Whether you’re a physician fresh out of residency, or a medical student starting the journey, I'm going to make you feel uncomfortable. The productive kind of discomfort, where intense reflection leads you to adapt and thrive.
First, consider priorities you care about deeply - your family or partner, your friends, your spiritual community and personal opportunities to do good for others. Also consider those pursuits that disproportionately excite your reward centers and replenish you - channeling your creative impulses, exercise, travel, music, art and the outdoors.
Next, imagine that I hired a professional time tracker to review how you currently allocate your hours. What priorities might I conclude you hold dearest? Advancing your career at the hospital? Spending time alone in a car?
Here at Crispy Doc, I set out to help you reclaim time as your most valuable asset by implementing efficient financial strategies. To this end, I discuss:
- financial literacy skills you don't learn in residency
- disciplined personal finance to achieve financial independence
- flexibility enabling you to meet needs while minimizing costs and effort (I’m quoting the godfather of FIRE, Jacob Lund Fisker, at his blog Early Retirement Extreme)
- what I wish I'd known/done 15 years ago that you can start today
Since it’s a personal journey, I'll also touch on:
- learning from past mistakes
- the virtues of a high earn, low burn lifestyle
- identifying high-reward pursuits that provide “pleasure out of proportion"
The name Crispy Doc alludes to the current epidemic of physician burnout. If managed as an opportunity for growth, experiencing burnout can prompt you to redesign your lifestyle around your values and priorities.
In certain dark corners of the web, FIRE is an acronym for Financial Independence/Retiring Early. Becoming a Crispy Doc from exposure to this type of FIRE can be a healthy, often life-changing experience.
I’m glad you’re here. Let’s figure out early in your career how we can practice medicine without letting it deny us what and whom we love.