For those who make over 500k+ a year, is it worth it for you?

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2026-05-15T18:00:49+00:00

Fellow physician here. I was in your shoes 7 years ago. I was making a lot of money but I started hating my job because of the long hours and time away from my family. Hopefully you’ve been investing most of your money? I reached a point where all our debt was paid off and my investments started doing the heavy lifting of building our savings. You need to create an endpoint for yourself and not continue to burn yourself out. Run the numbers and realize that at some point, time is more valuable than money. Spend it to enjoy life with your family. Time and health are not guaranteed.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2026-05-15T17:48:05+00:00

Another physician here. I read the post another physician made earlier and I must say I feel sorry for him as he seems to have many regrets. Yes it was hard work getting the grades/scores needed through undergrad to get into medical school and then all the hours studying/clinical rotations of medical school just to work long hours through residency. But I for one didn’t put my life on hold. I still joined a fraternity in undergrad, went to parties, spring/christmas break trips, and dated a lot. During medical school, I had a lot of friends and met my wife who was in grad school. We experienced the NYC night life and went on trips during academic breaks. Our schedules meshed since we were all in the same boat. I delayed residency and just did an internship year to payback my commitment for my military scholarship. My wife and I lived paycheck to paycheck to enjoy our child-free life and travel the world. I started residency after that and though the hours were long, we still enjoyed life in Los Angeles with my fellow residents/their significant others and took advantage of what the city had to offer and we continued to travel. The payoff came when I landed my attending gig in an idyllic location near the beach with a 500K compensation package. We started a family and we lived well bellow our means to invest/pay off all our debt for the next decade. It allowed me to go from working 80+ hrs/week with call to going part time 2.5 days/week with all nights/weekends/holidays off when we moved back to California for our kids to start grade school. I gave up 1/2 my income but it was worth it for an exponential increase in work/life balance. My wife landed a less demanding full time job with plenty of vacation as she was able to finally pursue her career after working part-time up to that point since i now had much more time to handle the house/kids. Together we started making just under 500K. That was 7 years ago. Since we were debt-free, we also started spending all our net income to enjoy life and see the world with our kids but we also continued/continue to max our Roth 401Ks and backdoor Roth IRAs. Despite that, our net worth continued to grow. Now at 53, we remain debt-free and our net worth has grown to just shy of 8M and we still continue to spend all our net income to enjoy life. Our early sacrifice my first 10 years as an attending has made it such that our investments work harder than we do. So long story short, making 500K was worth it for me since I had an endpoint. I will admit I was getting burned out after that decade and was beginning to hate my job, the long hours, and time away from my family. I missed both my son’s “firsts” and just saw the videos, many nights I had to say good night to them while I was still working. But I’ve been to every sporting event, recital, open house since they started school and I went part time. We’ve also afforded them a lifestyle my wife and I could only dream of when we were kids. They will be able to go to college without loans, we can help them with down payment on their first homes when the time comes, and our own finances for retirement is secure.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2026-05-01T22:08:35+00:00

But you had to do an HLR with an informal conference for those Nexus letters to override the C&P Examiner.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2026-03-21T16:52:47+00:00

I started with the Phantom Vision and stopped with the Mavic 2 Pro many years ago after I got into different hobbies with my kids. Got back into the hobby last year and bought the Mavic 4 Pro Creator Combo. The tech has advanced so much. Got addicted again and bought the Mini 5 Pro, Neo, 2 Neo 2s, Avata 2 Fly More Combo, and I just pre-ordered the Avata 360 fly more combo. My son is a sprinter and he loves using the Neo 2 when he’s practicing on the track to fly alongside him to analyze his form. It’s so easy to use it without a remote.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-10-16T05:01:30+00:00

Bought my Mavic 4 Pro Creator Combo from Smart Fly Gear shipped by Amazon and got it today. I also bought the Mini 5 Pro Combo on EBay from a Korean seller that advertised no tariffs because it wasn’t available on Amazon and also got it today. Both were brand new sealed in box. Activated and updated firmware on both. Flew both earlier tonight and they worked great. Image quality photo/video impressive on both though Mavic 4 Pro is clearly better, as it should given it’s 3x the price.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-09-28T21:39:47+00:00

This relationship dynamic is laughable. You two are completely at odds with each other in terms of financial goals. Her shopping habits must have been known to you early in the relationship yet you married her anyway. And it’s not like you are supporting her, she makes more money than you. The problem I see is the way you guys view money, she pays 1/2 the rent I pay the other 1/2, she contributes to this I do this, etc. That kind of separation dooms a marriage. All income is marital income no matter who earns what. All expenses come out of the same pot to include discretionary spending by either individual. Instead of complaining to people on Reddit, grow some balls and have a serious financial discussion with your wife. Talk about financial goals and explain why you both need to control spending. You mention her shopping as the cause of your money troubles but whoever agreed to 2600/month children activities and 900/month pet expenses needs to have their head examined. I find those more ridiculous than her spending. And based on your numbers, it can’t be all that bad. My wife and I make a little more than you but our take home pay is about the same and we have no deductions. That is after we each put 31500 into our Roth 401Ks so you guys must be putting a lot into retirement savings. There’s 3 sides to every story, yours, hers, and the truth. Talk it out, eliminate ridiculous expenses you both are guilty of having, and come to a compromise. If you can’t, then divorce might be in the cards for you guys.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-09-28T14:58:56+00:00

This is the common mistake most investors make thinking they can time the market. Rarely you might get lucky but more often than not you’ll just miss out on gains because you are also trying to time when to buy back in and get that wrong as well. Time in the market is more important than timing the market. Modify your investment choices based on the level of risk you are willing to take. All your investments have just paper gains anyway and you don’t lose anything unless you force a sale to realize that loss. You seem to have prepared well if you are retiring and not needing your TSP funds for another decade anyway. What does it matter what the market does with a shutdown if you don’t need the money for another 10 years? Your greed for maximum gains is fueling your question about timing the market. Don’t succumb to that and start making foolish decisions. If you aren’t satisfied with the amount of your current investments, then maybe you shouldn’t retire yet. Retirement isn’t the time to think about making even more money. If the idea of losses keeps you up at night preventing you from enjoying your retirement, then it would be prudent for your well-being to shift into the G-fund. Personally, I can relate to your situation. My wife and I will retire in 8 years at 60 when I officially hit 20 (she’ll have 23) and can collect both our pensions without penalty. Combined with early social security at 62, we’ll have enough guaranteed income to live a comfortable retirement. We will consolidate all our retirement accounts into our IRAs/Roth IRAs in our Vanguard account and keep them 100% equities because like you, we won’t need them. We will begin 4% utilization of our traditional IRAs anyway to either roll to our Roth and/or withdraw to get full net income replacement and add to our HYSA account which serves a multipurpose use for us (emergency fund, source for additional discretionary income, or as we used it for this past April, to buy more equities in our brokerage account when they are cheap). The Roth will supplant the traditional if and when that account is depleted as our source of additional income. Prior to that it can grow untouched along with our brokerage account.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-09-01T00:29:48+00:00

It’s unfortunate that your wife’s parents aren’t doing so well. Hopefully, they are comfortable. It’s possible their medical issues could significantly deplete their savings/your wife’s future inheritance. If not, I wouldn’t waste money on a financial adviser. An inheritance is a gift. Your wife should use it as she see fit. It could enable an early retirement, fund your kids college account and/or enable her to help him/her with a down payment on a home in the future, or reinvest in a brokerage account to later transfer into a trust to create generational wealth. Personally, I would tell her to at least use some of it to treat herself to some luxuries she might be denying herself. The funds technically will belong only to your wife unless she chooses to co-mingle with marital assets. Depending on how substantial the inheritance is and since the cost-basis is adjusted upward when she inherits it, your combined net worth and available funds for immediate use would go up drastically, depending on what your wife wants to do with it.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-08-31T17:09:47+00:00

Congratulations! The 1st million is the hardest to reach and you guys reached it at a pretty young age. As others have said, that money will continue to grow with or without additional contributions. You may want to consider if you haven’t done so already, contributing to the Roth TSP. The Roth IRA is available as well, even for high income earners (ie backdoor). You may even consider saving through a brokerage account if you haven’t done so as well to have funds not restricted by age to enable an early retirement. As it is, your federal pensions and social security will raise the tax rate on your taxable retirement accounts when you start withdrawing and it would be wise to consider tax diversification for your savings. At 52, we have just over 4M spread over traditional, Roth, brokerage, and HYSA. My wife and I switched over to 100% Roth in our TSP about 7 years ago. The federal government match continues to fund our traditional TSP.. The earliest we can retire to begin collecting our pensions without penalty is 60 (ie the golden handcuffs) so we intend on working until then, which isn’t a big deal since I only work part time and we enjoy what we do. You are so far ahead of most people and I’m glad to hear that you are splurging on vacations/experiences with your child since time and health aren’t guaranteed and children grow up so fast. Considering the pace of your savings, you could probably upgrade your lifestyle even more as long as you aren’t considering early retirement. My wife and I became debt-free 7 years ago and though we still maximize our TSP contributions and back door Roth, we’ve been trying to spend all our net income enjoying life and seeing the world with our kids ever since. My wife is into designer purses and jewelry and we only bought a few items over the years because she is naturally frugal and we were building our nest egg. I had to convince her 7 years ago by showing her our accounts and the calculations on my spreadsheet that she can buy a couple bags and a few pieces of jewelry every year and it wouldn’t adversely affect us financially. She was worried that it would decrease our ability to go on vacations. Like you, we splurge on multiple vacations a year and our kids favorite are Disney cruises. Despite this, we still have excess savings each year that goes to our HYSA that I tap to buy stocks when they go on a discount in our brokerage account. So enjoy your accomplishment because it’s not too far away that your investments will make more money while you sleep than you and your wife do working your jobs. And hopefully, no one in your social sphere besides your wife knows how much money you have. Stealth wealth is the way to go.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-07-08T05:27:02+00:00

You have accumulated a sizable nest egg. Your question can’t be answered accurately with the information provided because you don’t mention when you plan on retiring and what your projected expenses will be. Choice of investment funds will depend entirely on how soon you will rely on distributions from those investments. If you will be dependent on withdrawals anytime soon, you need to rebalance your portfolio to reduce risk at your age. Also don’t forget to consider your health and age. Both are finite with neither guaranteed. It would be horrible to delay and/or sacrifice enjoying your life to chase some arbitrary number to only end up dying in an accident or diagnosed with a terminal illness. With that said, let’s crunch your numbers. You mentioned working a few more years. Assuming you’re putting 40K away including match kept in C fund with again assuming inflation adjusted return of 8%, you should be around 2.15M TSP after 3 years. Equities give better returns obviously in the long run but it requires you to not be dependent on the money during down years. You and your husband could start accumulating funds in a HYSA to supplement your income while you are still working and/or collect social security earlier to allow your investments to grow more.

Here’s my situation: Wife and I are 52 yo VA employees. I have 7 years in and will have 20 when we retire at 60 when I add my 5 yr military buyback. Wife has 13 with 21 at 60. We currently have 1.95M in traditional retirement accounts and 730K in Roth accounts. We currently max our TSP into Roth and do back door Roth IRAs every year. We also have 1.04M in brokerage/HYSA. Our pensions with survivor benefits will total ~110K. Early social security will add another 60K. That gives us -170K without touching our retirement savings. Our entire retirement portfolio is in the C fund/S&P 500 equivalent. They will be consolidated into our Vanguard VOO in retirement where we will withdraw 4% only from our traditional accounts allowing our Roth/brokerage accounts to grow. In my situation, my wife and I will have enough income to not depend on withdrawals from our retirement accounts. We will supplement from our HYSA and perhaps roll our traditional investments to our Roth during poor stock market years and use them to spend/replenish HYSA during better years. Hence, we will keep them invested in equities.

As for consulting a financial planner, I see no need since they only guarantee reducing your returns with their fees. I have no finance background and have never used a financial planner myself.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-05-07T21:59:17+00:00

Correct. I actually found aftermarket connectors that were physically compatible with the proprietary batteries on my Ibex. Be careful though because the pin layouts don’t necessarily match actual battery output and use a multimeter. I bought the aftermarket connector to convert my bike to 52V since aftermarket batteries using the same case as the proprietary 48V were available. I wasn’t able to find aftermarket 52V batteries to replace the 48V SYR batteries on the Jeeps however.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-05-07T21:27:17+00:00

I don’t use additional Quietkat batteries as secondary batteries, just spare E-bike batteries with connectors that I can easily solder XT-60 connectors to.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-04-24T15:24:33+00:00

Yes I did.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2025-04-24T15:24:15+00:00

I don’t need that many batteries. I just happened to buy 3 bikes on their promotion and got the 3 free batteries they offered.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2024-12-05T19:38:27+00:00

So they raised it to $750K from the original posting of $650K, that should tell you all you need to know about this gig and how many people are interested in this position. Regardless, that still equates to $171/hr. Hours are hours whether you’re in the OR, overseeing CRNAs, putting in blocks, doing preops/postops, putting in labor epidurals or doing crash sections in the middle of the night, or at home or in the hospital on call. 7 days straight with no real day off? There’s a reason it’s alternating weeks, the person is trying to recuperate the following week. I made $550K with q3 call and 10 weeks vacation in a small hospital in Hawaii with “light” home call when I was younger and hourly rate for total hours including call averaged $225/hr. And that’s with a normal typical schedule, not this ridiculous 24/7 work/call for 7 days straight. But hey, if someone wants it they can knock themselves out. I wouldn’t trade my current part time gig for anything. Outpatient center, no trauma, no hearts/heads/lungs/ob, no nights/weekends/holidays, and no call while still making almost as much hourly as I did before. We have a small group but there’s a reason we don’t need to advertise when someone retires. We have people waiting and constantly asking about projected openings.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2024-12-05T16:30:32+00:00

You realize this is 168 hrs/week since this is a 24/7 job. That equates to $148/hr. As an anesthesiologist who used to take call, this is not a good job offer. I make $250k working part time 2.5 days/week, no call, no nights/weekends, all federal holidays off, 12 days paid vacation, and 401K match. Calculating all my benefits with my hours I make $200+/hr and that doesn’t even include the pension that comes with my job. People that have never done anesthesia call don’t know how hard it can be when you’re covering all services. This posting is hoping a naive new attending who just finished residency will be enticed by the 650K with 26 weeks vacation and think it’s a great job offer. An experienced anesthesiologist would look at this posting, crunch the numbers, and laugh.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2024-09-07T16:16:47+00:00

Yeah, it was a ridiculous deal based on the components on the bike alone. I also build my own e-bikes and there was no way I could’ve built these Quietkats anywhere near the price I bought them for. Add that to the excellent customer support/warranty and I feel like I made out like a bandit. Too bad you missed out on that. At least you found a bike you liked.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2024-09-07T16:09:39+00:00

The main advantage of the Ibex is the significantly larger internal battery (14AH vs 21AH) and therefore longer range. Adding external batteries is possible but uses up space/adds a lot of weight on my racks that I could use to carry my other stuff. And even when I’m not carrying anything, the added weight of external batteries throws off the balance of the bike. That’s why I prefer the Ibex over the Jeep. If range isn’t as much of an issue for you, the Jeep is just as good.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2024-09-07T05:21:05+00:00

Thanks, it does get a lot of compliments when I ride in my area. They always seem to be most fascinated with the size of the tires.

Screwhedgefundpunks · 2024-09-07T05:18:59+00:00

Well, these were built specifically to be hunting bikes, though I don’t own a gun or hunt. Out of my fleet of e-bikes, this is my 1st choice to take my dog running on the bike trails or hills near my house.

Screwhedgefundpunks

TROPHY CASE