Buy Nothing 2018 Experiment – May Update

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I am 5/12th of the way through my buy nothing experiment I started at the beginning of the year. In short, I have decided to be more deliberate about my consumption and buy things only when they meet certain criteria as I described in this blog post.   As I progress I am starting to …

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Reflections of a Millennial Doctor: Burnout

One of the wonderful things about having a blog is stumbling upon other peoples writing. A few months ago I discovered another blogger writing about burnout and I was intrigued. Her name is ‘M’ and she writes at https://reflectionsofamillennialdoctor.com.  I love her writing, and after reading a few posts I  immediately reached out to her …

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How to Make Financial Mistakes and Still Achieve Financial Freedom

How to make financial mistakes and still achieve financial freedom   I love to read blogs about personal finance, especially as they relate to financial independence and early retirement. When I was going through burnout very early in my radiology career, much of the inspiration, tools and tactics I used came from stories of ordinary …

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Buy Nothing 2018 Experiment – April Update

Failure The problem with a buy nothing experiment where only one member of the family is participating (me) is that many of the purchasing decisions are really made by the family (and by family I mean Mrs. Happy Philosopher). Sometimes it is hard to assign a purchase to one person or the other. I could …

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Keeping Score

I was watching my daughter play a soccer game. It was indoor soccer, as outdoor soccer is moderately miserable to completely impossible in the winter or early spring. The games are quick and everyone has a lot of fun. Someone scored a goal and everyone cheered. As I was taking a sip of beer a …

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Buy Nothing 2018 Experiment – March Update

I’m a little late with the March update because I just got back from spring vacation. It was a great time and we spent plenty of money, but none of it was on ‘stuff’. All of the money we spent was on transportation, food and experiences. Knowing I would not be buying anything this trip, …

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Podcasts Featuring The Happy Philosopher

podcast

Greetings philosophers! I have a couple of new podcasts to share with you this week (featuring yours truly). Podcasts are very different than blogging. When I write, my words are carefully chosen and deliberate. The pace at which the thoughts come out of my head is constrained by my very poor tying skills and old …

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Case Study: Should I Keep Working Even Though I’m Financially Independent?

Today I  have a case study that delves into many important questions about early retirement, financial freedom and the morality of work. I started interacting with this doc via email and knew I needed to use his case as a starting point for many issues I’ve been wanting to write about for a while now.  …

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Buy Nothing 2018 Experiment – February Update

I was a bit groggy and tired from a long day of work the day before, and I had not yet had my coffee when Mrs. Happy Philosopher greeted me with a colorful bag with decorative paper sticking out of the top.   Mrs. HP: “I got you a birthday present.” HP: “But it’s not …

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Burnout and Fractures

Burnout and Fractures I was reading an MRI the other day on a young runner with hip pain. There were the tell-tale signs of a stress fracture. If she kept running on it she would certainly completely fracture it at some point, but the pain would probably self-limit her activity. The treatment would be rest …

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