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…
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…
The other day, the lady and I were biking through the parking lot of the fancy Natural Grocers food store, when I suddenly screeched to a halt, without even realizing why I had done it. It turns out the reason was that one of these things had caught the corner of my eye: “What’s going…
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…
When you hear people talking about their cars, you usually hear ridiculous terms like “dealer”, “interest rate”, and “payment”. Mr. Money Mustache has already laid down the law on this issue in the past: You should never even spend all your money on a car, let alone more than all your money. So why does everyone…
Hello from the Valley of the Sun! This is my ongoing page on The Arizona Experiment, a joyful four month uprooting of my life to come check out a new car-free community that is springing up in Tempe (a city within the Phoenix metro area.) – What’s this all about and why are you there?…
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…
Whoa, have you seen what just happened to interest rates!? Suddenly, after at least fourteen years of our financial world being mostly the same, somebody flipped over the table and now things are quite different. Interest rates, which have been gliding along at close to zero since before the Dawn of Mustachianism in 2011, have…
As I type this, I’m jumping through the various hoops involved in buying a 2023 Tesla Model Y, a spectacularly expensive, large luxury “crossover” that is absolutely loaded to the gills with excess: all wheel drive, faster acceleration than a Lamborghini, enough space for seven people and enough computer gadgetry to function as a small…
In May of 2023, after many years of successful delay I let myself buy what is probably the ultimate no-compromise, do-everything vehicle currently in production, the Tesla Model Y long range all wheel drive. One year later, I am absolutely enjoying the shit out of this thing, while racking up a surprisingly high 11,000 miles.…
One of the reasons I don’t write as often these days is that my life has gradually evolved into a Personal Finance Bubble. The people around me have learned to be purposeful with their money, which means they now have plenty of savings and never have to stress about the stuff. Good ideas have naturally…
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…
