The Decision Filter
Five questions for a physician financial decision that has two genuinely defensible answers and cannot be settled by arithmetic.
What it is
The Decision Filter is Financial Fellowship's set of five questions for a physician financial decision that has two genuinely defensible answers.
The Filter exists for decisions where the math does not settle it. Two job offers. Forgiveness or refinancing. A partnership track or the comfortable seat. Modeling both paths in more detail produces two spreadsheets and no decision, because the reason the decision was hard was never arithmetic.
The five questions
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1
What am I actually choosing between?
Both options stated precisely, in one sentence each. A surprising number of hard decisions get easier here, because one of the two options turns out not to exist as stated.
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2
What does each path cost if I am wrong?
Not which is likely to be better. What the downside looks like in each direction, and whether the two downsides are the same size. They almost never are.
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3
Which one can I undo?
A reversible choice and a permanent one do not deserve equal deliberation. Reversibility is worth more than most households price it at.
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4
What does each path do to my time?
Every financial decision is also a time decision, and the time cost is the one that goes unpriced. More money for more hours is a trade, not a raise.
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5
Which answer can I explain to myself in five years?
The test of whether the decision matches what the household actually values, asked plainly enough that it cannot be answered with a spreadsheet.
Where it shows on the show
It applies when a household has run the numbers twice and the numbers keep coming out close. Close numbers are the signal that the decision is about something other than numbers.
It applies to job offers, which are the most common physician use. Compensation, location, call burden, culture, partnership path, and coverage all move at once, and no single figure captures the trade.
It applies to the student loan fork, where forgiveness and refinancing both have real cases. It applies when two partners in a household disagree and both are right. It applies to any decision a household has been circling for more than a month.
Financial Health Assessment episodes built on the Decision Filter are listed here as they publish. Physician households can submit their own finances at financialfellowship.com/submit.
What it is not
It does not produce an answer and it does not tell a household which option to take. It produces a decision the household can explain to itself later, which is a different and more useful thing.
Takeaways
- Five questions for a decision with two defensible answers.
- The math does not settle it.
- It does not produce an answer. It produces a decision the household can explain later.
- Reversibility is worth more than most households price it at.
- Run the math first. Use the Filter when the numbers come out close.
Common questions
What are the five questions in the Decision Filter?
What am I choosing between, what does each path cost if I am wrong, which one can I undo, what does each path do to my time, and which answer can I explain to myself in five years.
Does the Decision Filter tell me which option to pick?
No. It structures the decision. The choice belongs to the household.
When should I use the Decision Filter instead of running the math?
Run the math first. Use the Filter when the math comes out close, which is the situation the Filter was built for.
Can two people use the Decision Filter together?
Yes, and separately first. Each person answers the five questions alone, then the answers get compared. The disagreement usually turns out to sit inside one specific question rather than the decision as a whole.