Finance – Page 2 – Physician In Numbers

Month 2 Of Spending More

I wrote last month about deciding to spend a bit more.

The rationale: if I have hit my FIRE number, but am still working, I can loosen the purse strings and maybe enjoy my money a bit more.

I tried some purposeful splurging in July and August. How has it been going?

Patient Reactions To My Cutting Back

As I may have mentioned a few times on this blog, I am cutting back on clinic hours, starting this month.

The effects on scheduling have been apparent quite quickly: whereas it never used to be a problem scheduling out 3 to 4 months for follow up, this is now a huge problem. (I imagine it will be less of a problem in a few months, as patients decide they can see someone else; or move away; and are not replaced by new patients.)

I have therefore been telling patients that they should lock in a follow up appointment now (at check out), since I’m reducing my clinic hours and it may be harder to schedule going forward.

I have found the reactions of various patients very interesting.

Is It Time To Start Spending?

I always get grumpy right before I start working in the hospital.

I suppose I should cultivate a better attitude, but the prospect of working many days in a row, taking care of very sick patients, makes me anxious.

Once I’m in the thick of it, I’m usually more cheerful (at least the first week, before the sleep deprivation kicks in), but somehow the anticipation is worse.

Making things worse this year is the fact that the stock market rose recently, and I am pretty sure I have again “hit my number,” and likely surpassed it by a bunch.

At the same time, I had to attend a refresher course for attendings, full of bureaucratic nonsense and a safety course (reminding us that in Massachusetts, a health care worker is assaulted every 36 minutes. Ugh!)

Why, I might have asked, why am I still going to work? Who needs more money when you could be assaulted, have to give bad news to patients, and/or have to manage interns who (possibly) aren’t ready for the job?

In my grumpy mood, my answer was: well, you get paid well for this.

Another grumpy thought noted that I save most of it after paying for necessities.

So, I started wondering: if I have hit my number and am still working and earning money, should I try making my life more pleasant by spending some of that money I theoretically don’t need?

The One Mistake You Should Avoid With Your Will

I admit, this is a total click bait title for the post.

I am sure there are multiple mistakes you should avoid with your will–this is why you should absolutely work with a lawyer on this sort of thing.

(Perhaps the biggest mistake you might make is having no will at all, but that’s a different story).

Anyway, I was prompted to write this because my very close friend died, and her family could not find her will.

Welcome, Interns!

July is approaching, and I see that people are reading some of my older posts on budgeting.

This might be a very good time to highlight posts which may be of interest to people about to start their training.

Choices And Their Results

In my work, I sometimes prescribe weight loss medications.

They are not currently covered under many local insurance policies. Although the hospital insurance plan was covering them for a short time, coverage will end very soon. However, for the cash-paying patient, they can now cost “only” $500 per month.

I don’t particularly want to talk about whether or not injectable medication for weight loss is a good or a bad thing, or about the cost of medications in the US, or whether or not healthcare coverage for obesity management meets your favor.

What I do want to talk about (briefly) is the wiggle room in some budgets.

Future Me, May 2025

Not long after the start of this blog, I cut my hours very slightly, and wanted to make sure I didn’t waste the extra time I was paying dearly for. I had started reading about preparing for retirement in non-financial ways, and I realized that it was time to start (re-) building a life that didn’t revolve solely around medicine.

I started this series of posts at the end of October 2018 with lots of big goals, but even at the beginning, knew that I couldn’t follow all those dreams all at once.

Every few months, I try to look at what I have accomplished, and see if I can adjust course to focus my free time in the directions I wish I would go: increasing fitness, building (or maintaining) connections with friends, family and community, engaging with the arts, and, lately, keeping up with financial tasks.

My last update was in January 2025. I had hoped to write an update a little sooner, but travel got in the way. (An excuse that made me happy to skip blogging.)

This is a good time to review how well I have been pursuing those goals, as it I will soon have significantly more time out of the office to work on them.

5 More Mondays

It’s a beautiful spring Sunday, my first day off in several weeks, and I can’t quite say that I am excited to wake up early to go into the office tomorrow morning.

However, this will be one of my last early Monday mornings. I have 5 more until I will no longer have Monday morning clinic. Ever, if things work out well.

I’m realizing that I probably need to make some tentative plans for how I will use my extra time out of the office.

FIRE vs OMY, Redux

I’m just back from a national meeting, my first in 6 years.

Spending time away from the office and the inbox, while attending educational sessions, was invigorating. Returning to a week’s worth of messages and to-do’s is not.

Right now, looking at my work load, retirement sounds mighty attractive. However, while I was away, the stock market decided to jump off a cliff.

Why I Won’t Sign Up For An HSA Again

I made a comment a ~~few months~~ year ago on a post offering financial advice to younger people on finances. The writer advised signing up for an HSA (health savings account) and I advised being careful about one.

A quick back and forth earned me the comment that I should write about my experience, so here it is.

Just to be clear: I am not saying that HSAs are bad; in fact, for many people they are great vehicles for saving (and investing!!) for the future.

I’m just saying that an HSA was a bad idea for me.

Below I will go through why the HSA and accompanying HDHP (high deductible health plan) didn’t work for me and my husband, and point out a few things to think about before deciding on the HSA route for you.