Apr 10, 2018
When I built our current house, I decided to do as much of the work as practical myself, because I learned years ago that this is the most satisfying way to live. I love sitting back late at night, especially during cold winter nights or intense summer rainstorms, and looking up at the high ceilings…
In writing this blog for you, Mr. Money Mustache actually has three major goals: To make you rich so you can retire early. To make you happy so you can properly enjoy your early retirement. To save the whole Human Race from destroying itself through overconsumption of its own habitat. All three of these goals…
Have you ever noticed that as a whole, our society has its daily habits almost completely backwards? We’re generally so “busy” that we don’t have time to get much exercise. And then we spend countless sedentary hours sitting in our cars each week because we think that car driving saves us time. To fuel our…
— — As I type this, there are only a few days left in the 2010s, and holy shit what a decade it has been. Ten years ago, a 35 year old MMM and the former Mrs. MM were four years into retirement, but not feeling very retired yet. We stumbled out of 2009 with…
As I wrote that last article on making sure your life isn’t too busy, a nagging thought kept coming up in my mind. It went something like this: “Sure, Mustache – you’ve found great value in simplifying your own life. But you’re kind of known for being the Anti-Commitment guy. You get uneasy if somebody tries…
Every day, the ever-generous Google search engine sends thousands of random new people from around the world to the shores of our Mustachian Nation here. Do they find what they are looking for? Just for fun, let’s take a rapid-fire tour through the top questions people have asked the Internet over the course of the last…
With over 500 articles published as of 2020 and still going, this has become a huge blog. But some people allege that it’s a good one, and thus they want to read as many of those posts as they can. In the olden days, that meant going to the first post, and reading and navigating…
Luxury, luxury, luxury. What a strange and grand country this is, where the necessities are virtually free, so we end up spending most of our income on optional luxuries in the quest for ever-fancier pants. The Money Mustache family is no exception, and 2013 was another tight navigation along the border between “Enough” and “Too Much”.…
The Vacation House. A home away from home, where you get to escape on weekends to live a fantasy life that is better than your real life. It is a concept that seems to be coming up more and more among my friends and family these days, as people get older and wealthier and start…
Here I am, back on the keyboard again after a week in the Pacific Northwest. I was there to meet a small group of friends for our annual festival of snowboarding, feasting, and recreational alcohol and drug use known as the Safety Pirates trip. As usual, it was plenty of fun and the highlight of…
In my ongoing and painstaking research on what separates Wealthy Mustachians who feel life is full of abundance, from Consumer Suckas who can’t seem to get ahead because of life’s many expenses, I notice many patterns. Certain behavioral habits tend to make people wealthier, and others provide a grinding pull towards the gutter. Complainypants disease, an…
At the very center of Mustachianism Itself, lies the issue of What to Do With Your Time. Time is one of your greatest allies in getting rich, but it is also a constant foe, since we all have a limited supply of it. So it makes sense that Mr. Money Mustache would spend some of his time,…
Wow. Four thousand dollars a month. It was Automatic Money, rolling in like crazy with no effort on my part, absolutely no overhead, and it was remarkably reliable. Almost $1000 every week, $130 every day, or close to $50,000 a year, probably subject to exponential growth as well. And I just turned off this firehose…
In the first post of this series, we laid the groundwork for tempting a spendy spouse into a more frugal future. It was my attempt at combining the necessary logic and psychology that are required to slowly but surely allow someone to change their mind about the connection between spending and lifetime happiness. In this…
Mustachians are a tech-savvy bunch. From what I’ve heard, engineers and other professionals are way over-represented in the audience compared to the general population. We may think we’re pretty smart, but we are actually some of the biggest suckers out there when it comes to the unfortunate condition known as gadget addiction. I’m right there…
I grew up in a pretty low-key family, financially speaking. We always had plenty of money for groceries and my parents never went into debt, but if you were one of the Joneses* living down the street from us, you’d be hard-pressed to notice any flashy spending. This upbringing occurred in a pretty small town…
