This month marks nine years since I retired from practicing medicine.At age 54, even though my wife, an accountant, assured me we were financially ready for retirement, I wondered if we had enough passive income and retirement savings to meet our needs for the rest of our lives. I also wondered if I would miss surgery.
Today, I know the answer to those questions, and it’s better than I imagined. Here is a look into what transpired during my ninth year of retirement.
My Psyche
One of my biggest concerns regarding giving up surgery was missing the operating room, since I loved to operate. I did not leave medicine because I didn’t like it, I left because I wanted new adventures while I was still young and healthy enough to enjoy them. However, the worry that I might miss surgery was heavy on my mind, but surprisingly, missing surgery never surfaced as an issue. Every now and then I watch a movie about a doctor and miss the action and the patients. Saving lives was a very rewarding job. But when the movie ends, I’m back to my retired self.
The wise council I got before I retired was to create a new purpose to occupy my time. I spoke in depth about this in my book, The Doctors Guide to Smart Career Alternatives and Retirement. I believe having a purpose was a life saver for me.
Even though I stay busy, I especially enjoy the flexibility of dropping everything when an interesting opportunity arises. When our kids need us to watch the grandchildren at the last minute, or I decide to pop over to my parent’s house for a visit, or someone asks if we want to go on a trip with them, I’m glad I can say yes.
My mission
I have been teaching personal finance for decades and have turned my passion for personal finance into a part-time business. I began by publishing The Doctors Guide series. These books have become bestsellers and have won several awards, one of which was non-fiction book of the year.
Last year I published the sixth book in the series, The Doctors Guide to Finding Joy in Your Work. Many of the test readers felt this was my best book. Everyone can use a little more joy in their lives and this book walks through a new method of finding joy both at work and at home.
I continue to endeavor to publish a blog article each Thursday, but a couple new interests as well as health issues in our extended family, have kept me so busy recently I have skipped writing articles from time to time. My online courses, The Doctors Course to Automating Your Real Estate Investments, and The Doctors Course to Thriving in Locum Tenens, continue to change lives.
My favorite part about my mission is one-on-one coaching. It is so rewarding when the person on the other end of the phone has major breakthroughs as we work together each week.
One thing I did not anticipate was how effective my High Performance Coaching program would be in stopping burnout and improving careers. Clarity, courage, and influence are key factors to fighting burnout and finding direction.
I spoke at three conferences last year. Although I enjoy these events, taking time away from my life to fly somewhere for a few day conference without my wife is becoming less appealing.
One big change I made this year was not writing the next book in my series. Instead, I am writing a musical about a trauma surgeon. I’m having a lot of fun with this new adventure. It was especially fun to walk onto the stage at a conference with a song from my musical playing for my entrance.
My Finances
The real estate investment cash flow from our four apartment buildings (55 rental units) has continued to climb and provide more income than we need. You can read all about creating passive income from rentals in my book, The Doctors Guide to Real Estate Investing for Busy Professionals. Because of this income, we have stopped accessing our retirement funds. We were using rule 72(t) to access money before I turned 59 ½. Don’t let anyone lead you to believe you have to wait until 59 ½ to retire because you can’t get to your money.
Now that we are confident we have plenty of money for the rest of our lives, we have significantly increased our giving. It is an interesting feeling when giving becomes by far the largest expense in your annual budget. In 2024 I wrote about the difference between what I projected my retirement income would be by 2023 vs what I actual received. It was crazy to learn that we currently earn more money from our investments than what I projected ten years earlier.
Many people mistakenly think I make a fortune from Financial Success MD and selling books. I have never run this business as a source of income. That is why you see very few ads on my website. The purpose of this business is to give me a purpose, not to make money. My aim has always been for the business to pay for itself, and that has been what it has done. It is funny how many people say I do well financially in my retirement years because I make money telling people how to do well in their retirement years. That is a grossly incorrect assumption. My retirement is fully financed by the investments I made during my working years. Writing and coaching are hobbies that pay for themselves.
Health Care
Shortly after leaving my practice, the medical insurance we were buying stopped selling to individuals, which forced us to make a change. We looked at the options, all had premiums of more than $15k a year for my wife and me. We eventually chose to go with a Medi-Share program, Christian Healthcare Ministries, which initially cost less than $2,000 a year. Twelve years later it has gone up to almost $4,000 a year.
We were both in good health and the decision paid off. It has now been more than a decade since we made that change, which saved us more than $140,000 in premiums. Next year I will turn 65 and go on Medicare.
The only significant things about my health during this period has been my need to go on blood pressure meds and I had a vitreous detachment in both eyes. I don’t believe we have paid enough out of pocket in the last decade to exceed the cost of a single year’s premium for regular insurance. Since my wife and I haven’t had anything happen for the Medi-Share program to pay, I can’t speak personally about how good they follow through on paying for medical bills. Although I’ve read lots of articles bashing the Medi-Share programs written by people who don’t have first-hand knowledge, I have not heard any complaints from anyone who needed their services to pay for a hospitalization or a major health issue.
Travel
Since I retired, we have traveled to many places and have visited more than two dozen countries. Lately though, our travel desires have changed with the introduction of our two grandsons who live 15 minutes from us. Before grandkids, we were traveling more than half of the year. In 2019, the last full travel year before the shutdown, we spent 56% of the year off on an adventure, not including traveling to visit family. I’ve satisfied my travel bug. Now I prefer staying home, although we still travel a little. I’m glad we had the opportunity to travel while I was fit enough for adventures.
We have been providing daycare for our grandkids two days a week. I wrote of the incredible economic benefit derived by having free grandparent childcare in How a Father Can Make His Kids Millionaires. Since our daughter-in-law works half-time for the school district, childcare is only needed during the school year. Thus, we have stopped snow birding in the winter until our grandkids are in school full time. The bulk of our travel has moved to the summer. Because of this change and the fact that we haven’t been using our RV much, we sold our RV. For the first time in more than 30 years, there is no RV sitting in our driveway. Although I have both good and bad feelings about this decision, I certainly don’t miss all the upkeep it took.
We used our timeshare week to trade for one week of travel last year as well as giving away one week to friends. We spent Spring break in the hills just north of San Diego. Since we get several weeks of travel each year out of our one week of timeshare ownership, we have some catching up to do. If you are interested in learning how we get multiple timeshare vacation weeks out of the single week we own, check out my book, A Guide to Loving Your Timeshare. This provides the instructions you never got when you bought your timeshare. We have loved using it and have always got great value for our ownership. I highly recommend it to physician families.
Our first mission trip happened last year. It was the final tour in our RV. We went with a group of adults from our church to a small afterschool daycare in Mexico and helped repair and repaint their facilities. It was a lot of fun and I slept very well after working hard all day.
We also brought the family together for a week in Sun River, Oregon, in a large vacation home we rented.
Exciting new changes during my nineth year of retirement
My wife and I had begun walking again and we framed several pictures from when we walked 450 miles across Spain in 2019 as inspiration. So, for 2025, my wife and I set a goal to walk 2,025 miles before the end of the year. Unfortunately, I got too inspired and decided to run some of those miles. I advanced slowly, but when I neared two-mile runs, my Achilles tendons began to hurt. I stopped running and did some physical therapy but just couldn’t shake it. So, near the end of August, I stopped all activity that was taxing my Achilles. That was the end of my walking 2025-mile quest. My wife, however, did achieve the goal. My physician advised me to never again take up running and to stick to riding my bike.
This year I started playing pickleball about 15 hours a week and was advancing well. I even won a few medals last spring in pickleball tournaments. But with my Achilles tendon injury, I had to stop playing pickleball too. I’m looking forward to when my injury is healed and I can go back to playing again.
Early in the year I began playing piano bar music locally. But then the musical I am writing caught the eye of a local theater group. They selected my show to be included in their preview show of upcoming productions written by local artists. I was chosen to provide a scene which included two songs from my play for their November production. I then needed to get busy polishing the scene and making a recording of the finished backing tracks for the music. This required a lot of time, so I stopped playing piano bar to devote more time to this project. Then I was cast to be in the production playing the surgeon in my play as well as supporting characters in the other plays. It was great to see my work come to life on stage.
The Future
I plan to continue using my time writing/teaching/coaching/speaking about personal finance. Helping doctors achieve financial success and avoid burnout brings joy and purpose to my life. But I will also take time to enjoy my grandkids, play the piano at events, and finish my musical. Once the musical is complete, I’m thinking about writing a novel about a physician.
If your retirement goes anything like mine, it will be better than you anticipate. Your plans will evolve, so just go with it. When you believe you have enough money to retire, you probably do. Travel does not cost nearly as much as you think it will, and the freedom to come and go as you please is wonderful.
Before you pull the trigger, please read The Doctors Guide to Smart Career Alternatives and Retirement. It will help make your transition into retirement a smooth one.
Keep up doing great work in retirement!