Category: Finance

Life has been getting a little busy for blogging recently, but you really can’t get away from discussions of money–if that’s something that interests you.

I thought I’d note a few issues related to money-related that I’ve been dealing with recently.

This is an update of a post from 2 years ago, which I ended up splitting into 2 parts, as the original was quite long.

Last week I reviewed the 50/30/20 plan as a framework for making your budget. That post ran long, too.

This week I offer the example of 3 fictitious interns, who use the 50/30/20 budgets in ways that suit their differing backgrounds and goals.

I have noticed an uptick in people reading my prior posts on budgeting. Since Match Day was just 1 month ago, I assume people are thinking about how to arrange their finances for the upcoming start of internship.

This is an update of my post from 2 years ago. A few things have changed since then, including the student loan holiday extension and the salary offered to interns (it is nearly twice I what I earned!).

I have also stretched my prior, super-long post into two installments. This post will go over my suggestions on how to build your own budget, from figuring out your take how pay to deciding how to allocate it. The next post will give some examples of the different ways hypothetical interns might turn suggestions into plans.

Money in the PiN household isn’t holding my interest this week. We paid our bills, and saw our investments drop by 1x our annual spending. Nothing that I feel like dwelling on at length.

I thought instead I would write about someone else’s money instead. My brother is hoping to sell his first house, which has been a rental for a few years.

In this post, I review some reasons why becoming a landlord isn’t the family dream, and what to do when one comes into a large sum of money.

A number of personal finance bloggers write about making a plan–an Investing Personal Statement (IPS)–to keep you from doing dumb things with your money.

With a plan in place, you have guardrails for when your finances aren’t doing their normal thing. The stock market is falling and you aren’t sure what to do with your investments? Your IPS should address this. Your bonus was much bigger than expected, and you aren’t sure what to do with it? Your IPS should address this too.

I don’t have an IPS myself, at least not nearly as detailed as the ones other bloggers have published, but I have had a road map for years. Every year, at the beginning of the year, I look at my financial goals for the last year, and update them for the year to come. I decide what my goals are and decide how to send the money I (will) have to achieve them: save up a house down payment, pay off the mortgage, pay off the car, always max out retirement accounts, put aside money for travel and house repairs, etc.

Lately, however, I have been distracted by the changes in my household finances, and I realize I should probably check my map. I am still pretty sure I know where I am going, but my eyes keep straying to some of the road side billboards.

I have been thinking about early retirement for a while now. Eight years, in fact, ever since one of my partners retired early and put the idea in my head.

The closer I get to financial independence, the more I am thinking about what I would like to do. My planning is complicated by the nature of my work: being a primary care physician isn’t solely shift-work. If I am gone for 2 weeks out of the month, or for 3 months at a time, someone still needs to take care of the patients when they call in with problems.

Shift-work (hospital medicine) is a little easier if I want more days off, but comes with other challenges, like the expectation to put in long hours for many days in a row.

I decided to walk through some of the different flavors of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) and see how they might work out for me, as an Internal Medicine PCP.

Last week I read a post, which I now can’t find, basically daring people who write about donor advised funds to put their money where their mouth is.

I seriously doubt that person was writing about me, but I took the sentiment to heart, anyway.