Archive | September, 2011

Is a Costco Membership Worth The Cost?

Is a Costco Membership Worth The Cost?

Last week, I had a chance to indulge my usually suppressed Consumer Instinct and buy a WHOLE BUNCH OF STUFF at Costco. The nearest outlet of that chain is about 20 miles away from my house, in a mostly-sprawl area called Superior, Colorado. If you know Mr. Money Mustache at all, you know that I [...]

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Get Rich With: Moving to a Better Place

Get Rich With: Moving to a Better Place

If you’re like me, you currently live somewhere. But can you explain WHY exactly you live there? For most people throughout the history of our species, the reason they live somewhere is because they were born nearby. And the reason they were born there is because their parents were born nearby. Very rarely, a brave [...]

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Reader Case Study: Minimum Wage with a Baby on the Way

Reader Case Study: Minimum Wage with a Baby on the Way

I originally started this blog to both Ridicule and Educate the rich and privileged group of people known as the American Middle Class. Being a newly minted member of this group myself, I feel that we are all living large, and the vast majority of our financial problems are of our own making. Thus the [...]

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$3 Per Month: The Largest Possible Music Budget

$3 Per Month: The Largest Possible Music Budget

Mr. Money Mustache loves his music. I need a constant soundtrack of it at all times – different types of music for breakfast-eating, house-building, furniture-making, driving, blog-writing, exercising, dancing,  house cleaning, patio beer-drinking-and-campfire-having, and more. And it has to be different music all the time – no repeating the same song within a week (preferably a [...]

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I Can Never Retire, Because of Health Insurance, Waaah Waaah!

I Can Never Retire, Because of Health Insurance, Waaah Waaah!

Mr. Money Mustache likes to take a peek at where his latest visitors have been streaming in from occasionally, and sometimes he is fortunate enough to be discussed in various online discussion forums that send people this way. Sometimes on these discussion websites, a commenter will mention MMM, and a few readers will come in [...]

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Guest Posting – Notes From The Laundry Room

Guest Posting – Notes From The Laundry Room

This is fantastic! Just when Mr. Money Mustache is starting to get a bit overloaded with answering email questions and comments from readers, volunteer work at the local school, building a stone wall around one of the gardens, starting a new carpentry project in the neighborhood, and trying to write new articles here and there, [...]

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The Race to Retirement – Revisited

  Earlier this week, I spilled the beans and detailed Mr and Mrs. Money Mustache’s combined savings history from zero net worth to retirement. In the article, I tried to explain that it wasn’t a struggle or a sacrifice to become financially independent in nine years, it was in fact unavoidable. If you get paid [...]

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A Brief History of the ‘Stash: How we Saved from Zero to Retirement in Nine Years

I have been asked many times to provide some more gritty details on how I became Mr. Money Mustache at such an early age. Commenters and email writers have asked me to provide Salaries and Savings amounts through the years, as well as describe any windfalls or unusual maneuvers that made it all possible. I [...]

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Domestic Outsourcing: Practical or Wussypants?

Domestic Outsourcing: Practical or Wussypants?

A while ago, I had the pleasure of doing a guest posting on the Frugal Dad website. I noticed that the article that ran just before mine was about Outsourcing – Frugal Dad nicely illustrated his own battle between convenience and cash with a task he finds particularly unpleasant because of allergies – lawn mowing. [...]

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Book Review: Economics Explained

I have an irrational love for the subject of Economics. This strange love lay dormant in me for my whole childhood and high school career, because I incorrectly assumed I was born to be an Engineer – meaning I assumed that taking optional economics classes in high school would be a distraction. But in university, [...]

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Mrs. Money Mustache: What do newborn babies really need?

Mrs. Money Mustache: What do newborn babies really need?

Eliminating Lady Temptations: Avoid the Urge to Buy for Baby by Mrs. Money Mustache Congratulations!  You’re having a baby! Ah, babies… so small, so cute, so sweet, so…. expensive? Why is there a common misconception that having a baby costs a ton?  How much does it really cost? Answer: not much. Yet, us ladies just [...]

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My $750 Bread Making Machine

My $750 Bread Making Machine

Some consumer products become the butt of many jokes, because they are often bought in a fit of good intentions, but then discarded almost immediately. Treadmills and exercise bikes are in this category, as are juice extractors and bread machines. So you can understand the hesitation I felt three years ago, when the temptation to [...]

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How much is that bitch costin’ ya?

How much is that bitch costin’ ya?

Wow, how about that title. I can almost smell the politically correct outrage! But let’s explain right away, lest Mr. Money Mustache lose his rep as a caring family man who spends most of his time making sand castles and Lego ships with a 5-year-old boy. The alternate title was “Fix Impulse spending with The [...]

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MMM Has Been Hacked… and Fixed!

Evening Update by Mrs. MM: It’s been a long day of researching and looking through everything, but I believe I finally found the culprit hiding in pluggable.php, which was mysteriously updated on Aug 20.  Upon viewing the file, it contained a crazy long string of nonsensical garbage, so I updated it with a brand new pluggable.php. This [...]

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Book Review: “Enough.” by John C. Bogle

Book Review: “Enough.” by John C. Bogle

Mrs. Money Mustache forwarded to me an interesting video clip on YouTube with this wise old guy dishing out some very humble and sensible lessons for living a meaningful life. As I watched, I came to realize the guy talking was John Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group, a place that has been leading [...]

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What is Thermal Mass and How can it Make you Money?

What is Thermal Mass and How can it Make you Money?

Hey, what do you know, it’s September now. It has only been six weeks since I posted the controversial Air Conditioning Article, but things have changed quite a bit since then for residents of Canada and the Northern half of the US. Back on July 18th, we were mired in the hottest weeks of the [...]

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