January 2019 Income

I started getting lazy and haven’t been tracking my income as much since December. Before writing this post I had to go through all my income sources and start a new spreadsheet for 2019. That’s why I haven’t done an update since December. So let’s get down to the details for my January 2019 income.

My total income for January was $6,282. All this income is pre-tax and income I earn as a sole proprietor. If you want to read more about why I am a sole proprietor rather than an LLC or S-corp, click on this post.

Just for shits, here are my previous year incomes for the same month as I’ve documented on this website and some which I had to fish out:

• January 2018 – $10,503
• January 2017 – $7,785
• January 2016 – $24,554
• January 2015 – $12,728
• January 2014 – $21,373

January 2019 Income

I had 3 sources of income for this money in January: JustAnswer, Healthcare Consulting, and selling products on this website. I’ll go through each individually and I’ll finish with taxes and looking ahead for 2019.

1. JustAnswer – $3,187

JA remains a faithful way for me to earn money as a physician without having to diagnose or treat patients. I love this role as a medical expert because there is less liability and the income is rather easy.

I probably spent about 25 hours doing this. That’s an hourly income of $127. When I’m more efficient with my time then I can usually get this up to $150 or $175/hour. For example, as I’m writing this blog post I’m replying to some JustAnswer questions.

JustAnswer is great because I can do the work from anywhere in the world. I don’t have to do any phone calls, though with phone calls my income would be even higher. All I need is a laptop and a board certification – I don’t even have to have an active medical license. You can check out my tutorial on JA here.

2. Healthcare Consulting – $3,000

I haven’t actually gotten paid for this money yet. This is a monthly retainer with one of my healthcare consulting clients. I get this amount of money regardless of whether I’m working for them or not. In order to get paid out I have to contact HR but I usually just wait to get the paycheck every few months. Since I don’t need the money I’m in no rush to collect.

I did maybe 2 hours of work for this client in January so that puts me at $1,500 per hour. Cha-ching. If I work more than 10 hours a week then I get $75/hour. That’s the arrangement we have. I could have negotiated a $6,000 retainer but I didn’t want to be greedy, nor did I want to commit that much time to these guys.

You can read more about my healthcare consulting in various posts throughout this website. I have also created a tutorial for those who are interested in finding their first healthcare consulting client. The first person who emails me about this tutorial can have free access (email me before the end of today – 3/4/2019).

3. Educational Products – $95

I have been selling a few educational products on this website through the Shop Page. For some reason I really enjoy making these kinds of digital products so I’ll continue doing so. I have experimented with the pricing – almost all were set to $5-15. I am slowly going to raise the prices and add more products.

Income Taxes

I send in estimated taxes to the IRS and to the state of Oregon as a sole proprietor. Anytime you own your own business you are responsible for estimated taxes. I basically take 25% of what I earn and set it aside until it’s time to make a payment to the tax authorities.

The advantage of being a sole proprietor is that I can write a lot off against my income. Add to that my low household spending and I can write quite a lot off without worrying about any consequences. That includes:

• health insurance premiums
• cell phone
• home internet
• online subscriptions
• home office expenses (property tax, HOA, utilities)
• some travel expenses
• medical license
• medical board legal expenses

Looking Ahead to 2019

2019 will be interesting because I’m considering some new and exciting opportunities. It’s been 3 years since I retired and I’ve had a blast doing my own thing and spending my time the way I want. I have a few business opportunities which I might experiment with now that I’m done with all the medical board drama.

One option is to expand my health coaching business and dabble in some Direct Care medical practice models. I will be piloting the Vsee platform for telemedicine. I connected with the CEO of Vsee who was gracious to offer me this free service. It’s one of the most versatile of platforms so it’s fantastic that I get to test the shit out of it for the next year.

I will also be working for Oscar again. I’ve done a few shifts with them and, man, what a great telemedicine company to work for. They have a lot of different platforms that you have to learn and their workflows are intricate but they are a rather new company. Once you learn it all there is not much to it. They allow their physicians to do telemedicine through phone calls and chat based.

My guess is that I’ll make money in 2019 from the following sources:

• Telemedicine (Oscar, DialCare)
• JustAnswer
• Selling products
• Healthcare consulting
• Consulting with my readers through clarity.fm
• Possibly some in-person urgent care work (more on this later)