I read many blog posts each day. They mostly focus on personal finance, but also on minimalism and travel . Here are some of my favorite posts I read in October
I have no idea what the market will do in the next few months. However, given how much stocks have gone up this year, I certainly would not be surprised to see some of my winners lose value in the next year. With that in mind, I was particularly interested in these 2 posts:
From Blair duQuesnay at The Belle Curve: How to Sell a Winner. She admits there is no perfect answer.
From Ben Carlson at A Wealth of Common Sense: When Should You Sell a Stock? I particularly like their quote from Peter Lynch: “Selling your winners and holding your loses is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.”
Part of the reason I am thinking about this is I am getting closer to retirement, and I remember the dot-com bust in 2000. I heard about a number of people who were counting on their pre-bust portfolio, and who then had to postpone their retirement for years. Richard Quinn writes at Humble Dollar about this with a short piece: Why I Worry About Money.
Karen Trefzger, who often writes at No Sidebar about minimalism, reviewed a lot of the classic ways to Achieve True Financial Freedom. I think it’s a good piece to share with people.
A number of the writers at Humble Dollar have already retired and report on how it’s going. Mark Crothers seems to be managing well, and writes about The Real Wealth of Retirement (Hint: It’s Not Financial). On the other hand, Byjove seems to be struggling; their report is enjoyably creative though, in Retirement blues.
With retirement on the mind, and lots of posts about “the new 4% rule,” (Bill Bengen, who did the calculations leading to this rule has come out with new calculations), these two posts are ones I may want to refer to in the future:
- Jesse Cramer at The Best Interest goes over the 4% rule and all the things that aren’t perfect about it in The 4% Rule, the 4.7% Rule, We Need to Rethink All of Them. (Bonus points for excellent SF/F media outtakes.)
- Harry Sit at The Finance Buff highlights Open Social Security in his post When to Claim Social Security. I’m not 100% sure when I will find the time to put our numbers into a calculator–but I am the high earner, and a good bit younger than Mr. PiN. So we don’t really meet the usual examples of the older, high earning spouse (usually male) with the younger spouse (usually earned less, probably from spending time off work with kids), which is the usual example given.
The White Coat Investor published several wonderful guest posts this month, including:
- How We Became Actual Real Estate Investors, from Dr. Margaret Curtis (“Aunty Marge”). She almost inspired me to consider real estate investing myself.
- Burnout Is Expensive, from Annia Raja. A long but informative and eye-opening piece about burnout in medicine.
- And The 2025 WCI Scholarship Winners. 10 lovely essays by young people who are eager and excited to become health care works of one kind or another.
I liked this post from SoMeDocs. It’s aimed at medical students, letting them ask the question: What if I Dropped Out? For many students, considering alternative pathways reassures them they are in the right career. For me, as someone nearing the end of her career, it lets me weigh whether it’s time yet. Though I loved my vacation, I think I’m not quite ready to go yet, which makes me feel better on the days I don’t really want to do all of my work.
Dr. Neill Slater wrote a nice piece, which I can’t really summarize, over at Business is The Best Medicine about Going Home Again.
I haven’t been doing a particularly good job at decluttering in the past few months. I suspect there are a number of issues behind this, and some are on this list: 10 Things No One Tells You About Decluttering. From No Sidebar.
At the same site, Joshua Becker writes about How to Keep On Decluttering When Motivation Fades. His approach would work at any time, really, that you need to step up with the process.
Should you actually keep going and find your home pretty tidy, No Sidebar also put out a list of habits to help with maintaining a tidier home. In 7 Decluttering Habits Everybody Needs.
Do you have any favorite posts from October?
Thank you PiN. I’ve read so many of your monthly favorite lists that I’m proud to be included! I think the reason you can’t summarize my post is because it got away from me a bit and became a little too unfocused, contemplative, and esoteric. I’ve been reading a lot of Haruki Murakami lately, so I’ll blame him. Thanks again.
Neill
I thought it was a lovely post, painting a mood and feeling, rather than straight up factual.