Today on Radical Personal Finance, Mustachianism 101, the philosophy of popular personal finance writer, Mr. Money Mustache. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets and I am your host. Today we're going to talk about the philosophy of one of the leading personal finance writers online today who is very committed to the second part, well both parts, but especially that financial freedom in 10 years or less. I had promised this show a while ago in my recent episode where I interviewed Mr.

Money Mustache. I ran it up with him in Gainesville a few weeks ago and was able to sit down and finally get him on the microphone. It was probably the most requested interview. It was episode 425 of the show if you'd like to go back and listen to it.

It was the most requested interview where many of you wanted me to speak to him. Mr. Money Mustache's name is Pete if you're interested. But Pete said when I'd reached out to him several times he had done a bunch of interviews and he just wasn't interested in kind of rehashing the same old, same old.

So finally I was able to catch up with him in Gainesville and I promised him, I said I won't make you go through and talk about what you say on the blog. I won't make you do it. What we'll just do is I just want to hear about what's going on currently.

So that's why the tenor of that interview, episode 425, was not about his philosophy. It wasn't about what he does. It wasn't about even what he writes about. It was about him as a person because many of you will really, you're already familiar with his philosophy and what he teaches.

But Pete has been an internet publishing sensation, especially in the world of personal finance. There are many, there are from time to time new personalities come along, new people come along and speak to people. And on a comparison of a scale, there would be no comparison between the impact thus far anyway of somebody like Mr.

Money Mustache and his website as compared to say a Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad Poor Dad fame or of who else. I mean there are from time – there are other much more widely known personal finance pundits, somebody like David Bach from The Automatic Millionaire. These people have affected many huge, huge audiences, much, much bigger than Mr.

Money Mustache's audience. However, Mr. Money Mustache has not gone out and tried to market his message. So with regard to a grassroots message where you just have a guy sitting down typing some stuff into his computer, it's hard for me to find somebody in the finance space who has had such a big impact.

It's really hard. Pete to his credit has been – had a very authentic story and he has just simply sat down and written out his stuff and people have found it because it was good. One of the beauties of the internet. And today, I'm going to tell you a little bit about his philosophy, summarize what he teaches so that you can be aware because as even I interviewed many people who were there gathered for his conference or the conference that his community was putting on for him, many people were focusing and saying, "I'm a mustachian." So let me explain what mustachianism means.

Before I explain the philosophy of Mr. Money Mustache though, sponsor of today's show is Paladin Registry. Paladin is the go-to place for you to start your search for a financial advisor. Now here's the catch. Some financial advisors will probably hold and be aware of some of the teachings of somebody like Mr.

Money Mustache or somebody like Radical Personal Finance. Many of them won't be and that's one of the biggest challenges to finding a great financial advisor today. Most financial advisors are excellent in what I call the mainstream. They're not going to tell you to sell your car and ride a bicycle but they will help you figure out how to properly allocate your portfolio and how to draw income out of it from retirement.

I think there's a place for both and I'd love to see more mustachian financial advisors emerge. But there are a ton of very competent financial advisors who are skilled planners and advisors and there's no reason why you can't take the knowledge that you bring from the perspective of Radical Personal Finance or Mr.

Money Mustache, this type of hardcore stuff and integrate that with mainstream financial planning techniques. It's one thing to say I'm going to sell my car and buy a bike. That's great. It's another thing to figure out how do I live off of a portfolio for the next 30 years when I don't have several million dollars extra and I got to make sure that I structure this thing properly.

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Search for your next financial advisor at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. That link will flip you through to a landing page where they'll collect your name, your email address, your info. That info will be sent on to a couple of financial advisors in your area where they'll reach out to you. You can interview them.

Can't promise you're going to find your next great advisor there, but I can promise it's a good place to start your process. Thank you. Please use that link, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin, and I will receive a commission when you fill out that form. Thank you very much. All right. The philosophy of Mr.

Money Mustache. The story of mustachianism very much parallels Pete's own experience. He is originally from Canada, and even his financial journey parallels much of the advice that he gives. He had, in many ways, a normal upbringing in Canada. He was born to a couple of good parents. He had a very straightforward education.

He studied computer science in school, graduated out of college at the normal 22 years old, and got his first job. He started off on a good, solid foundation, but he was not rich. He didn't have any debt. He didn't have any savings. As he talks about in his writing, he graduated with a bike and a backpack and a diploma.

He did not have any student loans, which was a tremendous benefit to him and also should be to all of us. But he started off with no student loans. He had a little bit of help from his parents. He got his scholarships. He had various high school and summer jobs, all of which helped him to start on a solid foundation.

He came on down to the United States and, as he would tell, made many of the mistakes that many people make when starting off their life, buying fancy cars, going around and spending lots of money at bars and restaurants and basically living the good life. But over time, he did work really hard and he did get some raises of his income, transition jobs, and he always worked to keep his housing expenses relatively low by sharing roommates.

So over time, he and his wife got together. At some point in time, they married. Both of them continued to live on a relatively small amount of money while earning good professional incomes and being without children. So in that context, they were able to save a significant percentage of their income.

Along the way, he dabbled in some real estate on the side. He had a part-time business building houses and was able to put himself in a situation by working on some construction projects and also renting out some houses. That led to the point where, after about nine or ten years from graduating college at about 22 – it's called out at age 30, 31 – they officially declared themselves retired.

They'd been able to save over that period of time somewhere around $800,000 and, I believe, pay off their original house. Because of their skill with spending a relatively low amount of money, they were able to consider themselves retired with that $800,000 portfolio. Pete subscribes strongly to the theory of the 4% rule.

The idea of a 4% rule is if you have a portfolio of mutual funds and stocks, you can reliably withdraw about 4% of the value from that portfolio into perpetuity. So that means that with an $800,000 portfolio and a paid-off house, he and his wife were planning on living on an income of about $32,000 per year to cover their expenses.

And to put themselves in that situation, as long as they had that money, they considered themselves retired. They were able to retire by the age of about 31 before they had their first child. Since then – that's been a number of years ago – things have continued to go on.

He's moved, sold his house that he was living in, renovated another house. He and his wife have continued to pursue all kinds of different projects. He works on his blog. He does some building stuff that he enjoys. They have at times done home education for their son. They spend a lot of time with their son.

His wife runs a small business on the side. And life is pretty good. He started writing his blog back in – his first post was made in April of 2011. Since that time, the blog itself has become a significant business. He releases numbers as far as his earnings in various places, at least he has in the recent years.

Say he earns probably about a half a million dollars a year of profit from his blog, primarily from advertising. If he wanted to – now remember, he has the number one personal finance blog on the internet that I'm aware of. And if he – it is not optimized for making money.

If he actually sought to optimize it and make money, he could make a lot more money off of it than he does. He does his – his revenues come in in a very unobtrusive way and that fits his personal philosophy. So I'm going to explain to you a few of the things that you need to know about the philosophy and a few of the areas that are understated.

I'm going to walk through some of these major things and also tell you for whom does this philosophy work and for whom does it not work. It's important that you recognize up front that by all accounts, my own testimony included, it is who he says he is. He is a genuine guy.

The guy that you meet in person is exactly the same guy that you meet online. I have seen him a few times. Started when – a few years ago, immediately after I had left my – closed my financial planning business to start Radical Personal Finance, I traveled out to Colorado and to visit my family.

I wanted to go out and visit my grandmother. And so my wife and I, we traveled out there and we were on our way passing up through from Denver headed north into Wyoming, which would be passing through where he lives in Longmont, Colorado. And so I sent him a note and said, "Hey, I'm coming through town.

Could I come by and connect with you?" And he said yes. He was very gracious about that. And my wife and son and I went by. We spent the evening with a couple of other of his readers. He had scheduled a public event and a couple of others of his readers.

We went on a bike ride and then wound up visiting with him at his home and he very graciously invited us to spend the night. So my wife and I spent the night in his basement back when he had a basement, saw his project when he was working on it.

And Pete, his wife and his son are just really great people. He is genuine to the core. I've met him and interacted with him a number of other times and I think if any of you met him, you would understand that he is who he says he is. When he talks about doing his writing because he just wants to do it, he really does.

When he talks about not wanting to be part of the system, he really is. He's a genuine guy. And I love that about him. I applaud that. It's fantastic. It's also important that you recognize that his style of writing and his humor tends toward self-deprecation. And this is one of the challenges because you have to filter through the language of self-deprecating, humble language to try to understand is this really possible for a lot of people.

Now, if Pete were listening to this, he would say, "Of course it's possible for a lot of people. What are you talking about?" The problem is you do need to have a significant – you need to have significant skills and competencies. No matter how disarmingly casual his language is about his approach, he is an extremely hard and industrious worker.

There are a number of lessons that you can take even from his specific story that can be applied to many of our situations. Here are just some lessons. Number one, when he started off out of college, he didn't have any debt, no savings and he was very flexible. He didn't own a lot of stuff and so he was able to go and put himself in different positions.

He worked hard. He got a degree in something that's actually useful. He got a degree in computer engineering and it's much easier to get a high-paying job with a degree in computer engineering than with say a degree in the humanities. He was a serious worker. For example, if you read his story, he talks about how he skipped his university graduation ceremony and because he didn't want to miss any work, he had already moved away to a new city 300 miles away from the university.

So he skipped walking across the graduation ceremony. So don't let the persona of, "Oh, I'm kind of a slacker," fool you. The man works hard and he's a hard worker even now. You can't be lazy and have this type of philosophy work. Yes, he bought a car but it took him a year to pay off his car after he borrowed about $16,000 from it.

So he was focused from the very beginning. He talks about how – disarmingly talks about, "I flaunted my new salary around town with bar and restaurant hopping and computer equipment and furniture and accessories for my car." But the reality is, yes, his level of flaunting was nothing like what the average person was.

He was working hard at paying off debt. Certainly he got better over time but he was working hard at paying off debt. In his first time in a year in the tech market, he increased his salary from $41,000 to $57,600. That's a 40 percent raise. They don't hand out 40 percent raises to people who A, aren't in a good industry.

He was in the computer engineering industry during a rising tech market. B, they don't hand out 40 percent raises to people who are slackers. So all of these things. He moved to the United States to get a job. That's one of the most important things, increasing his income. He and his wife met early and they joined finances early.

That makes a huge difference to the ability to save wealth. Being a two-income household where expenses are less because of the shared efficiency of expenses, this is a big, big deal. To add her income to his income and have the ability to enjoy more frugal activities together, these things are a big, big deal in terms of actual results.

Eight years out of college, he was earning $125,000 a year and his wife was earning $70,000 a year. So that allowed them to significantly increase their savings very, very quickly. I hope in that you see, and I'm trying to cut through the casual, catchy, self-deprecating humor to see that don't let that stuff fool you.

A lot of times people that are very smart will conceal that smartness behind an image that will help to not get such bad results. In our society, for whatever reason, people tend to be – seem to be more jealous of people who are successful. And so those of us who are successful, we often learn to engage in self-deprecating humor, kind of a "Ah, shucks, ma'am" type of attitude and Pete does exactly those same things.

If you follow those lessons, however, you can do what he's done. The basic philosophy of financial independence that Pete espouses is a high savings rate. Earn a lot of money and save a high percentage of it, ideally 50 to 75% or more of your income. You can see how, based upon his own experience, that would be the simplest path to financial independence.

If he was earning $125,000 and his wife was earning $77,000, that's over $200,000. Now ignore taxes for a moment. If he were spending 25% of their income, they're living a $50,000 and saving $150,000. Again, ignoring taxes temporarily. They're saving – that would allow you to save 75% of your income.

And if you're spending $50,000 a year, you're living at what the median income is in the United States of America. You can live a great life. And when you bring that and add to that the lessons and skills of frugality that he embraces, you can live a great life and you can become financially independent very quickly.

This is the approach that he is so powerful at articulating. My experience, the people who most resonate with the philosophy of Mr. Money Mustache and his approach are those who are high-income earners who are just sick of what they're doing, sick of their job and wanting to do something different.

And for that person, his writing is addictive. I've known so many people. They start at the beginning and they read the entire volume of his blog. And I did that one. The first thing – generally, one of the things that I do when I find something is I read the whole archives, try to really understand.

So I've read every article he's ever written in the past but not recently. I've read recent articles but in the past, I read all those things. And so that helps you to grasp the knowledge. And if you are a high-income earner, which most of you are, if you're a high-income earner, six-figure income earner and you're feeling stuck, you probably need a face punch from our friend, Mr.

Money Mustache because Mr. Money Mustache has the ability to get you excited about living on $2,000 or $3,000 a month. Really, really remarkable, his skill with that. He is a skillful writer. He brings a sense of – I'm failing for the word. Insubordination, there's a better word for it.

Just the sense of like, yeah, we can figure it out on our own terms. So he is a phenomenal writer to the upper class, to the high-income earners. And that's his intended audience as best I can imagine. He wants to help six-figure income earners recognize, "Listen. You can do this." This also shows the weakness of some of his philosophy because in many ways, if you're feeling stuck, you don't have a high income or you have other expenses.

Perhaps you're caring for your parents, aging parents, or perhaps you're caring for children and you have committed yourself to certain courses of action that make your decisions a little bit different. People find it harder to really resonate with his message and with his methodology. Not that you can't learn, and I'm going to go through some other things that he is consistently teaching.

You can learn, but it won't resonate with you quite so much. If you think back to the interviews I've played in recent days here on Radical Personal Finance, many of the listeners are high income, no children, young working professionals. It's no accident because this type of person can get extremely, a huge amount of value from him and from his philosophy.

Now, he's not exclusively limited to just save all your money. He gives additional ways of doing it, much of which is a mindset. One of the real strengths to the philosophy of mustachianism is bringing intelligent design to life. Reid is an engineer, and so he brings that engineering skill set to the simple and the complex things of life.

Probably what he's most well known for is his, I want to say hatred, despisement. He despises people who he would affectionately call car clowns, people who drive a lot. If you think about his approach, this is very normal for an engineer. An engineer looks at a problem and says, "How can we set something up for maximum efficiency?" Especially a computer engineer who needs to understand how to make the code the simplest possible so that it loads quickly and so that it works effectively.

What he looks at is the massive simplicity and effectiveness of your making a choice to live right next to your work. That is so valuable. Many people don't think about that, and that's applicable no matter whether you're a high income earner or whether you're a low income earner. Live close to work and you'll save time.

There's a reason why for years, President Trump, before he was President Trump, his office and his house are in the same building. Just go up and down the elevator, and still, I guess his office and his house are in the same building. It is incredibly efficient. I love having my office and my house in the same building.

It is really, really valuable. Pete brings that philosophy of engineering to almost every aspect of life, and I think that's something that we all should take and model. Test the assumptions. Look at the situation and say, "If I were starting with a fresh blank slate, how would I design this to make it better?

What is my actual goal, the end that I have in mind, and how can I bring intelligent design to this particular concept?" Another thing that Pete is really well – that I see as far as one of his fundamental strengths is he embraces adversity. I would say that he is influenced although – he aligns well.

If you're familiar with the fundamentals of Stoic philosophy, the philosophy of Stoicism is gaining a real resurgence in the young – I think primarily men, young men really seem to be resonating with the philosophy of Stoicism. Although I don't know how deeply Pete has delved into Stoicism as a philosophy, he models the values of it, the embracing of adversity.

He wrote a post years ago about his embrace of having his house be hot by not putting air conditioning in the house. This is a really useful mindset to go out and tackle adversity and take it as something that's powerful. When I was with him a few weeks ago, we got together over breakfast and he was talking about the cold shower that he had just taken, the place where we were together had run out of hot water and so they'd taken a freezing cold shower.

But he wasn't complaining about it. He had tackled it as a benefit about what a rush, what a wake up to have a freezing cold shower in the morning, I feel really good right now. That's a tremendously powerful life skill. You don't have to embrace Stoicism to embrace that.

I don't embrace Stoicism. I reject the philosophy, not as not having some useful points but personal reasons for it. But I want to embrace the same philosophy. I really love that and I think that's so powerful to embrace adversity. He writes about going out and riding his bicycle in a blizzard, in a snowstorm, all through the winter or of learning how to fit in small spaces, learning how to live in less.

All of these things, if you turn it into an adventure, it can change your experience of life. That philosophy is applicable to everybody. You don't have to be rich or poor. Just embrace adversity and embrace it as an adventure because you can grow out of it. Really really useful.

Again, he's big on being able to live big on little amounts of money by nixing stupid, by cutting out stupid stuff out of your life. That's something that's applicable no matter who you are, rich, poor, high income, low income, no matter where you live or your situation. You can do really well by living large on just a little bit of money.

Pay attention to the details. His writing is a good mix of philosophy and practice. He does a good job of writing an article that is very philosophical, talks about very motivational and then in the next article, here's how you install a shower or here's how you tackle your, here's how you save money on your cell phone plan, things like that.

Big on again dumping the car and embracing the bicycle. It's valuable no matter whether you have a high income or low income and these things start to flow together. You can see how his philosophy is so powerful because if you design your life intelligently by focusing on how close your house is to your office and you embrace adversity, that makes you more likely to be willing to ride your bike even if you get a little sweaty or a little cold.

All these things save you money. It's good engineering. It's very, very efficient and it cuts out a significant expense by having extra cars or extra car costs out of your budget by just simply making some things different. Now this again is applicable whether you're rich or poor. In my area, just like probably in your area, a lot of the poor people ride bicycles and what Pete is doing is by embracing adversity, teaching people to become rich by changing the perception that riding a bicycle is cool.

It's not just for poor people. One of the real strengths of his philosophy is embracing do-it-yourself skills and doing this for multiple benefits by tackling home repair, by tackling car maintenance, by tackling learning new skills like web design. You are able to save money but you're also able to become a more well-rounded person.

His basic investment scheme is simple, index funds and rental real estate. He really doesn't ever delve – excuse me, also peer-to-peer lending. He does some peer-to-peer lending projects. Beyond that, he really doesn't dig into investing any more than that for good reason. It works and it's simple. More than anybody, I think he does a great job of really modeling the cumulative value of small steps.

He wrote an article called A Millionaire Has Made $10 at a Time which focuses on the power of little decisions. I think it's so important to constantly remember little decisions, lots of little decisions add up to the long run. So there is a lot that all of us can learn from his writing.

His writing – he's popular because of the power of his ideas and also even his style. He's an interesting writer. He writes. He's very colorful, writes with very colorful language. He is a wordsmith. He's very poetic, very skilled at bringing words together in a poetic way. This really, really helps people to be able to engage with him.

He's also meeting a need at a particular moment in time. We've reached an age in which consumerism has become one of the major religions of our day. Yet consumerism is leaving many millions of people without a sense of meaning. So there are many people who are casting around saying, "Where do I find a sense of meaning?

Where do I find meaning after consumerism? What do I do?" He writes to that audience and does a tremendous job of saying, "Look, there can be meaning after consumerism because you don't need it. Financial independence is going to provide that meaning." This unique cultural moment, I think, is also very key in understanding the rise of his success as a writer and as a voice in the personal finance space.

What worked in the past doesn't really work now and doesn't seem to work now. There are many people who are looking at their parents and recognizing, "My parents aren't happy. This idea of working an entire lifetime and then quitting, it's really not working for them." So the way out seems so simple.

If I become financially independent in short order, then I can do what I want to do. And this is powerful. So you put these things together and you put together his skill, the strength of his philosophy, and the skill as a writer, this unique cultural moment, and it helps me to understand his success.

It really does. Now, Pete and his writing are not without controversy and they're not without weakness. Weakness is all in the eye of the beholder. I think for his audience, his intended audience, which is six-figure income, working professionals, I don't know that he has a weakness, certainly, especially in two of my complaints, that perhaps the third one would be there.

But for my audience or for the general public, there are three major weaknesses that I think are found in his message. Again, weaknesses, you have to be careful because the most skillful and effective of people are speaking to their tribe. And Pete has created a powerful tribe, done it very, very powerfully, where his followers and fans will self-identify as Mustachians.

This is powerful language. But so don't think that somebody's a failure just because they don't speak to all people. The most powerful people don't speak to all people. But here would be three things I want you to be aware of. The biggest flaw in his philosophy and in his approach is if you don't fit that profile of high-income professional.

If you aren't earning six figures or if you're not at a stage of your life where it's appropriate for you to make significant pivots, it can be easy to find his writing frustrating. Because of his extreme casual, "This is so great, everyone should do it," attitude, which is very motivating to those for whom it is appropriate, it can be very frustrating for you to read some of his advice, read some of his approaches.

Because if you're earning $50,000 a year, somebody telling you that it's easy, it can be frustrating. Or even if you're earning more than that, but your expenses are higher due to reasons that aren't as simple as changing to a different cell phone, it can be very frustrating. So you need to focus on increasing your income.

That might not be easy. You need to focus on recognizing that sometimes you're just at stages of life where you've made certain commitments that aren't worth giving up in order to get out. It's okay to simply decide, "I'm not willing to give these things up in order to get out and be financially independent." So if you have a lower income, focus on your income.

You should learn from Mr. Money Mustache and others because lowering money on your cell phone plan is still valuable. Building DIY skills is still valuable. But look past the "easiness" of it and recognize that you have an income problem and an expense problem and you're going to need more than moving close to work to save you money.

Moving close to work is something you should probably do and you should probably think about, but you're going to need bigger benefits. Another major weakness of his philosophy is just the investing ideas, simplicity of investing ideas. I think he misses a major area of potential return. Again, not a problem.

If you're a high income earner, you probably shouldn't be dabbling in creative investment ideas. If you're a lawyer and you're earning $250,000 a year, your best use of your time is to figure out how to go from 250 to 450 and you shouldn't be figuring out how to make a higher rate of return here on the side.

But if the best use of your time is not in your income, there are alternative investment ideas that are worth your consideration. So you probably should go and study and research your investment philosophy and try to see if there's another way that you can get higher returns from your personal approach to investing.

Buying index funds and mainstream traditional rental real estate are not the only ways to build wealth. You can embrace entrepreneurship. You can embrace inside investing. There are all kinds of creative ways. When your income is not so high and if you don't have significant prospects there with your job prospects, then you should consider other approaches.

Then third and finally, what I think is probably the biggest weakness, which should be obvious from the speech that I released on the show, the speech that I gave to the mustachionism, is simple. What's the point of retiring? One thing I don't understand, I haven't asked him personally, at some point I will, but I don't understand what the point is of this aggressive pursuit of retirement.

It sounds good and I get it. Maybe I'll get it more when I'm actually financially independent. I'm not financially independent. I can't live on the dividends of my portfolio and so maybe I don't understand it. But intellectually, I don't get why this retirement thing is a big deal. Pete right now earns more money than he's ever earned in his life.

To his credit, he doesn't seem to spend a ton more. He spends a little bit more, but he doesn't spend a ton more. But he could do that whether he was retired or not retired. You can have control over your schedule, over your life, over what you do, whether you have $800,000 in the bank in a paid off house or whether you have $100,000 in the bank and you have your own business.

So this obsession with financial independence, I don't understand and I don't understand the point of it. What's the point of it? Is the point hedonism? I think this is a major philosophical weakness that his philosophy is that happiness is the only logical pursuit of life. That's a loose quote of one of his essays, that the only point of life is to be happy.

I don't ascribe to that for philosophical reasons, but what is it that makes you happy? That's a deeper question. And I fear that the common tendency, I don't think this for Pete. He has different – he's more thoughtful than that. But for many people, the basic meaning of that is hedonism.

I want to sleep in or I want to just be able to do what I want. Yeah, but what are you going to do? And my listening to people who've achieved financial independence confirms my fear that it's a hollow victory. It can be a hollow victory. So what's next?

I feel this is probably the biggest weakness of the pursuit of financial independence. But pursuing wealth and financial independence for its own sake, it's a poor master. What's the point? There should be something beyond that. The pursuit of financial independence as an expression of character, of stewardship, of self-discipline, I think that's good.

But then what? What are you going to do when you're financially independent? That to me is a major question. There's this intense fixation. I had Bill, a reader of Mr. Money Mustache who I met. I had Bill – it was episode 416, Bill on the show and he was focusing and talked about how he retired at age 42.

One of the key hallmarks is he talked about how maybe he should have done it earlier and he recommended to other people they should have retired earlier. Pete, Mr. Money Mustache has written various essays telling people, "You should retire right now." I don't get it. I don't get what the benefit of retiring is.

If somebody's – I don't get it. I don't see work as an enemy. This would be just a deep philosophical difference. Work is good. Work is helpful. Work is important. So I don't view work as the enemy. Now again, I want to be very clear. I build that on a philosophy of – a biblical philosophy.

That's how I seek to have my philosophy formed and the Bible teaches that work is good. Man is built for work, built for service, and is seeking to build for something that goes beyond his own lifetime. So in that context, that would be the biggest difference. Now you don't have to buy into that if you don't want to, but to me I think this is one of the major weaknesses of retirement.

Been saying that for three years since I've been doing this show and I haven't – I still haven't seen any evidence that would convince me to change my mind. That is my analysis of the philosophy of Mr. Money Mustache. I would encourage you to learn from him. He is a powerful writer.

He's just a tremendous wordsmith. He's a poet. That's his best skill set. He's very unassuming in person. I would encourage you even just the lesson, Pete is a brilliant writer. He struggles to communicate verbally. He said that publicly and so I'm not criticizing him. He struggles to communicate verbally in the sense of being able to speak clearly, speak publicly.

Play to your strength. His strength as an introverted thinker is in writing. And so for you, you should learn from his example of what he does and how he's built it. Learn from his skill with words to build a tribe and a community around a central idea. He's built a cult, a leaderless cult as he says, a cult of ideas and it's powerfully influential.

Learn from that. Learn from his experience and learn from – don't let again the unassuming nature turn you off. Learn from what he actually did right. He's a very smart man and his path has been intentional and designed. Some of the things have been things that I haven't even heard him mention.

But you can't get away from hard work. Worked very, very hard. So learn from those things and then think how you can apply those techniques to your own life. On his blog, there are gems for all of you, all of us. Don't let the things that might be frustrating to you, don't let those dissuade you.

Life is all about going places, picking out the good and spitting out the bones. I hope that you make that a constant habit. So Pete's blog is MrMoneyMustache.com. Hopefully you have a better introduction to the philosophy. It is certainly influential here in Radical Personal Finance because I seek to serve among others.

I seek to serve the early retirement financial independence community or the so-called FIRE community, financial independent retire early community. So I seek to serve that. So you got to pay attention to the philosophy. Hey, that's right. If you save 75% of your income, seven and a half years you'll be financially independent.

So if you make 200 grand, live on 50 and in seven and a half years you'll be financially independent. We'll see. You can tune in to Radical Personal Finance in the coming decade and we'll see if I change my mind on retirement. I don't expect to because I don't expect to ever retire and don't expect to ever quit.

But you never know. Life has a way of teaching us new things. At least that's been my experience. Thank you so much for listening to the show today. As we go, I want to remind you, please, if you haven't done so already, please take a moment and record a quick three minute, two to three minute story on your phone and send me the file.

Record just what Radical Personal Finance has meant to you, how it has helped you and what you've done with the advice and insight and education encouragement you've received on the show. I want to hear your stories, want to profile that for episode 500 of the show so that the audience can hear more of the stories.

As you're emailing that to me at Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, as you're emailing me that audio file, Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, email me also a picture of you and your family, please. Just for me personally, I'm going to put these up as a screensaver on my computer to let me know who I'm talking to every day.

That's so helpful. Email that to me as well. And finally, as we go, I want to thank the patrons of the show. There are 260 individual patrons of the show who send me, put together $1,625 per month. Receive some other income from my personal consulting services, from advertisers, et cetera.

But this is so important to me to have Radical Personal Finance be reflective of you, the community. So if you'd like to support the work here and add to that 260, please come to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and show your support for the show. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources. Find out more at radicallifemedia.com.