Episode 24. Physician on Fire, MD -- Achieving Financial Independence

Welcome to another Doctor Money Matters episode. This is a great episode. I got to interview one of the superheroes of physicians and finance, the Physician on Fire, the anonymous anesthesiologist who started the very popular financial blog by the same name. In this episode we talk about how he decided to go down the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) path, his plans now that he has reached FI (financial independence), and his advice for those who are interested in following this path. We also get into some detail about how he calculated the numbers to determine he had achieved his goal. We also took some questions from social media and discussed his brewery investment and his own personal beer brewing hobby. A couple of the concepts discussed in this episode: Geographic arbitrage -- Practicing in a low cost of living area while making a great income allows you to save more faster. Sequence of returns risk -- The idea that what happens to your assets (the total returns) around (immediately prior to and immediately after) retirement can determine how comfortably you can withdraw from your overall asset pool. Savings rate -- how much you should be saving as a percentage of post tax income. He challenges people to live on half your take home pay if you want to reach FI sooner. He has now reached a 75% savings rate after reaching FI as he doesn’t have a mortgage or doesn’t need to pay for disability insurance Donor Advised Fund -- An investment account that set up can make charitable contributions to via donated stock or other assets. This account can then continue to grow via the market and you can choose to make your charitable contributions over time. Clearly this mindset has resonated with many people as the FIRE community has exploded. PoF’s website has demonstrated significant growth over its 2 year existence and he has provided valuable resources for those interested in these topics. I want to thank PoF for joining us on the podcast. I encourage you to visit his Physician on Fire blog where you can get very valuable information. Please let your friends know about this podcast by sharing it on text, whatsapp or whatever social media platform you are on. More episodes of this podcast are available at www.doctormoneymatters.com and Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, etc. All episodes are also now on YouTube (Audio only) and Facebook. You can follow me on twitter @drmoneymatters Please consider joining the Doctor Money Matters Facebook group. Thanks for listening and please leave us positive reviews and continue to share this podcast with your colleagues. Some other physician hosted podcasts that I recommend are: Docs Outside The Box The Hippocratic Hustle The Happy Doc Doctors Unbound The White Coat Investor There are many others, so please support your physician colleagues.

Om Podcasten

Welcome to the Doctor Money Matters podcast. I am your host Dr. Tarang Patel, a practicing diagnostic radiologist in Phoenix, AZ. I started this podcast as a way to share knowledge about financial matters as they relate to health care professionals. We spent many years learning about the science and art of providing patient care but most of us have relatively little knowledge about reaching financial well being. I know that I had no formal training in setting up investment accounts, negotiating contracts, buying insurance, buying real estate, etc. I just learned by reading and also by making many mistakes. Health care professionals are trusted to take put their patients needs first and we in turn assume everyone in other fields work the same way. Unfortunately this is not always true. By talking about these topics, I hope we can reduce the many financial mistakes that prior generations of doctors have made. Those physicians were able to overcome these mistakes because of shorter training periods, less debt, and they were more likely to be in private practice. Today we no longer have those luxuries and many of us have significant debt burdens. The good news is that we also have access to information that the prior generation never had. A little background about me. As I said before I am a practicing radiologist in Phoenix, AZ. I went to undergrad at Indiana U. (Go Hoosiers), medical school at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine (Now AT Still Univ) in Missouri, moved east and did my radiology residency at New York Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan. I then moved west to serve my Air Force commitment at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, NV. I then did a fellowship in Body/Musculoskeletal Imaging at Mayo Clinic Arizona. Since I finished training I have been in a hospital employed group for the last 6 years. I have always enjoyed learning about finance and have read (listened to) many of the financial books. I also spent time reading on the bogleheads.org forum which I found to be a valuable source of information. Finally I just observed that many of my colleagues and I had the same questions about relatively basic financial matters but it was difficult to find clear answers. Hopefully you find these podcasts useful. I encourage you to subscribe to them, that way you will be updated when any episodes are released automatically. Also please let your friends and colleagues know about this podcast. Please give us good feedback on iTunes, Google Play and stitcher and if you have suggestions on topics or how to improve the podcast please send your emails to comments@doctormoneymatters.com Social media links: twitter @drmoneymatters Facebook www.facebook.com/doctormoneymatters/ Please understand that this show is for entertainment and education only and you should do your own research and speak with the appropriate experts prior to making any changes in regards to material you may have heard on the show. The opinions from the guests on this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or of Doctor Money Matters, LLC.