Drs. Moghaddampour & Mattison (2026)

11/11/2025

Calling on all my independent contractors to provide financial wisdom!

Braden is starting his job and part of that is taking call at local hospitals. So he is going to be a 1099 contractor and of course there is a new set of rules to learn.

These are things I read on a few different sites. Essentially the main takeaways were what I posted in the slides. If you could leave your thoughts if you have had experience with this / tips you wish you would have known, that would be great!

09/10/2022

Things I’ve been thinking about as the end of the year gets closer:⠀
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- I am not sure if it’s inflation or the multitude of things we’ve been having to buy, but it always feels like we have less money then before. We started contributing to our 403b each month 15% and it’s about $600 per month from each of our paychecks. So that coupled with conferences, house expenses, different flights, and booking housing in San Diego for our refractive course it feels as if we are constantly feeling the money squeeze! ⠀
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- the beginning of 2023 will bring student loan payments most likely :( I’m thinking we will stop contributing to our 403bs while we pay our loans and work toward maxing out our Roth IRAs. Then once our Roth IRAs are maxed out we will go back to contributing to at least one of our 403bs. ⠀
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- we are having to use around $6,000 from our emergency fund for our roof that had a huge hole under the solar panels. We are guessing that hole was probably there for a while and was missed on the house inspection when we bought the house. (The solar panels we inherited with the house and it’s a lease - nothing but heartache from them). So now we also are going to need to replenish that money. This one I’m less worried about because we also have a taxable account if things got desperate ⠀
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- someone asked me recently why even bother saving during residency when pretty soon we will have more money as an attending. Reason one is because money saved now allows you more time in the market for compound interest to work for you. Reason two is personal finance is more of an emotional game with yourself. Like with anything, we can always say “someday” and never do it. Practicing in residency sets you up for success and good habits for when you’re an attending ⠀
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Anybody else having financial woes? Please share so we can commiserate together ❤️⠀
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22/08/2022

Photo dump of life happenings
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1st photo: Dr. Bowes is one of our wonderful attendings and is retiring this September to Costa Rica. Pura vida! I got to operate with him on his last OR day ❤️ he is a great teacher and we are very thankful for him. Our county hospital will be depleted both of his presence and of candy when he leaves us for beautiful beaches ⠀
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2nd photo: Each year our program director gives us a lecture on how to set up the phaco machine (the machine for cataract surgery). Here we are all together and happy ⠀
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3rd photo: Another photo with Dr. Bowes. You never take enough photos until you realize your time is short. The board behind us is how we keep track of who is next. Sometimes our techs will erase us before we get to it and I always feel slightly put out because that’s my favorite part 😂⠀
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4th photo: our amazing cornea and glaucoma attendings / cornea fellow performing a combined open sky cataract surgery, Ahmed valve, penetrating transplant. It’s not often we all are in the OR so they let me take a photo to memorialize the event. My coresident and I got to throw some sutures on the PK so that was a great time. ⠀
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Right now I’m on my 50/50 block where I share time between one of our county hospitals and Loma Linda. This is the year where we get to operate more which is really great. ⠀
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Braden right now is on pediatric ortho and senior call. We haven’t seen each other much lately between me being at county / helping our first years with call and him operating / taking call. ⠀
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Now we are almost to September at least my call will be getting a lot better! ⠀
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Here’s to our fourth year of residency! ❤️ ⠀
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27/05/2022

What does $10,000 in loan forgiveness mean?⠀⠀
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It means a little less than 4% of our loan would be forgiven. So you get excited at first 🥳 but also get underwhelmed by how little it pays off and overwhelmed by how much there is 😂⠀⠀
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It means it would cover interest that will accrue for the year on our loans, so potentially when I graduate we will have zero interest and just principal to pay down. ⠀⠀
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It means loan interest will resume August 31, 2022 so we now get to decide if paying down our loan is worth the guarantee 4% return (which is the interest on our loan with the REPAYE subsidy) versus the potential return of the market. ⠀⠀
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So many possibilities! Looking forward to hearing President Biden’s announcement. From the sounds of it $10,000 will be forgiven for singles who make under $150,000 and for married couples who made under $300,000. ⠀⠀
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We will see what the future holds! ⠀⠀
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Are you considering paying down your loans over investing in the market when the student loan interest freeze ends? ⠀⠀
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Comment below! ⠀
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28/04/2022

Which platform is better for opening a Roth IRA?⠀
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The question of where to open your Roth IRA is one of the first steps to opening it! ⠀
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Options include: Vanguard, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Wealthfront, Betterment and the list goes on. ⠀
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Prior to a few years ago, each trade you made charged a fee. So Vanguard had been better to go with because they had a discounted trading fee for when you bought their ETFs or mutual funds (which have low expense ratio fees). Now that trading costs are minimal - this becomes less of an issue. ⠀
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Personally, I opened a Vanguard account initially but then the app and platform was not user friendly so I switched to TD Ameritrade. Thus, I have around $3000 in Vanguard and the rest in TD Ameritrade. This is just to say you can switch platforms if you wanted to it’s just not easy to transfer them I don’t think. ⠀
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Other points about the other platforms:⠀
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Charles Schwab - is a very good platform with lots of information and good customer service. They actually bought TD Ameritrade so they are essentially under one umbrella and will merge in a few years. ⠀
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Wealthfront / Betterment - have robo advisors for if you want effortless investing. They have a lot of options that are for target based investing so you put in your retirement date and it creates a portfolio for you. Over time it adjust the portfolio from one with more risk to less risky over time depending on your retirement date. ⠀
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Essentially, the hardest part is picking! They are all good options. If you want more information just google “Best Roth IRA accounts” and there are plenty of articles to read. ⠀
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Of note, the most important step is knowing that after you put your money in your Roth IRA you have to assign it to an investment. This is key!! Otherwise it’s just a bank account. ⠀
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Hope this was helpful! Which platform do you use and would you recommend it? ⠀
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16/04/2022

When he uses 8-0 nylon and says he is thinking of you ❤️⠀
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Happy birthday to the love of my life⠀
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It’s always been you. From sophomore year of high school when you were five feet tall and I was a foot taller you made me crazy. ⠀
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From college, to med school, to residency you have been my constant. You inspire me each day when you continually work as hard as you do and keep a positive attitude. ⠀
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You are witty and keep me laughing even when I don’t know it’s what I need. ⠀
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You tell me to dream bigger so I do. ⠀
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I can’t wait to continue to build our life together. ⠀
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You are my Gilbert Blythe and are SO COOL. ⠀
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Love always ❤️❤️ ⠀
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07/04/2022

When ophthalmologists advocate, patients and physicians win!⠀
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This year my co-resident and I were Advocacy Ambassadors at the Mid Year Forum!⠀
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This is a time when ophthalmologists from across the country come to Washington D.C. to advocate for issues which directly affect patient care and health care disparities. ⠀
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During the meetings, we are talking about prior authorization and how it harms patient’s access to vision saving treatments, Medicare cuts, and research funding for ophthalmology. ⠀
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These issues all have national impacts. It’s been really enlightening to see how critical it is for physicians to be advocates. ⠀
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This photo is with part of the California ambassadors from different California ophthalmology programs. ⠀
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It’s a privilege to advocate for our patients! ⠀
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07/04/2022

What do you do with $4400?⠀
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The student loan interest freeze is extended until August 31! 🥳🥳⠀
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That means the $600 we would have put toward interest each month is no longer part of the budget! ⠀
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This four month extension saves us $4,400 in interest that would have accumulated on our loans. ⠀
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That brings the grand total of money from interest saved by the pause to over $30,000 between myself and Braden! ⠀
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Overall, this hasn’t really changed our financial plan other than that we are now able to max out our Roth IRAs sooner for the year. ⠀
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As of right now, we have put $9,600 toward our Roth IRAs for the year. We are hoping to max it out hopefully by the end of this month! ⠀
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I share our numbers not for any other reason then to be transparent. I find people say it’s not possible to save in residency - so part of my purpose is to show that you can. Braden and I don’t have children and have a combined resident income which helps for rent. I hope this is helpful. ⠀
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How are you going to use the unexpected bonus of not having to pay student loan interest? Comment below!⠀
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26/02/2022

Reflections on turning 30 ⠀⠀
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Sitting here writing this I feel tired. I’m on my county rotation which is very busy. I’m slightly stressed about call tonight (because I hate call and nothing can change this regardless of the fact I know more now). We have our OKAPs coming up which is our standardized test we take each year for ophthalmology. I’m also still trying to get better at cataract surgery as this last week it felt like I went backward in time in terms of surgical skill. ⠀⠀
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Positives are my husband, co residents, and family keep me sane. My patients post op day 1 were seeing 20/30 which was exciting and one patient said this was the most clear he has seen in his life 🥳. I just submitted the documents to get a full medical license for California (instead of a training one). ⠀
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Turning 30 feels slightly meh. It’s hard because I spent my entire 20s working toward becoming a doctor, and now an ophthalmologist. Often times I look at people who are “living their lives” and ask what the heck was I thinking in signing up for this. Even though people tell you all the time it will be worth it, that you’re helping people, that you’re changing lives, it still is exhausting. But we just keep rallying 💃🏻💁🏻‍♀️ ⠀⠀
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My dad said to me when I was young if you work hard the first third of you life, you will get to reap the rewards the last two thirds. Here’s to looking forward to the decade where I hope that becomes true ❤️ ⠀⠀
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05/02/2022

Home mortgage update! ⠀
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We refinanced our home mortgage in March of 2021. ⠀
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We went from a 4.625% interest rate to a 2.625% interest rate. ⠀
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With the closing costs added back in, we ended up adding $9,000 back on to our mortgage principle. This essentially put us back to our original principle where we had started when we bought the house a year and a half prior. ⠀
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This month marks us getting back down to that same principle where we were before we refinanced! It took ten months compared to a year and a half with a higher interest rate on our mortgage. ⠀
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To break it down more: ⠀
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We went from paying down a little less than $400 each month toward our mortgage to now paying $600 toward our mortgage. We also went from paying $2,200 a month to paying $1,850 each month on our mortgage. ⠀
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Just wanted to post our progress in case anyone was unsure if refinancing their mortgage was worth the hassle. ⠀
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For us it definitely was! ⠀
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Have you refinanced your home? How much has it helped you so far? ⠀
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Also, for all the people in the same place are you planning to sell your place when you move or rent it out? Does the mortgage interest rate play into your decision? ⠀
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20/11/2021

What is contract negotiation and why care? ⠀⠀
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When I was at the AAO – our Academy ophthalmology conference this last weekend, did an amazing presentation on contract negotiation! ⠀⠀

This is a topic I hope to learn more about in the future – but it had such great points I wanted to bring them up in this post. ⠀⠀
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1. Know the basics of a salary structure – I think this a great subject for a future post. Essentially, there is a base salary with a bonus that is often based on 25-35% on collections that is 2-3x over base salary. So, then your actual salary is your base pay with the bonus (which is based on collections). ⠀⠀
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2. Knowing what you want – an important point was knowing what you find “non negotiable”. In the discussions, things to think about were benefits (insurance, retirement contributions), sick leave, vacation days, mal practice and does it include tail covereage, start date, partnership potential, and professional expenses ⠀⠀
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3. Knowing what the average salary in the area is – looking at salary.com or maybe reaching out to fellow people who left and/or are in the area to see if what you are being paid is reasonable. ⠀⠀
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4. Knowing how to look over the financials of the company and if your compensation makes sense (I was surprised by this – but I guess this is a thing!) ⠀⠀
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5. Having a contract lawyer in your specialty look over your contract. The lawyer who was speaking says his resident/fellow rate was around $300-500 an hour based on time spent reviewing the contract. ⠀⠀
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These were just some of the high yield points! Brings a lot more ideas for future posts because I realized I wasn’t familiar with most of the concepts discussed. One of my attendings mentioned how its important to know these things so when you first start out you don’t get fleeced. ⠀⠀
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I still have a year and half to go at least! So will try to shed more light on these things as the time comes. ⠀⠀
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Is this a topic you thought much on? If you’ve already done this, where did you go to learn more about contract negotiation for physicians?

11/11/2021

First financial presentation coming this weekend!⠀⠀
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Feeling very excited to give a presentation on personal finance basics at AAO! ⠀⠀
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It will be on Sunday during the Young Ophthalmologist program at the Morial Concention Center, room 252-254. ⠀⠀
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My presentation is titled “Gen Z - Don’t fall for all the Hype” and it will be at 12:15 right after the amazing .eyebal presentation on discovering your side gig. ⠀⠀
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It will be on the basics of personal finance and why to not be swayed by your peers to put all your investments in the latest cryptocurrency or trending “goldmine”.⠀⠀
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Looking forward to a wonderful weekend! Stop by and say hello!! ❤️❤️⠀
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Drs. Moghaddampour & Mattison

11/11/2025

09/10/2022

22/08/2022

27/05/2022

28/04/2022

16/04/2022

07/04/2022

07/04/2022

26/02/2022

05/02/2022

20/11/2021

11/11/2021

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