Apr 4, 2012
Dear Mr. M., My wife and I have been reading your blog, and slowly feeling some of the free-spending ways of our past slipping away from us. But it’s a slow process, and while my wife takes after her frugal immigrant parents, I am not sure if I am quite ready to step up to…
One of the things that happens when you get older, living in an affluent area of a rich country, is that the concept of gigantic amounts of money becomes commonplace. There are wealthy people sprinkled all over the Boulder County of Colorado where I live, and to a certain extent, this wealth is contagious. People…
Today I’d like to share a guest post from an interesting new reader to the blog. This guy, Jason, showed up here from some random Twitter surfing, and had this to say to me: I would like to write a guest post for your readers. As far as I know, there hasn’t been too much…
A few years ago, I was at a party eating some amazing food at the potluck buffet. In my area, there seems to be a friendly competition among the thirtysomething outdoorsy tech worker crowd, of trying to out-chef each other. It’s a contest I heartily approve of and I am happy to be both an underdog…
In the first post of this series, we laid the groundwork for tempting a spendy spouse into a more frugal future. It was my attempt at combining the necessary logic and psychology that are required to slowly but surely allow someone to change their mind about the connection between spending and lifetime happiness. In this…
Wow, this special month of ours is really zooming past. By the time you read this, the Money Mustache Family will be deep in the high desert of Southern Colorado, camping out at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument. But I thought it would be handy to share some thoughts on the hardcore savings challenge…
Dear Mr. Money Mustache, I’ve done it! I have lit the fire of Mustachianism in my own heart, and can suddenly see what should have been obvious from the start: the entire basis for most of the modern US lifestyle is complete bullshit, we are all wasting almost all of our money every day, and…
This is a special bonus follow-up to yesterday’s article on Cash-Efficient Cars. There seems to be widespread confusion about the value of hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius. Are they worth the extra cost? Are they reliable? Do they explode when they crash or actually have a higher environmental footprint than a Hummer? In the…
Many new readers have been asking me for car advice recently, and there have also been some useful discussions on the matter in the Money Mustache Forum. I find myself typing out the same list of recommendations over and over again, so I thought the best strategy would be to dig in, do some up-to-date…
A couple of Januarys ago, I spent a nice sunny day in my outdoor workshop doing some carpentry. I was helping a friend build a fancy Adirondack chair for her own patio. After we finished our work, she insisted on paying me with a huge pan of some delicious homemade dinner, and a box of…
Well, there goes another million. Sometime last week, this blog reached the “two million page views” milestone. It took less than three months to get that second million, compared to nine months for the first one, which I wrote about on December 10th. I remember we all thought we were pretty big business back then,…
Mustachians are a tech-savvy bunch. From what I’ve heard, engineers and other professionals are way over-represented in the audience compared to the general population. We may think we’re pretty smart, but we are actually some of the biggest suckers out there when it comes to the unfortunate condition known as gadget addiction. I’m right there…
I’ve only got 59 minutes left to finish this article for you. But I’m glad to have this time limitation, because it will keep me from going into my usual random sidetracks and wasteful web surfing that can easily end up burning half a day and leaving me with a stiff neck and a guilty…
Back in November, I read an article in the Economist with the tagline “House of Horrors: the bursting of the global housing bubble is only halfway through”. I usually pay close attention when the Economist calls a bubble, because unlike the daily rollercoaster of stock cheerleading and fear you read in most US newspapers, the…
I grew up in a pretty low-key family, financially speaking. We always had plenty of money for groceries and my parents never went into debt, but if you were one of the Joneses* living down the street from us, you’d be hard-pressed to notice any flashy spending. This upbringing occurred in a pretty small town…
One of the easier rules of Mustachianism is that you should shoot for using about 60-75% less power than the average US household (as described in this earlier article about electricity). By accomplishing this, you’ll end up about $13,000 richer every ten years. A big part of the savings comes from angrily smashing up any…
