With Florida recently passing a new law requiring high schoolers to take a financial literacy course before graduation, the news has highlighted just how poorly schools prepare kids for any kind of money management. Dr. Viveta Lobos, host of Stocks4Docs, can relate, and she expands more on this in the latest episode of Twist of Fate, a small business podcast hosted by Douglas Younger III. 

‍As an ER physician, she highlights her own journey toward financial wellness and how she’s helping others (not just doctors) start and maintain their own. She also speaks directly to entrepreneurs who are struggling to get their feet on the ground. 

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Being More Involved in Your Finances

‍Small business owners can easily be consumed by how to keep track of their money. Whether to take on debt, how much to take on if they do, what to charge, how to reinvest money into their own business: the questions never end. If you make the wrong moves (or make no moves at all), the odds of failure are that much higher. 

‍At first glance, Dr. Lobo, a successful and established medical professional in the ultra-competitive Bay Area, might seem worlds removed from a struggling first-year business owner. However, she quickly found that the mountain of debt wasn’t canceled out by a corresponding millionaire’s salary. 

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Dr. Lobos grew up as a refugee before coming to the US to start high school, and when she was young, helping people was far more important than money. She bought into a very common narrative still being told in our country today: study hard, excel in med school, and the money will just appear.  

‍Years into doing everything she was supposed to do, she found that her financial cushion was still mighty thin though. So she decided to take more control of her finances. The only problem was that she really had to start from scratch. 

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She also talked about a somewhat chance discussion with a cousin who worked for a big bank. Host Doug correctly points out that women don’t always have the same mentorship opportunities as men get in business, which can ultimately hold them back from going as far as they should. Viveta’s twist of fate was having access to someone who knew the ins and outs of finance. 

‍Stocks4Docs was still a ways off by this point, but she did decide that the market was where she felt most comfortable. 

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Working Through the Difficult Questions

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Stocks4Docs was created by a doctor and, as the name would imply, somewhat for doctors too. However, anyone who wants to learn more about how to invest would benefit from listening to it. 

‍Dr. Lobos wants everyone to know that you have the power to be more involved with your finances. Instead of agonizing over the best path or picking the default option (neither of which she recommends), she wants her listeners and readers to come away from her discussions with a more grounded understanding of how they can take their finances to the next level. For a small business owner, there are few things that can set them up with a better foundation. 

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