I don’t have a bone with pick with the wealthy, but wealth can help you and your heirs get ahead in life. Tennis lessons. Music tutors. Private schools with other like-minded peers. Connections that can get you into high places. Wealth is not a bad thing.
Most physicians in the United States are considered “wealthy” too. Not Sultan-of-Brunei wealthy, but comfortable-upper-middle-class wealthy. We have a relatively good earning potential despite the length of training we incur. Despite the similarly long number of years we spend perfecting our trade, there is still a wide income range across medical specialties. Some doctors will definitely become “wealthy” faster than others.
I previously wrote about becoming a rich doctor through building a strong offense through multiple income sources. I think that these remain strong tenants in maximizing our worth, but the appropriate mindset allows you to keep what you earn and build your wealth through passive means.
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A winning mindset to wealth should include retention of wealth.
You keep what you don’t spend. This is part one of the winning mindset. Whatever you retain can be used to work for you. Your army of millions of pennies can be put to work with almost no effort in an interest bearing fund. If you want more potential for reward with higher risk, use a P2P lending mechanism or simply the index market. If you want to manage your financial minions actively, you can invest in other means like real estate. No matter what you do, you still need to be able to retain that wealth to grow for you.
Understand what you really need to be happy.
We all have material desires to a certain degree. The goal in wealth accumulation and financial freedom is not to restrict these desires, but to actually assess what we actually need. Having that nice $120,000 AMG in the garage does you no good if you only drive it on the weekend and still pay thousands of dollars a year for maintenance. Could you have done without it, and turned that $120,000 into $240,000 in 7 years?
I see plenty of wealthy people, especially doctors and lawyers, who seem unhappy. Are they unhappy that their jobs consume so much of their life but they are loathe to quit because it pays so well? Are they unhappy that the other partners in their practice make so much more money than they do? Are they just unhappy people?
Clearly the lack of money is unlikely the cause of their unhappiness. This is a situation that you don’t want to get yourself into. Most of us really have never thought about what actually makes us happy. It doesn’t really matter either if you’re a hotshot neurosurgeon or a physician’s assistant—if you don’t really have a strong grasp on your needs, you will spend down your income and risk being unhappy in the process.
How to figure out your key to happiness.
What do you actually need to get you through the day? Does that daily Starbucks coffee actually make you happy, or does that just get you through a 10-hour workday? Would you be happier if you got to ride your bike to work everyday? Do you prefer to spend your day tending to your garden? Typically that core set of needs will not cost you millions. MMM is able to pare down his family spendings down to $25,000 a year. Where is your number?
What is your magic list of happiness?
(Photo courtesy of Flickr)
One of the guest speakers at this year’s 
Given the easy access to credit that we have in the United States, it is easy to purchase a house that commands several times your salary. Physicians are prime customers for lenders, as we are low-risk clients who have high earning potential and stable jobs. Easy access to credit is also a curse for us, since it is incredibly easy to overextend our earning potential to buy a 
Through observation of myself, my colleagues, and reports from other physicians through the grapevine, I’ve compiled a list of examples of lifestyle inflation that occurs among professionals who ultimately grow into their incomes. Some are modest. Others, not so much. What large expenditures have you witnessed or are actually guilty of in your growing lifestyle?
As part of my cost saving habits, I started looking into changing out my lightbulbs to LEDs, since I’ve read that they are more akin to incandescent bulbs in tones yet are as energy efficient (or more) than CFLs. Many of the local hardware stores also have rebates subsidized by the local utility companies (maybe they have governmental subsidies as well?).
Those who are financially independent justify their desire to be free from their daily grind. This grind supposedly allows us to earn enough to retire on and enjoy our decades of hard work. In a way, it does seem ironic that we spend the majority of our lives working towards sustaining our existence for the last few decades of our life.