"Give it to me! I got it first!!!" "NO YOU DID NOT! I grabbed it off the shelf first!" "This Elmo is mine!!!!!! Bob, tell her I got to this first!" Bob looked like a man who wanted to disappear into his turtleneck. "Come on, Nancy.. it's a toy." "DON'T TELL ME IT'S JUST A TOY! THIS IS A TICKLE ME ELMO!! AND IT'S MINE!!!!" Shaking my head as I walked away, I assessed the chaos that had descended on this Black Friday. What was this alternate reality I had entered into?
Category: Almighty Dollar
Career Lifespan of a Millennial Doctor: 10-15 years MAX
Millennial doctors are declaring our career lifespans to be shorter than our predecessors. At first I assumed it was selection bias due to reading all the physician FIRE blogs when starting my burnout journey. But, among my cohort of millennial doctors comprised of Emergency Medicine, Pediatrics and Med/Peds physicians at this unofficial reunion, NONE of us are planning on having a lengthy career in medicine. 4 years of pre-med. 4 years of med school. 3-4 years of residency. All that training for us to then make enough to pay off the 6 figure loans, stockpile our money and GET OUT in just about the same amount of time it took for us to get through training to begin with.
The Dilemma of Being the Female Breadwinner
While I've been researching various ways to get myself out of my current job aka mindlessly scrolling on Facebook physician groups in search of ideas to jolt me out of complacency, I've had an epiphany: Most of the people active in these groups are women. Why is that? Are women just more active on social media than men? As I paid more and more attention to the common threads of their posts and comments, I realized they were more vocal than the men in the groups about the need for more work life balance. Being able to spend time with their kids. Less time spent with emotionally exhausting patients. More time to be able to take care of things at home, ailing parents, so on and so forth. I marveled at the marked difference between the men and women's comments to my husband J, wondering out loud, "Do men just not care about the same things that women do? I mean - they have families too. Don't they also want to spend more time with their kids? Don't they also have things to take care of at home? I don't get it." J shrugged and replied, "It's not that they don't care... these guys probably just have stay at home wives who take care of everything."
A Doctor’s Journey Into Minimalism: Can It Be Done?
As I observe the spending habits of my patients, friends and fellow doctors, I find we are in a constant state of consumption. We're all chasing that thing that will make our life complete - the newest phone, fitness tracker, piece of clothing... you name it, the marketing gods will instill in you the "need" for you to have it. Inevitably though, it's never enough.
A Third Life Crisis: What Would You Regret the Most?
We have been conditioned to think of work as the end all, be all of life. But if you were to ask people what they regret the most at the end of life as Bronnie Ware had, they would say this: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier. What are we doing with our lives?
How I’m Plotting My Escape From Medicine
I just spent the entire morning planning my escape from medicine. I don't even know how the ball started rolling, but I found myself lost in the math trying to figure exactly how little I needed to live on. I've long known the 4% rule - if you can live off of 4% of your total investments, you could presumably retire. Are you good on $40,000/year? Your number = $1,000,000. What could I cut back on to get to my personal number?
Can Minimalism Be an Antidote to the Opioid Crisis?
When I first started working in my primary care clinic after residency, I was adamant I was NOT going to prescribe long term narcotics. Unless you've been living under a rock, I think most people are aware of the opioid crisis that is storming across America. I'm talking about Oxycontin, Morphine, Norco, Vicodin, Percocet, etc. During training, I already had my fill of drug-seeking patients in my residency clinic, ER and the hospital - there was no way I wanted to continue that trend in my new big girl job. If anyone wants to talk about things that immediately suck the empathy right out of young doctors, I've got two words for you: Opioid abuse.
How This Millennial Doctor Paid Off $100,000 in Student Loans in 2 years
Every January, I go through my spending over the previous year to see where my money went using Mint. It just hit me today - since refinancing my student loans in Dec 2015, I have paid off $100,000! It has felt like such a slow and painful process, but finally I'm at a tangible mark - $100,000 certainly feels like a HUGE accomplishment. ...
Crushing Medical Student Debt
One of my biggest regrets of going into medicine is not fully investigating the costs: the costs to my personal life AND the financial cost. I remember the idealism of my teens and early 20s - I was going to help people! I might even save lives one day! What greater contribution to society could one give? Any costs brought on by my education was worth it, so I took out the full amount of student loans available without any questions. ...
Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems
When I turned 30 and had essentially completed everything on my bucket list, I was left with the crushing weight of my student loans as the last goal to tackle. I was able to walk away from undergrad without any student debt - I was fortunate to have gone to premed before skyrocketing tuition rates, had several scholarships and was lucky to have parents who had saved for higher education since I was born. But, after 4 years of med school and taking out the full amount that was offered, I ended up with $217,000, compounding at 6.55% interest. ...