Interview with Mr. Money Mustache

Hey! Thanks to many of you for suggesting Pete as a guest on the podcast.

Let me know if you have ideas for other folks. You can comment here or email me - craig@ycombinator.com

Something I’m curious about regarding Mr. Money Mustache - is he actually retired, in the sense that he doesn’t do anything to bring in income (except through passive index investing)?

It seems like he has a brand that is pretty lucrative, so it’s unclear to me if he:

1. has enough money to be functionally retired at his current lifestyle, but chooses to continue his brand anyway,

2. has enough money to be functionally retired, but not at his current lifestyle, and so chooses to continue his brand,

3. cannot functionally retire and simply “transitioned” from professional software development to professional blogging.

I follow the logic of his blog series (reduce spending dramatically, increase savings dramatically, invest optimally), but I can’t tell how much of it contributes to his current lifestyle.

Oh god. I'm horrified by this.

> People think of a cult as a bad thing [...] really, it’s just a social organization structure which is a basic built-in thing to human beings

This is the naturalistic fallacy, or the is-ought fallacy. Other basic built-in things to human beings include ignorance, rage, greed, abuse, exploitation, and violence.

A core part of civilization is deciding which of our basic built-in things are valuable, amplifying the useful bits, and circumscribing the ones that aren't. Treating something as good because it's natural is a giant error. A very convenient one for him here.

Don't read too much into it.

He's only using "cult" as a provocative term to describe a tribe of fans who passionately like a particular brand. Nobody's going to be committing human sacrifices or burning heretics on behalf of Mr Money Mustache any time soon.

He 'retired' (as in, didn't have a job but spend most of his time DIY'ing so he didn't need money - not quite my definition of 'retire' but let's not beat that dead horse any more) years before the blog, but now brings in 6 figures (maybe more by now) from ads & other website income. It's a bit a 'in a gold rush, those selling shovels do best' thing.