[vinceguidry]

> Luckily, there’s a corner of the Internet dedicated to breaking the link between “comfort” and money.

The problem with this is that it moves in the wrong direction. You spent all this time learning how to earn more money for your time. Then what do you do after you earn a bunch of money? Figure out how to trade your time for money again, just in different arenas? Why, so you can avoid having to spend more time doing what you specialized in? This isn't the direction of leisure.

The MMM types always are quick to say that they actually enjoy all these little things they do to avoid having to put out more money for daily essentials. Cloth diapering and seems the be the poster-child for these sorts of things. Also using single-blade razors. Working on your own car.

Doing these things properly requires learning more skills. But time spent learning these skills is time not spent engineering. It almost seems more of a irrational reaction against modernity than it does an actual path towards greater impact.

You need to be trading the money you're making through specialization for time not spent learning more skills to be going in the direction of more actual leisure. (what I call "fuck you time". Much better IMO than fuck you money.) You use some of the freed-up time to make more money, and the rest of it towards leisure activities. It's possible for your skill-set to be so valuable that you can maintain ridiculous incomes on, as Tim Ferriss puts it, four hours a week.

Every dollar I can spend on not learning a new skill is a minute I can put towards pushing my flywheel.

[jtzhou]

> Why, so you can avoid having to spend more time doing what you specialized in?

Yes. Part of enjoying life -- at least for most people -- is taking part in challenges and endeavors in a wide range of activities. If you can work for 4 hours a week and maintain a high income, this would fit the bill but probably not realistic for most people (do you have suggestions besides managing a portfolio of capital, or free-lancing?). MMM is not saying we should do everything ourselves, but to be smart about what we do save have more time for other activities. This is how humans have been biologically desired over millions of years -- to be adaptable and have a wide range of skills. Legs for running, hands for climbing and building and fixing physical objects, noses for smelling. Skills that are unnecessary for simply writing code but useful to use. The flywheel sounds a bit too mechanical and less in tune with our biological needs.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

[_yosefk]

I pity the hog butchered by a computer programmer (though except for Zuckerberg I heard about few who tried.) I pity as well the programmer honing his hog butchering skills.

If you want to make the most money to be able to work the least hours over your lifetime, then focusing on those skills making the most money at the expense of other skills (and paying someone else with those skills when necessary) is the best strategy by far.

If you enjoy fucking around with plumbing, then by all means fuck with it all you want. But if making less money and fucking with plumbing is your plan to free up the most time for other things (neither making money nor plumbing), then I think it's just plain dumb.

[Dewie3]

So now the goal post has been moved from having more leisure time to an appeal to nature.

[ForHackernews]

> It's possible for your skill-set to be so valuable that you can maintain ridiculous incomes on, as Tim Ferriss puts it, four hours a day.

Tim Ferriss' extremely valuable skillset is being a flim-flam man / borderline scam artist who markets questionable pesudoscience nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ferriss#BrainQUICKEN

[mcdougle]

I don't see anything in the Wikipedia article that implies he was a borderline scam artist. Even the "controversies" section only really talks about the fact that he used steroids in the past and something about Amazon reviews for his books.

I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong... but what has he done that's actually bad? He says himself that the things he writes about worked for him, and he shows how he measured it in his own life. That doesn't mean it's scientific fact and will work for everyone necessarily.

[falcolas]

Yeah, the MMM manifesto would never work for me - it basically says that I would have to be setting aside over 90% of my income (given my salary range), which wouldn't allow for things like a newer car, owning a house over 300 sq. ft., or traveling to Arizona to visit relatives.

Personally, I refuse to give up my life today for the possibility of a life tomorrow. There's too few guarantees that there will be a tomorrow.

[zrail]

That's not really what MMM espouses, from what I've been able to tell (I've actually spent the better part of the last month devouring his blog and the forums).

MMM's point is that, if you live well within your means and can save 50% of your income (however you choose to define that, but most people do after-tax), you can "retire" after a short number of years. "Retirement" is very much however you want to define it, but the core is that you don't have to work for money anymore, since your previous investments can take care of your lower-than-average expenses. Lots and lots of people are financially independent (don't have to work for money) and still work a normal job because they like it.

MMM promotes freedom, in the sense that you can change some small aspects of your lifestyle and in a short amount of time free yourself of the requirement to sell your time.

[falcolas]

> if you live well within your means

Which they define as no morgage. No car loans. No TV. "Fuck cleanliness". "Luxury is a weakness". Fix your own car. Don't use AC in Phoenix (?!).

> your previous investments can take care of your lower-than-average expenses

How can, to use MMM's numbers, 17 years of living on 50% income somehow support 50-70 years of living on that other 50%? His answer? Drop your spending by another 50-75%, and hope you can get 7% returns on your investment[0].

Even MMM isn't doing that. He's living currently on about 25k a year, which is a over 25% of his starting income, and certainly more than the 4% he advocates above (unless he was putting away $125,000 a year for those 5 years, in addition to paying off his $400,000 morgage). If he can't live by his own advice without selling his house, selling his family heirlooms[1], how does he expect others to do it?

> MMM promotes freedom

Freedom from what? Enjoying your working years? Personally, I spent many, many years living on less than $25,000 a year. It sucked, it's certainly not the life I want to "retire to".

[0]http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need... [1]http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/08/22/how_to_sell_silver...

[charlieflowers]

> He's living currently on about 25k a year, which is a over 25% of his starting income, and certainly more than the 4% he advocates above

Something is wrong with your math there (unless I am misunderstanding you). $25k is not more than 4% of his total savings. (In other words, he has more than $625,000 in his investment portfolio).

He exceeds his own advice, because to him it is not deprivation.

[mcdougle]

He actually has an article where he lays out how he went about saving before he retired, and he basically had $800k in liquid cash/investments before he retired.

But I don't think he actually saved the full $800k; he probably had quite a bit less than that, but with the power of exponential growth, looked at his statements one day and had $800k. It sounds like he also makes a bit of money doing odd jobs throughout the year, too, and since the $800k was more than enough for them to live off of in the first place, it's grown quite a bit since they retired. I doubt he's put any actual numbers out there, but he's hinted at the fact that he's got several million dollars in his investment portfolio now.

He talks about exponential growth a lot. The problem is, people don't really grasp the concept. For example, if you save $5 extra per week (instead of buying that Starbucks coffee on Friday, for instance), it doesn't really sound like a lot. But if you invest that $5 (MMM suggests index funds, which are pretty low-risk/low-growth -- so we'll use 6% annual growth here) you actually end up with about $3600 at the end of 10 years. Sure, this isn't a lot, and most of the growth occurs near the end of the time period, but it's $1000 more than it would be just sticking it in a savings account. MMM advocates a whole bunch of these little changes in your lifestyle, which add up over time.

While he does take it to the extreme, he states often that he's not telling people they need to do what he does.

[vinceguidry]

It's a false economy. You don't have to wait until you're financially independent to find meaningful work that you like doing. I still remember the day ERE Jacob decided to go back to work. He spent all this time justifying his decision. It wasn't the decision he had to justify, it was the previous five years or so he spent not doing work he loved and not making buttloads of money doing it.

The argument against work is that it's soul-sucking and meaningless. Well, you don't have to accept that. There's plenty of things you can do to make work fit into your life, rather than make your life fit into your work.

[zrail]

I don't think this is the kind of dichotomy you're making it out to be. Of course not all work is soul-sucking and meaningless. If you find something fulfilling and enjoyable, great! That's awesome! There's all kinds of options in life, and the great thing is that you don't have to pick just one. MMM seems to be about opening up more options by allowing you to not have to consider revenue in your decision making process.

[balls187]

What is the point of retiring early, if you're stuck having to pinch-pennies, cut-coupons, all to living within a very modest budget?

I have to do something with my time, so I might as well get paid handsomely for it.

[zrail]

> I have to do something with my time, so I might as well get paid handsomely for it.

There's actually an interesting component to that. Likely since you first started working you've never actually been in a situation where you don't need to sell your time in order to pay your expenses. I sure haven't.

But I've read a lot of stories from people who are currently in that situation, and the feeling of having to do something with your time and be constantly productive apparently fades over time. Not because they're bored, but because they're fulfilled by different things. Like, suddenly the household chores are fulfilling instead of burdensome.

Also, from what I've read very few people on the FIRE path waste time clipping coupons or pinching pennies. The whole point is to optimize lifetime overall happiness by strategically optimizing your spending and investments, monetarily and otherwise.

[balls187]

> Likely since you first started working you've never actually been in a situation where you don't need to sell your time in order to pay your expenses. I sure haven't.

Actually that's not true. When I was 28 years old, I quit my job, "retired" and traveled. It got old quick. I missed the challenges of solving engineering problems, the comradarie I have with coworkers, and the shared sense of purpose you get with work. I also realized that the one thing I could spend hours and hours doing in one setting was writing code. So I rejoined the "ratrace" and decided that I wouldn't be so consumed about "retiring."

Instead I subscribe to the "don't wait till you retire" to do the things you want to do. I want to travel, so I travel.

I live my life the way I want to. That includes working for a paycheck.

[andyidsinga]

>Instead I subscribe to the "don't wait till you retire" to do the things you want to do. I want to travel, so I travel.

This! I'm with you. why should I ever "retire"?

[vinceguidry]

> That includes working for a paycheck.

Paychecks are nice things, aren't they? You don't have to worry about when they're coming in or what's going to be on them, what you do for that paycheck is generally pretty fixed, they come with things like health care and employer 401k match. One could do a lot worse.

[zrail]

Fair enough. I made an unfair generalization and I apologize. I'm glad you found something you enjoy doing :)

[aidenn0]

MMM is living off an effective annual budget of $40k per year for a family of 3. That's roughly 45th percentile, so not that modest.

[balls187]

I haven't done much research into his life style, but I assume with $40k he and his family are able to do the things they want to do. Though that isn't necessarily the same things other families want to do.

[Modernnomad84]

I think it's fair to say that this is 95% of people's first reaction to hearing about MMM or similar bloggers.

Here's something you can take away from MMM even if you don't agree with everything he says.

Based on your post, these are the things that are important to you (or at least a start):

- Newer car - owning a house over 300 sq. ft. - Traveling to Arizona to visit relatives.

Maybe there are a dozen or so other things that are important to you that you could add to that list.

Now open up your bank account and find out how much spending happens on stuff that isn't important to you. 50%? 80%?

If you can dial down the spending that doesn't make you happy or the spending you do that just out of habit then you would be able to do more that does matter to you... nicer house, nicer car, more frequent and longer trips to AZ.

[gluggymug]

"Doing these things properly requires learning more skills. But time spent learning these skills is time not spent engineering. It almost seems more of a irrational reaction against modernity than it does an actual path towards greater impact."

I don't think it was about the size of impact but about fixing your work/life balance. When it's skewing too much towards "all work/no play", most people burn out. By changing to learning something new and different, they get refreshed.

Personally I think I may have to write an article called "Join the Leisure Class, Leave the Engineering Class".

For me, I stopped working in engineering and life is awesome. Having made enough to pay off the mortgage and with leftover savings, I don't think I will need to work again. But when I was working I actually did get a certification in a completely different field of welding/machining.

[ChrisLoer]

MMM definitely makes most sense for people who enjoy doing the sorts of things MMM enjoys doing. I happen to really like a lot of the around-the-house type DIY projects, so it's a good fit for me, but I don't think there's a moral imperative to it. MMM sets the "$30k/year" bar for frugal family living with his DIY lifestyle, but there are plenty of people who do it differently. My wife's extended family are for the most part recent immigrants, so a lot of them live in that range (comfortably enough!) with a completely different type of frugality.

[vinceguidry]

I actually like doing those sorts of things too. But as my engineering skill-set grows, I also start to really notice the opportunity cost to doing them. You can keep doing them, for awhile, sure. But if you're actually pushing your personal productivity and value flywheel, those costs are going to weigh ever heavier and eventually you're going to have a decision to make. Outsource the things that aren't adding momentum to those who would be happy to take them off your hands or stop gaining momentum. Because as the flywheel gains momentum you have to push ever harder on it to make it go faster.

It doesn't just apply to household stuff. A business has to be able to scale beyond your personal efforts as well. To do so you have to be able to remove yourself from a lot of equations. Large impacts to society and the world don't really happen without institutions, and institutions can't get built any other way.

What I love about engineering is the personal value curve is so steep, that it starts making sense a lot sooner to outsource drudge work. It becomes a question of, how big do you want to grow, and how fast do you want to do it?

[jnem]

Sorry, but i cant find a reference to what MMM means anywhere. Im guessing you guys aren't talking about the Moon Miners Manifesto.. or talking about enjoying something "mmm.mmm.mmm"

[lemdj]

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

[jnem]

Ahh, there we go, context. Thanks!

[Compulsion]

Mustache Money or something. The guy he mentions in the article.

[PopeOfNope]

Many Men of Michigan.

[PopeOfNope]

Everyone's a critic.

[imgabe]

Having skills saves you both time and money in the long run. Let's say your toilet is broken. If you can fix it yourself, you need maybe a couple hours. You can do those couple hours any time, for example, on the weekend when you weren't going to be working for money anyway.

If you don't have any skills, you have to pay a plumber to come fix it, for maybe $200. That's already four hours of working at $50/hour. Plus, you have to be home to let in the plumber which is most likely during business hours, so that's maybe another 2-4 hours that you're not at work. Total time cost: 8 hours.

How long does it take to learn how to fix a toilet? Remember, you're a freaking engineer. A toilet is not that complicated. You should be able to watch a youtube video and learn just about everything you need to know in 10-15 minutes. Time spent learning to be self-sufficient pays itself back very quickly.

There's also additional risks to being overspecialized. What if the thing you specialized in becomes obsolete? Now you have no way to trade your time for money and you're absolutely useless for doing anything else.

[gaius]

Programmers routinely underestimate the complexity of every other field.

[imgabe]

This is true, and if you wanted to be a professional plumber there is definitely a whole wealth of information you'd need to know. The threshold for the level of competence required for basic home repairs is much lower.

[hspak]

Reminds me of the fisherman story: http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/fisherman.html

[s73v3r]

"Also using single-blade razors."

For me, single blade razors offer a better shave. The fact that it's cheaper is just a bonus.

[vinceguidry]

Not for me. I got a safety razor a few years ago, never looked back until I found myself traveling, and, unable to bring my blades, just went to the grocery store and got a cheap three-blade razor. Night and day difference.

[WalterSear]

It depends a lot on the quality of the blades, and if you store them dunked in mineral oil between shaves. Some brands of blades I got were garbage out of the box. None of them were much good if they had been left out for a few days after use - same are disposables in that regard.

[vinceguidry]

Even getting a brand new blade just isn't as good as a mediocre modern 3-blade razor. I had to face the facts that I really just moved to single-blade motivated mostly by the savings and the irrational belief that the way we used to do things is better than iterated, market-driven technological advances in consumer goods.

[sukilot]

I don't get the money saving aspect. If you want to be frugal, just grow stubble or a beard. A $3 razor will last for over a month.

[cerberusss]

Also, gros your hair to a length where you can stick it in a bun or a ponytail.

[Modernnomad84]

I just wanted to mention that MMM sometimes rubs me the wrong way too. A more analytical approach that I found more thorough and more intriguing is at "Extreme Early Retirement" here:

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

His book is especially interesting.

Granted, the author of this book is quirky and ends up doing a lot of work that you could hire someone to do for $10 an hour. But the author stressed that- at least for him- he'd rather spend his team mending clothes or fixing his bike that being in academia (his prior career).

[gohrt]

> Cloth diapering and seems the be the poster-child for these sorts of things.

Cloth diapering (as currently practiced, with fancy diapers and washing machines) is not cost effective at all; it's (arguably) environmentally responsible, extra butt padding, and cute.