Go from burnt out to FIREd up.
I just turned 45 this month. Statistically, I have more years behind me than ahead of me. This means I expect a pass from younger readers (and sympathetic understanding from my peers) to indulge any overly sentimental writing impulses. My dad has been on my mind a great deal recently. Specifically, due to the illness of someone close to me, …
Coastal California is paradise for everything but your wallet. You can hit the waves and hike the mountains in the same day. World cuisines collide in novel deliciousness (LA’s Kogi Taco Truck craze started when a Filipino-American chef who grew up devouring local Mexican food married into a Korean family). 13 years ago this month I had to dig my …
As a newly minted physician, you are presumably on an upward trajectory in career earnings. Any injury that limits your ability to achieve financial security needs to be covered by disability insurance. Some risk mitigation involves practicing common sense: no one will feel badly for a surgeon whose knife juggling hobby maims his dominant hand. But everyone will get a …
Back in the 80s of my youth, I owned one black tie and it was razor thin. Frankie was constantly insisting I relax, and Time magazine was the major determinant of what a given week’s father-son chat would be about. When Time Magazine ran a cover story on Herpes as the new “Scarlet Letter” of the decade, I could spot …
As I write this, I’ve spent two of the last three weeks alternating shifts at the bedside of a family member in the ICU who suffered complications following a high-risk surgery. It’s been brutal for everyone, most of all the spouse of the patient. This couple met in their teens, and just celebrated 51 years of marriage. The patient narrowly …
A funny thing happens when you commence your education in pursuit of financial independence. Without realizing it, you begin to view other areas of life through the lens of finance. The insights into non-financial life might pleasantly surprise you. After a family member’s prolonged illness, this morning was my first opportunity to paddle out for a winter swell. The surf …
Don’t Underestimate Life’s Value With A Disability I wrote an essay in college exploring the ethics of using novel DNA screening technology to determine if a fetus had Down Syndrome. As an exercise, I tried to write it from a utilitarian perspective – how does one evaluate what does the most good for the greatest number of people? Was this …
My mom and perhaps the one other regular reader of this blog may have noticed I haven’t posted in a few weeks. December was a brutal month – my wife and I spent much of it either out of state in the ICU at the bedside of a critically ill family member or back at home indirectly supporting that family …
Just as arbitrage deals with using inefficiencies in pricing to extract additional value in a financial transaction, ego arbitrage uses inefficiencies in the status of certain tasks or behaviors to create additional value (or savings) in your career and in your life. This morning I awoke to read a mind-blowing blog post over at Freedom Is Groovy where Mr. Groovy …
It’s not at Vanguard. I was not an accredited investor at the time of purchase. And it’s beaten the S&P in value added every single year since I went all in. Trouble is, it’s closed to new investors. A recent thread on the WCI forum got me thinking about my single most important investment. It was the summer of 2004, …