Apr 22, 2013
One of the weirdest things about this country is the way people use their cars. I mean, it takes some serious effort to find a spot in our Three Million Square Mile land area, where you will not see endless lines of seated humans trundling meaninglessly back and forth in these giant and stupendously inefficient…
When it comes to the Automobile, you really have a choice between two possible relationships. You can be the Master, and thoughtfully use cars as a tool as needed to reach your goals. Or you can be a Slave to the auto – worshiping it, allowing it to steal your money, your physical fitness, and your…
Right around the same time I bought this new fixer-upper house, I bought a special piece of equipment to help make the project more efficient. With the new house a five minute walk from the old one, commuting time was not an issue. But with the hundreds of trips carrying tools and materials required for…
A close friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer this year. It was the serious kind, where you need to treat it quickly and aggressively or it will spread through your body, stick to all of your organs, and kill you. The diagnosis was a shock to my friend and her loved ones – she’s…
In this extremely wealthy country of ours, the chief barrier to wealth is often the information, or misinformation that gets stuck inside our own heads. People with the right knowledge can develop the right habits, and these habits lead them to accumulate wealth very quickly. Meanwhile, the majority of people pick up incorrect financial ideas and…
In early April of 2011, I started a blog. Although I secretly hoped that lots of people would end up reading it, it was partly just a form of personal therapy – a place where I fight back against a world that had obviously lost its mind, by sharing some financial and living advice that…
If you look around on the street these days, you might get the impression that it is really, really difficult to stay in shape beyond the age of about 30. Sure, there are a few competitive athletes, movie stars and Navy SEALs around that still manage to keep in strong form, but if you are not…
The Man With the Big Keychain An old friend of mine is obsessed with security. He carries a huge bundle of keys and makes his way through each day meticulously locking and unlocking anything that can be locked. He drives his car through the alley into the detached garage, and the door seals shut behind his…
If you were to show up and gaze down on our planet as an outsider, you could easily get the impression that Dogs run the place, and we Humans exist only to serve their needs. We provide them with shelter, transportation, medical care and even grooming, in most cases going further into personal debt to…
Working in my yard the other day, I happened to notice that my power meter is just about to cross the ‘2000’ mark. That’s two thousand kilowatt hours, or roughly $200 of electricity. About the amount it takes to drive your Tesla Model S from Los Angeles to New York and back, or dry 570…
Here we go again! As we do once every year, Mrs. MM and I have spent the day nervously tallying the sinful blizzard of excessive spending that we have been committing over the past twelve months. If you aren’t familiar with my budgeting style, it is “I Don’t Have a Budget“. Since we know there’s no…
A few months back, I joined in for an episode of a podcast called the Disciplined Investor. The host Andrew Horowitz and I were chatting about money, raising children, stock market crashes and so on, and then this question popped out of the void and really surprised me: For some reason, the question…
