Early career Emergency Medicine physician trying to navigate the financial world
- March 2025 Update
March Total Income:
Another solid month of lots of work for the both of us, still blows my mind that we make 50-60k a month now as that’s what I’d make for an entire year as a resident.
Expenses
Fairly standard month for us, we booked a vacation for the fall on our credit card so the bill is a little bigger than normal. We also had our HOA quarterly bill so our expenses are a little higher this month overall.
Investments
Ouch, despite pumping in over $180k this year, market has turned negative for the year. I am still heavily invested in US Growth (largest holding is VUG), which have gotten crushed this year. Tough to swallow, but I am changing nothing in my plan. Everyone seems to be jumping to international stocks. I remember in 2022, everyone was jumping to syndications and ibonds when the market was crashing. I just kept buying then and those are some of my best investments ever. Just keep buying.
My 2025 401k and 2024 DB plan is fully funded, I’ve decided to also partially fund my DB plan for this year (2025) given the market downturn to get some more money in. My wife will have her 401k plan maxed in April and well get to work on her 457.
Investment Accounts:
We keep pumping money in but the market keeps on its downswing. We are staying the course but never full to see your accounts drop despite the aggressive funding.
My Financial Goals for 2025
- Hit $2 Million in investments. Now seems far away with the market drop and pulling money out to pay my debt, but time will tell!
- DONE- PAID OFF IN FEBURARY!!!! Pay off remaining student loans. I start the year with ~$95k left in student loans refinanced to 1.1%. I know mathematically it makes zero sense, but I only have two years left on them regardless. I plan to fully fund my retirement accounts in the first quarter of 2025 and then have them gone by midway through the year.
- Work less? I said that last year, didn’t happen.
-AMJ
- February 2025 Update
February Total Income:
Busy month of work and shifts. My telemedicine gig is going really well and I’m making good money from it. Hope that can continue because its allowing me to drop some of my clinical shifts. But as I know from experience, a lot of the telemed gigs can go belly up quick so I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket at this time.
Expenses
So the major news this month, I paid off my student loans!!!! How? I won big on a single stock. Back in 2021, I bought Palantir (PLTR) stock. Honestly, I was just watching CNBC one day and heard about the stock. I bought it in the mid 20s, watched it drop all the way down to $7 and I slowly bought to average down over the last few years. Well, it went crazy in the last year and I ended up selling it at $122 at nearly at 700% gain and sold it for $83k.
I always kept holding it because I said the extra cash won’t change my life but once it got large enough to nearly pay off my loans and was clearly overhyped/overvalued, I figured it was time. I actually timed it almost perfectly to sell as the stock dumped the next week. A lot of people told me not to do it as my rate was super low, but honestly having the freedom of not paying those huge monthly payments anymore was worth it.
Investments
Hard to see this chart, the market took a dump toward the end of the month with all the crazy pollical stuff going on right now. This coincided with me pulling 83k out of my taxable account from my PLTR stock to pay off my student loans.
I fully funded my DB plan and have started contributing to my 401k. We continue to invest regardless of market conditions. Just keep buying.
Investment Accounts:
Despite our huge debt payoff, we are still down a bit with the market drop. We continue the grind.
My Financial Goals for 2024
- Hit $2 Million in investments. Now seems far away with the market drop and pulling money out to pay my debt, but time will tell!
- DONE- PAID OFF IN FEBURARY!!!! Pay off remaining student loans. I start the year with ~$95k left in student loans refinanced to 1.1%. I know mathematically it makes zero sense, but I only have two years left on them regardless. I plan to fully fund my retirement accounts in the first quarter of 2025 and then have them gone by midway through the year.
- Work less? I said that last year, didn’t happen.
-AMJ
- January 2025 Update
January Total Income:
We had a great start to the year. My wife got paid three times in January and she is aggressively funding her retirement accounts to start the year. I had a solid month, busy with shifts, I am doing more telemedicine and providing a surprisingly high income which I’m happy with for now. I also started a new PRN gig in another local emergency department, I haven’t gotten paid for these shifts yet (get paid RVU bonus a few months later) so this will drop my income slightly until I get paid out.
Expenses
A standard month for us expense wise, continue to make minimum payments on my student loans and our mortgage.
Investments
Market went up about 3% this month.
We have super funded our retirement accounts for the year. I had some left over cash from December that I deployed into our Roth IRAs (14k), HSA (8.5k) and DB plan (38k). The rest includes money from my wife’s paychecks and I added another 30k into my DB plan this month. We will continue to aggressively maximize our retirement accounts early in the year.
Investment Accounts:
Another great start to the year, up almost 90k debt vs investments. We continue to chug along.
My Financial Goals for 2024
- Hit $2 Million in investments. Currently at approximately $1.7m Need some movement in the market as we continue to aggressively fund our retirement accounts.
- Pay off remaining student loans. I start the year with ~$95k left in student loans refinanced to 1.1%. I know mathematically it makes zero sense, but I only have two years left on them regardless. I plan to fully fund my retirement accounts in the first quarter of 2025 and then have them gone by midway through the year.
- Work less? I said that last year, didn’t happen.
-AMJ
- How we spent 600k in 2024
About me: I am a full-time emergency medicine doctor a few years out of residency (finished in 2020, currently 36 years old). 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
2024 Other Income/Withdrawals:
Well, one of my goals this year was to try and work less. I did not do any such thing. Still grinding out lots of shifts in the ER, working a few telemedicine side hustles here and there. My wife has also been working part time and been able to pick up some extra work from home as well. Two years ago, we made over 600k and I wondered if we would ever do that again, here we are for the third year in a row clearing 600k.
Investments:
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.
- Thankfully, we didn’t have any major upgrades or unexpected maintenance for our house this year outside of some minor things.
- Our total mortgage costs at 3.75% about 45k/year.
- That means an additional 40% goes into HOA, taxes, maintenance, utilities, etc.
- I continued to make minimum student loan payments, they are now sub 100k and I think this year (2025) will be the payoff year.
- The major extra expense this year was buying my wife a much needed new car. We paid for it in cash, we did have to sell 26k out of our taxable account to make the cash purchase. She got her new dream car, happy wife happy life.
- Income Taxes – I filed as an S corp as I work full time as a 1099, we also are deferring >$150k in pretax accounts between my wife and myself which allows us to dramatically lower our tax bill.
- I had 38k in left over 0% credit cards from furnishing our home in 2023, I paid them all off before they began
- Child Care – my son is now in part time “school” aka day care and we had a part time nanny as well when we both work, cost was just over $20k for the year
Wealth Building
Here’s a breakdown:
- Mainstay of my retirement accounts is a combined 401k with a defined benefit plan allowing me to put a ton of money away pretax
- Wife was able to make her 401k and also max 457, she gets a small match
- I am putting away 10k a year for my sons college, plan to do this for 18 years.
- Any extra cash I saved away in HYSA, this was immediately deployed in 2025 to front load our retirement accounts.
Investment Accounts:
We officially hit 1 million in investments last year in December. We continued to have another insane run up in the market. I am mainly invested in US growth stocks (largest holding is VUG) which have done extremely well the last two years (but got killed in 2022).
Yearly Review:
It is fun to look back on how far we have come in the last 2-3 years. We are making way more than I anticipated I would as there continues to be unlimited work where I live (basically I can pick up any open shift I want any day). Still looking to find a balance there. I said I’d work less this year and I just haven’t. I don’t include our house in our net work (I probably should), but I find it hard to value as we have a custom built home thus I don’t know how accurate Zillow really is.
Looking ahead to 2025, I’ve recently started another telemedicine gig that is paying fairly well, almost as much as my main ER gig. I’m also starting a PRN gig with another ER group in the area, although slightly longer commute. Time will tell as I try and mold a sustainable career in emergency medicine. Especially since starting a family, night shifts have become much harder on not only myself physically, but also my wife. I have this dream of hitting 3 million in investments by 40 years old that will allow me enough financial freedom to tell wherever I’m working to drop the night shifts. I’m not there yet, but I’ve made progress.
My Financial Goals for 2025
- Hit $2 Million in investments. Currently at approximately $1.6 mil, I plan to put in at least 200k, that requires a market return of about 10% to get me to $2 mil.
- Pay off remaining student loans. I start the year with ~$95k left in student loans refinanced to 1.1%. I know mathematically it makes zero sense, but I only have two years left on them regardless. I plan to fully fund my retirement accounts in the first quarter of 2025 and then have them gone by midway through the year.
- Work less? I said that last year, didn’t happen.
Thanks for following!
-AMJ
- Thankfully, we didn’t have any major upgrades or unexpected maintenance for our house this year outside of some minor things.
- November 2024 Update
November Total Income:
We had pretty much two separate weeks of various friends and family visiting this month which means the two weeks I had off, I was essentially working non stop and had some long stretches. Hope I can stop doing that in the future, but for now, I can still physically do it so it is what it is. I have continued to do a little bit of telemed work and did quite a bit more this upcoming month. Its nice to have a little side income coming in. I also have a ton of money sitting in a HYSA right now getting ready to pay my S corp tax bill in December. Another month breaking 50k in income.
Expenses
14k in Property taxes, ouch! Otherwise it remains a pretty standard month for us. My student loans are also now sub 100k!
Investments
Wow, what a boost we saw in our investments this month after the election. My only regret, I didn’t have more invested .
This month, my wife completed her 457 contributions for the year and we have officially maxed out all of our retirement accounts for the year. Cash is being held in my HYSA for year end tax payment, that will drop significantly after this month.
Investment Accounts:
Looking at our debt vs investments, we have a 140k uptrend in a single month. The first million is truly the hardest. Never thought I’d see moves like this in a single month. We are now net positive 744k for the year (again, this will drop after paying all taxes this month)
My Financial Goals for 2024
- 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.
- I still continue to work a lot. I’m trying
- Fully fund all retirement accounts – $168,300 GOAL – DONE
- Backdoor Roth IRA x2 – $7000 x 2 – $14,000 DONE
- Family HSA Plan – $8,300 DONE
- AMJ and Wife 401ks – $23000 x2 – $46,000 of 46,000 funded
- AMJ 401k Profit Sharing – $10,000 of 10,000 funded
- AMJ Defined Benefit Plan – $79,500 of $79,500 DONE
- 529 Fund for son – $10,000 DONE
- Make Minimum Student Loan Payments – 3 years left with $149k @ 1.1% rate fixed ON TRACK
- 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.
- DONE
-AMJ
- 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.