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…
During our recent discussion on Inflation, a Badass reader stopped by and caught my attention by dropping the following block of wisdom into the comments section: “A final note if you are worried about inflation: sledgehammer the TV and go for a walk in the woods. Trees get bigger every year unless you cut them…
Way back in the olden days, people used to be amazed at my life story. I was “The Man Who Retired at 30”, and it was so unusual that it would show up in news headlines all over the place. Thankfully, this is no longer such a surprising story. The idea of financial independence has…
One of the nicest new trends of recent years is really the revival and rebranding of something very old: the smaller dwelling. Over the last few months, I have built just such a structure, and it has turned out to be a rather cool experience. In fact, I’m typing this article for you from within…
This is kind of a special moment for me. Since the year 2007, which is eight years ago or 20 percent of my time alive on this Earth, I have been stuck with a less-than-ideal real estate situation. And it is just about to be resolved with the happy CHA-CHING! of a cash register. To…
The good news is, we sold our old house shortly after moving into the new one. The bad news is that the net proceeds (just over $400,000 after all related costs) are on the way to the bank account, where they will immediately become a sea of donut-munching, water-cooler-gossiping Idle Employees doing no useful work…
This past Friday, Mrs. Money Mustache and I walked downtown and purchased a bag of bulk cinnamon and a nice Midcentury Modern house. The ease with which these two errands could be combined reminded me how much I like this town. As for the house, It’s the same one I mentioned earlier this month, but…
Well, it’s official: The Mustache Family is buying a new house. We’re pretty excited, as this is a chance to put many of our favorite values into action. It is a significant downsizing, at 1000 square feet smaller than our current place. This brings the chance to live more efficiently, with less idle space. It’s…
If you ever look at my Twitter feed, you might know that we spent a day in June hosting the fun little video crew that makes Yahoo’s Financially Fit series. Host Farnoosh Torabi and her fine producer, camera dude, and a Denver-based sound guy and production assistant all came to Longmont to hang out, eat…
“Honey! Wake Up!” “MMpph?” “I heard my phone ringing a bunch so I got up and checked my voicemail. Luke says the pipes burst in our house and it flooded.. you probably have to go back.” These are the words with which Mrs. Money Mustache awakened me from my otherwise-beautiful Hawaiian sleep this morning. She…
Well, there it goes again. The business cycle, that is. I moved to the United States at the peak of the 1999 dot-com boom. At the time, high-tech companies were engaging in bidding wars over candidates, and home buyers in Colorado were racing to put in above-asking-price bids on any livable home that came to…
Well, it looks like the Foreclosure Project will be coming to an unexpectedly successful early end. It took a big push by all of us at the end of December, but the house has now officially become an income producer. And it is producing at $1200 per month versus the $1100 I originally estimated it…
Since the last update in this series, there has been a certain amount of drama on our latest road to Real Estate Riches. There’s always drama when you buy a house, because relatively large sums of money are involved, and the sale involves a large number of people working together. A buyer and seller, real…
We’re diving into a fundamentally new field here – the field of actually increasing your income, which is quite different from the cutting your spending I usually advocate. For most people, the cutting works much better because they already have a shortage of free time, and a surplus of income compared to what is actually…
Quite accidentally, it looks like we timed our last talk about the stock market pretty darned well. Back in February 2025, the market put the perfect cap on a multi year climb before stepping onto the wild roller coaster we’re currently riding. Since then it has seen some of the steepest drops and recoveries in…
After thirteen years of helping readers through case studies, helping friends with their early retirement plans, and even coaching people as part of in-person events like Camp FI, I’ve come to realize that I really like helping people sort out their finances! So this year, I finally decided to try working with people individually on…
