The Sunday Best (2/26/2017)

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, this week’s Sunday Best:

 

I revealed my current net worth and cracked a few jokes as ESI Money asked me a series of probing personal questions in the latest installment in his Q & A series, Millionaire Interview 5.

 

Do I have to choose? The Financial Samurai makes excellent observations in Do You Want To Be Rich Or Do You Want To Be Free?

When you eliminate debt, self-insure, and “cheat” in other ways, the dollar can be stretched a lot further. Justin @ Root of Good describes Living a $100,000 Lifestyle on $40,000 Per Year — 2016 Expenses in Review.

 

A physician abruptly attempts suicide and nearly succeeds. He lived to tell Dr. Pamela Wible @ Ideal Medical Care the story. Doctor Revived After Suicide. Here’s What He Says.

 

In an oldie but goodie, Joe @ Retire By 40 gives us a retrospective review in How’s Life 2 Years After Early Retirement?

 

Done By Forty talks unhealthy competition and income mobility in a thought-provoking The Unsustainable American Dream.

 

The Investing Doc is inching closer to his wedding date, which makes him highly qualified to share some important Financial Discussions To Have Prior To Marriage.

 

You’ve been told to live like a resident. Our lawyer friend, the Financial Panther, applies the same concept to the populace in Live Like a Student: Embrace Non-Traditional Ways of Living.

 

I thrive on geographic arbitrage, but we can’t all live in low-cost of living areas. Linda @ Brooklyn Bread shares her tips on living somewhat frugally in… you guessed it… Brooklyn in this guest post @ Freedom is Groovy: How to Survive Expensive Urban Life.

 

Speaking of survival, I survived my week as a solo stay-at-home Dad. Barely. More on that below, but first I’d like to share a bit about one of our site sponsors, Curbside Real Estate.

Started by physicians for physicians, Curbside is a concierge real estate brokerage founded by anesthesiologist Peter Kim, MD. He shares his story that led to the creation of Curbside here. In essence, he found finding a home loan and quality realtor to be a difficult task to take on as a trainee about to start his career. Curbside provides those services for busy professionals.

On the website, Curbside has a Mortgage Calculator and offers a Free Physician Loan Guide Book. They also have a charitable mission, which I love. If you buy a home using one of their network’s realtors or lenders, they will donate towards helping children living in poverty.

If you have questions, there is an extensive FAQ. If the answer cannot be found there, you can contact them via numerous channels.

 

Hooray! She’s back!

 

I got my wife back yesterday after 9 days away on a gals’ family getaway. It’s wonderful to be a family of four again. I believe this is the third or fourth time in eight years that I’ve been the sole provider for a week or so.

How do I do it? Not all that well. But the house is still standing, the dishes and laundry are clean, and I managed to provide reasonably healthy meals all week long. It also helps that I find little ways to reward myself, like reaching for the laryngoscope after the boys have gone to bed.

 

 

Every two or three years, I’m reminded just how much goes into maintaining a household, and learn to respect all that happens while I’m at work, in my office, watching football or basketball, or somehow being generally unhelpful.

While I respect the households that share most of the work equally — as it probably should be when both parents work full time — that’s not how things work around here.

 

 

There are certain household responsibilities that we share pretty equally. We share cooking duties, and grocery shopping seems somewhat evenly dispersed. We’ve both read to our boys a ton, we take turns assisting with brushing and flossing teeth, and putting them to bed in the evening. We each have our own goodnight song we’ve been singing for over eight years.

There are some household chores that fall mainly under my purview. Among them:

• earning money
• lawnmowing / landscaping
• snow blowing / shoveling
• grilling meat
• pulling loose teeth
• killing spiders
• brewing beer
• providing adequate, highly audible support to televised local sports teams

 

Other duties are performed mostly by my wife. She does most of the ferrying of our boys to school, activities, and back. She shoos me away when I try to do dishes, and I don’t put up much of a fight. I’m not quite as worthless as the guy in The Mystery of The Basket, but I’m not that far from it.

 

 

It turns out my wife actually launders the laundry, also makes the boys’ lunches, is the enforcer when it comes to homework getting done, and is a stronger disciplinarian than awesome, cool Dad. You know, the fun Dad that says it’s time to go grocery shopping, and takes them to The Lego Batman Movie. Great movie, by the way.

After a week with no magic laundry basket (or magic sink, magic coffee table, etc..) my appreciation for everything my wife does to keep our household running like clockwork has been reaffirmed. There’s a lot that happens behind the scenes, and she does it all so much better than me. She took a well deserved vacation, but boy, am I glad she’s home.

 

 

Have a great week!

-Physician on FIRE