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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!
The FI Heroes are essentially on the same FIRE timeline as me. Like me, they’ve seen a 7-figure improvement in their net worth after saying sayonara to their careers. Our Finances After 2 Full Years of FIRE.
When you see people like us hustling post-career, it feels like retirement as a word or concept has lost much of its meaning. The FI Physician gives it a proper eulogy. RIP Retirement – Or, Retirement is an Anachronism.
If retirement’s no longer a thing, is it even possible to un-retire? Financial Success MD thinks so. Five Lessons from Un-Retirement.
If you weren’t working for a living, how exactly would you spend your day? The answer has evolved for Caroline from Costa Rica FIRE. Turning 50: Rethinking My Perfect Day.
The key is to make work optional, and that’s much easier to do with multiple streams of income. Retire Before Dad prospers by living the Single-Income Lifestyle, Multiple-Income Life.
How many income streams do you have? How big are they? How much can you bench, bro? Nah, don’t answer any of those questions, says The Physician Philosopher. Don’t Let Comparison Be the Thief of Your Joy.
If you’ve got a roof over your head, you’re in better shape than some, not that we should be making those comparisons. Life Outside the Maze deals with a bad blaze. My House Burned Down!
XRAYVSN reminds us to enjoy life while we still have some youth and vigor (and, with any luck, a roof over our heads). Borrowing financial concepts, the radiologist dishes on Discounted Life Flow: No Time Like The Present!
The changing credit card landscape can be challenging to keep up with, but I’ve made tons of updates to the tracking spreadsheet I’ve created while highlighting some of the more interesting recent card offerings, including one card that pays you back in Bitcoin. Credit Cards for Free Travel & Cash Back.
Bitcoin gets the headlines and memes, but Ether has become the second-largest cryptocurrency with massive returns in the last year. An investment banker delves deep into the ethersphere. From the Banker on FIRE, An Investor’s Deep Dive On Ether and Ethereum.
I consider cryptoassets to be an optional asset class; there are no called strikes in investing. Stocks, on the other hand, are a must for me, and you can own basically all of them in two funds. Add in a bond fund and you’ve got the Bogleheads 3 Fund Portfolio – Week In Review from Dividend Power.
How do millionaires invest their money? ESI Money keeps asking them, and they keep spilling every last detail.
- Millionaire Interview #246
- Millionaire Interview #247
- Millionaire Interview #248
- Millionaire Interview #249
- Millionaire Interview #250
I’ve put together a super-quick interview for you, and I would greatly appreciate your response if you haven’t given me one. The written responses are optional, and anyone who completes the multiple-choice questions can opt into a drawing to win a $100 Amazon gift card and a one-hour virtual Happy Hour with me to be scheduled at your convenience. Full details on my first Physician on FIRE Reader Survey.
You’re Rich! Or You Will Be Soon Enough
Based on what I’ve seen so far, those of you who have completed the inaugural reader survey are in excellent financial shape. This doesn’t surprise me necessarily, but I am impressed.
I’ll be publishing a blog post with detailed results once we have at least 1,000 responses (can you help me out?), but I can share a few things I’ve learned about you thus far.
Most of you are married and have a household income of greater than $200,000. Most of you are physicians and more than a third of you consider yourselves to be financially independent already.
A majority of you are multimillionaires. Strong work! Among the minority that are not (yet), almost half have a million dollar net worth.
About 40% of you don’t bother with Facebook. Among the 60% that do, only about half are in one of my two Facebook groups. Let’s fix that:
- Join fatFIRE (for everyone interested in FIRE with an above-average budget)
- Join Physicians on FIRE (for physicians (MD/DO/MBBS) interested in personal finance)
You prefer to read versus consuming audio or video content to learn about personal finance topics. That makes sense for a survey of the readership, but I’m surprised by the extent of it.
You are awesome. But you already knew that.
As the responses continue to come in, I’ll spend more time reviewing the feedback and suggestions and will try to incorporate them into making this a site that continues to serve you and be relatable. Thanks again to those of you who have participated. If you have not yet, here’s one more link and then I promise to stop harrassing you!
I Am Ready For Some Football
Two Thursdays ago, “Doc G” and I spent a few hours at The Bank to take in my first live college football game in nearly two years. Minnesota took a halftime lead well into the 3rd quarter against The Ohio State University, but we were unable to hang on for the victory. I returned to the lively venue yesterday to see my alma mater take on another team from Ohio that sounds like it’s from Florida (Miami, to be precise), and this time the home team prevailed.
After a weird half-season last year with few or no fans in most stadiums, it was refreshing to return to campus and take in a couple of games in person. And while no group activity is perfectly antiseptic, the game is played outdoors in open air, and greater than 75% of adults in this country have now received at least one dose of the vaccine (I’ll bet that number on college campuses), and vaccination is mandatory among University of Minnesota students.
In a bit of a #fatFIRE move, I upgraded to the lower deck for my season tickets this year. I’m now in the 9th row at about the 30 – 31 yard line wtih my pair of seats. The views are great unless the cameraman happens to be between me and the ball. That, and the 6’10” former Golden Gopher and NFL practice squad veteran in row 8 occasionally obscure the view, but it’s all good! That’s me one row behind “the Woz” and still way shorter in the upper right.
The NFL and fantasy football seasons are also back in full swing. Thursday’s opener was full of excitement, and with Tom Brady and Amari Cooper on my team, we’re off to a strong start despite the lackluster performances of Zeke and the Bucs D (also in my starting lineup). I don’t have high hopes for my Vikings this year, but I’ll cheer them on as I always do.
May you and your team(s) have a safe and successful season on the gridiron.
Answer quick MicroSurveys for cash. Designed with convenience and timeliness in mind, 70% of surveys are answered on a mobile device in just a few minutes.
Physicians, Pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals are invited to join Incrowd today!
Real Estate Deal School
Coach Carson’s Real Estate Deal School (formerly Real Estate Start School) opens for enrollment this week. Learn from a guy who has managed nearly 100 doors at once while traveling the world in recent years. He was FI in his 30s from these properties alone, and now he has a successful blog / business with a charitable mission that he does because he wants to and he can. Sound familiar?
By the end of Real Estate Deal School, you will:
- Develop a customized real estate plan for YOU: Like picking from a menu, this course will help you choose the unique real estate plan that will move you towards your financial goals.
- Pick the right market for investing (local or long distance): You’ll receive detailed instructions and a checklist so that you can make sure you have a profitable investing market, either locally or long distance.
- Run the numbers to know you have a good deal: Real estate investing is a numbers game. So, you’ll learn the most important formulas to confidently evaluate your next property purchase. Plus you’ll receive the same deal analysis spreadsheet Chad uses on his deals.
- Get the money to fund your deals: You’ll learn the best sources of financing, both traditional and non-traditional (like seller financing and private money). And you’ll get ideas to raise money for down payments and other cash needs.
- Build a dream team to help you succeed: The right team will make or break your efforts, so you’ll learn the most important team members, like real estate agents, CPAs, contractors, etc. You’ll also learn how to choose the right ones.
- Find good deals: Nothing else works in real estate investing if you can’t find a good deal. You’ll learn how Chad has consistently bought good deals year-in, year-out for 18 years – including 17 proven strategies in the grad course – Real Estate Deal Finder.
You get lifetime access the the main course plus bonus courses and there’s a money-back guarantee. At a cost of about 1/3 that of a popular physician-led real estate course, I think this is a phenomenal value, and “Coach” Chad Carson now has decades of experience investing in real estate. Not many contemporaries can say that.
Policygenius
Policygenius is America’s leading online insurance marketplace. Policygenius helps you get life insurance right by making it easy to understand your options, compare quotes, and buy a policy, all in one place. Start by calculating personalized quotes from top insurers using their straightforward online tools.
When you’re ready to apply for a policy, the Policygenius team of licensed, unbiased experts handle all the paperwork and red tape – for free. From life insurance to homeowners insurance and even disability insurance, Policygenius is a one-stop shop for all your financial protection needs.
Have an outstanding week!
-Physician on FIRE
3 thoughts on “The Sunday Best (9/12/2021)”
Thanks for the “best of article” – I’m quite keen on the whole cryptocurrency article, and especially Ethereum because unlike Bitcoin, there seems to a proven concept/mini-economy around it already (namely, NFTs). Looking at DappRader, opensea is trading $40 million/day as of yesterday, and peaked to $200 million/day. Still not quite as much volume as, say, a large cap stock but seems like it’s the beginning of some traction.
But I’m also wondering with the whole Cardano / Solana now also popping up with their own NFTs if it’ll be more of a “winner-takes-all” situation or if it’ll end up as just kind of like ‘choose whichever platform you like’ in the future.
I might not be a medical professional, but I still enjoy your Sunday Best writeups ever week PoF! Thanks as always!
My favorite this week was Xrayvsn’s “Discounted Life Flow” post. Good stuff!
Thank you for the feature.
I’m excited about football season starting as well, although it is because of the NFL and not college level. Today is the first game day for me and excited (plus being in the Sunday Best was another pleasant surprise)