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Old 10-05-2016, 05:36 PM   #41
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Hehe, I didn't know that. The whole MMM thing is really a joke eh? Never read it so dunno.

That's pretty good, people just love to read cheap fiction eh? Amazing.
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Old 10-05-2016, 06:15 PM   #42
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100% agree. I wonder what this guy's popularity says about the perspicacity of his followers.

Ha
There is an article on the MMM site by another blogger (J.D. Roth) and how they met at a conference where the MMM guy gave a presentation on how to build a cult. I may be wrong, but I get the feeling that most posters here are more into sharing financial and retirement insights and appreciating a wide variety of perspectives than becoming cult members.
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Old 10-05-2016, 07:00 PM   #43
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Hmm a fictional character buys a Nissan Leaf. Is our Trombone Al building the MMM persona for his next novel?

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Old 10-05-2016, 07:10 PM   #44
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Hmm a fictional character buys a Nissan Leaf. Is our Trombone Al building the MMM persona for his next novel?
Could be. Maybe Al plans on his fictional character having a rollover accident leading to a total change in how carefully he drives. IOW, turning over a new Leaf...
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Old 10-06-2016, 06:59 AM   #45
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Hehe, I didn't know that. The whole MMM thing is really a joke eh? Never read it so dunno.

That's pretty good, people just love to read cheap fiction eh? Amazing.

I wouldn't say the ~ENTIRE~ MMM thing is a joke, but MMM himself has become so. It reminds me of a story about a librarian who got lucky and invested correctly during the financial crisis last decade. Her general advice was good (invest for the long term and be aware of your risk tolerance) but the specifics of why she pulled her money out of the market at the very top were ridiculous. She got lucky and thought it was all skill.
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Old 10-06-2016, 09:43 AM   #46
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Was he legit when he started? Really 30 and squeaking by on 25 grand a year?

I guess he's got lots now, but how about way back then?

And now that he's got mega bucks is he really still cheaping it out or just not telling people he's eating wagyu and caviar?
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:12 AM   #47
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Was he legit when he started? Really 30 and squeaking by on 25 grand a year?

I guess he's got lots now, but how about way back then?

And now that he's got mega bucks is he really still cheaping it out or just not telling people he's eating wagyu and caviar?
I was under the impression that him and his wife had decent incomes and reached FI that way. It was only after their house was paid off that they claim to live on about $25k per year. $25k per year in expenses is not unrealistic for a frugal couple with no debt, very low transportation costs, and no frivolous spending.
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:29 AM   #48
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Originally Posted by RobbieB View Post
Was he legit when he started? Really 30 and squeaking by on 25 grand a year?

I guess he's got lots now, but how about way back then?

And now that he's got mega bucks is he really still cheaping it out or just not telling people he's eating wagyu and caviar?
i think he's always been a FERB
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:33 AM   #49
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So, you guys think he is really legit, still frugal after all the millions?
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:40 AM   #50
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I was under the impression that him and his wife had decent incomes and reached FI that way. It was only after their house was paid off that they claim to live on about $25k per year. $25k per year in expenses is not unrealistic for a frugal couple with no debt, very low transportation costs, and no frivolous spending.
When people on Reddit tried to pin him down on his actual investable portfolio size to support a family of three with the adults in their 30s (portfolio $400K?) when he declared himself retired, his response was: "My post-retirement financial picture is confusing and ever-changing because I play around with investments and earnings so much. That's why I am hesitant to focus too much on personal details and can never explain it fully - it always leads to recursively-packed cans of worms."

So there you have it:
Reddit: Deconstructing Mr. Money Moustache
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfin...nders_welcome/
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:41 AM   #51
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So, you guys think he is really legit, still frugal after all the millions?
Perhaps not as much, but on this site there are many examples of frugal people who have retired well off and have stated that they have a hard time loosening the purse strings.
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:44 AM   #52
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So, you guys think he is really legit, still frugal after all the millions?
There has been quite a lot of discussion of him here. The reaction a few years ago began as generally favorable, but support for him seemed to evaporate quite swiftly - probably as most of us started to cotton on to what he was about, which is a little different from the general culture here. He does still have a few supporters in our midst though.

Personally, the attitude apparent on his home page put me off, and he completely lost me when I saw the exhortation to "Join The Cult" on his site. No thank you. I can learn and discuss ER here without having to buy into any kind of personality cult following. That is like anathema to me.

I like what haha said about him once, when he suggested that perhaps MMM was "as phony as a $3 bill"!
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:51 AM   #53
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I really try to believe people, give the benefit of the doubt. It's been my experience that lots of people won't believe you anyway, so why bother lying? Truth is stranger than fiction mostly.

My Ma told me something when I was young that I never forgot, she said "I'm your mother and no matter what you do I'll always love you. But if you lie to me it would be a tragedy because I could never believe a word you say from that day on"

I kinda adopted her thoughts, once I catch someone in a lie I write them off forever.
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:59 AM   #54
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I'm with you on the whole honesty thing Robbie, but I won't completely write off a person for one lie, depending on what that particular untruth is. Sometimes, otherwise honest people are too embarrassed to admit the truth. If I know them quite well, I can often tell they are not being completely upfront, and try to understand the reason for the lack of candor.

However, when willful dishonesty is a pattern of behavior, it's a very different thing. I can smell those folk a mile off and keep well away from them. I had the displeasure of having to work for one once, and found it hard to deal with my contempt for her methods while working a job that I very much wanted to keep.
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MMM Buys Brand New Nissan Leaf; "An Experiment"
Old 10-06-2016, 07:16 PM   #55
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MMM Buys Brand New Nissan Leaf; "An Experiment"

Some of the speculative comments about MMM above are entertaining. I like his blog, have learned a lot from it and have even met him. He's a former engineer who enjoys optimizing his finances and lots of other aspects of his life, resulting in a low cost lifestyle, and he writes about it in an entertaining fashion with some pizzazz, as if he's a FIRE super hero. All of the attitude is tongue-in-cheek because he's also just a young guy with a family named Pete, which he points out regularly. Because his rare story about retiring at 30 with no debt on $25,000/year is inspiring to a lot of people who enjoy and value his posts, and his blog has blown up to be the largest on early retirement, he's gotten very rich doing it. Now he's indulged in a $16,000 electric car. Oh my God! Will the republic survive?
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Old 10-06-2016, 07:26 PM   #56
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I'm fine with him buying a new car. I think on balance it is consistent with his proclaimed beliefs. The only thing I would like to validate is that he includes the cost of the car in his budget. If so, he'd be over $25K per year in annual expenses.

I've read his site and it has been part of my inspiration to FIRE. It also helped me see and think that I can retire on a lot less than the old 80% of my pre retirement income. So for that, I am glad I came across his site. For those who want to hold him to some standard - come on. You probably expect sports players to be someone your kid can look up to. Sorry, those days are long gone - if they ever were.
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Old 10-06-2016, 07:56 PM   #57
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"So my total out-of-pocket cost with tax will be $16,000, which is equivalent to buying a brand-new car with a list price of $14,775."
So I Bought an Electric Car…

To me the most interesting things are the discounts that transform a $35k car into such a cheap, new 2016 electric vehicle. Listed biggest first, from that blog post:
-$7500 Federal tax credit
-$6000 Nissan finance incentive for taking a loan (a 0% loan paid over 6 yrs!)
-$4653 Colorado state tax credit
-$4500 assorted dealer discounts
So the dealer took the tax credits off the purchase price? I thought the buyer received the tax credits (as they applied to taxable income) off his tax return? Correct me if I am wrong here, but a tax credit is not money.
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Old 10-06-2016, 09:01 PM   #58
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So, you guys think he is really legit, still frugal after all the millions?
Well, I can say I live on $25K if I take off enough stuff and call it business expenses...


I spent an hour or so reading his blog a year or two ago... I think he might have actually started off with what he said... but I do not think he is close now... if he is making $400K off his blog I doubt very seriously he is really roughing it anymore....


BTW, I did not find his site interesting at all...



Also remember the lady who claimed to be a millionaire and making minimum wage or something... kinda the same boat IMO.... who knows what kind of money she is pulling in on her blog...
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Old 10-06-2016, 09:36 PM   #59
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Well, I can say I live on $25K if I take off enough stuff and call it business expenses...
+1. Many posters here would have much lower budgets if they left off major expense categories such as home repairs, income taxes and travel and didn't include reserves in the budget for large infrequent expenses like high medical or dental expense years, long term care, college expenses or car replacements or didn't factor in future increased expenses for health care. Our health insurance premiums will increase significantly once we turn 65 compared to our ACA subsidized policy. I don't think the Fidelity numbers for a couple spending ~$250K in retirement medical expenses are too far off the mark, and that does not include LTC.
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:05 PM   #60
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So the dealer took the tax credits off the purchase price? I thought the buyer received the tax credits (as they applied to taxable income) off his tax return? Correct me if I am wrong here, but a tax credit is not money.
The Colorado tax credit is refundable whether one has taxes or not. The Federal tax credit of $7,500 would require 80K in income to be taken which also would result in income taxable of $2,400 additional taxes to Colorado, unless that was already the amount of income the individual living on 25K per year was going to take. You only get that income tax credit when you file your taxes and show you owe at least that much before other taxes and credits (non refundable).


IF one was on ACA then the tax credit loss in going from 25K to 80K of income for a family of 3 with two parents 37 years old and one child is $6,000 in lost tax credits for ACA a family of 3 would only pay $42 per month for ACA with 25K of income and $9,200 in lost subsidies to the deductible for a silver plan. So you would lose $15,200 in credits for ACA to get $13,500 in Green environmental tax credits in the year you did this.

But if you were already spending far more than 25K per year and instead were paying over 100K per year, and just pretending to live on 25 K per year, these tax credits on the Nissan Leaf make this an incredibly good deal and an interesting blog post.

Now the interesting part is for a family of 3 25K of income per year is tax free from federal taxes so the income tax saved would not be a real savings, as if you could live on 25K you could go another 33 years to age 70 without ever paying taxes. And Colorado uses federal tax income exemptions and deductions to decide on income tax so at 25K you pay no state taxes either.
Therefore the marginal rates as you add taxes from ACA, federal and Colorado as you go forward are very high indeed -with out tax credits you would pay $7,300 in Federal taxes $2,400 in state taxes and $6000 in ACA tax credits for the additional 55K of income (not even counting the lost $9,200 deductible help) for a 28.5% effective tax rate and if you have medical claims the total potential loss is $27,900 or an effective tax rate of 47 percent.
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