked great! However, the next morning I came downstairs to find the dining room ceiling bowing. I immediately called my contractor who told me that the French doors were load bearing structural elements. He advised a trip to Home depot to buy 2 x 4’s to emergently help carry the load until he could install a header.
DIY project can be exhilarating —and sometimes risky. When it came to my home remodel projects, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. It turns out that free can be very expensive.
Remember my exposed brick? When the the inspector came to sign off on the header, he said that I could not have an exposed nonfunctional fireplace. I wound up hiring the contractor to re-wrap the fireplace in sheet rock.
Many doctors are highly capable DIYers.
However, physicians respect an ethical boundary that limits our DIY professional activities: we know that we do not treat ourselves or the people we love.
Sometimes the boundary is crossed . If you ask a physician, “Have you ever prescribed antibiotics for a UTI outside of the formal doctor patient relationship, the answer is usually yes.
One day my mom called me told me she was in the er with a gallbladder attack. The doctors told her that she needed to have her gallbladder removed. Could I come out and do it for her?” While I was flattered in my Mon’s trust in me, I had to say no.
I wasn’t licenses to practice medicine in Hawaii. I didn’t have privileges at the hospital. Those are barriers that can be overcome, as I discovered when I volunteered to treat patients in the path of hurcaine Katrina.
But the most important reason I said no? It’s that emotion can cloud judgment. My mom would be best served with a surgeon who had professional distance. And what does that mean?
When there are challenges in the OR the surgeon with professional distance is in a better position to continue to make choices with their prefrontal cortex. That means better judgment choices When the patient is someone you love, you run the risk of triggering the basic survival response. The best solutions to challenges that arise in the OR are not best managed by freezing or fleeing or fighting.
DIY as a Wealth-Building Plan?
Now, what about DIY wealth-building plans? We know about half of doctors embrace this strategy. The number one reason physicians cite is the challenge of finding a financial advisor they can trust. Others say they have a greater sense of control if they’re are in charge of their money; it feels safer.
Sometimes physicians consciously weight the pros and cons of working with a financial advisor and conclude they’re better off going it alone. They think, ‘Let me take the fees I would give a financial advisor, and invest those funds. In the end I’ll be better off financially than if I worked with a financial advisor.”
Let’s dig in and explore this argument.
Why “Better Off” Isn’t About Numbers—At First
The question isn’t whether doctors can manage their own money.
It’s whether doing so always puts them in the best position to make clear decisions —especially in stressful circumtances.
As you look at whether you’re better off with or without a financial advisor ultimately comes down to this. What is the rate at which your net worth grows? And what factors impact the rate?
When the economy is thriving, it’s easy to see good returns on investments.
And when are investors most likely to make mistakes that erode wealth? It’s when they experience losses. More people die on the descent than on the ascent of mount everest.
The evolving field of behavioral finance says that real people don’t behave like idea investors. If you’re wondering if this is important, consider this: over the past 20 year of nobel prizes awarded in economics, 7 celebrate work in behavioral financial ad behavioral economics.
The Perils of Making Choices in Times of Loss
If I run the risk of making decisions based in emotion if I operated on my mother, imagine how vulnerable investors are to make mistakes when they experience losses or face financial triggers. Money is tied to survival and safety. The nervous system can respond to financial losses as the modern day saber toothed tiger. The nervous system propels us to fight or freeze or flee in the face of threats. Those actions inevtibally result in expensive financial choices.
Some disciplined doctors can put guardrails in place to make good choices in the face of losses. However, this requires extraordinary discipline.
“The question isn’t whether doctors can manage their own money.
It’s whether doing so always puts them in the best position to make clear decisions under stress.”
The Parallel We All Live In
Every financial advisor knows what it’s like to be a patient.
You know what it feels like when:
* a doctor walks in rushed
* doesn’t really listen
* jumps to conclusions
* or makes you feel foolish for asking questions
And every doctor knows what it’s like to be the trusted professional.
You know the responsibility of:
* holding uncertainty
* explaining options
- not substituting your judgment for the patient’s values
The best advisors don’t replace a doctor client’s judgment.
They create the conditions in which good judgment is more likely.
So when doctors sit across from advisors, they’re not just evaluating competence.
They’re asking:
“Do you practice your profession the way I practice mine?”
Velocity vs. Acceleration
Doctors often say their financial goal is to build wealth faster—to increase the rate at which their net worth grows.
That’s velocity.
But here’s the problem:
our bodies can’t feel velocity.
If you’re on a train, you don’t know whether you’re moving—or whether the landscape is moving around you.
What we can feel is acceleration.
You feel it when an elevator drops.
Your stomach lurches.
Your body knows *something just changed*.
Financially, people experience “better off” the same way.
Physicians working with professional financial advisors report shifts even before the numbers change.—
Not Being Alone
Sometimes clients experience acceleration the moment they realize:
I’m not alone with this anymore.
It’s like trying to walk through deep sand…
or water…
or quicksand…
and then stepping onto solid pavement.
Nothing measurable has changed yet.
But everything feels different.
You have someone to run ideas by.
Someone who understands the terrain.
Someone who can slow catastrophizing before it runs away.
That felt sense matters.
The Waiting Window
Let me tell you something I learned early in my surgical career.
For my breast cancer patients, the hardest time wasn’t hearing the diagnosis for the first time.
It wasn’t the surgical intervention or the chemotherapy.
The hardest time was the *window of waiting*.
That stretch of days between:
* discovering a lump
* or hearing about an abnormal mammogram
* and getting the biopsy results back
Most patients can tolerate almost anything.
What’s hardest is:
1. Being alone during a stressful episode
2. Living inside uncertainty
Because uncertainty invites catastrophizing.
In that window, patients don’t think:
“I wonder what the pathology will show.”
They think:
“Am I going to die?”
“Will I see my kids grow up?”
“What if everything falls apart?”
Nothing measurable has happened yet.
But the body is already responding as if catastrophe is imminent.
That’s where a trusted physician matters—not because they have answers, but because the patient is **not alone with the uncertainty**.
And that’s also where many doctors live financially.
Not bankrupt.
Not failing.
But stuck in a waiting window:
“What if I never retire?”
“What if I outlive my money?”
“What if I end up living in a van down by the river eating donuts?”
*(With apologies to Chris Farley’s SNL character, Matt Foley.)*
“What if I have to move in with my adult kids?”
An advisor doesn’t eliminate uncertainty.
But they can **contain it**.
The TrueWealth Way
Everything I’ve been describing so far has a name.
This is the power of shared decision-making.
And that’s what The TrueWealth Way is about.
The TrueWealth Way is not about products.
It’s not about tactics.
And it’s not about telling people what to do.
It’s about helping individuals make better decisions—
decisions that lead to actions that help them get more of what they want,
and less of what they don’t
Because the people we serve—whether they’re patients or doctor clients—don’t just want agency for its own sake.
They want different results.
Sometimes that result is:
* feeling less alone
* sleeping better at night
* not catastrophizing every unknown
And sometimes that result is:
* hitting the numbers
* retiring with dignity
* paying for grandchildren’s education
* having the freedom to choose how they live and work
Agency matters—but agency is not the end goal.
**Outcomes are.**
The TrueWealth Way connects those two.
As a professional.
As a human being navigating uncertainty.
That’s the standard.
Am I better off with– or without you?
For doctors, this question is about safety and clarity.
For advisors, it’s about whether your presence reduces or amplifies uncertainty.
For both, the answer isn’t immediate.
It’s felt—over time.
This isn’t a challenge.
It’s not about fees.
And it’s not about performance—at least not at first.
It’s about how it feels to make decisions with you involved.
Doctors ask this question the same way patients ask it about physicians.
They ask it when something shifts.
- When decisions feel clearer—or more confusing.
- When the future feels manageable—or overwhelming.
- When they feel more capable—or smaller.