Jun 13, 2013
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…
When it comes to optimizing your financial life, one of the biggest advantages you can gain is a sense of perspective. Beyond boosting your finances, perspective can make all the difference between spending your days worrying and complaining, and going out into the world having a great time as you get some serious shit done.…
If you haven’t heard the news, it has been a pretty exciting weekend for Mustachianism. I had the rare treat of doing a little interview with the Washington Post, and it somehow got promoted to the front page of the paper’s online edition where it remained for the entire weekend. Even Ralph Nader retweeted it.…
Ahh, money. The more you have of it, the more you get to spend, right? Everybody does it that way, so that must be the right way to do it. We all agree that, sure, the debtors and the flashy live-beyond-their-means club need to rein things in. But for those honest folks who work hard…
One of the weirdest things about this country is the way people use their cars. I mean, it takes some serious effort to find a spot in our Three Million Square Mile land area, where you will not see endless lines of seated humans trundling meaninglessly back and forth in these giant and stupendously inefficient…
Despite my insistence that the MMM family eats outlandishly well these days, I take a fair amount of flak from certain readers on the subject of food: I welcome the idea that food is important: since about age fifteen I have tended to experiment with my own eating in an attempt to optimize nutrition.…
Whew.. Mrs. MM and I finally signed, sealed and delivered both our income and property taxes earlier this week. Since I hadn’t made enough estimated tax payments on self employment income through the year*, it ended up being a pretty big bill. But it is done for another year, which is a fine feeling. This…
