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Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#71

Post by Evbn »

encoderer wrote: post #67

I don't like how judgmental he is about lifestyle choices alternative to the ones he's made. I, personally, enjoy going out to eat, I enjoy the "$100 happy hours," I'm in Turks and Caicos right now on a stretch of the most beautiful beach I've ever seen and I enjoy that, too. Oh, and I don't particularly dislike working. I'm a well paid highly skilled engineer building cool things for a fantastic .com that takes care…

GetRichSlowly, IIRC correctly is a much saner and more meaningful blog about personal finance for smart middle class people.

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#72

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

encoderer wrote: post #67

I don't like how judgmental he is about lifestyle choices alternative to the ones he's made. I, personally, enjoy going out to eat, I enjoy the "$100 happy hours," I'm in Turks and Caicos right now on a stretch of the most beautiful beach I've ever seen and I enjoy that, too. Oh, and I don't particularly dislike working. I'm a well paid highly skilled engineer building cool things for a fantastic .com that takes care…

You don't have to listen to everything he says. Take the ideas that help you.

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#73

Post by Evbn »

jonknee wrote: post #57
dustinupdyke wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said don't _have_ to work, I think there is a big difference there.

He's not actually working though, so not really a big difference. Technically I could move to a third world country tomorrow and be "retired", but that doesn't fit my goals.

He is working. He works hard on bizdev for his blog ,doing his own PR to get submarine press in WaPo. I "retired" from blogging, now I code for fun and some money to pay my entertainment bills.

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#74

Post by chris11 »

citricsquid wrote: post #33
pfisch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25k/3 people is like a welfare amount of money to live on.

You would need to know the value of their house to fully judge their situation. If we assume they live in a reasonable house that would cost $1,500 per month to rent / mortgage and we assume they save $750 per month on the costs of working (commuting, baby sitting, eating out) they have an effective income of... $52,000. The median household income in the U.S is $51,000 and that's for households that will often have…

Edit: He actually states his house is worth around $400k, which would make it a nice house for the area. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/01/raising-a-family-o...

He says he lives in a four bedroom four bathroom house. And he says he lives in what he believes to be one of the nicest neighborhoods in Longmont. His wife also states that the house has around 2600 square feet. That means the house is worth at least $200k. I would suggest that it would be worth at least $300k if it was older. You could get a little bit bigger house for $400k though. I wouldn't say that Longmont is an expensive place to live, it is definitely a lot cheaper than its neighbor Boulder, but I would say there are a lot of cheaper places to live.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/05/11/the-elephant-in-th...

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#75

Post by acabal »

jonknee wrote: post #31

I have a hard time seeing the appeal of intentionally living long term with a near poverty level income. I could never be content watching my son bike to school in 20 degrees because I don't want to work. Let alone spend years bragging about it.

Poverty-level income is in the eye of the beholder. He and his family sound quite happy at that amount; if they're happy, is it really poverty? If they're happy with that amount, why can't we be too? The "starving children in Africa" perspective is trite, but to an extent true--this guy's quality of life would be envied by 70% of the world, and yet we call it "poverty-level".

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#76

Post by firefoxman1 »

jonknee wrote: post #54
firefoxman1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bike to school and work in 20 degrees because my dad wants me to learn the value of a dollar before I'm in the "real world" (he also started me investing pretty early). I have 0 resentment and complete respect for him because of it.

I think it's questionable what knowing what a dollar is worth if you orient your life in a way to make as little of them as possible. I think you should value a dollar, but also work hard and apply yourself. It's a strange combination... He got the investment income is the secret part, but then seemingly stopped at the earliest opportunity. It just seems lazy. I agree with him that spending more than you make is irre…

I completely agree with this. My grandfather is a millionaire...apparantly. I never would have guessed it. He drives a near-broken-down 1980-something honda. He takes frugality to the extreme. I love talking to him and hearing his investing advice, but it gets irritating hearing about how he saved $0.50 on a book or hitch-hiked to Colorado for a family event. I don't see him much, but I've hardly ever seen him smile.

I think we have to be very careful in a society that promotes living in such excess. It's a hard balance to find between casting off all expenses to the point that it becomes frugality for the sake of being frugal, and frivolous-spending yourself into debt.

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#77

Post by georgemcbay »

brown9-2 wrote: post #42
31reasons wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He owns and runs a VERY popular blog. He is probably making at least $10k/month from advertisements on the blog alone.

If this is the case, then the figures mentioned in the article are incomplete and misleading.

"More recently, even my hobby of writing the blog has started producing some cash"

So technically the blog money was somewhat covered in the article, though in a way that I agree is likely very misleading.

As a "living frugal guru" you can't exactly come right out and say "Also, I'm making a bunch of money by selling advertising to you all", though it is almost certainly the truth.

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#78

Post by millstone »

nlawalker wrote: post #65

I always recommend the following two posts to anyone who has discovered MMM, as I think they best sum up his context, history, mindset, goals and living situation - all of which are good to understand before you start taking what he writes as guidance: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/09/15/a-brief-history-of... http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/01/raising-a-family-o... It's important to keep in mind that his…

Good posts. But for the other side, read these posts:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/07/27/youll-never-be-nor...

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/07/22/protecting-your-mo...

It seems as if the lifestyle has colored their ability to enjoy things like going out for ice cream, or dinner with friends.

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#79

Post by Evbn »

salvadors wrote: post #60
foobarian wrote: post #32

I thought that harping on riding a bike was a bit disingenuous. I used to do do it daily, but after a close brush with death (got doored by a car stopped at a red light) I've come to think the risks are high enough that continuing it would be irresponsible for a family man.

What about the risks of driving?

Driving the same route is safer.

Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

#80

Post by scarmig »

UK-AL wrote: post #62
scarmig wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he'd agree that the particulars of his situation are hardly prescriptive. But it's also hard to argue with the reality that, if you eschew stupid expenses and live frugally, you can very rapidly build up a very healthy savings. Given that, it's trivially easy to retire by 50 or even 40 for most people; for a software developer (like MMM), it's quite possible to do it by 30. Honestly, though, I would argue tha…

Your plan needs the nest egg + house paid off. I will have 150k USD(100k GBP) by the time I'm 26 but no house. so i doubt I could survive a decade on it.

Nope, it doesn't. A single person can very easily live on $15kpa. Even in the Bay Area. I've been doing it for 3 years, in fact, at $12-$16kpa.

It probably does mean having housemates and being careful about where you choose to live, but it's imminently doable.

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