Mr. Money Mustache: Financial Freedom through Badassity, mrmoneymustache.com. by Pete, no last name given. No, that’s not him in the picture.
Yet again this week there’s a blog instead of a book. I promise that next week I’ll post about a book. (I’m in the midst of reading it right now, in between my stints on the MMM website.) And, another yet again, I don’t know how I ran across this site. The power of Google, I guess. Mr. Mustache addresses the age-old question of whether or not money can buy happiness. The answer is: only if you use the money to buy freedom instead of things. (And why a mustache? Well, guess you’ll have to check out the blog for yourself.)
Let me tell you a little bit about my own financial history. I got my first general credit card, from Visa, when I was just starting out as a poorly-paid high-school teacher. An application came in the mail and I filled it out and sent it in just for a lark. “They’re not going to give a credit card to someone like me who makes so little,” I said. Well, duh. Why did I think they had sent me the application if they weren’t interested in issuing me a card? Soon it came in the mail, all shiny and new, begging to be used all the way up to its astounding $500 credit limit. And once I hit that limit, guess what happened? They raised it. It wasn’t all that long before my limit was $3,000–and I was right up there, every month. I was the credit card companies’ dream: I used every penny of my limit and I paid only the minimum amount every month, but I always paid on time. So they were making the absolute maximum amount of money from me. And I had a handful of other, company-specific credit cards also: Talbot’s, Spiegel, and at least one more. They were all also always up to the limit. I write about this whole story in my book, so I’ll leave it at that here. Suffice it to say that I was a terrible money manager during my single years.
Then I married Jim, and found out that he didn’t believe in credit cards, and I paid off mine from the profit I made selling my house (my one and only financially-savvy action during those dark pre-Jim years), and we went on from there. Jim and his dad really should start a financial advising business, but they wouldn’t make any money because their advice would be so simple: live below your means and invest in index funds. (Please don’t ask me to define what an index fund is. I just know it’s a good thing.)
So, much of the advice on MMM sounds very familiar. But it never hurts to be reminded of good principles, no matter what the source. I do wish that dear Pete (may I call you that, MMM?) wouldn’t find it necessary to use so many four-letter words. Hey, bad language is the last refuge of the inarticulate! Doesn’t he know that? He sounds like an aging hippie trying to sound like a cool dude. and he’s pretty much anti-any kind of religion. So it ain’t a Christian website, folks! Just keep that in mind.
I just re-read my own chapter on money and am a bit embarrassed to find that I seem to be alluding to Dave Ramsey favorably as some sort of financial guru when he’s actually sort of . . . not. Jim had pointed out previously, and MMM concurs, that DR’s statement that the average return on the stock market is 12% is way too high. And I just cringe when he says that God wanted him to have a Jaguar again, after he lost the first one when he went bankrupt. Why on earth would anyone want a wildly expensive car that spends half its time in the shop? How does that honor God? Much better to follow the advice of MMM and drive an inexpensive used car as little as possible. (Some excellent criticism of DR can be found here, although you can find plenty more by bopping around online.)
So I’ve started with the very first post on MMM and have now worked my way up to January 2012. I’m inspired to do better about bargain-hunting, to disregard any and all attempts of advertisers to sell me things I don’t need, and to get back into using mint.com, the online budgeting service. If I had to choose only one post out of the many that I’ve read, bearing in mind that I still have 2 1/2 years’ worth to go, I would advise you to read this one: “You Can’t Cure Obesity with Bigger Pants.” It’s not a post about money at all (as is indeed the case for many of them) but about a whole philosophy of life. If you’ve gained so much weight that your pants are tight, don’t buy bigger pants. In other words, don’t disguise the problem. Make yourself endure the uncomfortable waistbands so that you’re inspired to do something to solve the problem. Most of us are w-a-a-y too easy on ourselves, in every conceivable life situation.
Well, as I often say, I’ve gone on long enough. The proper use of money is a great happiness booster, and I’m going to try to do better. Perhaps in a future post I’ll share some specifics about how we spend our money and how we’re currently weathering the storm of Jim’s job loss. It’s a journey!