Go from burnt out to FIREd up.
This post takes it title from a charismatic flight attendant’s announcement prior to takeoff on a recent flight from California to Texas. It resonated for me. Like many other FI bloggers, I’m a recovering neurotic transitioning to calm. Also like these bloggers, now that I’ve got the big rocks in my financial life straightened out, there’s a lot of free …
In the FI blogging world, certain names get referenced by folks whose opinions you respect until you reach a tipping point and decide to spend a few hours digging through their website to see what the hype is all about. Ms. Montana at Montana Money Adventures was toasted by so many of the bloggers I admire that I prepared myself …
I was recently entrusted to read a friend’s memoir about coping with his wife’s major unexpected health crisis one year into their marriage. Spoiler alert – she survived, they remain together, and her recovery continues to make strides three years later. My friend describes, among many other things, the experience of being disappointed by friends he considered intimates who seemed …
In medicine, the Tanner scale of development uses physical characteristics to determine where an individual falls in their development from child to adulthood. Here’s my financial equivalent for newbie physicians (with minor modifications, it can apply to non-medical folks just as easily): Tanner I: Your sibling or parent gifted you a mediocre personal finance book in college, which you started …
For physicians with specialties than enable them to scale back time commitments, I’ve always suspected that creating a “glide path to retirement” could make a significant difference in day to day quality of life. Time to test that hypothesis! It’s been six weeks at my reduced shift load as an emergency physician, and I thought it would be a worthwhile …
It’s the one year anniversary of Leonard Cohen’s death. Here’s my tribute. You’re probably thinking I shouldn’t quit my day job. Once I reach my FI number, I may just quit anyway! (For best results, play the video and read the revised lyrics below in time to the music) And who by FIRE, who will early retire Who will …
Doctor goggling means diagnosing yourself with a new new terminal disease every week or so. It’s morbidity for the morbidly curious. It disproportionately affects those who know just enough to be dangerous. While it’s considered to be more of a med student malady, for lucky shmoes like me, it can endure far beyond residency. Ordinarily I enjoy being under the …
Years ago, I bought an album because the title caught my eye: Some People Have Real Problems. I was browsing used CDs in a music store back when both of those existed, and I felt the universe trying to restore perspective to my personal pity party. Fast forward a decade, and I had fallen off the wagon again into whining …
The first year of medical school is spent acquiring the complex vocabulary of medicine. Reading books on finance and investing requires an analogous amount of deciphering intimidating terms that obfuscate useful concepts. One can make the case that intimate comprehension of a vocabulary distinguishes those who truly understand a branch of knowledge from those who don’t. Unfortunately, there is often …
As an undergraduate majoring in Human Biology at Stanford, I was fortunate to study under the wonderfully entertaining anthropologist-biologist Bill Durham, who lectured us on competing theories of evolution. He first described the long-dominant idea of gradualism, where minor adaptations accrue subtly over millennia to create slow, constant and consistent evolutionary changes over time. This idea was contested by supporters …