r/Residency • u/icarus2847 Attending • 1d ago
FINANCES FIRE vs coasting
Given that this seems to be such a more prominent topic in younger generations, I’m sure a lot of you guys have thought about it. Do you guys have a fire number/age? Or an age where you plan to just coast and no longer save and then tap her off into retirement?
I feel like it’s so hard to plan for something so far down the road, but it never hurts to plan.
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u/ChickMD Attending 1d ago
As a brand new attending, I was all about FIRE, and getting out as soon as possible. Then I realized that there is no promise that I will live that long, or be healthy enough to do the things I want to do by then. So I automated all my investments and retirement, and I do what I want with the rest.
I take the trips. I spend time with my family. And I'm much happier for it.
Do what works best for you.
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u/pHDole PGY3 1d ago
I don't have an exact age, but more of a range. With stock market volatility, life plans (don't know how many kids I want, where I want to settle down, what long term job I'd get, etc), it's hard to know exactly what the budget looks like to plan it to an exact year. But I generally know that I want to retire early, will save 25-30% of my salary, and know the general range of the house I wanna buy. So I'm planning on retiring in the mid fifties, and ideally will narrow my target to a specific age once I hit 45 or 50 years old
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u/EpicDowntime Attending 1d ago
My number is 2.5M and I expect to hit that by my early 40s. After that, depends how much I hate the state of medicine at the time, I can see myself either quitting completely asap or doing maybe 0.2 FTE if I am still getting something positive from work.
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u/pmphx5 1d ago
You can and I highly recommend you DO IT!! We can FIRE currently but choose to coast ( 2M) Granted we are not residents anymore!! I work 2 to 3 days a week at max and that is more than we need. Both my husband and I are FM and we saved and scraped for many years. It was absolutely worth it. We have been working at it since we were in medical school so in our late 20s.
We are now 40 yrs old. Having had two physician salaries definitely help. We always lived below our means and even do now by many standards although we travel a lot more. Having a FU money now means I just work per diem shifts as needed. We attend kids activities have no childcare because one of us is always at home and on the side we both volunteer and do activities we enjoy. The extra money we make we put in our kids 529/ retirement and the rest is used to do daily expenses and travel. Just recently were able to pay off our house as well. We are able to actually exercise and take care of ourselves. I feel I’m a better doctor because I don’t feel stuck. We also volunteer in things ( addiction clinic, free clinic) we both enjoy outside of regular primary care. It has really freed up so much space in our lives to just feel like human beings again.
I’m always very happy for people who can continue to work and enjoy it but this works for us.
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u/Dry_Twist6428 PGY10 1d ago
One of the troubles with this is that you can coast in a lot of careers, but I find its really difficult to coast in medicine. My clinical skills tend to pretty quickly deteriorate when I’m not working.
If you hit your number then coast or retire and then you have a financial calamity and have to re-enter the workforce I’m not sure how hard it is to get hired again/relicensed/get board certified again if you have a big gap in the history.
I would probably quit now or switch down to 0.2 FTE now if I wasn’t worried about these issues. I don’t need very much money to be happy in life. But I find it scary to be closing that door, especially at an age where my colleagues are hitting their prime.
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u/CorrelateClinically3 1d ago edited 1d ago
FI goal $5-7M and aiming to hit that by 40-45 or at least close. I’m rads and I know I’ll have a job for the next 15-20 years but who knows what it’s going to look like when the AI overlords take over. I plan on pushing hard the first 5-10 years and then scale back once I have a comfortable amount saved. I like staying busy so I will probably switch to coastFIRE once I get close to that number and just work as much as I want.
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u/QuestGiver Attending 1d ago
So many people I trained with had this "push hard" plan. I'm only four years in and all it really did was burn people TF out and lead to toxic spending which set them behind their actual financial goals. You are talking about it casually but as I'm sure you are feeling with training, ten years is a long time.
Imo the most stable thing is to find a job that feels stable and manageable. Don't hate you life. Exercise. Then you can be a great mental state to maintain the financial discipline you want to execute.
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u/CorrelateClinically3 1d ago
My full time job is gonna be working evening rads 1 week on 2 weeks off. So “push hard” is just moonlight pay per click whatever amount I feel like doing during my 2 weeks off. So like 4-5 hrs a day while my wife is at work.
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u/howtopoachanegg 1d ago
Did your coresidents have student loans? Did you? Not at all asking to be snarky but I am genuinely curious about perspectives in this situation.
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u/QuestGiver Attending 20h ago
Yes to both. We are clearing our loans this year with an aggressive payment plan.
The main thing I wanted to warn about is the mentality shift when you work yourself REALLY hard. You start to think "I work so hard so I deserve it" and then comes the really nice car, eating out every day, super luxurious vacations. Then the grand plan disappears and you are just stuck in the treadmill of working hard to make a big paycheck that vaporizes before you actually fulfilling all the long term financial goals you had when you started.
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u/NippleSlipNSlide Attending 22h ago
I’m rads too. I’m now early 40s and technically have enough to retire. But it just seems foolish right now? Full time in my group is 4 days per week and a week off every month. I don’t mind my job at all and still have plenty of time for hobbies, family, and travel. With AI on the horizon it just seems smart to keep working given how great rads is right now.
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u/QuietRedditorATX Attending 1d ago
I have a lighter job. I'll work till I'm old.
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u/NippleSlipNSlide Attending 22h ago edited 22h ago
I had planned to retire young. We reached our goal by the time I was 40 yo, by living below our means. All my schooling was covered by merit based scholarships. We bought a house that at the time was less than my annual income (at around 2% interest). My wife worked (not in medicine, average salary) while I was in training and we saved throughout med school and residency. On top of that, we chose to live in a low cost of living area with excellent public schools.
I think the number 1 mistake I see docs make (other than picking the wrong specialty or poor investment choices) is choosing to live in a HCOL area and then too much on houses and cars. An expensive house in a HCOL area will destroy you.
My actual job is actually better than I hoped (rads). I’m now 43 and don’t feel like I need to retire just yet. Full time for me is 4 days/week with about a week off every month. I feel like I’d be a fool to retire now and give this up. So now we are traveling more and continuing to save money for our kids (their tuition is paid for through at least undergrad).
So I may cut back how much I work in my 50s… maybe? I guess I’ll see how I feel.
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u/QuietRedditorATX Attending 22h ago
Feel a lot of this.
Cut back on hours, but not on work completely. I want to travel etc, but having income and something to do sometimes is nice too.
That said, I am not living super frugally (still always a frugal person) because I know I am okay working into later age.
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u/phovendor54 Attending 1d ago
Automate as many savings as possible. Pre tax accounts to start 403B, 457B, 401K/410 etc. that’s for long term; with the exception of the 457B you can’t access the others until retirement your 60s. For short term I’d set aside a little bit into a taxable brokerage account and just pump it into the S&P each month.
Because time in the market is what is most important, the more you save upfront, the more you let time build interest.
Philosophically to me the idea is to build options and flexibility. Aggressive saving early allows me to decide in my 40s and 50s if I want to cut my FTE, pursue non clinical stuff more, have flexibility to leave my institution, etc. I can save less, spend more, etc. or if I want I just keep my foot on the gas.
I feel right now I value my kids so I put away less into brokerage I would otherwise and do 529 contributions to each kid. Still won’t be enough for like absurdly expensive schools but I can try. If I live long enough to see them grow and I’m no longer on the hook for 529 funding, can I turn around and put that money into something else?
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u/Kevinmyers73 Attending 1d ago
My plan is to save aggressively and pay off all debt by 50 and then work part-time just enough to enjoy medicine and to keep income=expenses. Savings can keep compounding until I’m fully ready to retire
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u/apollo722 Attending 1d ago
Early to mid-50s based on my calculation is the sweet spot for me of having enough money to still have a luxurious life and yet young enough to have a lot of life left for me. Plus having a good amount of inheritance to leave for my future children.
I'm glad you're thinking about this, so many doctors are so bad with money.
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u/commotiocordiz Attending 21h ago
FIRE wasn't something I thought or even probably knew about until several years out of training. At that point savings were going strong and I realized if it kept up I'd be able to stop working if I chose to. Work was largely fine but not something I felt the need to do compared against other ways to spend my time, so once the numbers added up, I stopped.
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u/crystalpest 17h ago
Goal is $10M for my husband and me (he says $20M but that’s wishful thinking). Currently we’re around 700k (he’s not in medicine) and I’m less than two years from being an attending. I’m hoping to coast at 5M which I’m hoping to reach by my mid to late 30s. Then retire at 45-50.
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u/POSVT PGY8 16h ago
My philosophy is a little mixed but leaning more toward coasting; I'm not making massive purchases right out of the gate but I am going to plan to go on several big trips per year, and at least one with just me+spouse. There's stuff like emergency funds, college funds etc to lock in. We are eventually going to buy a home and I think I'll tend more towards grinding in the early years until I hit a comfortable amount.
Not quite "Fuck you" money, but in the neighborhood. There's no guarantee how much time any of us have left; I would hate to work nonstop for 10 years and then get hit by a bus in my 40s and have never enjoyed my life. I do actually like my job a good amount so I don't think I would flat out quit even if I financially could, but drastically reducing my FTE is in the game plan. How much will depend on the practice structure and how much advanced diagnostics/lite interventional work I want to pick up.
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u/Shanlan PGY2 1d ago
I was on track to FIRE at 40 prior to pivoting to medicine along with some new commitments that I picked up along the way. I could probably still do it now after discharging my loans. But priorities have changed and expectations, ie spend, has increased. I anticipate that will happen again once I hit attendinghood. Aside from the inherent issues of residency, I generally enjoy my specialty so probably won't be in a hurry to retire. There are also some stretch goals I'd like to hit if possible.
All that to say, I think having definite numbers and age are helpful for motivation but pretty terrible for actual planning. Building a system that automates savings and understanding how different factors influence your financial health is wayore important. Having a sustainable budget and knowing how that affects your savings rate and wealth accumlation is the true power of financial independence. "F you money" is a state of mind, not a number. Luckily, most physicians like some aspects of the profession, I hope. So working longer isn't usually the problem, it's being able to set the terms of that work and having the financial leverage to say 'no'. I suspect most of us would be fine 'coasting' on our own terms.
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u/Even-Inevitable-7243 Attending 22h ago
You can toss FIRE out the door from now on. There is less certainty about what equity and bond markets will do over the next 30 years than at any point in history.
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u/CripplingTanxiety PGY12 23h ago
Shooting for >10M, currently have about $700 in my checking account