Jun 21, 2012
Wow. Four thousand dollars a month. It was Automatic Money, rolling in like crazy with no effort on my part, absolutely no overhead, and it was remarkably reliable. Almost $1000 every week, $130 every day, or close to $50,000 a year, probably subject to exponential growth as well. And I just turned off this firehose…
I’m writing this from an unusually clean desk, in a spotless and nicely vacuumed office, within a mostly polished and decluttered house. This, along with the tying up of a bunch of other loose ends, is why I haven’t been writing to you as much recently. The Mustache family has been hard at work for…
Well, I’m finally done building that fence I’ve been meaning to build for the last few years. It came out great, and now we at last have the nice, private yard that this house of ours deserves. But as with every do-it-yourself project, other unexpected benefits were revealed as well, and one of them was…
It was the fall of 1992, and the teenage version of Mr. Money Mustache was getting his first peek at a whole new world. The World of the Wealthy. I was on a date with one of my first-ever girlfriends. She was way too attractive for me, which already induced nervousness. We had been dating…
Man, I sure lead a risky life these days. I’ve learned that I am on the bleeding edge of so many wild frontiers, it is a wonder that I’m still alive. When you add in the fact that I’m also in great health, happy and content with life, and I even still have all of…
Despite the occasional complaints voiced by those who feel they are Taxed Enough Already, I’m always pleasantly surprised at the low tax rates that US residents pay (myself included). I guess it all depends on your frame of reference: the Canada that I left in the late 1990s had a marginal income tax rate of…
One of the biggest objections we get from new readers around here goes something like this: “Yeah, I guess Mr. Money Mustache has a point. Spending less than you earn really is a good idea. Too bad he’s so hardcore, though. I’m not ready to cut back my own life to the bone like he…
In the world of early retirees, we have a concept that goes by names like “The 4% rule”, or “The 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate”, or simply “The SWR.” As with all things financial, it’s the subject of plenty of controversy, and we’ll get to that (and then punch it flat) later. But for now, for…
Foreword by Mr. Money Mustache: A few months ago, a new reader showed up at this blog and joined the conversation in the comments sections of the articles. It was a guy named Jim Collins. He was wise, funny, well-spoken, and skilled in the use of swearing. So I checked out his blog and learned…
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, I wake up and read the newest Mr. Money Mustache post. Sometimes I know what it will be about and sometimes I don’t. I usually nod my head in agreement and laugh at my husband’s jokes (that is why I married him, after all). On Monday I woke up…
Do you ever feel like you completely suck at running your own life? Because I sure do. As luck would have it, I’m at a bit of an apex of suckiness right now. It’s Sunday night at 10:17PM, and I am behind on a whole bunch of stuff. I’ve got over 150 emails from the…
Earlier this spring, reports started coming in from some nearby friends that their internet access prices had been jacked way up. It seems that the local internet near-monopoly (Comcast) had just arbitrarily decided to increase their prices by $10 per month. Offended by this attack on their frugality, these friends naturally turned to Mr. Money…
If you’ve ever told a non-Mustachian about your plans to become a very early retiree, you’ve probably had to deal with a volley of skeptical questions. “How can you be sure you’ll have enough money for such a long period?” “Why did you quit working so early, when you could have had hundreds of thousands…
I used to assume that everyone over the age of twelve had figured out how to eat a healthy diet. Below that age, a kid can be forgiven, because fussy eating can be built right into your genes. One year in elementary school I insisted that my lunch be only a bacon sandwich on a…
“Obama knows nothing about economics. He’s driving us into a hole” “The Politicians are all sold to the highest bidder. It’s all a ruse and I can’t believe the voters think they have any say” “Our whole economic system is a conspiracy, controlled by just a few elites who hold secret meetings. The US Federal…
Well, there it goes again. The business cycle, that is. I moved to the United States at the peak of the 1999 dot-com boom. At the time, high-tech companies were engaging in bidding wars over candidates, and home buyers in Colorado were racing to put in above-asking-price bids on any livable home that came to…
