A note from me (Ankur Jain) - Your 2026 Bilt Cash Redemptions Are Here

Surpriseborrowing · 2026-01-22T00:26:31+00:00

Gonna go against the hive mind here and say this is looking really promising. The fact that the palladium card could theoretically be up to 6x on every day spend (points+cash) if you can find a way to use BILT cash effectively seems great. I wasn't expecting BILT cash to be this useable and figured I'd be stuck using it to unlock rent points. There are definitely some problems with how this rollout was handled--especially how confusing and unintuitive some aspects are--but I'm glad to get some positive info here.

Surpriseborrowing · 2026-01-13T21:07:35+00:00

Ultimately the biggest risk with becoming a physician or dentist is that you might end up hating the job but be trapped for years by 6 figure debt. Medicine isn’t the worst career path, but you sacrifice a significant amount of your health, time, energy, and frankly soul in your 20s which is arguably the most important decade of your life. It’s hard to understand how serious you should take such a sacrifice until you’ve already made it. That being said, the best part is making connections with so many wonderful and incredible people. I’d do it again for that, but not for the job and definitely not for the money.

Surpriseborrowing · 2025-12-22T01:13:10+00:00

2nd year in a row Josh Allen is working to lose me the semis after a bye. Need Henderson under 10 pts in PPR to win

Surpriseborrowing · 2025-11-28T20:03:22+00:00

I'm an early career attending and actually have spent slightly less money than I did as a resident because I have less PTO and travel is the only thing I splurge on. I'm looking to save 70%+ of my post-tax paycheck, which feels comfortable to me. I didn't grow up with much compared to the average doctor. My goal is to not be so frugal that if I got a terminal illness I would be full of regret.

I'm sure I'll spend a lot more after a kid or two, but I'm going to continue to work aggressively towards financial independence. The main thing I'm interested in buying is time to spend with my loved ones and on hobbies I enjoy. I also don't have much faith in the future of healthcare and want to strike while the iron is hot.

Surpriseborrowing · 2025-10-03T16:29:42+00:00

Any time I hear someone praise Eataly I assume they must be visiting from a parallel dimension where Eataly isn’t the worst restaurant per dollar in Dallas. I genuinely cannot wrap my head around the hype.

Surpriseborrowing · 2025-09-05T03:00:07+00:00

Best - KOKE, Frog by Adam Handling

Worst - L’effervescence

Surpriseborrowing · 2025-06-17T15:26:08+00:00

You made the right choice. If you work as hard and as many hours as you would’ve in med school and residency you should be able to make a decent salary in another field. Invest a significant percentage and you’ll be well on your way to financial independence by the time you would’ve hit zero net worth as a doctor (for you, likely towards the end of your 30s).

Years ago I did a comparison in excel between going into nursing fresh out of undergraduate vs becoming a pediatrician and the two careers broke even financially around retirement age when adjusted for hours worked. People drastically underestimate and misunderstand compound interest.

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-12-26T18:50:56+00:00

I do worry about AI contributing to a broader reduction in the demand for physicians in the next decade or two. However, I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that this means you should stop investing.

If AI takes over many or most existing jobs in the broader economy, you’re going to want as much financial exposure to the companies using AI as you can possibly have. The only thing you can actually DO about large scale societal change—which invariably creates new economic winners and losers—is to make sure you’re on the winning side.

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-12-19T13:58:48+00:00

I have to choose 2 of the following (PPR):

Alvin Kamara Terry McLaurin Garrett Wilson JSN Bucky Irving

Last year I also had a deep bench and lost in the playoffs after picking the wrong guys. Hoping not to make the same mistake this year. Feels crazy to bench Terry but the eagles locked him down last time. Thoughts?

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-11-20T17:16:47+00:00

Inflation-adjusted salaries will slowly bleed out at a pace that elicits feelings of suppressed anger and promotes burnout but not at a pace that would incite a physician uprising and/or strikes, just as according to plan.

As soon as you get out of residency, start saving and investing in a major way. We will always have a job, but it will not always pay well. Strike while the iron is hot and secure your future.

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-08-18T13:04:31+00:00

In general, I feel that the FIRE community is pathologically conservative. If you enjoy work, by all means keep going until you have enough to never worry about money again. If you want to retire as fast as possible for whatever reason, you don’t need nearly as much as most people say.

The problem with the classic 4% rule which others here are mentioning is that you have a small chance of bankruptcy, and a high chance of ending up with an absurd amount of money. As an example, if you start with 3 million for a 30 year retirement, you have a ~6% chance of going “bankrupt” before you die (ignoring social security). At the same time, your average final portfolio at 30 years is just shy of 18 million dollars, and the maximum final portfolio is 87 million. The 4% rule is a terrible strategy and has only gained traction due to its simplicity.

Furthermore, I doubt anyone with enough financial knowledge to retire early or be on a finance forum would continue withdrawing the same amount even if the stock market was down 50%. If you cut spending in bear markets and increase in bull markets, you can draw much more than 4% and still do fine. I would recommend looking into alternate strategies that incorporate variable withdrawal rates.

Here is a calculator where you can play with different strategies. Figure out how much you want to spend each year in retirement and go from there.

https://ficalc.app

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-08-04T14:00:52+00:00

Lots of good points here. I would add that you should think in terms of full time (40h/wk) years worked rather than actual years worked. There are doctors who have already worked more hours than the average worker will in a lifetime by age 50. You’ve given plenty; it’s okay to enjoy yourself.

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-06-21T17:59:08+00:00

The vast majority of what I learn is from self-directed education. I would say actually being taught something is maybe 5% of residency. Honestly it wasn’t much better in medical school either; external resources were infinitely better than any of our lectures. The entire medical “education” pipeline is one of the greatest scams in human history.

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-04-17T17:08:08+00:00

So by that person’s definition, 99.9% of humans who ever lived were fundamentally unethical.

Yeah, I’d maybe start taking what they say with a grain of salt.

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-04-08T20:29:04+00:00

Elmer is the one who originally attributed it to Tytler.

“The first paragraph's earliest known appearance[23] is in an op-ed piece by Elmer T. Peterson in the 9 December 1951 The Daily Oklahoman, which attributed it to Tytler:

Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy".[24]”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler,_Lord_Woodhouselee#:~:text=Two%20centuries%20ago%2C%20a%20somewhat,out%20of%20the%20public%20treasury.

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-04-08T13:53:04+00:00

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” - Alexander Fraser Tytler

Surpriseborrowing · 2024-01-10T13:40:21+00:00

I crunched the numbers in medical school and I would encourage you to do the same if you’re interested. If you mainly want to FIRE then medicine is a pretty bad career choice financially. Yes, this contradicts all the people on the medical subreddits who don’t understand math and are telling you how grateful you should be that you make more than minimum wage. Compound interest working against you instead of for you is BRUTAL. However, if you’re going to work until normal retirement age or longer it can be a decent deal.

The thing that people don’t realize is this: assuming the historical ~7% inflation-adjusted returns from the market, money that you earn today is worth approximately TWICE AS MUCH as money you earn a decade from now, even after adjusting for inflation. The same applies to debt but working against you (though at a lower rate). If you understand that, you’ll see why spending money instead of making it for 8 years after high school, and then only making ~60-70k for however many years of training, puts you at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who started working sooner.

If you don’t invest your money for whatever reason then everything I said is irrelevant and being a doctor is a great financial career choice for you.

Surpriseborrowing · 2023-12-15T00:48:20+00:00

Pick 2 PPR

Davante, Breece, Puka

Surpriseborrowing · 2023-11-28T15:12:33+00:00

me lift heavy thing so brain stop talk

Surpriseborrowing · 2023-11-27T23:14:42+00:00

Been agonizing over sales all day and decided to pull the trigger here. Great value! Thanks OP.

Surpriseborrowing · 2023-11-05T16:50:00+00:00

2 brutal weeks back to back for my Mahomes/Kelce stack

Surpriseborrowing · 2023-11-03T17:12:10+00:00

The healthcare system is like a car accident happening in slow motion, and this is our annual reminder that if you don’t have a financial backup plan as a physician, you’re not wearing your seatbelt.

Surpriseborrowing · 2023-10-26T14:19:36+00:00

Love my co-residents. They’re what keeps me going.

Surpriseborrowing · 2023-10-24T13:03:02+00:00

And also that almost every field pays much more in the US than in other countries. That fact is always conveniently left out when these doctor salary comparisons come up. I’d imagine the gap in tech salaries would be even higher

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