Funny I went from surgery to radiology for the same reasons. Maybe a bit off topic and somewhat obvious, but a significant underestimated pitfall of professional success is life style creep. My income increased 10 fold over just a few years and I was able to resist to a certain extent but I have friends and colleagues who went for the mansion and fancy cars (what is it with doctors and Teslas?...) and are now locked in the proverbial golden cage situation. Buying things instead of buying freedom. On the other hand I know of people who saved 70% of their income and retired at 42. Interestingly, I noticed that I lose interest in expensive things as soon as I can afford them. I guess that helped with avoiding the lifestyle creep as well.

My vote would be to put your head down for a few years and then leverage position and seniority for freedom (which is what a lot of the posters in this thread apparently have pulled off).

Yeah, that lifestyle creep thing is the silent killer! I'm not in the medical field, but I have a few friends that are MD's and I've seen them fall to the peer pressure of lifestyle creep. One of them is so far in debt I doubt they will ever have a net worth above zero despite making a massive salary. I can't imagine the misery of that situation!

By being relatively frugal and working for several years I've gotten to the point where my assets generate almost as much as I make from my job. It's great, I make as much sleeping when I'm awake. I joke to my wife that I'm a "self sponsored professional triathlete" because technically I'm getting paid while I ride my bike.

Yup. I’ve been out of residency 2.5 years and am about to pay off the last of my $112,000 of student debt. I drive a 10 year old VW and my goal is no debt at all by age 45 (I’m 33 tomorrow). No mortgage, no car payments, no debt at all.

Congrats on getting rid of the student debt!

So I was at that point 3 years ago, I had enough cash to pay off my other car (not the 2011 civic) that was still financed and my house. The car was only financed because it was a 0.9% interest rate (my money market account gives me about a 2% return right now) and the house was on a 2.25% mortgage rate. I ended up buying some more rentals with cash that return about 10%-13%. If I had financed those rental properties, I would have been looking at a 4.5-5% interest rate. So basically I used my house as my loan to buy more rentals. Because of the rentals, I will be at that point again next year where I can either pay off the house or buy some more assets. I would love to have everything all paid off, but I'll bet the temptation to buy more rentals will win out.

I know i've already posted once, but I had another thought on this. If you are at the point you have your basic necessities covered and aren't in debt, I would just place a monetary value on your time ($25/hr, $40/hr, $100/hr, etc.) then try to evaluate whether your time given up for career advancement is worth it. If you have to give up $30,000 a year in time to gain a $15,000 monetary increase then I'd not give it up.

The hardest thing about stopping lifestyle creep is having a spouse and kids! Even if your spouse works!

Yeah, I've got that too. Those little rugrats hit the pocketbook like a new Ferrari.

sebBo, I'm the same way. When I was in med school, I dreamed of having a fancy house and fancy cars. As my income increased, and I could buy whatever I wanted, I found that I no longer had the desire to do so. We use money to go on adventurous/active vacations but I have no need to "keep up with the Joneses". My Honda Pilot has 120,000 miles on it and runs just fine. I'm putting away as much money as I can, every year, in the hopes of leaving the medical field much earlier than my peers. Time is so much more important than money. Its amazing how you can blink and twenty years of your life pass by.

You got me beat there, I was weak and as my only extravaganza bought a 911 six month into my first job. Now, many years later I still have the same car and averaged out over the years the car probably cost me less than most Toyotas (zilch except for occasional new tires and oil changes/services). Rock solid car. I have a Wrangler as a daily driver, which in our hospital garage sticks out like a sore thumb ;-)

Agree with your plan, even though I did manage to leverage some special qualifications and seniority into more freedom at work and could do this for a long time, I am looking forward to the point where I go to work because I want to and not because I have to.

By being relatively frugal and working for several years I've gotten to the point where my assets generate almost as much as I make from my job. It's great, I make as much sleeping when I'm awake. I joke to my wife that I'm a "self sponsored professional triathlete" because technically I'm getting paid while I ride my bike

I want to know what stocks you’re buying!

---

USAT Level II- Ironman U Certified Coach

Bought a turbo charged viper and had a custom hose built before I got smart

Got rid of the bling, invested in business and rentals and retired at 47

I’m very blessed I didn’t have friends or relatives to try to keep up with.

Rental properties and dividend paying stocks....but mostly rental properties!!

In June, after 10 years of focusing on raising our kids, my wife finally joined the workforce and her income has been greatly appreciated by me. It allowed me to ditch the higher pay/ long commute/ high stress job in the city.

She eased into 15-20 hours a week and I cut back from 50-70 hour weeks to 35 ish and I feel Ike I’m on vacation. I feel like there is time for everything.

It was funny yesterday I was an hour into my 3 hour lunch reading this thread and decided to go for a 1.5 hour run just because I could.

I think about the question differently: how to optimize ones happiness (and sense of achievement) today, tomorrow, and in the longer term future.

So, I would weigh up the benefits of the new job (e.g greater pay, greater responsibility, greater sense of accomplishment, new skills, etc etc) versus the downsides (less time to train, etc). Then evaluate it on what is the right choice over multiple timeframes.

My experience, moving up the managerial hierarchy at a fortune 500 company has not involved long term detrimental impacts on my available times. The demands are different and so are the challenge, but I still manage to train and race quite well (eg podium AG at 70.3).

Hope this helps.

I read through many responses in this post. Both David and I have the perspective of going through the entire spectrum from young single guy doing sport, doing career stuff, to family guy, to grown family guy, all the while doing sport and career.

Today, at almost 54, I market my endurance sport participation and racing to Venture Capitalists. Its an asset. They want to fund young entrepreneurs who will have the energy to do the tech startup grind. I can outgrind pretty well anyone because my endurance and time management is relatively insanely high compared to the average tech guy.

In any case personally I have not 'sacrificed' so called career enhancement for triathlon. Rather I consider my life as one entire package. There is revenue generating part of life and revenue consuming part of life.

Firstly I measure my personal success by how much fun I have in both aspects combined and how the revenue consuming aspects of my life (family, sport, reading etc) enhance my ability in the revenue generating part of life, and how the revenue generating part of life enhance the non revenue generating part of life.

Looking at this entire package, I decide it the entire package is holistically moving in the trajectory that myself and my wife need it to move. Sport is a big part of the picture, and as it turns out in my late 40's and 50's its a huge asset having the health to bounce around the globe closing deals, beating the compeitition and making shit happen. I did that so well in one company that our largest competitior bought us...during that time I was making the most money I ever made in my life, and I was racing Ironmans all over the world. Once I was done with that, the money I made allowed me to go 1.5 years off no salary, raise investor capital, pay other guys and not myself and get a tech startup off the ground living ultra lean (in 2018, my wife and I lived off $38,000 CAD because we wanted to not tap into any retirement savings....I just swam 1200 km over the year and did cheap masters swim racing...but i was happy living off nothing starting a tech company and swimming a ton.)

My message to those of you on this thread who have not lived the full triathlon + family + career lifecycle that David and I and many "lifers" have lived, is that you should not look at this as enhancing one or the other. You are one person, not two or three.

You need to pick your own measures of success holistically and live with yourself. Don't let what cars, what houses, what vacations, what titles other people have determine what you do. Do what is SUCCESS for you.

Your spouse has to buy into the picture though. If your spouse and you have different measures of what is successful for the family and you're doing one thing and the spouse is wanting something else then you're doomed. Not many spouses will be willing to live off $38,000 in their 50's when there is a large pile of money in the stock market and we could cash at every Trump driven peak and dip and we're paying other people, just to get a company going.

I was having this discussion with one of my colleagues. She is in her early 50's. She said she would never want to re live her 30's and mid 40's and is really happy with her life now. I said, "no way!!! are you kidding??? I would be happy to relive every moment of my 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's. I never did anything where I would not want to relive that part of my life because I could die tomorrow and I'm not doing anything today that is miserable in the hope that it makes my life tomorrow awesome....that's just an endless trail of doing miserable stuff in hopes that it gets better....not worth it".

Interesting. I will have to be the odd man out. A lot of disgruntled MDs and workers in general on here. Work does not HAVE to be a chore. It can be a source of satisfaction and purpose. Personally, I love my work as an MD. The happiest people that I know, and I include myself in this group, are those who love their work AND work a lot while still having time for their family.

I gave up triathlon to focus on my career and young family. Not sure when I will come back to triathlon. I get much more satisfaction out of helping patients with clinical care and research than I ever did by crossing finish lines. I stay quite fit by run commuting to work, avoid work travel whenever possible, never waste time on TV or social media, avoid lifestyle creep and save lots of money in case my goals change in the future, provide the best schools and neighborhood for my family, and spend every moment I can with them. I plan to work until I drop dead.

That part above in bold....ST is social media. It was around in 1998 and beat Zuckerberg by several years. For slowman, the people he connects, however is a bunch of triathletes, so the market cap of ST is <<<<< than FB since most of humanity does not do triathlon. But its still social media that we're all squandering time on. Right now I am getting served up ads for Mini Cooper and World Vision here on ST.

I love what I do, as a physician, but all of the outside interference is driving me mad. Even the patients are burning me out now. A patient may have a problem you've seen a million times, but many think they are the ONE patinet who has some rare ailment. Most of this is because "I've looked it up on Google and I think they are connected". I spend so much time explaining "no, your problem is caused by diabetes because you don't control your sugar, have high BP, and smoke". It's just frustrating because I feel like I'm the only one (between me and the patient) who is actually trying to make the patient better

I agree with this frustration. I actually took a job where I care more for the indigent than for the private practice set mostly for the reason you stated--I couldn't handle the personalities. Most of my patients are just grateful that somebody is willing to take care of them. Tradeoff is of course $$$.

The bureaucracy and governmental dictates are maddening. It is still a pretty damn cool and fun profession though, with personal, financial, and intellectual rewards, I think, especially when I look at what my friends are doing.