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Comment by robertcorey

9 years ago

Mr. Money Mustache started me down the path of exploring my own personal philosophy. I now worship MMM as a diety (MMM !== Pete Adeney in my religion). Thanks for the teachings Pete.

8 comments

robertcorey

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AVTizzle  9 years ago

Robert - what would you recommend as a getting started guide to MMM?

And how would you describe your personal philosophy?

  • froindt  9 years ago

    Not Robert, but I would start here.

    http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

    Start reading more from there and remember it's your expenses more than your income that matter most. Also remember he turned the dial quite far.

    And this page is also quite good. You don't have to go as extreme as MMM, and doing so would burn out a lot of people.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58j8...

    • hammock  9 years ago

      Seconding this. That MMM article is what got me started into reading more of that blog.

  • robertcorey  9 years ago

    I would recommend reading through the entire blog archive, all together it's about the same length as a book. You can skip over articles on things that aren't interesting to you, for example I don't care about real estate.

    My personal philosophy is a combination of all the different sources I have been exposed too. My main influences would be the mustachian thought sphere (MMM, The Magic of Thinking Big, Stoicism), secular western buddhism (Buddhism Plain and Simple, In the realm of hungry ghosts, The magic of tidying up) Game theory probabilistic thinking (Poker background).

    When I first started reading MMM I was already a very tribal person. The us vs them mentality really appealed to me because I was used to strongly identifying with minority tribes (atheist, vegan). After I started studying buddhism I've been able to let go of some of the tribalism of mustachianism , but the frugality and the powerful self belief have remained. This is an example of my personal philosophy forking from a monolithic belief system.

    I also have a couple dieties I worship. MMM is the god of frugality and not being a wimp. RNGesus is the god of accepting random bad stuff. I'll spin up/down dieties to put on my altar depending on my current priorities/ needs.

    I know recommending you a bunch of books isn't really a proper response, but a proper definition would be the length of a book and I haven't written that yet.

    What I would recommend to everyone is to study different belief systems and roll your own religion. Our brain is designed to consume faith-y belief systems. It's arrogant to believe those mechanisms in your brain won't latch on to something. It should be something your consciously decide on and design.