Dec 16, 2011
Hooray, it’s time for another one of our roadtrips. The schools will be throwing out all the kids for the holidays, so we figured we’d take our own son out for another real-world geography lesson for the next ten days or so. We’ll be leaving on Saturday and driving South to Santa Fe, New Mexico…
I started this early retirement gig almost seven years ago, and for the first six of those, I thought I was the only one out here. I was definitely alone among my coworkers – When still employed, I discussed the idea occasionally with friends at the office, and the idea was met with universal rejection:…
Way back in our working and saving days (which peaked between 2000-2005), the Mrs. and I started to become more interested in watching the progress of our early retirement savings project. So every weekend, we’d log into our separate Vanguard accounts and compare notes. As this simple thrill wore off, we started a spreadsheet called…
As anyone who has read more than a few MMM articles has learned, the key to becoming rich is living an efficient lifestyle. When it comes to your choice of car, this means making sure you choose one that is optimized for whatever you will use it for the most. While this sounds self-evident, it is…
Hello dear readers. I’ve decided that to become a real blogger, I need to have more people signed up to the twitter feed. This lets me share smaller things like interesting news stories or daily observations, without the two-hour commitment of typing up a whole article. As a side benefit, it helps this website get…
It’s definitely late fall here in Colorado, and the trees have dumped most of their leaves onto the ground. In my neighborhood, this invariably triggers a flurry of lawn contractor activity. A pickup truck pulling a long trailer full of equipment pulls up, a fleet of young guys gets out and each picks up a…
The word on the street today is that Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme is quitting his post as President of the blogging-about-how-we-should-all-spend-less-so-we-can-quit-our-jobs-in-our-thirties scene. He’s doing it to focus on, if you can believe it, an exciting new JOB that he just accepted as a quantitative analyst in the financial industry. It’s a big moment, because…
Last week I wrote up an article about cutting your home heating costs. The discussion that followed in the comments section was full of more great information, and it even led to me making a small change in my own house that should work out to surprisingly large savings. This rather simple trick was: Changing…
When you hear people talking about their cars, you usually hear ridiculous terms like “dealer”, “interest rate”, and “payment”. Mr. Money Mustache has already laid down the law on this issue in the past: You should never even spend all your money on a car, let alone more than all your money. So why does everyone…
MMM-MMM!! I sure hope your Thanksgiving dinner was as delicious as mine. You can see my plate right over there for comparison. Well, to be honest, that was just my first of several plates of deliciousness. Great food, great times with family, and… a trip out to the shopping mall the next day or even in…
This next edition of the Foreclosure Series answers the question: “How can I profitably maintain or fix up a bargain-priced house for eventual rental or resale, when it costs so much to do things like plumbing repairs?” When I was a 21-year-old just beginning an engineering career, I had no desire to become a plumber.…
I’ve noticed a little pattern recently, and I thought it would fit right in with the things we learn about here in Money Mustache School, so I’d like to share the story with you. Tuesday is garbage day in my neighborhood, and that means everyone will be rolling the enormous 96-gallon bins provided by the…
We’ve all read the tips in the newspapers about how to reduce our heating bill. Turn down your thermostat and get a programmable one. Seal your air leaks. Add insulation to your attic. Blah blah blah. It’s boring, but it’s powerful advice, because US households spend an average of about $960 each per year keeping…
Hey, just a quick note while I’m running around cleaning up the house for a big family visit: Some cool person (it wasn’t me, honest) started a new category on the excellent online forum site called Reddit. If you haven’t heard of Reddit, it is a place where people gather to ask and answer questions…
You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been typing articles a bit less frequently in recent weeks, and that is for good reason: I’m doing real work these days! The foreclosure project is going extremely well so far, both when measured against the original schedule and budget, and when measured on the fun-o-meter.…
I normally wouldn’t share a personal email from an MMM reader, but yesterday I got a really inspiring one about what it means to lead a good life as a parent, and I asked the writer’s permission to publish it and he agreed. I think it’s a great one to share because it shows the…
