The best way to save / invest is automatically. You just get used to the lower paycheck. For a while I was living pay check to pay check intentionally. I wasn’t really broke as I was maxing my 401K, but I would be like “well lets hit up the dive bar for happy hour instead of the fancy bar as I have $300 in my account until Friday”.
I don’t know when I’ll retire, but I would like to be financially in a position to not really need income, or need very little income.
Check out this guy’s blog:
He doesn’t post much, but I think it has helped me quite a lot over the last couple years. He is a pretty good writer too.
He may not be nailing every last detail but that dude is a stud! So few 35-year-olds could have a paid off $700K house. We’re also around $200K and no chance we’ll have that net worth in six years (when I’m his age). Very impressive.
This is the key IMO. I’m always reminding the wife that we used to live on less than $20K lol. There’s no reason our life needs to keep on getting more expensive; we have plenty.
Many blue collar people live a good life but don’t save much. If you live at that standard with a high income, you will most likely be rich. That is basically the mmm message which I agree with. Hard to do though.
Yea for sure, I’ve got such a different outlook on finances now, whilst I was blessed with some good financial timing and choices, I lived in debt, permanently, and never even counted the cost (a lot of it was interest free and I just kept switching it around) but I lived in my overdraft and had 10s of thousands on credit cards, interest free purchases etc. Never thought about clearing debt, just servicing it and everything went on some sort of finance.
Mr MM’s your debt is an emergency post was illuminating. Can’t wait to shed the rest of this millstone of debt and start growing my early retirement fund!
I’ve recommended it to some people who I know or hope will heed the advice, I would love to be able to go back in time and see what I could have done if I’d had this mindset from my 20’s purely for interests sake (I don’t do regret, you can’t change the past plus every choice I made makes me who I am today and I am happy with that).
That’s fantastic you’re pretty young for that right?
Yes his writing style definitely resonated with me, because I the stoic philosophy intellectually (no claims to live it out at all haha).
This is true and probably the best type of advice for most, however I’d rather be told the most optimal and work out what I’m going to do with that info, ultimately I’ll end up making changes that make it less optimal anyway so it’s best (for me) to start at the top and aim high than start lower and aim to work up, I know traditional finance stuff has never struck a chord with me the way Mr MM has (I’ve previously read FIRE stuff and immediately dismissed it as an impossibility for me, but he’s changed my mind, in just a few short blog posts - although I read the entire site within a few weeks and was disappointed to find I was finished haha).
100% this - over the past 12 years my income has quadrupled (it was minimum wage 12 years ago, so it’s still not super high but substantially better) and I was more in debt than ever, cars holidays houses (and the upgrades to house, which probably added more to NW than removed) none of which were super luxurious, but none of which I paid for outright, so none of which I could afford in essence. That was eye opening after working things out from reading Mr MM.
Yea definitely, particularly when you’ve got a family, they may not always be on board and it’s hard to balance being unnecessarily tight to the point where it makes the present much less pleasant, with ensuring you’re being careful enough for the future - that’s going to look different for everyone. But the core Mr MM message is you don’t need to buy so much crap or live such a wasteful life and if you’re sensible you’ll probably end up fairly weathly as a side effect.
My opinion is Ramsey’s way is better for people who have issues controlling their spending and just need to get their finances together, get their credit cards paid off, get a little cash in the bank etc. But I think his methods start limiting people after that
MMM is definitely better once you start really saving some money and are good with paying off cards, etc. I’ve gotten probably 700K points if not more at this point and tons of free trips through credit card hacking. Ramsey’s method would never allow for that
Ah I wish I had a good answer for the best cards these days but I don’t. I have the chase sapphire and a couple of the business ones but I think the rules for opening business ones have gotten a lot stricter. You used to be able to just use your name as the company name and SSN as the tax ID and they’d accept it.
We haven’t been spending enough to be able to hit the spending limits lately so I haven’t really done much research into them in the last 6+ months. I usually find good recommendations between MMM and some of the ChooseFI or financial independence groups since they are super into that kind of stuff.
Last year was supposed to be a year of lots of travel before baby time but Covid had other plans. Baby girl (oh yeah, we found out it is a girl) is due in August so we’re hoping to at least get a trip in around April or May, hopefully.
Bro, definitely do a babymoon. The wife and I went to FL in December (baby in February) and it was great for our relationship. I’d advise all pregnant couples to do this. We also used credits so it was free.
…and good luck with a girl. I look at the way some young women dress and am so grateful I avoided that, lol.
Thoughts from the crowd on training a muscle while it’s sore? My program calls for legs again tomorrow, but they’re still feeling beaten up from Tuesday’s session. Should I push my normal routine by a day and sub in an arm day (not in the program)?
Depending on how sore I am, I might do a lighter session just to get the blood flowing to the sore muscles. I won’t do my normal routine if I do decide to work the same muscle group unless I am just feeling it a little. If I am really sore, I’ll skip it or sub something else in. Usually doing a lighter session will loosen things up and feel better afterwards as well.
I think that’s a good mindset. I ended up pushing legs by one day. I think one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made consistently is overtraining and underrecovering. My body can’t adapt because I’m too addicted to lifting lol.
Too late to the reply here but I’d say you can train sore - but ensure you’re recovering well in the nutrition (particularly overall cals and protein) and sleep department, and the occasional deload.
If you’re literally cripplingly sore then maybe not though.
I’ve always opted on the side of training while sore (NO PAIN NO GAIN, lol) – but that hasn’t boded too well for me. I think it’s a matter of where you land on the scale.
Today I woke up with legs at a 7-8 out of 10, so I didn’t train them; I did yoga instead, and I’ll do legs tomorrow. If I were at a 5-6, though, I’d probably do legs. As you said, nutrition/calories are probably crucial as well.
I think the magnesium glycionate has helped with anxiety, thanks @NH_Watts! Thinking of getting some L-theanine for the same purpose - anyone have experience they could share?
On my last labs (January), HCT was 51.1 and HGB was 17.3, so I donated blood.
Just had new labs – though HGB was down to 16.9, HCT was up to 53.1. At the start of TRT, my HCT was 44, and I’ve seen a gradual climb since.
I’ve read 53 is the cut-off where concern should creep in long term. What do y’all think?
Thoughts on interventions – cardio? Should I give blood again? RBC was also 5.82. which is the highest I’ve seen.
I’m not keen to lower my dose because I feel great. Unfortunately, my provider forgot to request free/total T on this script (and I forgot to check it), so I don’t have those numbers.
No idea. I know from what I’ve seen most say drink a ton of water h morning of. I’d imagine after an 8-10hr water fast it would take a bit to hydrate you back to normal. Not sure though