Perfect Pitch FI

It depends on how much you need to live on! So the first step would be to see how much you have spent in the past year, or longer, to get an idea. The 4% rule, states that you can live off of 4% of your invested assets and that you will not run out of money. For example, if you have $1 million invested, each year you can pull out $40,000 without having to touch the principle, on average. Certainly if it’s a down year it’s recommended to not take out as much as 4%, and you can take out a little bit more in good years. Personally, as I am more conservative and risk-averse, so I would not want to pull out more than 3%, especially since I have had to retire early due to my health, and I’m also concerned about inflation and I must admit a little fearful in general. The more typical physician might live on about 100 K a year, (aka FATFIRE) so you would need about $3 to $4 million if you were living off of only invested assets for that. It’s good to take into account any additional income you...

Having a financial plan is important to keep on track. To avoid emotional financial decisions, and a scattered approach to doing what’s trendy at the moment. It doesn’t mean that it cannot be changed if your circumstances change.  But before launching into a plan it’s important to know what your goals for the money is. Money is just a tool that can help you do what you want in  your life. Whether it’s to buy a house, a car, get out of debt, be able to enjoy life without being afraid of spending money (one of my personal issues). or it could be that you want to become financially independent to not have to depend on your job for income. Do you want early financial independence? Do you want to be able to work less or work part time? Do you want passive income so you have your money work for you instead of you working for money? How do we get clarity on our goals? Journaling is a great way to start, by writing down the thoughts we have, often we can get more clarity this way. Tal...

As the year is coming to an end, I reflect on how this year has been. My biggest accomplishment was that I got married, in our wedding postponed since 2020. There was a lot of planning that went into this of course, but in addition to work on our relationship. (And incidentally getting married is one of those things that can make your pain flare up, supposedly, so that may have been related to my pain flare in august/September).  I (mostly successfully) went on our first long trip since Covid, our honeymoon of sorts. We went to the south of France, Italy and London. It was fun except that I finally got sick for the first time too since Covid. It wasn’t Covid, but a terrible “cold” virus that it seemed like half the population had in Europe. RSV? Rhinovirus? I was sick and pretty miserable for 2 weeks, pretty much the whole time in Sicily.  I managed to have all of my disability policies approved which was also a major accomplishment. Filling out all the paperwork, going to app...

 It is so important to find appropriate treatment when you have chronic pain. I will speak from the perspective of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS), but it may be applicable to other chronic pain syndromes. You need to find the right person to help you through it. Physical therapy (PT) is a standard treatment for EDS, in order to strengthen muscles to better support loose, hypermobile, painful joints. However, it is not as easy as it sounds, in my experience, I would do something to try to get stronger, which would result in additional pain/injury, which resulted in less movement, and less strength. I went through these cycles so many time, I was unable to walk without a walking boot on for months at a time. There seem to be only select PTs who really understand and know how to treat chronic pain. A standard PT, or even doctor who doesn’t understand EDS or other disease processes with chronic pain can do more harm than good, as I have experienced. As a physician, I know how poorly unde...

  Hi I'm Winnie, an academic radiologist for 13 years who retired early due to my health.  Before that, I was working a job that was hurting me. I felt I had to keep going despite the decline in my health. I was worried I didn’t have enough money and that I had to keep doing this to myself. In fact, I had a choice, I didn’t have to keep doing something that was hurting me. I realized I did have enough (using the 4% rule). I stopped working for my job and started working on my health. 1 year later, I can report that I am in a much better place, physically (able to walk and do much more functionally than before) and mentally (in contentedness). I created this site to share my experiences to potentially help others.  I run a financial book club for women physicians and have posted the synopses of some of the books reviewed here 

Today I will tell you my secret to FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early). Actually there’s not much to it, nothing fancy, no financial advisor needed, and it’s not such a secret. You save as much of your income as you can (~50% for me, for 13 years) and dollar cost average it, automatically have it put into your investments from your bank account, weekly, biweekly or monthly. Then don’t think about it, just live your life. save and invest. No need to check it, (unless you want to, and if you want to I suggest doing it when the market is up to make yourself feel good). You let the magic of compound happen, and allow your money work for you and grow while you sleep.  A few years ago I noticed I had to pay a lot more taxes and investigated why. It turned out one of my investments that I had just set and invest, grew so much, and it wasn’t tax efficient (Vanguard Primecap core VPCCX).     I had thought this would be a great investment to put into as my mom had started it...