Reply to Mr. Money Mustache may be frugal, but he's high income.

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Mr. Money Mustache may be frugal, but he's high income."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I find it really ironic that he got rich by being really, really good at being poor.  It's almost as if there is a lesson here somewhere, but I can't quite get my head around it.

[/quote]
+1.
[/quote]

he's not really good at being poor he's really good at making a lot of money at a software engineering job and rental income  and then investing it and living frugally off  plus blog income.

I used to get really interested in people who who FIRE until I ralize that almost all of them had some very cushy job (mostly software engineers) and then they could afford to save 70% of their income because they were making something like 150,000 or more a year. [b]and you'll notice that while they're very open about how much they save their incredibly close lipped about how much they make from their jobs because that takes away the illusion that any person can save at some crazy rate and be able to save the money to retire early. [/b]

and of course when you point this out the fire community gets super defensive about it and claims anyone who critcizes them is jealous of their success or lazy or whatever.

My father-in-law is a janitor and struggles to get full-time hours due to health issues. He too lives a very frugal existence. The difference is that he will never realistically save a million dollars or whatever is the magical FIRE number is because he's making a minimum wage job.

This podcast does it really interesting job of breaking down how the FiRE community is being co-opted by investment bankers to sell savings products

https://m.soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-77-frugality-fables-and-the-poor-shaming-grift-of-financial-advice-journalism
[/quote]

This reminds me of The Frugalwoods. They have a popular FIRE type blog. The wife wrote a book and readers kind of ripped her to shreds over being disingenuous about how much her DH makes (she's "retired" but he's not, making something like $240K/year).[/quote]

I follow their blog and read her book. Finding out her husband makes 240,000 a year was quite a surprise. (And they rent their home in Cambridge). I'm not sure why they are still obsessively frugal given that they aren't saving for another house. They spend a lot of money on their homestead for projects but not to fix it up.she still agonizes over every big purchase that isn't on brand like a roomba

My general impression from her book is that  was forever chasing happiness by thinking a masters/dog/child/ homestead would make her happy but if you read get writing about bring a stay at home mom she's definitely struggling with having too small and very rambunctious children.[/quote]

I agree she seems unhappy. I’m shocked about her husband. I knew he worked but what can you do remotely for $240k that still leaves time for all that wood chopping? The $240k is IN THE BOOK???[/quote]

Wow, I just looked it up myself. $270k total comp from the nonprofit he works for. It’s in their tax filings. Wow.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics