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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!
After over 20 years of spreadsheet tracking, Loonie Doctor has data from the beginning of residency to mid-career. Unpacking My Net Worth.
- Related: A Net Worth Tracker That Auto-Updates Daily: download your free copy.
I just updated my tracking spreadsheet, as well. Everything I’m invested in is here in one tidy sheet. The PoF Portfolio in 2023.
Inflation is cooling in 2023, and we hope to see that trend continue. Barry Ritholtz shares his insights at The Big Picture. Why Inflation Has Been Falling… and For Lower Inflation, Stop Raising Rates.
Sahil Bloom asked a bunch of 90-year-olds a simple question. “If you could speak your 32-year-old self, what advice would you give?
Some people wish they had spent more when they were younger; others would prefer they had saved better. Morgan Housel with The Collaborative Fund describes The Art and Science of Spending Money.
The relationship between money and happiness is complex, but José with Crucial Wealth explains how he uses the former to improve the latter. Money and Happiness: 50 Financial Lessons for a Happier Life.
Early in their careers, their goal is to get to a place where they’re working not because they have to, but because it makes them happy. FIRE Starter 014: Two Highly Motivated MDs.
Craig Stephens with Retire Before Dad encourages us to focus on bigger questions when learning how to manage our money. More Powerful Than Financial Advice.
There are times when it helps to understand the fine details, however, as The Physician Philosopher explains. Tax Loopholes for Doctors.
Real estate can offer numerous tax benefits. I’ve just run the numbers on all of my past and current real estate investments, including REITs, funds, and syndications. A 2023 Update on My Passive Real Estate Investment Returns.
Credit cards offer some pretty sweet perks, but pending legislation could ruin the rewards. Eric Rosenberg with The White Coat Investor asks, Is Congress Trying to Take Away Your Credit Card Rewards?
Michael Flack with The Humble Dollar declares Death to Dividends. Good riddance, I say!
Work-Life Integration
When I was an anesthesiologist, I strove to achieve optimal work-life balance. I had distinct work time at the hospital or at home with a pager that I hoped would remain silent.
The rest of my time was my own, and I always preferred more of this time than the hospital time. I tipped the scales further towards more free time by working part-time the better part of my final two years before retiring from medicine completely in 2019.
My life is much different now. All 24 hours can be mine, but I devote a decent amount of time each week to this blog, its associated email and social media accounts, and continually learning from the content of others while choosing some of the best of it to share with you here each week.
I was introduced to the concept of work-life integration as an alternative to work-life balance by DLP Capital CEO Don Wenner. He works hard on his business, but he’s also raising three boys, coaching youth football, focusing on personal wellness, and traveling with his family, often on the front or back end of a work-related event.
If you work full-time or more, or even “just” part-time, work is a huge part of life, and rather than compartmentalizing it as external to your life, it can be best to embrace it and figure out how to best integrate work into your life and vice versa. It’s partially a mindset shift, but there can be some practical applications, like bookending a family vacation around a work trip or working remotely from amazing places.
There can be downsides to blurring the boundaries, and if you don’t prioritize the life aspect, you may find that work interrupts life night and day. This is especially true for clinic-based physicians dealing with a never-empty inbox and notes always waiting to be written.
I’ve had the luxury in recent years of scheduling my life as desired and finding ways to integrate some optional work into it. This last week, much like the first week of January (and the week before Christmas), it looked like skiing with my boys every day and spending time on the evenings and weekends to do the work of the blog. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t respond to some emails and texts from the chairlift. That’s work-life integration at its finest!
What Will You Learn From DLP?
That work-life integration concept was one I picked up at a DLP Prosperity event, and they’ve got one of those coming up, along with a host of other live and virtual events!
Get an insider look into DLP Capital’s latest updates and opportunities! Don Wenner, CEO & Founder at DLP Capital, will lead a webinar and take the audience’s questions at the next DLP Capital Webinar — February 1 at 5pm EST. Register here.
For those who can’t make it on the 1st of February, a followup webinar is available on February 23rd at 6pm EST. Learn about DLP’s Q4 fund reports, updates, and more, with a Q&A session to follow Don Wenner’s presentation. Register here.
At WCICON23, on March 1st at 7 p.m. Arizona time, DLP is hosting a complimentary happy hour and dinner for accredited investors. Availability is limited; register here (I just did!).
The following week, DLP will have a presence at the Best Ever Conference in Salt Lake City. Save 20% on your registration with code DLP23 here.
Last but not least, DLP is hosting an Elite & Prosperity Legacy Event in New Orleans from March 22-25 with the goal of helping you develop a legacy that will last for generations. I’ve been to two of these and they’re great! Register here.
For more details on all of these opportunities, please visit this page for additional information.
Last Call for $200 Off and a Discounted Room in the WCICON23 Hotel Block.
This coming Wednesday, January 25th is fast approaching, and that’s the final day to get the conference rate at the luxurious resort hosting the upcoming Physician Wellness & Financial Literacy Conference.
It’s also the deadline for saving $200 on your in-person general or premium registration with code CON23LD.
I’ll be hosting a retirement panel where we discuss the personal side of retirement planning and planning a retirement workshop where we focus more on the numbers, math, and order of operations of retirement planning. I’ll see you there!
Is Bitcoin Back?
Like the price of eggs, the price of Bitcoin has risen rather dramatically in a short period of time.
This year alone, as of Saturday, 1/21, it’s up nearly 40% on the month. I realize that it’s among the most volatile of assets, but it seems to have been quietly creeping up in rather rapid fashion to little fanfare.
It will be interesting to see if this trend bleeds over to other risk-on assets. If and when our economic outlook stabilizes, will we see SPACs, IPOs, and ETFs like ARKK (up nearly 20% YTD) return to prominence in 2023?
As outlined in The PoF Portfolio in 2023 post, I only have about 20 bucks worth of Bitcoin, but I’m making a little more every day with my Heatbit miner / space heater (5% off code PHYSICIAN), and I’ve got a warmer attached garage as a pleasant side effect. I was asked in the comments why on earth I bought one, and my honest answer is the novelty of it. If this trend keeps up, though, I may eventually get free or even paid heat out of the thing.
Have an outstanding week!
-Physician on FIRE
4 thoughts on “The Sunday Best (01/22/2023)”
Great links as always… Morgan Housel was as good as ever. Lots to digest there.
Work Life Integration is a great term and mindset. I guess I’ve lived up to the spirt of it over the years by integrating and making work a lifestyle thing.
In my heydey I’d fly around the world for work for 2 weeks a month and then came back to my truck camper, wherever it was stashed, and hang out in National Parks or whatever in the summer and ski 100+ days a season in the Wasatch in the winter. Pretty fun. Did that for 5 years.
I did find it difficult to stop doing that but life is about balance, in certain things, and it has helped me to think of life in seasons and just move on and enjoy the present. Or at least attempt to. Can’t always be like ol’ Uncle Rico, always living in the glory days of old.
Now I try to do integrate work and life by living where I want and maximizing my time off, so I can goof off and go skiing with old retired guys and occasionally younger ones too. 😀
Lately I’ve jokingly thought about my lifestyle as Faux-FIRE. I’m just pretending I’m FIRE’d. Ha!
Somebody has to keep those ski resorts open and catch all those fish on the weekdays!
Great links as always… Morgan Housel was as good as ever. Lots to digest there.
Work Life Integration is a great term and mindset. I guess I’ve lived up to the spirt of it over the years by integrating and making work a lifestyle thing.
In my heydey I’d fly around the world for work for 2 weeks a month and then came back to my truck camper, wherever it was stashed, and hang out in National Parks or whatever in the summer and ski 100+ days a season in the Wasatch in the winter. Pretty fun. Did that for 5 years.
I did find it difficult to stop doing that but life is about balance, in certain things, and it has helped me to think of life in seasons and just move on and enjoy the present. Or at least attempt to. Can’t always be like ol’ Uncle Rico, always living in the glory days of old.
Now I try to do integrate work and life by living where I want and maximizing my time off, so I can goof off and go skiing with old retired guys and occasionally younger ones too. 😀
Lately I’ve jokingly thought about my lifestyle as Faux-FIRE. I’m just pretending I’m FIRE’d. Ha!
Somebody has to keep those ski resorts open and catch all those fish on the weekdays!
Thanks for the mention PoF. I like the concept of work-life integration. I guess the balance is still whether you are integrating work into your life or integrating life into your work. It was definitely the latter for me when I was working full-time clinical plus academic/admin on top of that.
It is interesting how that shifted when I started using my financial power to cut that back. I originally thought I may retire when I hit financial independence. Now that I am there, I still have a clear line when I go to work clinically and it is separate from home. That was the natural response to counter how being on call clinically/admin-wise invaded our home life for so long. However, we are already starting to think how some part-time work might integrate when our kids are done high school and releases some of our geographic/time tethers.
-LD
Thanks for the mention PoF. I like the concept of work-life integration. I guess the balance is still whether you are integrating work into your life or integrating life into your work. It was definitely the latter for me when I was working full-time clinical plus academic/admin on top of that.
It is interesting how that shifted when I started using my financial power to cut that back. I originally thought I may retire when I hit financial independence. Now that I am there, I still have a clear line when I go to work clinically and it is separate from home. That was the natural response to counter how being on call clinically/admin-wise invaded our home life for so long. However, we are already starting to think how some part-time work might integrate when our kids are done high school and releases some of our geographic/time tethers.
-LD