A female primary care physician opines on money, travel, fitness, and other topics to be determined
Last month, one of my partners left the office a little early to arrange for life insurance. She wasn’t quite sure how much she needed, so she had decided to use the rule of thumb of 8 to 10 times her annual salary.
We talked about this a little, and I realize this is a somewhat silly rule of thumb. Sort of like saying you need to save 12x your salary before you retire.
Continue reading “How Much Life Insurance Do You Need?”I’m just back from ACP 2019, the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians, held this year in Philadelphia. I had a great time, and may talk about it all week.
Since I usually blog about financial stuff on Mondays, I thought I might write about some of the money issues around attending such a big meeting.
Continue reading “ACP in Numbers”After worrying about whether I could max out my 403(b) earlier this year, I was very happy to see my updated paychecks. Between increasing medical insurance premiums, increasing my FSA contribution, increasing my charitable contributions, and fiddling with direct deposit to my “secret account” where I hide money from myself, I wasn’t sure if I could afford to increase my retirement contributions as a catch up.
Continue reading “Yes, Doctor, You CAN Have It All, Just Not All At the Same Time”A little bit ago, I was looking through the forum at the White Coat Investor site. Someone posted looking for support in staying the course. They had discovered the financial independence movement 2 years ago, and were in the long slog (as described very well at Our Next Life) between the excited discovery stage and the finish line.
In reflection, I realized it was just over 4 years ago that I discovered Mr. Money Mustache and fell down the rabbit hole of the financial blogosphere.
Continue reading “Staying the Course”Congratulations! You’ve matched into residency, hopefully into the field and site of your choice.
The coming years will be busy, full of learning and service; also exciting, fun, amazing, and a bit stressful.
If you are a traditional student who went straight through high school, college, and medical school, this may be the first time you have earned a decent salary that you had to live on.
You might be a little worried about your budget during residency. You probably have plenty of medical school loans, and you won’t yet be making “doctor money.” This isn’t necessarily the time to pay off all your student loans, but certainly this is a very appropriate time to make sure you are living within your means. If you do this, you are setting yourself up for financial success once you finish training and make a higher income.
Continue reading “Budgeting for Intern Year”This is a rewrite of a post I started a few months ago, in which I was going to detail all the cool tips and tricks my husband and I employed to reduce our spending when I took a pay cut. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as we had hoped.
Continue reading “Frugality Fails”For the employed physician out there, your salary comes to you in forms other than your monthly paycheck. This post is a reminder not to give some of it away.
Continue reading “Get Your FULL Salary”I recently found some papers related to my time with AMWA (the American Medical Women’s Association), and was reminded of an experience I had in medical school.
Both my undergraduate college and medical school were rather late to admit women. Women were still in the minority at both schools when I enrolled, which left me with an interest in Women in Medicine while a student.
I attended pretty much every meeting for female medical students while in school. In my senior year, I remember a comment an older (faculty) doctor made, something along the lines of “here you are again.” The implication (at least what I heard) was “it’s much better now, why do you keep coming to these talks?”
Continue reading “Women in Medicine and Personal Finance”One of my big financial regrets is not having had a good plan for my money when I started my first attending job. My salary increased by about 150%, and I wanted to be sure I made the most of it. Finding the right balance of saving and splurging (or taking care of things I had put off for years because of I couldn’t afford it), was pretty stressful for me.
At the time, personal finance blogs, let alone physician personal finance blogs, weren’t nearly as easy to find as they are now.
I thought it might be interesting to apply a few of the doctor blogger financial rules of thumb to my first attending year, and see how I did. Since I did not have as much student debt as seems to be typical these days, I also will see how these numbers might look for a PCP just starting out with 6-figure student debt.
Continue reading “Retrospective Budgeting: the 10% Rule”One of my big financial regrets is not having had a good plan for my money when I started my first attending job. My salary increased by about 150%, and I wanted to be sure I made the most of it. Finding the right balance of saving and splurging (or taking care of things I had put off for years because of I couldn’t afford it), was pretty stressful for me.
At the time, personal finance blogs, let alone physician personal finance blogs, weren’t nearly as easy to find as they are now.
I thought it might be interesting to apply a few of the doctor blogger financial rules of thumb to my first attending year, and see how I did. Since I did not have as much student debt as seems to be typical these days, I also will see how these numbers might look for a PCP just starting out with 6-figure student debt.
Continue reading “Retrospective Budgeting: Live Like a Resident”