My Financial Journey, Part I

10x'ing My Net Worth

Greetings from Ireland where, since the changing of the clocks, the new, brighter evenings are upon us. As much as I enjoy the extra daytime, I am always a little disappointed at the sudden arrival of the longer evenings which dissipates all the sexual tension of the slowly lengthening evenings, which I like to relish every year. This week, we are back to the topic of money, and I have a nice graph to show you. I will be breaking down my financial journey, a long tale which ended with my 10xing my nett worth, which is quite easy to do when you start out with a small number 😎 Today’s article will cover the first half of that journey – part II will cover the remainder, and what I learned. If you like reading about money, you will probably enjoy my recent article on ‘How Much Money is Enough’, so don’t forget to check that one out, too.

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The progress

Before you read further, it might be interesting for you to look at the graph and try and guess what happened during the various dramatic points of change, or to see whether you can spot my sabbatical, when I took several months off without working. Being a little shy, I have redacted the actual figures, but the trend should still make sense.

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Gentle Reader,

Many of you seem to like when I talk about finances. Here, I will present an overview of my financial journey, starting 9 years ago, and coming all the way to the present day, in two parts. It’s been a bit of a journey, so hopefully there are learnings for me and you both.

The Beginning

My financial journey starts not quite at zero, at least on the graph, but almost. I earned my first few shekels in the first ‘real’ job I had, working as an intern doctor in Ireland. Although the pay per hour was quite low, due to the sheer volume of hours worked, I managed to put some money away. Towards the end of the year I was able to look at my bank account and say, wow, I have actual savings. This wouldn’t have been possible if I graduated in a country with very high university fees, so I was lucky to have a good start.

Then, I moved off to Australia where the working conditions were a little better. Around the same time, even though I had been reading about finances for as long as I could remember, I began to read a lot more about saving and investing, and the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. It was now a lot more exciting, since it was actually actionable, and I had money to deploy.

Like a good young investor, I began to slowly invest all my spare money at the end of every month into an S&P 500 index tracker. This went on for about 3 years, and represents the period circled below.

A Sabbatical

However, after doing this for a few years, as discussed in my article on work & money, I got a bit bored of the grind and, since I supposedly wanted to retire early, I decided to try it out, and do a sabbatical, and go travelling. I wasn’t really happy enough with my financial affairs, though, to start trekking around without a job, so I spent a few months working in parts of rural Australia, getting paid a very good hourly wage. The money didn’t come easy – I was sometimes the only doctor working in a small hospital at night or, during one stint, I was the most senior doctor working in a hospital which covered an area the size of Germany!

That’s when the grey hairs started coming in, but so too did my tax return, and with this and my new earnings from working every shift I could find, I managed to save quite a bit, or at least it seemed like it at the time. You can see a small bump in the graph, which then goes back down a little over the next few months, which represent the sabbatical I took. As you can see, it didn’t cost a huge amount, as I lived cheaply like a student, and it coincided with a reasonably bullish time in the stock market. Some delayed payslips from my Aussie days, by then a fading mirage of flaming galahs and terracotta dust, also helped to buffer my expenses.

The sabbatical came to a natural end when the European winter came in, and when I started to worry that my small financial buffer would soon start to plummet. I weighed up all my options, and eventually decided that returning to ‘The Lucky Country’ was the right move for me, then.

Grinding Again

Observant viewers will see the graph bumping quite nicely on my return to work. I was back Down Under again, and with the experience of working remotely under my belt, I doubled down again and found the highest-paying jobs, and flew everywhere from Traralgon to Tangmalangmaloo.

As an experience, it was pretty draining, but also full of ups and downs. The rhythm would often be week on, week off, or sometimes I worked for longer periods at a time. I was at the mercy of where the best jobs were, and the recruiter could send me anywhere, and would book my accommodation, too. As a result, I ended up in a bizarre array of situations, both environmentally and medically. Some of the places I stayed quite nice, such as the old renovated schoolhouse in New South Wales, where I awoke to some lovely morning views.

Unsure how this compares to actual south Wales

As lovely as this view was, I can confirm that this place in the Australian outback was extremely creepy at night, yet even that scary landscape came with a sort of haunting beauty, too.

There were also times when I stayed in very depressing motels, sleeping all day and working at night, and only seeing the sun for 15 minutes on my drive to work. This motel below was quite grim, and made worse by the fact that I found out somebody was murdered at the same motel a couple of years previously.

Excuse the mess

I stayed above while doing 16 night shifts in a row. The hospital told me it was illegal, and that I needed a break in the middle, but then they couldn’t find anyone to replace me, so I had to keep working anyway. It was good for the bank balance, but to the soul injurious.

I became conscious that I was working, more or less, just for money. This is fine, at a certain time in your life, especially early on and, as the graph shows, it did make a big difference to my numbers. It’s also fair to say that by being thrown in at the deep end I was also learning a lot, and I did develop a lot of experience and confidence which were a great help later in my career. Many junior doctors are very protected these days, which is a good thing, but it also means that sometimes they never develop the chops that come with being the one making the decisions.

hard-won shekels

The returns, however, eventually became diminishing, if not financially, then at least holistically. I got pretty tired of airports, tiny turbulent planes, rental cars, and constant change. Even though the shekels were accumulating, I conceded that it was time to get some stability in my life. Looking at it now, it was a phase of life which I moved on from and won’t return to – I still have friends and peers who do these kind of jobs, making good money, but paying a price of another kind for it. The almighty dollar has come to dictate their decision making in a scenario where the tail is wagging the dog and, even though I am jealous of their bank accounts, I can’t say I think it’s worth it, at least not for me anymore.

Seeking stability, and some credentials, I decided to do my specialist training, and to stay in Australia until this was finished.

Stability

As you can see on the graph, my earnings took a hit when I started my training, and the line, which had been going parabolic, flattened somewhat. This was part of the plan which was expected to pay off in the long run. In any case, i was enjoying some modest to moderate compounding effects, and still saving whatever was left over at the end of the month.

I entered into a reasonably stable phase of life at this time, and although I didn’t have any great adventures, I had a new job with new challenges and a good routine. I was living in a new part of the country, and made lots of great friends who I am still in touch with to this day. All that to say that, even though this article is about money, that doesn’t mean that the focus of all our efforts should be seen through this financial lens.

This period of stability was, however, jarred by Covid19, and also by the prospect of moving home to Ireland, and whether it would be influenced by the pandemic. I had no choice but to just keep working, and to pass my exams and get the piece of paper which would allow me to ply my trade with letters under my name, be it at home or in Australia.

Thankfully, I got there in the end, and finished my training, thus bringing us to the end of this part of the graph, and the end of Part I.

Part II will focus on what happened when I finished my training, my return to Ireland, and the various silly financial decisions I made – you can probably tell this by how jagged the graph became, towards the end. I will also include a short section of key takeaways, which will hopefully set me up for a more stable innings for the next 9 years. Here’s hoping!

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Thanks for reading, and I hope you are looking forward to reading part II. Next week will be issue #100, and so you can expect some reflections on the time I have spent here, on Substack. Part II should ensue as issue 101. In the meantime, here are two articles which I recently enjoyed reading, and so you might too.

1 –

Paddy

writes about the Irish concept of ‘craic’ 💚

What's the Craic

2 – Sticking with the theme of money and sabbaticals,

Cécile Marion

writes about giving herself permission to spend money.

Permission to spend my savings on a sabbatical

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