024: The Fringe Path to FIRE | Fringe Doc

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Intro
Hello and welcome to Explore FI Canada podcast. Join us as we sit with other Canadians at the round table… to discuss, and sometimes argue, about financial independence in Canada!

Money Mechanic 0:48
Welcome to Explore FI Canada. Today at the round table. There’s three of us here it’s Money Mechanic and also my co-host Chrissy from Vancouver.

Chrissy 0:58
Hello Money Mechanic. How are you doing?

Money Mechanic 1:00
I’m well, thank you. How are you?

Chrissy 1:02
I’m good.

Money Mechanic 1:04
And excited to introduce today’s guest is the Fringe Doc from the lovely province of Alberta.

Fringe Doc 1:11
Hi there. Great to be here. Thanks. Looks looking forward to it.

Money Mechanic 1:15
We’ve got lots to talk about you sent us a very detailed list of great topics to cover. So just introduce yourself quickly and then Chrissy’ll run through a top down of what we’re going to try and tackle today.

Fringe Doc 1:27
Sure, I’m originally from the Toronto area, had something of a blue collar upbringing, somehow made it into medical school with a bit of a circuitous path and then to help subsidise things. I joined the military got posted to to Alberta have been here since. Now have a family of five and I’ve got kind of a nice practice where I’m mostly working in corrections and doing telemedicine.

Chrissy 1:56
Excellent. I think your past into medicine is quite unique. And you outlined a lot of that in one of your emails to us. And I just want to cover the seven points that you sent to us because I think a lot of them are very actionable and would be helpful for our audience to see how you’ve come to this place where you’re very financially stable. And I believe you said that you’re Coast FI at this point, is that correct?

Fringe Doc 2:22
Yes. As far as my understanding the definition, I can stop adding to the pile, take care of my living expenses, and then be virtually guaranteed to have a fairly nice or even lavish retirement near traditional age round 60.

Chrissy 2:38
Pretty amazing. Well, let’s let’s head into the seven points that you sent us. I’ll just list them off and then we will go through them one by one. So the first point that you sent us was that you chose a lucrative career path or profession.

Chrissy 2:53
The second one was working my butt off. You said something else but I’ll say but just so we don’t have to put explicit on this episode. Number three, you married well. Number four, you did MOTP which is medical officer training plan through the military. And we’ll talk about that more.

Chrissy 3:12
And number five using a professional corporation for tax savings. Number six, your profession. And number seven, you try to live like in quotes, like normal people, which I think a lot of us do in the FI community. So let’s head into number one, you chose a lucrative career path or profession. And based on what you told us, this was controversial from the upbringing you had.

Fringe Doc 3:39
Yeah, I had the opportunity to work as a temporary nuclear operator at a power plant and it was the same facility where my father was and there was only two people who’d ever been hired without kind of a formal background. It was based on interview, an aptitude test, etc. It’s kind of a pilot programme.

Fringe Doc 3:58
And so at the time, on probational basis, I was making $14.93 an hour as like a high school student in like the mid to late 90s kind of thing. And so basically, within a six month period, if I stayed there, my income would have immediately doubled in a path ahead to, you know, to be in that kind of a career.

Fringe Doc 4:21
But I didn’t want to do so just because I wasn’t really that keen on on that particular field. And I wanted to go into biology and human health sciences type of thing.

Money Mechanic 4:33
So it seems like quite a job to go from from where you were in the nuclear program project there to going into medicine that seems to me like going down that path into medicine is a big, big commitment and time and effort so interesting that you made that choice and your next step is working your butt off, as Chrissy says, so I imagine that’s what you had to do.

Fringe Doc 4:57
Oh, there’s a saying that grad school is is impossible to get out of and medical school is impossible to get into. And so I basically ended up doing both of those things. You know, I had a, you know, good GPA going around, but I didn’t absolutely destroy the MCAT enough that I was a shoo in.

Fringe Doc 5:18
And of course, there’s the interview process, which has got a subjective component bit of a dice roll who you get matched with. So the first time around, I had, I was interviewed, and then waitlisted at two schools, and then I figured I’ll be productive make productive use of my time to reapply later on.

Fringe Doc 5:36
So I did a master’s and then I got in, and then I had to basically, you know, work really hard to complete the Masters because they don’t really like you just like, you know, say, I must finish by this particular time so that I can rush off to do my real job to go to medical school become a doctor like it’s the kind of don’t like that attitude. It sort of feels like you’re dissing science or research to them. But with a lot of struggling and some long hours, I was able to manage that. Yeah.

Chrissy 6:09
Hey listeners, I decided to skip over Fringe Doc’s third point, marrying well, because we covered this in previous episodes. But we realised that without an explanation, it could be taken out of context and misunderstood. So to clarify what Fringe Doc meant when he said marrying well, I’ll read what he originally emailed us:

Chrissy 6:28
“Marrying well refers to having a support system and a partner who is philosophically compatible. My wife is more frugal than I am, she manages the nuts and bolts of most of our finances. This is a huge superpower for me.”

Chrissy 6:41
I think that’s very well said Fringe Doc. And it does sound like you’ve married well. So thanks for letting me clarify. And my apologies for leaving that out. And we’ll get back to the show now.

Chrissy 6:52
So if it’s okay, I’ll jump ahead to number four where you mentioned that you did medical, the medical officer training plan and the this is completely new to me. So I think this is a really interesting, I don’t know if you want to call it a hack, but it’s, it’s a great way to get your education paid for and even earn some money. So could you talk more about that? How did you get into this? And what is this MOTP?

Fringe Doc 7:18
Sure. So depending on how much they are in need of the of the trade of physicians, they have different entry points. Traditionally, they would accept you in second year, you know, you sort of you’re in medical school, you haven’t failed out right off the bat.

Fringe Doc 7:34
So, you know, probably you’re going to make it and then that’s kind of the, you know, the pragmatic in you know approach. Then you basically sign on, you immediately become commissioned as a second lieutenant. You belong to them, but they leave you alone to do your training in the summers.

Fringe Doc 7:40
If you have time in your schedule, they’re going to try to you know, get you to go to basic training and do all your trade courses through the military. It’s like a separate, you know, medical training but with a militarised sort of context

Fringe Doc 8:06
At the time, because they were particularly short, there was a $40,000 signing bonus, which is how we bought our first car. And yeah, then at the at the time, the salary was around high 40s, low 50s, something like that.

Fringe Doc 8:21
So it actually allowed my wife as well to basically put her job on hold and, you know, start having start having our kids, you know, while I was in med school kind of thing. So basically, you do that program, they subsidise you through your training, and then you have fours obligatory service, and then you can you can stay or go.

Money Mechanic 8:41
Were you in a regular university for this training, or was it specifically military school for medical training?

Fringe Doc 8:49
Yeah, I mean, like, you don’t have like a military medical school and they don’t they don’t even have military hospitals anymore. They used to, so I mean, I guess the 1A, 1B part of MOTP you could do it through RMC right?

Fringe Doc 9:04
In Kingston area, they’re the Royal Military College. Okay, if you want to do English or history, or I think they have a few, they’ve got kind of some of the harder sciences and they have chemistry and physics, but they have nothing under bio sciences.

Fringe Doc 9:19
So you could do it through their, you know, through through their program, but no, basically, this is the civ-U approach they call it. So, you know, you you do all your thing according to your academic requirements, just like any other med student.

Fringe Doc 9:31
But then this is if you have any time off, they might say you got to come and do a course or whatever, just to save time so you’re not wasting your obligatory service doing stuff you could have already done during your earlier training.

Money Mechanic 9:42
So how much do you think this changed your the cost of your of your training of your medical training? Do you have kind of like a ballpark of from the starting of your second year when you got into the MOTP to finishing it? How much do you think you might have saved by going that route?

Fringe Doc 9:58
Well, the tuition, the time is in the high teens, like $17, $18,000. Books and supplies, whatever close to $20 a year for that. And then when you put in the actual salary, you know, call it $40 to $50k for easy math. So you’re probably looking at, you know, $60 to $70k for a second, third and fourth year of medical school.

Fringe Doc 10:22
Now, the part that’s a little bit up a little bit dumb is that they also count their payments to you as a resident as being them footing the bill, which is partly true because the funding is coming from them. But even if they weren’t paying the funding, you get paid the same amount through, you know, through the province of the school year at anyways, kind of thing.

Fringe Doc 10:45
So, so yeah, technically, it’s coming from them, but really, it’s not additional money that you wouldn’t had already. But when they calculate your indebtedness to them, it does count. So…

Money Mechanic 10:57
Right, well, that’s some significant savings. I think for a lot of those specialised type trainings, you know, I I’ve mentioned this on the show before, that’s not anything that I ever considered in with my technical training, but it definitely sounds like it’s a great option for saving a whole bunch of money on education.

Chrissy 11:12
Well, I just want to dig in some more because this seems to me like it’s almost a no-brainer. But there’s obviously there must be some costs and downsides. So I want to get into that a little bit. What are some of the downsides or things that people need to know if they’re going to pursue this type of training?

Fringe Doc 11:30
The two single most important things I suppose are number one, military is not known for being family compatible. They have a tongue in cheek saying that if the military intended for you to have a family they would have issued you one.

Money Mechanic 11:46
Fair enough.

Fringe Doc 11:46
Yeah. Okay. So you’re responsible for kind of sorting all that out and you may have to go somewhere short notice you may have to drag your your family there relocate, or maybe you just you personally can go there, do your task and come back. So that’s one thing.

Fringe Doc 12:01
The other important thing is that once you sign the dotted line, the Queen owns you, you might think it’s like a job contract. It’s not. It’s a semi legal, quasi-legal document to the military. Everything on the metaphorical left side of the page that you are obliged to provide is ironclad. Everything on the right side of the page that they’re offering you, quote, unquote, is completely at their whim.

Fringe Doc 12:27
So some people join the military. And this says, we’re going to pay you this much, you’re going to live here, you’re going to be this rank. None of that is enforceable and can never be appealed. And they have their own their own legal system, their own court system, which is unbreakable by the civilian system.

Money Mechanic 12:42
Interesting. Yeah. So there’s there’s a lot to consider, but definitely sounds like it was worthwhile in your case.

Fringe Doc 12:48
Yeah.

Chrissy 12:48
Well, I want to dig a little bit more. So if someone is interested in this path because the savings are significant. How does someone pursue this? Do you have to go to certain schools? How do you apply? Or is it tough to get into this program?

Fringe Doc 13:04
My friend’s father who’s ex-air force basically describes the process as a call centre, where a bunch of people are trying to contact these potential medical student doctors and and somebody yells out, “We’ve got one!”

Chrissy 13:22
Okay. So not necessarily hard.

Money Mechanic 13:27
We’ve got a live one on the line!

Fringe Doc 13:30
Yeah, it’s it’s getting in is, is it’s not like as long as you’re in reasonably good health. And even then, like, honestly, there I was on basic training. They took a 57-year-old, high maintenance personality. The female candidate who literally had an artificial hip already, and we were practically we’re literally carrying on her back together through basic training.

Fringe Doc 13:54
And it was kind of like, you know, if she were going into some other trade, it would have been like, obviously, you’re not suitable, but it’s like, oh, you’re a doctor. Well, don’t worry, like ‘cuz like accommodations.

Chrissy 14:06
Amazing. I’m amazed that someone that age would want to put themselves through medical school. That’s impressive.

Fringe Doc 14:13
Yeah, no normal person would. But yeah.

Chrissy 14:19
I think that’s really interesting. And I’m glad that you were able to educate us a little bit because I think it’s something that a lot of people might look into and pursue.

Fringe Doc 14:29
You literally just have to go to whatever your local recruiting centre is and state your intentions. They’ll have, do you have to go in, do a meeting with the captain there or whatever, fill out some paperwork, prove that you’re a student in good standing etc. And then they’ll make it happen.

Chrissy 14:47
Okay, sorry, just one more question. A little bit more on on the downsides. What are your obligations like? Maybe pick out some of the key ones that might be a no-go for most people?

Fringe Doc 14:59
Sure. So I’m you’ve got your four years of military service and of course you’ve got training you know, while you’re while you’re before that even period while you’re still learning the tools of the trade training, and then while you’re while you’re in that service period, you know, they can say you’re posted here you’re posted there.

Fringe Doc 15:16
They don’t really necessarily care about your preference of province or you know where your family wants to go. And then like for my first two years, I was only home six months out of 12. I was off doing all these training courses, and sometimes doing field exercises which is way worse than being on tour.

Fringe Doc 15:36
So like being in a literally in a tent in the middle of Wainwright or Suffield, which is basically just like a mud bog. The cell service is so poor that you have to basically stand on top of like a truck and angle your phone a certain way to get something because it’s no towers there.

Fringe Doc 15:51
You’re lucky to get a shower like once a week kind of. I know guys who’ve been in the field for a month, you know, doctors in the field to come out with no shower the whole time right. And you’re basically have your tent. You’ve got your blue rockets and you know your porta potties, right?

Fringe Doc 16:08
Your dining hall and back and that’s and it’s 24/7 right? So, I mean, in theory, you can delegate but like I’m laying there at two in the morning on my cot listening to this medic bumble through this history or whatever and is, you know, separated by like, you know one millimetre canvas or whatever.

Fringe Doc 16:26
And I’m like there’s no way I can sleep with this anyway so just like get up throw half a uniform on like you’d basically the military equivalent of pyjamas. Shamble out there. And I just kicked the medic back to their tent and take care of the patient so you can go back to sleep.

Money Mechanic 16:42
Yeah, it sounds like there’s a little involved.

Fringe Doc 16:44
Yeah.

Chrissy 16:45
Not so easy. Well, good for you.

Fringe Doc 16:48
Then there’s the tours, which wasn’t that which isn’t that bad, at least for me. It wasn’t I just had a three month stint at Afghanistan but like honestly, it was not the deals like inside the wire stuff. We’re closing it down transferring everything to United States.

Chrissy 17:02
Interesting. I guess as a doctor, you probably see service slightly differently than someone who’s on the front lines. Is that correct?

Fringe Doc 17:11
Yes and no, it really depends. I’ve heard of doctors who were placed on the forward operating bases or who had to travel through hot zones from one place to another and actually were, you know, shooting outside the air sentry hatch of the, the, you know, the armoured ambulance, that kind of thing. It’s one of those dice roll, experiences may vary type of situations.

Money Mechanic 17:33
Interesting.

Chrissy 17:34
Definitely a different type of path to becoming a doctor. And I still even with the downsides you’ve named I’m sure it will appeal to a certain segment of the population. So thank you for helping us learn more about it.

Chrissy 17:48
So we’ll move on to the next tip that you shared, which is using a professional corporation for tax savings. And this is something we think our audience will be really interested in: tax savings. It always perks up a few ears.

Chrissy 18:04
So you’re a doctor which essentially means you’re self employed, I assume, so you are able to open a corporation for yourself. So tell us more about how this saves you on taxes.

Fringe Doc 18:16
Okay just in a nutshell, high level because I’m not the one who deals with my accountant or anything. Basically, so professional corporation means you you have some of the tax benefits of a normal corporation but you don’t have any kind of a liability shield right so it doesn’t doesn’t mean that you can commit malpractice and then point to this invisible entity as the you know as the person that they have to seek retribution from.

Fringe Doc 18:43
From a taxation point of view, because of the moving parts, you get it together. You need to have a separate lawyer who takes care of that part of your of your business and does your your annual minutes and everything.

Fringe Doc 18:54
You need an accountant. The acccountant’s around three grand a year. The lawyer’s around $500 a year And then you pretty much have to have around high five digits into the corp per year, retained earnings in order for it to make sense, like in order for you to start to pull ahead of those costs.

Fringe Doc 19:14
But again, in a nutshell, if you leave retained earnings in the corporation, and you just get taxed at the business rate, which last time I checked was around 15% for my situation in Alberta here. So then you have basically an extra bucket, and you can you can put stuff in your RRSP you can put a stuff in your TFSA.

Fringe Doc 19:36
And that’ll be you know, fully taxed as realised income as any other Canadian, until you put it in, right? And then it’s like a regular personal tax return. But if those buckets are full, or if you have another reason you want to use a third bucket, then you can have the 50% tax and then you can basically do whatever you want inside the corp.

Fringe Doc 19:54
And then it can be it’ll be taxed later, you know when you take it out. But of course, the earnings were able to grow sheltered for however many however many years you left it in there. There used to be benefits in terms of income splitting within the corp, those aren’t really happening anymore.

Fringe Doc 20:13
They used to be a you could decide whether to pay your spouse, for example, via dividends or via salary. If you chose to go by dividends, they were immune to the reasonableness test. Now, there is a reasonableness test.

Fringe Doc 20:25
So my wife is employed as a bookkeeper. But you know, we have to talk with our accountant. Finally, you know, what, what amount can we pay her so she’s not going to get audited? And then there is this one still up in the year, but I have my children as a non voting shareholders.

Fringe Doc 20:40
So when they’re 18, if I want to subsidise your education, via money from the corporate using dividends, there may be a tax play there as well. But it’s I don’t know enough about it. And plus, to be honest, like it’s a five or 10 year in the future type of thing. So it’s hard to know where the laws are going to be at that point.

Money Mechanic 20:58
Yeah, I find that so, quite interesting because I also use a corporation for the business that I do. But I don’t generally keep a lot of money behind in there and I never actually thought of it as the way you’re describing it as a bucket.

Money Mechanic 21:11
But it does make sense if you’re just paying the 50% on that income that’s going or that the company corporate earnings that are going in there. Now, do you specifically invest within this corporation because that’s one thing that I’ve never gotten into.

Money Mechanic 21:25
I I use the corporate funds to pay myself a salary. So I shoot myself T4s every year as salary income that I have to pay tax on but I don’t do any investment within the corporation. Do you do or you?

Fringe Doc 21:38
Absolutely we do. Yeah, we got some operating funds that we leave there on that in case I need to buy any medical expenses or painting practice related. But yeah, we we definitely have just regular regular type of, you know, accounts within within the corp.

Fringe Doc 21:54
So there are you know, you’re not you’re not getting, like a pure you know tax deferral in the sense that you would have an RRSP, right? Like but but like for example, a lot of people who are kind of higher income, RRSPs are pretty much filled up.

Fringe Doc 22:13
And I think my wife’s TFSA we just started we filled hers up in like a year her whole lifetime TFSA and mine will take like six months to fill up and I haven’t touched mine yet. And now we have this other bucket that the average person doesn’t have right they would have to fully realise that income right away kind of thing?

Money Mechanic 22:29
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense especially for professionals with high salaries that are working towards FI because that you can spread that money out over a long period of time, right? You, even once you you know, as you said, you’re Coast FIRE.

Money Mechanic 22:43
But once you are full FIRE, fat fire, you can use that those corporate funds investments to draw down at your at the time and amount that you want to manage your personal taxes, which is really advantageous.

Fringe Doc 22:55
The Loonie Doctor is the one who’s got more detailed posts on this and understand it on far higher level than I do in more than I really want to understand to be honest. But, ah…

Money Mechanic 23:05
Okay, well, that’s a great reference.

Fringe Doc 23:06
Yeah, but the take home to, you know, too long, didn’t read point as far as your limits within the corp is that the tax structure I outlined, basically is intact until your passive earnings within the corp are greater than $50k.

Fringe Doc 23:23
Which as I’m sure you can do without even calculating on the napkin that would be 1.25 within that particular bucket at current expected expected rates, right, and that’s not counting how much you have in your RRSP not counting how much you have in your TFSA so like, that would be like a really nice problem to have and one that I am not close to happening, so…

Money Mechanic 23:43
Yeah, that would be a great problem to have.

Chrissy 23:46
So what happens with the taxation of this personal corporation once you reach FI and stop working. If you’re no longer earning income, can it still exist?

Fringe Doc 23:57
Again, I’m gonna just mangle the the terminology, right? But there’s some way of like transmogrifying the corporation into just like a holding corporation that’s no longer actively practising medicine but still is holding the medic the money the funds and can still be dispersed according to the the dividend model to to the shareholders, yeah.

Chrissy 24:19
Amazing. It’s it’s so cool to me that you can do this. I know others who are self employed who also use a professional corporation, and I’ve never fully understood it, but you sure make it sound great.

Fringe Doc 24:32
Well, that’s, again, that’s my kind of like very overly reductive kind of understanding of it. If you look at it’s interesting to look at different provinces, there’s different professions in each place that may or may not have the ability.

Fringe Doc 24:46
So like doctors and lawyers are usually do but then there’s also like, other other disciplines, other trades, like pharmacists, and, you know, other kind of allied health and maybe even accountants like you know, so, so the types of professions and jobs that can access this, it varies provincially and bears researching, if you’re not sure.

Money Mechanic 25:09
Yeah, I think we might have to do a deep dive into that one time. And I think it warrants a whole show because they’re, like you said, there’s a group of, you know, there’s potentially employed people that could become professional corporations for themselves. Or, or, like, in my example, I work for different companies, which makes me able to have my own corporation as well.

Fringe Doc 25:29
Yeah, the Loonie Doctor’s blog is a treasure trove. The guy’s a genius. I’m sure you could get a lot out of him, assuming he was interesed.

Chrissy 25:36
Yeah, he sounds pretty popular in the Canadian doctor or FIRE doctor space. He’s, he’s very well known. So maybe we’ll try to get him on the show sometime.

Money Mechanic 25:47
What while we’re talking about that, do you have any other references for our physician friends out there as far as FI blogs, Canadian-centric, things like that just off the top of your head? If you can’t think of anything now, that’s totally fine. I was just thinking about the, really, I only know the ones that I hear on the US podcasts.

Fringe Doc 26:05
Yeah, like Physician on FIRE and stuff like that. Right?

Money Mechanic 26:07
Yeah.

Fringe Doc 26:08
And then I think you’ve already interviewed Dr. FIREfly that’s the resident. There’s a Doctor Networth I can’t remember whether whether they’re American or Canadian, but that’s the other. Yeah, that’s Canadian as well.

Fringe Doc 26:19
So Dr. Networth is the other the other big Canadian fully trained doctor so but literally between those two and FIREfly, I think those are the only three and you know who who are publicly talking about these issues.

Money Mechanic 26:31
Great. Well, we’ll look forward to your blog coming out later this year.

Chrissy 26:37
You could do it you have a lot to say.

Fringe Doc 26:40
Too much too much of it.

Chrissy 26:43
So well. That’s That’s fantastic. Like Money Mechanic said I think we’ll have to do a deeper dive into this professional corporation. Sounds like you’ve got it locked down. So good for you for getting that set up.

Fringe Doc 26:57
No, my wife and the accountant are doing the heavy lifting, so.

Chrissy 27:01
Yes, there’s usually one person who does most of the finances in a marriage or partnership. So we’ll move on to the next point that you shared your profession as being one of the ways that you’ve reached your reaching FI, family medicine in particular.

Chrissy 27:18
And I’d like to speak to this because I have I know a couple of family doctors. And their the story they tell me is quite different from what you’re saying here. They have offices, each of them owns their own space or rents their own space.

Chrissy 27:34
And it sounds like they’re really being squeezed by the government and just the high cost of real estate and rent. And it sounds like it’s really tough to make a go of it as a family doctor. So how is it that you say that it’s been so lucrative for you for your family?

Fringe Doc 27:52
Right, so the regular the average family doctor is involved in I guess the term is like a monopsony. So limited market where there’s only one buyer, which is in this case, the government unless you fully opt out, which nobody does here, which they do in the state sometimes and have concierge medicine, that’s a whole other topic.

Fringe Doc 28:10
But basically you are exposed to market forces on the expenses side of the equation. You’re an entrepreneur in that sense, but I mean, you got to pay for your building pay for your your monthly computer telemedicine licence or EMR licencing.

Fringe Doc 28:25
Pay your the salaries, pay for your certifications, but on the revenue side of the equation, you can’t just increase prices because the rates are fixed by your whatever government entity is a is paying your billings. So that’s that’s the problem.

Fringe Doc 28:41
And then typically, when you hear a doctor’s billings, I mean it varies widely or wildly, but typically, whatever they say, there’s going to be around a 30% overhead component that’s going to be taken off the top as a business expense before it starts to turn into anything. It looks like gross income.

Fringe Doc 28:57
Having said that, I’ve been an independent contractor for a while. I was an independent contractor working on the base. And I did the same job outside of uniform as when I was wearing the uniform. And so that was basically like a per hour piece work thing.

Fringe Doc 29:13
I have several different contracts through different correctional systems, one of which is like basically five year long contract, which is a, like a basically a bid. A 95-page bid that sets out the conditions of the agreement.

Fringe Doc 29:30
And anyways, now that the take home message is that neither of those have any overhead at all. And there are certain medical specialties, emergency medicine, anaesthesia, there’s a few others that are similar in that respect, they have minimal overhead or none.

Fringe Doc 29:45
And so whatever their billings are that turns into their income, but that’s that’s kind of a very unusual situation. But I have now have my eggs in three different baskets. I’ve got contracts at the provincial government with the federal government and also with a private company.

Fringe Doc 30:00
So, you know, it’s more of a pain in the butt. A lot of driving, a lot of phone calls. I’m kind of wearing multiple hats, you know, but it means that if something happens financially or legally, in one of those entities, I’m relatively shielded compared to somebody who’s kind of all in, who’s hang up their shingle and is doing this cradle to grave style of medicine.

Chrissy 30:23
Yeah. And that’s what most of us think of when we think of a family doctor. And we all hear it’s on the decline, but hearing your experience, it sounds like a great way to really earn a lot more in this profession. And how did you find this path? It’s atypical for someone going into family medicine. How did you find this path?

Fringe Doc 30:47
I don’t really know. All I can say is I’ve always been something of a ultra capitalist mercenary, so I always somehow find the high paying opportunity and finagle my way, way in type of thing. I’ll give you an interesting anecdote about that in a second.

Fringe Doc 31:04
But I was moonlighting, doing these type of jobs while I was in the military because I wanted to kind of maintain my skills and not just be completely sidelined into the occupational side of military medicine. And so I already had those balls rolling, by the time I actually released and and I was just able to kind of scale those up as far as the telemedicine.

Fringe Doc 31:25
I just literally just, you know, Google stuff on the internet, looked in the back of the trade journals, and reached out to various companies until I found one that was willing to try me out. That can go into the location independent side of things, which could be another little mini speaking point.

Fringe Doc 31:43
As far as the funny story, when I was in my co-op program, doing my undergrad in kinesiology, the prof wanted me to stay where I did my fourth year, wanted me to stay there, work in his lab over the summer. But I told him if I stay there, I’d have to give up my co op job.

Fringe Doc 31:59
And so he said, if you show me the letter and I’ll match your salary. So as a fourth year student, I was making eight grand for the summer. Plus he gave me like a month off for my honeymoon. And his PhD student who’s teaching one of the courses that I was I was actually taking was being paid five grand

Chrissy 32:17
Wow!

Fringe Doc 32:18
Yeah.

Money Mechanic 32:18
Nice, well done.

Fringe Doc 32:20
But then she was all angry, but but I said, well, you didn’t negotiate. You have to tell them, this is what I want and then be willing to walk but Nobody. Nobody actually does that. Right.

Fringe Doc 32:32
They talk about that, but they don’t do that because they’re afraid of hurting people’s feelings. Or they’re afraid of being told no. You know, how, you know how your co host Ryan isn’t afraid to say or do things that are somewhat controversial?

Money Mechanic 32:46
Yes, yeah, we’ve noticed.

Chrissy 32:46
Yes.

Fringe Doc 32:48
Yeah, so I think I think he and I might be kindred spirits in some ways.

Money Mechanic 32:54
That’s awesome.

Chrissy 32:55
I think so too. So tell us more and while we’re on this topic, more about the corrections contracts that you do you do, this is interesting. And I, honestly, I never would have thought that this is a path that a doctor could take.

Chrissy 33:12
It’s completely foreign to me, and I’m sure most people. Tell us more about how this job works. Do you physically have to visit prisons, and what do you do?

Fringe Doc 33:22
Basically, it’s, I think it falls under the somebody has to do it style of medicine? Or the three Ds, if you’ve ever heard of that Japanese expression, dirty, dangerous and demeaning, right. So, you know, if you’re like, you know, a lot of a lot of people would look at what I’m doing and assume that I’m an SJW.

Fringe Doc 33:43
You know, and I want to like, change the world and reform these people. And whenever I look at it, as you know what they’re people too, they need health care. I’m going to treat each day as a new page, and I’m going to give them the best, the best, most dignified care that that I can within within my power, influence and facility.

Fringe Doc 34:03
And then at the end of the day, it’s an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay kind of thing, right? Then just kind of move on. So essentially, the clinks, for the most part are preset blocks of time and the one contract.

Fringe Doc 34:14
So if I show up, and I’m like, hey, how many have you got today? They’ve only got 12 or 15 patients, you know, and it takes me two hours. I work for two hours, and I leave, right but it’s a four hour clinic, they still required me to show up to drive there and show up and set aside half a day ahead of time, right.

Fringe Doc 34:33
So however long it takes to do the job it takes to do the job. Another one is, is by the hour, and I have to like I have to keep track of my time to 15 minute increments. The other thing is there’s an on call component, one of them has an on call component.

Fringe Doc 34:46
Which is roughly 12 hours a day 365 and you’re basically paid just to be available in case they call and sometimes they call a lot and sometimes they’d call not so much. And the other one that I just for provincial you’re basically on call 24/7 for one week out of six.

Fringe Doc 35:04
And it can be quite annoying, quite busy. But while you’re on call, you know, there’s a lot of hours in a week, right? So, you know, assign any kind of a reasonable level of pay to that hour and it adds up pretty quickly to the point that on a good day, it feels like passive income.

Money Mechanic 35:19
Yeah, it’s pretty interesting. You mentioned in the email you sent to us that you have like a, you set yourself up with a baseline pay, that you run your family budget on your cash flow. And then use all that extra pay that I’m gathering is what you’re saying is these on call periods and things like that, that are the extra that you kind of quote unquote, call your your side hustle and you can just dump that into your savings and investments, which is a really smart way to do things.

Money Mechanic 35:44
And it’s, it’s really interesting, I like the way that you’ve sort of customised your, your your weeks your days your your hours of work because the interview we had with Dr. FIREfly. It sound that sounds just overwhelming the amount of work that goes into you know, she’s a resident, but doctors in general the what I hear is that the working hours and burnout such a reality. But it sounds like you really customise things for yourself

Fringe Doc 36:08
My in person hours in the flesh is a 20 hours a week. And then my telemedicine like, Skype medicine, is four hours a week, and the rest of it is answering the phone and talking to nurses who have concerns about their patients and saying Oh, tell me about that patient.

Fringe Doc 36:28
Oh, have you tried this? Did you do that? No, I didn’t do that yet. Okay, do that and call me back. Okay, I did that. Okay, now we could do this, you know, blah, blah, blah. And like, yeah, you’re working. Yeah, you’re thinking, but you’re not like, right there.

Fringe Doc 36:41
Like I’m literally like in the middle of a workout. It’s like, Oh, man, stupid phone. Okay, cut my, my, my squad set short, right? Go over, try to like catch my breath. So it doesn’t sound like I’m like, you know, doing something intimate or something, you know, inappropriate.

Fringe Doc 36:56
And then and then you know, answer the call and then and then go back to whatever it was that I was doing right. So…

Money Mechanic 37:03
Yeah, that’s brilliant.

Chrissy 37:04
Yeah, it sounds pretty ideal the way you’ve got it set up. So why would more doctors not choose this path? Because family medicine is not easy, especially these days that government’s paying less, the expenses are getting higher. Why wouldn’t more family doctors choose this path?

Fringe Doc 37:19
Probably some of the same reasons why more family doctors are not in the military, right? I’ve had people ask me, they’re always fascinated, oh, blah, blah, blah. And I tell them a little better. I even tell them like I even tell them about all the gravy.

Fringe Doc 37:31
You can tell them how much you can make like blah, blah, blah. And there’s like, there’s one centre that I have an avenue and that is a very big facility that always needs more people. I can easily set you up to work if you casuals, no commitment. See if you like it.

Fringe Doc 37:46
No, they just there’s a significant fear factor, right? I mean, you’re literally sitting across the table from the real deal, right? Like some of these guys. They’re not just posturing with their gang. They’ve killed two or three people, right?

Fringe Doc 38:01
And especially the ones who have like, you know, 30 plus years or life. You’ve got to think like they have nothing to lose, like they literally could kill you. And then they would get like a week or two in seg, and then their life would go on, but just like it was beforehand, and they would always have that fond memory of them killing you who they don’t like, right?

Money Mechanic 38:21
Yeah, that’s pretty intense.

Chrissy 38:22
Yeah, yeah. Now, are you alone with them when you treat them?

Fringe Doc 38:26
No, we’ve always there’s always a nurse. But the nurse isn’t like, isn’t like a marine or something like that. Right? Like it’s a nurse, right? So there’s no guard. There are guards. In the one place the guard is kind of like a couple doorways away but within earshot, and they could run in.

Fringe Doc 38:41
In the other place. There’s a guard that can almost see you if you just kind of lean forward, but they’re in this bubble, and they’re not allowed to leave the bubble. They would actually batten down the hatches because they don’t want the cons to get the keys.

Fringe Doc 38:55
So then they would basically call in a response and then some other guys would have to… literally this one place I’ve worked, the patient comes in, they lock the door and it’s like it’s like a suicide locks for people who don’t want their house breaking in so they you know, you have no deadbolt on the inside you have to insert a key to open it.

Fringe Doc 39:13
So the nurse has one key and then there’s one other key that one of the guards has it and hopefully he’s not like on coffee break or like taking a dump or whatever, like when you need them to respond, right? So literally, if that patient got news he didn’t like, and overpowered, you know, the nurse and me, there’d be no way for them to get in the room.

Fringe Doc 39:33
But luckily, it’s a 20 foot ceiling and there’s a gun port on the upper half. So they could even if they can’t get in, they could always run in with a rifle and take some shots. But of course, you might be you know, getting, you know, collateral fire, right, that’s rare, really rare.

Fringe Doc 39:48
I’ve had only I’ve had one patient lunge across the table at me, like one patient lunge across the table with intent. I just sat there looking at him, didn’t move a muscle. And the guards grabbed them at the last second and wrestled him to the ground.

Money Mechanic 40:02
Wow.

Chrissy 40:03
So what why is it that they can’t have a guard right there? Is it just for confidentiality reasons?

Fringe Doc 40:08
Yeah, depends on the patient. Right. Like if they they modulate their, their level of security, right. So, so yeah, if the guys read if a guy has recently been a bad boy, you know, he might be cuffed behind behind his back. And my the one the one reason when there was a guy cuffed behind the back with three guards right there, right?

Fringe Doc 40:26
But sometimes they’re not, right? And the thing is, you can’t so called punish them or have them on like high alert status, like indefinitely, you know, they’re all good sometimes. But like, if you were like, if you were like really determined, you know, wouldn’t be that hard to strategize, you just, you know, pretend like you’re all calm and chill, right?

Fringe Doc 40:44
And then you know, do what you need to do at that at that moment. Right. So, but again, it’s it’s rare, it’s rare, like it should be in the back your mind, like, like when I’m examining them, like if I’m going to listen to their, their their breathe sounds or chest or something.

Fringe Doc 40:58
And I lean forward. I always have one hand, I have two fingers on their shoulder. And the other hand is using the stethoscope and just have little things like that I do so that like if they suddenly tense or somebody move, I’m going to get that feedback at least have a chance right?

Money Mechanic 41:12
So it sounds to me like your military training basic training something that probably works really well in this type of situation where you have more confidence that you may be able to react and like you said, you you’ve got some physical contact so you can feel a person’s if they tense up or things like that.

Fringe Doc 41:30
Yeah, I mean, obviously, like some of these guys are 240 pound gorillas. It’s not about whether, of course they could if it was like mano a mano, they’re gonna they’re gonna win. But it’s, it’s a matter of like whether you look like you can handle yourself is a matter of whether you can be calm.

Fringe Doc 41:46
It’s a matter whether you… and I’m very fair like I have, I say, Well, normally when I come to this situation, this is what I do with the patient and they all compare notes they all know this is going to happen. They got discontinued because they were diverting the medication they’re going to be cut off for a month and then we’ll try restarting it.

Fringe Doc 42:00
Divert again, you’re gonna get cut off for three months, because that’s what I did another guy. So you just have to be very, it’s like being a lion tamer, right? Most of the time, you know if you’re if you’re calm and if you’re predictable and if you’re fair, you know, you can just you can just avoid that you can just avoid all that. Yeah.

Fringe Doc 42:17
But by just being calm and by kind of taking control that being very polite, I call everybody sir or ma’am. And, you know, I’m just like, well, I’m sorry, but these are options. I know you want this, but I’m going to offer you a or b. And if they get mad, and you’re like, Well, let me know if you change your mind. You can tell the nurse and you know, they’ll call me and we’ll do it. Right.

Money Mechanic 42:37
Fascinating.

Chrissy 42:38
Yeah. And good for you. I admire you for doing this work, because you’re right, someone has to do it. And it sounds like you, you have a lot of compassion for these people and you’re doing your best and I’m not sure if you’re compartmentalising it somehow with the the fear side of it and the hard parts, but it sounds like you’ve managed to be successful in with navigating this kind of situation.

Chrissy 43:02
I think it’s time for a quick break now. We’ll be right back.

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Money Mechanic 43:51
So should we switch switch gears to living like normal people?

Fringe Doc 43:53
Yeah.

Money Mechanic 43:54
Tell us about that. Tell us about item number seven. This is awesome. You got the quote is we try to live like normal people as opposed to like doctors.

Chrissy 44:03
I like that.

Fringe Doc 44:04
Yeah. So, I mean, I dress like a bum, when I’m off.

Money Mechanic 44:09
Me too.

Fringe Doc 44:10
I go into the Home Depot or go wherever and, you know, I’m from a, I’ve got friends in low places, right? Like I come from a very blue collar background. I had roughly 25 jobs before anything like medicine you know, and they involved stuff like retail and sales and factory work and security.

Fringe Doc 44:13
And just you know, so I’ve I know what real work is. I don’t particularly enjoy it. That’s why I’m doing what I do. But you know if I have to do it, again, you know, I can do it. So yeah, I mean, yeah, we splurge as far as Mr. Money Mustache is concerned.

Fringe Doc 44:43
Like I told you about, like, you know, we have we bought like new, a new truck and a new SUV. They weren’t top of the line, but they were you know, they were new vehicles. Which you know, we’re going to we’re going to run them down until they’re, you know, till they’re dust basically.

Fringe Doc 44:58
But like, our house is kind of considered, you know, pretty average for the area where the we’re in, when I go to pick up my kids from the private school, like every single vehicle is like an Escalade, or Suburban or a whatever name that giant Toyota is forget what that one’s called. Sounds like a tree?

Money Mechanic 45:19
Oh, it’s the Sequoia.

Fringe Doc 45:20
Yeah. So these, I’m like I like these these vehicles are like $80k each. Like base model right before the bells and whistles, right? And I’m like, Man, these people are and these people are, you know, like teachers, and like pharmacists, and like, whatever right?

Fringe Doc 45:36
So I’m just like, man, like, either these people, you know what it is about conspicuous welfare. Either the person has a huge net worth of 10 million plus, or they have like, a lot of debt and they’re highly leveraged kind of thing, right?

Fringe Doc 45:47
And when I drop off, my kids at birthday parties, it’s like, oh, this is like a giant acreage. They’ve got a three car garage like, you know, fancy pants house with like a separate detached shop building with like, the gigantic garage door and the man cave inside kind of thing, right?

Fringe Doc 46:02
And I’m just like, and then I check MLS later, just to look on the neighbourhood or whatever. And I’m like, yeah, this house is probably one to 1.5 easily right so

Chrissy 46:13
Big hat, no cattle.

Money Mechanic 46:17
I’ve always like I don’t want this to come off as as bad against Alberta, but I have spent time up there. There’s is this, this big truck, big boat like that? I think a lot of it comes from the oil patch money when there’s lots of money around. There was lots of money spent.

Fringe Doc 46:33
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, though, it becomes an arms race, right? Like and yeah, and I don’t mean it from a conspicuous consumption point of view. I mean it from it. Like I don’t want to die during a collision on the highway.

Fringe Doc 46:46
So right you know, you really don’t want to drive a Honda Civic or a Smart Car in the Edmonton area like, so when they do those crash tests, everyone’s like this car so safe. I’m like, No, that’s only if that car hits a brick wall or another car its same size.

Fringe Doc 47:01
You take the least the least safe pickup truck and drive it against the most safe Honda Civic. And if people in the Honda Civic just get submarined. Like it doesn’t, people don’t get that, right. But that’s that’s the truth, right?

Fringe Doc 47:14
You want to at least be you don’t want to necessarily have a lift kit or have like a you know, like a three quarter tonne or anything like that. But you probably want to have like a little bit of height and a little bit of mass and all wheel drive or four wheel drive capability depending on where you’re driving.

Fringe Doc 47:29
Just because and I mean, honestly, I’m going to I’ll pay to get a synthetic oil, I’ll pay to get my oil changed more frequently. Like I’ve got we’ve got a week of negative 30 with a negative 40 wind chill, do I really want my car to break down to the side of the road and then call and wait for like ma or whatever, like that’s going to be like significant hardship if that happens.

Money Mechanic 47:50
I think you speak to a really good point there and, and this is one of the reasons we want to do this show is to get people’s voice from different parts of Canada because you can’t just peg the FI journey for people that live in a more temperate area of BC or east coast.

Money Mechanic 48:04
We all have these unique situations and you make a great point. It’s minus 30 you that is the worst thing that could possibly happen is if your car breaks down at night on the highway. I’d be that’d be terrible but need to factor that into into your budget your your FI planning for for where you live right?

Fringe Doc 48:21
Exactly.

Chrissy 48:23
Yeah and that that speaks to how mindful you are about your choices because I know you are a Mr. Money Mustache fan and you know he’s all about making fun of car clowns. And you would be considered a car clown driving big trucks.

Chrissy 48:38
But you bought the cars that you have for very specific reasons and for safety and the environment, and it makes sense in your case and you didn’t go out and buy the crazy luxury versions of these trucks. You bought practical versions and it shows to me that the FIRE community is on the whole very mindful about their choices.

Chrissy 49:02
They’re value based and it’s not just because they want to spend the money or just because they like luxury there, there are often very good reasons behind our spending.

Fringe Doc 49:10
Absolutely.

Money Mechanic 49:11
So I just want to pick on this other point you’ve got in here, you’ve got it figured out to average out to $1.90 per meal. Can you just share a tip? Do you guys meal plan? Do you have some magic formula? You do? You’re feeding five people, which is pretty impressive for roughly $200 a week.

Fringe Doc 49:29
Yeah, um, I don’t know. Like, my wife is the one who does all the cooking and she’s Asian. And so half our food is kind of ethnic. And the other half I guess is quote unquote, Canadian. We don’t really I mean, she’ll comparison shop to a certain degree.

Fringe Doc 49:46
Like oh, I was planning on making steak but oh look salmon’s on sale for half price and let’s let’s have salmon instead. So she’ll be flexible that way and we have enough deep stores that and she she knows exactly how many we have like, you know, how many kilogrammes of rice or whatever.

Fringe Doc 50:03
So she can make adjustments on the fly. But I mean, yeah, I mean, we go to regular grocery stores we go to the Asian. I don’t know if Chrissy has ever heard of like T&T or whatever like the I think, yeah that you know, the whole Asian thing right?

Fringe Doc 50:17
Yeah, I mean, she does it she you know cooks pretty large portions but and we have a big family and the kids are eating more now so we don’t really freeze that much it’s kind of like that’s enough for like, you know, one and a half or four lucky kind of two meals.

Fringe Doc 50:30
But yeah, I mean honestly, like, the big thing that I rail against and I get very much judged by my peers is this whole like food security, food insecurity, and this whole idea of like, oh, like, poor people are fat because nutritious food is so expensive and all they can afford is McDonald’s.

Fringe Doc 50:51
And I was like, last time I checked like beans and rice were like really cheap, and not that hard to cook either. Like, like literally, you know, a few YouTube had a like, you know, fix your car I’m pretty sure you can YouTube how to cook beans and rice.

Fringe Doc 51:06
Like Yeah, and and and and if you want to lose weight, it’s even easier because you can just intermittent fast. So now you only have to worry about two meals a day instead of three. And you could use that other time to forward your career or to like go to the gym or watch Netflix or whatever, right?

Fringe Doc 51:21
So honestly, like rice beans, maybe a multivitamin, some green tea, like I don’t, you know, and then whatever products you can get, you know, inexpensively that week. I had friends in university who had food budgets of 25 bucks, you know, for one person with like, 25 bucks a week, right?

Chrissy 51:39
Yeah, and I actually I would have to say our spending per meal is similar to yours. But I think a couple of the other things that work in our favour is volume. You know, when you have a family and when we host students we can buy in bulk more often and that is one cost savings.

Chrissy 51:59
But also a lot of ethnic cooking incorporates a lot more veggies and carbs. So you you are saving money that way because you’re eating a lot less meat and that is where a big part of most people’s grocery budgets come in.

Fringe Doc 52:12
Yeah, and my favourite protein which isn’t that expensive is like eggs. So like literally I have like oatmeal and throw two boiled eggs that are built ahead of time and and and raisins and there’s my like proteinaceous low GI breakfast.

Fringe Doc 52:29
And then lunch is leftover from supper or I’ll like throw in some crap like you know, No Name burritos or something like that one or two of those. And then yeah, the ethnic food supper. Yeah, it mystifies me like as much as we should teach people about financial independence like we should really teach people like basic life skills and cooking and stuff like that.

Fringe Doc 52:50
Because some people they literally just don’t know how to do basic cooking. I’m not saying be a gourmet chef, I’m saying like dad cooking, right? Where, where if that recipe has more than 10 ingredients that you just don’t even try it, right?

Chrissy 53:01
Yeah, and it’s also the processed foods, you know, the pre-packaged processed foods. Those, they’re quick, but they’re so unhealthy and they’re expensive. They add up over time.

Fringe Doc 53:10
Absolutely.

Chrissy 53:11
So, to wrap up, I just want to tie everything together and weave your story into one nice little bow. Through your life, you’ve made a lot of very unique decisions, whether it was going to university when your blue collar community and your family was almost against it.

Chrissy 53:31
And you chose to do the military training and the type of doctor you are and that you live like normal people and not like doctors. Like, all of these are unusual choices, depending on which community you live in. But for you, it’s been unusual. How have you taken this path so confidently? And are you spreading this mindset to your children?

Fringe Doc 53:54
Definitely, we are talking to the children we try to talk about money matters. I try to talk about even difference between middle class and upper class and you know, working for living exchanging your time versus, you know, investing and turning your, your dollars into employees.

Fringe Doc 54:13
And then talk about some of the middle class myths, you know, like the whole idea of like, your guidance counsellors are going to tell you if you work a day, and you know, if you work in a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Fringe Doc 54:22
And I was like, I don’t know if those people are all on drugs, or if they you know, live in a different place than I do. But you may, you may temporarily have a job like that, but there’s no guarantee that it’s going to stay like that, you know, five years, 10 years down the road type of thing.

Fringe Doc 54:36
And yeah, so we talk about stuff and you know, the kids have allowances, they can make more money through through chores around the house, they get interest, or they get interest calculated against them if they ever overdrawn in the negative, which they hardly ever do.

Fringe Doc 54:52
And then if we talk about like, kind of family purchases, you know, let’s say like, that sounds pretty, pretty fun to have. And then there Yeah, we should get them like you You guys want to contribute, you want to put some skin in the game.

Fringe Doc 55:02
And then they may they may want to, they may not. We just looked at, you can buy, wheel type thing but for your cats, right, and with shipping, it would be like 320 bucks. Like that’s pretty expensive, you know, but if all of you guys want to chip in, you know, maybe we can buy that for the cats.

Fringe Doc 55:18
And so now they’re thinking about deciding whether it’s worth it or not and, you know, kind of making these kind of decisions as far as going outside the norm. I guess that’s I’ve just been that kind of do my own thing kind of person or very high in the disagree in the very low in the agreeableness index as far as Jordan Peterson.

Fringe Doc 55:39
And, unfortunately, I just happened to hold the minority viewpoint on like a lot of things and I never argue for the sake of arguing. I just I unfortunately, am extremely socially conservative, not unfortunately, from a personal integrity point of view, but unfortunately, as far as ease of going through life point of view.

Fringe Doc 55:56
So you know, I’m not I’m comfortable saying no and I’m comfortable saying no thanks I’m going to do this a different way. And you know hopefully I had, sure I had help along the way and divine intervention and you know, support like from my family and friends and yeah you know we got to make your own bed and then lie in it.

Money Mechanic 56:20
Yeah, it sounds to me like you crafted such a great life story there all the way along but when you found FI, Mr. Money Mustache and FIRE, it must have felt like a pretty natural fit from everything that you’d been doing before that.

Fringe Doc 56:34
Yeah, well, it was just like oh look, other people are also like this but you just before the internet age you you’ve never met anybody like that and that’s how people can get together if you have some weird niche hobby or something like that.

Fringe Doc 56:46
Like you like to build and fly quadcopters or something like you know, like, there may be nobody in your small town who’s into that and you think you’re just kind of weird but all the sudden the internet you can you can connect with like minded people, whatever it is you’re into.

Chrissy 57:00
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I think it’s an amazing life that you’ve led. And we would love to hear more from you. If If anyone has questions, can they ask you in the show notes?

Fringe Doc 57:11
Absolutely. Yeah, just yeah, just notify me. You know, I can, whatever it is, like, add a comment or reply or whatever, however it works.

Chrissy 57:20
Yeah, because I think you’re there’s so much that’s actionable in your story. And it is not public knowledge. A lot of it is not out there that is easily found. So I think it’d be great to have you as a resource in case anyone’s interested in anything that you’ve done.

Fringe Doc 57:37
Yeah. It’s been a lot of fun and yeah, nice to virtually meet you both.

Chrissy 57:43
Yes. We had a great time.

Money Mechanic 57:45
Yeah. Thanks so much. Pleasure chatting with you today. And Chrissy, are we skipping our questions this episode?

Chrissy 57:52
I don’t know, what do you think?

Money Mechanic 57:54
Well, I did get I did see an end of an email where I think it specifically said Long live Tim Hortons.

Chrissy 58:03
Let’s do that. Let’s do that. Are you team FI or team FIRE?

Fringe Doc 58:07
Definitely team FIRE.

Chrissy 58:10
Oh!

Fringe Doc 58:11
Yeah.

Money Mechanic 58:11
I love that you’re Coast FIRE this is that’s that’s my team. Coast FIRE’s my team. I love it. Yeah right on I always ask a do it yourself type question. So you’ve got new vehicles you probably don’t do any need any work done on those. Around the house, are you a handy type person? Is there any way that you save money doing things yourself?

Fringe Doc 58:29
Yeah I mean we’ll do we’ll you know we’ll do like the first approach at trying to fix something or a little more careful if it’s kind of plumbing or electrical but you know, I I’ve installed my own ceiling fans I’ve put in dimmer switches and stuff like that.

Fringe Doc 58:45
I have my own toilet and sink, plumber snakes. You know what I mean? Like that kind of like basic stuff. I’m like, you know what, I’ve done all the easy low hanging fruit. I still can’t fix it. Okay, fine. I’ll pay the guy who cost 300 bucks just for gracing my doorstep with his presence and you know…

Money Mechanic 59:04
That’s awesome. You know, that’s, that’s awesome. And I think it does make a big difference over the long term to pick up those skills and like you referenced earlier, you know, you can find YouTube on most of this stuff now. So, okay, the final question to wrap up the episode. Ryan always likes to know what your favourite order at Tim Hortons is.

Fringe Doc 59:20
I would go with the medium regular with the espresso shot.

Money Mechanic 59:23
Nice. I like adding the espresso shot too. Right on, well it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time, and hope it was valuable for our listeners today.

Fringe Doc 59:31
All right, take care. Stay warm. Thank you.

Transcribed by Otter.ai

Outro
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