A FIRE’d surgeon, Cory Fawcett, MD, has written many finance books aimed directly at physicians. DH and I have enjoyed Dr. Fawcett’s books. The latest one, Navigating a Financial Crisis, is just as good, if not better than his previous books.
Continue reading “Navigating a Financial Crisis by Cory Fawcett, MD: A Book Review”
“The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” – Allan K. Chalmers
Boredom, Isolation, and Loneliness of FIRING During a Global Pandemic:
In August 2019, we moved to Gainesville, Florida, to give our boys a more rural upbringing, etc. In early 2020, we sensed possible danger on the horizon and quickly moved up our home purchasing plan. So we looked at the sparse real estate inventory and bought a house.
Just as we settled in, COVID-19 hit. We hunkered down, self-isolating because my husband’s a front-line doc. We didn’t want to unknowingly spread Covid.
Never before had I felt this socially isolated. We were in a new city with a tiny support network. For a social introvert like myself, the extreme social deprivation due to self-isolating was beyond tough. I was going stir-crazy and desperately craved human interaction.
‘Living the dream’ of FIRE isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Even with our hands full with young kids, quasi-retirement turned out to be boring during our period of prolonged self-isolation.
Only with this realization did I understand why some actual older retired folks without hobbies or many friends are bored out of their minds. (Though, in retrospect, I realize maybe they’re not self-aware enough to understand that what they’re doing is acting out their boredom…).
It was only after I made the excruciating decision to return to work that I realized I yearned to be back with my doctor community. They were in the trenches and I wasn’t.
Continue reading “FIRE is Boring: Redefining what Retirement Means”Bonnie Koo, MD of Wealthy Mom MD has written a finance book for females. Before I tell you about my book review, let me tell you about Dr. Koo. She’s a board-certified dermatologist best known for being passionate about teaching personal finance strategies designed specifically for women physicians since 2016. Dr. Koo has gone on to become a certified life coach with The Life Coach School.
I’ve been so excited for years for this book to come out because I knew she had a great money book for women—and the specific challenges women face with money—in her. So I eagerly loaded Dr. Koo’s book up the first chance I got and listened to it while driving from Tampa to Gainesville.
Continue reading “Defining Wealth for Women by Bonnie Koo, MD: A Book Review”(FIRE=Financial Independence Retire Early/Recreational Employment)
Why would a FIRE doctor who came out of retirement to work during a global pandemic want to continue working once it’s over?
Glad you asked. 😉
The first two blogs of this three-part series were the most emotionally difficult blogs I’ve written to date. Thankfully, this third blog was much easier to write since I have so many reasons why I want to stay in the medical workforce:
Continue reading “Why a FIRE Doctor Wants to Continue Working After We Re-enter our New Normal”This 3 part blog series explores the experiences and thoughts for the physician FIRE community on why I left FIRE to return to work due to Covid. (FIRE=Financial Independence Retire Early/Recreational Employment)
In the first blog, I wrote about the difficult decision to come out of early retirement as a Hospice and Palliative Care physician to work on the front lines during a global pandemic. This 2nd blog post details what that return felt like and what I found when I went back into the hospital.
Continue reading “An Inpatient Palliative Medicine Physician’s Experiences on the Front Lines During Covid-19”I’m interrupting this anemically-scheduled blog series to provide a public service announcement: I’m a vaccinated, frontline physician who still ended up getting Covid. If you qualify, get your booster asap, because getting breakthrough Covid wasn’t an experience I’d want to repeat. Here’s what it felt like:
Continue reading “I’m a vaccinated, frontline Physician who got breakthrough Covid. Here’s what it was like.”
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.
Continue reading “Spending Habits for Professionals Who Want to FIRE: I wrote a book just for you.”Does anyone else have fond recollection of the classic Hasbro board game Monopoly? I was playing it the other day with my two children who adore the game. Both of them particularly loved being affectionately labeled “money bags” when they were doing well—a term given to me on a few occasion in my distant memories from childhood.
The game is pretty straightforward: you buy good properties, try to maximize their earning potential with plastic green houses and red hotels. Eventually you reap the rewards when others rent them and have to pay you. It was simple. As a child, I envisioned doing the same someday in real life.
