Finance – Page 10 – Physician In Numbers

A Tale Of 4 Stocks

This is another do as I say, not as I do post.

If you read a lot of financial independence blogs, you will see, over and over again, advice to buy a low cost index fund if you are going to invest in the stock market. It is very good advice, and you can read more about it in posts by JL Collins, and The White Coat Investor, among others. They lay out their arguments in a very logical way, bolstered by graphs and spreadsheets.

That is not this post.

This post goes through my personal experience with buying individual stocks, and the various ways this has come back to bite me in the butt.

Building A Better Life

When I had first started reading about FI/RE (Financial Independence Retire Early), it was mostly about cutting unnecessary costs and saving lots of money. I devoted a lot of my brain space to these ideas, even if I did feel that some of those “unnecessary” costs were important to my life (they stayed).

Even going gung-ho on the project, I could see that it would be many more years until I could retire in the style to which I aspired (Physician on Fire would eventually christen it “Fat FIRE.”)

Not too long into my journey, however, I came across this piece by The White Coat Investor: Using a Venn Diagram to Decrease Burnout. The posts from WCI have much catchier titles these days, but this article has stuck with me for 5 years.

Inspired by that Venn diagram, I have tried making a change or two to make my life better. After nearly a year of the pandemic, and a significant increase in my investment accounts, I am thinking more seriously about changes to build a better life now, rather than waiting for the future.

Paying For Schools

This weekend I had a lot more free time, and enjoyed long conversations with my sister and brother, both of whom have school-aged children. We talked about other things, but the cost of school popped up with both.

Mr. PiN’s Low Spend Challenge: How Did He Do?

As you might recall, in early November, Mr. PiN decided to set himself a spending challenge. He was going to limit his spending for an entire month to $300.

I was hoping that not only would we save plenty of dough, but he would stay out of the stores (he was going shopping multiple times a week, at a time when COVID cases were rising in our region).

I had planned to report on his efforts in December, but then work and life got in the way.

The various outcomes of the challenge are reported below.

Future Me, January 2021

I started this series of posts at the end of October 2018. I had just cut back my hours from full time to 90%, and wanted to use my new free time wisely. Some of that time was to relax, but I also wanted to improve my fitness, make my home a more pleasant place to stay, and work on becoming a more well-rounded human being.

My last update was in September 2020, with a number of wins, and several misses.

So how have I done with my new goals? Read on for the latest update, covering the last 4 months of 2020.

Happy New Year. Now What?

As I have mentioned before, every New Year I update my (our) net worth, decide how to allocate savings over the year, and also review the spending for the year.

This all gets done only around January 1, give or take a few days, which means that getting the final numbers is big deal here in the PiN household. It is how I track the progress we are making in growing our nest egg, and how I keep track of our yearly spending–which dictates how large a nest egg we will need to retire.

When I ran the numbers for 2020, I found some mixed results. I am still chewing over the numbers and what to do going forward. I hope by writing this out, I may help not only myself, but also others who are trying to figure out how to improve their financial situation.

A Look Back At 2020

The year is almost over, and as several of my friends have said, good riddance.

However, consigning an entire year to the trash heap seems a little severe.

I spent a little time before Thanksgiving reflecting on what I am grateful for this year; I really do have a lot to be thankful for.

This is a slightly different post, reflecting on 2020, but still focusing on the things that went well for the PiN household.

Questions About A Spousal IRA

I have been talking about setting up an IRA for Mr. PiN forever, without actually getting it done.

For a few years, he didn’t want me to set one up for him. Then he wanted to wait until we had paid off the mortgage. This spring I was thinking about setting one up, and the pandemic hit; we decided it was better to beef up our emergency fund.

Now, though, those barriers are gone.

I thought it might be worth going through some of the questions I have about setting up a spousal IRA. I suspect I am not the only one with these sorts of questions. Except where noted, I found my information from the IRS publication 590-A.

As always, do not rely on what I write to make decisions for yourself. I am not your tax expert, or indeed any tax expert at all. I am just some random person writing on the internet. Do feel free to consult your own tax expert, or to look at the IRS forms yourself.

Monday Melange, COVID-19 Edition

As you might have noticed, if you read the news, the first (Pfizer) vaccine for COVID-19 received an emergency use authorization 3 days ago. At the end of this week, the Moderna vaccine may receive a similar authorization. Vaccines are rolling out, and healthcare workers–though certainly not all of us–will start vaccination this week.

Most certainly, the pandemic is not over. It will take months for enough people in the USA to be protected to reduce the spread of this illness. I expect the next several months to be full of stories of overfull, overworked hospitals and people grieving for loved ones lost to this disease.

However, I am starting to feel a little hopeful that we might be at the very beginning of the end.

On that note, I thought I would share a number of posts related to the pandemic that struck my fancy over the year. Many are from the very beginning of the pandemic; it is interesting to note the difference in tone from April until now. And yet, I find the messages within remain relevant.

How Much Does It Cost Me To Work?

It’s that most wonderful time of the year, a time of celebrations, gift-giving and holiday discounts. Not to mention marshmallow toasting, caroling out in the snow, and scary ghost stories.

Unfortunately, it is also the time when many licenses and professional memberships need to be renewed. Additionally, if I want (need) to register for meetings or buy study guides, this is the time to pay for them–prices usually go up sometime in January.

This year I started feeling a little steamed, as I contemplated paying out quite a lot of money for these work-related costs. I started wondering: how much does it cost me to work?

Soon after I jumped down the rabbit hole of totaling up all the costs that I see, or can estimate, just to be able to keep working. I am not counting all the other expenses related to work, à la Your Money or Your Life (professional clothing, dry cleaning, massages or vacations to decompress), just the plain, required (and possibly reimbursable) ones that keep me eligible to work in medicine.