The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: Vitai Slade on January 07, 2014, 10:14:28 PM
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This made me laugh:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bda-zZSCIAAYc15.jpg)
pic.twitter.com/ZI5lUqXQZG (http://pic.twitter.com/ZI5lUqXQZG)
One of the comments before it got deleted was complaining that it was harder to save during the summer months and was not ideal.
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Way to plan on building up frugality muscles only to get flabby again.
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Way to plan on building up frugality muscles only to get flabby again.
Lol! Right?
It's like, "Oh yeah! Saved up $150 this month! Now I can slowly go back down to saving nothing and spending my entire paycheck! Glad that's over!"
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Looks like a good plan for a teenager with a part-time summer job.
Edit: My god, she's a terrible writer but the message seems good enoug:
If you have been “following” me you know that I love to save money. My entire life I have worked and saved everything I made – it’s in my blood. I even ironed my money before putting it into my “cash box” when I was little. You can read more about that here but I’ve received multiple requests to help share with you what I do to save money. It’s natural for me to save and I’ve actually had to work on letting loose of some of it. I’ve realized that it’s okay to spend money in order to create memories (for example, all the traveling we do). I still have a hard time spending money on “things”. We choose to spend our money on organic food and quality supplements since those are things that really matter!
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Looks like a good plan for a teenager with a part-time summer job.
My thoughts exactly. This would be a decent goal for a 14 year-old
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I was wondering what that decrease was about. Are they tapering for a swim meet or something?
I've seen people do that plan on a weekly basis (with only an upward trajectory to get themselves going), but never monthly and never with the taper.
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I was wondering what that decrease was about. Are they tapering for a swim meet or something?
I've seen people do that plan on a weekly basis (with only an upward trajectory to get themselves going), but never monthly and never with the taper.
Yeah, it looks like the author has a fitness web site and recently went into finance blogging. So I'm guessing she's taking some kind of fitness approach to finance.
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I was wondering what that decrease was about. Are they tapering for a swim meet or something?
I've seen people do that plan on a weekly basis (with only an upward trajectory to get themselves going), but never monthly and never with the taper.
Yeah, I save $1000 on a monthly basis out of my net pay. That's after the max 401k deductions too. I also save $500 out of my net pay per month to go towards vacations (I take a lot of trips. It's my anti-mustachian weakness.)
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Looks like a good plan for a teenager with a part-time summer job.
My thoughts exactly. This would be a decent goal for a 14 year-old
Agreed.
However this appears to be from an adult. "Let's save $25 this month!"
So instead of I have a new plan for them: They should save $1 on Day 1, $2 on Day 2, and keep upping it by a dollar a day, all the way until they save $365 on the last day of the year, December 31.
Then they'll have $66,795 saved!
...oh, you think my plan may not be feasible? What says yours is then? My numbers are just as arbitrary as yours, but mine are likely to leave you with a lot more money at the end, though of course you may fail to reach your goal. So how about you instead spend wisely and save all the rest, however much that is?
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"Travelocity – We all know how expensive trips are…how awesome would it be to earn 2% Cash Back (for most offers) on your trip? We recently booked a hotel room through SHOP.COM and used our AMEX, so we got the points on the card plus $10 Cash Back…that’s enough for half a box of Quest Bars!"
Yes, half a box of Quest Bars! It's time to abandon MMM and start following Whitney Carlson. It was nice knowing you all :)
Seriously, though, at least she's challenging her readers to save a little bit of money. Anyone thats follow her $1,050 savings plan will be outsaving (maybe) one-third of workers, possibly more. I thought it was also nice of her to set the bar even lower for people who can only manage to save $12.50 in January [I added the underline]:
"I challenge you, if you have more money to put away – double this. If you REALLY can’t make it work (I mean REALLY, not just that you don’t want to give up your Starbucks or nails) then half the amount listed."
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Have you seen the one going around that goes by weeks, it starts really low and works it's way up, but you are still only saving about 1500 in a year. I do understand that there is a lot of spendthrifts out there and very low income. But yikes, it's so little and so dependent on your individual income. It doesn't make much sense to me, but whatever. There is no talking sense into most people, thats why I love this group!!!
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It's possible that she only makes ~15-20k a year or something...in that case I would applaud her for cutting back (on what I consider is a fairly bare bones lifestyle) so that she can at least save something. Many people don't.
Statistically more likely that she wastes a bunch of money though and could save much more. Anyway, somebody should recommend MMM to her.
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The crazy thing is, there are a lot of people for whom saving $1k for the year actually would be considered a major accomplishment. If you've never saved before, you need to start somewhere.
I saw a similar one, I think what greenmimama is referring to, where they want you to save $1 a week and increase that by $1 every week so that by the end of December you're saving $52 in a week! But at least that gets you all the way up to almost $1400 for the year. Much better!!
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Here it is:
(http://www.savingadvice.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/52-week-save-money-challenge.jpg)
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Yes Eric, that's the one.
But I have also seen a bunch of people saying they were going to do it backwards to that in the month of Dec (Xmas spending) they wouldn't be able to save as much. Uhhmmm if you can save it one week, you can probably save it the other weeks too, why not just see how much you can save!
I want to put out a real challenge, like a biggest loser challenge, where it is a % of your income, now that could be a real challenge :)
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"Travelocity – We all know how expensive trips are…how awesome would it be to earn 2% Cash Back..."
How awesome would it be not to take the trip in the first place? Why not check out some of the nearby places that people from distant parts are coming to see?
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I did that 52 Week Savings Challenge last year. This was before finding MMM and I was just testing the waters of how much I could actually save. I skimmed off my grocery money (read: bought less booze), and adjusted the amounts a bit so on my more flush weeks I paid the $52, $51, etc. Then I just started throwing $200/month at the thing and ended up saving $1500+ cash.
EDIT: I also saved separately in an actual savings account, this was just a test to see if I could skim cold hard cash out of my "already stretched" budget.
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Yeah, it's good for a start: "hey, I really CAN save money!" The thing I worry about is that people will think that saving $1,000 a year is "enough". Or worse, since it's a "challenge", they think that it's just a "tough it out for one year" thing, and then they never have to do it again. You better be saving for retirement big-time or you got some 'splaining to do!
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No joke, I had someone ask me once in all seriousness if they would be able to retire if they saved (drumroll, please) one thousand dollars a year.
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No joke, I had someone ask me once in all seriousness if they would be able to retire if they saved (drumroll, please) one thousand dollars a year.
Sure! Just do that for 50 years, at a 7% return (4% real return), and you'll have 406,528.93 (nominal dollars - $152,667.08 real dollars) then live on $6106.68 (real dollars) per year ($508.89/month) at a 4% SWR.
;)
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I just thought of something that would make for a more mustachian challenge for the 52 week challenge. Instead of it being $1 in week 1, take your weekly income and save 1%. Then go on to 2% in week, etc until you hit 52% in the last week of the year. Just think how well you would be after a year if you can work yourself up to a 52% savings rate.
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I just thought of something that would make for a more mustachian challenge for the 52 week challenge. Instead of it being $1 in week 1, take your weekly income and save 1%. Then go on to 2% in week, etc until you hit 52% in the last week of the year. Just think how well you would be after a year if you can work yourself up to a 52% savings rate.
That's neat. By the end your savings rate for the year would be 26.5% average, rather low for a Mustachian.
Something to ponder though, thanks for the idea. :)
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We are a prideful bunch here ;)
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I guess I had a very different reaction to this.
This made me smile today because this could be something that changes someone’s life and they don’t even realize it themselves yet. Efforts to do better have to start somewhere humble.
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I just thought of something that would make for a more mustachian challenge for the 52 week challenge. Instead of it being $1 in week 1, take your weekly income and save 1%. Then go on to 2% in week, etc until you hit 52% in the last week of the year. Just think how well you would be after a year if you can work yourself up to a 52% savings rate.
That's neat. By the end your savings rate for the year would be 26.5% average, rather low for a Mustachian.
True but for a starting mustachian that sounds like a really good way to ratchet up the savings, then at the start of the next year, you are at 52%!
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I just thought of something that would make for a more mustachian challenge for the 52 week challenge. Instead of it being $1 in week 1, take your weekly income and save 1%. Then go on to 2% in week, etc until you hit 52% in the last week of the year. Just think how well you would be after a year if you can work yourself up to a 52% savings rate.
That's neat. By the end your savings rate for the year would be 26.5% average, rather low for a Mustachian.
True but for a starting mustachian that sounds like a really good way to ratchet up the savings, then at the start of the next year, you are at 52%!
Definitely! A very good challenge.
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I just thought of something that would make for a more mustachian challenge for the 52 week challenge. Instead of it being $1 in week 1, take your weekly income and save 1%. Then go on to 2% in week, etc until you hit 52% in the last week of the year. Just think how well you would be after a year if you can work yourself up to a 52% savings rate.
That's neat. By the end your savings rate for the year would be 26.5% average, rather low for a Mustachian.
True but for a starting mustachian that sounds like a really good way to ratchet up the savings, then at the start of the next year, you are at 52%!
Definitely! A very good challenge.
Agreed, for a starting mustachian, big changes can be overwhelming and initially hard to establish and maintain as habits. Thus, I like BigLeap4ward's journal (or something like that) where the challenge is to focus on a new area each month, to really target down expenditures, but also find a way to maintain it going forward. This rolling racheting increase is similar.
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I had some relatives comment on this on facebook, saying how hard it would be but they are trying it, and how they have trouble believing that they'd be able to have $1,300 saved up by the end of the year.
People do have to start somewhere. Sometimes a 'not so big step' style financial site will get people's feet wet, and they'll go looking for more.
The BEST thing that could be done would be to contact the blogger, and suggest they do a writeup on either/both Dave Ramsey, MMM. That would possible expose the blogger, as well as their readers, to more options.
Here it is:
(http://www.savingadvice.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/52-week-save-money-challenge.jpg)
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I guess I had a very different reaction to this.
This made me smile today because this could be something that changes someone’s life and they don’t even realize it themselves yet. Efforts to do better have to start somewhere humble.
This was my reaction, too. I have several friends who did this last year and they facebooked about it. It was a big eye opener for them. They thought they would never be able to save $50+ a week and were very anxious about starting. But then a nice surprise...they got to the end of the challenge and had much more than $50 to save. A few changes in habit lead to some real growth.
And now they are doing it again, but starting with $53 and plan to finish saving $105 the final week.
I think it is easy to forget how hard it can be to get started.
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People do have to start somewhere. Sometimes a 'not so big step' style financial site will get people's feet wet, and they'll go looking for more.
As they say: every great journey starts with but a single step. The trick with this one is to get everyone to realize that the end of the challenge is not the end of the journey, rather just the first few steps in a life-long pursuit.
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It's a ladder workout.
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No joke, I had someone ask me once in all seriousness if they would be able to retire if they saved (drumroll, please) one thousand dollars a year.
Sure! Just do that for 50 years, at a 7% return (4% real return), and you'll have 406,528.93 (nominal dollars - $152,667.08 real dollars) then live on $6106.68 (real dollars) per year ($508.89/month) at a 4% SWR.
;)
I have a friend who lives on $6K a year by choice. He didn't work for 50 years, though, and he does it by choice.
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No joke, I had someone ask me once in all seriousness if they would be able to retire if they saved (drumroll, please) one thousand dollars a year.
Sure! Just do that for 50 years, at a 7% return (4% real return), and you'll have 406,528.93 (nominal dollars - $152,667.08 real dollars) then live on $6106.68 (real dollars) per year ($508.89/month) at a 4% SWR.
;)
I have a friend who lives on $6K a year by choice. He didn't work for 50 years, though, and he does it by choice.
Ok but was it at least by choice?
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No joke, I had someone ask me once in all seriousness if they would be able to retire if they saved (drumroll, please) one thousand dollars a year.
Sure! Just do that for 50 years, at a 7% return (4% real return), and you'll have 406,528.93 (nominal dollars - $152,667.08 real dollars) then live on $6106.68 (real dollars) per year ($508.89/month) at a 4% SWR.
;)
I have a friend who lives on $6K a year by choice. He didn't work for 50 years, though, and he does it by choice.
Ditto; my best friend lives on 6k per year (500/mo. - 250 rent, 250 food and all other). So definitely. But the point was if you can only save 1k/yr, you probably won't ever hit FI.
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I am doing the 52-week money challenge this year, just for giggles. It's like a game, and the real challenge for me is remembering to do it each week (this is in addition to the real stash saving that I'm doing as part of my regular budget though). I even renamed one of my extra CapitalOne 360 accounts to hold it. I think at the end I might use it to teach my son (who is 10) about investing.
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'll loop him in on it and let him contribute part of his allowance so he can watch the balance grow. Just another way to get him thinking about saving.
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She could save around $500 by closing down her website. Hee hee.