by Michael
All month I’m constantly reading. Be it various FIRE and personal finance blogs that I subscribe to, random things that pop into my feed, or suggestions from these aforementioned blogs. I keep a list of all of these that I encounter throughout the month and present them here in this monthly roundup where I try to bring you the best or most interesting posts that I saw over the past month or so.
The focus of these roundups is mostly on FIRE but other personal finance or other content I think could be interesting to the readers of this blog. If I got it from another blog’s roundup I try to give credit when I can.
With all those caveats out of the way, let’s get into it.
Need some more reasons to believe in long-term compounding? Justin Carbonneau at Validea has some reasons to do so in Let the Flowers Bloom: Eight Ways You Can Maximize the Power of Compounding. This post came to my attention from this Physician on FIRE roundup.
Everyone will make mistakes with their money. It’s just the nature of life. However, that shouldn’t stop you from learning from the mistakes of others. Josh Katzowitz on the White Coat Investor got some feedback from their community in Your Biggest Money Mistake. I’ll add mine in while we’re here, I think my biggest mistake to date was chasing high dividends in a taxable account. It was both tax-inefficient and did not provide a great return on hassle.
I’m a huge advocate for DRIP during the accumulation phase. This post from the Best Interest breaks down just how large that amount can be.
This Humble Dollar post serves as a good reminder that what is important spending to you may not be the case for someone else, something I’ve talked about extensively on the blog before. I got this one from Can I Retire Yet’s own roundup.
While I’m usually against mortgages, especially at these interest rates. This Best Interest post talks about some of the reasons you may want to buy a home regardless of interest rate.
This Best Interest post sums up a lot of the problems I’ve had writing posts for this website. A lot of personal finance can’t be made universal.
This 1500 Days post serves as a bit of a counter to my argument that savers should buy a house in cash, or at least pay off their mortgage extremely early. It has some good points.
I’ve looked at the pros and cons of owning rental properties and come away that they’re more trouble than they’re worth. But this A Wealth of Common Sense post does a good job breaking it down and comparing it to regular investing.
I found this A Wealth of Common Sense post about whether valuations really mean anything to be kind of interesting. I’d definitely give it a read.
What should your time horizon be before you put money into the stock market? I say about 5 years, this A Wealth of Common Sense post weighs some of the options someone would have.
This A Wealth of Common Sense post gives a good reminder that no matter what, every asset class will underperform at some point.
While I still say you should start by maxing out your 401(k) and Roth IRA (and other tax-advantaged accounts when possible) before investing in a taxable account, this Can I Retire Yet post looks at reasons you may want or need to invest in a taxable instead of these other vehicles.
While I find the comparisons to long-distance running and accumulating for FIRE to break down fairly quickly once you get into the weeds, I did find this post from His Her Money Guide did a good job talking about some of those items.
Of Dollars and Data had an interesting post about how income is an essential component of building wealth. While I don’t agree with everything I think there are some excellent points.
Looking to buy a house soon? This Of Dollars and Data post does a great job breaking down all of the different costs aside from the sticker price and giving you a few rules of thumb that could help with the amount you might want to save before buying.
I liked this Physician on FIRE post as it talked about something I think used to be not really on most FIRE blogs’ radar (although I think it is becoming more prevalent now), hitting that sweet spot between being too much of a saver and spending too much.
This White Coat Investor post about hedging against short-term inflation was fairly interesting. Importantly, it stresses that you should be focused on the long-term instead anyway.
While I think some of these 8 items could be tweaked a bit, I think this White Coat Investor Post about different items that can help someone have a fulfilling life was interesting and had some decent advice.
I think this month had lots of thought-provoking posts from around the web. There were quite a few I had to cut for various different reasons, but we’ll be talking about some of those at later dates. Next week I’ll have my usual budget update out.
