Personal Archives - Physician on FIRE

Our Latest Real Estate Investment: 7 Acres of Lakefront

Waterfront Lots

We thought we had a good plan. Work another year or two, minimize our belongings, downsize to our 700-square foot cabin as a home base, and travel extensively for a few years. It was a good plan, actually. It still could be. But one great opportunity has us thinking a bit differently. Our Latest Real Estate Investment: 7 Acres of Lakefront Ten days ago, we closed on ten lots, including 4 waterfront lots with 560 feet of frontage with a total of nearly 7 acres on a recreational lake Up North. A month ago, we weren’t in the market for […]

Four Rules I Followed To Get Wealthy

a real rocket scientist

Today’s Saturday Selection is a classic post from The White Coat Investor. I apologize if the title is misleading. Perhaps I should have replaced “I” with “WCI,” but the truth is, I’ve followed these same principles, so I let it stand. As per usual, this post originally appeared at the WCI network partner site The White Coat Investor. I guess we’re rich now. It’s not a huge surprise. As a resident, we made a plan to get rich. We then followed it. It was a good plan and so it worked. In fact, it worked a little faster than we had expected, but […]

Kids are Dynamite for Your Early Retirement Plans

baby bili blanket

Today’s dynamite post comes from a dynamic interventional radiologist who is a regular reader and commenter on this site as well as the White Coat Investor website and forum. The author goes by the moniker Vagabond MD. You may recall the name from a previous guest post he wrote for us: Top 5 Reasons This Physician Holds $500,000 in Cash. Read on to find out why the good doctor feels kids can be dynamite for your early retirement plans. Hint: it’s a double entendre. So, Vagabond MD, let’s hear your take on having kids while playing with FIRE. Kids […]

I Decided Not to Go For Medical School. Twice.

family on horses

Today’s guest post comes from Lisa, a mother, scientist, and personal finance enthusiast. She founded Mad Money Monster, a personal finance blog chronicling her and her family’s journey from doing money all wrong to doing it all right. She and her husband are known as Mr. & Mrs. Mad Money Monster on the site. They pride themselves as being Gen-Xers who have turned it all around and are now charting a course towards financial independence. Their goal is to inspire others just like them to take control of their financial future and realize it’s not too late! Take it away, Lisa! […]

Debt Free by Forty: Why I Chose to Pay Off My Mortgage

Dream House Sunset

Debt free by forty. That’s the goal I set. I liked the sound of it and at some point in my mid-thirties, I realized it was a possibility for us. When I said debt-free, I didn’t mean having a zero or positive net worth with assets equal or greater than debts. I meant I didn’t want to owe nothing to nobody. Positive net worth, zero debt. My decision wasn’t based on mathematical modeling. I didn’t cycle different scenarios through a spreadsheeet. It was a personal decision. A psychological decision. Nothing more. I had taken on some serious debt and paid […]

So Long, Full Time Employment!

Hello, part time position. Feeling fairly fraudulent as a financially independent full timer, I wrote a post about a fictional Dr. Findley last summer. In that post, I came up with a somewhat convincing argument for the good doctor to consider working part time. Trust me. The doctor considered it. His family discussed it. They evaluated the numbers and decided they weren’t quite ready. The math at the time showed them they would reach their financial goals in 2.9 to 4.5 years working full time at 2% to 8% real returns, or 4.3 to 9.4 years working half time. […]

Mixing Business with Pleasure: PoF Goes to SLC

Welcome Physician on FIRE

Have you ever had an amazing weekend but you couldn’t tell anyone about it? Or, at least you couldn’t tell anyone without telling a long story that you’re not ready to tell, and revealing a fact you’re not ready to reveal? Me, neither. Well, not until a few weeks ago. About a month ago, I told my parents about an incredible opportunity I had. They were nearly as excited as I was about this opportunity to collaborate, and they offered to watch our boys so my wife and I could take a quick trip to Salt Lake City, Utah to explore the […]

$62,000 Spent. Here’s Where it Went.

maui shoreline

In today’s post, I’ll review and breakdown the spending for our family of four in 2016, and will make projections for 2017. In about a year, we’ll see how close my predictions were. A few months ago, I shared our spending totals after our first twelve months of actually tracking it. I was relieved to find that we had spent about $74,000, just shy of the $75,000 I had used as a ballpark to determine that we were financially independent. I also was confident that we would spend significantly less in the final four months of 2016 when compared to 2015. Back then, […]

One Year of Physician on FIRE. Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Wow! A year? Already?? Boy, things escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand, fast! Last year, I made a New Year’s resolution. Just one — to start the blog I had tossed around in my noggin for awhile. I had written down some ideas, I had the name picked out, and I had some ideas for at least a couple dozen posts. January 9th, 2016, I hit “Publish” for the first time. It felt good. Like that first sip of Hopslam. My plan to post 3 or 4 times a month was tossed aside as I found […]

Giving Thanks with a $100,000.00 Donation

Last week, I celebrated my 41st birthday. A year earlier, I celebrated my 40th in style with a scrumptious steak dinner followed by a nighttime kayak with my wife in the world’s brightest bioluminescent bay on Vieques Island of Puerto Rico. It was an amazing getaway. You only turn 40 once, and I made sure my big day was a memorable day. 41 doesn’t deserve the same treatment. Just like a 21st birthday is a big deal (Hooray, Beer!), 22 comes and goes without so much pomp and circumstance. For my 41st, I didn’t go anyplace exotic or throw down on any steak. I slept […]

The Earth Awaits: Where in the World is Our Family Going to Go?

[PoF: The following is a guest post from The Frugal Vagabond. After I saw his excellent new site, The Earth Awaits, I asked him if he would like to showcase the site while doing some deep digging for me. I am not necessarily interested in retiring abroad, but would like to spend a year with my family in a true Spanish immersion situation.] Despite the differences in our lives, our professions, and families, PoF and I have a lot in common. We aspire to FIRE, or at least downshift, because we recognize that time is the most precious commodity […]

What if I Quit a Year Earlier?

This post was inevitable. Now that I am entrenched in the world of early retirement blogging, the idea consumes a growing percentage of my gray matter. Occupying space at the forefront of my mind, early retirement is something I write about or discuss with my wife more days than not. A couple months ago, I wrote a post about part-time work that had me pretty well convinced that half time was the best option for me. While my wife was at our second home, I had what I thought was an epiphany. When we got together and reviewed the numbers […]

A Physician Takes a Step Towards Minimalism

On a recent vacation, my wife and I stopped at a thrift store in Franklin, Tennessee. Thrift stores are a good place to pick up kitschy shirts, broken in jeans, and if we’re lucky, a nice Columbia jacket for the kids that someone else’s kid grew out of after one season. Thrift stores are only one of several sources of new or new-to-us clothing. We receive clothing as gifts. We might pick up a shirt as a souvenir. We pick things up from Amazon Fashion. We even shop at actual retail stores on occasion. We hit the clearance racks, of course. I […]

Top 5 Things I’d Tell My Younger Self

With ten years of real world experience as a physician anesthesiologist, there are a few things I wish I would have known as a young buck just starting out. Presenting, The Top 5 Things I’d Tell My Younger Self 1. You don’t need to build a 4,000 square foot home. There’s a reason really nice homes are called “dream homes.” We long to own one someday. We can’t wait to be able to afford the home we’ve dreamed of for years. When you sign your first contract as a physician, the dream home can be yours. “Don’t […]

I’m Giving Money Away!

This website serves several purposes: I want to inspire and educate physician colleagues and others to look at life a little differently. I want to give you the tools to invest purposefully and successfully. It serves as a creative outlet for me. I enjoy writing for you and interacting with you. The site has a charitable mission to give away half its revenue. I mention the charitable mission like a DJ-spun record, because I think it’s important for you to understand. Those Amazon links and new ads in the sidebar, pages, and posts serve a purpose that’s not altogether […]

Inception: When an Idea Takes Hold

What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An Idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks, right in there somewhere. This veritable quote comes courtesy of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb in the Oscar-decorated 2010 film Inception. The plot revolves around the unstoppable force that can result from a “fully formed” idea. I consider myself to have experienced Inception. Not at the hands of a Hollywood heavyweight sporting a bit of chin stubble, […]

Top 5 Things I’ll Miss When I Retire Early

Cheboygan River Sunset

I started thinking about an early retirement about 18 months ago. I’ve read extensively on the topic in the interim, and I started writing about it 4 months ago. When you write about early retirement, you think about early retirement. A lot. I ask myself questions. Why do I want this? What will retirement look like for me? How will it change life for my family and I? I think I’ve got some pretty good answers and of course I’ll be sharing them with you in due time. The fact that I actually like my job most of the time […]

Money Used to Buy Me Stuff. Now It Buys Time.

You’ve heard it before. “Time is Money.” The phrase appeared a few years back in Benjamin Franklin’s Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by on Old One. That’s probably not the first time the phrase was uttered, and it certainly wasn’t the last. The concept is simple. Wasting time wastes money. If you can accomplish or produce twice as much in the same amount of time, you can double your earnings. If it takes you twice as long as it takes the next guy to accomplish or produce a thing, you’re not going to make as much money. Reworking the […]

An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

So does a family vacation. I have embarked on a 9-day trip in which I will have zero or limited access to internet, particularly during the first 5 days. Please forgive me if I am slow to respond to emails, comments, tweets, and whatnot. In the meantime, if you would do me a favor and suggest one article from this PoF site to potentially be featured on Rockstar Finance at this link, I would sincerely appreciate it. If you have found one post you’ve read here worthwhile, you can help spread the word by sharing it with a wider audience. […]

My Story

How did I become the Physician on FIRE? Good question. It wasn’t until I was nearly 10 years removed from residency that the idea for this blog occurred to me. When I was a truly young doc, I figured once I settled into a permanent position, I’d work there for about 30 years, then perhaps break in a youngster not unlike myself to take over the reins. That did not happen. I spent my first couple years out of residency doing locum tenens work. That was part of the plan. Any of those assignments could have transitioned into a permanent […]