Crispy Doc

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 …

Today we’ll take a break from finance to discuss a tangent of equal life import: finding your tribe.Picture if you will a Californian transplanted to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the autumn of 2003. The only L.L. he’s ever heard of is Cool J, not Bean.  He sports flannel instead of tweed, and is completely disoriented by the local Emergency Department attire …

Links below to freeze your credit report, can be done completely online:Equifax Cost: Free Time: 10 minutes Experian Cost: $10 in California, varies by state Time: 10 minutes TransUnion Cost: $10 in California, varies by state Time: 10 minutes Innovis* Cost: Free Time: 5 minutes ChexSystems Cost: Free Time: 5 minutes Irony: You have to pay the fees by credit …

This weekend I went back country camping with a close friend in Northern California, witnessing the residual smoky haze of the fires firsthand as we snaked along Interstate 80 in poor visibility en route to the Western Sierras. My thoughts at the time were with EJ at Dads, Dollars and Debts, who lives in the area. A week earlier, I …