Jul 14, 2013
The good people of Canada’s capital region have been requesting firmly that we all get together this month while the Mustache family is still in town. So your call has been heeded and it looks like we’re going to make a pretty good party out of it. Originally planning to set something up for us…
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…
It’s the weekend, and the MMM family is deep into our annual Summertime in Canada tradition. That makes it an ideal time to run a little side story from my Ottawa* friend Mr. Frugal Toque. He and his lovely supportive wife are now approaching their own financial independence milestone, just 8 years after us. It…
Last week, the unthinkable happened: Mr. Money Mustache experienced actual car trouble. In past articles, I have boasted about how by owning a reliable car and keeping driving to a minimum, you will find that car maintenance becomes almost negligible: an oil change every year or so whether it needs it or not, and simple…
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…
What’s with Mr. Money Mustache and all his funny-business math? When you read the criticisms that sprout up around the web, you’ll often see people nitpicking over the accuracy of some of the numbers I present in these articles. You may even find yourself doing some of the nitpicking in your own mind. You might…
Of all the objections I get from people about why they can’t ride a bike to get around, perhaps the most frustrating is the claim that bicycling is too dangerous. According to this line of reasoning, we all need the protection of a two-tonne steel cage in order to survive the trip to the office…
On the long list of Imaginary Reasons Why Early Retirement Wouldn’t Work, many of the concerns are variations on the theme of “I won’t be able to retire early myself, because I wouldn’t have enough money to do X”. The “X” can be anything. Often it is something family-related like raising a large number of…
Ahh, Delayed Gratification. It’s one of the defining advantages of humanity itself: the ability to put off immediate pleasure, for the purpose of getting even better results in the future. Compared to lower animals or insects, we’ve got this ability locked down. Leave a dog in a room with a piece of tasty meat and…
One of the silliest objections I run across to the Mustachian lifestyle, is the concept that it is Extreme. Mr. Money Mustache needs to go out and buy more shit right now, because otherwise he’s depriving himself. And his family too. You only live once, and what good is money if you don’t spend it on…
This is just a note to the local Mustachians around Longmont – the rest of the world can safely ignore this call to action. Have you heard about the Bike Nights we’ve been having around here these days? They have been reaching record proportions, with the inaugural one of the 2013 season last week reaching…
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 right down to it, this blog is really just here to change your perspective on things. The exact same world can seem like an evil or beautiful place, based purely on how you choose to think about it. And paradoxically enough, changing the perspective (and thus the behavior) of enough people can…
Well, here we go again: it’s boom time. If you’re a US resident with a short memory (or a young adult who only recently started making a living for yourself), you might be under the impression that we live in a country with permanently high unemployment, a slow housing market, and mortgage interest rates that…
You might have thought that I’d forget to check up on you as Anti Automobile April came to a close. But here we are, on the first weekend in May. How did you do? Did you track your driving last month, and maybe even drive a bit less because of it? I did, and here…
