A Road Trip to Early Retirement Extreme
Today is actually a special occasion – Mr. Money Mustache’s first Guest Posting on another blog.
The wise and benevolent writer of the Early Retirement Extreme blog, a guy named Jacob who also retired in his early 30s and has been running that site for several years, allowed me to write a “hello” to his own club of financial freedom enthusiasts.
By the look of today’s readership stats, there are thousands of us. Maybe we can change the world!
Here’s the post: The quest of financial bloggers to Save the World
many thanks again to Jacob!
Article: How To Start a Blog
Welcome New Readers! Take a look around. Feeling Hardcore? Start at the first article and read your way through using the links at the bottom of each article. Casual Sampler? Browse the complete list of all posts since the beginning of time. Hope to see you around here more often. ~ Love, Mr. Money Mustache
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Mr. Money Mustache is a family man living in the United States who retired from work, relatively wealthy, at about age 30. After several years of retirement, he noticed that his still-working peers were envious of his lifestyle. They were making more money than he ever had, yet they were somehow still broke. So he decided to write this blog to educate the world on how it is done.
I saw the article over on ERE and headed over to your blog to check it out – great blog – you have yourself a new subscriber :)
I particularly enjoyed your post on getting rich with Rental Income – keep up the great posts!
Thanks,
Ryan
Hi Mr. `stash,
I am very glad to have found your blog through ERE. I too live in CO and will become a woman of leisure in about three years. I have a question. I often struggle with my friends who always want to get out of town on the weekends. I love the outdoors the mountains, and sports but not all the hassle, stress and expense that comes with being an endless weekend warrior. Camping is close to free but eating, drinking, transportation and sports gear isn’t.
I appreciated your prior post where you mentioned that you would rather make a day trip to a nearby mountain biking spot than haul junk 100 miles up in to the mountains for a few days and then back. I’ve already been to all of the nearby hot spots, probably several times as I have hardly been home a weekend in several years. How do I convince my friends and especially my boyfriend to stop doing so much or do I just opt out hope they catch on?
Thanks
That is a tricky one! I am much more of a homebody than you – I spend most of my weekends right here in the city. But being a Dad is the main factor causing that.
I like your idea of opting out occasionally – just check some good books out of the library and send off the man and friends and curl up for Lady Leisure at home. Perhaps he will cut back on trips in response as well. As for the friends – I’m not sure how to influence a pack of wild spenders. Host movie nights at your place? Turn them all into MMM readers motivated for early retirement?
I am glad we to see someone else doing early retirement – with a kid and in relative “luxury”. My family is doing the same, with a 4 and 6 yr olds. Our friends are always scratching their heads trying to figure out what we are doing differently. I came through ERE and I enjoyed your blog very much. Keep up the great work!
I just came across your blog from the Early Retirement Extreme, and I want to say that I’m impressed! I love your commentary. It’s very entertaining to read. I write about once a week on personal finance, but it’s nowhere near as entertaining as yours. Keep up the good posts! I’m now a subscriber :)
Hey John, thanks for reading! Just checked out your blog and it looks very interesting to me – I like the personal stories, since it lets me the reader spy on the financial lives of other people. Very fun.
Dear MMM,
Have you seen the Hateful Pinko Commie Propaganda film series entitled Zeitgeist? According to these films, debt is the source of all money and interest is the source of all evil, and our governments will all be bankrupt in no time since they borrow money from scary groups that secretly control the universe. How can we best protect our mustaches against this pending apocalypse?
I believe you have good advice- but a thrifty utopia is also perilous. If everyone grows beautiful flowing mustaches, no one will buy stupid shit that they don’t need, our stocks will fail, and we will have to go back to work. Or take up pot farming or something. Thank goodness that human nature will not change, laziness and greed will persevere, keeping our secret mustaches safe.
I shout: Buy videogames you will never play with your credit card! Drive your Escalade to the grocery store to purchase the latest swiffer attachment! Yes, you need new pants! Two pairs! Make all of the dinosaurs into plastic bags! Each and every one of them so we can stop worrying about it! Collect expensive cheeses! Burn the coal all up! Piss right into the ocean! Throw things away without using them! Then buy newer things! Consume everything! Spend it all!
Very interesting points, Mr. Crazy man!
There are actually some serious points in there I may someday write about. One is Pessimism and Stupid Conspiracy Theories. I find that at the default level of financial knowledge, people know very little and happily drink the kool-aid and consume. At a slightly higher level of knowledge, like watching some Fox News and reading a few blog postings, some people branch off into fucking stupid misguided crap about “Gold is the only thing worth anything in the world!”, or “The [insert ethnic group or industry group here] bosses control everything in the world including the government!”.
Then, when you read a few hundred more economics and history books, you become more of an ultimate Mustachian Master. Now you understand both the basis of all the conspiracy theories, and the reason they are stupid and wrong. So you become an optimist again and realize that the world economy – which is actually just the human race – is actually quite a robust and productive thing. And you can use this knowledge and lack of blind fear for your own profit. It is at this level that Mr. Money Mustache sits, in a little Junior chair next to the desk of Warren Buffett Himself.
And the other good topic is “What would happen if everyone grew a money mustache?” – If they did it all at once, there would be quite a dramatic depression. But if US consumers gradually increased their savings rate and eliminated debt, it would actually be great for the economy. For one thing, the financial sector – that unproductive fake-money-mixer component of our economy – would shrink, and we’d be forced to invest our savings and clever workforce into more productive businesses instead. With a higher national savings rate, we’d end up advancing our own manufacturing, medicine, and energy inventions, and education, and the ever-growing profits would go to us. The Mustachian Nation.
Dear MMM,
You are correct. That was a roar of nonsense. But damn, it was fun. And your response was on point as usual.
h s