My total income for August 2018 was $9,791. This is the same month that I served my medical license suspension.

I spent quite a bit of time dealing with medical board stuff – it’s a draining process because it’s not necessary. Fortunately, I had income coming in from work in July and I got a lucrative and timely consulting gig.

Every month I publish all my monthly income reports and monthly expenses reports on the UCC blog. This should give you an idea of what’s possible if you are interested in my chaotic yet fun lifestyle.

August 2018 Income

The majority of the income came from the consulting work which took 10 days and was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about data mining, statistics, epidemiology, machine learning, and computer programming.

Consulting Work – $5,000

I earned $5,000 doing consulting work. It was a 10-day long gig and I am hoping to get a few more hours of consulting income throughout the rest of the year.

I was hoping for 2 other consulting gigs to come through but one of them fell through and I am waiting to hear back from the other.

Telemedicine #1 – $207

This particular telemedicine company told me that I can’t practice with them until they investigate my medical license suspension.

They were professional and said that if the matter is benign then they are happy to reinstate my account. It’s a good telemed company so it would be nice to continue working with them.

JustAnswer – $1,661

I will resume answering questions for JA. This is a simple platform and though it’s not considered medical work, I decided to play it safe and haven’t done any JA in August.

Some of you have been trying JA and have shared your experience with me, thank you for that. It is definitely a competitive platform and you need to click on the question right away. But if you search on my blog, you’ll come across posts where I’ve talked about getting the most out of JA.

Telemedicine #2 – $2,923

I love this particular telemedicine platform and for very little time, I was earning a high income. It’s a niche telemedicine website and, once again, I can’t share their name. Believe me, it fucking sucks that I can’t because I really want you guys to try these telemedicine gigs.

I can tell you that it’s a telemedicine company specializing in a particular population – middle-aged men. You can figure out the rest.

I have also reported my medical board investigation to them and they have decided to run another background check on me. No idea why.

On one hand, it’s demoralizing that I can work very hard for a company and produce great results and have such a minor situation with the medical board discredit me so easily.

That said, if I was responsible for a telemedicine company I wouldn’t hire someone like myself on, nor reinstate them. The risk is too high. Once you have your medical license suspended you pose a high risk. I can think of so many scenarios.

Taxes

All this income is pre-tax so I usually set 20% of the money aside for taxes.

I’ll talk to a CPA friend to see what I can do with the 30 days of income loss. If there is any way for me to represent that on my taxes then I could recoup some losses but I don’t see any way of doing that.

I have been filing taxes as a sole proprietor for the past 2 years. This has been a potent tax-saving strategy for me – I only paid 12% in taxes in 2017.

Looking Ahead to September

I figure that I’ll take it easy this month. But I did get credentialed with a new telemedicine company during August and I’m fully on board and can start seeing patients. They know about my medical license suspension and didn’t have any problems with it after I explained the situation.

I’ll do some more JA stuff online.

A part of me wants to never do anything clinical again and another part misses it. I’ve tried to strike a balance by looking into getting my medical license in another country but that’ll be a long-term plan. Maybe I could practice a few months in the US and a few months overseas?

I had to cancel a few calrity.fm consults because I wasn’t sure if it would violate my medical board license suspension agreement. I’m hoping to pick that back up because it was a good income for me last month.

The health startup I consulted for in August will need me until the end of the year. They don’t quite know how many hours so we’ll figure that as we go along.

Net Worth Update

Over the past 2 years I have been a little less interested in my net worth as a way to secure a safe retirement. I have gotten increasingly preoccupied with finding something to do that I never want to retire from.

I heard about this concept for the first time from Joshua Sheats and it has resonated well with me. It may not be the right thing for everyone but I enjoy working and being productive so that’s what I will focus on for the next few years, finding something that I want to do indefinitely.

That said, I still love the shit out of my money, so here is my net worth update for August 2018. Sorry my dear medical board, not only did I earn more money in August than I did in July, but my net worth climbed even higher.