Investing Archives - Physician on FIRE

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Your Money or Your Life? Both, Please.

YMOYL Review

The 1992 book Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez (a.k.a. YMOYL) is considered by many in the financial independence space to be one of the most influential bodies of work in this realm. Joe at Retire by 40 reviewed the book back in 2011. Mr. Money Mustache wrote about the book in 2012. More recently in 2016, Coach Carson shared his thoughts on the pivotal paperback. I knew it was a book I would likely enjoy reading, but I wasn’t all that interested in reading a book published 20 years ago. A lot has changed […]

Is Having a Mortgage a Great Way to Force Savings?

mortgage forced savings

Today, Passive Income MD looks at a mortgage and how it forces one to “save money” by paying down the principal on real property, building equity. Is that one of the key advantages to holding a mortgage? PIMD will go into detail below, but when I hear the term “forced savings,” I am reminded of one of the arguments in favor of cash value life insurance, often purported by those who profit from selling such policies. A mortgage, of course, is very different from an insurance policy, and is actually a good and necessary product for many people. I no […]

Track Your Financial Goals with Four Key Measurements

Today’s Saturday Selection from The White Coat Investor gives you four key benchmarks to track while working to achieve your financial goals. Whether you’re trying to get out debt, save up for a big purchase like a trip, house, or boat, or achieve financial independence, tracking these four key measurements will help you achieve those goals. We wish you success in achieving whatever goals you’ve set! As always, this article originally appeared on The White Coat Investor. Question: I am an emergency physician who recently completed residency. How can I make sure I am as successful in my finances as […]

My First Bear Market

FIrst Bear Market

Today, we have an insightful guest post from a frequent contributor here on both physicianonfire.com and on the White Coat Investor Forum. You may recognize him as Vagabond MD, a radiologist who recently appeared on the WCI Podcast. He writes about his first bear market, which occurred just after the turn of the millennium. At the time, I was a medical student and was minimally invested in an IRA and not paying a whole lot of attention, and certainly not adding to my investments. I was only adding to my student loan balances. However, I did finish my training in […]

The Ten Commandments of the White Coat Investor

WCI-Banner

Do you want to reach financial independence? Of course you do. Do you want to get there in a reasonable amount of time? I’ll take it that’s a yes. Back in 2012, Dr. Jim Dahle of The White Coat Investor wrote the Ten Commandments you should be willing to follow. More recently, in late 2017, Ether to FI shared with us his report card as it relates to these directives. How did he do? Check out Ether to FI: Obeying WCI’s Ten Commandments & Net Worth Update. Today, I’m happy to bring you the original commandments, complete with explanations and […]

Should You Consider Your Primary Home a Part of Your Net Worth?

Home Net Worth

Today, in the Saturday Selection, Passive Income MD ponders whether or not a home is a good investment, and whether or not you should count it as a part of your net worth. Note that these are two distinct questions, and the answer may not be the same for both of them. And the answer or answers may depend on the experiences you’ve had as a homeowner. Personally, I don’t think of my primary home (or second home) as an investment in the traditional sense, but I do include any and all property as part of our net worth. However, […]

Why Joseph Should Continue in Real Estate Investing

LEGO New York

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Evan Roberts, a Baltimore real estate investor with Dependable Homebuyers. He reached out to me after reading Joseph Hogue’s guest post about failures with real estate investments. Evan had a similar experience starting out in real estate as Joseph, but he applied the lessons learned to improve his real estate investing. Evan runs a home buying company that focuses on flipping single family homes and holding low income rentals. Personally, I’ve been too busy in the past to consider any hands-on real estate investing, but have some prior experience as an accidental landlord and […]

Top 5 Ways I Make Poor Choices With Money

Drum_Lake_MI

Nobody’s perfect. I’m living, walking, occasionally limping proof of that. I try to do most things the right way, or at least what I think is the right way, but due to some combination of laziness, inexperience, or overconfidence, I often manage to goof things up. Sometimes it’s just small stuff. Like leaving the remote in the refrigerator or bumping my head on the stinkin’ monitor suspended from the ceiling in O.R. 6 that’s inexplicably 5’10” off the floor. Gets me every time. I sometimes make bigger mistakes. I went over the handlebars of my mountain bike at the pump […]

Investing Basics for Physicians With Little Time or Experience, Part I

Milo H. Larson MD

New visitors to Physician on FIRE may be excited at the prospects of financial independence and the possibility of a reasonably early retirement, but overwhelmed when presented with a lot of technical talk about specific investment accounts and strategies. This is totally understandable; we’re not taught the difference between a 401(k) and 457(b) in medical school or residency. If you’re self-employed like I once was, you may have opened a SEP-IRA (as I once did) when an individual 401(k) may have been a better idea. Even the White Coat Investor wasn’t born with knowledge of expense ratios, the difference between […]

How Leverage Can Multiply Your Returns & Create Massive Wealth

leverage

Today’s Saturday Selection from Passive Income MD demonstrates the power of leverage in boosting returns when investing in real estate. In the world of stocks and bonds, using leverage is referred to investing “on margin,” or with borrowed money, but we’ll leave that lesson for another day. The math laid out below shows how leverage can be a real boon to the investor’s return when returns are positive. When returns turn south, leverage can come back to bite you. As is usual on a Saturday, this post originally appeared on WCI Network partner site, Passive Income MD. The word leverage has […]

What I Wish I’d Known at 18: Money Advice For a Graduating Senior

money lessons graduate

Today’s post is a guest post from radiologist Dr. Matthew Morgan of The First Habit. I typically reserve guest posts for Thursdays, but given the timeliness of today’s topic, it didn’t make sense to put this one at the end of the queue. I’ve met Dr. Morgan a couple times now — he happens to live next door to Dr. Jim Dahle of The White Coat Investor, and I’m happy to hear the first of his six children is graduating and leaving the roost. I certainly hope he reads this one and that his father bookmarks it for the next five! […]

Should You Invest in a Roth or Traditional 401(k)?

When investing in retirement accounts such as a 401(k), or perhaps for you it’s a 403(b), SEP or SIMPLE IRA, or another variety, you will likely be faced with a choice. Do you invest in traditional, tax-deferred manner or make Roth contributions? Maybe both? Whatever you choose, it’s important that you invest. If you’re employed, there’s a good chance you’ll have some matching dollars invested on your behalf. Even without a match, there are wonderful tax advantages to either option, so be sure to invest as much in these accounts as you possibly can. Should You Invest in a Roth […]

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? Determining Appropriate Portfolio Risk

Today, we’ve got a Saturday Selection from the White Coat Investor, where this article originally appeared. This is an important topic for investors, and it’s a great example of how personal finance is personal. Some people are comfortable with risk. Others are conservative by nature. Some people avoid the stock market because they don’t understand it and consider it gambling. Personally, I’ve never been afraid to take risk with my portfolio. I don’t take uncompensated or unnecessary risk, but I am willing to roll with the ups and downs of the stock market with a portfolio that is roughly 90% […]

My Rich Dad. My Poor Dad.

rich dad poor dad

PoF: Personally, I’m more of a John Bogle guy than a Robert Kiyosaki guy, but I’ve heard if you can separate the wheat from the chaff, there are some valuable lessons to be learned in his books. The most famous of his books is Rich Dad Poor Dad. He may have made one of them up, but I’m not here to debate that. I’m here to present you with a post from Passive Income MD in which he discusses his two Dads, making up neither one of them. Do you have a rich dad and a poor dad? Two rich […]

Money Lessons from the Amazing Dr. Shaq

Shaq Soda

I’m always intrigued by those who earn millions of dollars per year or even per month. Some manage to blow all that money and then some. Others, like a select few NFL players, choose to spend wisely and save prodigiously. Today’s Saturday Selection highlights the habits of one athlete who was among the highest paid NBA stars for many years. The headlines sadly feature athletes with similar income who don’t have a penny to their name. Shaquille O’Neal will not be featured in a story like that. Shaq is a success story. And apparently, he now holds a doctorate. So […]

Investing in a Three Fund Portfolio Across Numerous Accounts. Get the Spreadsheet!

I’ve written a number of times on the effectiveness and beautiful simplicity of a three fund portfolio. All you need to do is own one total stock market fund, one total international fund, and one total bond fund and you’ve got a portfolio that is incredibly well diversified and likely to perform as well or better than many far more complicated portfolios. There’s a slight problem, though. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has a portfolio this simple. For one thing, your money is necessarily kept in multiple accounts. You might have a 401(k) or 403(b), perhaps a 457(b), a Roth […]

I Owned Six Homes and Lost It All With Real Estate Investing

lower ninth ward

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Joseph Hogue, a man who once dreamed of becoming a real estate mogul and fell flat on his face. Joseph previously worked as an equity analyst and an economist before realizing being rich is no substitute for being happy. He now runs My Stock Market Basics and four additional websites in the personal finance and crowdfunding niche, making more money than he ever did at a 9-to-5 job, and loves building his work from home business. Let’s hear what he did and how we did it, and let’s try our best not to follow in […]

Paying Off the Mortgage is a Mistake I’ll Never Regret

japanese house hilo

Today, we have a guest post from a co-nominee for the Best New Personal Finance Blog at FinCon last year. Neither of us won the Plutus Award, but the nomination alone was an honor. That recognition is not the only thing we have in common. There’s also the fact that both of us chose to be debt-free rather than carry a mortgage in spite of the math that would suggest it’s not the smartest financial move. Why? I’ll let Rob explain, after a brief introduction, which he kindly supplied. Rob of Mustard Seed Money is an accountant for the federal […]

The White Coat Investor Backdoor Roth Tutorial

backdoor roth wci

Hello, friends! If you happen to be in Park City, Utah for Dr. Dahle’s Financial Literacy and Physician Wellness Conference (or just randomly happen to be here), feel free to join me after my closing talk. I’ll be holding court right next door at the Boneyard Saloon & Kitchen. I’ve heard they have good food and good beer, and I have a feeling I’m going to need both. I was intimidated to see I’d be following Jonathan Clements, author of How to Think About Money and a half dozen other highly regarded personal finance books, momentarily relieved to hear he […]

Got Student Loans? Alter Your Asset Allocation.

Bull Bison

I’m happy to introduce you to another physician anesthesiologist and blogger, The Physician Philosopher. He has been quite active online in recent months since getting started with his site where he discusses both wealth and wellness from a doctor’s perspective. He’s got a pledge to donate a quarter of the site’s income to endeavors that promote wellness, which I love to see. I have no financial or other relationship with the good doctor, and as far as I know, The Physician Philosopher has no relation to the physician known as The Happy Philosopher. They just both happen to be happy […]

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