Liberty

So basically, you agree, you just like to nitpick. Gotcha. Maybe I should nitpick your nitpicks (later posts have him discussing moving to a more paleo/low-carb diet, etc) and then you can nitpick my nitpicks and so on... That'll be really productive. Like people who say "Buffett says he's frugal and still lives in the same house and drive hail-damaged vehicles, but he flies on private jets! What a hyppocrite!" ::) Nobody can write advice and have flawless logic equally applicable to everybody, while staying entirely internally consistent from post to post over hundreds of posts and years of personal change and evolution. Welcome to the real world. What matters are the ideas and the principles and how you can be inspired to apply them to your life with whatever adjustments are necessary. It matters a lot more that the stuff works than the fact that he's teaching people to value how much time they waste commuting in a different manner than he values the time it takes to clean up home-cooked meals... Most regular people are so bad at managing their finances that people like MMM are a glass of water in the desert to a lot of people, and he's providing all that advice for free. I realize people on this forum are very atypical, but let's not lose sight of what matters in the end.

Yeah, but people will find plenty of negative things to say about MMM and Fisker just the same as they do with her, so it's clearly not about her. Frankly, I haven't even looked at her site except for a quick skim. There are tons of people with varying levels of quality in any field, just like there are tons of people writing about value investing and they're not all good. I'd rather talk about the principles and the why of it all than try to nitpick one person's attempt (with only partial information), gaining nothing in the process.

Ideally, it might be possible to look at share count reductions over long periods and overlay valuations over that period to give more points to buybacks done at low valuations/high FCF yields and give less credit to buybacks done at high valuations. Of course you'd have to use relative valuations for each companies, since a really good business might always have a higher multiple than a crappy business, but buybacks done in the low end of that range might still be better...

I'm actually curious about this, because pretty well every time I've seen financial independence discussed on an Internet forum, it has a certain percentage of people violently opposed to the idea, with sound and fury way out of proportion to the topic. I mean, the core idea is to spend money on the things that you consider valuable and will genuinely improve your life, and eliminate expenditures on things that don't meet these criteria. I'm not sure why that would be a controversial idea at all. So where's the anger coming from? Envy? Fear over people choosing to live a different life? Shame that one didn't make the same decisions? A feeling of being judged? I find it fascinating. You'll see the same negative reactions when the idea of curing the diseases of aging is discussed. I think that when something is bad but it feels inevitable, the human mind rationalizes that it's actually a good thing. So you have all kinds of people arguing that getting frail and sick and dying is actually good, because if you didn't die this quickly, life wouldn't have meaning, there would be overpopulation, etc. It's like if everybody gets hit in the head with a baseball bat once a week, every week, and there's nothing you can do about it. After a while people would rationalize why the bat is a good thing and why would anybody try to remove it, and how dare people say that whatever negative side-effects removing the bat would have would be smaller than the problem of the bat itself? This is similar. Most people feel they have no other choice than to spend most of their waking hours at a job, so when other people talk about other ways to arrange your life, the reflex is often "it's not possible, it can't work, they're lying, having a job is actually really great, etc" as well as distorting the picture so that the cons are inflated and the pros are deflated. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

https://www.scuttleblurb.com/mco-moodys/ Write-up on Moody's.

http://www.csisoftware.com/2017/08/volaris-group-a-constellation-software-company-completes-acquisition-of-insurance-software-provider/ A little more info here: http://www.bbtsoftware.ch/en/about-us.html

Youtube version of the 25-min CNBC interview:

I did count his studio and car purchase. I am just pointing out his accounting is not exactly gaap. He took 135k in equivalent spending, did some fuzzy math, and said minus all this one time recurring, business vacations, imputed Mortgage, and company supplied health care, I spent 30k. Is his real name Michael Pearson? I read through several of his blog posts and looked at the forum. It seems he has a habit of using fuzzy logic to support his positions. Killing you $1000 grocery bill The true cost of commuting Bicycling: the safest form of transportation These articles are full of math that sounds good at face value but doesn't really compute. I agree with the message and have no problem with him enjoying his blogging windfall. Just don't pass it off as living your 20-30k low impact non consumer lifestyle. The point is he can live very well on very little, that proves the concept. If he wants to do stuff for his blog like buy an EV and review it and potentially influence thousands of others to go electric, or add value to his house that he'll more than recoup later when he sells because it improves his quality of life, more power to him. He's been doing this for a very long time, as have many others, and it works. When you have more surplus money than you know what to do with it (even without his blog income, as he's always been way below what his passive income provided for over a decade and the blog is just in the past few years), it's absolutely fine if you have spiky years, as long as whatever you spend actually makes your life better and isn't just mindless consumption that doesn't budge the needle and keeps you ratcheting up on the hedonistic treadmill: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/05/27/exposed-the-mmm-familys-actual-spending/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/16/exposed-the-mmm-familys-2011-spending/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/01/21/exposed-the-mmm-familys-2012-spending/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/01/12/exposed-the-mmm-familys-2013-spending/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm-familys-2014-spending/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/04/01/mmm-spending-2015/

He said he will donate it to charity, he's just learning how, because he wants to be effective, and in the meantime, it keeps compounding. Same reason why Buffett and others have waited and made efforts to make sure their donations will be effective and not wasted. In any case, even if he didn't donate it, it's his money. I find it interesting how everybody is so quick to spend everybody else's money and judge them for what they do with it. It would be insincere if he lived a life of laziness and overconsumption, full of stress and unwanted obligations, while preaching the concepts of frugality, DIY, low-stress and freedom. But piling up extra money is totally aligned with everything he teaches. It's then up to him to do what he wants with it (he's also recently decided to help improve his town by opening a co-working space: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/08/02/introducing-the-mmm-world-headquarters-building/ but I'm sure people here will complain that he shouldn't do that because he's retired and it costs money... Meanwhile, he's doing cool stuff that he likes and he's always doing it himself and in the most cost-effective way even if he could pay up and hire people while he sits in a lazy-boy -- why? because it brings more life satisfaction to work hard and accomplish things, as long as they're the things that you want to do and not things that others force you to do.)

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/31/wells-fargo-there-were-nearly-twice-as-many-potentially-fake-accounts-opened-than-originally-thought.html

Be honest with yourself about that spending. The 400k house he lives in would cost someone 23k/year - excluded New Car - For the blog - 14k excluded <-probably helps with gasoline costs too. No homeowners insurance - 1.2K (doesn't make much sense not to insure a 400k asset and potential liability) Built a studio apartment to work on his blog - 30k excluded Travel to meet with blog fans - 4k excluded Wife started a jewelry business - 20k excluded Talks about high ACA expenses but it seems pretty clear his business is paying his insurance premiums. The 6720 in his spending appears to be HSA contributions.... He is just calling this his premium. He seems to promote using ACA subsidies for early retirees (I am moral opposed to this) Claimed his spending is 30k 23K + 14k + 1.2K+ 4K + 30K + 20k + whatever insurance costs for a HNW family (call it 12k) + 30k in claimed spending So he is living the equivalent lifestyle of someone who spent 135k. Not super frugal. Just another charlatan. Oh boy, another "gotcha"... If you have a ton of excess cash and want to play with it, that's not cheating because there are no rules except self-imposed ones. The point is that he could live his lifestyle very well on what he saved when he retired and still have excess, and that it doesn't cost much to do basically all that he wants to do, and that the frugal lifestyle leads to excess cash over time so there's usually plenty enough to do fun things like finance a hobby down the road. He's transparent about all the things he includes and excludes and the reasons for them, and people can judge for themselves. In previous posts he talked about the impact of the paid off house and how that capital counted in his nest egg, and that he could've decided to not pay off the house and probably gotten higher returns on that capital, but he preferred the peace of mind instead. He retired many years before his blog ever became a thing, but now that it is, should he just shut it down and not do anything cool with the excess cash out of some purity thing so that internet commenters like you won't try to nitpick the trees and miss the forest? I don't think he's even touching the blog cash yet, since his own initial capital has kept growing and he's done carpentry projects and house flipping and stuff like that because he enjoys it and made money that way (it's not cheating! This type of retirement means you don't HAVE to work for money, but you can if you want to.. the point is control over your life, not "do as little as possible and don't ever earn money again"). His goal isn't to spend as little as possible to show up others on being the frugalest frugalist or whatever. If that was the case, there's a ton of stuff he could do differently to spend less. His goal is to maximize how happy he is with his life, and his core lifestyle happens to not require that much cash. But if tomorrow he wants to buy matching Teslas for himself and his wife, what does it matter? The ideas still make sense. Attacking him because he's a special case is like saying that the principles of value investing doesn't work because regular investors aren't Ben Graham or Warren Buffett. There's a whole forum of people doing what MMM did: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com btw, are you counting as recurring things like building a studio and buying a car?

Model S with 300,000 miles driven in 2 years: https://electrek.co/2017/08/30/tesla-model-s-hits-300000-miles-in-just-2-years-saving/

I thought this was an interesting article about the challenges facing consumer stable brands: http://intrinsicinvesting.com/2017/08/30/death-many-brands/

You nailed it Nate. It is a cult. And he makes big money out of these suckers. Last time I checked, his website generated $500k from the clicks. Not only that, these idiots spend thousands of dollars to go to retreats and discuss his "philosophy" !!! If you do feel the need to read his/any FI blog on a regular basis, the first thing you should do is stash your money in the index funds because you have very poor money management skills. It takes about 10 minutes to understand the concept of frugality. His only contribution is that he made frugality sounds cool,at least in the minds of his followers. They don't call themselves cheapskates , they see themselves as awakened and everyone else as someone who haven't gotten/understood the message yet. Not true . And this constant focus on nickel and diming doesn't make you a badass. Makes you lazy, meek and risk averse. So don't attempt stock picking/entrepreneurship either. You are going to lose. Finally here is an article that captures the spirit of this cult and his founder. A very sad commentary on the regressive lifestyle. I especially feel bad about that kid who'll grew up constantly feeling deprived and judged. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/mr-money-mustache-the-frugal-guru Showing your ignorance once again. btw, he's been transparent about how much money he makes from the website, and how he wants to donate it from charity and is keeping it separate, and he's been transparent about how much his family spends each year (usually around $25-30k iirc, and that includes spending weeks on vacation in Hawaii). He's organized some retreats to have fun with like minded people, nobody has to spend a cent on them and almost nobody does (there's maybe 20-30 people attending). It's not sold as something you need to buy to get the message (pretty sure he doesn't make money from it), it's a fun thing he organized, and he's not selling any books or DVDs or anything. All his content is free, all the forums are free. All the money is made from credit card referrals because if banks want to pay you a ton for clicks on your website, you'd be stupid not to do it and then figure out something good to do with the money. It's clear that what is going on is that you think the situation is "A" when it's actually "B", and to you "A" is stupid and a scam, so you're calling it out. But it's really not "A". Its something else. It's not just frugality repackaged, it's not about selling books and courses and retreats. It's the opposite of being weak and meek and lazy -- the lazy/weak/meek choice is doing what everybody else is doing rather than taking the road less travelled and putting some thought and effort in reaching non-comformist goals that you think will make you happier than the one-size-fits-all mainstream path. It's one guy who wrote (with style and panache) about his own experience, and it helped a lot of people realize that more consumption isn't the path to happiness and that you need a lot less money to stop working because of this http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ and that less stress, more control, better relationships, more freedom, more opportunities to try new things, to help those you love and spend time with them, etc, were all more important than a fancier car or a bigger TV or granite countertops. It's about developing a mindset more than any specific tactical tricks. Maybe to you it's all so self-obvious and simple that it's not worth discussing, but value investing is also very simple, yet very hard and subtle and the psychology of it is the most important aspect, hence why it's discussed every day all around the world. I got that message long before MMM existed (got it from a 90s book called Your Money or Your Life) and today my life is much better than it would be if I was still on the 9 to 5 (and I loved my job and it had tons of freedom and I mostly worked from home). To each their own, but even if it's not at all for you, your characterization of what this is is totally off mark. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/10/26/notes-on-giving-away-100000/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/05/19/2016-spending/

What podcast is that? I've never heard him say that about number of kids, or biking, and looking at the MMM forums, it seems like people with all kinds of numbers of kids have done what he did (this guy retired at 33 with 3 kids: http://rootofgood.com/category/parenting/ ). Seems like it would just require some adjustments (working a bit longer to have more money, or being a bit more frugal, or a mix of both, all taken into account by this math: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ ). Same with biking -- people in Amsterdam and Copenhagen bring multiple kids around daily without problem, there are all kinds of solutions, up to huge cargo bikes that you can move a fridge with (MMM wrote an article about a bike trailer that he bought, and he moved construction materials around with it) when kids aren't old enough to bike by themselves to just buying multiple bikes when they can. Not that biking is necessary to retire (I don't), it just helps save tons of money and improve quality of life. It was a podcast with Tim Ferriss. I have no idea when it was originally from, maybe past year, but I listened in June. The conversation was interesting, a lot of it focused on how his following was cultish. He said that in general what he wrote on the blog was more extreme than what he'd do in real life. And that this thing is almost a thought provoking platform. I've seen the cargo bikes. My brother has one. He also lives in an area that's bone flat with sidewalks. I live in an extremely dense, hilly area with no sidewalks. I'm not taking two kids on my bike on a road with zero shoulder with blind curves where people are whipping around at 45mph. I've been hit on my bike, it's not fun. It isn't uncommon for there to be a few bike deaths around here each year. I've listened to the Tim Ferriss interview and I don't remember that, might have to listen again to see what that was about. My go-to primer about him is now this talk: He definitely admits that he has a writing persona, but that's pretty clearly what it is when you read his stuff. He talks about "badassity", "mustachanism", "punching yourself in the face" and such, but that's just adding entertainment value and memorability to the delivery (which could've been bone-dry and nobody would've paid attention). I think the principles underlying the persona are sound and that he applies them in his life, and he's helped a lot of people realize that they had an option other than 9-5 until 65 available for their lives. A friend of mine recently met him for a bike ride and they chatted for maybe 20 minutes and he said that he was the most down-to-earth guy ever. As for bikes or early retirement/financial independence, of course it's not for everyone, and it'll be harder or easier for some people in some contexts. I just think everyone should be aware that it's a possibility, rather than just unthinkingly doing what everybody else does. I'm not trying to convert anyone to FIRE, I just dislike it when the whole concept is misrepresented by people who obviously have never taken the time to understand it (I'm not talking about you, to be clear) and think it's all about clipping coupons and lowering the thermostat while it's in fact about understanding what makes you happy in life and that we live in such a super-wealthy society that it's pretty easy to live very well on just part of that wealth and accumulate the surplus to buy back your own time rather than spend it on crap that doesn't make you happier. Ha, if you think the only way to be a productive member of society is to get a paycheck, that's too bad. I'm fine being productive in different ways (which are probably adding more value than 95% of wall street, an industry that mostly destroys value). If your own work happens to be what you most want to do with your life, consider yourself lucky, but spare a thought for the millions (billions) who don't have that luck or are wired with different aspirations and get their fulfilment elsewhere.

What podcast is that? I've never heard him say that about number of kids, or biking, and looking at the MMM forums, it seems like people with all kinds of numbers of kids have done what he did (this guy retired at 33 with 3 kids: http://rootofgood.com/category/parenting/ ). Seems like it would just require some adjustments (working a bit longer to have more money, or being a bit more frugal, or a mix of both, all taken into account by this math: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ ). Same with biking -- people in Amsterdam and Copenhagen bring multiple kids around daily without problem, there are all kinds of solutions, up to huge cargo bikes that you can move a fridge with (MMM wrote an article about a bike trailer that he bought, and he moved construction materials around with it) when kids aren't old enough to bike by themselves to just buying multiple bikes when they can. Not that biking is necessary to retire (I don't), it just helps save tons of money and improve quality of life.

Important PSA if you know people who might be targeted: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/how-online-filter-bubbles-are-making-parents-of-autistic

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/08/apple-and-accenture-partner-to-create-ios-business-solutions/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/

Personally, I don't believe that I'm born a slave, owned by a society that will force me to work most waking hours, spending most of my physical and mental energy on tasks ultimately decided by other people until my body starts to wear out, then allowing me some free time before the grave. I didn't pick this alias randomly. I believe I'm owned by myself, and I can decide what I want to do with my life. If my goal is to maximize my wealth and consumption, then of course I can work-work-work ever more at the highest-paying job I can find, and then buy all kinds of crap, etc. But I can also pick other goals, like control over my time, freedom, happiness, maximizing my ability to follow my curiosity (through books, meeting people, learning new skills, etc), spend time on things that I enjoy (like investing and other hobbies), having more time for my wife and kids and friends, spending time outside in nature, etc. It's all about making choices and accepting the tradeoffs that come from these choices. Sadly, most people don't seem to really make choices, they kind of just go with the flow and do what everybody around them is doing. Most people also never learn what "enough" is and think that more stuff can make them happier, while it's usually things like less stress, better relationships, and more control over your life that does it (something that Buffett has been preaching forever, btw). While I was in the accumulation phase, I paid all my taxes (more in absolute number than a lot of people I know will pay over a lifetime), and I'll pay all my taxes on any capital gains and dividends I make, and every time I buy something I pay all the consumption/VAT taxes, and all the companies I'm a part-owner of pay their taxes (afaik). That's certainly not freeloading, it's just moving things around to optimize for what I prefer (ie. from 20 to 34 I had a lot less free time and I consumed a lot less stuff than most people I knew, but that didn't feel like a sacrifice because it was to achieve a goal that I really wanted, and now that I've got it, I feel it was totally worth it).

Interesting to find people on investment forums who don't believe in capitalism... Earning capital and deferring consumption so that you can accumulate enough to later have the freedom to work less or not at all, or work on things that aren't paid work, is pretty much the opposite of what you're talking about. Some people spend everything they make as they make it and so are stuck on the treadmill of having to work, others make sacrifices (or just realize that more stuff doesn't make them happier) so that they can have more control over their lives later, in effect buying their own time (since working is exchanging your non-renewable time for money). Are you posting on this forum from work, btw? Are you robbing time away from your employer?

Or you know, it is a wife who stays at home and her husband works. Exactly this situation. Well, except that she does work for income with her blog despite describing herself as retired, that is. So either she is a housewife or she is not retired. Simple syllogisms give this answer. To you it did, but you seem to bring a lot of personal baggage to your interpretation of certain words, including "retired" and "housewife". I really don't care about the gender politics implications you draw from what words are used or not, so I don't think we have anything more to talk about. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too: You pretend that you can ignore the commonly accepted meaning of certain words AND force others into the commonly accepted meaning of certain words. Congrats on the mental gymnastics. See my link above about the retirement police, it sums her situation well. She's retired. She doesn't have to work for money (even if her husband didn't work), she's in control of her time, etc.

Yes, it does. It's a pretty giant cushion in the the actual decision to "retire". Would he/she/it/they have done it without a completely gender neutral significant other still bringing an income of unknown size to the household? We have no idea, but it certainly didn't hurt. No it doesn't, because this isn't a competition with set rules at which she's cheating. That's the way they're doing it, and reducing it to a "stay at home wife" is condescending because she's saved 2 million and is doing better than 99.9999% people of her cohort. Why are you arguing against a point I didn't make? I never accused her of "cheating" but of using words according to non-standard definitions. I said the whole story was not told and provided quotes from her to back that up. Whether you find that condescending or not, I couldn't give one toss about. That she is doing better than most others is another complete irrelevance. I think we're probably talking about different things. When I wrote: "The fact that her husband has a job doesn't change anything. If she was a man, I doubt we'd get the stay-at-home-husband label." I meant it doesn't change anything to the fact that she retired. I think you took it as meaning that it doesn't change anything PERIOD. Of course it does. Everything does. What city she lives in/cost of living, do they have kids, do they have other safety nets (family), what salary she had, etc. Everything changes something. But it doesn't make her go from FIRE ("financially independent, retired early", in the meaning of the word in that context) to "stay-at-home wife". I'm saying calling her a "stay-at-home-wife" is condescending because the standard definition of that is of a woman who is supported by her partner, and she is financially independent and can support both of them. I'm saying that if it was a man - like me - not having a job while a partner works, with enough financial resources to cover the whole family, that the same label probably wouldn't be applied (and surprise, people don't apply it to me). If you didn't make the argument that having a partner who works somehow diminishes what she accomplished, then that's fine. It did seem implied by your choice of words, but in any case, I'm just pointing out that calling her a "stay-at-home wife" kind of sucks because it reduces something uncommon and difficult to something very common that generally isn't the same situation at all. Every community has its own jargon with words that have specific meaning in their context. That's why at the top I said it would be great if there was a new word for this, but I haven't seen it yet. Maybe it'll come. It all reminds me of this: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/13/mr-money-mustache-vs-the-internet-retirement-police/

+1. This is exactly what the "early retired" community of MMM and others are selling to these people who hate their jobs and plot their escape from the cubicles. The gist is, look at me I'm retired and now spend all my time mowing my lawn, hacking credit cards and shoving the electrometer to figure out which of my refrigerator is burning more energy. Its such a cult that now every new entrant has a click baitey blog about his/her journey supported by the click baits of the other aspirants. A giant pyramid scheme only possible in a developed country where the fellow citizens can fund their healthcare and make them money from the index funds. No thanks genius. What they are really saying is that I escaped from the shitty career choices that I made earlier and now I'm so tired and scared that I can't do anything else. Instead of aspiring for a better career or more earning potential, they sit around and judge the cubicle dwellers who slog it out. A drain on the society. You've clearly never read what MMM wrote and don't know anything about this area. It doesn't have to be for you, but you also don't have to totally misrepresent the idea. If you have a few minutes to educate yourself, this is a good start: The rest is here: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/all-the-posts-since-the-beginning-of-time/