Anyone know any early retiree MDs?

[Kamban]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

3) Of those who can afford to, and who are willing to live off the lower amount early retirement usually entails, a certain percentage just love practicing medicine. I hope that’s me too.

4) There are some who could afford to but don’t have anything to retire to.

5) And then there are some like PoF who are still working just because they made some commitments to partners/employer/patients etc. That could last anywhere from a few months to a few years.

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These 3 apply to me. I love what I do most of the time, since I am my own boss. The income will be twice or three time in a hospital employed position in my specialty but then I will be like many physicians on this board complaining about burn out and administrators. When I see what my patients go through, doing what I do to help them feels like a purpose in life. I don't feel the need to retire from this just to work in a free clinic.

I do work 20-30 hours per week. Most of the time at the lower end of that number. If I quit completely I can't even write a prescription when my license expires in 1 year. I would like to have that privilege for some more time.

[Kamban]

Sometimes people make hasty decisions that they regret a few years later.

It was the late 90's and internet start ups were the craze. A young talented surgeon (around 40) who I used to refer to exclusively, left abruptly one day. He had a autistic child and he stated that he wanted to be at home to help him though his main goal was to start an internet company with 2 others to sell medical items online ( or something like that). He was also the primary breadwinner of his family.

After 3-4 years of losses, just when he should have made millions selling the company / IPO it, the bottom fell out of the internet craze. His company went bankrupt. He had lost his surgical skills, given up on job and hospital privileges. Now he was trying to reactivate his license and start doing locums. I met him in a grocery store and could hardly recognize the handsome man he once was. He had aged 15+ years.

Really sad early retirement.

 

[Raddoc123]

I wonder whether the current generation of physicians will be more likely to retire early?  They are more likely to be employed, get burned out because of employment, view medicine as a job, tired of admins and attacks on their jobs and salary, access to countless books and blogs about FIRE, better investments, etc.

[Raddoc123]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Raddoc123 wrote:

If this is your experience also, why do you think this is? 

Click to expand…

1) Most can’t afford to. That eliminates probably 90%+

2) Of those who can afford to, the majority (like me) prefer spending more money to stopping work completely. Want to live on $120K a year or work some more and spend $300K?

3) Of those who can afford to, and who are willing to live off the lower amount early retirement usually entails, a certain percentage just love practicing medicine. I hope that’s me too.

4) There are some who could afford to but don’t have anything to retire to.

5) And then there are some like PoF who are still working just because they made some commitments to partners/employer/patients etc. That could last anywhere from a few months to a few years.

Click to expand...

Regarding 1), as physicians get into 50s and 60s inheritances start to come into play.  I would think a good % of physicians come from educated financially successful families. After 20+ yrs of saving, I would think an inheritance would push many into early retirement, but it doesn’t seem to be the case?

[Complete_newbie]

I know one at 45 who completely retired. He also had amazing trading/business skills. He would have been successful with or without medicine. He also moved out of USA and back to his home country where majority of his family resided. Quiet guy but super sharp and knew what he wanted in life.

I can retire right now (thanks to outside of medicine income). At 34. Crazy to think about but I just started working like 2.5 years ago. I love medicine so far so will continue. However, I have something to retire to and increasingly alot of things that interest me for which I don't get much time so its possible I hang it up at 40 or something.

[Kamban]

Vagabond MD wrote:

There should have been a recommendation thread for that! I could not find anything worthwhile

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wonka31 wrote:

Agreed, I got a new basketball for the kids with the credit, I couldn’t find much else. I also couldn’t believe how much random crap there was, a lot of which was 100% sold out.

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The first couple of years of Prime were really good. After that it has been rubbish being hyped up and sold as great bargains. I did not even bother looking into what was put on the show at the site.

Read that Amazon now accounts for 49% of all online purchases and 5% of all retail being sold in USA. It has turned into a mammoth.

[Dont_know_mind]

Kamban wrote:

Sometimes people make hasty decisions that they regret a few years later.

It was the late 90’s and internet start ups were the craze. A young talented surgeon (around 40) who I used to refer to exclusively, left abruptly one day. He had a autistic child and he stated that he wanted to be at home to help him though his main goal was to start an internet company with 2 others to sell medical items online ( or something like that). He was also the primary breadwinner of his family.

After 3-4 years of losses, just when he should have made millions selling the company / IPO it, the bottom fell out of the internet craze. His company went bankrupt. He had lost his surgical skills, given up on job and hospital privileges. Now he was trying to reactivate his license and start doing locums. I met him in a grocery store and could hardly recognize the handsome man he once was. He had aged 15+ years.

Really sad early retirement.

 

Click to expand...

In 1999 I was an intern and me and the resident in my surgical rotation were talking about how we should leave medicine and do something internet related.

Someone in my year did actually leave medicine after internship for a failed medical internet startup. He eventually did transition to another e Heath company and did ok apparently. But he didn’t like clinical medicine.

[ajagannathan]

I'm part of a large PP radiology group, none of the rads based at my primary location have retired early (most of us at this site are in our early to mid 40s), but we have had 4-5 senior partners in their 50s retire fully or go part time in the past 2-3 yrs.  Unfortunately I was not close enough to them to know their situations well.

[The White Coat Investor]

q-school wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Raddoc123 wrote:

If this is your experience also, why do you think this is? 

Click to expand…

1) Most can’t afford to. That eliminates probably 90%+

2) Of those who can afford to, the majority (like me) prefer spending more money to stopping work completely. Want to live on $120K a year or work some more and spend $300K?

3) Of those who can afford to, and who are willing to live off the lower amount early retirement usually entails, a certain percentage just love practicing medicine. I hope that’s me too.

4) There are some who could afford to but don’t have anything to retire to.

5) And then there are some like PoF who are still working just because they made some commitments to partners/employer/patients etc. That could last anywhere from a few months to a few years.

Click to expand…

#2 is BS.   I call it twice.

people who spent a lifetime saving will not easily transition to spending 300k.  that’s an enormous amount of money.  you can do it for one years or two years.  but not consistently.  it just feels wasteful.  you can’t even start doing it the first year because you are so worried about SORR and watching the lack of paychecks come in.  takes a while to get used to it.

yes you don’t want to give up creature comforts you are accustomed to.  I don’t want to stop having housekeeper or go out to eat less when I retire.  but even with those things, we spend way less than 10k a month, if you exclude the unnecessary insurances, educational savings/expenses.  try doubling the expenditures.  a lot will wind up going to charity, which is fine, but most don’t get there and wind up leaving a lot to kids in my experience.  I see so many retired physicians continuing to invest because they don’t know what to do with money.  and these are the guys with pensions and healthcare provided including outpatient meds, so they are the ones that could really safely draw down.  but they can’t bring themselves to do it.  even the 80 year olds are not spending their current monthly nuts.  as the years go by, harder to vacation and other things.  harder to spend money.  so we have this tiny window to spend where we have enough, and are young enough to enjoy, but emotionally cannot bring ourselves to do it.

 

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I'll let my wife know. We were discussing a home remodel that would cost twice what we paid for the house last week. And we don't even have a housekeeper yet.

For some reason, when we work together, we don't have too much trouble spending a fair amount of money. $300K? Heck, we spend half that without even trying and that doesn't include taxes and charity. Some might have trouble spending that much, but I'm confident we could figure out a way to do it. We find it very easy to spend $10K a month and we don't even have any debts.

[q-school]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

q-school wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Raddoc123 wrote:

If this is your experience also, why do you think this is? 

Click to expand…

1) Most can’t afford to. That eliminates probably 90%+

2) Of those who can afford to, the majority (like me) prefer spending more money to stopping work completely. Want to live on $120K a year or work some more and spend $300K?

3) Of those who can afford to, and who are willing to live off the lower amount early retirement usually entails, a certain percentage just love practicing medicine. I hope that’s me too.

4) There are some who could afford to but don’t have anything to retire to.

5) And then there are some like PoF who are still working just because they made some commitments to partners/employer/patients etc. That could last anywhere from a few months to a few years.

Click to expand…

#2 is BS.   I call it twice.

people who spent a lifetime saving will not easily transition to spending 300k.  that’s an enormous amount of money.  you can do it for one years or two years.  but not consistently.  it just feels wasteful.  you can’t even start doing it the first year because you are so worried about SORR and watching the lack of paychecks come in.  takes a while to get used to it.

yes you don’t want to give up creature comforts you are accustomed to.  I don’t want to stop having housekeeper or go out to eat less when I retire.  but even with those things, we spend way less than 10k a month, if you exclude the unnecessary insurances, educational savings/expenses.  try doubling the expenditures.  a lot will wind up going to charity, which is fine, but most don’t get there and wind up leaving a lot to kids in my experience.  I see so many retired physicians continuing to invest because they don’t know what to do with money.  and these are the guys with pensions and healthcare provided including outpatient meds, so they are the ones that could really safely draw down.  but they can’t bring themselves to do it.  even the 80 year olds are not spending their current monthly nuts.  as the years go by, harder to vacation and other things.  harder to spend money.  so we have this tiny window to spend where we have enough, and are young enough to enjoy, but emotionally cannot bring ourselves to do it.

 

Click to expand…

I’ll let my wife know. We were discussing a home remodel that would cost twice what we paid for the house last week. And we don’t even have a housekeeper yet.

For some reason, when we work together, we don’t have too much trouble spending a fair amount of money. $300K? Heck, we spend half that without even trying and that doesn’t include taxes and charity. Some might have trouble spending that much, but I’m confident we could figure out a way to do it. We find it very easy to spend $10K a month and we don’t even have any debts.

Click to expand...

You are still young. If you kept your pre wci habits for twenty more years, I stick by my statement.    Even so, give yourself a couple years of spending and then after the remodels and the boats and cars and see if you can get keep it up without feeling wasteful.   Taxes don’t count as spending.  

[CM]

q-school wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

q-school wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Raddoc123 wrote:

If this is your experience also, why do you think this is? 

Click to expand…

1) Most can’t afford to. That eliminates probably 90%+

2) Of those who can afford to, the majority (like me) prefer spending more money to stopping work completely. Want to live on $120K a year or work some more and spend $300K?

3) Of those who can afford to, and who are willing to live off the lower amount early retirement usually entails, a certain percentage just love practicing medicine. I hope that’s me too.

4) There are some who could afford to but don’t have anything to retire to.

5) And then there are some like PoF who are still working just because they made some commitments to partners/employer/patients etc. That could last anywhere from a few months to a few years.

Click to expand…

#2 is BS.   I call it twice.

people who spent a lifetime saving will not easily transition to spending 300k.  that’s an enormous amount of money.  you can do it for one years or two years.  but not consistently.  it just feels wasteful.  you can’t even start doing it the first year because you are so worried about SORR and watching the lack of paychecks come in.  takes a while to get used to it.

yes you don’t want to give up creature comforts you are accustomed to.  I don’t want to stop having housekeeper or go out to eat less when I retire.  but even with those things, we spend way less than 10k a month, if you exclude the unnecessary insurances, educational savings/expenses.  try doubling the expenditures.  a lot will wind up going to charity, which is fine, but most don’t get there and wind up leaving a lot to kids in my experience.  I see so many retired physicians continuing to invest because they don’t know what to do with money.  and these are the guys with pensions and healthcare provided including outpatient meds, so they are the ones that could really safely draw down.  but they can’t bring themselves to do it.  even the 80 year olds are not spending their current monthly nuts.  as the years go by, harder to vacation and other things.  harder to spend money.  so we have this tiny window to spend where we have enough, and are young enough to enjoy, but emotionally cannot bring ourselves to do it.

 

Click to expand…

I’ll let my wife know. We were discussing a home remodel that would cost twice what we paid for the house last week. And we don’t even have a housekeeper yet.

For some reason, when we work together, we don’t have too much trouble spending a fair amount of money. $300K? Heck, we spend half that without even trying and that doesn’t include taxes and charity. Some might have trouble spending that much, but I’m confident we could figure out a way to do it. We find it very easy to spend $10K a month and we don’t even have any debts.

Click to expand…

You are still young. If you kept your pre wci habits for twenty more years, I stick by my statement.    Even so, give yourself a couple years of spending and then after the remodels and the boats and cars and see if you can get keep it up without feeling wasteful.   Taxes don’t count as spending.  

Click to expand...

$300K/year of spending seems like a lot of money to us because we are physicians. I'm confident that Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods wouldn't know how to get by on $300K/year.

If you earned $100M/year, then spending only $300K/year would probably strike you as miserly rather than wasteful.

[MPMD]

One thing I always think about on the spending is if it would basically be a burst followed by a return to relatively frugal habits. I think if I were magically FIRE or had a huge windfall I'd end up making <$100k of consumer purchases (~1/2 of which would be a vehicle), upgrade to a new home but not a crazy one, and then kind of.... do the same stuff I do now but probably give more money away.

It's not about self-deprivation (far from it) it's about avoiding hedonic treadmills with large depreciating purchases.

I will say that now that we have no non-mortgage debt it's harder for me to avoid spending, but that's not the worst thing in the world. I do still get a stomach ache spending more than about $100 on myself (thank you Irish Catholic upbringing) but I'm learning to push through it.