Welcome to another Dr. PayItBack monthly checkup! I use this space to remain accountable to our expenses and goals, track net worth and debt, and muse on what was done well and what can be improved.
Budget/Cash Flow
The holiday season is in full swing, as is our end-of-year spending. I’ve been without an iPad for the past 6 months and finally bought a new fully loaded one on Black Friday ($1,160). ASRA conference hotel ($700) and reservations for spring break travel next year ($670) round out the rest of the big ticket items. We spent a week at Disney which was mostly paid for in October, and we managed not to break the bank with our daily spending on food, booze, and trinkets.
We made our annual contributions to our boys’ Roth IRAs, but otherwise the month just saw our standard contributions to student loans, our taxable brokerage, and paying down the house.
PayItBack Progress
Still paying the minimum on my student loan but rates keep going up! Will be 4.11% next month which puts me into range of considering accelerated payoff. I will have to weigh this against contributions to our taxable account.
Mortgage
It’s cool that we can already see the slope of increasing equity even though it’s spread over 30 years. I’ve already decided I will be updating our home value annually, and this will be done next month for the end of the year. I want to reflect relatively current home prices without having our net worth whipsaw given the current volatile market.
Net Worth
On the heels of October which saw our net worth rise by $44,000, November was another success with a near-identical increase of $45,000. This puts us in net positive territory on the year for the first time in 2022, and our investment accounts total more than half a million for the first time since July. This also means I got to change the y-axis of my chart again; hopefully I won’t have to undo it!
Financial Independence
This continues to be ugly and I suspect will be for some time. The only saving grace is that next year our car purchase and house closing costs will drop out of the spending calculations and stop skewing them. But until then my dream of FI by 50 remains a reach.
Financial Goals for 2022
1) Max out 403b: $20,500 of $20,500 (100% done) ✅
2) Max out backdoor Roth IRAs: $12,000 of $12,000 (100% done) ✅
3) Use taxable brokerage in addition to 1) and 2) to save $120,000 total for retirement: $120,000 of $87,500 (137.1% done) ✅
4) Max out 529s for state tax benefit: $16,000 of $16,000 (100% done) ✅
5) Continue to pay minimum on student loan as long as rate remains <4% ✅
6) Finalize estate documents ✅
7) Purchase a house ✅
Hi Doc! I’m an IMG going into FM residency and am wondering, where can I learn more about financial investments? I have no student loans which helps, but I assume my income will be less than other medical specialties.
I would start with the first White Coat Investor book as well as The Simple Path to Wealth