The Three-Fund Physician Portfolio

Three funds, one hour a year, $68,494 kept

You titrate pressors and read your own films, so a thirty-fund retirement menu should be easy. It is not, and it is not designed to be. Hospital 403(b) menus mix a few cheap index funds into dozens of costlier active funds, and the difference hides in a footnote number: the expense ratio. Across the industry, equity mutual funds offered for sale carry a simple average expense ratio of 1.10%, while flagship total-market index funds charge 0.04% or less (ICI, 2024–2025 data). On $10,000 contributed per year for 25 years at an assumed 7% return, choosing a 0.85% fund over a 0.04% fund costs $68,494 — money that compounds for the fund company instead of for you. This module builds the alternative: a three-fund portfolio — total US stock market, total international stock market, total bond market — that you can assemble from almost any menu, fund automatically from each paycheck, and rebalance once a year between patients. The design goal is not maximum sophistication. It is a portfolio that keeps working during the months you forget it exists.