The liberal arts undergraduate eduction is dead; you must know what you want to be by age 16. This is what you might conclude from looking around at the friends of my high schoolers. A couple of kids have been doing bench research in a lab for two summers, something I did not have the preprofessional stamina to pursue until …
Optimizing Income Or Balance?
This is the reality of hitting your peak earning years: every step you take toward autonomy, flexibility and balance comes with a very real opportunity cost. That cost is the largest you will ever consider paying. Last night was Game Night, and over the usual beers and taunting, a fascinating conversation developed. One of us (a non-MD; I am the …
Epochs
A month ago I read Die With Zero, a book that has made the rounds and achieved equal popularity with both the FIRE community and the Silicon Valley tech bros. I was intrigued by someone who could attract what are often regarded as fairly disparate communities. A word about the author, Bill Perkins – I first encountered him as an …
Legacy
My dad grew up very close to his first cousin. They caught crabs together along the shores of Matanzas, Cuba, where they shared a childhood. They tied razor blades near the base of their home-made kites and flew them in fierce competition with other neighborhood children. If you cut another’s kite string, you got to keep their kite. My dad …
Cultured
Last night was date night, and it brought back memories of a younger and more vibrant time that it feels we are on the cusp of returning to. On a friend’s recommendation, we attended a live show of Mortified, a national phenomenon (with an eponymous podcast) where writers and artists “share the shame” of reading their actual high school diaries …
Age Is A Determined Stalker
This decade of life has revolved around coming to terms with betrayals of the body. Following the first year of the pandemic, I sold my both my beloved surf kayak as well as my stashed in bushes on the beach workout kayak because the lifting and loading was taking a toll on my back. In comparison to many people I …
A Good Week Defined
Last Sunday, I flash-froze my gonads in the Pacific during a modest swell, and while it was not the most comfortable experience in the water, there were several good rides on my bodyboard and the camaraderie of the blue-lipped surfer in the lineup, the only other person willing to paddle out at dawn on this particular winter day. Monday morning …
On purpose
I was reviewing my notes from the physician finance conferenceĀ I recently attended, and one of the interesting aspects is that my notes on finance were scant, while my notes on purposeful living were substantial. This is yet another by-product of having cultivated financial literacy and developed an investor policy statement – once money is properly understood and given tasks that …
Time With My Tribe
I attended the largest physician finance conference in the US in 2020, when the pandemic lockdowns unfurled in real time. I gave a talk and led a panel on burnout at that time. After my talk, I called home. My wife informed me that the kids’ schools had closed indefinitely and suggested I might want to return home earlier than …
New Shoots, Dead Branches
My son and I took a road trip to visit the home I grew up in this past weekend for a celebration with family. My youngest sister is due to deliver her first child, and she and her husband recently moved back to my home town to have more support in place. Over a year after the loss of my …