Debt to Dreams

After blogging remarkably inconsistently for the past year, I am back on track with lots of changes and hopefully more useful insights into medicine, investing and starting & running a small business. Many more changes loom on the horizon with the great healthcare debate gripping our nation. I watch anxiously as our leaders decisions will [...]

I have successfully completed my formal education and passed the requisite board exams. I am now a board certified physician and excited to begin the next phase of life…….REPAYMENT. After borrowing extensively to complete my education, I finally get the opportunity to begin repaying these debts. As I watch the health care debate play out, [...]

I continue to be amazed at how much life changes year to year. Makes me wonder why we even bother to forecast changes more than a few months in advance. The one consistent feature of my life for the past 20 years is finally coming to an end as I near the end of my [...]

I was not surprised at all to notice that the Dow made a nice recovery today. Almost every “expert” over the weekend felt that stocks were close to being oversold. It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a sustained rally. My uneducated opinion is that we still have a little [...]

I have finally managed to update our financial records after doing little more than paying bills for almost 4 months. The reason behind this delay is that I have managed to complicate our financial life in the name of being more orgainzed. If you too want to complicate your financial life, here are my suggestions: [...]

Pardon my absence, the past month has been a busy one for our small family. We are finally getting settled in our new city and have re-established internet access. Our June Monthly Update is to follow soon. Here is what we have done in the past month. 1. Moved our family 2800 miles to a [...]

After catching up on some reading this holiday weekend, I never envisioned that at the ripe old age of 30 that I would be out of touch but I just had to marvel at an article the most recent issue of Money Magazine. Of course, all kids need stuff, and there’s no reason to completely [...]

A sign that I am way behind the times: It’s almost October and I am just now getting to this months issue of Money magazine! I was surprised to see this in one of their articles: even a $100,000 debt is a reasonable trade-off for a medical degree This is the foundation of this blog. [...]

Or should I say, Minimal Risk, Maximal Returns! As I have been watching the markets race to new records over the past six months I have been remarkably unenthusiatic about it. In years past when stocks, or real estate were zooming up, all I could do was watch and get a sick feeling in my [...]

When I stop and think about it, managing our finances shouldn’t be that hard. If you get down to the basics you just need more money coming in than you have money going out. Very original thoughts, I know. When I realized that I was in over my head in late 2005, my first response [...]

To all the new readers from Credit Card Lowdown Welcome. For a little more background please see my About page. I will have to say that I am excited about how far I have come from February 2006. I also realize that I have a long way to go with $3800 in credit card debt [...]

I like to make the argument with my friends that as Generation X, we are at the whims of the Baby Boomers and the AARP. Because they make up such a large proportion of US population that their shear numbers mean that any political or economic moves will be to benefit themselves and not necessarily [...]

If financial apathy were a disease it would be considered an epidemic. It would be a deadly, debilitating disease that ruins lives. Common age of onset would be late 20′s but we are starting to see signs of childhood onset as well. It is treatable with education but is rarely diagnosed until it is a [...]

Why am I perpetually behind? Why do I always have 20 magazines to read, 20 emails to return, a couple of presentations to give and all these great thoughts for posts that never get written? I seem to walk a fine line between getting things done and being hopelessly overwhelmed by what needs to be [...]

I was doing an Internet search for information about the Obesity epidemic and how it affects us financially when I came across a great article that is now about 6 years old but remains spot on when it comes to “Fixing a Fat Nation“.  The fact that this article was written half a decade ago and we [...]