Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Physician Personal Finance”
Just as arbitrage deals with using inefficiencies in pricing to extract additional value in a financial transaction, ego arbitrage uses inefficiencies in the status of certain tasks or behaviors to create additional value (or savings) in your career and in your life. This morning I awoke to read a mind-blowing blog post over at Freedom Is Groovy where Mr. Groovy …
It’s not at Vanguard. I was not an accredited investor at the time of purchase. And it’s beaten the S&P in value added every single year since I went all in. Trouble is, it’s closed to new investors. A recent thread on the WCI forum got me thinking about my single most important investment. It was the summer of 2004, …
In medicine, the Tanner scale of development uses physical characteristics to determine where an individual falls in their development from child to adulthood. Here’s my financial equivalent for newbie physicians (with minor modifications, it can apply to non-medical folks just as easily): Tanner I: Your sibling or parent gifted you a mediocre personal finance book in college, which you started …
Links below to freeze your credit report, can be done completely online:Equifax Cost: Free Time: 10 minutes Experian Cost: $10 in California, varies by state Time: 10 minutes TransUnion Cost: $10 in California, varies by state Time: 10 minutes Innovis* Cost: Free Time: 5 minutes ChexSystems Cost: Free Time: 5 minutes Irony: You have to pay the fees by credit …
It’s been four months since I returned my iphone to Sprint and my wife and I switched over to Project Fi, the no-contract cellular service operated by Google. Calls are routed preferentially via wi-fi when available, and on the Sprint or T-mobile networks when you’re away from wi-fi. We put Fi to the test by traveling out of country (Mexico …
I’d heard California called many things before. The Golden State. A nature lover’s paradise. A youth and beauty parade. But the White Coat Investor (WCI) was the first to call it out as a Financial Toxic Wasteland. I describe myself as an unrepentant Californian, owning up to my idiosyncrasies and accepting the faults (and more reluctantly, the fault lines) …
I was introduced to the concept of “insensible losses” in medical school. Briefly, excess fluids lost from the human body are difficult to measure via the lungs, skin and GI tract, but can take a significant toll on the state of hydration. Conditions that stress the body and increase metabolic rate (burns, fever, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in …
I have a close friend, someone I’ve known 32 years and counting, who is astute and insightful and easily fulfills all those prerequisites for managing his own personal finances. Add to this his MBA from a top 3 business school, and basically there’s no excuse for his not taking on this responsibility. Let’s call him my friend on the fence …
I have an embarrassing confession to make. Despite my otherwise frugal instincts, I’m a sucker for a well-designed Apple product. My brother-in-law, a conscientious consumer, reminds me that the equivalent PC or Android product offers far more flexibility and bang for my buck, but I see a sleek aluminum case and my rational mind turns to mush. The prospect of …
A recent debate held simultaneously on the WCI forum and PoF blog touched on whether physicians owe a long career in practice as part of a greater debt to society. As a doc pursuing FI/RE, here’s my contribution to the discussion: When my then girlfriend (now wife) and I moved from the northeast to southern California, we rented an apartment …