Oct 28, 2013
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…
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…
As a kid, I occasionally had the pleasure of catching episodes of The A-Team when I was allowed to stay up late. The show had plenty of action and comedy, at a level ideal for a ten-year-old boy. But my favorite part was always the inevitable scene where the team would harvest a bunch of…
I’ve got yet another secret to share with you today, that could further destroy our economic system if it got out beyond the confines of this blog. You know the office building or house you’re sitting in right now? With all the accessories and products and painted walls and carpeted floors? And the rooms you…
A couple of Januarys ago, I spent a nice sunny day in my outdoor workshop doing some carpentry. I was helping a friend build a fancy Adirondack chair for her own patio. After we finished our work, she insisted on paying me with a huge pan of some delicious homemade dinner, and a box of…
Well, there goes another million. Sometime last week, this blog reached the “two million page views” milestone. It took less than three months to get that second million, compared to nine months for the first one, which I wrote about on December 10th. I remember we all thought we were pretty big business back then,…
Imagine an alternate version of Mr. Money Mustache. What if I had suppressed some of my profanity, become just slightly less hardcore in my frugality techniques, and moved to Western Canada instead of the Western US? Who would I be? You may already be aware of the real-world simulation that exists to model this situation,…
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…
There is a small but growing social movement spreading around the world these days. It started long ago but has been accelerating recently. Although this revolution is tiny when measured as a percentage of the population, it has the Fiery Heart of a Golden Lion and thus it gets an unusual amount of shock, admiration,…
I just had one of my stranger birthday experiences when I turned 37 earlier this week. Things got off to an early start, when the doorbell rang at 12:01 AM, just as I was considering putting down my book and going to sleep. When your doorbell rings at that time of night, you answer it…
