A female primary care physician opines on money, travel, fitness, and other topics to be determined
I’m not sitting my repeat specialty boards for a few more weeks, but I’m finding that I have less time to blog these days.
I will likely continue publishing my Friday Fitness posts, but the Monday posts may need to go on hiatus until April.
See you on the other side!
You may or may not know that US physicians are no longer board certified for life.
Anyone who passed their boards after 1990 has needed to pass more exams (with associated costs and time off of work) in order to stay current.
Continue reading “Pick Your Poison”Another school year has come to an end.
Graduations are pretty much done.
That means the first days of internship are approaching fast.
I thought a few pieces of advice, and encouragement, might be appropriate at this time. As I prepare to meet my new interns on my next rotation through the hospital.
Continue reading “4 Pieces Of Advice For Those Starting Internship”Match Day has come and gone. It’s time to think about next steps as everyone still in training moves on to the next level.
Fourth year medical students know where they will be going in June.
Residents who are going on to fellowship have known about their next destination for a few months.
Those finishing training in 3 months will (hopefully) be moving on to a practice that excites them. And pays a lot more than a resident salary.
The move from resident to attending salary holds plenty of opportunity: to spend more, to save more, to make plans that can affect your financial life for years to come.
When I graduated residency, I did not have a very clear plan for my finances. There really wasn’t much out there to guide people who were going to see a large increase in income.
I muddled along, making some good moves, and some not-so-good moves. I periodically look back at the choices I made, and I thought I might share some lessons I take away from my spending at that time, in the hopes it helps you make your own plans (or maybe let you know you are not alone if you have made similar choices yourself).
Continue reading “Lessons Learned From My Spending As A New Attending”I have been thinking a lot about cutting back at work.
The conditions at work have been going downhill (not enough staff, some issues with the physical plant), and I have been tired, and I have other interests I would like to have time to pursue. Some of my patients are not always pleasant to deal with.
On the other hand, I have some patients whose names on my schedule make me smile with anticipation. I love seeing them for their yearly or twice yearly visits.
Continue reading “When You Are Ready, You Will Know”I don’t know how things are going where you work, but around here, nothing is working as well as it used to.
Continue reading “FIRE, Louis, and Me”This week I am revealed as a hypocrite.
Continue reading “Talk Is Cheap, Look At What People Really Do”When I had first started reading about FI/RE (Financial Independence Retire Early), it was mostly about cutting unnecessary costs and saving lots of money. I devoted a lot of my brain space to these ideas, even if I did feel that some of those “unnecessary” costs were important to my life (they stayed).
Even going gung-ho on the project, I could see that it would be many more years until I could retire in the style to which I aspired (Physician on Fire would eventually christen it “Fat FIRE.”)
Not too long into my journey, however, I came across this piece by The White Coat Investor: Using a Venn Diagram to Decrease Burnout. The posts from WCI have much catchier titles these days, but this article has stuck with me for 5 years.
Inspired by that Venn diagram, I have tried making a change or two to make my life better. After nearly a year of the pandemic, and a significant increase in my investment accounts, I am thinking more seriously about changes to build a better life now, rather than waiting for the future.
Continue reading “Building A Better Life”I was planning on writing something else altogether for today. However, I spent the entire weekend trying to catch up on work, and I just didn’t have the energy to edit my planned post. Maybe for next week.
As it was, last week I had a difficult return to work. After taking time off for the holiday, I returned to a bursting in-box, all the while dealing with a full schedule and teaching two different courses over video. While one course was brand new, which was stressful, the other was almost as time-consuming, as I had always taught it in-person.
I must confess, coming back to all this, I started thinking about retirement more seriously. The argument that financial independence leads to happier doctors at work seemed highly suspect to me by Tuesday.
Continue reading “Dealing With A Tough Week”It’s that most wonderful time of the year, a time of celebrations, gift-giving and holiday discounts. Not to mention marshmallow toasting, caroling out in the snow, and scary ghost stories.
Unfortunately, it is also the time when many licenses and professional memberships need to be renewed. Additionally, if I want (need) to register for meetings or buy study guides, this is the time to pay for them–prices usually go up sometime in January.
This year I started feeling a little steamed, as I contemplated paying out quite a lot of money for these work-related costs. I started wondering: how much does it cost me to work?
Soon after I jumped down the rabbit hole of totaling up all the costs that I see, or can estimate, just to be able to keep working. I am not counting all the other expenses related to work, à la Your Money or Your Life (professional clothing, dry cleaning, massages or vacations to decompress), just the plain, required (and possibly reimbursable) ones that keep me eligible to work in medicine.
Continue reading “How Much Does It Cost Me To Work?”