As part of The White Coat Investor’s mission to provide you with the means to successfully earn, invest, save, give, and spend to your heart’s content so that you can, to borrow a phrase from Ramit Sethi, live a rich a life and eventually experience the retirement of your dreams, we also like to take a few moments sometimes to live in the present. Oftentimes, WCIers like to travel—to places near and far, from Caribbean resorts to European hiking trails.
And then occasionally writing about our travel experiences and what lessons (financial and otherwise) we have learned from them has become a fun and meaningful activity here at WCI. Whether it’s Dr. Jim Dahle writing about climbing to the top of the highest point in Wyoming, guest writer Michael Mulick describing how his working trek to Sudan reinvigorated his career, guest writer Dr. Liz Aarons learning the harsh reality of a goat in Peru, or a couple taking a long walk in the woods from Georgia to Maine, there is value in learning from others’ world-traveling wisdom.
We call this WCI Travel Club, and so far, Tyler Scott has penned his thoughts about Thailand, credit card points, and the power of a 100% tip; Margaret Curtis has written about her Alaska; and Anthony Ellis has described his time walking the Camino de Portugues. Today, we unveil our fifth edition of WCI Travel Club.
Before we get to the new travel essays, though, I again want to invite all readers to share their experiences with the community. If you have undertaken a trip that taught you lessons about finance, mental wellness, or some other aspect of medicine or life, I’d love to hear from you so that we can include your story in subsequent WCI Travel Club columns. These essays can be inspiring, or they can simply be a nice break in the day so our readers can be transported to other parts of the globe.
After all, the outside world is always there to teach us lessons.
If you’re interested in submitting your own WCI Travel Club essay, email me at [email protected] so we can discuss it. It thrills me to publish these columns a couple of times a year.
Previous WCI Travel Club columns:
Meaningful Trips to Half Dome, Thailand, and Alaska
Magical Trips to Peru, Portugal, and Disney World
Momentous Trips to the Appalachian Trail, Washington DC, and Tokyo/Paris
WCI Travel Club: Memorable Trips to Chile, Lake Powell, and the Oregon Wine Country
Past and Future: Time Travel and Destiny Explained
By Dr. Jian Xu, Guest Writer
“Travel is not a reward for working, it’s education for living.” — Anthony Bourdain
What do the study of history, museum-hopping, and time travel have in common? I will tell you.
My inspiration to study medicine took root in October 2002. That autumn, a Maritime Prepositioning Squadron (MPS) ship named 1st Lt. Baldomero Lopez caught fire. The damage to the ship was substantial, forcing it to dock at Chinhae Naval Base, about 30 miles west of Busan, South Korea. Afloat around the world, a typical six-ship MPS carries 30 days of war-fighting supplies for a 15,000-strong Marine Expeditionary Brigade. I was part of a small Marine Corps team dispatched from Okinawa, Japan, to offload the war materiel from this vital transport ship so that repairs could begin.
Essentially, all the equipment had to be removed from the ship and then reloaded after the repair. Within this one ship was a massive amount of military materiel (bombs, equipment, medical supplies, etc.) and rolling stocks (tanks, amphibious vehicles, heavy equipment, cannons, etc.) for air, land, and amphibious missions. We were informed that this was the first complete operational offload of an MPS ship since the Gulf War in 1991.
The 1st Lt. Baldomero Lopez in the background of the equipment offload in 2002. Photo via Jian Xu
It is one thing to study battles or pathology from textbooks; it is quite another to tour the battlegrounds or examine a patient in person. By necessity and by profession, I studied military history the way Dr. Jim Dahle tackles personal finance. As an enlisted Marine and later as an officer, I had read much about the Korean War long before I set foot in the port city of Busan. Aside from its hustling fish markets and metropolitan trappings, Busan claims an important chapter in military history.
In the summer of 1950, North Korean forces, supported by the Soviets, launched a surprise attack on South Korea. Within a few months, they pushed the entire American and Korean garrison to the southern corner of the Korean Peninsula, trapping them between the sea and a 140-mile defensive line called the “Busan Perimeter.” The Korean War paused in an armistice in 1953, after three years of brutal combat. Seventy years later, the main protagonists (North Korea, China, Russia, and the United States) are still plotting their next moves. The more time I spent walking the battlegrounds of the past, the more inadequate I felt in my ability to lead troops and hold the line in our nation’s next wars.
Imposter syndrome, experienced by many new physicians, is not unique to the medical profession.
My off-duty meandering around Busan included a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. One particular exhibit there caught my full attention. It was made up of many small plastic bags pinned across the wall, each holding a few nondescript pills. The bags were whimsically labeled with phrases like “pills that make you smart,” “pills that increase your attractiveness,” and so on. As I recall, none of the pills claimed any practical use, say for a humanitarian or disaster relief mission in the real world.
So there it was on display, an embodiment of desires to alter our destiny with miracle pills. I examined the exhibit at length, contemplating my own role in this destiny. Later, having considered the possibilities, I felt duty-bound to safeguard those pills. Such an important responsibility cannot be entrusted to persons of dubious character. Seven years later, I set foot in the USUHS, our military medical school, and eventually became a military physician. Today, I prescribe pills with abundant caution and forethought.
While past performance cannot guarantee future gains, the failure to understand the past is a sure way to ensure future losses. In other words, to alter our future, we must study the past with the intention of influencing future outcomes. Every time we pick up a book, wander into a new city, or visit a museum, we are taking a peek into the future. Every time we chat with a 90-year-old veteran; a 60-year-old mentor; or a 30-year-old who just lost their job, marriage, or investment, we are taking a peek into our own future.
In October 2002, I could have gone anywhere in Busan, but I entered a museum to examine a random exhibit by some nameless artist. This artist, just like Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2010 movie Inception, planted a seed deep inside my mind. They effectively bought me a ticket and sent me into a different destiny. Every single journey, every chance encounter, and every decision we made represents a new ticket for the one-way time machine. That is, in essence, time travel.
Last spring, my wife and I took our four teenagers to Washington, DC, for what I would describe as a “freedom tour.” We arrived just in time to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. We managed to see most of the war memorials, the National Archive, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the dreary Holocaust Museum, and the wonderfully inclusive National Museum of American History. Now that my kids are older, they actually stayed awake and alert, just like I was in an art museum in 2002. I shall be elated if they become inspired from these visits. I would privately shed tears of joy should they become productive citizens and bring honor to their gritty immigrant parents, as well as grittier Chinese and Korean grandparents who lived through two different wars.
I traveled for 28 years in the military. I hope my children will travel just as far and wide, visit all the museums, and read all the banned books. To be honest, I simply want all kids to enjoy a future devoid of the horrific sufferings of the past. I hope the invasion of Ukraine is not a metastasis of the Cold War, which has been smothering in a protracted stalemate in Korea since 1953. I dreamed that someone had plainly explained the 7,591 words of our Constitution to our politicians when they were impressionable youngsters; those seeds might have fortified their moral compass to point in the righteous direction.
Is that too much to ask for our time travel together, in a small, unsteady boat going inevitably forward?
Liberty Port, Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong in 2002. Photo via Jian Xu
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Jian Xu is a practicing primary care physician and a first-generation immigrant with 28 years of military service.]
What the Obsessed Artist Can Teach Us About Life and Wealth
By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content Director
The specter of Antoni Gaudí hangs over Barcelona. From the highest hills of the city to the tallest manmade structures overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, one of Spain’s most famous architects continues to inspire tourists and artists alike nearly 100 years after his death.
Maybe you don’t know Gaudí’s work. Maybe you’ve never heard his name before. He’s not in the zeitgeist like other famous Spanish artists Picasso, Velázquez, and Dali. But once you’ve experienced Gaudí’s artistry, it’s nearly impossible to forget.
Just take a look at La Sagrada Familia, the church in Barcelona that looks like it’s melting and that is STILL not finished, 143 years after construction began (side note: the last time I went to Sagrada Familia was in 2005; it’s fascinating to think of the changes that have been made in the last 20 years that people will see for the next few hundred or 1,000 years). You think the words “gaudy” and the name “Gaudí” are a coincidence? Nope. And once you’ve been inside the church and seen the sun shining through the stained-glass windows that make a cornucopia of rainbow colors on the walls and ceilings, you’ll think you have seen the otherworldly being that Gaudí is honoring.
The exterior of La Sagrada Familia. Photo via Josh Katzowitz
The colors on the wall of La Sagrada Familia when the sun shines through the stained-glass windows. Photo via Josh Katzowitz
Even though Gaudí was a master artist, he can still teach us about finance, money, and work-life balance. Here’s what I took away from Gaudí on my family’s trip to Spain.
#1 Don’t Isolate the Wealthy
A few days after spending time inside La Sagrada Familia, the family and I made an early-morning jaunt to Park Güell, an area that rises above the rest of the city and which was co-planned by Gaudí to be an enclave for the wealthiest citizens in early 20th-century Barcelona. The idea was to build several technologically savvy homes that featured original Gaudí designs and construction.
The views of the city are stunning, and some of the houses that are still standing give off a Dr. Seuss vibe (in the best possible way) or come off as something Hans Christian Andersen might have imagined. Gaudí’s work is gorgeous, and some of his construction methods, architectural mathematics, and landscaping ideas are still breathtaking.
The idea behind Park Güell was to design and build 60 high-end homes so some of the city’s wealthiest families could live together in a planned community. But only a few plots were ever sold, and in 1914, 14 years after the project began, the idea was shuttered. A few years later, the city bought the land and turned it into a public park.
One of the problems with the idea, according to our tour guide, was that the wealthy didn’t want to live apart from the rest of Barcelona’s citizenry. Why? Maybe they were afraid of a worker’s revolution against them, or they might not have wanted to be inconvenienced by the lack of public transportation to a hill outside the center of the city. But the richest people also wanted to be seen by those who didn’t have as much money as them—the idea being, what’s the point of all that money if you can’t flaunt it in front of your colleagues and the less fortunate? The rich didn’t want to isolate themselves.
That idea might seem a little strange today, particularly if you live in a gated community or if you party exclusively at clubs behind red velvet ropes. But it’s a good reminder that it’s not necessarily fun to be a wealthy hermit, because being part of a community, no matter how much money is in your bank account, is one of the most rewarding parts of life.
#2 You Must Have Work-Life Balance
Despite the project’s failure, Gaudí lived at Park Güell for several years before deciding, “You know what’s a good idea? Moving out of my house and just living at work!” He ended up moving into La Sagrada Familia, a project on which he had worked for 43 years, and lived there while the construction of the church continued.
As noted by Rostar Architects:
“He even began sleeping in his studio toward the end of his life. He also terminated many of his jobs so he could focus his efforts. Slowly his health and hygiene began to suffer as he became increasingly obsessed with the project . . . In 1926 while crossing the street, he was hit by a tram and passed away at 73. The tram driver mistook him for a beggar because of his disheveled appearance and tattered clothing. He was buried in the crypt at La Sagrada Familia.”
Gaudí was clearly living to work instead of working to live. But then again, his work came to define his life after his death. Still, you’re probably not as talented or as driven as Gaudí. Avoiding burnout is key to having a well-rounded life.
#3 Artists Still Need to Make Money
There is a gift shop at Park Güell. There is a gift shop at La Sagrada Familia. When we visited Casa Batlló, a house designed by Gaudí in 1904, there was also a gift shop. Eventually, we couldn’t help ourselves. We bought some wooden chopsticks and a pair of trivets for $52. We briefly considered salt and pepper shakers and a three-pack of dress socks, but somehow, we detached ourselves from those items before we walked to the cash register.
Talk about artistic integrity all you want. But Dali (who hawked cars and gum for money), Velazquez (who accepted paychecks from Spanish king Philip IV to be the court painter) and Picasso (with the infamous story of him trying to sell a charcoal sketch of a goat for $100,000) all understood that their art needed to sell so that they could eat; live; and, in the case of Dali, buy what I assume was a tremendous amount of mustache wax.
A starving artist might seem romantic, but it probably sucks in real life.
Do you have your own travel stories where you learned a lesson? What else have you gained from your journeys? Email us!
[For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at [email protected].]
