My April 2019 income came out to $20,675, mostly because I received a lump sum pay for my consulting work for the past 3 months.

My historical income reports.

My historical spending reports.

April 2019 Income

As a self-employed and independent contracting physician my income is all over the place. They say that it’s really hard to budget when your income isn’t steady; I disagree. What does budgeting have to do with the frequency of your income? For that matter, what does your spending have anything to do with your income?

Budgeting has matured and using a software like YNAB it’s easy to budget whether your money comes in every 2 weeks or 2x a year.

1. Just Answer Income – $700

This is the income for the previous month, March, but I get it deposited at the beginning of the following month. I really didn’t spend much time on JA in March because I was busy moving to Spain.

In my most recent podcast episode I go over my April 2019 JA work and income.

2. Rental Income – $1,100

I wasn’t planning on renting my Portland condo out but a friend of a friend needed a place to stay. We signed a week-to-week contract for $275 per week.

My HOA requires a minimum 30-day stay, so that was the only stipulation in the contract.

3. Oscar Telemedicine – $4,410

I got my last few paycheck from Oscar this month. They couldn’t let me continue working on their platform because I wasn’t board certified with ABMS. I have written about my board certification with NBPAS before.

DialCare Telemedicine – $0

I’ve done some consults for them but they weren’t in this pay cycle. I expect payment for them during the next pay period.

4. Healthcare Consulting – $14,464

I love the shit out of my consulting work. This has been one of the best gigs I’ve come across. I got paid in a lump sum for Jan/Feb/Mar.

5. Clarity.fm – $0

I haven’t gotten any consults from clarity.fm and there are a few good reasons as to why. I’ll discuss all that below.

6. Blog Products – (-$8)

I had one sale this month which also happened to be my first return. The person who purchased the Teladoc tutorial said that it didn’t offer them any value.

I listed it as (-$8) because when I refund the money I still have to pay the transaction cost.

Income Overview

I’m incredibly pleased with my April 2019 income.

Telemedicine

I am totally bummed that I will no longer have any Oscar telemedicine income. I was told that the insurers require their California physicians to be ABMS board certified in order to properly reimburse the medical groups.

DialCare is the only other telemedicine company which I have a contract with. Their volumes are picking up so I’m hoping to do a little more for them until my own telemedicine company takes off.

I started my own telemedicine company, MHC, using the VSee platform. So far, so good. But I haven’t decided what I want to do with it. I’m doing some marketing and have done only 1 consult. But stay tuned, I have some ideas which I’ll write about soon.

Healthcare Consulting

My main client and I work really well together. I make around $5,000 from them every month for the time I spend with them.

My other client and I were negotiating a new reimbursement rate right when my California Medical Board stuff happened which brought it all to a halt. With that resolved, I’ve given them a tight deadline to accept my retainer offer.

I can’t tell you guys how important it has been for me to be able to earn an income regardless of my licensure status. Ironically, the month when I got my license suspended by the Oregon Medical Board is the month I got a $10k consulting offer for 1 week of healthcare consulting work.

Clarity.fm

I don’t like the clarity.fm platform. I’m moving away from it so I’m not advertising it as much. I guess I should write a whole post about that.

I get emails daily from physicians who are want to learn more about the things I’ve dabbled in. I can usually give them a good one-liner and point them towards the right posts. The rest I steer towards my clarity.fm profile so that I get reimbursed for my time. I think there is a better way of doing this … something I’m working on.

Blog Products

I enjoy making the tutorials and online courses. Usually when I mention them on a specific podcast episode or post, I get a sale.

They don’t require a lot of work to make so it’s an easy effort on my part. Marketing them is key but I am less motivated to do that part. I figure it will just become part of my “brand” – whatever the fuck that means.

Rental Income

Real estate has a high carrying cost – or operating expenses, or whatever you want to call it. Even if my Portland condo sat empty, it would cost me nearly $500/month just to own it.

Fortunately, I can pay for an entire year’s carrying costs by renting it out for 1-2 months. I get a much higher rent when renting it out short-term but I could also rent it long-term and enjoy a decent rent.

Income Taxes

I have decided to not pay any estimated taxes this year. I’m setting that tax amount aside and tacking it on to my emergency fund. I’m not fully convinced that I’m done dealing with the Oregon Medical Board and would rather pay the tax penalty and, in return, have access to more cash.

All the income I listed above is pre-tax. I’m managed to create the kind of lifestyle where the majority of my spending is business related. That means I can write off the majority of my spending against my income. This reflected nicely in my 2017 and 2018 income taxes.

Looking Ahead, May 2019

I’ll continue to have my consulting income and Just Answer income. Can’t anticipate and major changes to either of these sources, though, that’s always a possibility.

I’ll spend this month peddling the blog products a little more and hopefully publish my newest one – ‘Faster Telemedicine Visits’.

I will also continue to earn rental income from the Portland condo. It’s already listed, though kept inactive, on AirBnb in case I want to continue earning money from it. I haven’t decided on that yet and will capitalize on it if I need the income.

Finally, and not least of all, I have a little over $200k invested in index funds and ETF’s. I haven’t yet accessed that money. Technically, I could spend down $500-800/month from these investments and it should last me several decades.

Net Worth Update

From the graph above you can see that my investments are earning me a little over $2,000 per month – the blue line. While my spending is somewhere around $1,500 per month.

I like the trend that I’m seeing; the passive income from my investments is going up while my spending is going down.

My total net worth is somewhere around $900,000. I have no debt at this time.

$180k of this $900k is my Portland condo which is earning me a good income right now. The value of the condo is hard to pinpoint and rather unimportant.

The income stream from my investments is more important to me than the value of the underlying assets. Not that the value is irrelevant, but I care more about the cash flow.