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.
Most posts will be from recent weeks, written by physicians, and related to personal finance, but expect to find a post or two that are lacking some or all of these elements.
Presenting, this week’s Sunday Best:
Is Vanguard giving bad advice? Jim Collins @ jlcollinsh thinks so. Find out what’s got the Vanguard fanboy up in arms in the latest installment in his stock series, Stocks — Part XXX: jlcollinsnh vs. Vanguard
When contemplating retirement, it’s vital to consider both your vitality and mortality. Wade Pfau, PhD @ Retirement Researcher explores the CDC’s longevity statistics of the retired in How Long Can Retirees Expect To Live Once They Hit 65? It’s likely longer than you think.
In an (updated) oldie but goodie, the Financial Samurai sheds light on what it means to be a millionaire today, asking a provocative question and making a similarly provocative statement:Â Are You a Real Millionaire? $3 million is the new $1 million.
Emergency Medicine physician, Julie @ Choose Better Life shows off some amazing scenery and photography while sharing backpacking and life tips in Life Lessons From The Tahoe Rim Trail.
In a post that could serve as an outline to his autobiography, radiologist Happy Philosopher delivers his origin story in Happy Philosopher: The Backstory.
We know what one multimillionaire* family spends in a typical atypical year. How much do you suppose a half-millionaire family of seven on sabbatical spends while traveling and remodeling over the summer? Ms. Montana @ Montana Money Adventures scores bonus points for Devil’s Tower in the background in June and July Expenses.
*Being a numbers guy, I thought the definition of a multimillionaire was pretty straightforward. Two is a mulitiple of one. When you say you have multiple something, you imply you possess two or more. To me, the definition of multimillionaire is pretty straightforward. A net worth of two million dollars or more.
The American Heritage® Dictionary agrees with my logic.
Not everyone does. Ten Factorial Rocks told me it was $5 million. Joe from Retire by 40 commented that Ten is the new Two. Apparently wikipedia agrees with him.
I’m sticking with my assertion, but it doesn’t really matter much, anyway. It’s just a number that fluctuates from day to day, and life is about how you live, not how much you have.
This week, I’ve been living like a resident. Too busy working to spend money. In seven days, I will have worked two 10-hour surgery center shifts and four 24-hour hospital shifts (some of which ends up being call from home with immediate availability). That’s 116 hours of the week’s 168 that my time has belonged to my employer.
But don’t cry for me, Argentina. The truth is, in the next two weeks, all but 24 of those 336 hours will be mine. I am looking forward to that break!
With some of my time, I’ll be attending a one-day medical conference, an excuse to be reimbursed for mileage and a hotel (with waterpark) for the family the night before I take a friend to a college football game and Oktoberfest celebration at my favorite brewery. We’ll spend some time with my friend and his family before heading back home. Oh, and I might learn something at that conference.
Then there will be fall yardwork to be done, blog posts to be written, and we’re going to take a first step towards decluttering by clearing out the master bedroom closet. I’ve verbally committed to getting rid of half my clothing. We’ll see how that goes, probably in an upcoming post!
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Have a great week!
-Physician on FIRE
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$3 million is the new $1 million really opened my eyes up to the effects of inflation. That said, I sure won’t be complaining if I ever get to be lucky enough to have $1 million 🙂
Oh, you know it’s not luck, Finance Solver. Keep reading what you’re reading, and doing what you’re doing, and you’ll get there eventually.
The first million is always the hardest 😉
Best,
-PoF
Many thanks for sharing my story PoF.
I really loved the results of my decluttering project. It’s amazing how much better I felt when I was surrounded by fewer things, but things that brought me happiness. I had less but I felt like I had more if that makes sense.
How many thanks, exactly? I’m a numbers guy. I need numbers. 🙂
-PoF
p.s. You’re very welcome.
3.1415926535897932
Give or take…
😉
Mr. & Mrs. PIE would approve.
Decluttering definitely sounds exciting!
I would love for my household to undergo decluttering as well.
It all takes time. Time to accumulate; time to decumulate. Wish me luck!
-PoF
Nice links and good discussion about multi-millionaires. The classification I’m familiar with is High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI):
100k-1m: sub-HNWI, or affluent
1m+: HNWI
5m+: Very HNWI or VHNWI
30m+: Ultra HNWI or UHNWI
But this reminds me of an issue that has been on my mind recently: What constitutes low-seven-figures, mid-seven-figures and high seven-figures net worth? (or the equivalent for incomes: low/mid/high-six-figures)?
Is it linear?
1,000,000-3,999,999 = low-seven-figures
4,000,000-6,999,999 = mid-seven-figures
7,000,000-9,999,999 = high-seven-figures
Or should it be in logarithms? Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law to see that for many variables, especially economic and financial ones, the distribution of the starting digit is not uniform, but there are many more 1s than 9s! So if the bucketing of low/mid/high is supposed to generate roughly equal number of observations in the population we’d have to pick the cutoff points at 1,000,000 times 10^0.3333 and 10^0.6667:
1,000,000-2,154,433 = low-seven-figures
2,154,434-6,651,592 = mid-seven-figures
6,651,593-9,999,999 = high-seven-figures
I’d prefer the latter version, because we’re already in the mid-7-figures category!
Any thoughts on that?
$3 is the new $1 mathematically speaking! But, it’s just not as catch as the other numbers. Thanks for the mention. I actually went back and spent time updating the chart and making everything new for 2017.
How nice! I’ll have to revisit. Can’t really call it an “oldie but goodie” then, I guess.
Thanks for the update,
-PoF
Not sure I call it “bad” advice (although that might account for the traffic you’ve driven my way!), but thanks for the shout out. 🙂
A gentle breeze doesn’t tease the hornets out. You gotta give that hive a good whack!
Cheers!
-PoF
Oh, and the faces in devils tower photo were really cool. I didn’t notice that at all when we were there!
Hidden among the shadows… just stumbled upon them. Probably carved by aliens.
I’m going to go with that!
Thanks for the shout out! Have fun at the hotel-water park. That is one of my kids favorite things! I never knew how much joy a hotel with a pool could bring till I had kids. We try to keep the toy level low in our home, so that is the most requested outing for their birthday gifts.
De nada, Ms. Montana. Training kids to appreciate experiences over things is a monumental task. Great work!
-PoF
Nice compilation, PoF!
Is $17 million the new $2 million? Is 40 the new 20? Is orange the new black? Such questions we’ll never really be able to answer…! Nice work as always, and enjoy those (much-deserved) days off!
Gracias, libre!
I’m pretty sure 40 is the new 20 (says this 40 year old with thinning hair who never gets carded anymore).
Cheers!
-PoF
Seconded by this 40’s guy.
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“I’ve verbally committed to getting rid of half my clothing.”
Let me know how that it works. I am considering the same.
Stay tuned… I’d like to be more of a minimalist, but it will require a 180 degree change in the way I think about stuff in general. Minimalism and frugality are at odds with each other at times. Another post I intend to write.
Best,
-PoF
Thanks for the shoutout PoF!
Enjoy your trip to the waterpark, and I can’t wait to hear about your closet decluttering. You can tell me if my theory is true that guys have much less emotional attachment to their clothing than women do. For them, it’s just a shirt, but for women, it’s a size, an image, or a memory that they’re giving up on.
Happy to host your post!
I can see that emotional attachment thing being real, although I might harbor some similar feelings. We’ll find out soon enough. My wife hasn’t committed to a percentage, but she’s done a better job of thinning out her 60% of the closet continually.
Cheers!
-PoF
$1 million, $2 million, $5 million….as they say in Vermont, pretty soon it adds up to real money! Joke apart, I agree it doesn’t matter. I will happily go with your definition. My doctor friend has just returned back from his stint with MSF and he was glowing about the lives he was able to touch – the kind of satisfaction that money can never buy.
Excellent point, TFR! Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) a.k.a. Doctors Without Borders does some amazing work. I attended a talk in San Francisco given by an anesthesiologist who has traveled into incredibly dangerous territory to help people in need.
Best,
-PoF