When I'm old I'm afraid I'd regret not working harder and accomplishing things. With that said, this does sound like a viable strategy for startup founders. It basically gives you an infinite runway at age 30, which means you can keep swinging the bat for the rest of your life.
Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
181–190 of 252 posts
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
$500/month? But a simple train ticket that takes you 600km away will set you back $100. Here in Europe at least. And I probably spend $500/month just on food and caffeine. Hell, the basic government fees (insurance, pension etc.) to keep my sole proprietorship running costs me 300 euro/month. I really don't see how you could live on the road on $500/month, you're making stuff up.
When you travel on budget, you usually don't take trains, but hitchhike. And you can always get a bed with couchsurfing.org
Not true. I've traveled for months through S. America and Europe. Of the dozens of people we met, never were any of the hitchhiking as the primary method of transportation.
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#183Interesting article, and it would do well for most people to consider increasing wealth through investments. From the article: Our bread-and-butter living expenses are paid for by a single rental house we own, which generates about $25,000 per year after expenses. One nit, perhaps, on that - is the rental house completely managed by someone else? If not, I assume there is at least some minimal amount of work associat…
If everyone took such advice, they'd all be working for only ten or fifteen out of their 80 years of life, instead of 40 or 45. So you'd only need a third as many total jobs to provide full employment. And those jobs would be focused on things that actually benefit their consumers.
The person renting has to make their money from somewhere - it can't be rental properties all the way down the heap.
Oh there's something to be said for living within your means, certainly. People seem to waste a lot of money on things that don't really make them happy. But it seems to me that people with relatively high areas of local utility probably shouldn't start talking about how everyone can act - their solution may not scale well.
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#184He gets a nod from me just because he isnt one of these financial self-help gurus who primarily makes his living by selling financial self-help products/services. I'm always staggered to see how blatantly chicken-egg some of these people talk about their financial freedom.
Yeah, especially when the advice is to mimic them and create informational products or similar.
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> travel a lot. That takes money. Not at all. If you talk to a few dozen people who "traveled a lot" before they turned 30 (including me, the person to whom you're replying), the single most common thread in all those stories will be how cheaply they did it. Life on the road costs ~$500/month. Life in an apartment costs ~$2000/month. One of the simplest ways to save money when you're not working is to ditch all your…
$500/month? But a simple train ticket that takes you 600km away will set you back $100. Here in Europe at least. And I probably spend $500/month just on food and caffeine. Hell, the basic government fees (insurance, pension etc.) to keep my sole proprietorship running costs me 300 euro/month. I really don't see how you could live on the road on $500/month, you're making stuff up.
Sure, but how much are trains and coffee in Thailand? China? India? Malawi?
There's a lot of world out there beyond Europe. For the vast majority of it, $500 goes a long way.
Try to keep in mind that there are lots of things that are possible that you don't yet know how to do. It sounds like you're just now learning that you can travel cheaply on the road (from people who have actually done so, no foolin'). Rather than accuse us of lying to you, you might be better served taking some of it on board.
Then book a flight out here. I'll use 1/1000th of my monthly budget to buy you a beer!
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#186Try doing that as an employee also in ex-eastern bloc countries. Now... That would be impressive...
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#187early retirement doesn’t only happen to Powerball winners and those who luck into a big inheritance. Right. It also happens to those who get lucky in the stock market, and chose the right job at the right time. http://money.msn.com/retirement/article.aspx?post=dd544488-f... I was able to save more: $5,000 into the retirement account, $3,000 into an employee stock purchase plan, and $10,000 in cash. Year 2 'stash: $23…
Here is a link to the original "History of the Stash" article on his blog; http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/09/15/a-brief-history-of...
It's also worth noting that he didn't do this as a single person. A few years in the combined salaries of him and his wife were approaching $200,000.
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
The standard figures are definitely optimistic, but when you check your returns make sure to include dividends reinvested. In recent years, they're good for about 2%/yr if you buy something like the S&P 500. I find it somewhat baffling how many financial tools ignore the effects of dividends when calculating returns.
It is a good point - first time I ran the numbers I realized I was missing them, but now my numbers use the "adjusted close" from yahoo which take dividends into account. As of today, my all-time APY would be 6.02% - lower if you take inflation into account. And it's worth noting that almost all of the time before now would have had a lower APY than that.
Using the adjusted close assumes that you put your dividend receipts into a mattress so it's still slightly low, but I doubt that's more than .1% or .2% for a typical portfolio over a moderate timeframe.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that it's dangerous to bet your retirement on a level of return that many won't achieve.
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
$500/month? But a simple train ticket that takes you 600km away will set you back $100. Here in Europe at least. And I probably spend $500/month just on food and caffeine. Hell, the basic government fees (insurance, pension etc.) to keep my sole proprietorship running costs me 300 euro/month. I really don't see how you could live on the road on $500/month, you're making stuff up.
Sure, but how much are trains and coffee in Thailand? China? India? Malawi? There's a lot of world out there beyond Europe. For the vast majority of it, $500 goes a long way. Try to keep in mind that there are lots of things that are possible that you don't yet know how to do. It sounds like you're just now learning that you can travel cheaply on the road (from people who have actually done so, no foolin'). Rather th…
I live half the year in Vietnam, half the year in NYC. I'm mildly frugal, but Vietnam still runs me about $2K a month, $1.2k if I don't leave my apartment. NYC, a frugal month costs me $3.5k.
SE Asia is cheap, but its not as cheap as people think it is.
Re: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you travel on budget, you usually don't take trains, but hitchhike. And you can always get a bed with couchsurfing.org
Hitchhiking is pretty dangerous. Better to use a car-sharing board. I once took a long-distance Greyhound bus to Florida at Christmas, which was filled with homeless wanderers who had splurged for the bus ticket because they said hitchhiking was too dangerous. It isn't an option at all for women and most of the men had stories about being robbed, aggressively solicited for sex, or even having been shot at while walki…
Hitchhiking has never been dangerous. Why would you take the word of homeless people you met on a bus over stats you can easily find online?
http://wandrlymagazine.com/article/roadtrips/hitchhiking/
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/10/10/where-have-all-the-hi...