Building Wealth, Strength, and Character
Coming off a month where checking my investments was no fun, here is where we stand. Total Net Worth: $787,000 We are only up $3,000 from last month. Despite our continued investing, we are actually down $4,000 on investments this month. It is tough to see portions of your net worth decreasing, but I understand […]
Here is where we currently stand: Total Net Worth: $784,000 Market appreciation helped us move up a bit quicker than expected, which obviously feels nice. However, this has me thinking that a downturn will temporarily feel awful. Regardless, we will stay the course. I am actively trying to think about our finances a little less. […]
Learning to save requires delayed gratification. You have money to spend, but you are intentionally choosing to put it aside. This can be very difficult, but once someone establishes the habit, delaying becomes second nature. In my own experience, the gratification part has been more difficult. Month after month, our net worth increases and, by […]
It has been several years since our last net worth update. A lot has changed in our lives, but our strategy for building wealth has remained the same. Here is where we currently stand: Total Net Worth: $756,000 This officially marks another quarter-million-dollar milestone. I’m currently setting aside money for our Roth IRA contributions, but […]
As the announcement of our annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) approaches, I’ve found myself thinking through the possible outcomes. It’ll likely land somewhere between 1% and 3%—already an improvement over last year, when I received 0% as a new hire. Still, with inflation averaging around 4% in recent years, it’s easy to feel like […]
On the financial independence track, where does happiness come in? When should we slow our portfolio growth to focus on lifestyle? I don’t think there is a prescriptive answer that fits everyone. These questions require us to look at why we want financial independence and examine what we are willing to sacrifice to achieve it, […]
As we graduated and entered the workforce, a recurring piece of advice we received from friends and family was to budget. The version they were imagining involved setting aside a set amount of money each month into different buckets of expenses. Two hundred dollars for the gas bill, eight hundred dollars for groceries, two hundred […]
The latte factor is the idea that if you spend 5 dollars every day on a drive-through coffee, you are losing around 150 dollars a month. Therefore, it has become a common piece of financial advice to skip the daily latte. I can’t argue that, for many people, an extra 150 dollars a month could […]
Medicine is a field that has been plagued with “burn out”. While it has become increasingly clear that any field has its fair share, this has been a topic of discussion in medicine before it ever became main stream. At the end of the day, if your job is to help people you can’t afford […]
I am nearing my 2 year work anniversary and last month I was able to completely pay off my student loans. In total, I graduated with just over 60,000 dollars in student loans in 2021. After a brief stint at a local factory while I awaited my physician assistant licensure to be fully authorized, I […]
