Miscellaneous Archives - Physician on FIRE

2017 Q4 & Annual PoF Portfolio, Spending, and Blog Performance Update

Each quarter, I like to share updates on our investment portfolio, family spending, and blog statistics. The fourth quarter has come and gone, along with a very prosperous year. In 2016, the PoF Portfolio increased 11.5%, and 2017 was even better. I don’t know how long this will last, but we’re off to a great start in 2018 with about a 4% gain in the first three weeks. Our spending, which was $62,000 in 2016, was remarkably stable in 2017. Keep in mind, we have paid off our mortgage and student loans. Our kids are in public schools. Being FI, we’ve […]

» Read more

46 comments

Use Reverse Engineering to Achieve Your Life Goals

Our Saturday Selection today comes from the latest addition to the WCI Network, Passive Income MD. The good doctor realized that we were once good at reverse engineering our lives, but many of us lose our way as we start living the life that is expected of us by our peers, employers, or an invisible but all-too-common life script. How can we do better? This post originally appeared on Passive Income MD. Use Reverse Engineering to Achieve Your Life Goals When did you know you wanted to be a doctor or practice the profession you’re in? Whenever that […]

» Read more

7 comments

Invest in Yourself Now. Save Money Later

Today’s guest post is penned by colleagues who wear the white coat by day (and sometimes night) and athletic gear in their spare time. As an OB/Gyn resident and physician researcher, their spare time is limited, but Alex Robles, MD and Brittany Noel Robles, MD, MPH not only make time to stay in shape, but also to share their stories, tips, and tricks with the world via their website, The White Coat Trainer. You can learn more about the duo here, and be sure to check out their blog and picture-laden tutorials. What do the good doctors have to say […]

» Read more

58 comments

Successful Blogging: 10 Steps to Building and Growing a Website

I don’t consider myself to be an authority on all things website related. I started this one in January of 2016, knowing next to nothing about blogging. While I’m still learning how to best do some of the behind-the-scenes technical wizardry, I know a lot more than I did when I first got started. Why should you listen to me, then? In a little over a year, I’ve grown this blog’s readership from a few dozen a day to a few thousand a day, and those numbers continue to grow at a steady and rapid pace. 2017 was my second year […]

» Read more

111 comments

What to Give Those Who Have “Everything”

Experiences, not things. You’ve heard the anthem. If you want to be happy, spend your money wisely. That means you should concentrate your spending on experiences that you will remember forever, and forget about the fleeting hoverboard / Furby / Hatchimal that might bring a couple days of happiness and just maybe set the plane on fire. Spending on experiences is solid advice, and science supports it. Science. I understand the draw of things. I spent a good forty years focusing on obtaining them. And here we are, drowning in so many things. Things I collected as a child. Things I held […]

» Read more

50 comments

She Said, He Fled. Divorce in a FIRE Focused Family

[Today’s post is a guest post I requested from The Vigilante of iVigilante fame, a family law man who dropped an entire blog post worth of knowledge in a comment on my post about derailing early retirement, which happened to include an ugly topic: divorce. I liked his style and depth of knowledge, and he clearly likes to write. I’ve got a sound marriage despite all the time I’ve been devoting to this blog. But if you’re sitting in a room of physicians, and you look to your left, and you look to your right, there’s a good chance at least one of you will be divorced […]

» Read more

84 comments

Book Report: The White Coat Investor

It’s that time of year again. The time where the kids go back to school, report on how their summer was spent, meet their new teachers and classmates, and begin school work once again. School is always in session when you’re a grownup, and, being a grownup myself, I am continually learning. In the last week of my summer vacation, I read a couple books, and I’d like to share with you my very first Physician on FIRE book report on one of my recent reads. The book I’ll be discussing today is Dr. Jim Dahle’s The White Coat Investor: […]

» Read more

10 comments

Olympic Medalists and the Taxman. Make ’em Pay?

What is the cost of winning a Gold medal on the world’s biggest stage? Years of dedication to a single sport or event. Incredible sacrifice to become one of the world’s best. Persevering through exhaustion and perhaps injury to one day stand on the podium to hear The Star Spangled Banner played in your honor. Oh, and about $10,000. Yes, our Olympic heroes must pay income tax on both the value of the metal in the medal, and on the cash bonus that the Unites States Olympic Committee doles out for each medal won. We’ve been rewarding our […]

» Read more

17 comments

Money, Achievement, Fame, & Suicidal Ideation

If you’ve paid any attention to anything at all in the last week or so, you are probably well aware that Michael Phelps had an outstanding run swim in this latest rendition of the Summer Olympics. His swan song (or so we are told) will go down as one for the ages. The story most often regaled of the 2016 version of Phelps is his successful comeback to the sport of swimming. By most accounts, four years ago, he pretty much mailed in his performance in London. His training was subpar and inconsistent. His head wasn’t in the right place. He was in […]

» Read more

49 comments

Geographic Arbitrage, or Why the Great Plains are Great

In many professions, there seems to be a direct correlation between the cost of living and the salary potential. For those in finance, real estate, and law, the biggest salaries tend to be achievable in the highest cost-of-living cities. If you want to make big money, you’ve got to head to the big city. New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Places where $1 million dollars may or may not get you three bedrooms and two baths. With some success and perhaps luck, the salary differential may be more than enough to make up for the increased costs […]

» Read more

62 comments

The Task Snowball

Getting things done is hard, particularly when you’re a well-practiced procrastinator like me. I thrive on deadlines and like to test their limits. Checking items off the to-do-list becomes even more difficult when you fancy yourself a writer and give yourself a second job creating, maintaining, and promoting a blog. I shouldn’t call it a job; I love it, but I bit off about as much as I can chew. When you’re a homeowner, husband, father, and do-it-yourselfer, required tasks have a nasty habit of stacking up quickly. I haven’t caught them in the act, but they also seem to […]

» Read more

16 comments

Top 5 Money Lessons from Prince

I was working on a bathroom remodel in the basement on April 21, 2016, listening to Hawaii’s New Music Alternative Star 101.9 via the magic of the internet, when the eerily majestic “Purple Rain” came on. I knew something was amiss. This station’s idea of a throwback classic is spinning a tune from Sublime‘s 1996 self-titled album, and they never play pop music from the eighties. When the DJs came back on, they shared the news. Prince died. Celebrity deaths don’t normally affect me much. At least the news doesn’t ever put a lump in my throat or make my eyes […]

» Read more

14 comments

Welcome, KevinMD readers!

Thank you for visiting Physician on FIRE. I created this site to educate, enlighten, and entertain you while discussing issues pertinent to physicians and other high earning individuals and families. If you discovered my site via KevinMD, welcome! If you’re one of my loyal readers, please see today’s guest post, titled “It’s Time for Physicians to Live an Evidence-Based Life” here. Personal finance takes center stage on this site, with a focus on financial independence, which creates the ability to retire early if you so choose. I will also occasionally touch on other physician issues, and I curate a Sunday Best roster of […]

» Read more

Stay Fit for a Longer & Better Retirement

When we contemplate retirement, we tend to hone in on the dollars required, how long it might take to get those dollars, and how to best keep those dollars in our own accounts and out of the hands of advisors and tax collectors. Money is obviously vital to any retirement plan, particularly an early retirement plan. Money isn’t all that matters, though. I’ve talked before about other things that matter, like having Enough in terms of meaningful friendships, time, love, and happiness. Another important consideration is your health. Without good health, retirement might not be nearly as great as you […]

» Read more

24 comments