My July 2018 income will was $8,436. The majority of the income came from telemedicine work and the rest came from doing consultation calls. I’ll break it down below.
Income – July 2018
In total I had 5 sources of income and I probably spent, on average, 2 hours a day working for this income.
I’ve mentioned before that I can no longer reveal the names of the telemedicine companies because they are worried that their secrets will be revealed.
All of the income for July 2018 is pre-tax income which I earn as a sole proprietor.
Telemedicine #1 – $4,790
This first telemedicine company is the one I have been doing for the longest time. It’s text-based and I do it from my laptop or from my cell phone.
Most of you know which one this is. I serve more as a medical expert and don’t actually diagnose anyone and just offer insight into medical questions.
I have developed some really good techniques so I have no problem getting enough questions. I spend about 1.5 hours a day on this. Not continuously, but that’s what it comes out to in total.
I should add, I also do consultation work for them with a particular AI project and they pay me by having their engineers post questions to me and so I get paid for each question. I would say I made maybe $400 this month answering consultation questions which is included in the income above.
Telemedicine #2 – $525
This was the income from a telemedicine company for work I did in June. They will allow me to do work overseas but I am not sure if I am interested in doing it.
They provided me with my own laptop so all the work has to be done from that which I have brought to Spain with me.
It’s a great company and I love what they do. We’ll see what I’ll do after my license suspension is up.
This company pays by the hour and not per patient. I only did 4 hours of work and saw 2 patients. Easy money and I do enjoy the work.
Telemedicine #3 – $485
So this is funny. The medical director of this telemedicine company contacted me and asked me to remove their company name from my blog posts.
She was super nice about it and professional, so I obliged. Immediately after doing so I was no longer able to pick up shifts with them. I mean, why, seems petty. Transparency is a good thing. Secrets don’t last long and aren’t a good way to earn money.
Telemedicine #4 – $1,360
Right before leaving I did a bunch of telemedicine calls with this company. I wanted to have a little spending money from them since I cannot do telemedicine for this company abroad, either.
I won’t be doing any more work for them. I contacted this telemedicine company about my upcoming medical license suspension and they have essentially fired me. I am not to do any more patient calls for them moving forward for any state.
I would say I did maybe 7 hours of this and got about $25/patient.
Consultation Calls – $1,274
This has been my favorite!! I’ve been doing some of the calls through clarity.fm/DrMo and the rest through either Skype or Google Hangouts.
Midway through the month I bumped up my rates from $5/minute to $7.50/minute. I was aiming for somewhere around $100 for every 15 minutes of my time and it has worked out well so far.
I haven’t advertised it on any particular website but did a little word-of-mouth campaign. I emailed a gang of colleagues and friends in the personal finance space and told them what topics I will do consultation calls on.
Most people will email me first. I give them some answers and some blog links which I think should be more than enough to answer their questions. But some prefer to talk to me in order to shortcut the process – that’s where I make my money.
Taxes
Every income deposit I get, I deduct 20% for taxes and budget it towards my estimated tax payment using my budgeting software, YNAB.
Taxes were beautiful for 2017. I earned more per hour than ever before and paid less taxes than ever before. Thank you capitalism!
Well, and thank you bureaucracy because I will have a lot of room for tax write-offs this year with the medical board investigation stuff. I utilized my attorney heavily this money = $$$.
The income for the year up until now has been $70,000. I might slow it down a little for the rest of the year in order to optimize taxes. We’ll see.
Income for August 2018
Looking ahead towards August 2018, I should have some income coming in for work I’ve done this month. I also have some consultation calls scheduled for August.
I hope to do even more consultation calls. I anticipate another $500-$1,500 from that for the month.
30-Day License Suspension
Most importantly, I’ll have no income coming in because I cannot practice any medicine because of my medical license suspension. I can’t use my MD or doctor title for any lucrative purpose. The medical board was vague about it but my lawyer gave me some really good pointers.
Dr. Mo will serve his 30-day suspension starting next month. I’ll be a good boy, I promise.
Rental Income
My condo in Portland is sitting empty. I might rent it out if I decide to continue living in Spain. I am worried that the other states in which I’m licensed are going to want me to fly back for medical board investigation interrogations. That’s why I don’t want to make any decisions yet until things are more predictable.
AirBnb could fetch me an easy $2.2k for the month of August but with all the bad experiences I’ve had with AirBnb and the concept in general, I’m gonna hold off.
Net Worth – $870,000
My net worth is holding fairly steady in that $800k range.
My real estate has climbed up higher in value as another large apartment complex is getting build across the street. I won’t adjust the price for a few more months until things stabilize.
I am keeping most of my cash on the sidelines because I am thinking of investing in a new project which will need lots of cash. If I don’t go through with it then I’ll invest that cash into index funds.
I still continue to invest $1k/month into my private brokerage. I have an automatic $250/week deducted and invested using Vanguard’s automated investing feature. I do this because I want to maintain my investing habit.
4 replies on “Income – July 2018”
Dr. Mo,
Out of curiosity, what do you consult on?
I can’t say it’s been anything too specific. Every call has been with physicians except for a GI PA.
Everyone’s situation is a little different in the end people want more lifestyle, less stress about investing, more freedom to work when they want and a secure retirement.
So far nobody has called me who is burnt out – I really thought those would be the people who’d want to retire early.
A good amount of telemedicine questions. And people who want to start their own gigs.
No investing questions though most aren’t quite sure what they are invested in.
It’s like, “This is what I want and I don’t know how to get there, would you do this or do you think that is better?”
As expected, I have a good number of Kaiser people who don’t wanna work for Kaiser until age 60 and so they ask me about all the different retirement and benefits plans.
I’ll keep sharing with you guys the different questions I get which I sort of did in my last post about my average readership.
Really appreciate that you actually give your salary/wage in these posts. Makes those on the sidelines figure out if its worth it to get in.
Glad it helps out. I agree that the devil is in the details. I try to share as much as possible and it’s a shame that medicine is riddled with so much secrecy. From the telemedicine companies, to the medical boards, to our employers.