Apr 26, 2011
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…
My wife actually invented this post and I think it’s a great concept that we should cover right away. You see, Mrs. Money Mustache* is an indispensable part of our shared empire of frugality. Believe it or not, she was generally just as excited as I was about making an extra payment on the mortgage.…
“I drive a pickup truck because it’s comfortable and sometimes I need to haul things on the weekend” “There’s nothing in the fridge right now so let’s just go out for dinner” “I’ve read that Mr. Money Mustache claims to save $94,432 every ten years by riding a bike, but I don’t HAVE a bike,…
Q: Mr. Money Mustache, I was curious where you stood on the subject of building up a 6 month savings cushion versus flinging money at existing debt? I know what Dave Ramsay says, but I also value Mr. Money Mustache’s experienced opinion. Thanks! A: SOME sort of cushion, or ‘stash as we refer to it…
I think the main reason people seem amazed at the idea of retiring at age 30, 40, or even 50 is the lack of real information on early retirement in general. If you type “retirement calculator” into a search engine these days, and enter some basic stats about yourself, you will find some very strange…
First a quick editorial update: Mr. Money Mustache and the Realist got into an epic battle last night, similar to the one where Good Superman and Bad Superman smashed each other around in the auto wrecking yard in Superman III. However, unlike Superman, we ended up in a death grip of mutual strangulation where our…
A recent comment from a valued Mr. Money Mustache reader asks something like this, “I need a new car – we want a Honda CRV, but after looking at the used car listings, it looks like new might be a better deal, especially since it saves me from the need to put much money down”.…
Hey there.. welcome to the first edition of my new “Get Rich With…” series. In these articles, we’ll analyze a bunch of ideas, both new and old, to see what kind of impact they can have on your life. (Hint: the impact will probably be a huge positive one, since these are all of my…
By the Realist Mr. Money Mustache has been a bit more reasonable lately, posting some numbers to back up his assertions. But I thought I should join in at this point to address something that has probably been in your mind: how much can I really give up, without going crazy? After all, we all…
I just saw one of those automatically generated text ads at the top of my Gmail account. Here’s what it said: 2011 Pilot 4WD LX $319/mo (note: this article was first published in April 2011 but you can substitute the current year whenever you read it.) It gave me shivers to look at it, just…
By Mr. Money Mustache I love the topic of “Early Retirement”, because that alone is the subject of so many books. But as a reader of this blog, you get full discussion of that topic for free. For previous generations, perhaps our parents or grandparents living stereotypical middle-class lives, retirement used to mean reaching age…
By Mr. Money Mustache The Realist thinks he has me pegged. He’s right about the 1999 REI Bookpacker Plus backpack, but in his calm by-the-numbers approach he is missing a lot of the reasons frugality is great. No. Not just great: it’s the only non-ridiculous lifestyle for the thinking person. And this is because for…
