Are You A Mime?

crispydocUncategorized 18 Comments

I recently re-read an inspirational post by BC Krygowski, a palliative care physician married to another doc who (at their lowest point) was living hand-to-mouth in a big doctor house in an expensive state with $750k in debt. Like many of us, they realized well into their careers that they were on a collision course with financial disaster; like few, …

Precrastination

crispydocUncategorized 7 Comments

This morning started innocently enough. I purred awake in a cocoon of toasty sheets and rubbed the sleep from my eyes to find my wife sitting up in bed next to me, fully alert. When she gets excited about something, she can barely contain her enthusiasm. Having stalked her prey for maximum vulnerability, she unleashed a torrent of words at …

What Should Be Your International Stock Allocation?

crispydocUncategorized 9 Comments

[Ed.: The following post was written by the Wall Street Physician, a radiation oncologist who was an investment bank trader in his former life. He addresses a point of great debate in the finance geek community: Are international stocks another valuable way to diversify, or a tax-inefficient bogeyman out to undermine your investing strategy? Smart people respectfully disagree. This post …

Buy And Hold Investing In Community

crispydocUncategorized 4 Comments

The FI blogger world is full of folks whose wanderlust guides their lives. Seductive terms like location independence, geographic arbitrage and digital nomad pepper the posts of well-regarded bloggers whose lives as expatriates (Mad FIentist) traveling the world either childless (Millennial Revolution) or with young children (Go Curry Cracker) are tempting a generation to follow their lead. I understand the …

Money Talks. Are You Listening to What Yours Is Saying?

crispydocUncategorized 5 Comments

The following post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through this site, I stand to make a modest commission. For those of us interested in pursuing early Financial Independence, fundamental assumptions that hold true for the population at large are not necessarily true for physicians and other high-income professionals. I recently posted about how a friend challenged my assumptions …

The Inconsistent Investor

crispydocUncategorized 18 Comments

[Ed. note: This post is best consumed in combination with the comments that follow. I consider it an important personal lesson in 1) tempering the investing piety (defined as accepting a particular investing philosophy with unthinking conventional reverence) that often accompanies a financial literacy conversion experience, and 2) hubris in expressing criticism toward the efforts of a  fellow blogger. I …

Are My Major Expenses What I’d Assumed?

crispydocUncategorized 3 Comments

This past week I went hiking with an intellectually rigorous friend. He is a law professor, and part of the pleasure of our friendship is that we often come at a similar problem from different analytical angles. He’s also one of the folks I can freely geek out over finance with, knowing his eyes won’t glaze over. I was describing …

The Greatest Showman

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Until June 3rd, 2018, you can use THIS LINK to get $100 off the regular price of the White Coat Investor’s take-it-at-home version of his first Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference ($199 with my link; $299 regular price after that date). If you use it I make a small commission at no additional cost to you. The good Dr. …

Sisyphus As Parenting Role Model

crispydocUncategorized 11 Comments

A big part of my motivation to cut back on shifts is to spend more time with my kids, currently finishing the second and fourth grades. I’m a hands-on dad. I know their teachers, volunteer in their classrooms, and their classmates know me. Not all the time I spend with them is roses and sunshine. On a recent weekend morning …

Doctors Who Cut Back Early

crispydocUncategorized 23 Comments

Old school medicine was not conducive to balance. Your family got the scraps of time leftover after your patients had staked their claim. Cutting back on your clinical load was done reluctantly, of necessity. You cut back because you needed your aortic valve replaced, and your energy in clinic never fully returned; because the diagnosis of Parkinson’s meant you could …