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!
As Bob’s 40th birthday approaches, he shares a life lesson for each of his years on this earth. TawCan drops wisdom in 40 Lessons I’ve Learned After 40 Years.
Cutting way back on alcohol improved Dave’s life. Here’s what happened when the man behind Accidental FIRE quit completely for a month. Sober October And How It Impacts My Finances.
Your world would be a better place if you placed more emphasis on happiness than money, although the two are correlated to some extent. Loonie Doc explores this relationship in Income & Happiness: A Double-Edged Sword.
A double-edged sword sounds scary, but the College Investor has identified five financial facts that are even more frightening. 5 Scary Money Facts And Statistics.
Does retirement frighten you in any way? To be fearless is irrational, as Dr. David Graham, the FI Physician explains in a Halloween-themed post. What Scares Me in Retirement.
Kitty from Bitches Get Riches hasn’t exactly enjoyed her newfound freedom. Dropping F-bombs and truth, she explains the unforeseen circumstances that threatened to sink her FIRE battleship. My First 6 Months of Early Retirement Sucked $hI7: What They Don’t Tell You about FIRE.
Some people never learn. Like financial people, says Morgan Housel with Collaborative Fund. Doctors get a much higher grade. Cumulative vs. Cyclical Knowledge.
Quoting guidance from companies like J.P. Morgan, McKinsey, Nuveen, and KKR, Acretrader makes The Case for Alternatives in a Changing Investment Landscape.
One can also make a case for buying high-interest bonds guaranteed by the U.S. Government. Updated with the latest rate changes, here is How, When, and Why to Buy I Bonds in 2022.
The White Coat Investor makes the case that TIPS are the U.S. Government bonds you should be buying now. I Bonds and TIPS: Which Inflation-Indexed Bond Should You Buy Now?
How much money should be set aside to invest in stocks, bonds, and alternatives each year? The Physician Philosopher has some recommendations for our physician colleagues. How Much Money Should Doctors Save?
It’s a bit trickier if you are on the low end of the physician salary range, but The White Coat Investor has faith in your ability to save. His top tips in Financial Advice for “Low Income” Doctors.
A Year of Impact in Review
Mark your calendar for 4 p.m. on November 16 as Don Wenner presents a Year of Impact in Review in the upcoming DLP Capital Webinar. He’ll highlight the lives DLP has impacted as an organization and stories from acquisitions and projects throughout 2022.
DLP is also launching a holiday campaign, where you can help Feed America! More details will come during the call as well.
To wrap up the webinar, Don will host a live Q&A, so come prepared with your questions. Register here.
My initial investment with DLP via a CityVest access fund has recently gone full circle. Investing in the DLP Lending Fund that makes short term “hard money” loans to real estate developers, I personally saw a net return (after all fees) of 8.68% annualized as measured by IRR. Investing directly with DLP, which is something I will likely do in 2023, I would expect a slightly higher return.
Speaking of Impact, I’ll be running my annual Giving Tuesday giveaway at the end of the month. Be sure to read the new post on 11/29 and have a charity in mind that you’d like to see impacted!
The FTX Disaster
A good old-fashioned bank run on FTX led to yet another bankruptcy filing for a cryptocurrency exchange. Allegedly, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was moving money between his companies, essentially using deposited money to make speculative bets in the crypto space, and when users tried to withdraw something like $6 Billion over the course of a day or two, it wasn’t there.
Adding insult to injury, hundreds of millions of assets that remained at FTX disappeared this weekend in what was described as a “hack,” but has people asking even more questions of the founder and his inside circle.
Author Michael Lewis (The Big Short, Moneyball, etc…) has been following SBF for an upcoming book, and with this latest series of twists, the book should be fascinating!
It remains to be seen whether or not account owners will get any money back, but if they do, my guess is that it will be pennies on the dollar. If you lost money via this or any other crypto blowup, I’m sorry. There are some lessons to be learned, and some lessons are more expensive than others. I hope yours were relatively cheap.
One, you don’t know who you can trust. Praise had been heaped on SBF, and the 30-year old’s net worth was estimated to be in the $15 Billion to $25 Billion range until losing the vast majority of it this week.
Two, don’t speculate with money you can’t afford to lose. I have always viewed cryptoassets as a place for “play money,” which ought to be a small part of one’s portfolio, especially prior to reaching financial independence.
Three, not your keys, not your coins. Between massive hacks, exit scams, gross mismanagement and fraud, keeping your cryptocurrency allocation under someone else’s “watchful eye” carries clear risks.
There’s plenty more to this developing FTX story, and I’ll be sure to follow along. I look forward to it getting the Michael Lewis treatment.
I’m on a Boat!
For the second time this year, my family and I boarded a lengthy repositioning cruise.
The first one took us from Galveston, TX to New York City with stops in Central and South America plus the Caribbean. This one goes from Southampton, UK to Florida with two stops each in France, Spain, and Portugal.
We’re having a splendid time, and we’ve already visited four ports. Two remain and then we’ll enjoy a series of 25-hour days as we traverse the Atlantic. I look forward to those extra hours of sleep!
The food’s been great, the drinks plentiful, the entertainment impressive, and we’re not on a ship with 800 known COVID cases, unlike our friends the FI Heroes.
The internet’s pretty lousy, but I’m able to do at least the bare minimum to keep this blog chugging along. Having excellent help with various aspects of the blog makes traveling much more feasible.
Have an outstanding week!
-Physician on FIRE
7 thoughts on “The Sunday Best (11/13/2022)”
Good morning PoF,
You might consider listening to the podcast, The Outlaw Ocean, specifically the Magic Pipe episode. Gives another perspective on cruise ships. The whole podcast is certainly worth the listen!
VetOffLeash
Woohoo! Thanks for including us!
Thanks for the shout-out and enjoy your travels. One of my premises in thinking about time and money is that we only get 24h in day to spend. I guess the other approach is to take a trans-Atlantic cruise!
-LD
Good stuff, as usual. Good reminder that building a life you enjoy beats lots of other paths in life.
Didn’t know Michael Lewis was writing a book on FTX/crypto. I’ll be looking forward to that. He’s always great.
His podcast is good too if you haven’t listened.
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules
Enjoy the high seas…you guys considered taking a freighter? Might be a bit yet before they allow it but I’ve always thought that’d be interesting way to cross the ocean.
https://www.freightercruises.com/voyages.php
Interesting about the freighter option. It looks awfully spartan compared to the luxury we’re enjoying.
But if you’re primarily interested in transportation without the bells and whistles, buffets, entertainment, etc…, I guess hopping aboard a freighter could be an economical way to get from port to port.
Cheers!
-PoF
Enjoy your travels!
I’m glad to hear you’re giving Tuesday charity bonanza is happening again this year. I make a list of charities to support that day, and will be picking one to add to your list!
I’m up earlier than I’d like due to very noisy upstairs neighbors and the Sunday Best is my go to way to ease into the day.
Have a wonderful week!
Thanks, Liz!
You have a wonderful week, as well.
Cheers!
-PoF