Radiology: Ready, Aim, FIRE?

We medical folks love our acronyms. They are a must in our profession as our field is loaded with cumbersome phrases that would otherwise take much longer to write, type, or even say, and every extra keystroke or syllable increases the chance for errors.

Of course, docs haven’t cornered the market on it, especially in the Information Age when everyone is trying to communicate through keyboards and touchscreens, looking for shortcuts. One of the downsides to all of this is that you start forgetting what a lot of these things stand for, even if you remember their overall meaning.

Accordingly, after I saw a bunch of rads talking online about what their FIRE numbers were, I spent the greater part of an after-work exercise session that day trying to remember where those letters came from. Happily, I did not have my phone with me and could therefore enjoy the mental tussle without just looking up the answer.

The RE was easy enough because it’s the main thrust: Retire Early. Those aiming to FIRE want to get done with the “grind” and be able to rest from their labors earlier in life. However, one does not want to do so at the cost of living poorly or otherwise fretting about how to make ends meet. Instead, one works harder early on, invests well, and lives beneath one’s means to have a bankroll that will endure, even passively grow itself.

My exercise-taxed brain couldn’t specifically reconstruct FI. Did it mean Frontload Income? No. Was it something about Frugal living and Investing a lot? No. Hours later, I caved in and saw from my cellphone (which I’ve come to call my “accessory brain”) that it was Financial Independence.

I dimly recalled hearing about FIRE early in my career, and it sounded smart. Don’t blow through your earnings like a drunken sailor; think about your future, sock stuff away, and work toward a point where you won’t be dependent on a job.

Some folks took this to an extreme or at least gave lip service to it. They spoke of working extra hours or moonlighting. They advocated doing a lot of overnights for premium pay, and talked about continuing to live like a resident, even after receiving the income of an attending. They emphasized having a humble little house or apartment, driving a beater of a car, avoiding dining out, and eschewing pricey vacations.

According to a random AI search, “traditional” FIRE means stashing 50 to 75 percent of your income. I might have approached that while I was prepping to buy my “forever” house since I wanted to make the heftiest down payment possible. Afterward, I still maximized my retirement account contributions and maintained strong personal insurance policies but that was it.

The further along I got, the more I realized that I didn’t want to retire early. Heck, I didn’t want to retire at all, unless fate brought a day when I couldn’t competently do my diagnostic work as a radiologist. I like what I do. Even if I was indifferent to it, I am pretty sure that it is a decent contribution to society, improving and even saving lives here and there.

It is also good for me. One’s mental sharpness gets blunted without regular use, and I don’t think any hobby I picked up would compare to throwing myself at a mixed worklist every day. Maintaining a schedule has value. Without that, one can start to drift.

I know that plenty of rads are not in as good a professional place as I am. Just glancing at social media will tell you that lots of folks hate their jobs and would love to escape. Burnout is a very real thing. I have experienced it myself. That is one of the reasons I like my current situation. I have plenty of less-than experiences with which to compare it.

It has occurred to me, however, that some burnout is self-inflicted. FIRE is one method. For instance, I can imagine burning myself out by working too many hours, especially in stressful or overnight positions, in the name of socking away more money for my future. I could compound that by not living comfortably, being frugal rather than rewarding myself with memorable vacations, fun weekends and holidays while at home, etc.

In other words, pushing oneself too harshly in a FIRE plan might create the very burnout that makes one want to retire early.

There are, lest it need saying, other valid reasons for FIRE, or at least FI with option to RE. Suppose, for instance, you see a non-zero probability that radiology, or health care overall, will one day cease to be the strong career it is now. AI replaces us all, government takeover decimates our income and/or makes us miserable enough that we want to retire even if we didn’t before, etc.

If you have made yourself financially independent, you will have more options when such things come to pass. You won’t feel trapped in your job. The same thing applies if you begin to lose the tools that currently enable you to practice rads (your eyesight, perhaps, if not your marbles).

Alternately, maybe you “do it wrong,” like my financial guy likes to say. Sometimes he talks about scenarios where you establish retirement accounts, long-term insurance policies, etc., and then don’t need them. It’s a happy kind of wrongness because you prepared for the worst and the worst never happened. Suppose you make yourself financially independent, but you find yourself in a situation like mine, and never actually want to retire.

You would then have the enviable “problem” of overabundant personal resources. Perhaps you would just have to learn how to pamper yourself and live large at last, or maybe it would feed your soul better to leave it to worthy beneficiaries and charitable causes.