So you want to be a millionaire...

[spotty_dog]

...do you? Do you see this as an achievable goal for your family, to have a net worth in the seven figures? Do you feel you're on track for reaching your financial goals, two-comma-club-related or not, in a timely fashion?

This whitecoatinvestor.com blog post (a few weeks old) made me think today so I thought I'd share it. http://whitecoatinvestor.com/how-can...day-qa-series/

In related news, who's read The Millionaire Next Door? I finished it a month or so ago and loved it -- now I see why so many consider it required reading for new and upcoming physicians! Strongly recommend (as a bonus, a lot of the examples are based on physician lifestyles and families...)

[poky]

We're most of the way there now, but I know we're an odd case; we lived well below our means for 10 years when we were both bringing in decent salaries as engineers, maxed out retirement, got completely debt free, don't have kids, and had a scholarship for med school. I anticipate we'll continue to live well below our means once DH is out of training. We're also almost 15 years older than most in our same spot in training, though, too, so we may well still be "behind" people our same age who trained earlier and lived similarly frugally. *shrug*.

[ladymoreta]

I'm reading Millionaire Next Door now. We have a lot of catching up to do from both debt-payoff and saving/investing, but we've made a plan. If it works out, we should be millionaires by the time DH retires. But I know plans change, and crap happens, so I'm still nervous about retirement.

[GrayMatterWife]

Yes. Provided that we stay on track, we should have $1MM in assets within the next five years. Timely? I wish we'd been able to do it five years ago, but DH's training took a long time. But, being a technical millionaire is not my goal. I would like to have several million in assets not including my home, retirement accounts and personalty. we'll see...

I read "The Millionaire Next Door" years ago. My dad gave it to me, with an inscription commenting on how it reflected a lot of my grandfathers's values (he grew up dirt poor and died a self-made millionaire--a modest millionaire, but nevertheless, he escaped bleak poverty and an environment of horrific abuse at home and bettered himself through education and hard work.)

[weeniegeniewife]

We're there now, but keep in mind that DH has been an attending for 18 years. I enjoy reading the White Coat Investor blog as well as other financial books to make sure we stay on track. DH doesn't read any of them, but then again I take care of our family finances. He hasn't written a check or paid a bill in 7 years!

[JaneDoe]

We're half way there. Our plan is to have all our our debt, which includes Dh's remaining medical school loan and his two buy-in loans - one for the office building and the other for the ASC, paid off in the next five years. At that point, we will have 1M is assets. When we met with our accountant last, she calculated that we will need to have at least 3M in assets by the time we retire to have a similar standard of living as we do now. So 1M is achievable for us in the next five years, but we still have a ways to go.

[Auspicious]

Huh. This highlights how destabilized we still are. We're socking it away and will continue to do so (and our balance sheet is definitely moving in the right direction), but I truly don't feel I can predict our family income over the next 25 years. This is definitely somewhat specialty-dependent, but there are several aspects of this that are just out of our control. We'll continue doing our best and hopefully things will firm up over the next few years.

[houseelf]

I love these threads! Keep them coming. More chatter!

I have to say that with a nice round number birthday coming up, I have a fire under my butt to get my financial house in order. While we have made huge progress from debt laden resident lifestyle to having a reasonable nest egg, I'm impatient. I wish we would have even been more aggressive during residency about saving because when you start really saving and paying down debt in the mid to late thirties, you have wasted a decade of compound interest.

[bobk]

We should be able to get there. Our situation is somewhat unusual because DW did the Md/Phd route and is going into fellowship as well. She will be earning an attending salary much later than most physicians her age, but on the other hand, our student debt is less than $20k. I guess it evens out in the end.

[MsSassyBaskets]

We're almost 30 and still in the debt-accruing stage. Ugh. We have an emergency fund and some savings, and are working to pay off a car and previous student loans (and also buy a second used car) before graduation so we can start fresh with ONLY the med school debt at that time (of which we will have 6 figures). I'd like to have a kid in the next 2 years, but I know I'll have to keep working full time and the cost of daycare (and everything else) scares the pants off me. Actually, this entire conversation scares the pants off me.

BUT, I think we're in a good place when it comes to lifestyle. We live cheap and probably could live even cheaper. We're happy with what we have. We have no desire for fancy cars or a huge house -- I would really love a house, period, once we're out of residency and we've already got a good start on a nest egg.

On the other hand, I have a retirement fund and DH doesn't. Yikes!! We're going to have our work cut out for us in a few more years.

[ides]

We've got a long ass way to go. We are both just about 40 and Dh just finished training. We have started on our emergency fund and are coming up with plans for retirement, house, college, etc. We are paying down student loans but aren't being aggressive as we hope to qualify for the ten years on time payments while working in the public sector to have the balance forgiven after ten years.

[Michele]

It *was* in my plan....however I don't see it happening now. Though I'm hoping to at least live comfortably. I really need to see someone to help me figure my money out. I have no retirement plan. And I suppose I need to start thinking about owning a practice or not and what the buyin would look like. Yuck.

[GrayMatterWife]

We should be able to get there. Our situation is somewhat unusual because DW did the Md/Phd route and is going into fellowship as well. She will be earning an attending salary much later than most physicians her age, but on the other hand, our student debt is less than $20k. I guess it evens out in the end.

We were in a similar boat--MD/Phd with 6 yr res and 1 yr fellowship. You can make it happen because no school debt.

[spotty_dog]

I guess before I read that thread it just never occurred to me that a million-dollar net worth might be a stretch for any physician. Financial independence has always been our goal, and I expect it to take more than one cool mill to get there. We're on track to get there relatively young, assuming we can keep up our modest lifestyle and don't experience dramatic pay changes. But I see now that we enjoy tax benefits that not everyone does (eg. being a 1099 contractor instead of an employee, not having state income tax), and while DH's income is about the median for a doc these days, that means plenty of folks are making less than he is -- including folks in higher COL areas or with higher loan repayments. It's a bit sobering, I guess.

But on the other hand the Millionaire book gives me hope. Honestly I think we could get at least to the two-comma club even if DH never had more than a resident salary -- if I got a job and could save that income, it would take longer and we'd have an even more modest lifestyle, but I do think we would get there.

[ladymoreta]

It's definitely do-able in this area, and on a lot less than what we make now. We made less than 100k per year when I was working back in OK, and we were able to save $20k in about a year and a half. (Of course, that was pre-kids, so saving is harder with them around. ) That was just savings for me to quit my job when we had our son, so we didn't do any investing with it. I agree that saving has to be a priority, or becoming a millionaire won't happen at almost any physician income level. We are also planning to have more than 1 million at retirement.