Overview of my 2022 Finances

Early career Emergency Medicine physician trying to navigate the financial world

  • April 2024 Update

    April Total Income:

    This month I finally kicked back on hours a little bit. I really did minimal telemedicine work as well. The weather is nice and I’m enjoying more of my time off! We did end up purchasing my wife a new car at the beginning of the month. We sold about $26,000 in our brokerage account and then funded the rest with our emergency fund/cash, thus we have a brand new paid off car. Hurts to write the check, but it was time.

    Expenses

    A lot of expenses/debt paid off this month. We had a 0% APR credit card coming due and I wanted to get that out of the way as well as home insurance bill, car expenses, etc. I now have just about $19,000 left on a 0% APR credit card that I will pay off by the end of the year. Most of these were related to moving into our home, furniture, upgrades etc.

    Investments

    This April the market dropped, we continue to make our monthly contributions. Mostly flat to down on the month.

    As stated above, we paid for our car purchase in cash and paid down a lot of debt this month so only minimal contributions, next month I will be able to make some larger contributions and start maxing my 401k.

    Investment Accounts:

    A 100k dip this month with our car purchase and drop in the market. Hopefully temporary as I ramp up my retirement accounts through the rest of the year.

    My Financial Goals for 2024

    1. WORK LESS – I’ve been working like a dog the first few years out of residency, I feel like I’m finally getting to a point where I want to pull back a bit.
      1. This month was the first month of me pulling back a bit, I am much happier with this move.
      2. Fully fund all retirement accounts – $168,300 GOAL – 100,326 currently funded
        1. Backdoor Roth IRA x2 – $7000 x 2 – $14,000 DONE
        2. Family HSA Plan – $8,300 DONE
        3. AMJ and Wife 401ks – $23000 x2 – $15371 of 46,000 funded
        4. AMJ 401k Profit Sharing – $0 of 10,000 funded
        5. AMJ Defined Benefit Plan – $79,500 of $79,500 DONE
      3. 529 Fund for son – $10,000 DONE
      4. Make Minimum Student Loan Payments – 3 years left with $149k @ 1.1% rate fixed ON TRACK
      5. Payoff Credit Card Debt – We have about $39,000 in credit card debt, this is all 0% APR but its still a decent amount that we will have to pay off this  year.
        1. Approximately 19,000 remaining

    -AMJ

  • March 2024

    March 2024 Update

    About me: I am a full-time emergency medicine doctor a few years out of residency. I am currently working as a full time 1099 independent contractor with a few side hustles here and there. I am married to my beautiful wife, Mrs. AMJ and have one child. I created this blog to track my financial journey. My goal is to maintain a balanced approach to my finances between slowly paying down my low interest debt, investing aggressively, but also enjoying life along the way (IE: Somewhere between frugal and YOLO). Thank you for following along.

    March Total Income:

    Another busy month of shifts, I was supposed to work less this month, however due to some family emergencies, I had to move around some shifts and ended up working quite a bit more than originally scheduled. My telemedicine gig did officially end its contract so this will  be my last month of that extra side gig income. I have been dabbling in some urgent care telemedicine work, but its honestly been pretty slow and I haven’t had a whole lot of free time to do it.

    Expenses

    Fairly standard month, we did some minor home upgrades and will have some more coming in the next month or so, this lead to a big larger credit card bill this month. We will also have to pay our home insurance this month which is now over $3,000/year.

    Investments

    The middle finger on the chart is related to me moving my accounts from my 401k into a brokeragelink on Fidelity, which briefly double counted the money during transfer, otherwise ignore that portion.  I have a few ETFs that I prefer over the available mutual funds in our work related 401ks. The big news is us withdrawing about $26,000 from our brokerage account to fund a new car for my wife, hopefully we will be able to purchase this month. Her car is on its last leg and after taking it to the mechanic and realizing we likely have another large pending bill, we pulled out some money to have cash available for a car purchase. With that money pulled out, we were essentially even in our investments for the month. I should be able to replenish this later this year.

    My DB plan/401k plans are now funded in time for my tax return for 2023. I am holding a ton of cash right now as discussed above for our pending card purchase.

    Investment Accounts:

    Just a slow continued upward trend here. Once we make our car purchase, this will create a little dent, but hopefully just temporary.

    My Financial Goals for 2024

    1. WORK LESS – I’ve been working like a dog the first few years out of residency, I feel like I’m finally getting to a point where I want to pull back a bit.
      1. With my telemedicine gig ending, I am working a bit less just from that, I am now scheduled for fewer clinical shifts moving forward.
      2. Fully fund all retirement accounts – $168,300
        1. Backdoor Roth IRA x2 – $7000 x 2 – $14,000 DONE
        2. Family HSA Plan – $8,300 DONE
        3. AMJ and Wife 401ks – $23000 x2 – $12755 of 46,000 funded
        4. AMJ 401k Profit Sharing – $0 of 10,000 funded
        5. AMJ Defined Benefit Plan – $76,500 of $76,500 DONE
      3. 529 Fund for son – $10,000 DONE
      4. Make Minimum Student Loan Payments – 3 years left with $149k @ 1.1% rate fixed ON TRACK
      5. Payoff Credit Card Debt – We have about $39,000 in credit card debt, this is all 0% APR but its still a decent amount that we will have to pay off this  year.

    -AMJ

  • February 2024 Update

    About me: I am a full-time emergency medicine doctor a few years out of residency. I am currently working as a full time 1099 independent contractor with a few side hustles here and there. I am married to my beautiful wife, Mrs. AMJ and have one child. I created this blog to track my financial journey. My goal is to maintain a balanced approach to my finances between slowly paying down my low interest debt, investing aggressively, but also enjoying life along the way (IE: Somewhere between frugal and YOLO). Thank you for following along.

    February Total Income:

    February was another month of working too much. March 1st will actually be a big change for me. I am going down to full time hours and my telemedicine gig actually lost its contract so I am going from working >20 shifts a month to 13 shifts a month. I feel strangely guilty about doing this, but I just know what I am doing is not sustainable over the long term. I see the partners from the group I work with miserable (even though they are making very good dough). I would rather have a longer more sustainable career (I think) so my hours are going down significantly. I think we are in a financial place where this is now doable. Much of our major expenses for our new house are behind us, we can continue to pay down debt and invest aggressively.

    The other major change this month, is my wife was able to go from PRN to part-time meaning she can now get benefits. Her W2 job has much better healthcare (and about $300 cheaper) than my private health insurance I bought as a 1099. She also gets a small 401k match now so lots of wins out there this month!

    Expenses

    No major expenses to report this month, we did go on a tropical vacation for a week with friends but had already paid for most of that last year, outside of food we didn’t have any major expenses there.

    Investments

    The market continues on a bull run and my investments are loving it.

    I continue to aggressively fund my DB plan, it is now fully funded for 2023 pending my final tax amount from my CPA. My wife also continues to fund her 401k aggressively, our goal is to get those maxed by the end of the year.

    Investment Accounts:

    My net worth continues to sky rocket as I pay down my debt and invest aggressively. This time a year ago my debt vs investments was -$300k and is now +$300k. A swing of 600k in one year, unreal to me. Great lesson in staying the course.

    My Financial Goals for 2024

    1. WORK LESS – I’ve been working like a dog the first few years out of residency, I feel like I’m finally getting to a point where I want to pull back a bit.
      1. I’m getting there, I am working much less in March
      2. Fully fund all retirement accounts – $168,300
        1. Backdoor Roth IRA x2 – $7000 x 2 – $14,000 DONE
        2. Family HSA Plan – $8,300 DONE
        3. AMJ and Wife 401ks – $23000 x2 – $9377 of 46,000 funded
        4. AMJ 401k Profit Sharing – $0 of 10,000 funded
        5. AMJ Defined Benefit Plan – $76,500 of $76,500 DONE
      3. 529 Fund for son – $10,000 DONE
      4. Make Minimum Student Loan Payments – 3 years left with $149k @ 1.1% rate fixed ON TRACK
      5. Payoff Credit Card Debt – We have about $39,000 in credit card debt, this is all 0% APR but its still a decent amount that we will have to pay off this  year.

    -AMJ

  • January 2024 Update

    About me: I am a full-time emergency medicine doctor a few years out of residency. I am currently working as a full time 1099 independent contractor with a few side hustles here and there. I am married to my beautiful wife, Mrs. AMJ and have one child. I created this blog to track my financial journey. My goal is to maintain a balanced approach to my finances between slowly paying down my low interest debt, investing aggressively, but also enjoying life along the way (IE: Somewhere between frugal and YOLO). Thank you for following along.

    January Total Income:

    I worked a ton in January (too much). We continue to be very short staffed at work and I’ve been filing in the holes. My telemedicine gig has also had plenty of available shifts and I honestly enjoy the work and find it very easy to work at home. The bad news however is the contract is ending in February so I’m trying to get as many shifts as I can. I will likely look for another telemedicine side gig starting in March. I spoke with my boss and asked to just work full time hours starting in March so I’m hopeful this will make my career more sustainable. Difficult to say no as there is so much extra work out there.

    We continue to make minimum payments on my mortgage and student loan debt. I often think about paying a little extra, but investing in the stock market continues to pay off. Once my student loan debt drops under 100k (which will be at the end of this year), I may seriously consider just selling some money in my taxable account and getting rid of it. There is so psychological security in doing so. I also think about maybe upping my mortgage payments by a couple hundred, but haven’t done so yet. I had a lot of licensing expenses in my credit card for my business/LLC that I had to pay off this month.

    Investments

    Wow, the stock market has been on an absolute tear these past few months. We remain mainly invested in growth index funds and it is paying off. My only regret is not investing more sooner!

    I moved a lot of money out of our HYSA to prefund these accounts maxing out the HSA, Backdoor Roth IRA x2 and my son’s 529. I also am aggressively funding my DB plan as I need to get in $88,500 by tax time, I dropped in 40k this month. I also made a large estimated payment to the IRS (not showing this amount) so my cash/HYSA largely depleted at this time. Will slowly rebuild but want to get my investments funded quickly.

    Investment Accounts:

    My Seven Goals for 2023

    My Financial Goals for 2024

    1. WORK LESS – I’ve been working like a dog the first few years out of residency, I feel like I’m finally getting to a point where I want to pull back a bit.
      1. I worked over 240 hours in January. I will pull back in March, I hope.
      2. Fully fund all retirement accounts – $166,800
        1. Backdoor Roth IRA x2 – $7000 x 2 – $14,000 DONE
        2. Family HSA Plan – $8,300 DONE
        3. AMJ and Wife 401ks – $23000 x2 – $4,592 of 46,000 funded
        4. AMJ 401k Profit Sharing – $0 of 10,000 funded
        5. AMJ Defined Benefit Plan – $40,000 of $88,500 funded
      3. 529 Fund for son – $10,000 DONE
      4. Make Minimum Student Loan Payments – 3 years left with $149k @ 1.1% rate fixed ON TRACK
      5. Payoff Credit Card Debt – We have about $39,000 in credit card debt, this is all 0% APR but its still a decent amount that we will have to pay off this  year.

    -AMJ

  • 2024 Year In Review

    How we spent 600k in 2024

    About me: I am a full-time emergency medicine doctor a few years out of residency. I am currently working as a full time 1099 independent contractor with a few side hustles here and there. I am married to my beautiful wife, Mrs. AMJ and have one child. I created this blog to track my financial journey. My goal is to maintain a balanced approach to my finances between slowly paying down my low interest debt, investing aggressively, but also enjoying life along the way (IE: Somewhere between frugal and YOLO). Thank you for following along.

    2024 Total Income

    I made a lot more than I thought I would. My current job remains very short staffed and thus I’m working quite a bit more than I anticipated. I also got about $100k in bonus payouts from my previous job and a $20k sign on bonus for my new job boosting my income much higher than anticipated. I also converted from a W2 partnership track position to a 1099 which boosted my income about 10k per month higher. I was able to pick up some shifts doing some telemedicine work a few times a month as well.

    Investments:

    I messed up my personal capital and deleted a bunch of data  ahhh, so now only have recent data from December on. Most of my money is invested in growth index funds and ETFs (such as VUG) and it had an absolute monster year (after getting crushed last year), but these funds are up around 40% for the year. Thus my investments have done phenomenally for the year. I began the year at $652k and finishing at $1.024 million, an increase of 372k!

    Yearly Expenses

    Full disclosure, I don’t track every single dollar so some of these are general estimates besides the major expenses that I have all the receipts for.

    This year was a very expensive year for us. My son was born late last year, we moved across the country, built our dream home, a dock and purchased a boat. We worked hard but we also play hard and we are building our dream life. Removing all the construction costs for our home and the boat purchase and our expenses this year will drop 250k. I was still able to invest about $130k into the market.

    Investment Accounts:

    We officially hit 1 million in investments this year in December. I started the year off with $652k. With the massive returns in growth stocks and another 130k or so invested in the market it was an amazing year for us, an increase of $372k. Lets review my goals from 2023 and look forward to 2024.

    My Seven Goals for 2023

    1. Close on our new house – Pay all final costs and furnishings with cash DONE (ok we are holding some on a 0 percent credit card, but only to leverage our HYSA at 5%)
    2. Max out Roth IRA x 2 for myself and wife – $13,000 (DONE)
    3. Max 401k – $22,500 (DONE)
    4. 529 Plan – Contribute $10,000 (DONE – 20,600 contributed)
    5. Taxable Account – $60,000 in contributions (Miss- $32,000 contributed)
      1. change in this plan as I have now opened up a DB plan
        1. Didn’t quite make it, I will focus on funding my DB plan
    6. Buy Rental Home– Single Family Home (on hold for now) – MISS
      1. Just too busy, market is too crazy, will think about doing this in the future.
    7. Make Minimum Student Loan Payments – 4 years left @ 1.1% fixed (DONE)

    My Financial Goals for 2024

    1. WORK LESS – I’ve been working like a dog the first few years out of residency, I feel like I’m finally getting to a point where I want to pull back a bit.
      1. Fully fund all retirement accounts – $168,300
        1. Backdoor Roth IRA x2 – $7000 x 2 – $14,000
        1. Family HSA Plan – $8,300
        1. AMJ and Wife 401ks – $23000 x2 – $46,000
        1. AMJ 401k Profit Sharing – $10,000
        1. AMJ Defined Benefit Plan – $90,000
      1. 529 Fund for son – $10,000
      1. Make Minimum Student Loan Payments – 3 years left with $149k @ 1.1% rate fixed
      1. Payoff Credit Card Debt – We have about $39,000 in credit card debt, this is all 0% APR but its still a decent amount that we will have to pay off this  year.

    -AMJ