More money and a managerial paradox

I blogged some time ago that I switched jobs and now it is 50% clinical and 50% administrative (or "leadership"). Now, what they call in business world the "economical profit" (i.e., my current salary minus the "opportunity cost", or what I could've been making at my old job) is pretty good. However, the added hassle/more time spent dealing with staffing/patient complaints/organizational etc. headaches (not even mentioning political undercurrents and interdepartmental "bad blood"), the need to be constantly (i.e. 24/7) available to resove petty/small/medium-size/large issues... Is this"economical profit' worth it?
On one hand, sure- it's more money in real terms. Also a potential to earn more money thru advancement at later stages of your career. More interesting ,too, I guess, at least the level of the problems I'm supposed to solve. More flattering for your ego, yeah! ( you are "da boss" after all, you've made it!)
But all this leads to almost no ( and I mean it) free time- even when you're "not working" you still are- trying to figure out solutions to issues/schedules/research ideas/fend off hostile attacks etc. (Speaking of solutions, I found that most of them are only temporary). So kids get no attention. So is your spouse. So is your other small piece of life outside your working realm which is supposed to be used to enjoy the fruits of your bigger piece of life consumed by work. Add to this a tremendous increase in stress levels. An lack of attention (due to lack of time) to management of your investments ( I think it's possible to assign a sort of "negative cash flow' numbers to all of the above if nothing else, as a crude denominator)
At the end that "economic profit" shrinks, the question is by how much.

MBA for doctors, part 2

So I'm now well into my 2nd year of the MBA experience. So far, so good, the trouble is that I cannot really imagine what the experience would be had I've been at some renowned school, like Kellog or Wharton.
But the courses are useful- Corp. Finance was the most interesting, and before that -Management was very useful in practical sense ( since now my position is somewhat managerial; I will try to write on the art of managing people some other time).
So far, my understanding of how bonds/stocks are valued improved quite a bit. However, I don't think it will have any influence on how my retirement money are invested. My notion of passive, low-cost investing was strenghthened by seeing just how much time and effort a dilligent professional investor must spend to find suitable investments, and often she or he still picks a loser!

MBA for doctors

Like I said in my previous post, I enrolled into executive MBA a little over a year ago.

Good things:

1.they didn't ask me to take GMAT ( I would've failed miserably),

2.the tuition is not atrocious since it's a relatively obscure albeit real, as opposed to online, school of business ( consider this- the renowned schools like Kellogg and NYU ask for about 120k/2 yrs...)

3. The pace is not frenetic

4. There are several "concentrations", including Marketing, Health Care Administration, and Finance.

5. I'm in "fast track", 48-credit, program

The bad things:

1. You get what you paid for. Sometimes I feel I know more than a certain professor.

2. The new style teaching means asking your students to buy a particular textbook, and then in class use the PowerPoint slides from the same publisher, with identical color scheme and content. Good for teachers- in such case, no need to prepare for the class. Bad for students since the class doesn't add anything beyond a textbook material.

3. Too much reliance on group assignments.

Now, for the reasons to do an MBA... Probably in a different post.

1 year later

Not writing for more than a year deserves serious "splaining". Well, there you have it: I change my old place of employ, having moved a bit up on a food chain.

Also, enrolled in one of those executive MBA programs. Not sure what to select for a concentration, but for a time being thinking of Finance.

And tried to wage an unsuccessful attempt for a change with fringe benefit committee at my new place, failing miserably to show them that they're getting ripped-off with those enormous 401k agent fees.

Also read some good books, one of them by John Bogle "Don't count on it!"

Living happily... and simply?

There was a good article in NY Times today about people discovering their true happiness through simple living and spending most of their money on what makes THEM happy.

As in my previous post about "liquid life", it seems that the tide has turned and more and more people discover that "stuff" doesn't make them happy.

The whole notion, once a very underground and "subculture" type is now getting traction in such well-know publications as NYT. Corporate America is also taking notice and is adapting their sell pitches accordingly.

The only "stuff" that might contribute to your happiness is actually sports equipment - golf clubs ( I don't play golf, but I do know Costco sells them!), fishing rods and surf boards (can get one used for not so much money). What really makes us happy is money spent on our experiences, be it around the world tour or a backyard "staycation"

What I hope will start happening to us is that we start asking ourselves this trivial, but hard-to-really-answer question "what truly makes me happy?". For a lot of us, it will be "vacation".

So what's a point of getting that shiny Bimmer and paying for it through the nose?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html?src=me&ref=business

Taxes and doctors

Today there was a very good op ed in the Wall Street Journal about actual observed drop in tax receipts while raising taxes on the wealthiest. ( one of the examples being John Kerry who bought a $7 mln. yacht not in his own state of Massachussetts, but in RI whereby saving in exsess of $500,000 in taxes). The reason being that wealthy people have so many "advisors" that they won't pay those taxes anyway.
I was thinking about the doctors, who , by enlarge, make just enough money to be fleeced by uncle Sam because they are "rich", but usually not nearly enough to do the "creative" tax reporting by using those financial/tax/legal/estate etc. advisors. In the end, they probably end up paying for the poor, who completely depend on the government (i.e. taxes) and the truly rich who are smart/savvy/well connected enough to avoid paying those taxes...

401k pains, part 2

At my (almost) new job, 401k is handled by a private company. Not that their mutual funds are atrociously expensive (they are, average expense ratio is about0.4%), but these guys also charge 0.1% management fee on all the money under management.

Most doctors will be fast asleep if your start talking "expense ratios" to them. No wonder they are oblivious to the fact that, if you believe the Wall St. gurus, the market returns are about 8% a year in a very long run, they are loosing 6 to 7% of these money- no, much more if you counting compound interest- it'll be close to 10%.

The other thing worth mentioning is that even those doctors who were entrusted to make decisions for the whole group about their 401k know very little about money in general let alone investing.

I heard one of the "seasoned" members of the fringe benefits committee seriously suggesting to "just select the best mutual funds out there and just invest in them" My humble statement that, in the long run, statistically speaking, half of the mutual funds' money managers will fail to keep up even with the average market returns, and it's close to impossible to predict which funds they are, was met with dead silence. When doctors have nothing to say....