Month: February 2019

up-close shark picture
Paying Taxes with a Credit Card

Paying Taxes with a Credit Card

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Yes, I took that picture of the shark. No, I was not in the water with it (aquariums for the win), although I am proud to say I have snorkeled with sharks a couple of times. A shark picture seemed appropriate for a post about taxes and credit cards; they all are potentially scary, and they are frequently misunderstood.

So last month I put $24,130 of our personal taxes on a credit card. You read that right. The same person who tracked her family’s spending down to the penny last year, bought her kids second-hand toys for Christmas, and advocates super aggressive debt repayment just put tens of thousands of dollars of money she owed to the government onto a credit card! …

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office reception desk
Office Skills!

Office Skills!

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I’m sharing this here due to popular request! I apologize to everyone who is not in my field; these posts are not going contain much that can hold your interest. I’ll get back to rambling about other topics later this week.

Back Office Skills

This is the “skills checklist” we give to new members of our back office team. They can bring it with them when they request raises if they want to.

Obviously, this is not going to be super useful if you are not in our particular field (orthodontics). Even if you are in this field, you will want to design a skills list that fits your unique practice, team, and office culture. …

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Black diamond ski run sign: "Hallelujah Ridge"
$500k of Business Debt Bites the Dust

$500k of Business Debt Bites the Dust

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Honestly, it’s mind blowing for me to write this post. I have major imposter syndrome anytime I even think about numbers this high.

And before we go any farther: please don’t send me messages telling me I’m limiting myself by “not thinking big” or some such nonsense. These are freaking huge numbers. And not only on a global scale (where the median household income is under 10k) but in the USA as well (where the median household income is about $61k) and even in the shiny bubble of doctor salaries that I live in, where the average individual income is anywhere from $100k to $300k depending on your specialty and time in practice and blah blah blah.

So, yes, it feels crazy to write this post. It’s also really fun for me to write this post, because I’ve been waiting impatiently for this day ever since I realized it was within my grasp this calendar year. …

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tents high on a mountain, campers with arms raised
Our Family’s 2018 Spending (and How We Could Have Spent Less)

Our Family’s 2018 Spending (and How We Could Have Spent Less)

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A couple quick notes before we dive in to the numbers:

I decided back in January of 2018 to share our family’s spending publicly for a whole year. This was an attempt to prove that doctors do not have to spend a totally ridiculous amount of money to live well and love life and more importantly a strategy to make us take a cold hard look at where all our cash was going and decide whether we liked what we saw. …

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