Miscellaneous Archives - Physician on FIRE

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. I regularly field questions from […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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: […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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The Task Snowball

Getting things done is hard, particularly when you’re a well-practiced procastinator 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. I’m pretty good at doing that, both literally and figuratively. One of my sponsors hooked me up with three free (I love free!) Blue Apron meals for two. Two of […]

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Top 5 Money Lessons from Prince

I was working on a bathroom remodel in the basement today, 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 all glossy. But […]

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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 […]

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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 <a href=” />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 […]

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