5 ms·
> Keith Baldwin, a 44-year-old surgeon who lives outside New Bedford, Mass., saved $177,000 during the past decade. Last year he took his savings and bought USD
by dubswithus 4y ago
> Keith Baldwin, a 44-year-old surgeon who lives outside New Bedford, Mass., saved $177,000 during the past decade. Last year he took his savings and bought USD Coin, putting it in a crypto account that paid a 9% annual yield.
A surgeon saved 177k over 10 years? Something else might be going on here.
- gowld 4y agoHe also bought a mansion and a few cars and divorced and gambled a lot in Vegas and online casinos and hot stock tips? What's amazing is that this person put his name in the WSJ as a gullible fool who can now be targeted by spearphishing scams (including that Crypto Recovery scam that has was even spamming HN recently) and shunned by his peers and potential clients.
- Tao3300 4y agoYeah I would not want this guy getting near me with anything sharp if I could avoid it.
- dehrmann 4y agoEspecially for the surgeon, why would you volunteer to be interviewed for this? Unless you actually have $2M net worth and it's a big troll, you're not going to show your friends you were in the WSJ. You want your patients to know?
- openknot 4y agoIt's probably lifestyle inflation (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lifestyle-inflation.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lifestyle-inflation.asp), where spending increased in proportion or in excess to rises in income. A surgeon in the US wrote about colleagues who exhibited this behaviour in a blog (source: https://www.kevinmd.com/2019/03/why-many-doctors-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.kevinmd.com/2019/03/why-many-doctors-live-payche...).
- nmfisher 4y agoMy surgeon brother told me that many older surgeons can't "afford" to retire, often because they lost loads of money in investment schemes (and probably coupled with an unwillingness to accept a cutback in lifestyle). You probably lose a lot of basic savvy when you're insulated from "the real world" for decade after decade (undergrad, medical training, residency, surgical training, high paid private consultancy, etc).
- alphabettsy 4y agoBeing a surgeon isn’t equivalent to wise with money. Many Ponzi schemes have preyed on high income individuals and doctors of all sorts seem to be popular targets.
- Balgair 4y agoI think that's a tactic that Madoff and others used explicitly. Targeting people that think they are smarter than the rest. So lawyers, surgeons, engineers, management types, SWEs, etc. The social shame and cognitive dissonance of the obvious fraud leads to them to continue investing to 'save face' and to continue to think themselves smarter than the rest of us. "Is it an obvious fraud? No, I'm too smart to fall for that. Therefore, I'll double down, again" You can see it all over crypto today. The fun part is that until a higher authority like the government steps in, we're going to have a lot of these schemes online for a long time. Herbalife and the MLMs use the tactic, crypto is just another; the future is ripe for people that use Madoff's tactics. (Also, there must be a specific name for this tactic, and I would love to know what that it. But google isn't really coming up with anything for me. If you know, please comment and let me know? Thanks!)
- dehrmann 4y agoIt also feels like a surgeon should have known better. Not because this is something he studied, but he's obviously halfway intelligent, so he has less of an excuse for not knowing better.
- strikelaserclaw 4y agoit seems primal desires in humans such as greed, lust, envy seem to shut off the rational brain centers in many people.
- dehrmann 4y agoGood point, and I bet that's what happened, but it's interesting that he didn't really own his greed, he's just fishing for sympathy.