Finance – Page 18 – Physician In Numbers

Spending Money I Don’t Yet Have

I’m very close to paying off the mortgage. It could be all done by the end of the summer.

For a few months, I will probably be topping off the savings accounts, refilling what was withdrawn to pay off the mortgage. But after that, a significant portion of my paycheck will be newly available for spending.

Which leads to the question: what I will do with the extra money I have each month?

House of (Credit) Cards

Last month, my husband got in on the credit card rewards game. He has a new card, and has to spend $3000 in 3 months–or $1000 a month. If he does that, he will get a very nice sign up bonus: enough miles for a round trip ticket to Europe.

I figured this would be easy-peasy, considering our monthly expenditures. But it is turning out to be a little more challenging than I thought.

A Monday Melange

Nothing I wrote this weekend felt ready to publish.

Instead of skipping another week, I thought it might be time to post links to some interesting articles; I picked three on dealing with medical student loan debt.

How Much Life Insurance Do You Need?

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.

ACP in Numbers

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.

Yes, Doctor, You CAN Have It All, Just Not All At the Same Time

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.

Staying the Course

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.

Budgeting for Intern Year

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.

Frugality Fails

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.

Get Your FULL Salary

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.