I enjoy being a physician and especially love caring for people in our town, where I have many repeat customers and often take care of people I know. I want the flexibility of being able to decrease my clinical practice in the future if I want to, and that’s my main impetus for wanting to be FI.
Honestly, two years sounds like a long time to Dr. C. She wants to take a sabbatical but isn’t quite up for delaying her retirement quite that much. Let’s play with some of PoF’s assumptions by using a sabbatical calculator to see if we can get those 2 years down at all.
Let’s say Dr. C decides to go on sabbatical for 6 months rather than a full year. She thinks that will give her some additional financial flexibility, and she has some ailing family members she doesn’t feel comfortable leaving for an entire year.
Dr. C decides to go to Colombia for her sabbatical. She stays in a very nice apartment in central Medellin for $2000/month, eats most of her meals at her apartment, and focuses on some of the many free activities in Medellin.
She and her family spend about $4500/month there. Her expenses have decreased by over $8000/month simply by choosing an inexpensive destination. She also could have gone to Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, or many other locations for similar costs.
Dr. C is a hustler and is able to find some telehealth work while she’s abroad that pays $2000/month without being too onerous. She also picks up some extra evening and weekend shifts before she leaves to make some extra cash.
With a shorter sabbatical she’s eligible to make her usual retirement contributions, though her employer match decreases. If she invests in a pre-tax account, her effective tax rate will decrease from 30% to 26%.