Physician In Numbers – Page 63 – A female primary care physician opines on money, travel, fitness, and other topics to be determined

Get Your FULL Salary

For the employed physician out there, your salary comes to you in forms other than your monthly paycheck. This post is a reminder not to give some of it away.

Fitness Log #21

One of the favorite things I have heard from a patient is: you’re a doctor, you don’t have to worry about blood pressure. Implying, of course, that doctor’s don’t struggle with their health.

I most certainly do struggle with fitness and health, like many other Americans with sedentary jobs and a proclivity to eat treats. One of my goals is to make sure that I get my 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise (or 75 minutes of high intensity exercise, which probably won’t happen). I was doing well enough that I added a second goal of 60 minutes of strength training a week; I’m still working my way up to that part of the goal.

Women in Medicine and Personal Finance

I recently found some papers related to my time with AMWA (the American Medical Women’s Association), and was reminded of an experience I had in medical school.

Both my undergraduate college and medical school were rather late to admit women. Women were still in the minority at both schools when I enrolled, which left me with an interest in Women in Medicine while a student.

I attended pretty much every meeting for female medical students while in school. In my senior year, I remember a comment an older (faculty) doctor made, something along the lines of “here you are again.” The implication (at least what I heard) was “it’s much better now, why do you keep coming to these talks?”

Retrospective Budgeting: the 10% Rule

One of my big financial regrets is not having had a good plan for my money when I started my first attending job. My salary increased by about 150%, and I wanted to be sure I made the most of it. Finding the right balance of saving and splurging (or taking care of things I had put off for years because of I couldn’t afford it), was pretty stressful for me.

At the time, personal finance blogs, let alone physician personal finance blogs, weren’t nearly as easy to find as they are now.

I thought it might be interesting to apply a few of the doctor blogger financial rules of thumb to my first attending year, and see how I did. Since I did not have as much student debt as seems to be typical these days, I also will see how these numbers might look for a PCP just starting out with 6-figure student debt.

Fitness Log #20

One of the favorite things I have heard from a patient is: you’re a doctor, you don’t have to worry about blood pressure. Implying, of course, that doctor’s don’t struggle with their health.

Retrospective Budgeting: Live Like a Resident

At the time, personal finance blogs, let alone physician personal finance blogs, weren’t nearly as easy to find as they are now.

Fitness Log #19

One of the favorite things I have heard from a patient is: you’re a doctor, you don’t have to worry about blood pressure. Implying, of course, that doctor’s don’t struggle with their health.

I most certainly do struggle with fitness and health, like many other Americans with sedentary jobs and a proclivity to eat treats. One of my goals is to make sure that I get my 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise (or 75 minutes of high intensity exercise, which probably won’t happen). I will see for how long I am willing to document my progress Saturday to Friday.

Future Me, the February Follow Up

At the end of October 2018, I wrote about 10 Steps to Future Me. I was a bit worried that I would be cutting back on work and frittering that extra time away. Those 10 steps were meant to move towards my idea of how I wanted to improve myself and/or find new activities to give my life some purpose and form once I am no longer working full time. I thought it might be time to review them, see what progress I had made, and think about how I might move forward on some of those 10 steps.

To be brief, there were 10 items to work on over time, but I really only planned to address 4 or 5 of them over the short term. What have I gotten done in the past 3 to 4 months?

Technical Difficulties

Apparently, updating my computer meant I wasn’t able to get online for some time. Which meant I didn’t finish the post for today.

Wednesday’s post should appear on time.

Fitness Log #18

One of the favorite things I have heard from a patient is: you’re a doctor, you don’t have to worry about blood pressure. Implying, of course, that doctor’s don’t struggle with their health.

I most certainly do struggle with fitness and health, like many other Americans with sedentary jobs and a proclivity to eat treats. One of my goals is to make sure that I get my 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise (or 75 minutes of high intensity exercise, which probably won’t happen). I will see for how long I am willing to document my progress Saturday to Friday.

This week, I think it is time to increase my exercise goals. I haven’t been truly working on building strength, and I am starting to feel it. The current guidelines advise working your muscles twice a week–I’d like to have a goal of 60 minutes a week, in addition to my 150 minutes of moderate exercise. It may take me a few weeks to reach that goal, but I’m hoping that by spring I’ll be hitting it most weeks.