I’m Dr PayItBack, a double board-certified anesthesiologist and pain management physician working in the eastern half of the US.

I spent residency and fellowship learning everything I could about personal finance, so I could hit the ground running when I became an attending. Like many in medicine, I bottomed out at over $250,000 in debt. I started with a great salary, but also a giant hole to dig myself out of.

One thing that struck me in all my book-reading, web-surfing, and podcast-listening is that nearly all the physician voices out there were from folks who had already ‘made it’. Whether they had wildly successful business ventures, had enough money to retire from clinical medicine, or were just simply debt-free, there seemed to be a deafening silence from folks who were in the trenches putting these supposedly effective methods into practice.

As I stated in my first ever blog post, I started this blog intending to serve as a real-time case study of what disciplined saving, investing, and debt payment can do for a young physician just starting out. Using what I’d learned I planned to have my debt paid off by 3-5 years out of training, setting up myself and my family for a bright financial future. I accomplished this goal in December 2022, after just over 3 years as an attending.

Thank you for joining me as I chronicle my mistakes, my successes, and my musings on physician personal finance while on the journey back to broke (and beyond).