Jun 29, 2011
As dedicated MMM readers already know, I have fiddled around a bit with rental property ownership over the past six years. In that first article linked above, I had a somewhat neutral view on the practice, figuring it was definitely good money, but it took real work to get it. But I’ve been noticing an interesting trend in recent…
It’s widely known that I think clothes dryers are a big waste of energy. There’s something about a device that sucks warm air from inside your house, pumps 5,000 additional watts of coal-generated electric heat* into it, and then shoots it outside into the cold winter air along with lots of nice humidity from your…
Dear Mustachians, Thank you so much for all the fun and motivation you’ve provided for both me and your fellow readers so far. We have a lot more adventures in Wealth to experience together. I just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving today for the big annual trip to Canada (the Great lakes…
So the other Sunday I went out for some errands on the bike as usual. I had to hit the Big Box stores at the Eastern edge of town – Staples for an office necessity and Lowe’s for a specialized light bulb. It was a beautiful day. Sunny with dappled clouds. Temperatures in the mid…
I’ve been reading some incredibly thoughtful and zoom-out-and-look-at-the-entire-human-race-from-the-perspective-of-an-alien articles on other blogs recently, and they forced me to re-think some of the reasons I quit my job as a computer engineer back in 2005. Two of the articles, which I wouldn’t recommend digging into while at your own work unless you are a very advanced…
Oh, Mr. Money Mustache is pissed off today. It’s because he just stumbled across a competing personal finance blog that espouses blatantly Anti-Mustachian principles! And yet it has the audacity to call itself “I Will Teach You To Be Rich!” Here’s the article, called The Psychology of Cutting Back on Lattes, if you want to…
Becoming an excellent driver is a truly worthwhile pursuit – for both the added safety and the cash savings it provides. I still remember the the awe I felt towards driving as a young boy when my family went places together. When I was old enough, I’d like to sit up front, next to my…
Yesterday I ran into a friend while perusing the Yogurt section of the local grocery store. It was around noon on a Thursday, and my friend explained to me that he had just come from his office job to grab a few necessities for lunch because he had forgotten to bring anything to work that…
There are lots of amusing stories in the news these days, as there always are when gas prices are rising. They often feature quotes like this, “I’ve got a 65-mile commute each way and these prices are making it impossible to put food on my table for my two kids!”, said Irene Smith as she…
Did you know that the MMM family was actually somewhat famous, in an anonymous and obscure way, before Mr. Money Mustache even started typing this blog? It all started back in 2008, when Mrs. M. was surfing around on her computer and came across this website about Equally Shared Parenting (ESP for short). If you’ve…
I just got an interesting request for a Mustachian Makeover*. Here is our reader’s story: Dear MMM, I was wondering if you might want to do an analysis of some reformed spenders working hard on their stash but dealing with the repercussions of previous and lasting life choices (like a mortgage) in their newly reformed…
This week I accidentally got sucked into looking through one of those mindless ad-laden Forbes features on the world’s top billionaires. The leader of this flock, the current richest person in the world is a dude in Mexico called Carlos Slim, with a fortune of about 74 billion dollars. And as it turns out, “Slim”…
In a recent article in this Investing series, I mentioned that the S&P500 index had delivered an annualized return rate of a little over 11% (7% after inflation) for the past sixty years. But what caused that generous rate of return? And is there any way to know if the market is likely to return…
When I retired from real work back in 2005, I inadvertently crossed a very interesting divide in our society. It was the canyon that separates the People with Real Jobs from the Self-Employed. As it turns out, I was entering a sparsely-populated area. Only about 1 in 9 workers in the US is self-employed, a…
Welcome to the third post in the Investment Series. For those just joining us: Article 1 told you why investing in stocks is actually pretty simple, and Article 2 described the volatile nature of stock returns. So we’ve established that while long-term stock market returns have been quite predictable for over 100 years, with an…
In most of my examples of small savings adding up over time, I assume that you the saver are not only saving the money, but investing it for some compounding gains. For example, I once stated that saving $25 per week by skipping a restaurant meal adds up to about $19200 after 10 years. To…
