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…
Mr. Money Mustache can tend to get a little high-level at times, talking about all these feelings and philosophies that underlie the proper path to wealth. But you can’t just smile your way to the top – there are real numbers at work in the background, whether you understand them or not. These can gang up and…
Pretty much since I learned to walk, I have had an unusual disdain for waste. I noted the inefficient route of the school bus and wondered why it couldn’t just pick us up at a few centralized locations. Tracked my allowance with multi-year forecasts and kept the dollar bills organized in a photo album. Always…
This summer, Mr. Money Mustache broke his own rules and burned an absolute shitload of gasoline to criscross the continent in a not-very-efficient vehicle. Sure, I can list a few excuses as to why I did it (it was a 7-week family vacation, I needed the big vehicle to carry all my carpentry tools and…
Hey! It’s time for a Reader Case Study! I almost forgot about this cherished category of posts, partly because my MMM contact email address stopped forwarding way back on January 10th. “Ahh, this is relaxing”, I thought, “I guess nobody has any questions for me these days!”. Mrs. Money Mustache laughed at my naivete. I fixed the…
I was recently enjoying a conversation with a new friend. Despite my best efforts to sound normal and busy, this person eventually figured out that my wife and I don’t actually do enough paid work to sustain the normal middle-class life we seem to lead. From here he pried out the fact that I am…
So, I kind of just bought the house next door to me. This is already somewhat amazing, for a small-town boy who refuses to even buy himself a new car. But even stranger are the details that surround this deal: I’m not moving into it. I don’t really need or want a second house. I…
Two years ago, I was unsatisfied with my options for health insurance. The premiums were rising even as the quality dropped in the form of an ever-increasing deductible. I am guessing that you might feel the same way these days – most of us Americans are in the same boat. I felt like I was…
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…
Since the Dawn of Mustachianism in 2011, the same question has come up over and over again: And in these nine years since then, the movement towards socially responsible investing has only grown. Public pension funds have started to “divest” from oil company stocks, and various social issues like human rights, child labor, climate change…
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…
— — 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…
