Go from burnt out to FIREd up.
The second letter of the title above is deliberately capitalized to emphasize FI – as in Financial Independence. Since reducing my shift load, I was able to increase my participation not only in non-medical pursuits (pleasure out of proportion activities), but also in medical roles that are interesting (if unremunerative) to me. I got hooked on bioethics during a …
Financially oblivious physician stumbles into serendipitous contact with Financial Independence/Retire Early (FIRE) movement, binge reads related blogs, can’t wait to spread message of hope among the huddled physician masses yearning to be free via his own blog…only to realize a highly talented physician finance geek beat him to the punch. I’m speaking, of course, of Jim Dahle, who blogs as …
Betterment Likes Piña Coladas and Getting Caught in the RainIt was a whirlwind romance. When I first heard of Betterment, I was in the throes of my personal finance conversion experience. The robo-advisor appeared on wings of angels to offer a panacea: they’d worry about optimizing asset allocation for a fraction of my current cost (fees of .35% – .15% …
A few months ago, a friend dropped off a carload of third graders at my daughter’s birthday party and mentioned that he was going from our house to a “daddy date” with his high school freshman daughter to buy her a pair of jeans. Having just scored a nice pair of lightly used brand name jeans, I thought I’d share …
The aptly named SEAK, Inc. (Skills, Education, Achievement, Knowledge) is a continuing education company that sends me annual brochures touting how physicians like me can make money outside of the clinical practice of medicine as we know it. They are the ultimate purveyors of exit strategy, the mantra hidden between the lines of their pamphlet whispering, “Someday you will …
One of my resolutions for 2017 is to bare more personal details, so in this spirit I’ll share my investor policy statement* for your perusal. Asset Allocation: 100 – (% in bonds) to be divided among stocks as follows: Domestic Equity (65%) International Equity (25%) Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) (10%) numbers rounded for simplicity 3-6 months’ expenses in Money …
You have worked like a dog through your undergraduate years, medical school, residency and perhaps fellowship to reach your professional apex as a working physician. Finally you get your first check, and it has more zeroes at the end than any document you’ve seen short of your student debt statement. One friend from your study group who has the same …
A recent New Yorker article summarized the three stages of the American immigrant experience: First Generation: work hardscrabble jobs, sacrifice for children’s education Second Generation: academic achievers pursue professional careers in medicine, law, finance Third Generation: take Improv classes I found this a concise way of capturing the internal tensions we all struggle with to some degree: on the one …
Checked bag fees and lines are for suckers. Secret to eternal youth: less stress + less back pain = greater stamina. Missed connections / delays will never deprive you of clean underwear. Join a secret society: carry on travelers share a self-sufficiency gene that is the key to evolution. I’m a control freak. Keeping my bag in reach is one …
I was one lucky son of a gun: 22 years old, graduating college, accepted to medical school. I had an airline ticket (thank you, generous aunt and uncle), a Eurorail pass (thank you, savings from college gig as a Sunday school teacher), and a ginormous new Eagle Creek backpack bought on sale (if only I’d known that used is the …