Category: Medicine

Building A Better Life

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.

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Dealing With A Tough Week

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.

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How Much Does It Cost Me To Work?

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.

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Monday Melange: Medicine

I have been saving links to posts by other people for over a year. Some of these posts just struck my fancy at the time, others I find myself thinking about for weeks or months afterwards. I would like to share them with others, rather than hoarding them on my list of saved posts. I hope some of them speak to you as well.

It’s almost September, and another year has started at the medical school. In honor of those eager, earnest students I see (and in memory of the eager, earnest student I once was), here are some articles I have saved about…Medicine. With some segues into health, finance, the business of medicine, and the meaning of life.

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Is There A Secret Handshake? When Your Spouse Is A Patient Where You Work.

Since the pathology on my husband’s tumor was benign (hooray!), I feel okay writing a bit about the experience at the hospital. Specifically, your spouse having a surgery done at the same hospital where you work as a physician.

People can have some odd ideas about doctors. Like, that we don’t get sick, or never have to deal with the same run-around they do when they try to call an office.

I had one patient tell me “well, since you’re a doctor, you don’t have to worry about high blood pressure.” Which, since he didn’t know anything about my family history, salt intake, or blood pressure readings, was clearly not a particularly informed statement.

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In The Shadow Of The Big C

The SARS2-CoV pandemic shut down a good portion of our lives this spring, and changed the rest. We were asked (or ordered) to stay at home. We were advised (or ordered) to wear masks when going out. No shopping, no shows, no parties, no travel.

For the most part, this didn’t bother me much. I was pretty upset to cancel a trip in March, but I eventually got over it. I went to work, Mr. PiN made sure there was food on the table; we watched movies and discovered Amazon Prime Video.

However, our household was affected in a very serious way by the shut down.

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Last Week We Had The Talk

The other day my husband and I had a pretty serious discussion. It wasn’t about our relationship, or finances (directly), or any of the usual suspects.

In fact, we were talking about my upcoming hospital rotation. Mr. PiN asked me directly: did I want to back out of going to work? Did I want to quit my job?

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question isn’t all that crazy.

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