Oct 1, 2013
The big news today is that the politicians of the United States just bumbled themselves into a Government Shutdown. Last night, a military friend sent a message mentioning the impending doom to me, which is the first I had heard of the situation. Unfortunately that triggered a late night of frustrated, sweaty reading on my…
The highest form of payment you get for writing a blog like this is happy stories from readers. Although all this Sensible Living stuff becomes obvious after a while, there are still new people showing up every day with all sorts of monetary problems. The full-on crazy life with the double-financed-SUV-ultracommuting, insurmountable debt, and deteriorating…
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…
On May 13th of this year, I had the chance to log in to a special chitchat system hosted by the Washington Post, and field a bunch of live questions from their readers in response to the interview I had done with that paper’s business section a few days earlier. I found this to be great…
Ahh, Financial Media. It is a key cog in today’s ever-churning news machine, because hey, who isn’t interested in money? Everyone has a go at it, from the tanning-salon-smile hosts of the regional news shows reporting the daily close of the Dow index, up to the Ph.D. credentialed economists who debate economic indicators and fiscal…
A few years ago, I was helping a friend with some kitchen renovations. He’s a smart guy with a good career, and he likes to work hard on the weekends. He had done most of the carpentry himself, completely transforming a very small house to make it work better for his growing family and greatly…
When it comes to optimizing your financial life, one of the biggest advantages you can gain is a sense of perspective. Beyond boosting your finances, perspective can make all the difference between spending your days worrying and complaining, and going out into the world having a great time as you get some serious shit done.…
If you haven’t heard the news, it has been a pretty exciting weekend for Mustachianism. I had the rare treat of doing a little interview with the Washington Post, and it somehow got promoted to the front page of the paper’s online edition where it remained for the entire weekend. Even Ralph Nader retweeted it.…
We haven’t been talking about stocks much on Mr. Money Mustache recently, and that is for good reason. Despite the tendencies of the TV news to report on the movements “The Dow” as if it were a sports team, there really is no reason for wealthy people like ourselves to follow the mostly-meaningless fluctuations of…
Want to hear something really weird? All this time, I’ve been writing this blog about financial independence, a term and movement that is often credited to the 1993 book “Your Money or Your Life”. I had been assuming that Mr. Money Mustache himself was at least partly motivated by a long-ago reading of that book…
This Hawaii place has quite a reputation to outsiders. You can’t get halfway through the word without people’s eyes fogging up as they start to dream about beaches and scenery and sunshine. And much of it is true – even on my third visit, the magic of this place remains. For me it’s the temperature,…
Despite the fact that he wears mostly ripped jeans and installs his own sewer pipes, Mr. Money Mustache is occasionally accused of being a privileged upper-middle class elitist who doesn’t understand the problems of real people. So this week we look at a call for advice from a reader with more challenge packed into her…
One of the questions that comes up in the face of Mr. Money Mustache’s unrelenting optimism about the state of the world is, “Will human prosperity continue even as we run out of the cheap fossil fuel energy that has powered us for the last 200 years or so?”. In a nutshell, I always say:…
It’s finally November 1st, and it means that for the first time in history, the Money Mustache family is running on a fully unsubsidized health insurance plan which we’ve paid for out of our own pocket. Isn’t that scary? As noted in past articles, I’ve had a pretty cozy health insurance situation up to this…
As a Mustachian, you are bound to get richer over time, even as your cravings for expensive manufactured stuff gradually fade away. If you haven’t seen this happening yet, don’t worry – it is inevitable, and you’ll love it. But eventually, the end result is likely to be a surplus of savings, a certain amount…
A recent paraphrase from a Beginner Mustachian: Mustachians like you and I are engaged in a lifelong process of increasing our wealth. In the beginning stage, the goal is mostly monetary wealth, and I see no problem with that. Money is a big and exciting part of our culture. And most of us start out…
