The $3 Million Mistake My Friend Almost Made

This week, I was talking to my long-time friend and thought, yep… this is exactly why I do what I do. 

We were catching up on WhatsApp. She lives in London, UK, and had just wrapped up an overnight ER shift — she’s a surgeon. At 5pm, she was sitting at a restaurant with a martini, waiting for her partner to finish work and trying to stay awake until she could finally crash at 8pm.

The reason she called is because just the week before, we’d talked about investing. I was shocked to learn she wasn’t investing her money at all. She didn’t know what an ETF was, and the idea of starting felt overwhelming, though she knew she needed to do it. 

Here’s someone earning about $220K/year… yet she had nothing invested.

All those years of hard work, and not a penny working for her. If I hadn’t prompted this conversation, she could’ve lost out on millions down the road. 

So we talked through her next steps. Nothing massive yet, but she started. She’s dipping her toes in, learning how to make her money work so she doesn’t have to work forever..

What a concept 🤯

Here’s what I explained.

It’s not about hitting $3M overnight. It’s consistently saving and investing over time. 

Let’s say she invests $2,000/month and earns an average annual return of 8%. 

• Over 25 years, that could grow to about $2M. 

• Stretch that to 30 years? Nearly $3M. 

• And she would have only contributed $720,000 of her own money in that time. 

And here’s how you retire: 

• $3M × 4% = $120,000/year in income

That 4% is what you can safely withdraw each year, while leaving your original $3M intact, because you’re aiming to earn more than 4% annually, even just 5–6%, so the portfolio can keep growing over time.

And this doesn’t even account for increasing her contributions over time, bonuses, tax planning, or optimizing accounts like the RRSP or TFSA (if she was in Canada). 

My friend summed it up perfectly:

“I just don’t have the bandwidth to be an expert in finance. I can only be an expert in this one little pebble of the world.” 

And that’s okay. 

You don’t need to be an expert. You just need the right support. 

If you’re ready to stop putting this off and take your first step, send me a message.

I’ll help you figure out where to start, no pressure, no jargon, just clarity. 

Talk soon, 

👉 Click here to book a time with me

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