[Ed: If you follow physician financial blogs or fora, you’ve undoubtedly come across the prolific comments of Gasem, a retired 60ish anesthesiologist whose unusual life trajectory cannot be done justice by a brief introduction. His writing is brutally honest, his insights are rational yet run counter to accepted dogma, and his prose is engaging and manic. Many of us pursuing …
FI-iku: Financial Independence Haiku
Financial Independence involves striking a balance between minimalism and enough. What better medium to represent this balance in verse than through Financial Independence haiku, or FI-iku? Heart in hand and tongue in cheek, a ragtag band of personal finance bloggers convened to distill our words to their fundamental essence. Here’s what happened when geeky met artsy. After FI I Still …
Have You Completed Your AME (Anecdotal Medical Education) Requirements?
As a reformed academic, I still have moments of unrequited yearning to teach the young (defined as my age minus ten years). While I enjoy sharing interesting x-rays or clinical findings with our techs, nurses, and the docs I work with, my favorite teachable moments fall under the category of Anecdotal Medical Education (AME). Most of us working in the …
What Does The Zen Master Say About Market Timing?
Lately there’s a lot of talk among newbies on the Physicians On Fire facebook group about how they are tempted to practice market timing: hold onto their cash and strategically wait for a market downturn to invest on the dip. Given the famously poor relationship we docs have with our money, it’s evocative of the famous quote attributed to investor …
Not Your Typical Warren Buffett Article
David Sedaris once wrote a piece about walking into a curio shop and seeing a large bowl filled with prosthetic glass eyes. He reaches into the bowl, grabs an eye and holds it up to his own. Then he sees a sign stating, “Please do not hold glass eye up to your own to pretend it is yours as the …
That’s Not A Health Plan. That’s Wishful Thinking.
I love that the FIRE blogging community makes our health a priority. It’s clear that taking responsibility for your finances goes hand in hand with taking responsibility for your physical well being. I take voyeuristic pleasure in reading prominent bloggers’ accounts of milestone physical achievements, and share their vulnerability when they confess their dietary indiscretions to a readership that …
A Master of Public health Takes Issue With A Master Of Finance
Like many of us in the FI blogging space, Mr. Money Mustache is the reason my blog exists. I’ve never met Pete, but by all accounts he seems like a charismatic and responsible human being, and I have great affection for the cult he’s created. Still, something on his blog has gnawed at me for years, and I’d like to …
Too Much Home: Further Reflections And House Selling Fantasies
Second in a series of woulda shoulda couldas. Picks up where the last post left off. Two Story vs. One Story To get the large square footage we sought, he had to opt for a two story home. This is fine assuming youth and health. Stairs are problematic. They present a constant hazard to infants and toddlers early in …
If I Had To Do It Over Again, I’d Buy Less House
When I moved from Boston to LA in 2005, everything was coming up roses. I was dating a woman whose presence had suddenly transformed my life from black and white to color, and we were moving in together (spoiler alert: I married her). I’d found us an apartment that was a nine block walk to the beach. I’d landed a …
Deprivation Vs. Discipline
<![CDATA[ The Happy Philosopher, a radiologist whose thoughts on life routinely serve as inspiration for his readers and fellow bloggers alike, began an interesting experiment at the start of this year. He initially made a public declaration that he’d buy no clothes for the year. Reconsidering it a few days later, he grew more ambitious and decided that (excluding a …