There seem to be a growing number of personal finance blogs touting super early retirement (ie after around 10 years of working). These guys are “living the dream” after “jumping off the debt-powered treadmill” and they’re preaching that you too, you fool/drone/sucker*, can wake up like Neo in the Matrix and realize what a sham this whole consumerist world is.
So what how does this work? It’s so simple I can sum it up in one sentence: You need to be cheap as fuck.
I don’t mean “no more lattes at Starbucks cheap”. To work for 10 years and retire, you need to be “I rotate my bike tires so they last longer” cheap. You need to be “I buy a year’s supply of rolled oats when they go on sale” cheap. That’s basically what every one of these blogs boils down to.
If that sounds appealing to you, go for it. As these guys are demonstrating, it definitely can work. If material possessions don’t really matter to you, if you don’t want to do anything that requires a fair amount of money, or if you’d simply rather focus on something other than the “rat-race” (though don’t forget that being this frugal takes a lot of effort), this seems like a great way to go.
If, like me, you’d rather have your hand slammed in a car door, I just saved you a few hours of blog reading.
*Note that if you are using debt to fuel your $400 a week shoe/gadget/whatever habit, you are a fool.
You forgot to mention my $400,000 paid-off house and my 3 months of annual travel. Or my two cars, fleet of six nice bicycles, or the fact that I give a few tens of thousands of dollars of my time and money to charity and helping people out each year.
But yeah, you are correct that I do like rolled oats
Yes, sorry. I’ll also throw in that you *will* be a millionaire some day, unless something catastrophic happens to the markets. That’s awesome, and congrats.
I just think that’s beside the point. Your philosophy really does boil down to “be cheap as fuck”. Nothing wrong with that at all, and I truly don’t mean any disrespect. Some people would do extremely well to follow your example.
It’s not for me though. This blog and I focus on maximizing output, not minimizing expenditures to the extreme.
What needs to be acknowledged is that people can (and do) spend money infinitely faster than they can make it. If you are making $1000 per month and spending $1000 per month, then increasing your output to $10,000 per month, with the only spending goal being the avoidance of debt, will likely put your spending at $10,000. If you don’t have a problem being at $0 at the end of each month regardless of output/money, then you understand that for your life to continue you have to continue working.
I focused on my spending floor first, adjusted to it over time, and am only now focusing on increasing output, while banking the difference.
I would say that it is all relative. A philosophy of frugality may not be ‘cheap as fuck’ for someone that was not, say, raised in an exclusive enclave in San Diego county with a tennis court in the backyard.
I’d also add that not only do *you* need to be cheap as fuck, but, if you’re married, so does your spouse. And, if you have kids, so do they.
I’d have no problem cutting cable, but my wife would be pissed. *I* would have no problem eating the same cheap meal 7 nights a week for a month, but if I tried making that the standard at our house, life with my wife would get pretty miserable.
Pingback: 6 Easy Steps To Get Rich Without Worry | The Blog of A.J. Kessler
I’ve been trying to live the “Cheap as Fuck” lifestyle and chase after the early retirement dream for a while, but sadly my wife isn’t on the same page and its simply not in her DNA.
So I’ve retreated to a retire by 50-55 goal. Pay the house off, rent it and buy a little nicer one, drive old cars til they fall apart and live as debt free as possible.
We’ll see how it goes…
I’m siding with Mr. Money Mustache. Mostly. I lived the high life owning multiple houses, cars, trips, gadgets, etc. At one point my lawyer said I was our towns ‘leading consumer’. All I got was a divorce and a mountain of debt by 40.
So, I did what what MMM did (at 40 instead of 20) and saved like crazy for 10 years and am now retired (really, semi-retired, but I do what I want, work on what I want and go where I want, when I want).
I also maximized investments and created passive income streams using pretty sophisticated models and strategies not unlike AJ.
I live cheap, but not ‘cheap as fuck’. I eat out when I feel like it, I buy what I need when I need it and I am very very happy. I’m just SMART about spending money. Being smart about spending money is not being ‘cheap as fuck’, but it has a similar effect.
Bottom line, MMM’s point of view works, and it’s been working for me for a couple of years now and I suspect we’d have a better world if it worked for more of the striving consumer driven folks in this world.
These two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Simply take the best of both points of view and you’d be amazed how close to a ‘normal’ comfortable American upper middle class life you can live by saving your ass off for 10 years.
MMM’s approach does work and I wouldn’t call it cheap as you do. I’d call it sensible. Other people can take a more relaxed approach, pride themselves as not being cheap, and retire 10 years after me. I’m fine with that.
I also side with MMM’s approach. You don’t have to go 100% to see an improvement in your finances. If more people understood the concept of living within your means we would have a lot less vacant houses in my neighborhood. It wasn’t long ago that many of the things we believe we can’t live without didn’t exist, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to givea few up. It’s a lot more about making a choice about how you spend your money and only spending it on the things that are important to you, not letting the media or some social norm dictate your expenses.
“Be cheap as fuck” is not a fair simplification of the MMM philosophy. It’s much deeper than that. Being sensible with your financial choices is a big part of it, of course. But to me “cheap” means cutting back on satisfying your desires. MMM’s insight is that you can re-train your mind such that “cheap things” become your desires. You can learn to take satisfaction from learning and using the skills that keep a bike working cheaply. And you can learn to select “cheap” or even “free” options for spending your time over expensive ones…and be just as happy for it.
Well said.
You’re confusing cheap with frugal.
The fact is, most of what is out there to spend your money on is only marketed as being worth your life energy that you used to get it. For example, the important part of getting married is the commitment two people make to each other, and maybe having family there to be a part of it. No real cost to that. The designer dresses, flower arrangements, harpists, etc are just a bunch of BS, and are very expensive.
What MMM figured out is that if you focus on the important bits, and strip out the rest, life is full of plenty and happiness. The most important thing is understanding the trade off completely (life energy vs stuff) and making careful decisions.
I was so on your side ten months ago. My husband started to become Mustachian. Started biking to work (23 miles round trip in Florida storms/heat all hours of day and night). He sold his car, putting us down to a one car family (of 5! Three adult drivers!). His parents and I threatened to get an MRI of his head because I was concerned he had a brain tumor. Then he put window tint on our living room windows (I tore down, cut up and threw out) and stopped using shampoo to save money. I threatened him with a divorce. Then I balanced the checkbook and realized with only HIM doing Mr. Money Mustache over 6 months we had saved $100,000! So then I figured I should shut up and start to read Mr. Money Mustache!
I liked that last comment.
I’m the same age as MMM and have
been frugal most of my life. I’ve had decent paying jobs but never even management level. By saving and investing I am now a millionaire
I think living frugally is a lot of fun. I quit my last job when I got sick of it, now I only work part time. Enjoying my freedom. also helping others.
Even managed to get on a reality tv show last week (I’ll have to go over to someone else’s house to watch it!)
You forgot the other half of the MMM philosophy – live cheap as fuck AND makes lots of money at the same time. I lived MMM’s “cheap as fuck” lifestyle all through my 20′s. The only problem was I also refused to join “the corporate rat race” and so I subsisted on an income of $15,000-$20,000, giving me no savings. Now I am running my own business and raising a growing family so early retirement is not in my future no how. Still, I like his blog for inspiring me to go back to some of those frugality tricks that I used to do automatically because I had to and all my friends were living the same way.
MMM has it right. Everyone makes choices. For me autonomy – having no boss, deciding how I spent my time – was way more important than spending boatloads of money. In my plan imaginary notions of status were the first to go. You will be surprised at how much money you can save if you don’t care what other people think.
Think it’s really two heads to the same coin. Increasing income works, reducing expenses works. Doing both together works even better. Some of the extreme savers do take it a bit far and don’t really get to travel or do fun things in their quest to spend as little as possible. Yet there are still little tidbits of knowledge I pick up, which is why I still read a bunch of these blogs.
You are an insolent child. Please delete your blog now.