The Sunday Best is a collection of articles I’ve curated from the furthest reaches of the internet for your reading pleasure.

Every week, I scan hundreds of headlines, read dozens of posts, and bring you the best of the best to save you time and mental energy.

Financial Independence (FI) is a primary focus, but it’s an awfully broad topic. I tend to approach FI and early retirement from a fatFIRE perspective and through the lens of a physician, so expect to see those biases in the selected articles.

Related topics that have become recurrent themes include early retirement, selective frugality, tax issues, travel, physician issues, and of course, investing.

For more great articles, take a peek at The Sunday Best Archives. Now let’s get to the best… The Sunday Best!

 

 

 

Decisions made as you start your career can have a profound impact on your FI trajectory. The Physician Philosopher tells The Tale of Two Doctors: The First Paycheck.

 

Pete McPherson offers an alternative to frugality that can still save you money in the long run. The Do You Even Blogger guest posts at Budgets are Sexy. 13 “Buy It for Life” Items That Save Money and Bring Happiness.

 

You’ll likely be happier and wealthier if your marriage lasts a lifetime. Financial Samurai shares a sad story of a miserly millionaire and his unhappy spouse. It doesn’t have to be this way. If You Love Your Spouse, You’d Make Them Financially Independent.

 

Steveark lives his active Slightly Early Retirement life one season at a time. The Four Seasons of Life After Work.

 

Location independence isn’t quite as good as financial independence, but it offers a lot of the benefits. From Money Knock, Remote Work: A Viable Alternative to FIRE?

 

I made the transition to remote work several years ago. It required a change of vocation, but now life is more like a permanent vacation. 6 Years of Physician on FIRE: Blog Stats and the Year in Review.

 

After more than four years and a dozen investments, I’ve had good experiences with real estate, but I fully expect to take a loss at some point. The White Coat Investor shows you what can go wrong and how to protect yourself. How Real Estate Investments Go Bad.

 

Dr. Peter Kim shows us how to do some basic due diligence on real estate investments. Passive Income MD Podcast #95: Ask The Right Questions Before You Invest ft. David Scherer of Origin Investments.

 

When he’s not busy injecting us with his microchips, the pandemic orchestrator* has been busy buying up farmland all across the U.S. Five Year FIRE Escape gives us the scoop on Bill Gates, Farmland, And Everything You Want to Know About Investing in It. *[sarcasm — in case that wasn’t obvious]

 

Dr. Mitra Sadhu brings us part two of her home build, explaining her high-low approach to her new home’s interior. How a Boglehead Builds a Doctor House Part 2 from Physician Finance Basics.

 

This couple is ditching their lucrative careers in the real estate industry, moving from San Diego to build a home in the Tennessee wilderness. With a baby on the way, is this the right time to make a drastic move? FIRE Crossroads 022: Giving Up $700,000 a Year.

 

If you enjoyed their story, you might enjoy learning how others earned their millions and invest them in ESI Money‘s interview series.

• Millionaire Interview #291
• Millionaire Interview #292
• Millionaire Interview #293
• Millionaire Interview #293, Part 2
• Millionaire Interview #294

 

As Ben Carlson with A Wealth of Common Sense says,” trying to understand what’s going on with the stock market during a time of war can be confusing and counterintuitive.” Taking a look at market returns in times of war and crisis, he concludes that The Stock Market is Heartless.

 

 

Investing in Farmland

 

From our partners at FarmTogether:

Farmland investing has been a popular macro trend among billionaires [PoF: See Bill Gates post above] and big institutions for the last decade. But the high cost of buying an entire farm put this asset class out of reach to all but big institutions and the ultra-rich… until now.

FarmTogether.com allows any accredited investor to invest in fractional ownership of several different categories of farmland. And, as investors continue to flock to recession- and inflation-proof asset classes, farmland in this capacity couldn’t become available at a better time.

Farmland has delivered strong absolute returns over the last 50 years; since 1992, returns to farmland averaged 10.85%, outpacing gold, real estate, and the S&P during this same time frame. Compared to many popular assets such as stocks, cryptocurrency, or commodities, farmland is an extremely low-volatility asset.

Between 1992 and 2020, the NCREIF Farmland Index had a standard deviation of 6.9%. In comparison, the volatility of the S&P 500 was 17.1% and privately owned real estate was 7.4%. A third attractive characteristic of farmland is that it is uncorrelated with other major asset classes, further decreasing overall portfolio volatility.

Another major advantage of farmland is that it provides investors with an effective hedge against rising inflation. The value of US farmland has historically been about 70% correlated with the CPI; when the price of food increases, driving inflation higher, so will the price of crops and the value of the land that produces them.

Last, but certainly not least, by investing in farmland, investors have an opportunity to drive agriculture toward sustainability and proactively fight climate change on a large scale.

The continued demand for farmland investments, coupled with the growth FarmTogether continues to witness, is strong validation for the growing asset class. These milestones also validate our mission to provide investors with greater access to farmland investment opportunities.

Check out FarmTogether.com today. You’ll be glad you did!

 

Dentists on FIRE Facebook Group

 

As the son and grandson of dentists, I have a particular fondness for the profession. For years now, I’ve had to turn down dentists asking to join our Physicians on FIRE Facebook group — we limit the group to MD, DO, and foreign equivalent medical doctors.

I hate saying no, and in the past, dentists have been referred to our fatFIRE group, a group that takes all comers.

Starting today, I’ve got a new group just for the dentists and dental specialists. We’ll apply verification standards just like we do in the physician group to do the best we can to keep this group limited to dentists only. My presence will be the only exception. If you are a dentist, endodontist, orthodontist, periodontist, etc., I’ll see you there!

 

 

They Are Who We Thought They Were

 

After weeks of U.S. Intelligence foretelling Russia’s next moves in the unfolding invasion of Ukraine, and Russia denying it all while doing precisely what was predicted, Ukraine and its capital Kyiv are currently under siege.

I’ve been impressed with the will of the Ukrainian people and President Zelensky as they are putting up more of a fight than Russia expected.

I pray for freedom and democracy to prevail, for any current and future economic sanctions against Russia to be effective, and that we don’t look back on Thursday’s events as the beginning of the next oxymoronic “Great War.” Hundreds of lives have been lost already in this conflict. I don’t want to see that number climb to the thousands or millions.

If this is indeed one of those days where I’ll always remember where I was, it was at Universal Orlando’s theme parks with my family. I haven’t been posting about our travel on social media this week. Most of my spare time has been spent reading and watching the news. Eventually, I may post pics of our decadent desserts or Mardi Gras parade haul, but to do so now would feel rather heartless.

I don’t want to be as heartless as the stock market. As Mr. Carlson reminds us, “if the stock market is your biggest worry right now, consider yourself lucky.”

 

 

Have a strong week!

-Physician on FIRE