The Sunday Best (1/1/2017)

Happy New Year!

The Sunday Best is a collection of a handful of posts I share with you each week. With so many informative and inspirational writers out there, I have no trouble coming up with a number of worthwhile reads each week.

Every featured post should be of interest to any physician seeking financial independence. Some will be written by your physician colleagues; others will be written by our friends and patients who share common goals and interests.

Presenting, the New Year’s Sunday Best:

 

In a popular post the other day, I explored a timeline to fulfill a $10 million dream. Read the story of someone who tried to take a shortcut, as shared with the world @ Budgets are Sexy. Financial Confessions: “I Became So Obsessed With Being Rich That I’m Now Sitting in Prison”

 

Did you squeeze in any year-end donations? Future Proof, MD did. In a Big Way. The FPMD 50% Pledge or “How I Gave Away $4,200.” Strong work, Doctor.

 

What can we expect from markets in the year ahead? Son of a Doctor compiled some predictions and discusses their utility in Why Reading Year-End Market Predictions is Largely Useless.

 

Two of my absolute favorite physician personal finance bloggers teamed up this week. The White Coat Investor hosted the amazing if not self-absorbed Physician on FIRE who shockingly admitted to making poor choices in Parting With Suboptimal Investments: One Physician’s Story.

 

In an oldie but goodie, Dr. Doom @ Living A FI shares his thoughts after a mini-sabbatical. Three Weeks Off Series, Part 3: Wrap-up. Here are Parts 0, 1, and 2.

 

Quoting Thomas Edison, Ray Kroc, and Yoda, Mr. SSC of Slowly Sipping Coffee discusses early retirement and more in You’ll Never Know if You Don’t Try.

 

A radiologist is unsure about that 4% rule. Please clinically correlate, says the Happy Philosopher in Dangers of Relying on the 4% Rule in Early Retirement Scenarios.

 

Oh, the Places They’ll Go. Matt & Daniel @ The Resume Gap are non-stop travelers. They pose a simple question: Where Should We Travel in 2017?

 

While some of us are busy setting goals, others are giving up on them. Vicki @ Make Smarter Decisions is Giving Up My Goals To Focus On Habits

 

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Sponsor Spotlight

Highlighting the Sponsors that make this site possible and support its charitable mission.

Today’s featured sponsor is Physician Financial Services, a financial services firm in Woodbury, NY specializing in income protection & wealth accumulation strategies for physicians.

PFS, led by Lawrence Keller, has a wealth of resources on its site, including a calculators page that puts mine to shame with 30 financial calculators, a library with dozens of articles to enhance your financial knowledge, an insightful online newsletter, and a video series.

To learn more about the services PFS offers, contact them here, or request a quote for life, disability, long-term care, or group health insurance.

 

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Let’s Set Some 2017 Goals!

 

The blogosphere was crowded with 2016 wrap-ups and 2017 resolutions recently. I’ll be wrapping up a year of blogging in 8 days, so I’ll recap the year for the blogiversary. Looking ahead, I don’t want to be the only personal finance blogger to be goalless, so let’s create some goals.

In 2016, my only New Years’ resolution was to start this blog. It happened on January 9th, and survived the year. If I hadn’t injured my shoulder, I’d be patting myself on the back right now.

 

Blog goals:

• Maintain Tues, Thurs, Sun posting schedule. This works well; I can see scaling back at some point if I find it’s taking too much time, but this schedule works for now.
• Reach a million all-time page views by fall. Over 400,000 this year. Unreal.
• Exceed 1,000 e-mail subscribers. I don’t do popups — the most obtrusive reminder I have appears in the lower right corner at times. I have integrated the calculators download more seamlessly; this should help grow the list.
• Meet more bloggers & readers in real life. Looking forward to FinCon17!
• Continue to grow revenue to support the charitable mission.

 

Life goals:

• Firm up plans for 2018. If we do indeed leave the full time job behind in 18 months, we need to know what’s next. I’ll share our plans as they are formed.
• Exercise! I got lazy this fall / winter. I need to get back into a routine.
• Travel. We’re taking our boys to Europe for spring break. A good start.
• Balance? Time is at a premium. Try to find time to do it all without sacrificing what’s important.

  

 

Financial Goals:

• Max out the usual (401(k), 457(b), HSA, Backdoor Roth x 2)
• Continue funding taxable account and 529s x 2.
• Build up donor advised fund close to $250k
• Exceed 30x anticipated annual retirement expenses in retirement funds.
• Continue to downsize / minimize our belongings.

 

We’ll have to revisit these at the end of the year, and see how I did. I think the biggest challenges will be exercising and achieving balance. The blog goals are achievable, but require a good deal of time, which makes meeting the other goals a trickier proposition.

I got my family back on Friday, and we had an uneventful New Years’ Eve at home. Watched a movie, a little football, and remembered that Dick Clark is no longer with us. I have grown so accustomed to seeing the man on television every New Years Rockin’ Eve.

 

 

Have a great week! And a great 2017!

-Physician on FIRE