Reply to MMM - criticisms?

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[quote=Anonymous]I haven't made a close study of his blog, so maybe I'm missing key posts that would address my reservations about him, but here's what I can think of off the top of my head:

1) He seems to presume that everyone's top priority is to be able to stop working ASAP, and that all other money-related priorities are second to that. He has repeatedly expressed horror at the notion that some people would be willing to defer retirement for a few more years in order to enjoy some luxuries today. So if you're not an extremist in your desire to be frugal and retire asap, you'll occasionally find some judgmental comments about your own choices that you might find offensive.

2) He has been extremely fortunate in his life in ways that he really seems to take for granted (and doesn't appreciate that they don't apply universally). He likes to tout how smart he is by finding health insurance for his whole family for only $200-something per month. But it's really a catastrophic plan with a 10k per person/$20k per family deductible. That's all fine and good if you and your family are in good health from the outset, but if they'd had a child with special needs, or one of them had a chronic health condition, they wouldn't be able to maintain their retirement lifestyle with that policy. He and his wife also had a high income in a low COL area, which he always tries to dismiss and it comes across as disingenuous. If you're HHI is over $200k and you're living in a place where you can rent an apartment for $400, it's probably not that hard to save 65% of your income. But if you're living in a place where you can rent an apartment for $400, there probably aren't terribly many jobs around that pay that kind of money. He also graduated from college with no debt, thanks in large part to parental assistance. There were a lot of other events along the way that fall into the "luck" category and won't happen for everyone, but he doesn't like to acknowledge his good fortune.

3) Another thing I really don't like is that if you're going to aspire to retire at a young age like him, you should plan to do so without relying upon public assistance; MMM apparently disagrees with this, and feels that it's perfectly fine to include public assistance as part of your retire-early planning. For instance, he has noted more than once when discussing health insurance premiums that people who retire early and live frugally like him will often have post-retirement income levels that qualify for ACA subsidies to make health insurance more affordable. That's so fundamentally not what programs like ACA subsidies were designed for, and to me this feels like fraud and abuse of the system.

4) He likes to cite the ability to go back to work as his fall-back if unexpected stuff happens and he can't afford to be retired anymore. Except he never really stopped working since he's been doing the blog and related activity to make money, so he has a full resume to fall back on. Someone who truly retires in, say, their early 40s and then needs to go back to work in their late 50s due to a fiscal crisis is probably going to have a really hard time finding work. I also don't know what the plan would be if, for instance, he had a hugely expensive medical crisis that rendered him unable to work -- has his wife kept up enough with something that she could readily find work? And is it really retirement if you're constantly needing to keep your resume fresh just in case?

I'm sure if I kept thinking about it, I'd remember more things that bothered me.[/quote]

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