How is putting yourself in a situation where you can lose half your assets "frugal"? The guy would have done better financially if he'd had been blowing money every weekend on a gambling habit but avoided divorce.

Reading the pages on his site there's something deeply not right about the guy.

Quote: (01-06-2019 06:07 PM)g®eek Wrote:  

Back to the regularly scheduled programming:

While I'm new around here, I used to be a regular on the MMM forums in 2014-2015. I've often kinda wondered how long their marriage would last for similar reasons others here have voiced...

Quote: (01-05-2019 03:32 PM)Penta Sahi Wrote:  

So here's my tinfoil hat conspiracy: After reviewing the MMM family finances, she decides its time to cash out and ride off with handsome chiseled Lukas from the gym.

Another case of Alpha fucks Beta bucks?

Once the female gets the cash herself then it's just Alpha fucks and nothing else...

Quote: (01-06-2019 07:19 AM)lunchmoney Wrote:  

The sad reality is she already has her dick in waiting probably moved in to HIS house and sitting in HIS car, spending HIS money.

Nah, she and her new beau probably traded in the wind-up car Nissan Leaf before the ink on the divorce was dry. There's probably something with a blue and white propeller logo sitting in the driveway now.

How's that for hedonic adaptation??

According to reports on the MMM forum she is already dating again, after all, she's not fat.

Beta boy, Peter Adeney is not, apparently.

They probably had assets of about 2 mn so he's down by a million bucks.

He has made 400,000 in a year from his blog before but decided to do away with some of the advertising because he didn't want to constrain his use of swear words which were not advertiser friendly.

Guess what, the ads are back and I can't find any rude words in his recent posts, the fucking hypocritical cunt.

Quote: (01-06-2019 08:32 PM)remarkable vigour Wrote:  

Quote: (01-06-2019 06:07 PM)g®eek Wrote:  

Back to the regularly scheduled programming:

While I'm new around here, I used to be a regular on the MMM forums in 2014-2015. I've often kinda wondered how long their marriage would last for similar reasons others here have voiced...

Quote: (01-05-2019 03:32 PM)Penta Sahi Wrote:  

So here's my tinfoil hat conspiracy: After reviewing the MMM family finances, she decides its time to cash out and ride off with handsome chiseled Lukas from the gym.

Another case of Alpha fucks Beta bucks?

Once the female gets the cash herself then it's just Alpha fucks and nothing else...

Quote: (01-06-2019 07:19 AM)lunchmoney Wrote:  

The sad reality is she already has her dick in waiting probably moved in to HIS house and sitting in HIS car, spending HIS money.

Nah, she and her new beau probably traded in the wind-up car Nissan Leaf before the ink on the divorce was dry. There's probably something with a blue and white propeller logo sitting in the driveway now.

How's that for hedonic adaptation??

According to reports on the MMM forum she is already dating again, after all, she's not fat.

Beta boy, Peter Adeney is not, apparently.

They probably had assets of about 2 mn so he's down by a million bucks.

He has made 400,000 in a year from his blog before but decided to do away with some of the advertising because he didn't want to constrain his use of swear words which were not advertiser friendly.

Guess what, the ads are back and I can't find any rude words in his recent posts, the fucking hypocritical cunt.

Damn Bro... Dude just lost 1 Million in a Puff of Smoke! If I'd lose this much money... I'd be marketing 2x as hard as Tai Lopez & shaking every Hand that I could!

Quote: (01-07-2019 12:02 AM)Captain Gh Wrote:  

Damn Bro... Dude just lost 1 Million in a Puff of Smoke! If I'd lose this much money... I'd be marketing 2x as hard as Tai Lopez & shaking every Hand that I could!

I wonder what the Cost Per Bang for this guy came out to if he did indeed lose 1,000,000 outright. Granted, he has a child now, but not really, he won't get to be a father, not in the full sense of the word anyhow, and there's a strong possibility the child might hate him on top of that. Still curious what the Cost Per Bang came out to.

So much for all that frugality...

Quote: (01-04-2019 08:56 AM)DarkTriad Wrote:  

Quote: (01-04-2019 12:40 AM)Penta Sahi Wrote:  

MMM was one of the first blogs I followed regularly on the net. I'm not a hardcore moustachian, but I've taken a lot of the things he wrote about and adopted it for myself. Through him and others in the FIRE sphere, I clawed my way out of a 5-figure debt and am now on track to building actual wealth.

Anyways, this is slightly discouraging. I don't know all the details, but if a man like him can't make a marriage work (solid provider game, solid internet fame), then it just bodes ill for regular schmoes.

F

Quite possible, given his obsession with frugal living, that he was terrible at provider game in a day to day marriage and the only way he would "provide" her a moneyed lifestyle is if divorce courts forced him. I'm not shitting on him, many geniuses are nuts or have feet of clay in some way.

While I'm certainly for financial responsibility, this over-the-top frugality comes off as dorky to women. Any guy I've ever met that's excessively stingy always falls short with women.

Unless he demonstrates his frugality by not tipping. Then he's ALPHA AS FUK!!!!!

Quote: (01-07-2019 12:33 AM)Spaniard88 Wrote:  

Quote: (01-07-2019 12:02 AM)Captain Gh Wrote:  

Damn Bro... Dude just lost 1 Million in a Puff of Smoke! If I'd lose this much money... I'd be marketing 2x as hard as Tai Lopez & shaking every Hand that I could!

I wonder what the Cost Per Bang for this guy came out to if he did indeed lose 1,000,000 outright. Granted, he has a child now, but not really, he won't get to be a father, not in the full sense of the word anyhow, and there's a strong possibility the child might hate him on top of that. Still curious what the Cost Per Bang came out to.

Well that child is going to get to know the sound of pipe being laid at both houses...

I imagine this moustache guy is on team no appetizer.

Quote: (01-07-2019 01:51 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

I imagine this moustache guy is on team no appetizer.

He looks like he's on team no fun.

Being careful with your money is a virtue, particularly for families that are in debt and struggling.
Miserliness, on the other hand, isn't a virtue.

Quote: (01-07-2019 01:57 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

Quote: (01-07-2019 01:51 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

I imagine this moustache guy is on team no appetizer.

He looks like he's on team no fun.

Being careful with your money is a virtue, particularly for families that are in debt and struggling.
Miserliness, on the other hand, isn't a virtue.

He comes across as a cheap person. Great to see him build a whole business around being cheap.

I think he screwed himself, though.

Instead of just being honest he tried to put a spin on it to make it look like something entirely different. His wife thought the frugality finally paid off when the money started rolling and they could have some fun.

She found out he wasn't frugal because he wanted to retire and spend time with his family. He was frugal because he is a cheapskate.

I bet he was more pissed about losing money than the actual divorce. haha

Quote: (01-07-2019 02:07 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

He comes across as a cheap person. Great to see him build a whole business around being cheap.

I think he screwed himself, though.

Instead of just being honest he tried to put a spin on it to make it look like something entirely different. His wife thought the frugality finally paid off when the money started rolling and they could have some fun.

I agree, though he kinda painted himself in the corner. By many accounts, the MMM business was quite successful which could easily have led to upward mobility but then he wouldn't be practicing what he preached.

Just how successful?
In this article he talked about giving away $100K in late 2016, which was "downright small at less than a quarter of what this blog earned last year (before tax at least)..." So that means OVER $400K in ONE YEAR.

According to his 2016 statements, the family only spent ~$30K and that was including some home renovations. $150 for the YEAR on crossfit and yoga. I bet Mrs. wasn't too happy about that, or she was paying for it separately. I used to do Crossfit, and most gyms START at $100/mo or so.

Quote:Quote:

She found out he wasn't frugal because he wanted to retire and spend time with his family. He was frugal because he is a cheapskate.

I bet he was more pissed about losing money than the actual divorce. haha

Heck, even Warren Buffet's (also a known "cheapskate") first wife left him (sorta). They lived apart but remained married since 1977 until her death in 2004.

The message of "live within your means and invest the rest" is a smart one but clearly he's lost the plot. You're allowed to have the odd luxury here and there. And even if he didn't want it, why not make his wife's life better with his play money?

Quote: (01-07-2019 08:03 PM)g®eek Wrote:  

According to his 2016 statements, the family only spent ~$30K and that was including some home renovations. $150 for the YEAR on crossfit and yoga. I bet Mrs. wasn't too happy about that, or she was paying for it separately. I used to do Crossfit, and most gyms START at $100/mo or so.

Hahaha, here's his little tidbit at the end:

Quote:Quote:

Overall, it looks like another fairly reasonable year. The biggest lesson that I try to emphasize is that spending does not have to scale with income. We spent less than 10% of our taxable income this year, and still cannot see any reason to inflate the lifestyle any further than it is already.

It’s a beautiful life!

How about spending just a little bit more to keep the wife happy?

While he was patting himself on the back for being an uber cheapskate, his wife was probably slowly getting pissed off that they couldn't splurge on anything that falls outside the MMM philosophy.

I bet just one freaking all expenses blowout vacation a year would have kept her in line, at least a little longer than today. Unless you're buying solid gold statues while abroad that shouldn't put a dent in a 400k a year income.

Quote: (01-07-2019 01:57 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

He looks like he's on team no fun.

Being careful with your money is a virtue, particularly for families that are in debt and struggling.
Miserliness, on the other hand, isn't a virtue.

I'm always amused how many comments, controversy, and wholly wild speculation these early retirement stories generate.

People love to pontificate as above, even though while spending 25k, that probably puts him (on a wage where you'd pay tax) somewhere around median if it were bumped up. https://wallethacks.com/average-median-i...n-america/

2 cars (including a fancy overpriced electric one), decent house, multiple overseas trips every year, I bet there's a huge number of people on the forum who can't afford to live so "miserly".

Keep in mind on top of the 25k he spent, there's 2 more magnification factors since he does a ton of shit himself (installing his own furnace, moving appliances on a bike) which as a throw back to the DIY thread, and isn't necessarily because he doesn't want to spend the money, as much as their is a huge degree of pride in handling shit yourself, doing something cool, and learning new skills. Then, the fact that he's spending a bunch of company money on things that benefit him, but which don't count in his personal spending.

It always struck me in broader sense as a happiness and efficiency blog. Perhaps it's because we're both engineers, but I think there's a bit of magic in accomplishing something that others' did, but with only 1/10th the inputs. It's not about spending as little money as possible, rather it's about detaching that money from the happiness you expect, but it will fail, to provide. Rather, the whole frigging point is that instead of working a job you don't like (70 hr software engineering weeks) so that you can afford a third car, realize that you will be far happier and healthier if you use that time to do something you love instead of hate. Such as go for a bike ride or write a blog. Like Buffet or Gates, once your material needs are met, you can either keep on working at building something for it's own virtue that you love doing and then use the proceeds to help society, or you can ostentatiously buy 200 cars and a super yacht to show off on Instagram. Who do you think honestly sleeps better at night?

Once you have about 40k/yr in income, any problems you still have don't get resolved with more money. This community abounds with them, millionaires who can't get laid, people far better served from going to the gym than working on getting their income from 200 to 300k. You have millions living on a dollar a day who are happier than a lot of people in the west, yet many here's solution to materialistic culture that's brought us to the current state is that he should have been more materialistic from the get go.

As for MMM, sort of a surprise, but even if he is taking a 7 figure hit, it effectively changes nothing day-to-day. He'll still have a blog he enjoys writing producing more than he needs, along side investments that will do the same. Someone who can give away sums each year larger than the bottom billion people out there will make in their life time is doing okay financially in my books, more evidence that he isn't just a miserly fuck jerking off to bigger numbers.

This for me is misery:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/05/1...nt-page-2/

“Imagine, then, the effect that impulse grocery purchases like those little $7.49 packs of sushi would make, if you casually toss them in the cart on a regular basis? A decade of a family’s innocent-seeming Whole Foods indulgence could pay for a house outright, while leaving them no better nourished than wiser meal planning with bulk ingredients.“

This dude is a lunatic. Maybe his wife just wanted to buy a fucking sushi without having to do the maths.

At what point this is not selfishness on this guy part. Because to me he is putting his family in duress so that he just doesn’t do the sacrifice.

There’s some clear OCD here.

Google “witch of Wall Street”. People who live in misery with money in the bank is not something new.

Quote: (01-08-2019 05:45 AM)fantome Wrote:  

This for me is misery:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/05/1...nt-page-2/

“Imagine, then, the effect that impulse grocery purchases like those little $7.49 packs of sushi would make, if you casually toss them in the cart on a regular basis? A decade of a family’s innocent-seeming Whole Foods indulgence could pay for a house outright, while leaving them no better nourished than wiser meal planning with bulk ingredients.“

This dude is a lunatic. Maybe his wife just wanted to buy a fucking sushi without having to do the maths.

At what point this is not selfishness on this guy part. Because to me he is putting his family in duress so that he just doesn’t do the sacrifice.

There’s some clear OCD here.

Google “witch of Wall Street”. People who live in misery with money in the bank is not something new.

That's exactly the point that it's not about money. You're looking at it as a one off, 7.50 purchase. It's not. It's about evaluating series of routine decisions over the long haul, and going after the most efficient. $7.50 for food that you could make yourself for a fifth of the cost is a waste. Yes sushi is good so once a month or something maybe, but many people feel they "deserve" it every day when even their most basic finances are a mess.

Do you want sushi every day for a decade or a paid for house and home made, equally nutritious food?

When people make decisions, they look at certainty and magnitude. That's why people smoke. I will certainly give me an enjoyable headrush, and one cigarette will almost certainly not make anyone worse off. One cigarette, one $6 coffee, one $7.50 sushi tray makes almost no difference to anyone's finances or health. However, everything about it that was true yesterday is true today, so most people develop habits, and the rest is history.

Quote: (01-06-2019 07:42 PM)RawGod Wrote:  

How is putting yourself in a situation where you can lose half your assets "frugal"? The guy would have done better financially if he'd had been blowing money every weekend on a gambling habit but avoided divorce.

Losing half your assets is a myth in divorce. A lot of times it's closer to 25% of your assets for your lawyer, then you pay another 25% for her lawyers, half the rest going to her, leaving you with a quarter of your assets.

And if you end up with substantial transfer payments to the ex (alimony/child support) it can easily be closer to 500% of your assets than 50%.

I'm not trying to be a Negative Nelly here, I'm just trying to make sure people are aware of the real stakes and risks in Family Court.

Quote: (01-08-2019 03:31 AM)Seadog Wrote:  

Quote: (01-07-2019 01:57 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

He looks like he's on team no fun.

Being careful with your money is a virtue, particularly for families that are in debt and struggling.
Miserliness, on the other hand, isn't a virtue.

I'm always amused how many comments, controversy, and wholly wild speculation these early retirement stories generate.

People love to pontificate as above, even though while spending 25k, that probably puts him (on a wage where you'd pay tax) somewhere around median if it were bumped up. https://wallethacks.com/average-median-i...n-america/

2 cars (including a fancy overpriced electric one), decent house, multiple overseas trips every year, I bet there's a huge number of people on the forum who can't afford to live so "miserly".

Keep in mind on top of the 25k he spent, there's 2 more magnification factors since he does a ton of shit himself (installing his own furnace, moving appliances on a bike) which as a throw back to the DIY thread, and isn't necessarily because he doesn't want to spend the money, as much as their is a huge degree of pride in handling shit yourself, doing something cool, and learning new skills. Then, the fact that he's spending a bunch of company money on things that benefit him, but which don't count in his personal spending.

And here perhaps we get to the crux of the matter. he is happy to spend money on things that benefit him. HIM not her.

I imagine he sold the idea of frugality to his wife as being we save and invest all this money so we don't have to work, can spend time together and look after our kid, yet still have plenty of money. Put it like that and she would be happy to get on board.

However, the end result was probably stuff like the family holiday being a camping trip by bike instead of a bog standard fortnights beach holiday. Adeney would see such a holiday as being beneath him, travelling by airplane to do nothing at a beach, how unenviromental.

Adeney really is a massive beta who clearly doesn't understand women.

The witch of Wall Street:

"Green's stinginess was legendary. She was said never to turn on the heat or use hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out, did not wash her hands and rode in an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that Green spent half a night searching her carriage for a lost stamp worth two cents. Another asserts that she instructed her laundress to wash only the dirtiest parts of her dresses (the hems) to save money on soap.[7]

Green conducted much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers; she did not want to pay rent for her own office. Later unfounded rumors claimed that she ate only oatmeal, heated on the office radiator. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps in part related to her Quaker upbringing), she was given the nickname "the Witch of Wall Street".[2]

Her frugality extended to family life. When her son Ned broke his leg as a child, Hetty tried to have him admitted to a free clinic for the poor.[3] Mythic accounts have her storming away after being recognized; her biographer Slack says that she paid her bill and took her son to other doctors. His leg did not heal properly and, after years of treatment, it had to be amputated.[3]

When her grown children left home, Green moved repeatedly among small apartments in Brooklyn Heights and Hoboken, New Jersey,[2] mainly to avoid establishing a residence permanent enough to attract the attention of tax officials in any state. In her old age, she developed a bad hernia, but refused to have an operation because it cost $150. She suffered many strokes and had to rely on a wheelchair. She also became afraid that she would be kidnapped and made detours to evade would-be pursuers. She began to suspect that her aunt and father had been poisoned.[citation needed]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green

Quote: (01-08-2019 06:25 AM)DarkTriad Wrote:  

Quote: (01-06-2019 07:42 PM)RawGod Wrote:  

How is putting yourself in a situation where you can lose half your assets "frugal"? The guy would have done better financially if he'd had been blowing money every weekend on a gambling habit but avoided divorce.

Losing half your assets is a myth in divorce. A lot of times it's closer to 25% of your assets for your lawyer, then you pay another 25% for her lawyers, half the rest going to her, leaving you with a quarter of your assets.

Can someone explain why lawyers are such a huge chunk of divorce costs? If you're willing to give the other party half without fighting them then there's no litigation, ergo no need for lawyers.

Surely you can't be charged $500/hr by someone whose services you never requested?

Would it be possible to donate say 500k to an offshore charity? And in the case of divorce, that charity hires you as a consultant at 100k per year for 5 years?

Quote: (01-08-2019 09:41 AM)captain_shane Wrote:  

Would it be possible to donate say 500k to an offshore charity? And in the case of divorce, that charity hires you as a consultant at 100k per year for 5 years?

Not if you did that during your marriage and not before. The court will see that as you hiding your assets and if you are in America they will give you a bill for 250k. Failure to pay can result in jail time.

Even if you sent it to a legit charity the court will say you had no right to giving away 500k without your wife's consent (since it is her money too!) and you'll get raped.

Money doesn't exist to women unless she can experience it. It doesn't seem like the ex-wife got to experience much of that money. Now she does.

Quote: (01-08-2019 09:04 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Quote: (01-08-2019 06:25 AM)DarkTriad Wrote:  

Quote: (01-06-2019 07:42 PM)RawGod Wrote:  

How is putting yourself in a situation where you can lose half your assets "frugal"? The guy would have done better financially if he'd had been blowing money every weekend on a gambling habit but avoided divorce.

Losing half your assets is a myth in divorce. A lot of times it's closer to 25% of your assets for your lawyer, then you pay another 25% for her lawyers, half the rest going to her, leaving you with a quarter of your assets.

Can someone explain why lawyers are such a huge chunk of divorce costs? If you're willing to give the other party half without fighting them then there's no litigation, ergo no need for lawyers.

Surely you can't be charged $500/hr by someone whose services you never requested?

You can do a low cost divorce via mediation and you'd avoid dealing with lawyers for the most part. If most people went this route then divorce wouldn't be so painful. Problem is though that most folks can't come to any sort of agreement on how to split things up, divide up time with the kids and so on. So lawyers swoop in like vultures to pick at the carcass and sow as much discord as possible to bleed their clients of all their money. I think the divorce system should be based on mediation only with no need for lawyers but the lawyer lobby is too strong and will never allow for that.

I agree with everyone here saying that this Moustache guy is a cheap bastard who ended up losing more by getting divorced than he would have by spending a bit more to keep his wife happy.