The Sunday Best is a collection of articles I’ve curated for your reading pleasure.
Expect most of the writing to be from recent weeks and consistent with the themes presented on this website: investing & taxes, financial independence, early retirement, and physician issues.
Presenting, this week’s Sunday Best:
Dr. Curious is getting mightily clever in that My Curiosity Lab of his. Rather than listing all the things he looks forward to doing in retirement (as I have done), he compiled 30 things he will not be doing as a retiree. A Retirement Anti-List.
Speaking of global travel, Mrs. BITA of Bayalis is the Answer started an interview series featuring immigrants to America and their potential path to FIRE. If you fit that description, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. Here are the first two installments:
FIRE aficionados are familiar with the 4% safe withdrawal rate. The Early Retirement Dude has done some research and discovered something surprising. Where’d the 4% rule come from, anyway? (Hint: it wasn’t the Trinity Study.) No way, dude!
From another dude who retired early, The Financial Velociraptor, we get a status report after five years of early retirement bliss: What I’ve Learned in Early Retirement.
Perhaps you’re a physician who’s not interested or yet able to retire early. Dr. Patricia Salber of The Doctor Weighs In has reinvented her career several times and would like to show you How to Stay Excited and in Love With a Career in Medicine.
Last weekend, hospitals nationwide welcomed a fresh batch of residents to the wards. The Doctor in Debt has been there and done that, and would like to help them get off on the right foot with the eleven step Financial Advice for New Residents.
Jacob is not a doctor. Nor is he in debt. From Dollar Diligence, Is Debt Free Life Different? Reflections from One Year of Freedom!
Dr. Fahd Ahmad, a.k.a. Rogue Dad MD recently published an Academic Paper About Resident Financial Illiteracy on The White Coat Investor. That’s right, illiteracy. The results are appalling.
Tomorrow, my 6th quarterly newsletter goes out to all e-mail subscribers. I’ll be sharing all sorts of blog facts and statistics. The last quarter has been my best quarter yet, and I’m glad you’ve all been a part of the site’s success.
If you haven’t opted in, here’s your chance.
Smile! You’re supporting Amazon Smile!
Based on a tip from one of today’s featured authors, the Early Retirement Dude, a few months ago I started making any links to Amazon special “Amazon Smile” links.
What does that mean? It means every time you make a purchase on Amazon.com after clicking on a link from this site, you are supporting charities twice over. First, this site gets a small percentage of a referral fee, and I donate half my profits to charity.
Second — and this is where the Smile comes in — when you make that purchase, 0.5% of your purchase will benefit a charity of your choice. With Prime Day (Amazon’s version of Black Friday on a July Tuesday) coming up in two days, this is information you can use.
Shoppers, how do you select your charity?Â
Go to “Your Account. You should see an area labeled AMAZONSMILE DONATIONS with the amount generated and a “Learn More” button below. Here’s what mine looks like.
While I’ve only generated $2.81, all charities have received over $54.5 Million from the Smile program. Making a purchase via one of my links will result in 0.5% going to a charity you choose, and another approximately 2 to 2.5% going to charities I support. Pretty sweet, eh?
When you click to “Learn More,” you can select your charity. It’s as simple as that. If it’s a small local charity, the organization may not have registered with Amazon. In order to receive the funds, ask them to register at org.amazon.com.
Bloggers, how can you change your affiliate links to Smile links?Â
Simply change the “www” in your links to “smile” — I believe this can only be done manually. Also, if you use the SiteStripe like I do, be sure to change your links from the default “Short Link” to “Full Link” or you won’t have a “www” to change.
Once you’ve inserted the link into your site somewhere, edit the link and swap out that “www” for a happy “smile” and everyone wins.
Please don’t buy anything you don’t want or need. There are far more efficient ways to donate to charity (the donor-advised fund, for example), but if you’re going to shop Amazon anyway, please consider replacing your bookmarked link with this one to get the most benefit for your buck:
Happy Shopping! And have a great week!
-Physician on FIRE
Some very good reads in this one PoF! Thanks for doing this as always!
That will happen when you’ve got an interesting story to share.
We had a little fun with the Gonzo talk in a recent post discussing Johnny Depp shooting Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes from a cannon.
Cheers!
-PoF
Thanks for featuring me. I’m getting gonzo traffic!
Thanks for another great roundup!
I don’t see your share sidebar today- did you change your site?
I shrunk it to tiny buttons on the left when JL Collins (BOOM! goes the namedrop) told me the old ones were intrusive.
I see the little ones on my page, though. Thanks for sharing!
-PoF
Maybe it’s just my computer, but I don’t see them anymore.
Great reading as always, it’s part of my weekend routine. Thanks for the info on Amazon Smile, I’ll definitely integrate that on my site.
It’s a quick extra step; probably takes 10 minutes.
I’m not sure what happens if a reader hasn’t made a designation. I should probably look into that.
Cheers!
-PoF
Thanks for including my stuff PoF!
I checked my stats and I have nothing from Greenland or Madagascar either. I have had readers from 134 countries though (that blew my mind a little), including the Turks and Caicos islands and Benin.
I’ve never been in Benin.
Or Turks and Caicos, for that matter. Might have to rectify that situation.
Cheers!
-PoF
Thanks PoF, for featuring me here and for all your help along the way!
I am reading the Roadschooling article with much interest, as it’s something we will consider in a few years time. My biggest concern with long-term travel with children is the potential lack of meaningful social interaction for the kids. Because of this, I think 1-2 years of travel—perhaps spread over a longer period of time—might be more likely for us compared to 4-5 years of sustained travel.
Dr. C
I hear you. We’d be “missing out” on mostly middle school years if we were to vagabond it for 4 to 5 years. Those tend to be some awkward years for kids socially — it might not be such a bad thing if we give them some worldly exposure instead.
That Roadschooling was my favorite post this week. The least popular among readers (yours has been the most), but I understand not everyone is considering taking their kids on the road like you and I.
Cheers!
-PoF
Thanks for sharing! Love seeing these and looking through all the articles!
This is such a great list. I like that you keep it simple yet informative.
I look forward to the quarterly newsletter. The other day I saw your stats on Twitter and was fascinated at how your traffic spikes on the weekends (which is the opposite of my blog). Happy Sunday!
Thanks for signing up, Ms. FAF! I’ll be sharing the revenue, top posts and pages, growth in pageviews and subscribers, and most importantly, whether I’ve gotten any views from Greenland or Madagascar yet.
Cheers!
-PoF
I was hoping you would include rogue dad md’s paper on financial literacy. It was a great read (despite the terrible results) but that means there is a ton of room for growth! Sites like this will help increase those numbers and I’m confident in a few short years those numbers will increase.
Yes, it shows that there is a huge void that needs to be filled. I’m doing all that I can to help reduce that knowledge gap and improve physicians’ lives.
Cheers!
-PoF
Seems like such low hanging fruit for schools to teach, but I doubt they will have any interest. I will keep pushing people to sites like White Coat Investor and this one.