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Welcome to this session of grand rounds, a collection of posts I have found in the blogosphere that I found of interest and hope you do too.

We all know that being a physician means delayed gratification.

While others enter the workforce after college (or even high school) and start earning a living, a physician does the exact opposite, accumulating even more debt via medical school education before the first red cent starts rolling in.

Ever wonder when, if ever, a financial breakeven point occurs?

Well wonder no more and check out My Curiosity Lab and this wonderful financial breakdown between three occupations in, “Best Future Career: Doctor, Engineer, or Plumber”

Are you lucky enough to receive a windfall and now faced with a dilemma of whether you should pay off your debt or invest it instead?

That particular debate has raged across the FIRE community for some time now with proponents on either side.
Rockstar Finance suggests that sometimes it doesn’t all boil down to simple math in “The One Simple Reason to Kill Debt Before Investing”

Most of us with dependents have a will in place (and if you don’t, please drop everything else now and get one drawn up as soon as possible).

But is a will enough?

Sadly, no it is not.

If your goal is to transfer the maximum amount of your assets to your heirs (as it should be), then you must do everything you can to avoid going through probate (whose sole purpose seems to tie up your assets in lengthy court proceedings which incur legal fees that could have instead benefited your heirs).

I don’t know about you but I rather have my daughter be the beneficiary of my hard work than some crusty old judge/lawyer.

A great legal vehicle to do this is described by Wall Street Physician/Dads Dollars Debts in a “Revocable Living Trust”

Many retirement simulators use Monte Carlo analysis to predict your portfolio success rate (my go to website, Personal Capital, for instance uses this).

I admit I really had no clue what Monte Carlo analysis was (I just assumed it had something to do with gambling) and just blindly trusted it.

Well luckily analyst extraordinaire, Gasem, helps to open this “black box” and let us peer inside in his guest post on Doctor of Finance MD appropriately titled, “Monte Carlo Analysis by Gasem.”

You may be curious of the FIRECalc that was mentioned in Gasem’s post above.

Like Gasem mentioned, it is strictly for mathematical entertainment purpose, giving a visual representation of how your portfolio would have performed in the past (which again is no guarantee of how it will perform in the future).

Well here is a link to FIRECalc where you can indeed put in your individual details and see how you would have fared throughout history (1871 to present).

One of the biggest bonuses of starting a blog is encountering individuals from all walks of life that share the same philosophies that you would never have encountered in “real life.”

Through social media I came across Andrea Joy of Saving Joyfully and have subsequently formed a great bond.

As physicians we are usually on one side of the billing equation but one day all of us will be on the less desirable patient side.

Andrea, who works as an account analyst in the medical field, gives us some tips to best navigate medical billing with her post, “What You Need To Know About Medical Billing.”

Hope you enjoyed the reading material.

Have a great rest of the week.