Finance – Page 9 – Physician In Numbers

Monday Melange. Money Is For Spending, Too

Before I leave on a vacation, I always try to tidy up the house: clear the desk, put everything away, empty the fridge of food that won’t be good by the time we return. This makes coming back to regular life slightly less painful. This time, I also put together a round up post, to share some blog posts that spoke to me over the past few months.

I didn’t have much of a budget for this vacation–after over a year at home, I sort of didn’t care what it cost. Sometimes it is time to loosen the purse strings, and for the PiN household, this was that time; though I still like to get a good deal if that is possible. A number of the posts below reflect that mindset.

Talk Is Cheap, Look At What People Really Do

This week I am revealed as a hypocrite.

Living As A One Car Family

If someone were going to ask me, what is the most unusual thing you did that helped you get ahead financially? I suspect that my best answer would be, living as a one car family.

Over the past week, I had to deal with some of the inconveniences of having just one car in the family, as Mr. PiN took ours out of state to help with a family emergency. [This might be why this post is coming out a week later than expected.]

I thought it would be worthwhile to go through the many ways in which this one-car situation has overall yielded great benefits, while acknowledging that sometimes it is not ideal.

Monday Melange, May 2021

Lately, the PiN household has joined the modern, electronically connected world. By that, I mean, I have started forwarding articles to Mr. PiN that I think he would enjoy. Or that I want him to do something about.

I thought I might share some of the articles that I thought interesting enough to forward. After going through all the links, I will concentrate on the personal finance and travel-related articles I sent in the past year.

Making A Bed You Want To Lie In

Right now, I love my bed.

There is little I enjoy more during the 5,000th day at home, than sliding into my collection of freshly cleaned sheets, deluxe pillows with just the right degree of softness, and my personal comforter.

Before the pandemic, Mr. PiN and I would sometimes consider the merits of going away for the weekend, and decide to stay home because our house, mostly our bed, was just too luxurious to leave. Now that we cannot leave, we are very happy to have the current sleeping set-up already arranged.

However, I was not planning to write a whole post about how lovely the bed is. More, I was thinking about the financial issues that affected how we built this treat we get to enjoy nightly.

Why We Don’t Invest In Real Estate

When I look around the internet, it seems everyone loves real estate. I can hardly peruse a personal finance blog feed without tripping over someone extolling the virtues of investing in rentals.

Why is it, then, that the PiN household isn’t doing the same?

Future Me, April 2021

I started this series of posts at the end of October 2018. I had just cut back my hours from full time to 90%, and wanted to use my new free time wisely. Some of that time was to relax, but I also wanted to improve my fitness, make my home a more pleasant place to stay, and work on becoming a more well-rounded human being.

My last update was in January 2021, with a number of wins, and several misses.

So how have I done with my new goals? Read on for the latest update, covering the first 3+ months of 2021.

Rising Tides

In the past few months, I have been checking my investment portfolio, and seeing it increase. A lot. This has sparked thoughts of retiring much earlier.

After working many weeks in the hospital this winter, I am quite tempted. The thought of staying home, sleeping in, not worrying about COVID exposures from people who can’t be bothered to wear their mask properly–it’s all quite alluring.

Maybe I can think about retiring soon? My nest egg is growing on steroids this year. And yet…

What Is A Good Budget For Intern Year?

It’s that time of year: Match Day has come and gone. Congratulations to all the students who matched!

Now it is time for a large number of graduating seniors to make decisions related to their first year as doctors.

If you stopped here for this post, then I am guessing you may have some concerns about making a budget for your internship year.

Though that time is long passed for me (I won’t say thank goodness, as it was a very exciting time), this question of what to budget in your first year as a doctor is something that I keep chewing over. I have written about it before, but am still trying to put things together in a better way. We will see if this year I can do better.

To read my prior attempts at answering this question, please see:

What Does Saving 20% Get You?

Last week I read this post by The Prudent Plastic Surgeon, which starts out calling a savings rate of 20% “pretty much mandatory” for building wealth. I think this is a fine goal. He writes that paying down debt should count, as it improves your net worth (which it does).

I wasn’t so sure. After all, if your plan relies on saving and investing 20% of your money for 30 years in order to build up your nest egg, then using some of that money to pay off debt should, in theory, mean that you come up short.

As I was walking this weekend, I was thinking about this more and more, and was getting more and more annoyed. I figured it was time to bring out the numbers and see how this worked.