Finance – Page 19 – Physician In Numbers

On Good Citizenship, or Don’t be a Pig

One of the issues have with some of the frugality blogs out there–and don’t get me wrong, I love reading them–is the excitement? Pride? Exhortation? to take advantage of free things. It especially bothers me when I know that the author is no longer struggling financially.

I should point out that as I write this, I have just taken advantage of free admission to a museum while staying (for free) at a relative’s home in another city. So I get the appeal of the cheap/free treat.

Our “free” vacation through travel hacking

I love to travel. My husband loves to travel. We both love to save money. We are a great team ;-). In the last few years, finally, we have been able to travel overseas, and have been getting better at money-saving tricks. There are so many posts on the internet about travel hacking, I was curious to see if we could take a nice vacation for free (or super cheap). I don’t profess to be an expert, but I tried to use as many options as possible on our latest vacation, and I wanted to lay the results out in one place. I might compare and contrast with our prior methods. Here goes:

The Different Speeds of Money

I was listening the other night to a talk about testosterone and investing, and why this isn’t the best combination. Something about risks, returns, and not beating the market. And it struck me–do you really need to Beat the Market. The answer is no. And yes. But no.

Really, the answer is–how fast do you NEED your money to grow.

I Bought a House In Residency, or Do As I Say, Not As I do.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I was a senior medical student looking to buy a house. There were no blogs back then–let alone the doctor financial blogs we have now–detailing why this is a bad idea. Or maybe a silly idea. To be fair, my Dad wasn’t so keen on it, but at that stage of life I wasn’t listening.

Tax Free Coffee Money (aka My Residency Roth IRA)

There I was, a newly-minted intern, hanging out with my fellow newly-minted interns. Somehow the discussion turned to retirement accounts–I swear, it wasn’t I who introduced the topic!– and V. says that his dad recommended he put money away for retirement. His dad had done so during his residency, and still had that money in its own account. It wasn’t much, but he told V. it was enough “to buy coffee when he retired.”