What Hospice Patients Can Teach Us About Money

As you build wealth, include your life's purpose and meaning in the framework.

- SANDRA BLOCK

In 2018, you left a lucrative career as a physician in private practice to work with hospice patients. How has working with people who are dying affected your attitudes about money? 

All these financial experts could tell me how to make money, how to build a business, how to invest. But what they couldn't tell me was what that all meant. I started realizing some of those answers were coming from my hospice patients. When people are told they have six months to live, they look at what's important to them. They’ve been putting it off because it’s much easier to concentrate on their careers and money. When they were told they were dying, they regretted they didn’t have the courage or time to do the things they wanted to do.

By saving and in­ vesting, you’ve achieved financial independence—the ability to live on savings and passive income without rely­ ing on a paycheck—yet you’ve been critical of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. What do FIRE followers get wrong?