The Road to FISE: How Many Benjamins Has This Blogged Saved Me? – Dr. Plastic Picker
 

The Road to FISE: How Many Benjamins Has This Blogged Saved Me?

| Posted in Personal Finance Blog - Financially Free to Save the Earth (FISE)

Gardening Pics #1

November 22, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Isn’t that picture above pretty? It’s a collection of my container gardening project. The picture at the end of the post is the 2nd picture of my container gardening project. My mother-in-law and mother are avid gardeners, and I have never been able to grow anything in my life. But these new adventures through blogging have made me excited to try new things. I realized that I could learn new things, and I ventured into gardening. My sister is a very insightful and a thoughtful person, and she said that this is common for accomplished people. You reach a point in your career where you reach mastery, and embracing a new venture or trying to acquire a new skillset is important for that personal renewal. I think this is why I became Dr. Plastic Picker in my 40s.

Today will be bag #340 and I am commited to getting to bag #500. This blogging Dr. Plastic Picker journey has been unexpectedly about personal growth and renewal, but at it’s heart it’s still about the plastic pollution on the beach. The stretch of beach I clean does seem cleaner. I see more litter-pickers around in general. But there is plastic on the beach every day without fail. So I continue on. I’ve salvaged now #71 items this month, and in total #1355 things rescued from the ocean and redeployed into use. I’ve also saved a lot of money in this process! I’ve spent money too during this environmental journey. I wanted to calculate out today the major expenditures and major financial savings I’ve gained in the last year. This is just for fun, plus I needed a blog post to add to my Physician Personal Finance Page, in case Crispydoc stops by to check! I’m on his blog roll and I get a trickle of traffic from his blog. I’m trying to get physicians to wake up to the environmental crisis – so this is an important part of my mission. Plus I’m going to put it in a table. Tables always look more personal finance bloggy anyway.

SHOW ME THE BENJAMINS:

How Much Does This Cost? How Much Did I Save?

Expenditure $$ Benjamins Savings $$ Benjamins
Domain Fee $50 Rayban Womens Sunglasses $185
Reusable Bags $1054 Portable Speaker $100
AAP Fee $35 Oklahoma State Nice Hoodie $30
Aerobin 400 Composter $149 Homemade Vinegar $4
Intern AAP-CA1 Meeting Fee $15 *Retreat for Physician Wellness $1225 
Gardening Supplies $200 *Harvard MD Leadership Development $9500
    Found Money $8
    Zip Ties $5
    *Fee for Marie Kondo to Tidy Your Life $100 an hour
    SD Padres Sandals $45
    Reusable Face Masks $10
    Mens Shirt $15
    iPhone Charger $20
    Dog Toys $20
    Succulent Cuttings $25
    No Early Retirement (12Y) 1.8M in retirement**
TOTAL $1503 TOTAL

$11,292 or 1.8M+

*did not need since I fixed my own burnout and revitalized my own career

**it’s actually much more but I can’t detail why

Wow that was really fun.  So the moral of the story is saving my career was the most cost saving adventure, and not having to pay someone else to teach me about physician wellness or leadership development is important.  Indeed, I want to become a Fellowship Director.  I have so many Harvard degrees, I really don’t need to pay Harvard another 10,000 for a measly leadership certificate.  Now really, who is scamming who here? I also have found more than $500 worth of things on the beach that we actually use.  The remaining items were recycled or donated.  

For over the last decade, I had not really committed to my career and always in a self defensive manner discussed retiring early.  This is common for a lot of physicians in burnout and not uncommon among my colleagues.  But seriously now, I am happy as a physician and as a middle manager.  Enjoying clinical practice again has been a true gift.  My goal had been to make it just to 15 years at our HMO, but now I know that I will stay at least to early retirement.  Because I learned that if I love the earth, I can make more impactful changes in greening healthcare from within than outside.  

So that is the power of FISE: Financially Independent to Save the Earth.  I also have been thinking a lot about buying a condo in San Francisco for fun, but it doesn’t really make much sense.  Knowing the realities of climate change is important.  I am hopeful we will be able to mitigate the worse of it, but I look at real estate realistically.  There will be sea level rise.  I was corresponding with a good set of friends who are active in the climate world and are scientists.  There are definitely good flood maps of San Francisco.  Scientist husband of my friend said “The bigger issue I think about for the near term is the liquefaction zone under the financial district.  The sea wall running from the ballpark to the Embarcadero is something like 80% structurally deficient.  The land behind it is all full of sand, so a bad earthquake could make all that land flow like a liquid out toward the bay – destroying all the building in the liquefaction zone.”  It sounds like the houses on the hills should be fine.  Likely San Francisco will be able to weather it, but there are going to be serious issues.  So being Dr. Plastic Picker and having good friends share their knowledge, just saved me 800,000 which was what I was thinking of spending on a condo there.  I’ll save that money and look elsewhere.  So I guess this journey has saved us well over $2.5 milllion dollars. Wow, that’s FISE. 

Stay tuned, we are growing beets and radishes!!!  They are supposed to be super hard to mess up.  Organic beet root powder is $25 a bottle and in plastic! What a scam people!!!  I bought the beet seeds for less than $2 and I get to watch them grow everyday.  We can make the tops into pesto and eat the beets.  I am growing beets because if I incorporate them into our vegan burgers it makes it look more like burgers.  Stay tuned!

Gardening Pic #2.
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