“You are not going to beat the market. Your time is better spent at being a good physician than it is trying to get rich quickly. You are not Gordon Gekko.” In the absence of a time machine, I’ve learned that wealth can be built with the next best things. Patience, a reliable income, and low-cost index funds. Don’t sink your retirement on a stock (or other volatile investment) than can expose your money to danger. We can’t eliminate risk, but we can certainly spread it out and improve our chances that money will grow reliably over time. Index funds (available on Vanguard, Fidelity or any of the major brokerage firms) charge almost no fees to own and will allow you to enjoy the growth of the market over time. Buy it and forget about it.
There will be good and bad years but, taken over the entirety of a 30-year career, the growth is almost certain. I watched colleagues get distressed during the market downturns of the pandemic and sell, only to buy back at much higher rates a year later. The comfortable income afforded to physicians allows you to be patient. Hitting singles might not be as sexy as hitting homeruns, but being able to retire early is a heck of lot more appealing to me than extending my career because I had big losses in the market. You don’t need an explorer in an aluminum foil suit to travel from the future to tell you this.
Futuristic wealthy people didn’t discover the next Google. Rather, they made a brokerage account on Vanguard and started to invest in index funds. If you’re looking to get rich quick from investments, you are on the wrong blog (and honestly, in the wrong line of work). Anyone who promises you otherwise should be viewed through squinty eyes. If you’re looking to shorten the time between today and the day where you don’t need to work for money, hitting singles is the key. It will be equally as true now, as it is then.
The ASA Committee on Young Physicians is pleased to present this monthly article series on personal finance. These articles are not written by hedge fund managers or real estate tycoons but by practicing physicians. Some have business degrees and some do not – but every contributor is an anesthesiologist who has some guidance to offer the rising generation of attending physicians. It is not the intention of the committee to offer definitive financial advice, but rather some pearls of wisdom to consider while developing a personal fiscal plan.
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