May 6, 2015
Almost two years ago, I started getting reader emails asking me if student loan refinancing was a good idea, and if a company called SoFi was a good place to do it. Never having carried such a loan myself I wasn’t sure if I was qualified to answer, but other emails were coming in reporting…
To my Brothers of the construction trades, the oil industry, the armed forces, and even plain old civilian office jobs. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, because I think we should all be free to make our own choices. But with the recent oil boom and bust, and the even bigger housing boom…
“If everybody retired early like those Mustachians”, the lament goes, “there would be nobody left to do the work.” We need people to do the hard, dirty necessary chores that keep society running. And we need other people to keep the innovation going, since technologies and ideas don’t invent themselves. And besides, even on an individual…
We’re about four years into this blog, and at this point I finally have to admit I am a complete and total fraud. I mean sure, I saved enough to retire in just nine years and have had a great time running around like a free man in this subsequent decade. But that was an isolated incident,…
Working in my yard the other day, I happened to notice that my power meter is just about to cross the ‘2000’ mark. That’s two thousand kilowatt hours, or roughly $200 of electricity. About the amount it takes to drive your Tesla Model S from Los Angeles to New York and back, or dry 570…
Imagine that you are floating comfortably above an alien planet observing the really insane species that lives there. We’ll call these beings Sheeple, because their incredible tendency to follow the herd even if it is running right off a cliff is quite similar to the behavior we see in sheep here on Earth. Almost everything an individual…
As a retiree, I have a special place in my heart for Monday mornings, because that’s when I would have had to go back to work if it weren’t for the joy of early retirement. Despite the option of complete leisure, I woke up at 5:30 this morning because the sky was starting to brighten and…
One whole year ago, I was in the depths of destroying and rebuilding a sagging 1950s brick ranch house, which has since grown up to become our actual home. Looking back through Google Plus’s automatic archive of my phone pictures, I can see the “kitchen” was still open to the great outdoors on that date: Despite…
Mr. Money Mustache can tend to get a little high-level at times, talking about all these feelings and philosophies that underlie the proper path to wealth. But you can’t just smile your way to the top – there are real numbers at work in the background, whether you understand them or not. These can gang up and…
Foreword from Mustache: Almost exactly one year ago, our Canadian correspondent Mr. Frugal Toque and his family reached a nice milestone: a mortgage balance of Zero. Although early retirement and financial independence do not strictly require you to pay off your mortgage (or to own a house at all) as long as you have other investments to cover your…
Here we go again! As we do once every year, Mrs. MM and I have spent the day nervously tallying the sinful blizzard of excessive spending that we have been committing over the past twelve months. If you aren’t familiar with my budgeting style, it is “I Don’t Have a Budget“. Since we know there’s no…
When you think about it, that brain of yours is both the cause of and the solution to every one of your problems. With the right thoughts, you can trigger yourself into actions that will change your life – or even the entire world. With the wrong thoughts and actions you can just as quickly…
I’ve decided to grant myself the rest of the year off. But don’t worry, I’m extending the same privilege to YOU as well. As those of us in the North endure the coldest and darkest days of the year, everything seems to shut down. Some of this is a good thing – the holiday season…
Today’s case study is a classic, because it addresses a problem suffered by tens of millions of families: the chronic time shortage caused by a double income, double commute, kid-raising lifestyle. While some practitioners of this game do it by choice, many other would rather have more free time … if only they could afford…
Every year right around this time, millions of consumers are tricked into a massive financial and lifestyle mistake as the natural incompatibility of snowy roads and safe driving take them by surprise. “I know Mr. Money Mustache insists that I drive only efficient cars, but that’s because he lives in the dreamy semi-desert of Colorado where…
A few months back, I joined in for an episode of a podcast called the Disciplined Investor. The host Andrew Horowitz and I were chatting about money, raising children, stock market crashes and so on, and then this question popped out of the void and really surprised me: For some reason, the question…
