Physician In Numbers

Our “free” vacation through travel hacking

I love to travel. My husband loves to travel. We both love to save money. We are a great team ;-). In the last few years, finally, we have been able to travel overseas, and have been getting better at money-saving tricks. There are so many posts on the internet about travel hacking, I was curious to see if we could take a nice vacation for free (or super cheap). I don’t profess to be an expert, but I tried to use as many options as possible on our latest vacation, and I wanted to lay the results out in one place. I might compare and contrast with our prior methods. Here goes:

Fitness log #2

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.

Figuring Out Future Me

There’s lots of talk out in the FIRE blog world about retiring to something, rather than from something. Finding your passion, something you not only don’t mind going to do, but are excited that you get to go work on it.

The Different Speeds of Money

I was listening the other night to a talk about testosterone and investing, and why this isn’t the best combination. Something about risks, returns, and not beating the market. And it struck me–do you really need to Beat the Market. The answer is no. And yes. But no.

Really, the answer is–how fast do you NEED your money to grow.

Fitness log #1

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 Bought a House In Residency, or Do As I Say, Not As I do.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I was a senior medical student looking to buy a house. There were no blogs back then–let alone the doctor financial blogs we have now–detailing why this is a bad idea. Or maybe a silly idea. To be fair, my Dad wasn’t so keen on it, but at that stage of life I wasn’t listening.

Tax Free Coffee Money (aka My Residency Roth IRA)

There I was, a newly-minted intern, hanging out with my fellow newly-minted interns. Somehow the discussion turned to retirement accounts–I swear, it wasn’t I who introduced the topic!– and V. says that his dad recommended he put money away for retirement. His dad had done so during his residency, and still had that money in its own account. It wasn’t much, but he told V. it was enough “to buy coffee when he retired.”

The first post. On the first page of my first blog. So far with zero readers, until you.

Already we have lots of numbers!

As a primary care physician, I see numbers all the time: vitals, labs, ages, costs. Report cards on panel size, metrics met, satisfaction scored.

As someone interested in personal finance, I read about savings rates, investment returns, safe withdrawal rates, financial independence and “the Number.” As someone interested in travel, I hear about frequent flyer miles, airfares, countries traveled. As a woman in the USA who consumes mass media, I think about clothing sizes, calories to cut (or eat), steps logged, items to buy, items to purge.

As a woman, I have seen fewer writers like me blogging about these subjects, but that is changing.

I hope to write about numbers, lots of numbers, but also to include some of the stories that go with them: how do real people make these numbers work, what do we do when they don’t work so neatly.

For now, I plan to remain anonymous, keeping in mind that sometimes things change. I’d like to keep things civil and professional here; somehow that always seems like a good policy.

So, let us voyage into this blogging adventure together, my #1 reader….