Mr MM Explains the Why of FIRE

soupcxan said:
Sorry I was just being flippant about the IRP - not taking a shot at you. I agree with you that MMM's financials are extremely opaque and his acolytes are irrationally optimistic at times.
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No problem, sorry for being dense and not getting your humor.
 
Sarah in SC said:
I think Fuego might be all of those things, lol.
And a verified cheapskate, to boot. :)

I know, I know, parking is EXPENSIVE!
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100% verified cheapskate! :)

If I had to pay for parking, I wouldn't be able to go on as many cruises. Or buy as much rum! :D
 
I enjoy some of MM and find some of it annoying. I would say he is semi-retired because he does work that he enjoys but does not have to. I also worry about some of the young people there thinking they will be happy on such a low budget. They may be for awhile but I doubt it in the long run. The COL also goes up and I don't think they are accounting for that. It does bug me that he doesn't count his travel expenses as part of his budget. One of the moderators on there said since he paid off his house you could really say that MM is living on 40k/year since housing costs would be that much. Of course the less expenses you have the less you can live on. I was fully retired for 8 months at age 58 and then got bored so went to p.t. consulting in my field. I enjoy the intellectual stimulation. I also did a lot of volunteer work but that did not bring me the same level of enjoyment. I consider myself semi-retired. I think everyone should do what works for them.
 
rodi said:
He dissed sitting on the couch and watching tv. I like sitting in my comfy chair and watching tv. I also haven't found anything I'm passionate about enough to make monetizing it worth it. I'll stick with my version of retirement which involves exercise, cooking, reading, watching tv, being a better mom.... No desire to blog, build houses, etc. for money.
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+1

"I don't think anybody should truly retire in the old sense of the word — swearing off all forms of paid activity in favor of a dramatic increase in television watching and golf playing." Who cares what he thinks?

The great majority of his writing is nothing more than trite platitudes …
 
REWahoo said:
Yep, very interesting...especially this tidbit:
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And that money is something he is keeping....

Says he plans to give it away some day... but if he does not need it then why not now?


I know very little about him, but do not want to live the way he does... at least as far as I have read...
 
3 months of annual travel for a family of three? On $24K a year total annual expenses? I could cover basic expenses on $24K with a paid off house but I wouldn't be traveling for several months with foreign travel or hiring bands for parties on that kind of budget.

And if our taxable income, regardless of expenses, made our taxable income over the ACA cliff then our medical premiums alone would be well over $1K a month.
 
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Interesting article. Thanks for sharing it. I think it was a pretty fair assessment of the guy, and I could see why he wouldn't want that blog revenue number to get out there. Whew!
 
dixonge said:
Evidently there's big money in selling people on the idea of..... not spending money? :confused:
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Any ideas what this forum earns?

I'm assuming the moderators are all volunteers. Is that accurate? Who owns it anyway?
 
daylatedollarshort said:
3 months of annual travel for a family of three? On $24K a year total annual expenses? I could cover basic expenses on $24K with a paid off house but I wouldn't be traveling for several months with foreign travel or hiring bands for parties on that kind of budget.

And if our taxable income, regardless of expenses, made our taxable income over the ACA cliff then our medical premiums alone would be well over $1K a month.
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The meet-ups are probably considered a business expense and not part of his personal annual spending.
 
Well that was fascinating. So was someone coming out for a week to do an interview.

Still, pretty freakish to me. Different world.

Does the New Yorker typically write really long articles?
 
audreyh1 said:
The meet-ups are probably considered a business expense and not part of his personal annual spending.
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Yes but I gather from here that early retirees typically travel quite a bit, sometimes devoting as much as 25-50% of their annual budget to travel. I feel like one could pick up photography as a hobby, blog about it, and then exclude all travel expenses because its for "work".

He's clearly thrifty and there's a lot to respect or take away from it no doubt. However his constant fudging of the numbers or half truths of expenses gets extremely old. And the blog making $400,000/year? It's easy to say money ain't a thing when you've got a monstrous pile of it to fall back on at his age. Some of his followers though are putting all their eggs into a $500,000 cash pile while he's sitting on 4 or 5 times that much from the blog itself.
 
One condition for me to ER was that I would have no change to my everyday life. That is, I would not have to make any changes to my already low spending habits after ERing. If I wanted to go out and be a little spendy once in a while, I would not have to worry about if I had the money to pay for it or worry about how it would fit into my budget. My monthly budget already includes a surplus which I can use to pay for something I need or just want. For example, my old, ancient TV was dying so I finally bought myself an HD TV. It cost me about $150, a decent price (its a 28" without any extra frills), so I bought it and it is wonderful and gives me more incentive to sit on my couch (or chair) and watch TV all day or close to it.


When I ERed, I had no desire at all to have to work to earn any money. As my signature line suggests, I want my money working for me, not vice versa. My career "change" went from working for a paycheck, even a part-time one, to working not at all.


My main reason for ERing was to eliminate the long, tiring, and sometimes sickening commute I had for most of the 23 years I worked. When I watch the local news on my (new) TV, I like to watch the traffic and transit reports to remind me of what I am missing (and to watch the cute girl giving us those reports LOL). This falls under a bigger category of ERing to simply eliminate all the things I disliked about working. Getting rid of negatives for me is just as good as adding positives such as being able to take an afternoon nap every day.


My being single (but with a ladyfriend) and childfree combined with being FIREd is a superb way of having total personal and economic freedom, freedom to do what I want whenever I want. I realized this some more in the last week when, a few days after I bought that new TV, my dad (85 and retired for 21 years) and I just took off to visit my brother who lives 200 miles away. We had planned to go there 2 weeks ago but a snowstorm prevented us from making the drive. With good weather in the weekend forecast, we just decided last Wednesday to leave Friday and return Sunday. As I mentioned to him and my brother, we retirees can simply get up and go when we like.
 
daylatedollarshort said:
3 months of annual travel for a family of three? On $24K a year total annual expenses? I could cover basic expenses on $24K with a paid off house but I wouldn't be traveling for several months with foreign travel or hiring bands for parties on that kind of budget.
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Most of his travel is visiting and staying with family and friends back home in Canada, so not too surprising that it's not expensive.

We managed to spend only $24k in 2015 and that included over 8 weeks of international travel with 3 kids (and no free rent by staying with family or friends!). Some mild travel hacking was involved (so gross it up to $30k if you count the cash value of that).

We didn't hire any bands, but don't live like absolute paupers.

There are a surprising number of very early retirees living very well on $30-40k/yr but I'm not sure they would enjoy posting at this forum very much.
 
I assume his income from his blog comes from things like his "referral" fees for credit cards, his "referral' fees for things like MrRebates and then some advertising... ie he has figured out a lot of referral programs that pay him substantial kick back and if you have enough followers signing up it can be a great gig.

I always take everyones budget with a grain of salt. Its very hard to tell what people are leaving out..ie are they still using miles they earned years ago for all their travel, using HSA money and not counting it, etc... do you live near family and they help you out significantly. Like my sister who is like oh my food bill is only X, but I know she eats and mom and dads at least 3-4 times a week with her 5 kids... yeh I can imagine your food bill being lower than expecting.. guessing mom and dads is rather huge though.
 
Options said:
Put up with what? Trading an endless, meaningless, never-ending treadmill of a life earning as much as you can to spend as much as you can, only to find, as just too much research has shown, money cannot buy happiness...... .
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Hey, Options,

I would have to take just a little issue with your definition of life before retirement or alternative living or whatever you want to call life after work. Understanding, of course, that we all have opinions.

I was ready to leave the workforce when I left. No SWAT team needed to extract me from my office. But I don't at all look at my work life as meaningless. I appreciate what my job gave me and my family. The result of all that work means I'm typing this to you at 10:15 in the morning rather than working right now.

My point is, a lot of the attitude at the other forum seems to be that work is poison to your life. It isn't. It could be your passion. It could just be a means to an end. But it is something. It's one of the reasons I don't hang a lot at the other forum. I think their attitudes about work, saving and living is just a little off, at least for me. I mean, live below your means, sure. I do. But, damn, there is life to be lived here. We only get to do this once.

Ron

Edit: Sorry for bringing you back into the conversation, Options, I just noticed the age of this thread. I need to read before I write.
 
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Pretty much confirmed that I have zero use for his blog and that I'd probably find him insufferable. To each their own; his is not mine.
 
FUEGO said:
Most of his travel is visiting and staying with family and friends back home in Canada, so not too surprising that it's not expensive.

We managed to spend only $24k in 2015 and that included over 8 weeks of international travel with 3 kids (and no free rent by staying with family or friends!). Some mild travel hacking was involved (so gross it up to $30k if you count the cash value of that).

We didn't hire any bands, but don't live like absolute paupers.

There are a surprising number of very early retirees living very well on $30-40k/yr but I'm not sure they would enjoy posting at this forum very much.
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Mean income in the U.S. for households 65+ (likely with many retirees or at least not working full time) is $43.6K, and that includes expenses such as state and federal income taxes, mortgage, travel, home repairs and likely higher medical costs than a younger household.

If I take out income taxes, mortgage payment (though paying off my mortgage would lower my investment income), reserves for new cars, deductible business expenses, travel, travel reward points, college costs / saving for college, and home repairs and just published a subset of my expenses for a given year online, excluded any and all reserves for future major expenses and called it my budget, my budget would look remarkably low, too.
 
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I've met the real guy behind the MMM finance super hero online persona and he's a very decent guy to chat with. The persona is obnoxiously directive at times but he himself is not. These days, he's probably as focused on studying and educating about the means for fostering personal happiness, as much as frugality. Anyway, MMM has become a celebrity, with all of the associated upsides and downsides of celebrity-dom in our media-drenched society. My guess is he accepts those opportunities and limitations, unrealistic acolytes and inevitable critics and handles them all with pretty good equilibrium. He thinks and acts for himself and I think he's done the finance community, and me as a reader, a useful service with his unique ER story and sharing on his blog, no more and no less.
 
daylatedollarshort said:
Mean income in the U.S. for households 65+ (likely with many retirees or at least not working full time) is $43.6K, and that includes expenses such as state and federal income taxes, mortgage, travel, home repairs and likely higher medical costs than a younger household.

If I take out income taxes, mortgage payment (though paying off my mortgage would lower my investment income), reserves for new cars, deductible business expenses, travel, travel reward points, college costs / saving for college, and home repairs and just published a subset of my expenses for a given year online, excluded any and all reserves for future major expenses and called it my budget, my budget would look remarkably low, too.
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Check the stats further down in your link - 65+ don't have much in the way of mortgages, paying only $1500 in mortgage interest per year. Same with taxes - $3200/yr. Subtract those from the $43600 annual median expenditure and at $39k you're still well above $24k/yr, and MMM is a household of 3 unlike the typically smaller household of 2 for age 65+.

I'd say he's still spending pretty sparsely even though I question whether there out to be some accounting for the new house costs he incurred (he says he'll end up selling it for much more than the cost of materials purchased, and he's doing the labor himself).
 
I think of one likes Mr Money, he should love Bernie Madoff.

Also should appeal to anyone who enjoys fairy tales.

Those who have met him, and found him attractive, that is what people said about Bernie. A con has to be personalty attractive and seem genuine. If you are going to ask people to suspend their disbelief, you cannot afford to be obnoxious. Cons are attractive, cops and lending officers not so much.

For example, I could never make a go of any of these things.

Ha
 
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