Comment by ashark
9 years ago
One of the things that made me stop reading him was when it became clear his "I'm totally retired and you can be too!" thing was BS. At the time he had like 3 part-time jobs (the blog, landlord, handyman, IIRC), with his savings being large enough that he could make a stupid "hey, you should stop paying so much for health insurance you idiots! Turns our if you have a lot of money in the bank and the skills to land a job with family coverage in a matter of months if you need to, you only need catastrophic coverage! I don't know why people say buying your own health insurance is expensive, it's not!" post, but not enough to totally retire on it (he seemed to be letting his investments grow by spending mostly his part-time job money, at the time, rather than investment returns)
Exactly. Seems totally stupid. Like why is it better to have 3 jobs ( blog, handyman, landlord ) than one normal job ? to me retired is a person who specifically lives strictly off the money they have. I mean sure, if you prefer to work as a handyman or run a successful blog, by all means do that, but calling yourself retired seems inaccurate. I am retired but I have 3 jobs. ooook.
Ha. The MMM community calls people espousing this sort of view "the retirement police". I have no idea what this complaint intends to accomplish beyond adherence to some kind of radical linguistic prescriptivism.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/13/mr-money-mustache-...
You can't claim to be financially independent and come back two years later with this gem:
"The secret is that my wife is no longer really retired, and in fact she started a business that is now big enough to FUND OUR ENTIRE FAMILY'S LIFESTYLE."
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/03/06/etsy-shop/
If not outright dishonest, it certainly gives the off appearance that you can't put any weight in the numbers he is throwing out.
I guess I'm one of those "retirement police" who hates seeing a huckster give bad advice while eschewing talking about the real increase in realized risk you take by retiring early and not considering it in your plan. As one of the previous comments stated: your budget is not static, investment returns are not guaranteed, life events and medical situations change drastically.
So when I see, "I made it so can you", I want to respond, "Come back to me when you are 90 and on your death bed and talk with me again." I've seen the cancer treatment bills and what they do to someone with 10x your "financial independent" worth.
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And that's another thing that I don't particularly like about MMM: the incessant shouting down and name calling of anything and anybody that dares to question him and his statements.
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He had more than enough money in the bank to do nothing given his expenditures. Turns out he likes making money on his own time.