Every week I find a few great articles I feel are especially valuable. Following are this week’s best. I hope you find them as useful as I did.
This week’s favorites include how much money does it take to live in New York, a check list for those retiring soon, why margin of error might be a better measure than risk tolerance in your investing decisions, guilt-free spending, and what to ask about a locum assignment.
Happy reading!
I hear physicians talk about how they can’t get ahead because they live in a high cost of living area. But when you really think about it, physicians make a lot of money no matter where they live. The high cost of living is only their current excuse. What about all the teachers, EMTs, plumbers and other middle class people who make a faction of what the physician make? How do they get by on so much less? The New York Times interviewed people on the street of New York asking them what they earn. The 27 people who would talk to them all earned far less than the average New York physician. No more excuses!
Are you going to retire this year? If so then A Dime Saved has a great retirement checklist that will help you make the transition. #3 is one I help a lot of people get right.
The financial world likes to talk about risk tolerance when it comes to investing. Young people have a lot of tolerance and old ones not so much. But how do you measure risk tolerance? Maybe us scientific people would do better if we looked at our investing using margin of error, something we are familiar with already. The Prudent Plastic Surgeon shares this concept with us in What is Your Investing Margin for Error?
When we begin the process of saving for retirement we will be saving for many years. But is it the right thing to do to put all effort into saving? Shouldn’t we be spending money to have fun along the way? How do we balance the desire to buy stuff with the desire to save everything we can? Physician on FIRE shares with us a story from Late Stater FIRE who now is getting a grip on The Joy of Spending Money Guilt-Free. I know I struggled with shifting to spending after so many years of saving. How about you?
I have been retired for six years and I still get calls asking for me to do locums. When you get the call, what are the key questions you should ask before saying yes to the assignment? Locumstory shares a few of those questions in Choosing a locum assignment: What to ask and what to avoid. If you need to get started in locums and want a quick way to learn the right stuff, consider my inexpensive online course The Doctors Course to Thriving in Locum Tenens. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
I hope you enjoy these articles as much as I did. I look forward to updating you again next week with a few more articles I find especially interesting. If you read an especially good article, send me the link so I can share it with others.
