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:
Financial Independence will make your job better, they said. You’ll be working because you want to, we were told. Retire by 40 isn’t buying it (and neither am I). The Downside of Financial Independence.
Crispy Doc hosts a guest post from Gasem highlighting a different kind of independence. When combined with financial independence, families can also gain location independence with Home Schooling: Educational Independence. Based on the results, it worked very well for him and his family.
Location Independence will give us the ability to spend more time in places like Honduras, where we recently took part in a medical mission as a family. It was an eye-opening experience for my boys. Women Who Money ponders family and the less fortunate in How Can I Help My Children Understand Poverty?
I decided I wasn’t interested in going from full-time work to slamming on the brakes, hence my part-time schedule. Jillian of Montana Money Adventures touts the benefits of a smooth transition aligning your values, passion, and purpose in Flexible FIRE.
B.C. Krygowski, a physician couple finding financial freedom, are following a similar path. Why Two Physicians Agree to a Massive Paycut.
The Krygowskis have travel plans. So do the ERNs of Early Retirement Now after Karsten’s early retirement kicks off in two weeks. His route map alone makes me jealous. The 2018 ERN Family World Tour.
As the wealthy sometimes say, you’ve got to spend money to make money. What else do the wealthy say and do? From Passive Income MD, 7 Behaviors of the Wealthy (and How I Try to Copy Them).
One thing I’ve observed the wealthy do is to give generously. The Rich Fool feels that Charitable Giving Deserves a Place in Every Budget. I agree.
Updated Credit Card Tracker
I updated the spreadsheet as the limited time offers continue to improve. Click here to learn more about the current offerings or download the spreadsheet via the form below. If you’re already a subscriber, you won’t be resubscribed.
If you enjoy Marriott or Hilton Hotels, you can easily score a few free nights in either or both of those chains.
And if you’ve got a small business, the 70,000 you see in red represents Aadvantage miles. You may recall that I flew my family of four to Honduras and back with 90,000 miles. Two of these cards (one new card for each spouse, NOT companion cards) would earn you 140,000 points. That would get a family of four to South America and back.
For more on my travel rewards strategies, visit my recent post on cards for people who love nearly free travel and money.
Learn how to better manage your student loan debt, and explore refinancing to a lower rate with cash back offers up to $1,000!
They Come in Threes
Celebrity deaths seem to come in threes. I don’t know why. They just do.
Three isn’t a bad number. I’m a fan of the three fund portfolio. A shot from beyond the arc is worth three, as is a field goal from anywhere on the field. A threepeat is an amazing feat, and I try to get three servings of fruits and vegetables in per day. My wife is a big fan of menage et trois — the wine. The wine!!!
You know what else comes in threes? Appendectomies. I don’t know why. They just do.
Yesterday afternoon, I made this observation in our Physicians on FIRE Facebook group:
Let’s ignore the fact that I’m disagreeing with the premise that I, myself, made in this thread and jump to what happened next.
The pager goes off late afternoon. Guess what? Another appendectomy.
I guess I deserve it.
I also deserve some downtime — for the last 16 days, I’ve been in either an O.R., and airport, or both. I’m looking forward to sleeping in or hitting the sack early next week. Or a nap.
Maybe I’ll go for all three.
A generous welcome bonus of 60,000 points & Peloton membership credits onthe Chase Sapphire Preferred & premium card perks with the Chase Sapphire Reserve!
Chase Sapphire Preferred
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Chase Sapphire Reserve
60,000 Points with a $4,000 spend in 3 monthsPoF Summary
The Chase Sapphire Reserve offers great travel perks including Priority Pass lounge access, a credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre✓ and a $300 annual travel credit. When using Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal, get 10x points on hotels and car rental & 5x points on flights. 3x points on other travel & dining. Elevated Peloton, Lyft and DoorDash benefits. $550 Annual Fee
Have a restorative week!
-Physician on FIRE
Thanks for the mention! And it’s cool that you featured Brenda too because she is doing that same thing! For most people after they decided they want OUT then it’s time to figure out what they actually want to do. That processes takes a bit more time and attention than most people realize.
Always a must-read every Sunday and even sweeter if one of my posts is on the list! Have a great rest of the weekend everybody!!! 🙂
Nice list and sorry you jinxed yourself on the appy’s. LOL
For some reason, I cannot seem to sign up for Crispy Doc’s excellent blog and cannot easily find the Gasem contribution. Also, previous comments at Crispy Doc’s site went unpublished so sadly my failure over there is a three-peat. 🙁
Vagabond,
This is my shortcoming, not a fail on your part. I migrated my site just ahead of PoF’s generous interview with me, in hopes of seeming “classier” with a new big boy site.
Unfortunately, the comments did not migrate as I’d hoped they would, and the much smarter computer guy I asked to help me out said he had no additional ideas. I’ve now reluctantly accepted that moving the site lost some valuable comments in the move.
Gasem’s post is here.
I’m trying to make it easy and worthwhile to follow my blog, so if I’m not succeeding I want to make it right. If you encounter any problem please let me know at crispydocblog (at) gmail and I’ll address it.
Please accept my apology.
Sincerely,
CD
Sounds like you need a vaca PoF. This retirement stuff is serious! Tnx for the shoutout on my article
Fortunately, I just started one! A 14-day staycation to be specific.
Glad to see how well homeschooling worked out for you. There may be some of that in our future.
Cheers!
-PoF
An eye opening experience? That’s all I get?
Guess I’ll wait to hear more…
I hope to have a post ready in the next couple weeks with all the details of our Honduran adventure.
I can tell you that the beer was uninspiring. But at least there was beer.
Cheers!
-PoF
Agreed! And I’ll add that at least the beer was cheap.
Thanks for the shout out.
The tracker has good timing, I’m looking at the next card at this point. I’ve never had an account with American or any miles with them. How transferable are they? We’re looking at Chase Ink Prefferred currently but 5/24 is debatable due to prior authorized card users. Might need the backup of a call to chase doesn’t do the trick.
Yeah, I wish I had known not to add my wife as an authorized user when I started down this path. It did not occur to me that those cards would count against her ability to obtain Chase cards.
I’ve racked up all the AA miles I can find. It’s what we used to fly the four of us to Mexico, Hawaii, and Honduras all within the last six months. I haven’t transferred any miles, but you can to British, Hawaiian, and a number of others in the OneWorld Alliance.
Here’s a page that shows how many miles it takes to get somewhere.
Cheers!
-PoF
I always look forward to reading your Sunday best (so much so that I usually get up earlier than my family so I have time to read most of the links before they wake up!). Thanks for the mention today, much appreciated. And man, do we have travel plans this year! 😉 Hope you get some rest!
Thanks! We had a fourth appy Sunday evening, but I was able to sleep in ’til 8:30 this morning, and it was glorious.
Cheers!
-PoF