Go from burnt out to FIREd up.
One of the early lessons in trauma care during my emergency medicine residency was the concept of the Golden Hour: early, appropriate intervention during the critical first hour following traumatic injury can avoid death. I ended up practicing in a community hospital where our critical care cases are more medical than traumatic (stroke, sepsis, heart attack). Yet the concept of …
You are in your late 20s, at a cocktail party, and strike up a conversation with a friendly and socially lubricated stranger while standing in line for a drink. Five minutes into the conversation, the stranger asks you what you do. How do you reply? It’s a probing question, and it can mean a ton of different things. Is this …
I come from a family, and a tradition, that is historically steeped in guilt. Visits home used to end on a sour note, despite the best of intentions. We would contort our schedules and sublimate our priorities to visit family. Then, without fail, this script would play out: Me: It’s been a really nice visit. Dad: You need to come …
In a couple of years, I’m going to hit a life milestone that has nothing to do with financial goals or control of my time. My First Colonoscopy. The words read like an utterly forgettable children’s book (turns out someone else thought so, too). My wife and I have never met a gastroenterologist who wasn’t profoundly humane, hilarious, or both. …
Your dentist constitutes an intimate relationship. Like the little birds hopping in and out of the crocodile’s teeth, there’s a level of trust implicit in letting another human being near your mouth. Once you understand the anatomy of the carotid artery, the level of trust deepens substantially. A dear friend once proclaimed that you can’t truly call a place home …
One of the great pleasures of this blog has been getting to befriend and learn from other physician finance bloggers. It’s an even greater privilege when they offer to share their playbook for how cutting back their clinical hours helped them achieve their goals. I met Wealthy Doc in a bar in Orlando, but we weren’t living out the lyrics …
Dad called a couple of weeks ago to let me know that the condo in Miami was sold. He sounded weary over the phone, as if resigned to the amputation of a dead limb whose weight he could no longer bear. Selling his stake in the Miami condo, that storied unicorn purchase made decades ago, was a profound symbolic shift. …
An Unexpected Pivot My father spent most of his career in sales and marketing, which is why he it surprised us all when he opted to pursue an encore career as a substitute teacher for junior high and high school students. In retrospect, it made perfect sense, what with his primary qualification being that he is an eleven year boy …
My dad has been going through some difficulties with his health. Lately, most of our emails back and forth are about his latest test results and what they mean. That’s a weird place to be as a son, but not entirely unexpected when you are the child who became a physician. Whether you feel comfortable in the role or not, …
The progression toward financial independence can be encapsulated in two distinct life stages: the hunt and the feast. Some will spend their lives in a perpetual hunt, holding out for large game that may never come. These folks move the goal posts so far forward they risk never scoring. Others shorten the hunt by accepting a feast that is slightly …