as a general dentist i typically do an array of different procedures so it can include anything
from crowns root canals oral surgeries basic fillings every day looks a little bit different
my name is lou wong i'm 31 years old i make 157 000 a year and i live in san diego california
i was born in china my parents both immigrated
when i was a baby and i was left in the care of my grandparents
when my parents first moved out of student housing into a rented home our land lord
at the time he was a dentist he's also a first generation immigrant from china
and i remember one time he took me just to run errands and he was grocery shopping he would just
kind of roll on by with his cart and anything that looked interesting to him he would just
plop into the car without checking the price tag and to me that was kind of the height of luxury
i grew up walking to school every morning it was about a mile and some change one way and i
remember just dreading that walk in the winter time when there was ice or sleet a lot of my
classmates were getting their learner's permits driver license and many of them were gifted brand
new cars and i'd just be kind of charging my way to school i think one day i fell again and i said
i don't care what it takes one day i'm going to be in that car somewhere warm
i attended university of maryland on a full academic scholarship it didn't cover room
board or books so that first semester my parents did help me pay for that expense and i took it
upon myself to find additional scholarships and to work part-time to help pay for that portion
so a navy recruiter reached out to me he was also a navy dentist at the
time and he wanted to share his wealth of experience and see if anyone was interested
in joining the navy i was very interested i feel like there was a wealth of opportunities
that the navy could offer me that i would not be able to accomplish myself
the navy actually pays me a salary and i'm free to
spend that salary on what i want of course the bulk of it went towards tuition
the way the military works is every two years and every promotion your salary jumps a little bit
a portion of that is allocated for housing and food and that is not taxable so if you
are paying mortgage or rent at a certain price the allowance can sometimes exceed that
and you are allowed to pocket the difference my rent is
2700 a month it's a one bedroom one bathroom and it's about 900 square feet
so for me personally i do value traveling spending time with friends as well as food
so i'm willing to splurge a little bit on those sort of activities so lou where'd
you learn about money and savings um probably a lot of wall street beds have you heard of that
i usually wake up at 5 30 for work and usually work goes between 7 till three or four and i
see about 20 patients or so depending on what i'm doing for the day i'd say about half of my time is
spent doing dentistry anything from oral surgery root canals crowns basic fillings and then the
other time is allocated more towards leadership as well as peer-to-peer mentoring there's more and
more women in dentistry overall so i think we see a good representation of that in the navy itself
i've never felt out of place i've always felt welcomed i would highly recommend it to anyone
who's interested in financing their education without going into depth by the time they graduate
i think about 1 600 automatically is deducted and goes into my
tsp which is the military's thrift savings plan kind of similar to a 401k
right now my time is starting to become more valuable than my money is for example i don't
own a tv not because i can't afford one but because i feel like the time i probably spent
watching that tv it could be better allocated to something that would enrich my life far more
my investment strategy is pretty simple it's just to buy and hold for right now
i'm kind of going in with the long-term investment in mind so i'm not selling off stocks right now
i don't live a very extravagant lifestyle so i'm able to put away quite a bit without
feeling like i'm depriving myself
fire stands for financially independent retire early ideally i would like to retire at age 42
by then i would have served 20 years in the military and
i'll be able to receive the full pension package at that time and i think the end goal would be
to be able to support myself financially if i wanted to retire early for me the
emphasis is more on the financial independence aspect and not necessarily the retiring early
going back to that story where i used to walk to school i feel strange telling that story
since so many years have a lap since i was that person but there's like kind of one constant thing
it's kind of the lasting gift of poverty it's that sense of urgency that need to
overcome whatever obstacle may be in the way because the alternative is i
wouldn't quite call it living it's kind of just existing just that kind of life where you're
more or less at the mercy of factors outside of your control
there's a tendency the more we make the more we spend i hope that regardless of what i end
up making that i will contribute roughly the same percentages of what i'm doing right now towards my
savings and investments as we earn more money it's easier and easier to spend it on bigger better
shinier things but i don't want to end up losing my sense of appreciation for what i already have
you