Perfect Pitch FI

The white coat investor by James Dahle MD.  This is the book we started with in the book club because I feel that it is a great place to start for physicians. It discusses the physician situation in which you spend a lot of time in training and don’t really start to make money until your 30s generally and then you have lots of student loans to pay back. And then physicians often find themselves working so hard that they don’t have time or energy to pay attention to their personal finances. They may have never learned how to save money and may get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses. The downside of this book is that it may not appeal to some women physicians as it is written from a male perspective with a stay at home wife.  Even if you feel this way I think it’s still a great place to get started. Also it may be more helpful for physicians just starting out, but it is never too late to get started. I love the saying “you start by starting!”  Honestly I wanted to jum...

(Skip down to the bottom for a link to a recent podcast episode the author of The Hands Off Investor, Brian Burke made regarding the current state of the market) Section 3: evaluating real estate Next the book dives into how to evaluate the real estate offerings. Different real estate sectors include multifamily, single-family homes, offices/retail, self storage, warehouses, mobile home parks and land. General real estate strategies include buy and hold (hold periods common for 3 to 7 years), buy and flip, and development (considered most risky). Substrategies, in order of less risk and less return, to more risk and potentially more return, include core (least risky, less return more desirable buildings in urban centers), Core plus, value add (common strategy with moderate risk and moderate returns), and subsidized housing. There are also different classes of real estate ranging from class A (newer buildings in nicer neighborhoods) to class D (older buildings in rough neighbo...

In book club this month we review The Hands-Off Investor by Brian Burke about passive real estate (syndication) investing The book is divided into 5 sections 1. Investing in syndications 2. Getting to know the sponsor 3. Evaluating real estate 4. Evaluating offerings and structure 5. The investing process This post will review sections 1 and 2. I like that the book's structure fits to what the author thinks one should evaluate when trying to decide if syndication investing is right for you. After deciding if investing is right for you in chapter 1, finding a sponsor that you can trust and has a good record is the next step.  Personally I use real estate as diversification (currently 10% of my portfolio).  And honestly I’m really not interested in evaluating the numbers (I know that’s not great) however I agree that what’s most important is the sponsor and so I went in because I trusted the sponsors (or the people that referred me to them). The author states he believes that 20...

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...