Anonymous wrote:"He has made it big, but the point is he would have been fine even if he had not."

The point is its his family and not, "He' and family would not be fine on 20K a year. Yes in a perfect world this family could exist on 20K a year but things break and kids go to the hospital on occasion. Kids also need paper and pencils for school which 20K a year does not cover. I ran a bare bones budget to figure that out.
"Living on 20K a year isnt living, its just not dying. - Eep Crood."

PP here, every year he posts how much he spends, atleast from when he started the blog.

Here is the latest for 2014, I am curious to hear your thoughts.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm-familys-2014-spending/
Do you think some of this is fudged, and he is spending more? What do you see lacking?

Personally, yes I cannot see sustaining my family on this spending level, but I attribute that he is handy, lives in LCOL area and has tons of time in his hands to plan and optimize spending. Clearly he enjoys that, but you & I might not, so what works for him, will not work for you, which is fine. But I dont think we need to follow his script, maybe learn atleast a few lessons in frugality?

And to say that his family is just a step away from dying maybe a bit far fetched? I do agree he has a huge safety net like handy skills, wife works for her parent's company and made 60K partime, Canadian healthcare etc (way before the blog revenue) but again his message is NOT that go quit your job, but be frugal and save so you have enough to quit if needed.
And I think he is living his example, if he was in a 9-5 cubicle job, he would not have had his blog that is now raking him revenue.

"He has made it big, but the point is he would have been fine even if he had not."

The point is its his family and not, "He' and family would not be fine on 20K a year. Yes in a perfect world this family could exist on 20K a year but things break and kids go to the hospital on occasion. Kids also need paper and pencils for school which 20K a year does not cover. I ran a bare bones budget to figure that out.
"Living on 20K a year isnt living, its just not dying. - Eep Crood."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the message wrong just because he got rich telling it? It's still mathematically correct that he could have stopped saving $ before his blog began making an income. He was set before his blog really began earning money. You can say that he's no longer entitled to give the advice he does, or that he's a fraud because he doesn't HAVE to live on $24k a year, but it doesn't change the truth of the math.

Why is he a hypocrite just because he used to live below his means and now he lives way below his means?

I don't think the message is wrong, but the fact that he isn't forthright about what he is really doing bothers me. What he needs to say is that he is a one percenter voluntarily choosing to live a disgusting nickel rocket king of the poors lifestyle with millions of dollars in an emergency fund should this whole poor thing not work out. To me that changes things quite a bit from "look at me, see, look how you can do this".

NP. I think he is doing that. He's been very upfront that he has plenty of money that he'll never need.

Exactly. I've been reading his blog for a while and he's always been clear that he now has way more money than he needs to pull off early retirement.

Agreed, I am amazed by the hatred on this thread. He is quite extreme in some areas like biking and vacation spending and so on, but his overall message is very sound and can be applied to anyones life, atleast parts of it. He keeps claiming he is frugal yet has a rich life, with no wants and no needs unmet. I think it is possible.

Most importantly, he quit when he was 30, in 2004 with some 800k and a paid off house. He started his blog in 2011, and I am sure it took a year or two to take off. So his 400k income is pretty recent, while his retirement is 10+ years old. He has made it big, but the point is he would have been fine even if he had not.

And no, we cannot attribute whatever is written in his forums or comments to him, some of those people are way extreme, way more than him.

And lastly, his wife looks great.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the message wrong just because he got rich telling it? It's still mathematically correct that he could have stopped saving $ before his blog began making an income. He was set before his blog really began earning money. You can say that he's no longer entitled to give the advice he does, or that he's a fraud because he doesn't HAVE to live on $24k a year, but it doesn't change the truth of the math.

Why is he a hypocrite just because he used to live below his means and now he lives way below his means?

I don't think the message is wrong, but the fact that he isn't forthright about what he is really doing bothers me. What he needs to say is that he is a one percenter voluntarily choosing to live a disgusting nickel rocket king of the poors lifestyle with millions of dollars in an emergency fund should this whole poor thing not work out. To me that changes things quite a bit from "look at me, see, look how you can do this".

NP. I think he is doing that. He's been very upfront that he has plenty of money that he'll never need.

Exactly. I've been reading his blog for a while and he's always been clear that he now has way more money than he needs to pull off early retirement.

He makes certain types of people feel insecure and defensive, and they are clearly very eager to discredit him. It's a lot easier than facing the fact that they might be living lives on a spending treadmill and they don't know how to get off.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the message wrong just because he got rich telling it? It's still mathematically correct that he could have stopped saving $ before his blog began making an income. He was set before his blog really began earning money. You can say that he's no longer entitled to give the advice he does, or that he's a fraud because he doesn't HAVE to live on $24k a year, but it doesn't change the truth of the math.

Why is he a hypocrite just because he used to live below his means and now he lives way below his means?

I don't think the message is wrong, but the fact that he isn't forthright about what he is really doing bothers me. What he needs to say is that he is a one percenter voluntarily choosing to live a disgusting nickel rocket king of the poors lifestyle with millions of dollars in an emergency fund should this whole poor thing not work out. To me that changes things quite a bit from "look at me, see, look how you can do this".

NP. I think he is doing that. He's been very upfront that he has plenty of money that he'll never need.

Exactly. I've been reading his blog for a while and he's always been clear that he now has way more money than he needs to pull off early retirement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the message wrong just because he got rich telling it? It's still mathematically correct that he could have stopped saving $ before his blog began making an income. He was set before his blog really began earning money. You can say that he's no longer entitled to give the advice he does, or that he's a fraud because he doesn't HAVE to live on $24k a year, but it doesn't change the truth of the math.

Why is he a hypocrite just because he used to live below his means and now he lives way below his means?

I don't think the message is wrong, but the fact that he isn't forthright about what he is really doing bothers me. What he needs to say is that he is a one percenter voluntarily choosing to live a disgusting nickel rocket king of the poors lifestyle with millions of dollars in an emergency fund should this whole poor thing not work out. To me that changes things quite a bit from "look at me, see, look how you can do this".

NP. I think he is doing that. He's been very upfront that he has plenty of money that he'll never need.

Anonymous wrote:Why is the message wrong just because he got rich telling it? It's still mathematically correct that he could have stopped saving $ before his blog began making an income. He was set before his blog really began earning money. You can say that he's no longer entitled to give the advice he does, or that he's a fraud because he doesn't HAVE to live on $24k a year, but it doesn't change the truth of the math.

Why is he a hypocrite just because he used to live below his means and now he lives way below his means?

I don't think the message is wrong, but the fact that he isn't forthright about what he is really doing bothers me. What he needs to say is that he is a one percenter voluntarily choosing to live a disgusting nickel rocket king of the poors lifestyle with millions of dollars in an emergency fund should this whole poor thing not work out. To me that changes things quite a bit from "look at me, see, look how you can do this".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will always be haters -- people don't want to believe that you can actually live well if you spend below your income and don't go into debt. That you can save money and stop working before you're 70 years old. That you can spend your time finding something meaningful to do with those 40 years after you retire at 30. I think MMM has some great ideas and I'm going to teach my children that they don't need to work until they drop dead if they don't want to.

There will always be people like yourself who try and obfuscate the fact he is promoting the idea everyine, including himself that it's possible to retire at 30 on 20K a year with a family of 4. All this promotion while collecting 400K a year the whole time.

THIS! It's not the lessons I object too, but the attempts to hide his real income and then censor people on his site questioning him about the article. I definitely think he loses credibility over it. Like one of the PPs pointed out, he has a massive parachute that he would otherwise not have if he actually followed what he lays out 100%. He has little worry about this early retirement/pooping in a bag strategy if at any time (major medical emergency, legal problems, house issue, etc.) he can simply remove the shit bag, flush his toilet like the rest of us and withdraw a portion of the millions of dollars he is sitting on to fix it. He has that ripcord sitting right there that nobody else that follows his preaching to the letter will have. Sorry, not a fan anymore. He's FOS.

The censoring is messed up.

Why is the message wrong just because he got rich telling it? It's still mathematically correct that he could have stopped saving $ before his blog began making an income. He was set before his blog really began earning money. You can say that he's no longer entitled to give the advice he does, or that he's a fraud because he doesn't HAVE to live on $24k a year, but it doesn't change the truth of the math.

Why is he a hypocrite just because he used to live below his means and now he lives way below his means?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will always be haters -- people don't want to believe that you can actually live well if you spend below your income and don't go into debt. That you can save money and stop working before you're 70 years old. That you can spend your time finding something meaningful to do with those 40 years after you retire at 30. I think MMM has some great ideas and I'm going to teach my children that they don't need to work until they drop dead if they don't want to.

There will always be people like yourself who try and obfuscate the fact he is promoting the idea everyine, including himself that it's possible to retire at 30 on 20K a year with a family of 4. All this promotion while collecting 400K a year the whole time.

THIS! It's not the lessons I object too, but the attempts to hide his real income and then censor people on his site questioning him about the article. I definitely think he loses credibility over it. Like one of the PPs pointed out, he has a massive parachute that he would otherwise not have if he actually followed what he lays out 100%. He has little worry about this early retirement/pooping in a bag strategy if at any time (major medical emergency, legal problems, house issue, etc.) he can simply remove the shit bag, flush his toilet like the rest of us and withdraw a portion of the millions of dollars he is sitting on to fix it. He has that ripcord sitting right there that nobody else that follows his preaching to the letter will have. Sorry, not a fan anymore. He's FOS.

Anonymous wrote:There will always be haters -- people don't want to believe that you can actually live well if you spend below your income and don't go into debt. That you can save money and stop working before you're 70 years old. That you can spend your time finding something meaningful to do with those 40 years after you retire at 30. I think MMM has some great ideas and I'm going to teach my children that they don't need to work until they drop dead if they don't want to.

There will always be people like yourself who try and obfuscate the fact he is promoting the idea everyine, including himself that it's possible to retire at 30 on 20K a year with a family of 4. All this promotion while collecting 400K a year the whole time.

There will always be haters -- people don't want to believe that you can actually live well if you spend below your income and don't go into debt. That you can save money and stop working before you're 70 years old. That you can spend your time finding something meaningful to do with those 40 years after you retire at 30. I think MMM has some great ideas and I'm going to teach my children that they don't need to work until they drop dead if they don't want to.

Anonymous wrote:Meh, still disingenuous that he tried to hide the fact that he's a 1 percenter to keep credibility with his readers. I liked some of his stuff, but he's just a rich guy living frugal to prove a point now. Credibility rating down about 80% as far as I am concerned.

Yeah, telling the New Yorker is really keeping it under wraps.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mr money moustache is blocking people on his forum for criticizing his New Yorker article!!!! Talk about censorship. He must not be taking the criticism well.

He's a total fraud. I hope he stores his $400k a year in the same bag with his shit.

Lol!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mr money moustache is blocking people on his forum for criticizing his New Yorker article!!!! Talk about censorship. He must not be taking the criticism well.

He's a total fraud. I hope he stores his $400k a year in the same bag with his shit.

+1.