He claims: “… I’m the freaky financial magician who retired along with a lovely wife at age 30 in order to start a family, as well as start living a great life. We did this on two normal salaries with no lottery winnings or Silicon Valley buyout windfalls, by living what we thought was a wonderful and fulfilling existence. It was only after quitting the rat race that we looked around and realized why we had become financially independent while most people, even with higher incomes, end up stuck needing to work until age 65 or later.
I’m writing this post to use as kind of a permanent “Hello!”, since at any given moment in time, about half of the readers of this blog are pretty new, and casting around wondering where to start on a giant site like this with over 400 published articles. Most people arrive with the same question:
“I hear Mr. Money Mustache writes some useful stuff and many people are building happy, wealthy lives for themselves using his advice”, they are saying, “but I am a busy person. How can he make me rich Right Now!?”
[He] is a thirtysomething* retiree who now writes about how we can all live a frugal yet Badass life of leisure. My wife and I studied engineering and computer science in Canada, then worked in standard tech-industry cubicle jobs in various locations throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Then we retired from real work way back in 2005 in order to start a family. This was achieved not through luck or amazing skill, but simply by living a lifestyle about 50% less expensive than most of our peers and investing the surplus in very boring conservative Vanguard index funds and a rental house or two.
This blog was born in 2011 out of exasperation. Six years into this early retirement, life was going well and our little boy was growing up nicely. But many of my friends and former coworkers remained broke, constantly complaining about how hard middle-class life is these days, and how much they would like to be able to afford to lose at least one of their six-figure salaries so someone could stay home with the kids.
These comments were generally made over expensive pints of microbrew at a restaurant, or on Facebook between announcements regarding the purchase of brand new dealer-financed Subarus, snowboarding trips, and road biking equipment.
And indeed, the whole country seemed to be displaying the same odd behavior: living ridiculously expensive lifestyles while thinking they were completely normal, and then being baffled when they had no money left over to buy their own freedom. All while being so busy that they didn’t even have time to understand the science behind why this behavior is trashing the very home that makes our lives even possible.
So I decided to start this blog to share some of the secrets of how all this can be done. How you can create a life that is better than your current one, that just happens to cost 50-75% less. It has been a long and winding road, but I’ll keep learning and writing as long as you keep reading!
* OK, I was 36 when I started this blog but the years have been passing since I wrote this. I’m up to thirty-twelve now.'”