Apr 7, 2023
In my role as Mr. Money Mustache, I do my best to be your one-stop-shop for Lifestyle Guru ideas. So over the years we’ve covered not just the Money side of life, but also the even more important stuff like health and fitness and the psychology of better, happier living. But there’s one single area…
Oct 4, 2016
Before we begin, I should probably admit that the Mustache family absolutely did not need a new car. Or even a new used car. In fact, we didn’t even need the two older used cars that we have been keeping around for the last five years, because our local life has blossomed so nicely in this small…
Jan 28, 2016
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…
Jul 2, 2013
Last week, the unthinkable happened: Mr. Money Mustache experienced actual car trouble. In past articles, I have boasted about how by owning a reliable car and keeping driving to a minimum, you will find that car maintenance becomes almost negligible: an oil change every year or so whether it needs it or not, and simple…
Sep 20, 2012
So you’ve got a small car now. It’s a hatchback or wagon design, which allows you to carry bulky stuff as well as people. Thanks to that nice open interior space, you find you can easily carry 8-foot 2x4s home from the building materials store, as well as dressers and small appliances. Good for you!…
Mar 19, 2012
Many new readers have been asking me for car advice recently, and there have also been some useful discussions on the matter in the Money Mustache Forum. I find myself typing out the same list of recommendations over and over again, so I thought the best strategy would be to dig in, do some up-to-date…
Dec 8, 2011
As anyone who has read more than a few MMM articles has learned, the key to becoming rich is living an efficient lifestyle. When it comes to your choice of car, this means making sure you choose one that is optimized for whatever you will use it for the most. While this sounds self-evident, it is…
Feb 25, 2025
And by lately, I mean the past several years or more. The value of the S&P 500 index of stocks, where most of us hopefully have a good chunk of our retirement savings stashed into index funds, is up about fifty seven percent in just the past two years. And it has more than doubled…
Feb 3, 2024
The other day, an MMM reader stopped by and left the following comment on one of my older posts about the principles of FIRE: As with every critique of our ideas, I thought about this comment for a while. Tried to determine if there were any Principles of Mustachianism that were genuinely going obsolete, versus…
Nov 2, 2023
The thing that drew me to early retirement is freedom, and that’s still the best part of it. Back in 2005, the primary reason for this freedom-seeking was being able to devote my best hours to being a Dad – I had a feeling my career in tech would be too demanding to sustain once…
Oct 5, 2021
To most of the Internet, Mr. Money Mustache is known as the quirky early retirement financial guy, and this is a blog about Money. But really, I’m not a finance guy – someone who devotes most of his time to optimizing money. I’m more of a general Life Engineer – someone who tries to optimize…
Apr 18, 2021
So it looks like my 15-year-old is officially a high-school dropout. Halfway through ninth grade, emboldened perhaps by the taste of freedom that Covid-era remote learning had provided, he realized that the whole system was just too slow and inefficient for him, and was “Getting in the way of his work.” So as it looks…
Nov 9, 2020
This page (maintained by my healthshare expert Bill) will dig further into the details of Sedera health sharing , and serve as a place to ask and answer questions in the comments section below. After learning everything you need to know about the company, you can sign up with Sedera at the best possible prices,…
Aug 4, 2020
“Success can get you to the top of a beautiful cliff, but then propel you right over the edge of it.” As a Mustachian, there’s a good chance that you are a bit of an overachiever. Maybe you fought hard to get exceptional grades in school, or perhaps you have always dominated in your career…
May 3, 2020
A Quick Foreword: Although the world is still in Pandemic mode, we are shifting gears back to personal finance mode here at MMM. Partly because we could all use a distraction right now, and even more important because forced time off like this is the ideal time to re-invest in optimizing parts of your life…
Apr 2, 2020
So here we are just a month later, in a full-blown economic panic, and at the start of the most sudden recession ever. The pandemic has spread much further and faster than most uninformed people (including me) would have ever guessed, and the whole world is on some form of lockdown. Nothing quite like this…