Nov 21, 2013
As an Economic Unit in a Capitalist Economy, you probably spend most of your time scurrying about Maximizing your Utility. Right? You buy things which give you pleasure, or sell them when the cash you’d receive is greater than the pleasure of keeping them. You choose the job that offers the best tradeoff between things…
A few weeks ago, the MMM family lost about $12,000. While this might sound like quite a bummer, the event wasn’t upsetting in the least. In fact, the days between that fateful event and today have been some of the most joyful and free days of our lives so far. As you know, Mrs. Money Mustache…
I’ve had the chance to go to lunch with quite a few visiting Mustachians of late, and a theme has been popping up in the conversations. Like my own family, many of these readers have been leading slightly-less-ridiculous-than-average lives for years, which has led to a considerable surplus of money. But amassing money is just…
It has now been a whole year since the MMM family made the jump to a low cost / high-deductible health insurance plan, so I figured it would be useful to provide an update on how the year has gone. The one we ended up with was called the “Saver80”, a barebones but useful plan…
My son is seven and three quarters years old. Having reached second grade, he is having a nice time defining himself in the little society of the public school system. He likes being the creative one who invents the games that his classmates play at recess. Defines himself as a good reader, a respectful class…
Pretty much since I learned to walk, I have had an unusual disdain for waste. I noted the inefficient route of the school bus and wondered why it couldn’t just pick us up at a few centralized locations. Tracked my allowance with multi-year forecasts and kept the dollar bills organized in a photo album. Always…
In the quest to become wealthy on a finite income, your savings rate dominates all other factors. Because of that, this blog tends to fixate on living happily and efficiently, and the oddly magical lifestyle changes that allow you to drop your spending dramatically even while improving every area of your life. However, this can…
That recent article on the Low Information Diet (which I probably should have called the Low Irrelevant Information Diet) stirred up quite a debate. While some readers offered their double high-fives of agreement, others came out with pitchforks and torches, scolding both Mr. Money Mustache and any who dared to agree with him for “Celebrating Ignorance”.…
The big news today is that the politicians of the United States just bumbled themselves into a Government Shutdown. Last night, a military friend sent a message mentioning the impending doom to me, which is the first I had heard of the situation. Unfortunately that triggered a late night of frustrated, sweaty reading on my…
The highest form of payment you get for writing a blog like this is happy stories from readers. Although all this Sensible Living stuff becomes obvious after a while, there are still new people showing up every day with all sorts of monetary problems. The full-on crazy life with the double-financed-SUV-ultracommuting, insurmountable debt, and deteriorating…
This past Friday, Mrs. Money Mustache and I walked downtown and purchased a bag of bulk cinnamon and a nice Midcentury Modern house. The ease with which these two errands could be combined reminded me how much I like this town. As for the house, It’s the same one I mentioned earlier this month, but…
An exciting event is coming up in my group of old friends: another one of us is approaching Early Retirement. Mr. Frugal Toque, whom you may recognize from his many comments and occasional guest posts on this site, is a software engineer in his mid-thirties living in the high-tech belt of Ottawa, Canada. We survived…
We have been having a lot of fun around here, and thus straying into topics that are only loosely related to building financial freedom. These lessons can be handy, since getting rich is only the first baby step in living a long and prosperous life. After all, if you adopt a Mustachian ethos fairly early,…
All right, I’ve been curious about this for a while, and maybe you have been too: Who are you? Who are we in general? As this blog has grown, the people have come from all corners of the internet. Search engines, newspaper and magazine features, other blogs, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and any number of other…
So, here we all are at the equator. Sitting by the fireplace in a 400-year-old hotel, nestled in a tropical valley at 9,000 feet above sea level and surrounded by towering volcanoes. Well, that’s where my mind remains, even if in reality I’m finally back home in Colorado at the end of a 36-hour day…
Well, it’s official: The Mustache Family is buying a new house. We’re pretty excited, as this is a chance to put many of our favorite values into action. It is a significant downsizing, at 1000 square feet smaller than our current place. This brings the chance to live more efficiently, with less idle space. It’s…
