Go from burnt out to FIREd up.
The COVID pandemic has had a significant adverse financial impact on physicians of all specialties despite the widely-held belief that medicine was supposed to be a recession-proof career. As a result, many physicians expect a lower than normal income for 2020. A year of reduced income presents certain tax-saving opportunities to low spenders looking to minimize long-term tax liabilities. The …
They were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. They had that certain sparkle in the eyes. They boldly set out to revolutionize physician financial literacy. Then they disappeared. The physician finance blogosphere is relatively small, but for the past several years the rate of new blogs coming online exploded with Malthusian vigor, like Silicon Valley startups in 1999. I first counted 50 on …
A couple of days ago the outlook for the summer took a turn for the better. After a little bit of online brainstorming, I confirmed that several California state parks within 1-2 hours’ drive were reopening on a limited basis beginning next week. That discovery led to the purchase of a gently used, lightweight, two-person camping tent via craigslist for …
This is the second post based on Michael Lewis’ excellent book, Flash Boys, which exposes how High Frequency Traders (HFTs) use technological advantages to obtain informational advantages that amount to learning about upcoming equity transactions fractions of a second before the rest of the market becomes aware of them. They employ these advantages to exploit less technologically sophisticated investors for …
School ended last week, and our family of four felt a sense of foreboding. We mourned the loss of the travel we’d planned and looked forward to for the past year. We slowly accepted the reality that we will now be sheltering in place with no playdates with friends in the immediate future. We are likely to be one another’s …
I buy my books later and cheaper. Waiting a few years means I score pristine hardcovers for a buck at a Friends of the Library book sale, which I savor and then donate back in a virtuous cycle of frugality and reading. This is how I came across Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, published 6 years ago and devoured on …
Being an emergency physician requires you to excel, among other areas, in one particularly important preschool skill: playing well with others. I deal with consultants from other specialties numerous times on a daily basis, often asking them to employ their unique talents at inopportune hours. One of emergency medicine’s kindred “plays well with others” specialties is radiology – in fact, …
The past few days have been disturbing. A brutal death caught on tape. Peaceful mass protests and organized civil unrest on an order of magnitude not seen in a generation, evolving in a few places into looting and rioting. An image in the Times of the LA Farmer’s Market was the gut punch – that’s where I used to take …
I’ve never been more fit. I’ve never spent more time sitting on my bum. By serendipity, my shifts this month and last were batched together, providing long stretches of time off. The upshot was that I have done some form of exercise (weights, cycling, walking the neighborhood) every single day for several weeks. I feel good about this turn of …
The gifts of the WCI Con 20 swag bag just keep on giving! Sheltering in place has provided ample reading time to sneak in some continuing financial education, currently on how achieve desired returns with reduced volatility. I’m currently reading Swedroe and Grogan’s 2018 edition of Reducing the Risk of Black Swans, which has the most lucid explanation of correlation …