May 27, 2014
With over 500 articles published as of 2020 and still going, this has become a huge blog. But some people allege that it’s a good one, and thus they want to read as many of those posts as they can. In the olden days, that meant going to the first post, and reading and navigating…
Well, I’m almost done rebuilding that house I have been working on since last fall. There was a big push through the electrical and insulation stages, and then I happily handed the place off to Agustin and his crew for drywall*, which is now in its final days as well. Insulation was a big step…
I’m pretty sure we’re all being scammed. I have been collecting evidence on this for over 15 years now, and it’s starting to look pretty compelling. If you’re skeptical, see what you think of these stories: Happily Oblivious In my own life, I’ve rarely had much occasion to think about cleaning. Sure, if a surface…
It has now been a whole year since the MMM family made the jump to a low cost / high-deductible health insurance plan, so I figured it would be useful to provide an update on how the year has gone. The one we ended up with was called the “Saver80”, a barebones but useful plan…
I had a pretty scary dream the other night. My son and I were sitting on the floor in our basement, building a fort out of interlocking foam squares. Except in this dream version of our basement, I had built the house just a little bit out into the ocean, and the foundation out of…
The Mr. Money Mustache you see today is flabby and weak. Although consumers often compare themselves to the Mustache family and determine they aren’t ready to become “so extreme”, in reality the only extreme thing is how far we are from living a truly frugal lifestyle these days. The reason for this is of course…
Ahh, money. The more you have of it, the more you get to spend, right? Everybody does it that way, so that must be the right way to do it. We all agree that, sure, the debtors and the flashy live-beyond-their-means club need to rein things in. But for those honest folks who work hard…
Adventurous readers may recall that we are in the middle of a Lending Club Experiment – on September 24th, I posted an article describing my first foray into peer-to-peer lending and promised to keep you updated on the progress of the investment. At the time I invested $10,000, and distributed it mostly among the higher-yielding…
Although the dead of winter is safely behind us, it is still looking pretty cold out on that North American weather map. Austin, Texas recently came close to freezing at night, although that temperature would have seemed warm to people from North Dakota, where it was -30C(-21F). My part of Colorado is going to reach…
A few weeks ago, I met another early retiree while attending the financial blogger conference in Denver. I found I had a lot in common with this guy, from our shared former career to our optimism about life in general. Darrow Kirkpatrick retired at age 50 and told me he is finding life to be more fulfilling,…
These summer vacations are great. I’m sitting in a 150-year old house in the heart of downtown Hamilton, Ontario and enjoying the steamy warmth of the Great Lakes area, the lush vegetation and well-tended gardens that only our elders seem to master, and some of the world’s best home cooking. During earlier stops on this…
One of the biggest objections we get from new readers around here goes something like this: “Yeah, I guess Mr. Money Mustache has a point. Spending less than you earn really is a good idea. Too bad he’s so hardcore, though. I’m not ready to cut back my own life to the bone like he…
