Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to dig around find world-class performers of all sorts of stripes and breeds and species and deconstruct what they do. How do they make decisions? What do they do first thing in the morning? What are the habits routines details that you can apply to your life and this particular episode was very much an in-demand requested episode and the guest is mr. Money.
Money Mustache at Mister Money Mustache Pete Aid me in real life. He grew up in Canada in a family of mostly eccentric musicians, then graduated from Computer Engineering in the 1990s and worked in various tech companies before retiring at age 30 Pete his wife and their now 11 year old son live near Boulder Colorado and they've not had real jobs since 2005 this begs the question, of course, how how did they do that? They
Just this early retirement by doing a number of things but in effect optimizing all aspects of their life style for maximal fun at minimal expense and by using basic Index Fund investing their annual expenses on average total a mere 25 thousand to twenty seven thousand dollars and they do not feel in want of anything. So again since 2005, all three of them have explored a free-form life of interesting projects side businesses.
Has and Adventures in 2011 Pete started writing the Mister Money Mustache blog about his philosophy which has grown to reach about 23 million different people and 300 million page views since its Inception since its founding. It has become a worldwide cult Phenomenon with a self organizing community and incredible news coverage. This episode explores his story philosophies and routines. So, please enjoy my conversation with the one and only Mister Money Mustache.
Pete dating
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At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking the miles you a personal question now, we're just living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
Pete welcome to the show.
Thanks, Tim and Sinatra to be on here and
you are I would say in the top five most requested guests for this podcast that that that I see on the internet and Beyond I had somebody come up to me recently in New York City of all places that you know, you should have on the podcast and it was you and so I'm really excited to dig into all sorts of stories and conversations and discussions.
It's because I'm thinking through many areas of my life in which I think you are an expert or certainly spent more time ruminating on these things, but I thought we could start with your experience getting groceries. Could you describe for people what your experience looks like getting
groceries?
Well, it's kind of varied but I feel strongly about groceries. So in an ideal like utopian grocery day, I would throw my bike trailer onto the back of my single speed bike and roll down to your like the local kind of hippie natural grocery store. And then just load up with like a hundred fifty bucks of awesome stuff and then pedal it back up the hill and then unload it and then have people show up and the giant barbecue that night and feast
so
That's the Utopia. What does the what does the compromise Utopia look like?
Well, it's usually pretty close to that. But sometimes people don't come over or sometimes there's some reason I have to use the car and maybe I'm taking taking it past the grocery store. So I rush in and get some stuff but I think the, you know, the thrust of the question is like does this guy really get groceries but bicycle and it's definitely true. I kind of do everything by bike here in Longmont Colorado like at least 99%
scent of my trips away from the house here are human powered and that's just the way of figured out makes me
happiest to live and at this point I'm you have a household of 3, is that right? Yeah. That's true one boy one boy one girl and got it. All right. And what what is the because I think this is this is a this is going to be a core piece of the discussion. What are your average annual family expenses at this point would you say
All right. Well we've been adding this up ever since I started writing a Blog we never really added it up before but it always comes out around 25 to 27 thousand dollars of annual expenditures with the notable exception that we don't have any kind of mortgage or debt or anything. So that's all on Purely stuff that we want to buy. Hmm
and
Maybe we'll this is going to be momento style in terms of chronology as a lot of my conversations are as just a quirk of my brain that I'm trying to bug. I'm trying to turn turn into a feature of this podcast.
what was
the blog post or the day that you realize Mister Money Mustache had a cult-like following was there a nice use that I use that in a complimentary way. By the way, if you have some of the most die-hard fans I've ever encountered. Was there a particular piece or moment when you realized how strongly and have devoted your fan base
was I think it's kind of been like one of those frog and hot water.
Things where it just gradually happens and then occasionally, especially when my friends stopping on I like a Money Mustache event. They're like dude your cult leader. Did you realize that it's but it didn't really happen any specific time. I would say the first time I was really surprised by the effects of blogging with when I had a guest post on this awesome previous blog called Early Retirement Extreme and a whole bunch of this jacob bloggers fans came over to mine my blog and just
Flooded it and just crawled and read every single article and started putting all these comments and then I was really a rewarding thing and I just kept going from there. It's sort of a self motivating thing. And then the other incident was probably we had a party once blog related meet up in Ottawa Canada, which is kind of one of my homeland hometowns and all these people came like 200 people and it overflowed into the backyard of this like unwitting hosts place and it was a little weird because I didn't even
The meet anybody and that was the first time I became uncomfortable with like, oh, well, I didn't want to be one of those people where you don't even meet everybody who wants to meet you.
So Ottawa, I've actually spent a decent amount of time in Ottawa and of and I had a beaver tail for the first time while ice skating or planning on ice skating in Ottawa due to a start-up there while it's a quite a large company now called
Shopify. Oh, yeah. I knew that. Yeah and the beaver tail
that's the right way to do ottawa's skating and you were
tales and no beaver tail is I don't even remember exactly what it is, but it's a pastry right? I mean, it's what is it exactly like a chocolate-covered pastry? And for those people who have not been to Ottawa you can you can skate for hours. I mean, it's this this gigantic, I guess they lower the water level or maybe they're raised the water level so that you can skate or effectively around the entire city if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah, that's right.
Pretty awesome the the bit to get back to the blog. What what do you think has what are the aspects of your philosophy or your writing or your persona that have struck such a chord?
Well, it's funny. You should ask that because the first time I ever did it talk like a big public talk it was to a conference of bloggers. It's called fincon and I just stopped by because it was in Denver and I had realized that this blog was kind of behaving like a cult and then I looked up.
Up, like what are the properties of a cult? And then I read some articles and maybe a book or two on Cults and I realized man I've accidentally done it and and just because that's my idea of a sense of humor is so it turns out if you want to start a cult you need to just have a few key elements like a recognizable leader need to have a sense of us versus Zen them. You know, like, oh, we're an oppressed people in the rest of the world doesn't understand us and a couple other things it helps to feel like you're virtuous and have some kind of like
Just changing the world. And the rest of the world needs your help. And yeah, so if you look at all the Cults including informal ones like Star Trek or apple, there's always these same kind of characteristics and I accidentally emulated those and in retrospect realized. Hey, well, I guess that was a pretty good idea.
So for those who are part of the us in your case, what is what's the belief system? What are the the tenets?
Right? So the belief system, which I jokingly call must
- Ian ISM it's kind of like a lifestyle and a fake religion and the beliefs are that the sort of the United States especially as the ground zero of this consumer Insanity that has overtaken all of our minds and it's just causing people to behave in an irrational way and sort of sabotage their own ability to have a good life. For example, if they work way more years than they have to because they're consuming a lot more crap than they have to without actually getting any life benefit about it over.
And the same thing applies to the health their health and their their sanity and their mental health their everyone's very inefficiently going about their lives. So the correction through mustache in ism is just being a bit more thoughtful about this stuff and seeking efficiency in the way that you spend your money and make sure you get fun out of it each time that you spend something and applying this you just end up a lot healthier and wealthier and able to retire from mandatory work at a much earlier age in
Or life, which a lot of people are drawn in by the prospect of an extra four Decades of Freedom that they wouldn't have otherwise
gotten correct me if I'm wrong here, but you were tired effectively at age 30. Is that right?
Right. Yeah. This is perfect reverse chronology. Just like you planned it. So yeah now we're back to the Year 2005 and after working about a 10-year career in software engineering my girlfriend who is now my wife and I determine we had enough money saved up to live off the
Turns forever. So we just quit our regular cubicle jobs and just in time to have our baby boy at the time and that was of course but 11 years ago and we didn't even know this was a weird thing to do we thought oh, yeah. Well, of course, you know when you get paid as much as we do like it only takes so long until you don't need to work anymore and it was only after several years of retirement that we noticed that we were kind of oddballs and everybody else who earned the same amount of money with still broke
broken.
I'm probably more way than one and I want to dig into some of the the numbers related to this. So as a discussion point one of the one of the things you had sent over and I was asking guests for potential prompts for topics that could be fun to explore and one of them was you only need to accumulate 25 times your annual spending to retire forever. Could you elaborate on that? And how how you arrived at that number because I think this is
This is a useful exercise for people to hear.
Yeah. This is a core piece of math that is very it's widely known if you're a financial Independence enthusiasts, but it's almost completely secret to most of the of the rich world's population. So if you have a few have a handle on your annual spending and you know, how much you need to live on. All you need to do is save up 25 times that amount and on the very very conservative side. Let's say twenty eight times that amount in
Investments like a giant Vanguard index fund and that's enough to fund you with passive income with a high degree of safety for the rest of your life. So if you have a disc keep the number simple, if you need to $30,000 to live on multiply that by 25 and dine I'm giving myself a tricky math question. I think younes like $750,000 you'd need saved up or something like that to quit forever. And that's a lot less than most people think most people at least in my age group.
Shooting for the tens of millions type of range if they if they were to ever quit work early and they haven't really done the math on how easy it really is
and what are their any assumptions embedded in that in terms of percentage annual yield and so on what are what are the weather historically based or otherwise? What are what are the other any other assumptions embedded in that
it is? Yeah, there's some it's kind of based on a really long-term study of the stock market dating back.
To the 1920s or something like that or maybe even earlier and the idea is it goes up some years it goes down some years consistently pays dividends and in the worst case scenario you want to still not run out of money. So that's where the four percent comes from. It would have gotten you through a lot of the worst-case scenarios. There are some situations when you could have spent up to five or seven percent of your portfolio every year and still not run out if you would happen to retire just
For a big stock market boom that went on for a long time, but most people don't like taking a huge amount of risk. So the 4% or 3.5 if you want to be extra conservative with today's stock market valuations that's more of a safety net and it's really just a mental crutch because what I find is that when people retire early almost everybody like over 95% of people still have a lot of interests and passions and then they're pretty good at making money if they managed to save up that much.
The first place so they still make money in their quote retirement. They just have a lot more fun doing it and that Nest Egg that's pumping out dividends and returns just adds extra confidence so they can they can have more fun in the process.
Well, I've read two different definitions of retirement or maybe their characteristics that are I think one was attributed to one was written by you both of which I thought were very helpful as a orientation for
About the subject and the first is your retirement or financial Independence simply means that you have your living expenses covered by non-work income right part one. Yeah part two is definition of a modern retirement the activities you pursue once you are done searching for money, and I think that's a very useful framework if in particular you're considering an early retirement at say the age of 30 40 50, whatever it might be the
How do let's say media not to cast aspersions on everyone who is part of the media since I suppose that's what I am right now at this moment, but you've been covered a fair amount and I know like everyone who's been covered a fair amount you get misquoted or people get the message wrong or they just takes nut Starkey cheap shots occasionally doesn't happen all the time. You've actually had some of the most complimentary profiles. I
For red but where did they get it wrong? Where do people get you your message your principles philosophies
wrong?
While the the misconceptions are sort of two different things from the media side. They often assume. Well, I mean the ones that aren't complimentary they assume a there's this crazy guy and he's just a lifestyle Guru just like another Junior Tim Ferriss trying to get everybody excited about his crazy ideas and he's not really retired or or they say, yeah, he he made so much money, but that doesn't apply to the regular person when they're you know, when they're trying to make it on like 50.
Was another your salary or what about people with more kids? So the media don't understand they often assume some kind of extreme frugality that would be undesirable to live under and that's that's really an accurate and I work pretty hard to fight it because
I don't have my spending set up for the minimal level. I have it set up for the maximum amount that I can possibly spend and get value out of it, you know because it's easy to make money. So I set my spending at the maximum happiness level and then stop spending when I stopped getting more happiness. So that's the that's really the fundamental mistake. And then as for the non media world, they're a little bit more suspicious like they just think on make every making everything up and I don't even you know, I never did any of
Stuff that I say I did in the first place. So then it's more of a conspiracy theory. If you're reading like the comment section of MSN what you should never do
you have but you do have and I think this is why this is probably going to bring it up very early a by most standards in the United States a low household.
Annual expense. Right? Right and it might be helpful here to talk about because I asked during our sound check what you had for breakfast. So could you repeat your answer
please? Oh, yeah. Well that my breakfast was a fancy black espresso with foamed milk and coconut coconut oil phone into their to and then some dark chocolate like 90% dark chocolate and some nuts almonds and cashews and stuff.
And it's not exactly related to low expenditure but it's indirectly related. I'm going to I'm going to
come back to it what type but since I love the particulars what type of coffee what type of chocolate do you recall? Oh,
yeah. Well right now my coffee is some kind of organic e fairtrade thing but bought in large quantity from Costco, which is obviously a lot cheaper than getting like a Starbucks equivalent every morning.
And yeah, the nuts are from Costco as well. Now that you mention it. So this is the
the reason I bring it up is that I think stumbling on happiness stumbling on happiness by Daniel Gilbert is is good exploration of this oftentimes what we think will make us happy does not make us happy and we can talk idly should dig into What happiness is for you because I think it's it's it can be a dangerously nebulous term, but the point being that to to have a functional
Our and then to have what Society tells you is the optimal car say some type of sports car. There's a massive Delta in price and you pay some severe penalties for that but to have a to go from a good chocolate to an excellent chocolate to world-class chocolate. It might only be the difference of ten or twelve dollars, right? So there there are there places where you can optimize without being obnoxious lie or Frugal or Frugal in
just to a disabling extent and derive maximum pleasure. That's the point I was trying to make is that and what I would love to hear from you is for those people out there who are spending far more multiples more than you are per year who don't know where to start are there any easy optimizations? That could have a dramatic impact on their ability to get closer to optimizing for happiness as opposed to
Succumbing to internal or external pressures to remain on this treadmill of
overconsumption. Yeah, right and this might actually be a better answer for your earlier question too because as an engineer, like I was kind of born part engineer at least and for me optimization is really really fun. It's like beautiful and when something is not optimized and when something is inefficient, I actually find it offensive and ugly. So I had a lot of Joy I get a lot of Joy from
I'm looking at each of my life spending decisions and being comparing it like okay, if I get this car, I'd probably make me about this happy and this car would make me this man happy. Whereas if I ride my bike it does this other thing and you do you apply that to food and housing and transportation and clothing travel exercise and then all these categories can become super efficient where you end up getting incredible happiness out of them and the cost can sometimes be not only low, but sometimes you'll get paid for doing stuff.
Other people spend tens of thousands of dollars to do. So, if you're a beginner at this port of optimization, you can just start with the stuff that costs a lot of money. So my favorite one to be a bit repetitive is the car because the average middle income Americans spends like $12,000 per household, which is just on driving around in these like gas powered racing Wheelchairs and that's more than they even invest in in their future. Like that's more than their spending on the freedom. So,
Step 1 don't have a car that's worth more than about 10,000 bucks at the most unless you're at least like a single millionaire preferably multi-millionaire because you can get a great perfectly great car. That'll be trouble free for 10-plus years for under $5,000. So the reason will ceiling would be 10 and that's already going to be pretty giant thing for people and then number two is don't use that car alive. So everybody assumes that you know a short drive to
Is anything under an hour? Whereas I think I encourage people to take a really really hard line approach on that because it's a giant factor in life happiness and fitness and money in my rule is you should never get a job, you know, unless you're at gunpoint that requires you to drive to it, like either find a new job find a place to live near that job. I mean, even if it requires moving to a new city or a new country in the long run, you just got to keep that nagging thing in your mind like okay, I drive to work now, but this is
is not optimal in the long run. I will optimize away car dependence and yeah just start with that one and then you can move on can read stuff on my blog and figure out how to cut your grocery costs down and your housing and everything like that too. But I really like the mobility because there's Fitness involved to you know, and there's there's happiness of forcing yourself out into the fresh air every morning as soon as you give up the cage of the car such a huge thing and it's such a overlooked thing in our
country. I'd I couldn't agree more
and I think the
the it forces you to make other decisions like you pointed out. I haven't had a car for close to three years. I want to say now that does not mean I don't spend time in cars I do. So I tend to use whether it's a get around four trips to Tahoe or things that are further away that require some travel or Uber, but I probably walk.
Walk I tend to walk more than a bike for whatever reason but that's that's typically I'd say 70 80 percent of my Locomotion. Sometimes great walking and it's it's helped me to make other decisions to optimize for say having people come to me as opposed to having to constantly bounce around a city or travel around the environment and think about how I can better use the capital. I have four types of Leverage that don't
Choir or replace the need for bouncing around continuously and wasting that time and Transit and also found for me at least very slower very fast in terms of Transportation work. Well, it's in the middle that I get very frustrated because if it's very slow, I can also say batch phone calls. I can listen to podcast listen to audio books. I can take time for that type of enrichment in the process of moving from point A to point B,
so true walking is so powerful and so
So underrated like your brain just goes into overdrive all of your problems sort of start to solve themselves in the background. And for people who don't do it regularly like an hour a day of walking to genuinely go somewhere. They just discount it because they haven't even experienced this incredible power. So I'm glad we're both on that train. I'm in that shoe.
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What are some of the books that have this could be two different lists, but some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you or books that you must frequently recommend to your readership.
Yeah, I don't have the ultimate. I'm not the ultimate book connoisseur. I don't spend as much I don't burn through as many books as some people so but in recent months three books that have had a pretty big impact on me that I'm about to recommend to people it really depends on who you're talking to. So if
Into changing the world for the better one book that spectacularly opened up my mind is this one called? Happy City by an author called Charles Montgomery and it kind of just pulls back the curtain on how we're wasting most of our resources and our human and money resources on building up the country into a spectacularly inefficient asphalt jungle. So that's for urban planning nerds and fixing the world nerds, but for
people who feel like they personally want to they're wondering why there's such a weirdo. I'm a big fan of the book on Elon Musk by the author Ashley Vance. I think it's called Elon Musk and musk and the Quest for a fantastic future that book I read and it talks about Elon as a little kid and growing up and it's like that's exactly how I was as a kid and I thought I was the only one and it he has his feeling where the world is incredibly illogical and no one's listening and he just wants
Just fucking change it. Like I'm just gonna do everything myself
then and I can really everything except for the fact that he actually does it and I don't I can relate completely to the feeling of that book and finally a really really old-fashioned book if someone just wants to
Wake themselves up and start turning into more of like a positive less depressed person. Is this 1950s? Classic called The Magic of thinking big I've recommended that to like so many friends because I stumbled across it when I was like 15 years old and it was really really old even then and that's like this this 1950s cheesy stereotypical like man's world has some flaws in that way, but that just makes it more funny and it's a great way to just remind yourself.
Oh when you think big and act confident and sparkly then it's amazing how much stuff actually goes better for you? So those are my three
so I can't comment on the first two but I have to comment on the magic of thinking big. So I have a copy my original copy of the magic of thinking big about 15 feet to the side of me right now in my living room. It is one of the books that has traveled with me and its face out so I see it every day when I'm sorry.
On my couch along with a handful of others tribe from Sebastian Junger Dune Frank Herbert. That's a bit of a long story gratitude Oliver Sacks. I'm looking at them right now Bird by Bird by and LaMont Zorba, the Greek and less is more which is an anthology of writing on minimalism and the magic of thinking big but David Schwartz this book despite the title which like you said. I mean, it's it's it's screams cheesy at you and it was
why it's good though. It isn't easy to like gorgeously delightfully cheese.
You're like yes, I'm a powerful 1950s known as well
as you conduct business know exactly and it was it was introduced to me by a man named Stephen key. Stephen key fascinating guy lives in I think it's Turlock California middle of nowhere and has built this this fantastic career for himself developing products. A lot of toys and Licensing them to gigantic companies whether it's Disney or Nestle Coca-Cola. You name it?
And he makes these incredibly simple prototypes out of construction paper often times and then we'll license these ideas for I'm assuming hundreds of thousands millions of dollars over time and he was given the magic of thinking big at one point by I believe it was a Fortune 500 CEO. So the lineage at least or the path that the book took to me was was fascinating in and of itself and I read it I would say around
Around 2003 2004 which was just before I took my my walkabout and all did all the experiment station with my business at the time to either redesign the business or shut it down. And that was the journey that then precipitated the writing of the four hour work week. So the the magic of thinking big I I've been meaning to reread it and part of me. I don't know tell me if I'd be curious to get your opinion. So I
It's so long ago and I have such a high opinion of it that I'm worried. I will read it now and it will not age. Well, when I read it a second time have you read it recently
last time was probably about five years ago and I found I was just as good. I just love the creat the you know, the overly simple examples, like imagine that there's two little gentleman in your head. There's mystery success and mr. Defeat. Mr. Defeat always wants to throw some oil and sand into his your crankcase.
Send your mind and it's days like these, you know, I find that most maybe this is my Engineers brain handicap again, but I really get annoyed by overly flowery language like kind of Harper's magazine Atlantic stuff for people just go on for like eight pages to cover something that could have fit in a couple sentences, right? And dr. Schwartz doesn't do any of that shit. And in fact, his writing style really inspired me and like when I write as Mister Money Mustache, I'm thinking
I'm like channeling David J Schwartz and he always starts off every story with this little anecdote. Like that's makes him sound like casual and powerful. He's like I was relaxing in my lounge one day when a few of my employees came in for a questions and you know, like it's just, you know, you got to read it again. I'm going to be all right.
All right. It's been on my spit on my to-do list for January because I've set aside we're doing this interview in January 2017, and I've set aside the first two weeks minimum two.
Simply consider options because I've in the past six Fallen prey to over calendaring myself and for fun things in many cases, but nonetheless over calendaring so I don't have as much slack in the system empty space as I would like and I've been meaning to as part of my self-imposed curriculum reread the magic of thinking big. So I will I will jump into that. How are you?
You different from Mister Money Mustache if at all.
Well, the lines are pretty fine pretty you know, I don't know if there's like a really formal dif difference, but he's probably a bit more perfect than me. Like I will complain occasionally and if I don't catch myself and you know, I won't I don't actually complain on the blog about you. No way. I'm going to add this the world is being mean to me but in general like because I Read Magic of thinking big so long ago and internalized it so much and I kind of ran my
My work Courier in my you know, my International Adventures of moving to the US and everything under those assumptions. I feel like
You know, I'm pretty I'm fairly Mister Money Mustache. I'm more sensitive. Here's the thing. Like I Don't lecture people in real life about you know, like I don't actually smash my fist through the driver window of pickup trucks and honk their horns with their foreheads and tell them they shouldn't be going through the drive-thru with a stupid off-road diesel thing, but but I think it but and I write it. So yeah, the Mister Money Mustache is a little more violent in his writing and confrontational and I enjoy that
Because it helps me remain more common my real life because nobody wants to be lectured in real life about even if you have some ideas you want to share with them. You have to wait for them to come to you and when you're running a Blog they have come to you by definition, which means they're a lot more open to having their faces punched in a literal a literary sense,
right? You get to get prose mugged while you're while you're shaping their behavior.
The question of the US said the spent a little bit of time in China and even as a as an American who's somewhat desensitized to consumption, I think that China is its appears to be 10 times more materialistic and ended it driven towards overconsumption, but the that's not really leading. I don't wanna lead us certainly no conversation about China the the at the question. I was going to ask in this might have a very simple answer. Why did you decide to stay in the US?
I just love it here. It goes. It's kind of like the furnace of the world like many of the problems in the US that stem from under regulation are also its strengths in the sense that you can just start stuff up and then nobody even notices that you're doing it and you can have a giant company before anyone's even noticed and it's just the entrepreneurial and the optimism and the lack of rules is kind of it goes along with my personality personality.
Cuz I hate rules. I'm really in favor of people self-regulating in the sense that don't be a jerk to your neighbor and don't pollute the world and everything like that, which is the part at that annoys me about some of the US business culture but in general I just love it here and I love the giant range of geographies to compared to Canada, which is kind of just a string of cities along the border and the US you have a grid of cities and Islands it.
From like arctic tundra to Tropical Islands and coconut, you know, coconut shell tops and everything like that. It's just a lot more variety and excitement
here.
Yeah, there is there is a lot of variety and I've actually decided that this year will be my year of exploration in the domestic United States and I've realized that my default and the default of many people I think when they have their designated time for travel or vacation is oftentimes to fantasize about the trips overseas, and I've realized I've neglected to explore so much diversity in the United States itself, so
I'm planning on somehow transporting me and my Pooch around the country, which I'm very excited to do and next thing I'd like to do is is read something and get your comments on it. So this is this is from a piece profile of yours in the New Yorker which congratulations I guess. It's one of the top 16 is it most read of the Year profile something along those
lines?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I saw that thanks to you I think on
Twitter I did too. I might have driven some traffic there which which I was happy to do and also hesitant to do because I know that there are I'm so I'm for sure there are things that are at the best incomplete and maybe completely off base at worst, but that's just the nature of the beast when you're dealing with these types of
profiles. Yeah. I did a snarky response is section for that like complete on
That genius start it website
if anybody your inline
responses, yeah is that you can the writer can write his story and then I can add my stuff right on the side and that kind of corrects for the one-sidedness of normal New Yorker
journalism. Yeah might have to do that myself. Although I'm not sure I want to reopen the wound. I was misquoted even after correcting fact Checkers. I was misquoted and number of people were misquoted probably half a dozen times in my in the piece that I had in the New Yorker.
Which really rankled me because of course. It's it's top of Google with page rank. But yeah water under the bridge for now. I'll put that aside the piece I wanted to read though. I don't think is is going to
Push those buttons let me start with the following so being an engineered. He runs the numbers once after his bike was apparently stolen he ruminated on the wisdom of locking one Spike. And this is this is then to your writing. This was the first theft in many many years of very Carefree living the Craigslist replacement value of that bike was probably around five hundred dollars. What value do I place on a decade of the Fearless freedom of leaving shit happily unlocked and not worrying about it. How about the value of my time saved and not spending my life fumbling with the
Norma's keychain 90 seconds a day for 10 years is 91 hours or at least $4500 in my time at $50 an hour. I was still coming out way ahead and you concluded if you can't afford to lose it. You can't afford to buy it yet. Otherwise the object owns you rather than vice versa. And there are plenty of folks out there who
we
think we are more opposed then I think we are because the type of math that you did here and I'd love to get your thoughts.
on it but these are the types of things that I think about constantly because the how the in the how many of these wrote decisions common decisions are burning up the non-renewable resource of time in the interest of some marginal utility perceived marginal utility in terms of dollars and cents, but I'd love to hear any sort of thoughts who are more
That you have on this because I love this
example. Yeah. Well, it is the math sometimes explicit like that and sometimes more implicit that drives most of my decisions and that's why I'm surprised like anybody who says that Mister Money Mustache and Tim Ferriss are opposites in any kind of way. I think they're not really understanding the picture because it's really just an optimization process. Right? Like I'm not opposed to spending money.
My only limitations on spending money our number one. It has to make me happy and number 2 a factor in my personal happiness is like resource consumption because I kind of know the numbers behind all the costs to other people like into the Earth or everything that I buy so that kind of rules out certain types of spending that other non-science seeing on environmentalist people might feel okay about but if you push that bit aside, it's all just about having the maximum amount of fun. So and if you have limited
Money then having to go to work for a longer time is a genuine source of non fun. And thus spending less money is going to give you more of something that's more fun which is time and then you're all set. So that's a win and then now in this post work world where I've stumbled into more money than I could have imagined having my spending hasn't changed and that's just a sign that I got some of the decisions approximately right to begin with and and if I had started buying more stuff
afterwards that might have been a sign that I didn't really do the math right to begin
with. What do you do with the search and I apologize that this is a simplistic question. But what do you do with the money that you have as a surplus in this post work life what happens to if the expenses aren't going up or nominally go up and down by a few thousand dollars a year. How do you allocate the Surplus?
Yeah, that's something
That's another thing that has to be optimized because I feel that money is such a valuable resource. So I'm still working on it. So I try to you know, I've been doing small donations like paying for more stuff when other people I know can't afford it and then I did a medium-sized donation with the effect of under the effective altruism movement that I know that you've covered at one point in your tools of
Titans book. Yeah head will mccaskill on the on the podcast the
under our maybe founder of that movement.
Yeah, and I think one of those two Founders sent me an email after I sent my donation to them and they seemed really really really sharp people. So that's a that's one useful thing to do with Surplus money. The only reason I have some of it still sitting in my investment accounts and it's still rolling in of course because I still have this unexpected blog income is I feel like I can leverage the attention of all these people
For something good and that would be bigger than just donating like, you know, a million dollars per whatever period to standard causes. I think I would like to create kind of like one of those Tipping Point effects in the u.s. That might for example tip us more towards bike based transfer temper notation instead of car-based, you know, and potentially save like billions or trillions of dollars.
Of society's wealth and have it go somewhere better if the whole society got more excited about a different way of living. So that's why I haven't just given away all the money yet because I feel like for example, what if I could start like a little mini town where we do things really awesomely and this of course sounds a bit like a cult like oh, yeah, we started comuoon.
But yeah something also sounds like Singapore, right?
Yeah, right Santo down within a Town based on the ideas of cohousing or something like that. So these guys ideas are still swimming around in my head.
And solve the problem of how to deal with Surplus money efficiently, but once I do then I will start having some fun with it and then I'll probably also start trying to make more money like have the blog make more money because then I'll have a use
for it.
And the I'd love to hear more about how you your decision making process or thought process or internal dialogue when you are considering buying something, what are the questions that you ask yourself and if it's related to happiness. I want to Define that it may be a way to do that is you know, how do you know when you're happy or unhappy? But I'd love to just maybe take those in either order really, but what?
What's the thought process like or the internal monologue / dialogue when you're considering buying something?
Yeah, well, usually I try to start with like no you weenie. What do you think? What kind of consumer are you you know, like just a little bit of mental beat down to shut off the easiest things. That's what keeps me from buying like like a Tesla Model S or something like that because even though I think it's a great car support it I know for sure that wouldn't make me any happier because I don't even have anything to do with it. Like I don't drive really so so
Obvious stuff gets shot off. But then when you get into like things that you're pretty sure you want then you just think about it for longer procrastinated little bit see if the desire goes away a bit and then consider how much space that thing is going to take up in my my limited space of my studio for example, and then imagine how I would feel if it broke because a lot of stuff does Break Even if you have high quality gear and its really annoying to deal with thinking things that break and if you have to warranty
It and finally ask myself is this removing a negative in my life? Because it's pretty well studied that happiness is not very much affected by adding positives to your life. It's mostly especially in a rich World environment. Like we live it's mostly accomplished by removing things that are a strong negative to every day. So getting myself like a remote control photography drone is unlikely to make me happier because my life doesn't currently
suck due to the absence of Photography drone a quadcopter thingies. So that's you know, and whereas if there's something that every day, I'm like damn it. I just wish I didn't always trip over this, you know, broken dishwasher or whatever then replacing. Your dishwasher is is probably going to be a happiness boosting proposition
what what purchases or productions for that matter? I know you make a lot of things but what purchases
To stick with one category that come to mind have most improved your happiness by removing negatives. Yeah.
Well, that's a perfect follow-up question because I'm talking to you right now in this studio building that I made over the process of the last year. It's kind of a roughly like a 400 square foot modernist thing with a lot of Windows and and overlooking this nice forested park behind my house. So I had a consistent problem after I move to this current.
House, we live in in 2013. It's a bit too small for our style of living. So I was genuinely tripping over stuff a bit and always having to move things around and I had some of my equipment out in the back like my table saw I would have to live under a tarp during the rear Colorado precipitation events. And I realized you know more space would actually solve this problem and I always wanted to have a detached Studio anyway to play music in because I don't want to have to like drown out my family's ears.
I'm playing bad rock music with my friends. So I built the studio and I did it all myself because I know from experience that this manual labor and solving physical problems is one of the happiest things I can possibly do just like, you know hundreds of hours of lifting and sweating and digging and you know, all these amazing useful outdoor things with friends and now I'm in it, you know, I'm recording a Tim first podcast in my studio surrounded my drums and bass and guitar.
And watching the trees sway outside. So this has been really a genuine happiness boosting spending expenditure of money and it's brought me happiness pretty much from the day. I broke ground on this, you know this piece of dirt. So so no regrets there, even though that was a lot more than than a few dinners out that I spent on this thing.
I've been I've been hoping and wishing and fantasizing at some point about building my own structure.
Not done this and I've thought about it ever since I had Kevin Kelly on the podcast founding editor of Wired Magazine incredible guy mean really the real life world's most interesting man in so many ways, you know, a an impeccable technology futurist who has an Amish beard and spends time with the Amish. It's a little people can listen to the episode. It's a long story, but I asked him what every person should do at least once in their lifetime and he said build a home build a house.
And I've every time this is a lesson. I need to relearn over and over again.
I use my hands in that capacity that manual labor reward. Like you said, it's just unbelievable. Even yesterday. I was I was purging donating a bunch of stuff that I just don't need. I was I was I was getting rid of a bunch of stuff and the but the the simple visual reward of the before and after using my hands to move a bunch of stuff around and have that before and after was so much more rewarding than some of the biggest things I've done on lat.
Up top or on the web in the last few months. I felt ashamed in some ways. It's such a menial mundane set of tasks was so
rewarding dude. Yeah, Kevin Kelly is right. And this is why as a fellow lifestyle Guru admittedly a junior lifestyle Guru. I spend most of my time doing manual labor, even though I can make you know infinite money type in shit into the computer and Publishing it to you know, the cult following I hardly do that at all because the
Not doesn't work for everybody but certain people get incredible satisfaction out of building because it's like the Zen aspect of it. There's like physical and mental and problem-solving. It's like it's like what a human was made to do. So Kevin is right. In fact the house that I live in I also built before I built this studio I built as a slight exaggeration because there was a bit of a shell. I tore it down to like a brick shell and then rebuilt it to a different shape, but in every time like every night, especially in the
Sure here when it snows I look up at the trees and like the snow falling on the roof that I made and the fireplace that I put in there and the heating system that I designed pumping water under my floors and he hiding at my feet and like this is the most satisfying thing I could possibly experience. So yeah, you should figure out a way to build something at least like a shed quarters or like a man cave type thing in your backyard and I have this thing called carpenter has mmm where I go out, too.
People in need and build fun stuff with them and teach them how to build so if you ever want to do a teamwork Tim Ferriss Studio than I'm making the software now and make a quite an interesting story.
I could I could be a like an operating room assistant of sorts. You be like Hammer Hammer screwdriver screwdriver. I think I'll be more of a liability otherwise, but wow,
that's how you learn though. I'll give you the nail gun, and then you'll make some mistakes and I'll bring a welder and then you'll like it.
Upload some stuff but later you'll be making fine welding lines. And
yeah, you know, I might take you up on that. I love Colorado. I've been spending more and more time in
Colorado. Well, I was assuming we would build something at your pieces of the world where you need a structure because you don't need to like build stuff for me. That's not though. Not for you. I was thinking
about the people in need, but maybe they don't want like some horrible Rochas Picasso painting has a table with their like I didn't really want some
Weird thing Ferris if you could you could use parallel lines next time, please
and this case you were the person in need because you're this, you know, this accomplished guy who yet has yet a hole in your life where you haven't actually built a house yet. So so I felt sorry for you. That's
all. Alright, I will put a bookmark and that I may take you up on it. Here's here a few questions related to
consumption because I think about I do think about consumption a fair amount living in San Francisco on some level helps because you can't walk five or ten feet without having someone to talk to you about it or seeing Billboards are seeing announcements and so on the related to some type of conservation or or curbing consumption, but if you got a few questions for you, the first is I and this is related to kids so I don't have kids.
One of the considerations has been a concern for consumption. So, how do you reconcile?
Kids with consumption or do you do not see them as dramatically increasing the sort of consumptive Burden?
Oh, yeah. Yeah kids are definitely a huge for my consumption. Like if you're a rich World resident and you have a kid, you know, that's that's another hundred years of Rich World lifestyle going on there. So, but I'm not a pure person. I strategically indulge in fun stuff and and my wife and I knew we wanted to have
It's and we just happen to feel that one was the right number for us and I'm not judgmental of against other people, but I think it's just good. It's one of the things to throw into your equation of like child-raising. Like should I have one or maybe 13 or like well, if if consumption of natural resources, that is a factor, you might not have 13, but if it's not a factor, you know, no judgment for me. And so we got one and then you can
Have probably like a four x, you know, four hundred percent difference in the amount of consumption. You do on behalf of your child. Just depending on how you raise them depending on what activities they're into and what kind of stuff you buy them and how you train them as well. If you train them like Hey, we're rich and rich people get to buy whatever they want. Then you're gonna raise a super consumer and more the Richer you are whereas if you teach them to the balance and give them a little bit of biology and science.
It's in their upbringing then they're going to have a value system that prevents them from being nearly as destructive and yet they'll probably still have more fun in the world as
well. Is it true that you paid your son per mile written on his bike at one point.
Yeah, we still do that. There's just kind of a
I like this. By the way, this is not in any way criticism,
right every parent many of them like to find excuses to give their kids money.
Now in order for them to figure out how to manage it at a young age. So I didn't want to just hand over money like your money comes from nowhere. So I thought that bicycling would be kind of little income system for him. So he has an odometer on on his bike. So I automatically tracks a miles and then just give him ten cents a mile which adds up pretty fast if you're an all bicycle family. So I'm just giving a little payouts and then we've got a spreadsheet where we keep track of his money. He's 11 years old by the way, and
And that earns interest so he has a comparison of like if I keep my money in the bank of dad then I'm going to earn interest whereas if I spend it my Capital decreases and then that interest-bearing piece of like, my little green employees are gone forever. So he still spends his money of course, but he just knows everything's a trade-off which is makes it more more thoughtful
the you are an engineer and it seems like you have a strong.
Engineer genetic through line and your family has your son tried to Ferris Bueller the odometer at any point, of course doing the opposite has he figured out how to had a tinker with his odometer. I guess is he so good that perhaps you wouldn't have noticed.
Yeah. I mean, you never know. He might be hooking it up to a cordless drill and spinning that front wheel. No, I don't think he's not that's not in his personality. Like he's not into really cheating on anything. He's plus it's kind of an abundance.
He has more money than he can spend a little dude has like a thousand bucks and has spreadsheet now and the only thing he really wants to buys is the odd video game which might be like 20 or $30 once every few months. So he's pretty much retired already because the passive income that he's earning his is close to finding his video game
needs. Either that or he's got the best long Con in history. Like he's been he's been Connie with his good behavior for 11 years.
It to just to Tinker with this odometer, which I don't think is the case, but for those people who are listening and I'm sure you're asked this all the time but books on investing or personal finance. Are there any go to recommendations? They don't have to be books. They could be resources, but for people who want to self-educate could certainly be one of your top, you know, one or two blog posts as well. But if you were to pick from potentially your own stuff, but also from
Other work that's out there. Where would you direct people?
I think it depends on how interested in investing. You are one of the key nice things about the world, especially the US Financial system is you don't have to know much to be very good investor. Like you can be a top 10% investor by just buying one Vanguard fund and leaving your money. Just putting all your extra money in there forever. So if you're if that's your idea of good enough
Which it should be for most people then you can just read any book by Jack Bogle John Bogle. The founder of Vanguard is one good example A friend of mine who's a blogger named Jim Collins wrote. This book called The Simple path to wealth, which is just sort of like a even simpler more story-based like enjoyable old man's Tales explanation of how why you should invest in index funds and so that's another idea but much more important than how
Invest as long as you don't screw up your investing like leave your money in a checking account or by a Shifty life insurance Whole Life program or whatever, you know, the things that Swindle people out of their money, you're going to be fine and the investing side. So the other side of that equation is a book and I really want to write a book myself. So then I can just recommend my own but for now is a really great one that's called your money or your life that everybody's heard of and if you just get your get the whatever the latest
latest edition of that book is it really teaches you philosophy that's pretty similar to mine, which is that consumption is not really what's making you happy buying yourself treats and it's quite easy to become financially independent as soon as you modify your spending in that way. So huge surplus of money is on a weekly or monthly basis is the real solution to your financial problems rather than becoming a super kick ass investor
yet. There's a
read on if you've ever
Read this book. It does primarily focus on.
Low-cost index funds if I remember correctly, but by Daniel Solan smartest investment book you'll ever read I have heard of it and I had I quite enjoyed that book is a little more nuanced. Certainly anything by Bogle is is fantastic for people who want to dig deeper there any additional books that you would recommend or that you've enjoyed
yourself. Yeah, if you want to get deeper like for example more into the Warren Buffett side of
Are you an active investor one really interesting book that I read few years ago is called the little book that beats the market and its really a lesson on investing value investing fundamentals how to understand if a company actually is a good deal to buy and that helps put a regular, you know, like a sober shell around investing instead of the ridiculous speculation, like technical chart investing I think is kind of universally proof.
To be bunk but people are still doing it like oh, yeah, the Bollinger Bands are wild this week. I'm going to you know, I see a support level at 53.5 unless something happens. Like all that stuff is statistically it keeps being proven wrong and people keep doing it. So don't do that. If you're going to be an active investor, then get really good understanding companies rather than technical fluctuations. And that's why I Warren Buffett makes a lot of money above the Rocket returns is because he's a savant and understanding business and some people genuinely are that like
Maybe it would probably be less than one in a
thousand people. He's also do that. He's also a savant in emotional Detachment in the sense that I'd love to talk to you a bit about stoicism and so on at some point, but he is utterly unaffected by what he would call mr. Market, right the the ups and downs of Any Given company that he may have bought in the form of shares or outright if he purchased the entire choir the entire company and that
That type of emotional Detachment is also exceptionally exceptionally rare.
Yeah, and that goes without saying to me that's a
prerequisite you sure I don't I don't have that at all. So I don't know what we'll know in the sense that if if I'm going to be active it is very hard for me to be an active investor and publicly traded equities for whatever reason I can do highly speculative startups and that's hey disturbingly high percentage of my portfolio because I can't balance a portfolio with a liquid ass.
That's our it's very challenging certainly, but with with publicly traded equities if I'm trying to be active in any capacity, I do very poorly emotionally with those fluctuations and I make bad decisions. Okay, but if we're talking about something like an index then I'm fine. If it's if it's a if it's in if it's entirely hands off and I have other people or in some type of say automated fashion with whether it's a wealthfront or something else.
Then I don't have any trouble with
it.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's since I don't do active stuff anymore. Then that's I'm totally with agree with you on that and agreement
the the book you mentioned. Was that by Joel Greenblatt the little book that beats the market?
Yeah. That's right. Yeah, it was really interesting and it was a little book which is perfect for my short book
attention span. He is. Yeah, Joel is exceptionally he's an exceptionally smart guy and he has a fascinating track record because he he can teach and he has taught.
In classrooms in New York University's he can write and he's also very very well respected as not only a value investor, but also an inventor what you would call an event-based investor. So his first book, I think it was his first book Is perhaps the most sophisticated of them all which is where people can make the most mistakes. So I think the little book that beats the market makes more sense as a first-rate or maybe the his later book the big secret for the
Investor, but book with the title that is sort of blessed and cursed in the same way that the 4-Hour workweek just sounds so schlocky as if it's going to appear at three in the morning on an infomercial that it's but it's highly memorable. So it's been helpful in punishing at the same time. He has a book called you can be a stock market genius which is actually really sophisticated. I've met some of the most successful and most of by the way hedge fund managers are not successful but I the handful I've met who have been exceptionally successful.
This book which is intended for novices effectively is one of their favorite books. So lots of lots of yeah, lots of interesting stuff out there.
Yeah. I'm going to check that one out for sure since I like Joel greenblatt's writing a lot and I still follow, you know, I read an investment in finance books all the time. I just try not to recommend them too much on my blog because it's supposed to be about lifestyle and making your life good and I don't want it to be all esoteric, but sure I or
Read like The Timothy Geithner book stress test. I read that 800 page description of the financial crisis and I was found it pretty captivating knowing what really happened in the background. But yeah for the average person it's not going to help them get rich and retire earlier so I don't talk about it too
much well on top of that if you want to a cautionary tale, so for those of you out there who love love love reading at least if a book is captivating what you should get at the same time if you decide to get
The you can be a stock market genius by Joel Greenblatt, which is exceptional. You should also read a book that will be a cautionary tale and it's a cautionary tale because it it details the types of people that you are competing against if you choose to be really active in certain respects and it's a fantastic read. It's more money than God and it is about the birth of the hedge fund model.
And a number of the characters and most successful managers in that world. It's a bit like a liars poker. But instead of bonds they are talking about hedge funds and it will give you a very good idea of who you're competing against and when you step on when you step onto the metaphorical golf green and you throw your money down as your participation and bet on yourself, the fact that Tiger Woods is probably
The two holes ahead of you become super super clear and I should also just to in a sense reinforce. What you said about index funds say when I went to the only time I had a chance to go to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, and I think they've stopped doing open QA with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, but I actually ran in and it's insane. I mean it is like a
gigantic Rock concert for investment nerds and people will camp out overnight to try to get a good seat and I ran in and I was someone's guest which was great because I was able to get in a little earlier than the entire the entire Stadium full of folks effectively and I ran in and I found somebody who was volunteering or working there and I said, which microphone is the hardest to get to because they had microphones all throughout this this
Venue and that's where you deal to ask your question if they got to you and I figured you know, what people are going to be long-winded. Maybe the answers would be long-winded. Although they very seldom are especially if Charlie munger's involved and I need to find a micro. I can be first or second person in line. And so I ran up went through this crazy set of staircases and found this Mike that was in the middle of nowhere and I asked Warren Buffett if you were 30, and I said, hypothetically if you were 30
You had say five hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars in savings and there were a couple of other stipulations. But what would you do with the money and he's and he said assuming you're not a professional investor, I would put it into the S&P 500 or in an index fund and get back to work. That was it. That was the end of the answer and you know, Charlie. Do you have anything more to add nope and then on to the next question, so yeah,
it's good advice it is because there's so much more to work on in your
Life, like if you're going to become a really good investor, you're probably going to compromise in the areas of being a good parent or being a good maintaining good physical fitness or and life. Like you're not really optimizing you're not supposed to optimize for money. You're supposed to optimize for happiness, which has a lot of Dimensions. So you should really like take the sort of the for our investor approach and be like, everyone says, this is good. I'm just going to do it and I'm going to work on all the other stuff in my life that
It also needs to be addressed. Yeah. Well, let's let's jump into some some rapid fire questions as I call them but your answers don't need to be short. I'll just try to keep my long-winded question asked how to a minimum. So outside of your immediate family when you hear the word successful who's the first person who comes to mind for you or who is a person who comes to mind for you and why
yeah, I've racked my brain over this question because I know it's a standard
Faris podcast question and I don't have an answer than anybody would recognize because I can't judge the success of any celebrities or well-known people because success is such a balance thing and it depends on how happy you are at home and how nice you are to the people who are close to you. So to me the people in my life that I've seen seem to be very high in success range are a couple of friends. These are male friends that run their own business they basically
With fitting the same description so they run their own business. They're a little bit older than me their business is extremely successful, but they have scaled it right back in order to be a lifestyle business and handed off a lot of responsibility to their employees and the kind of pay them more because there's so much Surplus anyway, and you're like, okay you do with all the junk in exchange for you never calling me on the weekends. So both these friends work pretty minimal like 10 to 20 hours a week and yet somehow their businesses keep doing better because of this hands-off approach.
Ouch, so they're making even more money but yet they have a fairly mustache in lifestyle. And this is probably because I met these guys through the blog and then they both have kids and they have really really good relationships with their their children their semi adult children their wife and basically just really good shape physical shape. They do a lot of Adventures. They always say yes, if I invite them to do something they like, oh, yeah, that's sure we'll fly over and meet you in that random spot for some mountain biking or whatever so they've come
They've managed to combine all of these dimensions of what most people want in a kind of a Carefree way and they're not overly focused on any one of them which allows them to be extremely fun people to be around. So that's my definition of success and that's what I kind of hope for for myself by the time I'm like 50 years old with a pretty old kid.
We're on the flip side we talked about what some of the critics get wrong. What's perhaps media sometimes?
It's misinterpret. Where do where do your fans get it wrong? What are the most common mistakes that your readers make or misinterpretations? When do they get the message wrong?
That's pretty rare. I find. It's a pretty there. I write a lot of stuff. Right? So anybody who reads A Lot they'll see all the little nuances and
Bits and what I try to express as a philosophy, but for those of them those readers who don't have all the details a lot of people assume that I'm very, you know, I like I would be mad at them. If I ever found out that they bought something luxurious like, oh don't tell Mister Money Mustache. I bought this $2,000 mountain bike because I really love bikes but but you know, everything else is good and like I don't I don't judge people to nearly this standards that they think I judge them so you so
And the other thing is it's the same for people who don't know my real life. They often assume that it's pretty Spartan and that I'm always spending pinching and this goes back to the same answer with the New Yorker article to but I'm really I'm really in favor of celebrating and decadence and feeling like stuff is luxurious. So so I'm really not as minimalist as people people think I am. I'm really maximalist in the fund Department
besides the studio. What are
Or some of those luxuries and we could tie that into and let's limit it to purchases that have most positively impacted your life or that you just love because they're so damn fun for you. What are some of those things?
Well, some of them some of it is Vacations. So since since retiring from real jobs, my wife and I have had a nice tradition of going somewhere semi-tropical every winter for a good long period
Most winters at least sometimes the school schedule messes it up a bit. But yeah for a month or more will often go and so we spend some money on these vacations and we'll rent a nice house on a beach like in Florida or Hawaii or Costa Rica or whatever so vacations. Most of the money goes to rent basically like VRBO type stuff Airbnb sure is one example of indulgences that I still have a lot of warm memories from and I really like knowing that I can do.
Ooh that anytime. So even when I'm not on vacation right now in January and sometimes if the cold weather blows in I think and I could just press a few buttons on this computer and just fly right out to anybody's VRBO and be there within like a day or two and just having that freedom is a form of luxury and itself and then I can go out and shovel some snow and be happy about it. And yeah, the other purchases nothing's really expensive, but when I built out the current house
The main house rather than the studio. I was feeling pretty rich at the time. So I went a bit high end on some of the stuff. Like I have this really gorgeous high efficiency wood burning wood stove fireplace thing that brings me pleasure every day. You've no is more expensive than you know, then then just a basic fireplace and the window is my house. For example are very kind of these fancy windows that cost about five times more than then it would have cost if I'd gone Bare Bones, so it's you
Ugly stuff related to home vacation and food, you know, we've been known to go out for sushi a bit more than a person in debt should go into sushi. So we take advantage of our non debt status. That's really not too much though. Yeah.
Do you any favor documentaries or movies?
My favorite? I'm actually got a huge huge list of documentaries that I've been meaning to watch many of them collected from the from the guests on your
Tools of Titans book, but the one that I did watch and enjoy is actually a series rather than documentary, but the cosmos that the remake of Cosmos Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yeah. I love Neil deGrasse Tyson and I love his awkward but scientific way and the topics he covered in those in those episodes were like so stunning and it was a great education for my son who is very very into science himself so that
That's kind of like that's the documentary that stands out in my mind the great probably the most interesting thing in the last five years.
Anyway, yeah, it's a fact it's a fantastic series. I've been hoping in meaning to have Neil on the podcast that we've had I guess some some indirect email exchanges. So if anybody's good buddies with Neil give them a poke and let them know that it's still like that on the podcast if you were to give a Ted Talk on something that you are not known for
What would you give it on ha ha ha. So any any kind of pet Obsession or something your lesser known for maybe your DieHard fans of read every single line of everything. You've ever written would have heard of it. But yeah, if you had to guess I think I
do have an answer. Yeah. So if you define the thing that I'm known for is the early retirement Mister Money Mustache stuff, then the other topic that I'm super passionate about is is energy and like the
Energy balance and solar power and how the humans how humans consume it and how we can basically fix our energy consumption related to climate change and all this stuff. So I would probably write one up about that and explain how we're at this insanely close Tipping Point where fossil fuels are just about to be
economically unfeasible, even without regulations and stuff and I think that can make a good tied talk because a lot of people are you need to popularize the ideas and right now, they're kind of dry and numbers base like you're talking about terajoules and kilograms CO2 and all this stuff and there's a lot more fun and emotion in that topic if you if you package it, right? So I think that'd be a good
talk. Yeah. What is your what I've been curious about. I know you've written about this before but when you
If you if you were to think of when you and your when you are in your best physical shape in the last five years, what did the exercise regimen look like? So I saw a photograph of you I want to say squatting outside at an outdoor squat rack. Am I making that
up? Yeah. That was my most recent blog post. Okay starting to get a little old now. But yeah,
so if you think back to when you were in the best shape and you can Define that anyway you like what did your exercise regimen look
like? Yeah. It's I might
Be in in some ways and some of the best shape. I'm in my life right now. And that is just a pretty casual program. But with really efficient barbell exercises combined with just a whole bunch of walking and biking construction. So so the the barbell stuff is just squats deadlifts clean and press a little bit of benching and stuff with kettlebells and dumbbells and generally use
Weights that I can just barely lift five times and the total expenditure of per week is only in the the order of like an hour or two. So I'm not like a gym rat so that right now I'm pretty happy with the way my body is working especially for a 41 year old or whatever am but the strong I was slightly stronger when I was in my 20s and it was basically the same stuff but just going to the gym for a longer period and training. It was really just more.
Hours put in and that's when I probably had my record weightlifting and certain
exercises Julia quote or any quotes that you live your life by her think of often.
Don't really think in quotes too often maybe with the exception of use it or lose. It seems to come up at least a couple times a day. I'd
say that's often enough to to be a response.
Yeah. It's so short and and thus memorable you
To be all flowery and poetic to appreciate losing use it or lose it but I think it's because in the current stage of my life being over 40 and then having some family members with you know, some people have died in my family and had serious health problems like in the extended family and its really made me more aware of mortality and how Stuff doesn't automatically stay in perfect condition. And even if even if it does stay in perfect condition, you're unlikely to live forever.
Ever unless some really really big medical stuff changes before I turn a hundred. So anyway use it or lose it is the philosophy like brain-body skills friendships relationships just do everything that you want to be good at as often as you can and don't fool yourself that you're going to keep being able to do this stuff unless you continue doing it regularly in the
And I don't know which label to use here. But in these safer Gala t or low-cost living world. What is the worst advice or what is bad advice that you hear given
often?
I think the biggest issue with that I have with a lot of this mainstream Financial advice. Is that there? They make you think of saving as a negative kind of a negative obligation. They're like, yeah, we know it's feels a lot better to buy yourself Treats. But but come on look if you can just squeeze out five percent or even 10 percent then you're you're doing okay just do that every week and make a budget and all this stuff. And so your your
People to think that saving is bad and you want to minimize it whereas I think it's a win-win and most of our spending is is a sign of weakness and it's a bunch of stuff that we do to compensate for our weaknesses because we couldn't solve the problem in a smarter way like as we talked about earlier is possible to walk or bike to work which is a physical and mental win. It just happens to cost a lot less. So I encourage people to radically reshape their entire lifestyle.
to be optimized and all these dimensions and sure you happen to save 50 to 75 percent of your income as a as a by-product, but the only reason that's a win is because your life is better as well and normal Financial advice is it doesn't really address the life stuff and you know, you see a lot of these totally out of shape business Guru people trying to sell life insurance at the same time as they're giving you Financial advice and they're not really
They're not really in it for making people's lives better. I think that's where that's where it falls
flat. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, it's important. I think certainly in almost every area but in the world of financial planning and advice to ensure that the person giving the advice has done what they're suggesting or has some practice putting their words into
Ian because otherwise, they haven't stress test their ideas or at the very worst. They're hypocrite in there doing the opposite of them.
Are there any failures that come to mind which our favorite failures of yours in the sense that they ended up sowing the seeds of a later success does anything like that come to mind for you?
Yeah, I have a pretty pretty serious one that I called have an article called Mister Money Mustache has big mistake and it's right after I retired in 2005. I kind of faded in.
To a my first Dream retirement job, which was to start a custom house building company where I was going to make these beautiful eco-friendly houses. Our did actually we started making these houses and and the problem was it was way way more stressful than than what I wanted for retirement job, and I just had this new baby boy at the same time and suddenly I had all these obligations and like a construction loan to build this thing and I was doing marketing and working late and
Wrangling all these cats together like the contractors to help out building the places and it wasn't really retirement at all. And on top of that we did it right in time for the housing crisis. So like we sold our first house into the 2006 boom market for housing, but then by the time the second one was done is 2007 and everything was slowing down and then starting to drop like a rock and then I was stuck with this beautiful ready to sell house and nobody.
Eddie wanted to buy it for any kind of reasonable sum. So that was kind of soiled the fun spoil the fun of my first three years of retirement is running this company at the same time though going through hardship was was really good for me. I had to do a lot of hard stuff that I wouldn't have done and that's how I learned a lot of my best carpentry stuff. You know, the skills that I'm most skilled. My most proud of is like
Always messed around with woodworking since I was a little kid but by being forced into production on these expensive modernist houses where everything has to be perfect. It really trained me a lot and I enjoy those skills now so the combination of shittiness and skills and then then we shut this company down and since then I've been truly retired and had so much more fun looking back and like wow, I'm sure glad I'm not doing that anymore. So I lost a bunch of money, you know, some of my retirement savings went up.
In Smoke initially and then I was started to be a bit more worried about money. That was a big part of it because that's like all my hard-earned savings and if I could go back and change that I would probably still do it, but I would train myself to be just so much more relaxed about and be like dude. Don't worry. You're going to have so much fun after this and you're not going to run out of money. So just have a good time with your business even if even if it
fails
What was the process like of shutting it down in the sense that was their particular dinner or conversation or a bike ride or moment when you decided to start the process of shutting it down and how did that what does that look like?
Well, it was pretty it's pretty quick because I bought these two vacant lots and kind of a premium new urbanist neighborhood with my business partner in the and the company
And then we started building the first one and it was the aforementioned stress was high. I was like, oh shit. What have I got myself into? Okay, let's just get these things done and then be done with it. So then I got the first one done and then like blue that was great, you know big success. It sold for more than we were even asking for it and then the second one got more and more stressful and I already knew before I even started that second one that I wanted to shut down the business afterwards. It just got drawn out longer and then we got
Into like renting it out, but then the tenants turn out to be horrible and I had these like scam artists move in that we didn't realize we're scam artists and there were like, oh, yeah, we got we just sent you the rent. Yeah, that's in your mailbox. Check your mailbox. Click in the hang up and all these like little tricks and the guy had like this, you know fancy like brand new Corvette that he had bought and he had to hide it in the garage because the Repo Man would take it back if he ever saw it outside. So all he could do was like pull it out polish it and rev it and then put it back in the garage.
But
we're just really messed up and I have to get tangled in their web for a while and we had to use the full on eviction with like Sheriff come into the door to get them out of my place. And so yeah, there's some education in there.
That sounds like a headache, huh? What did it feel? Like when was it finally done shut down completely. And what did what did that day? Feel? Like
I'd say it was shut down the one of the biggest problems with this. Is that the
The relationship between me and my friend who started it and business partner. It does it just soured and it became pretty bad by the end and we had totally different views about work and money and dividing stuff up. So we finally got him out of there by basically had to buy out the company. I'd to put like I'd lost all this money and I had to put like a final four hundred and sixty thousand dollars into the company to pay off this mortgage that was on the house just to kick him off the the deed the property.
He did so that I could have control of it. So that day was kind of like, you know, we're like frowning at each other over the lawyers table or whatever. And then since then that lifted the weight off of me and then everything was so much better and then for a while I rented out the house to Great tenants and I had it in that situation. I was just using the rent for kind of our grocery money because that house was a fairly big portion of our retirement savings income at the time and then more recently I think just less than
Two years ago I the market in our area here in Colorado started to Boom again. So I just sold it for a nice high price. And then now I've been super relaxed and then that's kind of like another wave and it really taught me a lot about happiness because this negativity in my life, at least I was choosing to perceive it negatively. It was washed away and then suddenly I was happier than I could have ever imagined being because I'd gone through this.
Hellish
situation and then remove the negative. Okay. Yeah, which is such a valuable question. I the the question to ask for purchase this that that alone will return at a hundred X the effort of scheduling and doing this interview for me that question is this removing a negative from my life. That's such a powerful reframe because I think that is so true. And so so incredibly useful.
useful, but the next which is going to be completely flipping that on its head and that this is not one of my usual questions, but I'm so curious to know how you will answer this if you had
Had to spend you were given a hundred thousand dollars and they said you have to spend this you have to buy something or some things. You cannot donate donate it to charity. You cannot stick it into an investment vehicle. You have to spend it and it has to be on you your family or your close friends, but it can't be charitable in the sense that you're say parent paying for the college tuition of your friends kids and so on nothing like that. How would you spend that way?
Would you
do that was my answer? You just took my
answer? I know because I felt like it was coming
because I could pay off somebody's mortgages. They still one family member in my close family that has a mortgage. But but yeah, we want we want to consume here. Yeah it can I have more than $100,000. Sure. No, it's not limited. It's not limited. This is
just let's just say that you took a step into Bizarro land where everything was what it wasn't and suddenly you are the anti mustache, right? Yeah, and well, what would you do?
Well, the thing is this might actually be somewhat realistic because I still consider every day, you know, is there something I could spend money on that would be worth it. It's still an open question. You don't want to be ideological about this stuff. But so one thing I've been interested in maybe buying and if I was forced to I would do it quickly is that is a building. I kind of want to own a commercial building on our towns little historic Main Street this town I live in Longmont. Colorado is kind of
of these over a hundred year old things where it's all historic with big trees and the narrow Main Street with a tall brick buildings on it. So I could buy one of those and then set up, you know, some kind of fun community space in there where we play music and we have parties and we rent it out and do some teaching too because I like to do a bit of volunteer Math and Science teaching to kids kind of advanced stuff that they don't get in the normal school so I could have like
Professor moustaches School of Science in my downtown building so that would be kind of a fun use of
money. Yeah. This is more of course a metaphorical question. But if you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say, you know short message or image or that you would like to impart to the world?
Right. I'm picturing this in a u.s. Metropolis because that's kind of where I'm focusing my efforts right now. So I think I would say I think it would say walk or maybe it would say just walk something that people can really understand quickly. I like his without getting yeah back to our original thoughts like it's the under it's the best prescription medication in the world and yet it's so under done so far. So it's my billboard.
Yeah, it's we've made as a species.
So many evolutionary trade-offs to be able to walk with a level head unlike say a pig that doesn't have a nuchal ligament. So their heads Bob all over the place like we've evolved to be able to as it would seem a survival imperative walk very long distances and I just feel like humans are generally better humans less neurotic when they walk a lot at least that's true for me. I'll speak for myself. I'm like
10% less neurotic. Yeah, which is which is a win for me. That's
our billboard could say just walk you've paid a high evolutionary price for this ability and let's not squander it.
What are what are one of your biggest challenges right now? And how do you plan to think about it or face it?
I think my biggest challenge is the over satisfied.
Rat in a cage syndrome where it's a fine line between being too satisfied. You wear your life with your life and not doing enough so that you feel like a bit of a weenie at the end of the day for squandering one of the few days of your life versus over driving yourself to be like, well, I got to accomplish more, you know, I have all these gifts and and great situations and I have to make the most of it and taking either of those two extremes.
Can lead to a pretty unsatisfying life and this often I often compare myself actually because this is little bit weird. But to you as Tim Ferriss because I've read some of your books and I see some of your self reflection in there where you have some of these battles you're like, well should I be perfectionist or should I relax and I have a lot of these same questions to myself and one of the differences is that I chose to have a kid and I focus a lot of energy on that which by definition subtracts a lot
Of the other stuff I could do like why am I not running my own kind of Tesla type company or whatever. So that's my challenge is trying to walk the line and have the at the end of each day be satisfied that I've created the right balance of like stress and accomplishment versus lazy decadence, which is part of the fun of really being early retired as that. You generally can like just smoke a bowl and have some fun with your friends on a Wednesday and like sleep in and it does not matter.
And you still are going to have all the money that you need no matter what so and that's still yeah. I still have trouble. I've been a little bit on the lazy side in the last couple weeks because of family conditions here at home. And so I'm I'm craving to get back to work on something hard.
How will you how do you think you'll explore that in the coming year testing that balance or trying different things too?
Try to find it or maybe it's maybe it's a matter of just oscillating between the poles and that's how you achieve balance. It's not like you're never it's not like you're ever 50/50 for a long period of time you just oscillate between the poles. I don't know but hey, how are you thinking about that? Because I'm also thinking about the same thing in 2017. Yeah.
Well, it's a continuing series of experiments and it's always changing. Look. I've been at this for a long time. It's been 11 years since I had a real job, and I've done a lot of hard stuff and then a medium amount.
Out of laziness in this time. So I keep trying stuff to see if I enjoy it. So like last August, for example, I wanted to see if I enjoyed the Ted Talk kind of public speaking and I did a whole bunch of traveling around that as well. And I found it was a bit too much like enjoyed the actual stuff that I did but I was craving being at home and then that's made me realize that most of my joy comes when I'm actually creating something and this is why I'm less travel oriented than other people because I can't really create.
They tell I'm traveling. So I need to do a certain amount of like nitty-gritty Construction and design and just hanging out and having fun unplanned spontaneous people coming over for a party or barbecue or whatever. So I need this Village Life. If you imagine A Primitive man living in a village where he spends half the time hunting some of the time like building stuff and some of the time traveling around the fire that's kind of my core of happiness and when I get too much into lifestyle Guru,
Activities like I'm going to publish more articles or get this book done quickly or say yes to all these interviews so I can have more and more fans and Page views those things sound. Actually. They saw dumb when I say it like that, but when you look at the you know, when you look at news headlines about yourself, you're like that's successful or you look at page views or money you go. Yeah, that's success, but it's actually good kind of the least happy thing that I do. It's the least satisfaction bringing so I have to balance that.
That with with these much more villagey type of activities, but if I don't if I totally neglect the internet world, then I'll feel like I'm letting the world down because you can actually create good positive change that way that you could never do just in your own
village, right? What have you changed your mind on in the last say handful of years. Is there anything that you've done an about-face on in anyway or modified?
Benchley and you're thinking
there's been a few little things like what type of eating as healthy. I kind of switched to the high fat low carb eating on a whim after reading some books and I'm really really happy with that. Whereas before when I was a teenager. I was the ultimate low fat because I read all these bodybuilding magazines back then and oh, yeah and they were always telling you like. Oh, yeah 10 grams of fat would be way too much to have another stuff. So that was a change in a
It'll weigh the biggest change I've had though is more in my understanding of happiness. I thought that happiness came from from Maximum achievement and maximum wealth. And as I got into experimenting with those things sounds too much like my other answer but I learned much more about the balance that's required for happiness. So it's changed my goals for the rest of my life is that there's a lot more to happiness than
Maxed out in one
dimension. So I only have a few questions left. I'm having a lot of fun and we could keep going for many many hours. But do you have any ask or request of my audience any experiment you'd like them to do exercise anything? It could really be anything. But any any parting thoughts before I ask you where people can find out more about you and so on.
All right.
Well, if you are new to this stuff that I talked about then I would suggest and if any of anything that I am advocating sounds crazy, like for example not using a card to get your groceries or not using car to get to work then try and think of the idea of voluntary hardship to put this phrase into your mind and then see where you can apply it through the day and then you're like, okay that looks hard. I think I'm going to do it instead of that.
Alright, I'm going to try to avoid it and the voluntary hardship. Is that the gateway drug to the rest of mustache in ISM and thus being able to save 75% of your Silicon Valley income while everyone else is still broke. So yeah, find some things that are hard even if it's just skipping the elevator and taking the stairs like up to the 15th floor, whatever just if the other people are not doing it, then that's probably a sign that it's something that you should do and
Then just record your results see how much better it makes you feel and then just keep pushing yourself a bit
further and I would Echo that and spin it slightly differently. It's not these are complementary viewpoints. But even if people listening those folks out there listening, if you do not want to focus on saving even if that is not the objective purse a voluntary hardship is a fantastic way to show
It's circuit hedonic adaptation where you need more and more and more almost like an opiate to satisfy your need for x and I would highly recommend everybody read a letter. You can find it in the public domain online. You can also find it in tools of Titans and a slightly edited fashion, but on festivals and fasting it's letter 13 from Seneca Seneca, the younger to Luke Ilyas, the
moral letters to look Alias on festivals and fasting and it talks about setting aside a few days per month. Let's say to experience voluntary hardship and different ways and it is it is such a
Fascinating psychological trick in many respects with all sorts of beneficial side effects like cutting down on expenses that I think allows you to realize it is possible to recalibrate yourself to experience greater happiness and well-being without simply adding more more and more more and more whether that's pageviews money fancy shit. You don't need or otherwise, so I definitely want to second that notion.
Pete where can people find out more about you and you've written a lot where should they where should they start also so we're going to find you on social or do they say hi. We're going to read your stuff and where should they start if they're they're just opening the doors to your writing.
I'm a big fan of old-fashioned website. So there's always Mister Money Mustache.com and you'll see is start here button on there that takes you kind of to
introductory article and then the design of the website to The Limited extent that it has a design. It's just to poke around and follow links to other links and or you can start at the beginning and read all the 400-plus Articles dating back to 2012 or 2011. And yeah, that's how most people do it and then you can read it. If you get really into the rabbit hole, then there's a forum where like all these users discuss their intimate problems with each other and it's got like tens of thousands of members it
All day on there and or you can just for keeping it really light. You can just go to Twitter and look up Mister Money Mustache and say hey, I enjoyed the podcast.
Perfect. Oh Pete. Thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate you taking the time and to everybody listening as always you can find links to everything we discussed books and otherwise at the show notes, which is for this episode in every other episode 4 Hour workweek.com.
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