State of the Blog 2025

This is how WCI spent the last year and what we have planned for 2025. As always, we want to give thanks to our community for your support. The post State of the Blog 2025 appeared first on The White Coat Investor - Investing & Personal Finance for Doctors.

Jan 22, 2025 - 08:34

By Dr. Jim Dahle, WCI Founder

We have a 14-year tradition here at The White Coat Investor that we call “The State of the Blog.” The point of this annual post is to thank readers for trusting us with their time (and sometimes their money), review our conflicts of interest, and highlight what has been accomplished by the WCI community in the last year.

For the first half of that time period, the post provided extraordinary transparency—including basically every dollar we made and spent, where it came from, and where it went. As you might predict, that had its downsides, not only in spawning competitors but in providing a blueprint to follow. As WCI became more financially successful, it made us worry a bit about our children being kidnapped and held for ransom. So, it is not quite as transparent as it once was, but it is definitely still as transparent as it needs to be regarding our conflicts of interest. We'll get to those in a second. First . . .

Thank You!

Thank you for being here. Whether you're a blog reader, podcast listener, redditor, forum member, YouTube watcher, conference attendee, student, book purchaser, or whatever, we're glad you're here. You're a very important part of this whole enterprise. Without you, none of this works, and there wouldn't be any point in putting in all this effort. Also, thank you for telling others about our resources. Over the years, our growth has primarily been from word of mouth: attendings telling residents, residents telling interns, interns telling students, students telling attendings, and patients telling doctors about the site and its resources. And 99% of what we produce isn't even all that doctor-specific. Much of it isn't even high-income specific. So, welcome and thank you to all the non-doctors out there as well.

Our primary mission is to serve you as best we can. We want you to be financially successful because we think life is better for you, your family, and those YOU serve when you're not worried about money or doing things mostly for the money.

Conflicts of Interest

As Katie and I follow the principles we share on WCI, we are focused less and less on money each year. The White Coat Investor is a for-profit business and always has been. It had ads on its website the very first week of its existence. Here's what it looked like:

Thank you to those who clicked on those ads. A click back then was worth something like $1.42. We managed to generate $921 or so that first year. We spent it all, leaving no profit, but hey, that's business for you. My 7-year-old daughter would climb up on my knee each afternoon after school and ask me how much money my website made today and I'd report $1.42 or $2.84 and she'd be excited. She's now an entrepreneurship major in the business school at her college.

Why We're For-Profit

Many of you are not aware that I was doing “white coat investor” type work for years before the official start of The White Coat Investor in 2011. I was just doing it on internet forums like The Student Doctor Network, Sermo, and Bogleheads. I was getting sick of typing the same thing over and over again into the internet, and I got really excited that year about “passive income.” Thus, the blog was born. Well, income from WCI has been anything but passive, but it does produce income. After a few years, it dawned on me that a for-profit business was exactly the right entity to accomplish the mission of The White Coat Investor. That initially small but growing income kept me interested enough to stick with it long enough to be successful and make a difference, and it allowed us to do some things that required money. These include:

The White Coat Investor Scholarship: More than $543,000 in cash plus tens of thousands in prizes have been given directly to students over the years.
The Champions Program: The White Coat Investor's Guide for Students was published early in 2021, primarily to be given away to first-year medical and dental students. We send it to as many as 70% of first-year students each year, and we are getting close to having given away 100,000 copies. At $30 a piece, that's about $3 million worth of books we've distributed.
The Financial Educator Award: Since 2019, we have given away a cash prize to encourage docs to teach financial principles to each other and their trainees.
Put on a conference: The biggest financial risk we take each year, but it allows us to meet with the audience face to face each year and learn from some incredible presenters in our community.
Hire staff: There are literally dozens of people working here at WCI, including 11 full-time employees, six part-time employees, and 20+ independent contractors. Our first was hired in 2014. Without those first few hires, I wouldn't have even made it to “WCI Burnout Time” in 2019, after which the majority of these people were hired. For some reason, they all want to be paid every month, have health insurance, send their kids to college, and come have fun trips with their teammates at work. WCI would not exist, at all, without its staff.

I might still be the face of WCI, but I'm not doing even 5% of the work being done here. To accomplish what we're trying to accomplish, we HAVE to be a for-profit business. Unfortunately, it is impossible to earn money without generating some sort of a conflict of interest. Even “fee-only” fiduciary financial advisors have conflicts of interest, and we're not a fee-only fiduciary advisor. We're a media and education company. A for-profit media and education company. Naturally, we have lots of conflicts of interest.

There are really four ways money is made on the internet. The first is by selling ads, and the second is by selling the products of others. Whether you get paid a flat rate for putting up an ad, get paid by the click on those ads, or get paid only when the seller actually makes a sale (affiliate marketing), the conflict of interest is the same. If those ads don't eventually result in sales generating more revenue than the ads cost, the advertisers (and their revenue) go away. While we work hard to try to promote the good people in the financial services industry and run “the bad guys” out of business, it's impossible to control everything that every single one of those advertisers ever did in the past or will do in the future. We sold them an ad; we're not running their company. That said, if you don't think an advertiser is up to the standards of The White Coat Investor community, we want to hear about it. We can often resolve issues much faster than you can. Multiple unresolved complaints eliminate the privilege to advertise here pretty darn quickly.

“Affiliate marketing relationships” often take on different forms of business to make sure you get served well and that we get paid fairly. A couple of years ago, for instance, we actually started an insurance agency, and we have one licensed insurance agent on staff. That wasn't because we had any interest in selling insurance (we have never actually been the primary agent on any policy). We simply wanted to make sure you were treated well and we were paid fairly for the referrals we were generating. We needed an agency to do that. It turns out that insurance agents can't legally make any sort of affiliate payment to anyone other than another insurance agent. That move turned out to be a wise one, both for you and for us.

Similarly, we started StudentLoanAdvice.com a few years ago, and we are the majority owners of that service. Good for you. Good for us. But it's a little unique as business marketing relationships go. Is there a conflict of interest because we get paid when you buy insurance or some coaching on your student loans? Sure. But it's the exact same conflict of interest we had back when we were selling flat fee ads for those same services. Either you buy those services or our revenue from the referrals goes away pretty quickly.

The other two ways to make money on the internet are to sell our own products (online courses, books, the conference, and swag) and our own services (consulting, speaking, writing, etc.). The obvious conflict of interest here is that if you don't buy it, we don't make anything, putting us in the role of salespeople.

Once you understand how money is made on the internet, our conflicts of interest become obvious. But as a reminder, here is a comprehensive list of them:

We are incentivized to run content that relates to our advertisers’ businesses more frequently than other content. The content team is mostly separate from the business team, but the conflict still exists.
We are incentivized to accept guest posts from financial professionals who advertise with us more frequently than those who do not, despite our policy to judge guest posts purely on the basis of the content. We do our best to follow it. We run very few sponsored posts and only to fund the WCI Scholarship, and even those generally have exceptionally high content quality.
We are incentivized to recommend you purchase term life and disability insurance policies through our recommended agents.
We are incentivized to recommend you refinance your student loans when perhaps it would not be a good move for you. I don't think we've ever done this, but we are certainly incentivized to do so.
We are incentivized to recommend you seek out professional help with insurance, financial planning, investment management, student loan advice, purchasing and selling real estate, negotiating contracts, getting burnout coaching, and preparing your taxes when perhaps you could do some of that on your own.
Since we have real estate advertisers, we are incentivized to discuss real estate investments more frequently than we otherwise might or more than we discuss traditional investments like index funds or alternative investments for which we do not have advertising partners. Let's be honest, we could get advertising partners for EVERY alternative investment out there, and we routinely turn many down. What we still can't seem to do is get Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, or iShares to advertise their index funds here, despite the fact that 85% of my portfolio is invested in them.
We are incentivized to accept advertisers who do not meet our high standards for recommendation to friends and family. We are constantly vigilant to minimize this conflict.
We are incentivized to recommend you read financial books, including and especially our own.
We are incentivized to recommend you take our financial courses and those of our affiliate partners.
We are incentivized to recommend you attend WCICON.
We are incentivized to encourage you to purchase from the WCI Store.
We are incentivized against recommending content by others who have the same affiliate marketing partners or who compete for the same advertisers.
We are incentivized to recommend you use the WCI forum over other forums, the White Coat Investors Facebook group over others, the WCI subreddit over other subs, and the Financially Empowered Women (FEW) group.

OK, I think we've just about beat the conflicts of interest horse to death, but in summary:

We are a for-profit business.
We are not a fiduciary, fee-only financial advisor (but we will refer you to many).
We have conflicts of interest even though our heart is in the right place.
We are very transparent about our conflicts of interest so you can evaluate what you read/hear in the appropriate context.

Notable Events for 2024

Lots of interesting stuff happened here in 2024.

Jim Fell Off the Grand Teton

Despite our best efforts, WCI is still closely connected with Katie, myself, and our family. One of the greatest challenges of 2024 for our family and The White Coat Investor occurred on August 21, 2024. While leading a rock climb on the North Face of the Grand Teton at 12,000 feet, about 300 feet above Teton Glacier, the mountain let go of me. I took a long leader fall; hit some ledges before the rope caught me; and suffered serious injuries rendering me unconscious and upside down with multiple fractures, dislocations, separations, a brisk cerebrospinal fluid leak, and several lacerations. My life was saved by heroes on that mountain and in the trauma center I reached within three hours of the fall. If you missed this whole debacle, you can catch up using the two podcasts (the YouTube version is better) we published in November interviewing those heroes.

While recovery was surprisingly rapid, there were still a couple of weeks when I didn't do any blogging and a couple of months when I didn't do any podcasting, even if I was doing speaking gigs by the four- or five-week mark. Even as I write this five months later, my life and motivation are still massively consumed by physical therapy. This has had a significant impact on my productivity and that of Katie (our chief product officer) as she cared for me this year. The WCI team, including guest hosts on the podcast, performed remarkably well despite this challenge and, for the most part, improved the quality of the content and services we offer. As usual, I discovered they're better at most things than I am.

Katie Got Elected

Instead of spending time in the ICU and healing, I was supposed to be helping Katie run her campaign for the local school board. I wasn't much help, but she still managed to get elected. While her volunteer spirit has ensured that she will have ZERO conflicts of interest while serving on the board (her pay is being redirected to a foundation supporting teachers), her public service for the next few years will have an impact on how rapidly we can create and bring to market additional products. She is still doing all she can, though, and she has her first WCI speaking gig coming up next week.

Our Staff Stabilized

We went on a hiring spree starting in 2020 but finally managed to stabilize our staff this year. For the first time in at least four years, we didn't hire anybody new in 2024 other than some contractor writers. The stable nature of the staff has allowed us to focus more on your needs and how best to serve you, rather than training new people and swapping hats around as we take on new jobs.

We Did a WCICON on the East Coast

The conference continues to be one of the highlights of the year for our WCI team. Though it takes every person on our team to run it from sun up to long after the sun goes down for four days, it is worth every minute because it’s the one time a year we get to be face to face with so many white coat investors. We are inspired by your stories and motivated by your challenges. It was our first time in Florida and like those before it, it was the best conference yet. The venue in Orlando was incredible, but that was just the backdrop for the well-run conference packed each day with presentations by some of the best finance and wellness educators in the industry, followed by incredibly fun wellness activities, receptions, dinner groups, and more.

Our attendees continue to tell us it’s the best conference they have ever been to, and they leave feeling better equipped to take that next step in their financial and wellness journey. We are keeping the tradition and opportunity alive with our 2025 conference coming up at the end of February in San Antonio. There is still time to join us in Texas. We may or may not have bought the entire team WCI belt buckles. You might just want one yourself.

Until January 27, you can save $200 on your conference fee using code SAVE200. Even if you just want to “try it out” virtually, you can save $100 with code VIRTUAL100. Learn more at wcievents.com.

Financial Success

We had two years of declining profits (2022 and 2023), but with improvements in efficiency, support from you, and a lot of hard work, that trend has reversed. In 2024, we increased top-line growth (revenue) by 10% and bottom-line growth (profit) by 6%.

Online Community Growth

We set a goal to grow our online communities by 20% in 2024, and we exceeded that goal, including the WCI subreddit which is now 52% larger than it was a year ago! There's a WCI community for just about everybody including:

The WCI Forum (the oldest community in more ways than one which saw 94% more visitors in 2024)
The WCI Facebook Group (the largest community, but maybe not for long)
The WCI Subreddit (the fastest-growing community, which may beat the Facebook group to 100,000 members)
The FEW (Financially Empowered Women)

Social Media Growth

Years ago, our social media feeds were primarily designed to try to bring people to the website. We gave up on that a couple of years ago and decided to bring the content to social media rather than try to bring social media to the content. This approach has been amazingly successful. We now have 45,716 Instagram followers, 47% more than the year before. The growth percentages are even higher with Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok, even if the total numbers are smaller. Here are some examples of our most popular stuff from 2024.

Gave Away $437,000 Worth of Books

One of the programs I am most proud of here at WCI is our Champions Program where we try to give a WCI book away to every first-year medical and dental student. We might be doing more good with this than anything else we do at WCI. Getting this information right at the beginning of your career is worth literally millions of dollars to docs. Every year we're expanding the program, and we will now provide The White Coat Investor's Guide for Students to first years in just about any professional program, including PA, NP, Pharmacy, CRNA, and more. We had 123 schools participate last year, and we're hoping to break that record this year.

Were Inspired by Students

Once more, we ran the WCI Scholarship Program, selected 10 winners, and distributed about $60,000 in cash. With more than 1,000 applicants, our judges really had their work cut out for them this year. Winning essays can be found here and here.

Improved Reliability, Security, and Functionality

Most WCI staff works behind the scenes, and nowhere is that more true than in the tech department. Under the leadership of CTO James Talbot, you are now having a way better experience on this website than was even possible back in 2011. The site basically never goes down anymore, and the tech team worries about stuff I didn't even know we were supposed to be worrying about. The team has been working on some big changes that will roll out in 2025 that you're REALLY going to like and which will set up WCI nicely for its next decade of service and success.

Hit the 600 Podcast Mark

We now have over 400 “regular” WCI podcasts and over 200 Milestones to Millionaire podcast episodes. The fact we have 23,135,562 all-time downloads is a mind-boggling number to me. We really appreciate the 2,307 reviews (4.8 stars!) that help to spread the word. It's a top 50 podcast for investing and in the top 100 for business, which is pretty good considering its relatively tiny niche market. Videos are now on Spotify (28% gain of followers there), and many of you now watch them on YouTube (a 69% increase in views there). The podcast is streamed in 77 countries, and the fastest-growing segment (although still a relatively small one) of listeners is the 55+ crowd. We're all getting older, I guess. I'm now eligible for catch-up contributions for the first time.

The most popular podcast this year? It was #359, Tax-Deferred vs. Roth. No surprise. That's the most complicated personal finance question out there. Kudos to Chris Davin, the guest on that podcast. We have some really cool stuff planned for the podcast this year, including a somewhat separate “back to basics” series that Megan Scott, our podcast producer, has been working hard on for those who prefer to become financially literate using the podcast format.

Designed 3 New Online Courses

Fire Your Financial Advisor is now the course that grows with you. You can purchase a very inexpensive version as a student, then upgrade it as a resident, and then upgrade it again as an attending. There is a CME version, too. The student and resident versions were new in 2024. We also put together a new Continuing Financial Education 2024 course, as we do each year.

Awarded Another Educator of the Year

Kent Bradley was awarded the WCI Educator of the Year. Well done! So many out there doing so much good work in this space.

Helped At Least 130 of You Get PSLF (But Probably Much More)

In 2024, StudentLoanAdvice.com (SLA) celebrated another outstanding year, surpassing $820 million in advised student loan debt. In 2024 alone, the team guided 130 clients (that we know of; but it could be 2x-3x that number) to loan forgiveness through PSLF. Andrew Paulson, the chief consultant, met with hundreds of WCIers and provided valuable insights through the monthly newsletter. As a second-term Trump presidency begins, SLA is carefully monitoring potential impacts on student loans.

Did a Little Writing

Lest we forget, yes, there is still a blog here. It had 8.3 million page views in 2024. That's a lot of people reading a lot of good stuff written by a lot of good people. Some of our most popular blog pages this year included:

Two Keys to Happiness: Didn't expect that one to go viral, it was the biggest hit published in 2024.
Personal Finance for Doctors: Everything you want, all in one place.
How Much Do Doctors Make: Everyone loves to compare.
Retirement Contribution Limits: They change every year.
Backdoor Roth IRA Tutorial: Viewed over a quarter million times, up 28% from 2023.

Oh yeah, and we sent out some newsletters. Every month, our main newsletter goes out to over 77,000 subscribers, but there is also a smaller newsletter that goes out to real estate investors and one to the Financially Empowered Women (FEW). They're all free, like 98% of what we produce here.

Sold a Few Books and Some Swag

While I was too busy falling off mountains to write any books this year, the “old” ones (that still get updated frequently rather than new editions) continue to sell well. The White Coat Investor's Guide to Asset Protection is still No. 1 in its category. Our worst seller is The White Coat Investor's Guide for Students. Maybe it's because we're giving away 30 times as many as we're selling. Get it as a first year and it's free! There is lots of other cool stuff available at the WCI store, too.

Did Some Webinars

In addition to paid speaking gigs, we're now doing four free webinars a year: one each for students, residents, attendings, and real estate investors. We also partner with many of our sponsors to boost education in their particular niche. The next webinar is aimed at students, and it's basically the presentation I'd give if I were invited out to your school to speak to your class followed by an extensive Q&A period. It's live on February 12 at 6pm MT. Sign up even if you're not sure if you can make it, and we'll at least make sure you get a link to the recording.

WCI Resources You Should Know About

My head is spinning just to think of everything we've done in the last year. Over the years, I've learned that many of you have no idea about a lot of the stuff we're doing. So, I'm going to include a list of links to all of the resources (most of which are free) that we have put together for you over the years.

Overwhelming, isn't it? Sorry, we're just trying to help you in whatever way you prefer to be helped. Every one of these resources exists because at least one of you asked for it.

How You Can Help

Tell others about The White Coat Investor and share content: The younger they are in their career, the more likely they are to know about it, but there are still plenty that don't. A quick text or email link to a podcast or blog post could be life-changing.
Subscribe and like on YouTube: Popular stuff becomes more popular.
Leave a five-star review on Spotify or Apple: Or whatever podcast player you use. Same principle.
Give us feedback: Both about content AND about advertisers. The reason WCI is so useful to you now is because so many WCIers have provided useful feedback over the years. Negative feedback may not be fun to hear, but it's way more useful than the positive kind. Like you, we prefer to get negative feedback privately. You can still just email us at editor (at) whitecoatinvestor.com.

What do you think? How did WCI help you this year? What surprised you the most?

The post State of the Blog 2025 appeared first on The White Coat Investor - Investing & Personal Finance for Doctors.