Female Physician Finance Blog – Page 2

How COVID Made Me Not Go Gently into My FIRE Goodnight

Part One:

Difficult Decisions at the Start of a Global Pandemic:

I want to share with the physician FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early/Recreational Employment) community what my thinking was to leave FIRE and return to work.

In 2019, I resigned from the VA when we moved to Medellín, Colombia, for the summer. After we got somewhat settled in Gainesville in August of 2019, I half-heartedly applied for a part-time position at a local hospice.

But after exploring it, I sensed it was a chaotic work environment and knew my heart wouldn’t be in the job. For that reason, I ended up turning the position as a Hospice and Palliative Care physician down.

I intended to let my medical license lapse while I walked away from medicine completely. One thing made me renew my license, though. Now, this next bit sounds a little woo-woo, but in the interest of authenticity, I’m going to tell you.

50 Nonclinical Careers for Physicians: a book review

If you’re burnt out from Covid and contemplating exploring nonclinical options, this book is for you. 50 Nonclinical Careers for Physicians is full of information on finding fulfilling, meaningful, and lucrative alternatives to direct patient care.

Books and Hikes are good for the soul. (Reader: please be aware there are Amazon affiliate links, that if you click, although they will not result in higher prices for you, could result in a commission that would go towards supporting this blog.)

Dr. Sylvie Stacy wrote a much more comprehensive, and up-to-date book than this book review I did here. Physicians in Transition was a dated compilation of twenty-five interviews with physicians who quit clinical medicine and explored other ventures as ways to not only make money, but find more fulfilling careers.

Physicians in Transition: Doctors Who Successfully Reinvented Themselves (A Book Review)

“It is unlikely that your actual path through life will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out. It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success.” – Atomic Habits

Fascinating read (Editor’s note: Please be aware there can be affiliate links in this blog, while bringing no extra charge to you, can provide a commission to support this blog)

This post may sound a bit tone-deaf in our current climate, as it explores physicians leaving clinical medicine. However, this blog was written last fall and is only now seeing publication as I have a one week break in my regular (fiction) writing schedule. And judging by the eye-popping number of “I quit” posts from doctors that I’ve seen recently in my Facebook feed—as well as reading a thought-provoking blog by a pharmacist who’s taking a COVID Sabbatical—I decided to go ahead and publish this post.

Spending Habits for Professionals Who Want to FIRE: I wrote a book just for you.

Often when a blogger drops off the face of the earth, it’s because something happened, like divorce or else health issues, like a Glioblastoma. For DH (Dear Husband) and I, it’s been something else entirely. Or somethingS else. Over the past few months, I feel like we’ve been barely treading water with massive waves overcoming us. But, like a Chumbawamba song, every time we get knocked down, we’ll get back up again.

Machu Picchu: What I wish we had done differently

If you’ve ever dreamed of going to Machu Picchu, then this jam-packed with useful information, 5-part blog series is for you.

Peru is a magical country full of gracious, friendly people. The climate is incredibly diverse, leading from an arid environment up into the Andes mountains covered in snow. Beyond is a tropical rain forest where the upper stretches of the Amazon embrace the ruins of Machu Picchu that were hidden from the world for so many centuries. (The Incan destroyed a large part of the Incan trail to hide Machu Picchu from the Spaniards).

I am so glad and thankful we took our family to Machu Picchu. We almost bailed on the whole trip because of how awful the flying experience was leading up to leaving Medellín! Tune in to the last part of this blog series for more details on that aspect of the trip. For now, let me loan you my scar tissue and share the first part of this series: Continue reading “Machu Picchu: What I wish we had done differently”

Cost Analysis of a Sabbatical Summer in Medellín

Although I wrote this post in July, I had to wait until today to edit it as I was finishing up writing a book for y’all (more on that in a future post). And that whole moving thing has been consuming my time of late. But now that I’m about 2/3rds of the way done unpacking, I can return to the world of blogging.

Folks, there’s a reason why people who’ve been to Colombia—especially Medellín—get all excited and animated when they start talking about these places. It’s because this city of eternal Spring is incredible! DH and I were talking recently, saying we thought last summer was amazing. But this summer has easily been one of the best summers of our lives.

Since people have been asking me how much our Sabbatical cost, I thought I’d do a blog post with a detailed analysis for anyone who is not only interested in a Sabbatical in Medellín but perhaps considering Geo Arbitrage for long term living down here. Continue reading “Cost Analysis of a Sabbatical Summer in Medellín”

The Benefits of Investing in a Solo Parent-Child Trip

You thought the ending to the title was going to be “…Solo 401k” didn’t you? That’s where DH (Dear Husband) thought this was going when I told him about this blog post. I pointed out that a Solo Parent-Child trip is actually more valuable than a 401k. For the myriad reasons why read on in time for a “Mother’s Day” type blog post. Continue reading “The Benefits of Investing in a Solo Parent-Child Trip”

Becoming the Change I Want to See: #OwnVoices Movement

I was bombing as a medical educator, and I knew it.

Five days a week I was teaching Fellows how to navigate the inpatient hospice world, but I was still failing these about-to-graduate physicians. Some had up to $650,000 in student loan debt, but I was sending them on their way to attending-hood without the real education they needed to survive long term.

Continue reading “Becoming the Change I Want to See: #OwnVoices Movement”