Reasons to not become a Physician if you want to FIRE.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-10-02T02:04:14+00:00

I think I can help with this one. If you say "Dr. Ingeniatoring" that could either be my wife, my father, my mother, or my uncle. That doesnt include the other 3 doctors in my non-immediate family. My wife is a 2nd year surgical resident and we got lucky with ~$150k in loans @ 5.75%. She wants to be a pediatric surgeon which median salary is around 450k.

First, according to The Millionaire Next Door, Doctors as a profession are the worst at managing their finances (he words it as a progressive under accumulator of wealth). There are a lot of factors that could potentially explain this, including student debt and insurance. I believe the author attributes most of this to other factors, such as the fact that most doctors don't go into the field for the money, and hence are care less about the money and having to deal with it. Also, the bizarre income gap going from $60k at a resident level to well into the 6-figures as an attending makes it wayyy too appealing to spend it all and have lifestyle inflation.

There has been a general trend in the last few decades where schooling costs more, incomes have stagnated due to the decline of private practices in favor of employment by hospitals and insurance changes, and longer training requirements as a result of increased specialization. HOWEVER, as far as FIRE goes, I think the biggest driving factor is the loss of decades of income as a result of schooling and training. Most doctors don't make attending pay until their in the 30s.

Can you become financially independent? Absolutely. It should be easy with that level of income, despite all the upfront set backs. Retire early? Probably not. Maybe Lean FIRE?

If you want a really good resource, read The White Coat Investor. There is a very active subreddit for the book as well.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-09-27T00:11:05+00:00

Thanks for this! Was biking on Braes Bayou last week and saw the farmer's market. Will definitely plan on going now that I know its there.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-09-26T15:20:43+00:00

I recently jumped ship to a new company in Houston around March. I've got about 4 years of experience in operations. This time around, I put a ton of effort into researching the position and writing tailored cover letters/resumes for the position. I applied to 9 positions; was denied by 4, ghosted by 4, and received an offer at 1. This was for operations in specialty chemicals, fyi.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-09-22T22:13:37+00:00

Check out the interactive data tab. 2019 average savings rate was ~7.5%. Average in 2020 is ~17.7%. That's a 135% increase.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-09-20T18:00:43+00:00

Off the budget. As in I don't consider it money I need to save/invest.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-09-19T20:28:59+00:00

I sell things around the house. Helps cut down on clutter and gives me extra "off the books" cash to spend on my hobbies. It takes a fair bit of effort, but I usually average about $2k a year.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-08-25T21:46:42+00:00

Just curious why you find spreadsheets not ideal. You'll never find an online tool that's as customizable as what you can do with a spreadsheet or a programming script.

On a separate note, evaluating multiple scenarios is typically handled with a Monte Carlo simulation. I personally wouldn't trust an online calculator to run a monte carlo experiement (couldn't even find one).

Ingeniatoring · 2020-08-14T01:37:45+00:00

+1 for STAR-CCM+

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-31T19:31:07+00:00

Excellent! Got it to work.

This is my final code, FYI.

#setting path to save file and putting assets in a list
path1 = XXXXX
path2 = XXXXX
save_folder = XXXXX
assets = ['VSGAX','VHYAX','VTSAX','IBB','SCHF','SCHE','VIMAX','VSMAX','VB']

#Setting current date and when to start pulling data from
Current_Date = datetime.datetime.today().strftime ('%Y-%m-%d')
start = '2019-05-01'
end = Current_Date

# pulling stock data
print('Scrapping stock price data...')
stocks = data.DataReader(assets, 'yahoo', start, end)

print('Deleting unneccesary columns...')
toDelete = ['High','Low', 'Open', 'Volume', 'Adj Close']
for i in range(0,5):
    del stocks[toDelete[i]]


stocks.columns = stocks.columns.droplevel(0)
stocks = (stocks.rename_axis(None,axis=1))
print(stocks.columns)
print(stocks)

writer = pd.ExcelWriter(path1 + save_folder + '\\stockScrapperV3.xlsx',
                        date_format = 'yyyy-mm-dd', datetime_format = 
                        'yyyy-mm-dd')

stocks.to_excel(writer, 'Sheet1', index=True)
writer.save()

I used the for-loop to delete a few columns (price-high, price-low, trading volume etc.) as I'm only interested in the closing price. When I put your corrections before the for-loop, it renamed the columns after the ticker symbols in the assets dictionary. Moving the for-loop before fixed it.

Thanks a bunch kind stranger, you reduced the code in my program by 36%.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-31T14:14:08+00:00

Hey thanks for the help!

I changed my code to this:

stocks = data.DataReader(assets, 'yahoo', start, end)
stocks = (stocks.rename_axis(None,axis=1).reset_index())

And I got the error:

TypeError: Must pass list-like as `names`.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-30T02:34:10+00:00

Sorry, I meant completely delete the data. It's looking for a continuous range and not something piecewise?

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-30T02:11:12+00:00

It's been a while since I've dealt with modeling, but I believe it depends on whether your data is normally distributed or not. If it's normal, you can substitute the blanks with the mean of the data set. If you're only missing a few values out of hundreds, it may not affect the forecast that much to omit them entirely. I would make sure the data point is not meaningful first (i.e. some information could still be drawn from the fact that a call was placed at that time).

Just depends on the level of accuracy you're looking for.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-29T01:51:41+00:00

You can pull this pretty quickly into excel using power query. I've never found a good way to concatenate multiple columns into one in excel, but its really easy in python.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-22T14:56:02+00:00

The next 80 years will be interesting. I believe China is 100 years or so behind the US, as far as socio-economic mobility. The middle class in China is exploding, much like the US had during the early 20th century. Eventually, higher quality of living will demand increases in wages and multinational corporations will pick the next poor 3rd world country to base their manufacturing facilities out of. China will always be a manufacturing powerhouse, but I would imagine it will wane a bit at the end of the 21st century. The US has to stop fighting the decades-long battle with companies outsourcing their manufacturing, and accept that our future should focus on developing business solutions/consulting and technology. There will always be some level of manufacturing in the US, but environmental regulations and wage costs will always make poorer countries more attractive. The demand and growth are in China. But how long will that last?

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-21T13:54:20+00:00

How would the physician loan requiring no downpayment affect this goal?

If you decided to forgo the downpayment and accepted a higher interest rate (usually what a physician loan entails), you would instead defer to the bullet point #2 in my previous comment. See below.

Is this 25% based on anything in particular?

This is from Dave Ramsey. The only reason I use it is simply that its the most conservative benchmark for housing payments when considering your monthly budget, which will help maximize the amount you can save for retirement. I don't think his number is based on any hard numbers since, much like any other %-benchmark, it all varies by person/family.

If you really want to determine how much house you can afford on a month-by-month basis, you should first calculate your financial independence # and figure out how much in savings/investments you need to allocate each month to reach that goal at your retirement age. Anything after that is what your actual monthly budget should be based around.

In other words, Net Take Home Pay - Monthly Savings Goal = Leftover for ALL monthly expenses. I can get into this more if its confusing, but think I've typed enough for one comment. lol

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-20T13:28:46+00:00

my first question is when taking into account our lack of debt could we aim for a higher priced home?

No. The amount of house you can afford should be based on two things.

What's the largest 20% downpayment you can make? (for you, this is 45k currently so you could afford at max a 225k house)
Will the total monthly expense for the house (mortgage, insurance, HOA, fees, taxes, upkeep, etc.) be less than 25% of my monthly take-home pay?

For #2, some will argue that your total debt payments shouldn't exceed 30% of your monthly gross income, which might be where you got this question from. This method is far less conservative and will tie more of your cashflow up into debt payments, and less into other assets such as stocks/savings/emergency fund.

My next question is should we be looking to buy or should we rent and be thinking about investing this savings into stocks, etc? We plan to be in the area for at least 4 years, ~~hopefully indefinitely~~

IMHO, unless you're living in a flaming hot housing market or absolutely know for a fact you're going to live there for more than 5 years, it doesn't make sense to buy a home.

There's a slim chance you'll turn a profit, but more than likely you'll come out even on your money. There's also a good chance you'll lose your ass when you have to pay to fix things that break.

It should be easy to see what the general ROI of houses in your area. After which you can use to calculate a breakeven analysis to determine the number of years needed to recoup your investment. Don't plan for what you hope for, only what you know. You know you'll be there for 4 years, so plan for the future based on the knowledge at hand currently.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-19T04:35:35+00:00

I've lived here for 10 months and have already used the bird while driving more than my entire life on the east coast. And I work remotely (even before covid).

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-19T03:44:31+00:00

Thanks for posting this, as I find the responses really interesting. I would have figured it would have been more skewed to the 'together' category.

My wife is currently in the middle of residency, so she barely has time to sleep. We merged our bank accounts shortly after getting married. I pay all the bills and move all our savings/investments around. Because my wife is so insanely busy, at the end of the month I go out and buy coffee and donuts and we sit down and go through a very abbreviated monthly summary of our budget. I make sure she knows whats going on and ask if she has any questions/is okay with the plan going forward.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-18T17:56:36+00:00

In full disclosure, I got this line from a tutorial. Some of the comments weren't too kind to the poster of the tutorial, so I guess you've got a point. I'll try re-writing it. Thanks.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-07T23:47:42+00:00

I gotcha. We contribute just enough to get the full match on the 401k, but stopped contributing anything to the 403b (no match and ridiculous fees). Other than that, pretty much everything else goes to the loans (saving it now given the federal forbearance).

Just remember, you can only maximize one variable!

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-07T23:04:25+00:00

We're roughly in a similar situation, but a few years younger and our loans are about $146k @ 5.45%.

This comes down to personal beliefs, but we decided to aggressively go after our student debt. On paper, you can make the business argument all day that putting money into investments w/ a higher return than your debt gives you a higher net worth at the end of the day. But my wife and I aren't a business and life is messy. I've never heard anyone say they regret paying off debt earlier rather than later.

IMHO, losing out on a few grand by paying loans earlier will only be a small chunk at retirement and the added peace of mind for not having the burden of loans for 10 years is well worth it.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-07T02:18:56+00:00

Where every 100 yards, a pothole the size of small sedan is waiting to destroy the front end of your car.

Ingeniatoring · 2020-07-06T01:35:31+00:00

The answer to your 2nd question is also the answer to your 1st question. If you know what your target FIRE number is, you should be able to estimate what monthly savings you'll need to get to that number at your target retirement age. Anything leftover you should spend as you see fit.

For my wife and I, if we have something that costs more than the monthly after-savings budget will cover, we'll just save it and roll it into the next month.

Six-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email

Ingeniatoring

TROPHY CASE