Miscellaneous Archives - Physician on FIRE

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Maximize Your Dead Time For a New Approach To Life

Staring at Clocks

When I have dead time, also known as downtime in my life, I tend to turn to my phone. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram… sometimes I just pop bubbles or fling angry birds at piggies. I realize that’s probably not the best use of my time, but I haven’t put much thought or effort into being productive with the 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there that I have in life. Truthfully, for me, the dead time has significantly decreased. I’m no […]

6 Lessons I Learned from Failed Business Attempts

Behind most successful ventures are a string of failures. It’s true. A person’s first grand idea rarely works out. The key is to fail forward and learn from your mistakes. That’s what Michael Norton, the author of today’s guest post, has learned. He’s actually got a half-dozen lessons that he’d like to share. Michael, please tell us about who you are and what you do. The remainder of this article was written by Micahel Norton of Funds Inc. I received […]

Rewards Made Easy: The Best Cash Back Credit Cards

Top Cash Back Cards

Every time you swipe a credit card, the merchant pays a fee in the neighborhood of 3%. Businesses that want to be profitable will factor those costs into the price of the products and services they offer. If you assume you’re paying about a 3% premium on everything you purchase, you might as well do what you can to get most of that money back. As someone who likes to optimize, I’ve often found ways to get more than 3% […]

How to Find More Time to Get Things Done

wake up early

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” I dug a little further and found that John Clarke’s Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina, printed in 1639 contains the nearly identical “Earely to bed and earely to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” In the U.S. Army, they claim to do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. ESI Money believes in an early morning wakeup call. Scott […]

Top Ten Efficiency Secrets of The White Coat Investor

Seward Harbor

Personally, I’ve been in awe of The White Coat Investor‘s uncanny ability to be ever-present online while continuing to expand his reach via not only an amazing blog, but also a podcast and Youtube channel while producing both a top-notch financial course and putting on an outstanding conference. Sure, his team of “Dahle’s Angels” that help with various tasks that go into the various aspects of his online presence are a huge help, but he still manages to respond personally […]

Focus Less on Net Income and More on Net Time

Money used to buy me stuff. Now it buys me time. We’ve all heard the phrase before. “Time is money.” When I was much younger — single and without children, of course, money was tight, but time was plentiful. And life was good. These days, the tables have turned. I have all the money I need to live the life I want to live, but there are never enough hours to do all the things I’d like to do. I […]

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 […]

Use Reverse Engineering to Achieve Your Life Goals

Reverse Engineer

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 […]

Invest in Yourself Now. Save Money Later

White Coat Trainer

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 […]

Successful Blogging: 10 Steps to Building and Growing a Website

maui rocks

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 […]

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 […]

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

Hyatt Maui

[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 […]

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 […]

Olympic Medalists and the Taxman. Make ’em Pay?

swimming lessons

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 […]

Money, Achievement, Fame, & Suicidal Ideation

If you paid any attention to the most recent Summer Olympiad, you are probably well aware that Michael Phelps had an outstanding run swim in this latest rendition of the games. 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 […]

The Task Snowball

hop vlowers on bine

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 […]

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 […]

Welcome, KevinMD readers!

Short's brewpub

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 […]

Stay Fit for a Longer & Better Retirement

spartan race barbed wire

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, […]

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