[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.