Why You’ll Probably Never Run Out Of Money

As strange as it may sound, earning financial freedom is a lot easier for certain people than claiming that freedom once they have earned it. And if the following statement rings true to you, you may be suffering from this same hardship: “I think I’m close to having enough money to jump into early retirement, but not quite. So I’m just working...

4w

Which is Safer: Rental Houses or Stock Investments? (a Case Study)

Another fine day in Retirement During our recent discussion on Inflation, a Badass reader stopped by and caught my attention by dropping the following block of wisdom into the comments section:  “A final note if you are worried about inflation: sledgehammer the TV and go for a walk in the woods. Trees get bigger every year unless you cut...

Jun 2022

Finally, a Stock Market Crash!

Boom! Well, that was kinda sudden! In the three months or so since we last spoke, the world has become an entirely different place – at least for those of us who keep up with any sort of international, financial or stock market news.  The headlines are new, and the problems are of course very real. Russia has started one of the...

May 2022

Reader Case Study: Is it Okay to Subsidize my Spendypants Adult Children?

It has been a good while since we’ve done a reader case study here on MMM, but that hasn’t stopped them from arriving in my inbox. And since 2022 is becoming a year of interesting financial changes, it’s time to spark things up again, go back to our roots, and start covering some of the many subjects that are cropping up in this latest incarnation of...

Jan 2022

Inflation – Should We Be Worried?

I’ve been writing about money for almost eleven years now, and in that time the world has become an immensely richer place. Here in the US, our economy has grown by about 25% even after inflation, world economic output has grown even faster, and the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut roughly in half. US Real Economic...

Jan 2022

Our DIY Heat Pump Install – Free Heating and Cooling for Life?

A work of art. To most of the Internet, Mr. Money Mustache is known as the quirky early retirement financial guy, and this is a blog about Money. But really, I’m not a finance guy – someone who devotes most of his time to optimizing money. I’m more of a general Life Engineer – someone who tries to optimize everything that is fun and interesting...

Oct 2021

Three Months of Slacking

Unsuccessfully but Refreshingly trying to climb the local waterfall “MMM, are you still alive?”– somebody on Twitter Holy Shit! I just realized that the last time I wrote a blog post for you was on April 18th, and now it’s late July. That’s an entire quarter of a year that I have let this wonderful, golden field of interesting opportunities...

Jul 2021

The Self Educating Child

Little MM and me self-educating with some Orson Scott Card, way back in 2017. We’ve come so far together since then! So it looks like my 15-year-old is officially a high-school dropout. Halfway through ninth grade, emboldened perhaps by the taste of freedom that Covid-era remote learning had provided, he realized that the whole system...

Apr 2021

Beware of the Bubble

“A Nation Which Forgets Its Past Has No Future” Those were the words on a 20-foot-long banner that “Mr. Slick”, my high school history teacher, kept carefully pinned across the width of his classroom for the entire four years I had classes with him. “That makes no sense at all”, I thought to myself when I first read it at age fifteen....

Mar 2021

The Margin Loan: How to Make a $400,000 Impulse Purchase

So, I kind of just bought the house next door to me. We’ve already gotten straight into the renovations with a symbolic first step: a new front door. This is already somewhat amazing, for a small-town boy who refuses to even buy himself a new car.  But even stranger are the details that surround this deal: I’m not moving into it.I...

Jan 2021