Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 8 with Dr. Elisa Chiang (Ophthalmologist, Oculoplastic Surgeon, Life Coach Specializing in Money Mindset)

Elisa Chiang is an Ophthalmologist, Oculoplastic surgeon and Life Coach. Elisa primarily works with physicians to master their money mindset so they can build wealth and practice medicine on their own terms.

Dr. Elisa Chiang: I think there's different levels of budgeting for some people having a strict budget really stresses them out. And I don't know that you have to have a really strict budget. I think you do have to have a sense of what you're spending and where your money is going.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hi, welcome to beyond ADHD, A Pysician's Perspective podcast. I am your host, Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a family medicine doc, with ADHD, practicing in a rural setting in Texas. I am a mother to two very energetic toddlers for three and four years of age.

And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. And a lack of time awareness. I didn't realize that I was not filling my own cup. I was running on fumes the last year I figured out the secret; learn to stay in your lane. So now my mission is to help others develop systems that tap into their zone of genius. So they too can reclaim their personal lives back. Like I have.

Good evening, I am so excited today to talk to Dr. Elisa Chiang, is an Ophthalmologist Oculoplastic surgeon and life coach. Dr. Chiang primarily works with physicians to master their money mindset so that they can build their wealth and they can practice medicine on their own terms. So today you all got to pay attention because this is going to really change your life..

Dr. Elisa Chiang: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Can you tell us a little bit about how you started this and money mindset? How did that come about?

Dr. Elisa Chiang: You know, so in the beginning of. Yeah, everyone. When they're starting to love, coach business tries to think about like, well, who are my people and what can I specifically do to serve my people?

And so being a physician, you know, it's natural to want to coach other physicians because that's, you know, our people. And one of the places where, I have a lot more, you know, knowledge and just, experience is with. Investing and partially with money mindset. And I have to admit it's not because I've had to overcome a lot of, money mindset issues, but I, I guess was blessed with parents who actually talked about money and you know, not everything.

It's not like it was a perfect money upbringing, but. My parents, when I was young, like, you know, money was discussed in the household. When we got allowance, it was very specifically to kind of teach us how to manage money. When we want to kind of bigger ticket items like a bicycle, we actually would go 50 50 with our parents.

So we understood the value of money, the bio of working for something that we wanted and how much things like actually. And so that continued, you know, in college, like there was always talk about like saving for college and how much, , you know, college cost. And then when we're in college, like actually managing our money, like my sister and I literally had like independently, I don't even think it's like, my parents told us this, but somehow we just independently like had spreadsheets where we actually put all of our spending and like, yeah, like who does that?

But like, literally she did it. I did it. It's not like. It's not like we were ever told to do it, but somehow it just came up like, well, we should be tracking everything we're spending and making sure that like, it falls in, you know, the budget that we have so that, you know, we can, you know, I mean, freshman year we were all on meal plans, but after freshman year we were no longer on meal plans and we had kind of a budget.

And so we wanted to make sure that. Yeah, we had food.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: That's amazing. You know, I remember I'm the oldest of my family and I'm the first one to go to college and education was always like something that my parents were like, this is how you're going to get ahead. This is how you're going to have money security.

Right. But I remember like, I would always, because we didn't have excess money. So to say, like, I got scholarships and I was also on financial aid. I remember I was choosing like the biggest loan, like not knowing that eventually I was going to have to pay it back. Right. And so I would always choose the biggest loan and like, Use it to go on vacations and like all this other stuff, instead of being mindful.

Oh, I should be careful. But it was, it was silly because I remember always looking to see if I could find like a cheap book, because those were expensive. They were like $500 or something crazy. Right. But at the same time, I wasn't really careful with buying all these clothes and purses because I was like, oh yeah, I'll pay it back.

Eventually. I wish somebody would have told me, like, you know, if you don't need all that money, that all that exess loans, like don't take out that, all that excess loan do you know? And so, yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes realize that yes, while money can help us, it can also get us into trouble.

Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yes, it certainly can. And I definitely saw, you know, there was a reason why credit card companies always have booths at college campuses to get people, to sign up for their credit cards. Right.

[00:05:12] Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, exactly. So I have ADHD and I tend to have some type of limiting beliefs. Something like money is too hard or something like, I don't know how to manage it.

I don't know where to invest or maybe I should just let my husband take care of that. Like, why do you think those are things that we shouldn't just wait for others to manage? Like why do you think it's important for us to try to understand like how much money comes in or where to save or all that.

Dr. Elisa Chiang: Because honestly, no, one's going to care about your financial security more than you yourself care for. Right. Everyone's out to get money and you know, people in the financial industry, they want you to feel like it's hard so that you give them their money. That's how they make money. Uh, most financial advisors are really just glorified salesmen, and they're not doing what's best for you. And if you don't know what's best for you, then.

I mean, maybe yourselves like can handle it, but you don't ever actually want to be in a position where your spouse is. The only person is the person handling all your finances. Know, I don't want to have to cite the divorce statistics, but I mean, it's really high. Right. And you may be in love with. It might be great, but literally first marriages are 50% and in divorce and with each subsequent marriage, it's a higher percentage.

And of course, we don't want to go into marriage thinking about that, but there is a point at some point where you may not be with that spouse anymore, and it may not even be divorced. Right. I mean, we're physicians. We see young people, you know, die. Like, you know, like I said, you don't want to think about that, but you want to be in a position where if your spouse dies, that you can still manage the household finances and if your spouse dies, I mean, like that's going to be even more pressure financially in general.

 And the thing is, I think a lot of physicians feel that. Well, not just physicians so that people in general feel like money is hard, but I can say that if you got through medical school, you can learn personal finance, right? Most people who are out there in the personal finance world. I mean, yes, they probably graduated from college, but not even necessarily that, right.

I mean, we know so much. More, we have, we have all the brain power that's needed. The difference I think is that we forget how much training. We went through to learn medicine. And we all went through four years of med school, a minimum of three years of residency. A lot of us did fellowship. I mean that's years and years of training where we learn medical language and medical jargon.

How many of, I mean, there are lots of physicians. Who've never read one financial book, right? So the financial world has its own jargon. It has its own language. And if you don't spend any time learning that jargon and language, it's not going to make sense. So like, if you go to France and you don't know any French, like nothing.

There, right. You go to Spain and you don't know Spanish. Nothing makes sense. There all you go to the talk to financial people and you don't know the financial language, then nothing makes sense. So you think you're stupid, but you're not, you just don't know the language. Once you learn the language, it's actually really simple.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Is there like one book that like you think would like be the first starting step that somebody might want to at least dive into?

Dr. Elisa Chiang: So there are a lot of bait financial books. I think for physicians, you know, the white coat investor and the physician philosopher both have on their books on personal finance.

And so if you are a physician, I think that is a good place to start because we, as physicians are generally a little different than the rest of the population in the sense that we typically have these very large loans. And while we do make a really great income, we went through a long time for, we weren't actually making that much money.

And then. Start making a lot of money. And, but when we start making a lot of, we may still have a lot of those loans. So that's not, you know, the normal situation for, a lot of other professions. I mean, law, I think might be an, a similar situation