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(Part 7) If you can’t make your own healthcare decisions, who steps in? If you can’t pay your bills, who has the authority to? And if you forget to name a beneficiary, where does your money end up? I walk through the essentials every new attending should have in place within the first year: a will, a healthcare directive, a power of attorney, and updated beneficiaries.

You’ve already delayed retirement saving for years: undergrad, med school, residency, maybe fellowship. Now you have the income to do something about it. In this episode, I cover why new attendings should start maxing out retirement accounts as soon as they reasonably can. I walk through the 401(k) and 403(b), 457(b), backdoor Roth contributions, and HSAs.

This is part five of my series on mistakes new attendings make, and this one might have the biggest impact on your net worth: ignoring taxes. Taxes are inevitable, and planning proactively to reduce them legally is one of the most powerful moves you can make.

This is part two of my conversation about physician contracts with Kyle Claussen from Resolve, and this time we're focused on private practice. Negotiating with a future business partner is a different game than negotiating with a hospital system. We talk about what to ask when a partnership track could run three years or more, how to protect yourself if the practice gets bought by private equity before you ever make partner, and why the early-years discount only makes sense if the partnership is real. We also dig into guaranteed salaries: why they exist, where they can backfire, and why knowing your value matters even mid-career.

I sat down with Kyle Claussen, founder of Resolve, to talk through employed physician contracts. His team reviews thousands of them, and over 80% end up with changes. We cover: Why your contract often doesn't match what you heard in the interviewThe vague language that lets an employer change your schedule, call, or locationHow to negotiate without the fear of losing the offerWhether non-competes are still enforceable (they are)What actually happens if you break one This is part one - Next time, we get into private practice.

This week I'm joined by Dr. Sravan Panuganti, a private practice urologist I've known on social media for years, for a wide-ranging conversation. We get into the question of AUM versus fee-only advisors, whether his fellowship was actually worth the lost income, why he chose practice ownership over an employed role, and what he tells residents trying to figure out their next move. A lot of ground covered, and a lot of it applies no matter what specialty you're in.

(Part 4) A lot of new attendings skip own-occupation disability insurance because of the price tag. In this episode, I explain why that's a mistake you don't want to make. This isn't optional risk management, it's what protects your income if you're ever unable to do your specific job. I cover the five companies that offer real own-occupation policies, why you need an independent agent who can access all of them, and what to know if you're still in training and might qualify for a guaranteed standard issue policy before you go through full underwriting.

Before you refinance or pick a payoff plan, you need to think through your career path, especially if public service loan forgiveness is a possibility, your tax filing status, your mental relationship with debt, and how any of this fits into your broader cash flow. These four pieces are more connected than most people realize, and getting them wrong can cost you options you can't get back.

This time, I'm talking about the written financial plan, why so many people avoid making one, and why that avoidance can cost you. A plan starts with your values, not your numbers: what you want your life to look like, what matters to you, who you're building this for. It sounds like a lot, but you don't have to tackle it all at once. You just have to start. And that's what this episode is all about.

In this episode, I talk about the first mistake I see new attendings make: getting stuck on one extreme of spending. Some overspend the moment the new paycheck hits, buying the house, the car, the lifestyle before they've stopped to think it through. Others go the opposite direction and freeze, unable to spend on anything because the scarcity mindset from training hasn't caught up with reality yet. Both are common, and both can hurt you. I walk through why the real fix isn't "spend more" or "spend less," it's building a cash flow plan so your spending and saving decisions are intentional instead of reactive.

Physician mortgages can be a great tool for doctors, but they aren't automatically the best option just because you're a physician. In this episode, I walk through five things to watch out for, from lenders who don't really understand physician loans to getting too focused on the lowest rate. If you're thinking about buying a home as a physician, there are some important questions you should ask before you sign anything.

If you’re trying to pay off a credit card but still using it for everyday expenses, it can feel like you're failing when the balance goes up. You need to account for the old debt AND the new spending. This episode explains exactly how I approach it.

In this episode, I walk through why paying off high interest debt is often the smartest first move, even if it doesn't feel as exciting as investing. Wealth isn't built by doing everything at once. It's built by making good decisions in the right order.

In this episode, I walk through why a taxable investment account can become one of the most valuable tools for building long-term wealth and creating flexibility in retirement. We cover how to invest tax-efficiently, common mistakes to avoid, why automatic rebalancing can create unnecessary taxes, and when strategies like direct indexing may start to make sense.

In this episode, I explain how guaranteed physician salaries work, why they're often temporary, and what happens when your compensation shifts to production. We talk about work RVUs, lifestyle inflation, and why buying a home, financing a car, or making other major financial commitments too early can create unnecessary stress down the road.