Brian P. Kelley, MD

Why I wrote The Income Variable

I spent most of my young adult life broke and mildly terrified about money. Once I knew better, I started to read. I read everything I could get my hands on, especially after I finished training. That's honestly too late, but better late than never. Personal finance turned into a hobby that never switched off. By the time I was an attending, I was one of the people other doctors, nurses, or APPs cornered at the coffee machine to ask about their 401(k) or whether they could buy that ski house. My wife Angela is also a physician, and between us and our two kids, getting it right stopped being just a fun exercise.

What pushed me from casual advice-giver to writing a book was watching the ground move under our feet. I do reconstructive surgery and I've published on AI in our field going back a few years. I wasn't exactly surprised by the technology but I hadn't seen anyone lay out clearly how AI actually reaches our paychecks. If you think about it superficially, you'd think a doctor would be about as safe as anything. That's partly true. AI doesn't replace you or me. It works on the pieces that set our pay. That includes things like how much your work is in demand, who refers to you, how many people can do your job, what you get paid for it, and how much of your time gets eaten away. Some specialties sit more exposed than others, and I thought it would be useful to figure out a map of where we sit.

So when I wrote the book, I wanted to hand it to a colleague. Most of what you know from the White Coat Investor or Bogleheads stays the same. I'm just expanding the part they didn't expect. When the books were written, their authors couldn't have anticipated what would happen to the income side as the tools and policies changed around us. I wrote it for physicians and for the nurse practitioners, PAs and CRNAs working next to us too. The same factors hit all of us. Mostly I wrote it because if my own kids ever go into medicine, I want them walking in already knowing how the money works.

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Disclaimer:

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‍Brian P. Kelley, MD, is a physician and author. He does not provide financial, investment, tax, legal, insurance, or medical advice through this website. All content, calculators, and companion tools are provided for general educational purposes only. They do not account for your complete individual circumstances and should not be treated as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any investment or to take any specific financial action.

Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance, hypothetical results, examples, calculations, and projections do not guarantee future results. Laws, tax rules, reimbursement policies, source data, and financial assumptions may change or may not apply to your situation. Consult appropriately qualified professionals before acting.

Use of this website does not create a physician-patient, adviser-client, attorney-client, or other professional relationship. The views expressed are Brian’s own and do not necessarily represent those of his employers or affiliated institutions.