What is the smartest financial decision you have made

[wideopenspaces]

Going to med school in Texas-super cheap tuition . . . having a reasonable budget . . . paying off student loans within 6 months post residency . . . picking a specialty I love and that I'm happy to do for many years to come.

[Mmd]

Sounds interesting.   What happened to your monthly mortgage expense?  Why do you feel this was a good move?

[Dicast]

My smartest and dumbest financial decision is almost the same thing.  I tried out stock trading before I had any substantial amounts of money.  The net loss of about $6k from picking some horrible stocks (lost $8k on one ridiculous pick) made me continue my education into finance so much further that now I almost consider it a fee I paid to educate myself.

[The White Coat Investor]

Learned how to invest without a financial advisor. I figure that's currently worth something like $10-20K a year this year and is worth more every year.

[Ricky]

I agree with that.  I don't follow any of Dave's investing advice, but can't go wrong paying down debt.  That's basically what I did the first few years out of residency.  Didn't know what to invest in, so just threw everything at mortgage, student loans and business loans.  Found WCI when I had money I could invest, which worked out perfect.

[Gas_Doc]

Let's be honest, the answer for a bunch of us here is "reading this blog for the first time (x amount of time) ago." I know that's my honest answer.

 

But to play the game by excluding the obvious, my best decision was a combination of tax loss harvesting three busted tech stocks (now penny stocks) that I had inherited post-bursted-bubble when we cashed in my wife's US savings bonds. The savings bonds paid off the remainder of my med school loans, giving us new found peace of mind, and the TLH made the tax bill almost nothing.

[ExpensiveMD]

PhysicianOnFIRE wrote:

Married a beautiful woman more frugal than me.

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Ditto.

savings  on this > then all other financial  decisions

[Joseph]

Moved thousands of miles to a higher paying job = pay off medical school in 1 year.

[nyu04]

Purchased an existing practice that I worked as an associate even though it was over priced by quite a bit.  I was confident that the practice can grow quickly with hard work and some luck.  It has been 5 years and my income/practice value has more than doubled.  Very grateful.

[Dr_JB]

Smartest Financial Decision: chose a residency in a low-cost city with above average salary where I ride my bike to work every day. This allows me to save enough that I max out personal and spousal Roth IRA and 403(b) during residency.

 

Luckiest Financial Decision: Used surplus student loan money during medical school to max out Roth IRA every year (eligible due to side W-2 income); also used a large chunk of low-interest unsecured personal loan and bought in the stock market in January 2009 (missed the March 2009 market low by two months).

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

Married a beautiful woman more frugal than me.

[RJ]

Slav4ikMD wrote:

Started to read WCI site and Sermo.

 

Started something that gave me 1099 income which allowed to max my retirement savings.

 

Having applied for and received full repayment of all my loans.

 

Set up some very basic low cost accounts at Vanguard.  As well as a regular simple budget plan to stick to.  (And we still overspend and splurge, but at least knowing where all the money is going helps a lot).

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Slav4K!!!! How's the S4???

[Slav4ikMD]

Started to read WCI site and Sermo.

 

Started something that gave me 1099 income which allowed to max my retirement savings.

 

Having applied for and received full repayment of all my loans.

 

Set up some very basic low cost accounts at Vanguard.  As well as a regular simple budget plan to stick to.  (And we still overspend and splurge, but at least knowing where all the money is going helps a lot).

[JKG]

We established a comprehensive financial plan with a great CFP 9 years ago while we both were still in residency, and that lit the spark of our financial education and progress. I read almost any financial book I can (Bernstein, Malkeil, Swedroe, Zwieg, etc). We still work with him, really so I'm not tempted to do stupid things with our money! He only sells us unbiased, honest advice, nothing else, no assets under management. He charges what works out to be 0.002% of our income, so that's a great deal for us!

[scbunker]

Doing Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University.

I know, I know, Dave's advice has some issues, and I don't agree with much of it anymore, but he's where I got started and he provided my initial motivation to get my money in order and learn.