Finance – Page 9 – Physician In Numbers

Future Me, August 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 April 2021, with a number of wins, and several misses.

I’ve been busy and tired since; took a vacation; worked in the hospital in July; and asked for another pay cut to reduce my hours after they crept up again to 100%.

With all that, how did I do with my goals over the past 3-4 months?

The Finish Line Keeps Moving

This July I took a lovely vacation, longer than I have had off in a while. I visited family, and saw new places, and actually relaxed for a few days. I would love to do that more often.

On my return, I was soon working in the hospital with July interns. It was intense–both good and not so good–but exhausting. Everything that was not medicine went by the wayside: exercise, reading new books, watching suspenseful miniseries (I can’t wait to get back to The Night Manager).

Both experiences have left me wondering where my finances are vis a vis readiness for retirement.

I was thinking about this last summer also, and I think it is time to revisit that question: are we there yet? With the corollary: how can I figure out where the finish line is?

Join me as I walk through my rough calculations and figure out what I am still missing.

First Vacation After COVID: Making Travel More Affordable

A few weeks ago, the PiN household returned from our first trip out of town since COVID hit. I had previously written:

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.

It isn’t quite true that we didn’t have a budget: I gave Mr. PiN a rather high number as a limit to our hotel spending, thinking that our food budget couldn’t possibly be a big issue. (I haven’t seen all the credit card bills; I am not sure that assumption was correct!)

Nevertheless, even though we had a very high budget (for us) for our vacation, we both like to get a bit of a deal.

Below are some ways we saved money on our trip, and some thoughts on ways to make future trips affordable. As well as things that, to us, are worth spending more on.

I hope you may find some of these tips helpful in your own travel planning in the future.

My Killer Financial Tool: The “Secret” Savings Account

I frequently refer to my “secret” savings account, but realize I haven’t really written about it explicitly. Since I consider it one of my key tools to managing my finances over the past 10-12 years, I think it is time to review how it works and how important it has been.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating hiding money from your spouse; that is not cool in the least.

Instead this is an extra account to “hide” money from myself–which is sort of silly, because for sure I know I where these savings are. But the account is in a separate institution from my checking account, and it’s difficult to check the balance, so I don’t think about it very often. This means money accumulates without any effort on my part, growing steadily month by month.

Today I will finally describe all the ways this account has helped me since I started my “grown up” job, and encourage you to try this as well. Especially those of you just starting in a new position this summer, with a new (hopefully bigger) salary.

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.

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?