Five Years Retired from Surgery

A lot has happened in the last five years.

Think about your life on July 22, 2017. What was true then that is no longer true for you?

I doubt most of us in the summer of 2017 were anticipating a global lockdown just three short years later, and yet here we are, getting to the other side of it. The market continued its amazing bull run even despite that. And many other unexpected events happened to all of us, surely.

Financial Success MD recently celebrated five years of retirement from his active practice, and looks back now on what has happened since then, what he has discovered, and a few surprises he encountered along the way. Enjoy today’s guest post.

 

 

Next month marks five years since I turned in my pager and walked out of the hospital to the song 18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses by Kathy Mattea. I was very reluctant to give up surgery at age 54, but I trusted that we had enough money saved to meet our needs for the rest of our lives. The following is a summary of the last five years. If you read all the way to the end, you will find out about the greatest thing that happened to me last year.

My original target date for retirement was age 50.  I set up my early retirement plan as a medical student. Although I reached financial independence by age 50, I did not actually retire until I had found a purpose for my life after medicine. Some say I didn’t retire at all, but merely repurposed.

By age 51, I had decided to do part-time locums work in critical access hospitals that only had one surgeon. It was great fun to help those overworked surgeons. I learned a lot about being a locums doctor and put all my knowledge into an online video course, The Doctor’s Course to Thriving in Locum Tenens. If you want to get started in locums, but are not confident in what steps to take and how to do it well, take my course and you can become a locums doctor with confidence.

 

 

My Psyche

 

One of the biggest concerns I had when I retired was whether or not I would miss practicing medicine. Surprisingly, this has never been an issue. I developed a new passion for teaching physicians about personal finance and coaching them through tough times and transitions. My new mission in life has kept me busy enough that I have not missed my life as a surgeon. In fact, it is hard to remember what that life was really like. Today I can’t imagine going back.

I am especially thankful that I was retired before the pandemic hit. Many doctors have faced tough times and I was very thankful I didn’t have to weather this storm.

It is very important to stay busy during retirement; boredom must be avoided, or it overturns the entire purpose of being retired and free. Even though I stay busy, I have especially enjoyed the flexibility in my new life to drop what I am doing and go do something fun when the opportunity arises. When my kids drop in for a visit or I decide to pop over to mom and dad’s for a visit or someone asks if we want to go on a trip with them, I’m glad I have the ability to rearrange my schedule at the drop of a hat. It is great to be able to just do it.

 

My new mission

 

I have been teaching personal finance for decades, formally by leading financial study groups and informally over the operating table or in the doctor’s lounge. I have now turned my passion for personal finance into a business. I began by publishing five books in The Doctor’s Guide to series. These books have become best sellers and have won several awards, one of which was non-fiction book of the year.

Next Spring the sixth book in the series should be hitting the shelves and it will likely make some waves in the online financial world.

I started a blog in the spring of 2016, after my first book came out, and have published a new article every Thursday since its inception. I later introduced Fawcett’s Favorites on Mondays, which is a collection of my five favorite articles discovered during the previous week.

My second course was The Doctors Course to Automating Your Real Estate Investments. This course was in direct response to a question I repeatedly was asked: ”How could you possibly manage 64 rental units as a full-time general surgeon?” I included all my tips and tricks so others can make their real estate investing as passive as they want it to be. I am especially proud of this course as it is making real estate investing possible for so many doctors.

I am currently working on two lectures I will be giving at the White Coat Investor’s 2022 Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference on February 9-12. One lecture is called Why Spending Time with Your Family is Your Best Investment. The second lecture is titled Developing Systems for Real Estate Investing, based on my real estate course. This will be my first in-person lecture appearance since the pandemic started. This conference is a hybrid. Those who can’t attend in person can do so virtually. Just click on the link at the start of this paragraph and sign up either for in-person or virtual attendance.

I have enjoyed the increasing number of financial lectures I have given last year, but my favorite thing to do is one-on-one coaching. I started a financial makeover program five years ago to help doctors who want to optimize their finances for debt reduction and meeting their retirement goals. Meeting with these clients monthly has been a lot of fun.

Last year, since I haven’t been traveling, I opened up my High-Performance Coaching program to more people. It was a big leap for me to commit that much time to these new clients, but since I’m not traveling I have extra time to devote to my clients.  One thing I had not anticipated was how effective the high-performance coaching program is for stopping burnout and for those who are ready to change directions in their careers. Clarity, courage, and influence are key factors in fighting burnout and finding direction.

 

 

My Finances

 

Even though my wife, an accountant, kept reassuring me we had enough in our retirement fund for me to quit medicine, I still had some reservations, because if we ran out of money in a few years, I could not return to surgery without being retrained.

It turned out she was right. We have more than enough money. The year I retired, we started taking a 3.9% distribution from my retirement plans, which was the calculated requirement for the IRS using the substantially equal periodic payments method, also known as rule 72(t). (Clicking on that link gives you the instructions as to how you can do this also.) Under this rule, I am required to take the same dollar figure each year for five years, and the final distribution is this year.

Following these guidelines, I will not pay any penalties for taking my money out of my retirement plan before I’m 59 ½ years old. After that, I can take out whatever I want until I reach age 72 when my required minimum distribution kicks in. The 72(t) rule proves it’s a myth that you can’t take your retirement money before age 59 ½.

This year I turned 59 ½ years old. My wife had a surprise party for me on that day. I didn’t see that coming. Turns out there are things that happen when you turn 59 ½. That is a good year in retirement terms.

In addition to 3.9% distribution from my retirement plan, we also had our real estate investment cash flow from our four apartment buildings totaling 55 units. You can read all about my rentals in The Doctor’s Guide to Real Estate Investing for Busy Professionals. It turns out the cash flow from our real estate has been enough to fund our retired lifestyle without taking any withdrawals from our retirement plan. So I used the 72(t) withdrawals to pay my taxes so I didn’t need to do quarterlies.

During the five years we have been making the 72(t) withdrawals, we have seen our net worth increase by 47.8%, and our retirement account value has increased by 36%. We clearly have not gone backward despite losing my surgical income and living off our retirement accounts and real estate cash flow. We have not put any more money into our retirement plans since I left my practice at the end of 2013. Yet despite taking four distributions from the plans, they continue to grow. For those who are interested, my retirement plan money is invested in stock mutual funds. I don’t own any bonds.

Our real estate cash flow continues to exceed our living expenses as well.

 

Travel

 

My fifth year of retirement was a drastic departure from my first three years retired as the pandemic changed our plans just like it did for everyone else. We still have three pending trips that are waiting for the world of travel to improve before we can take them. The tour companies would not issue refunds, only credit for a future trip with them. Hopefully, we will be able to do some of them this year.

Our timeshare traveling is starting up again this year and we have already booked 6 weeks for 2022.

We took our motorhome out to two nearby lakes with the kids last year. We also did one three-week cross-country motorhome trip. It was fun to get out again.

Since I retired from medicine we have crossed the border of more than 2 dozen countries, hiked 450 miles on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and our longest cruise has been 31 days.

 

The best thing about my fifth year of retirement

 

The best part of my fifth year of retirement was being a grandfather. My first grandson just had his first birthday last week.

He has been such a blessing in our lives. I am so thankful to be retired and able to spend time with him. We watch him two days each week during the school year when we are home. He recently took his first steps and I was home to see it.

 

The Future

 

I now have grown accustomed to my new life and don’t see ever going back to a regular job that requires me to stay home all the time and take call.

We will resume traveling this year. We were so thankful to be able to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and feel safer traveling. We didn’t go snowbirding last year, but it is on for this year.

Due to several factors we have abandoned our new home building project. Instead, we have been redecorating our old house. It is almost finished. It is so nice to see the update as we have lived here for more than 24 years.

I will continue to use my time writing/teaching/coaching/speaking to doctors about personal finance as helping doctors achieve financial success and avoid burnout brings joy and purpose to my life.

If you are contemplating retirement, and it goes anything like mine, it will be better than you anticipate. When you think you have enough money to retire, you probably do. Travel has not cost nearly as much as I thought it would, and the freedom to come and go as you please is very nice.

What do you want to do after you retire? If you have already retired, what have you learned that you could share with those who are getting ready to make the leap?