The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: exterous on May 02, 2016, 07:56:30 AM
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I got most of my frugality from my father although his lessons were rarely in specifics. Instead they were more general themes like savings (esp for retirement) = good, consumerism = bad. Some of these themes didn't really sink in until I was living on my own. I had chaffed a bit under the strict spending limits and didn't know why we had to deal with such an old, small TV or why all our furniture was older than I was. With the liberation of being able to make all the spending decisions my future wife and I got ourselves into a bit of financial trouble. Nothing major in the grand scheme of things but eye opening and shocking to two people making near minimum wage, living in the bad area of town and trying to pay for as much college as possible on their own. Fortunately enough knowledge had been repeatedly drilled through my thick skull by my father to realize the effects of interest rates and I eventually came to the realization that we were on the wrong side of the equation when it came to compounding interest. So we throttled down our spending and worked full time while going to school full time. Even after graduating and finding jobs in our fields we each kept a second job so we could pay off our debts and jump start our savings. I used to say 'The best part about working all the time is that you never have time to spend your paycheck' (although I did eventually decrease my hours spent working)
All that said 4 years ago our financial habits underwent a major change. A coworker and I would talk about FIRE and all the things we would do when we retired as soon as possible. 4 years ago he was killed in a car accident at 27 with most of those dreams unfilled. 3.5 years ago my father retired early and made plans to do all the things he had been putting off to retire early. 2 months into retirement he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He made it 2.5 years - which is astounding for someone with pancreatic cancer - but was unable to fulfill almost all of the things he had wanted to do after retiring.
After these events my wife and I took a long look at our lives and our plan. We decided that we were giving up on too much now for an uncertain future. We didn't shed all of our frugal habits (We still have our 11 year old Civic) but did find a few areas to change. I work in IT and hated the constant after hours work and on call phones that would ring regularly. So I found a less stressful job. The pay won't be as good long term but I rarely have to work more than 40 hours a week and they have flexible hours and great time off options.
This change went along well with our other new goal: travel more. We used to go years without a vacation, taking time off payouts instead of taking the time off. We pretty much completely reversed this and now we use all of our vacation time every year.
We still do trips frugally: using points from credit cards and my hoard from my more stressful job, cooking for ourselves in hotel rooms, walking to the laundromat, taking local public transportation but its now our second biggest line item on the expenditures list.
So while we're not on the same early retirement path as some here we are pretty sure we've now found the right balance point for us between RE, frugality, and our expenses
So thats my long winded story about how we got here. What's yours?
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My parents were Depression-era survivors whose parents had themselves come from belt-tightening circumstances. They drummed it into me from an early age: Shop for sales. Compare prices. Do the math. (We all liked math in my family; my dad taught engineering for 30 years.) Save a little from each paycheck. Don't just live within your means, live under your means. Don't buy things you can't afford; if you want something, save up and then buy it. Debt is bad. Pay off your mortgage as quickly as humanly possible. Credit cards are a 20-day interest-free loan, nothing more. Pay them off in full every single month.
The messages weren't so much anti-consumerism as anti-going-into-debt and pro-having-a-cushion. My parents, like their parents, were determined never to be a financial burden to their children. Spouse & I don't have children, so we have to make sure we're okay on our own.
I wasn't much of a saver as a kid, but when I hit early adulthood, the messages started sticking. When spouse & I met, we had slightly different approaches to finances. Spouse had never believed retirement would be an option, so why not spend a little more, buy something on credit, and enjoy it now? But when I was able to demonstrate that we could spend less now and actually save toward a real retirement, my way caught on.
Somewhere along the line, I got excited about fixing as many things around the house as I could, both to save money and to increase my own knowledge and handiness. It's really rewarding taking something that's funky-looking or not working and fixing it.
Finding the MMM site & forum has sharpened some of those instincts for me, and reframed a few others, but I was already pretty much aligned with the basic financial philosophy.
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On vacations as a kid, my parents would allow us to spend $20 each at dinner. The intention was to let us choose nearly anything on the menu (at the time) but not something crazy like lobster or gold flakes. My brother picked whatever he wanted (chicken strips) and didn't give it a second thought.
I took it as more of a challenge - how can I get the most food for my $20 allowance. I think this laid the foundation for maximizing value with each dollar.
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I've just always been cheap.
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I listened to alot of punk rock when I was a teenager. Mostly of the crust, thrash, hardcore varieties. Alot of it was political and anti-capitalist. Much of it was critical but some, like the folk punk sub-genre, was positive and extolled the virtues of dropping out of materialism to lead a non-consumerist and 'work for the man' lifestyle. You know, ride bikes, grow gardens and participate in cooperative economies to provide subsistence.
Acknowledging that I now dis-regard alot of the hard-left political leanings of the music, the disengagement with consumerism and aversion to wage-slavery still says with me. In that way it is very Mustachian. But I also had to pick up the idea that working hard at something enjoyable and building a stache might be a better way to get the freedom one wants rather than dropping out and making a living via train hopping to volunteer on farms.
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I had a really rough/busy time at work in early 2015. It really wasn't fun getting up everyday for a bit there. Around the same time, my dad was talking about how he hated his job and wishes he could leave but hasn't saved up enough (early 50s, have about $500k between the two of them and a paid off house in LCOL, but spend waaaaayyyyyy too much and still have one kid left to go through high school/college).
I decided I didn't want to be in that position down the line. If I truly started disliking going to work everyday, I wanted to be in the position to just be done. That was the start of it.
Work has gotten better. Much less busy, though that will come with less pay too. My attitude hasn't changed though. I still want the ability to leave if I'm not loving it.
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Pretty sure I was born this way.
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My father was a child of the depression. Share cropper. First trip to the dentist was when he enlisted.
Opened my first savings account at age seven (passbook savings). Learned about compound interest at the same time (yes, they will pay interest on your interest). First rule: pay yourself first.
I remember a conversation when I was about six.
Me: Look at that new car. That man must be rich.
Dad: No, he spent all his money on a new car so now he is poor.
(I found out years latter he was living in a rental unit).
Lesson learned.
And this. "You don't need a light to watch the TV, it has its own light".
YMMV
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I grew up lower middle class and was born into a family of immigrants.
My parents instilled good financial habits. After I got my first full time career job I googled early retirement after realizing I didn't want to grind for 40 years.
Started saving 20-40% of income till I found out about MMM and the "Shockingly Simple Math" and bumped to 50%+
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I was born this way for the most part, but my parents set a fairly good example too. Entering the work world cemented it.
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I've just always been cheap.
+1
My mom used to joke that I probably still had the first dollar I ever earned.
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I was for the most part as it was based on how I grew up but I definitely become more frugal and mustachian once I discovered this site.
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I've just always been cheap.
+1
My mom used to joke that I probably still had the first dollar I ever earned.
Heh, I can tell you where my first dollar went . . . I saved up all my birthday money and cash for doing odd jobs for three years and bought a nintendo. :P
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We are a family of immigrants so we never had much growing up.
When I got my first job at 16, I never had to worry about money because I always had money to spend.
I remembered right after college I only had a PT job but it paid enough and I would always blow it all at the end of each night going out drinking. Once I got my first FT job at 31, I still didn't think about saving much but I did save a bit because I was working too much.
I went into full frugal mode when I bought my first house. My sister was living with me and she paid for a lot of things. After about 2 yrs of owning the house, my sister told me she was moving out. I went into frantic mode. Am I going to be able to afford living here on my own ?? Do I need to get a roommate ??
Afterward, I kept an expense sheet of everything I spent down to the pennies. That was an eye opener. With with a mortgage, I was budgeting myself for $1500/month.
The one advice I would give to anyone now that wants to save money is to keep an expense sheet. Its an eye opener on how little things add up.
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My family moved to the US when my dad came to do his PhD. Mom couldn't work so money was pretty tight. (Even when he graduated, his field requires a couple postdoctoral positions, which are also not high-paying, though better than the stipends!) There was more free/flexible time than in a traditional job though, and my parents always loved the outdoors so we went camping a lot. Maybe would have rather have ridden roller coasters as a kid, but in retrospect, no way.
So, the contributing factors were:
-> good examples in childhood: family of 4 then 5 lived in a 2BR rental, never had cable, old secondhand TV and old Walmart/Target furniture, hand me downs, fixed/mended things when possible, cooked at home virtually always, shopped discount stores and sales (but not Black Friday). More to the point, life was never about acquisitions or status symbols; as long as you were presentable and had what you needed to fulfill your academic and social responsibilities...you were good. If not, we'd figure it out. Not all their choices would qualify as "MMM-approved" but they spent in line with their values, and were very cautious with debt (and sent the message that it was undesirable, if sometimes hard to avoid).
-> environmentalism: when almost every vacation is to a national park (or five), it's hard to not appreciate the wisdom of "reduce, reuse, recycle." In conjunction with the above, things like using rags and mending clothes to wear at home/camping and not throwing away things that could be salvaged, used, given away, etc made a lot of sense.
-> when I started college (only 10 years ago), I got $40 allowance for laundry, snacks, and outings. As soon as I got a campus job, that went away. Parents never made a fuss of helping me out occasionally when earnings ran low (typically around breaks), but I always hated to ask; it felt irresponsible. Obviously, this only increased once I went to graduate school and my income stabilized (in the form of a stipend). I also think not being able to (legally) work for pay until my sophomore year of college gave me a very negative experience of not having financial agency and I never wanted to feel that way again...so one of the first things I did, intuitively, was to save $1000 never to be touched. At that point I could live off that for a month, maybe even two (my rent was $200).
-> I'm really not sure where anyone gets the idea that it's ok to carry a balance on a credit card as a matter of course. We had a balance on a 0% card for a few months after moving (some reimbursable; some to maximize fluidity) and it was freaking me out the whole time. I can't imagine that for something frivolous like purses and clothes. (I don't personally have a car loan or a mortgage but conceptually they don't give me the same visceral feeling; being underwater because you didn't put down a down payment, however, does).
-> I admit I am not as badass as I was in those early days, but I am still completely self-sufficient and I think some of the things I allow myself--like being at my friends' weddings, going to see family for the holidays, going out for a friend's birthday (or just based on their invitation), getting a new computer when I don't trust mine, or even treating myself to a lunch out during a bad week...those things are worth it. And things have changed as my life has evolved; my bf and I go out to eat less now that we live together, rather than 3 hours apart, but we bought more "stuff" for a while (I want to say it's slowing down some...), and we probably do more activities/experiences. But I still try to make sure I'm getting my money's worth of happiness, and we keep as much as possible as low as we reasonably can; e.g. we skipped some amenities to rent at a lower rate in an expensive area and it's working out just fine.
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I grew up on a strawberry farm. I worked for $2 an hour with a shovel. Makes you value a dollar.
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I was never really a spendthrift, but 3 events put me on the road to becoming a mustachian:
- Purchased a condo in south Florida in 2006
- Began tracking income & expenses in excel in 2007
- Financial crisis vaporized net worth in 2008
After that stomach-churning fall of 2008, I was bound and determined to save & invest every nickel possible to get my head above water again. I've since kept those habits and only spend money on those things/experiences that I know I truly value - I can't imagine making an unthinking purchase again.
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One side of the family second generation mountain men. The other side of the family mid-western farmers. I watched my parents play this game every paycheck to see how fast they could get their checking to 0. My grandparents on both sides were extremely frugal, I don't know how that didn't pass on to my parents.
We were poor because of my parents choices. I did get a lot of great experiences from my parents choices and I even attended private school for a while. But, at the end of the day, they worked very hard for a lot of money that they quickly blew.
Consumerism never made much sense to me, I never understood why kid's parents paid extra to advertise on clothing for a company that paid slave workers in other countries to make their products. I learned early the value of the dollar. I learned later the value of my time. I got burned pretty hard in Seattle during the 2008-2010 housing/financial crisis. I bought in '06 and sold in late '09. I had to pay someone a lot of money to buy my house from me. That was an experience I learned a lot from. It was humbling to say the least.
TLDR: A lot of life experience and a little bit of math.
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Baby I was born this way.
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Baby I was born this way.
Exactly. My parents and sister are terrible at dealing with money. No idea what happened with me.
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Hit rock bottom to the point where I was living in a rented room with defaulted student loans and maxed out credit cards and then read an article about MMM. The rest is history.
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One side of the family second generation mountain men. The other side of the family mid-western farmers. I watched my parents play this game every paycheck to see how fast they could get their checking to 0. My grandparents on both sides were extremely frugal, I don't know how that didn't pass on to my parents.
We were poor because of my parents choices. I did get a lot of great experiences from my parents choices and I even attended private school for a while. But, at the end of the day, they worked very hard for a lot of money that they quickly blew.
Consumerism never made much sense to me, I never understood why kid's parents paid extra to advertise on clothing for a company that paid slave workers in other countries to make their products. I learned early the value of the dollar. I learned later the value of my time. I got burned pretty hard in Seattle during the 2008-2010 housing/financial crisis. I bought in '06 and sold in late '09. I had to pay someone a lot of money to buy my house from me. That was an experience I learned a lot from. It was humbling to say the least.
TLDR: A lot of life experience and a little bit of math.
This is interesting because generally I tend to think that folks learn to be frugal by growing up without much resources, typically watching their parents work hard and squeeze a quarter. But in this case it seemed to skip a generation and you learned the lesson in a slightly different way.
With a large family and a factory job my dad always had part-time work as well. A bit of grit goes a long way.
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I've always been frugal/Mustachian, well before MMM started publishing his blog.
My family was poor. You name the welfare entitlement, we had it. And even with those entitlements my parents struggled to pay for things. A sudden emergency $50-100 expense would make them have to borrow money. They had zero emergency fund and sometimes had to borrow money just to pay the expected monthly bills. It didn't help that we had a large family. With more people around it feels like there's higher chances of someone getting sick or needing something for school or needing clothes or whatever the case may be. But they weren't exactly great at spending money wisely either.
I saw how much money was a constant stress for them and I didn't want to be in that situation. When I moved out at 19, I immediately started saving as much money as I could. I quickly got myself an emergency fund and set myself a goal of having $50k in savings. It has just gone from there. I'm also very frugal and carefully evaluate costs before I buy just about anything.
It's not just about frugality though. It's also about life choices and luck that affect where you go. Some examples of that: My parents never had (still don't) a bank or savings account. I had one starting at 17. My mom didn't have her first credit card until I was in my early teens and so had no credit most of my childhood (making loans more costly). She also paid minimum payments everytime and always had some sort of balance that she was paying interest on. I had my first credit card at 18 and paid the credit card off every month, never paying interest or fees. I was lucky in that I was making more money than my parents at 17, when I graduated from high school, because my good grades helped me get a great job. I never had kids and kept my spending low so I always had a large % of my income that I was saving every month.
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I watched my parents blow silly amounts of money on materialistic junk they would replace within a few years with newer and trendier materialistic junk. I was always a saver as a kid (not just with money, also Halloween candy and everything else), so that kind of conspicuous consumption always rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn't until I was older that I realized how much debt fueled this lifestyle - from the mortgage on a McMansion to a newly leased car every 3 years to credit cards that were never fully paid off. I made some stupid money mistakes in my college years based on this example, but when my student loans came due it was the wake-up call I needed to return to my inherent frugal ways.
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As a kid I observed my Dad leaving the house at 4am to go to his construction job each day. He would come home tired and immediately lay down for a nap. I admired what he was doing but always felt guilty that he was working so hard to take care of us while I had it pretty easy. At a very young age I set a goal to get an education and get a high paying job that would allow both me and my Dad to work less and hang out together more. This has led to becoming more Mustachian as the goal has changed to working/consuming less in order to spend time with my own children.
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I've always been frugal/Mustachian, well before MMM started publishing his blog.
My family was poor. You name the welfare entitlement, we had it. And even with those entitlements my parents struggled to pay for things. A sudden emergency $50-100 expense would make them have to borrow money. They had zero emergency fund and sometimes had to borrow money just to pay the expected monthly bills. It didn't help that we had a large family. With more people around it feels like there's higher chances of someone getting sick or needing something for school or needing clothes or whatever the case may be. But they weren't exactly great at spending money wisely either.
I saw how much money was a constant stress for them and I didn't want to be in that situation. When I moved out at 19, I immediately started saving as much money as I could. I quickly got myself an emergency fund and set myself a goal of having $50k in savings. It has just gone from there. I'm also very frugal and carefully evaluate costs before I buy just about anything.
It's not just about frugality though. It's also about life choices and luck that affect where you go. Some examples of that: My parents never had (still don't) a bank or savings account. I had one starting at 17. My mom didn't have her first credit card until I was in my early teens and so had no credit most of my childhood (making loans more costly). She also paid minimum payments everytime and always had some sort of balance that she was paying interest on. I had my first credit card at 18 and paid the credit card off every month, never paying interest or fees. I was lucky in that I was making more money than my parents at 17, when I graduated from high school, because my good grades helped me get a great job. I never had kids and kept my spending low so I always had a large % of my income that I was saving every month.
You did well to figure out personal finance on your own without any help at such a young age. I grew up under similar circumstances and I didn't figure things out until I was 29 and started reading Suze Orman. Did you have any life skills classes in high school? I received no life skills instruction at all. It's actually kind of amazing that we were both able to escape from poverty at all. Everything is stacked against the poor.
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My parents taught me nothing about money, other than its to make money and easier to spend it. I have watched them throughout my life claw their way up from nothing(prison cell and a shitty mobile home) to having an upper middle class lifestyle awash with luxury. I also watched them gamble(literally and figuratively) and otherwise waste it all until they were begging me for money to pay their electric bill.
I hit a point in my mid-20s when I realized I was heading down the same path, became horrified at the thought, and turned things around. Its been a slow journey, with some stumbles and missed opportunities, but overall I like where I am headed... FIRE.
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I got a lot of values and behaviors from my father. He saved a lot and was careful with money, and ended up retiring in his 50s. I'm on track to retire before I turn 40 I hope :)
One moment that I recall was some time during my first week on-the-job at a big company after graduating from college. I was in my cubicle, bored, annoyed, frustrated.... I knew I was only beginning my "career", but I wondered to myself "Do I really have to endure this for 40+ years? There's no way I can make it. I want to quit right now. Does everyone do this for years and years on end? This is awful."
I didn't go full-on-mustachian at that point, but I was saving quite a bit right out of the gate.
During the financial downtown in 2008-2009, I was extremely fortunate to not be laid off, when I saw dozens and dozens of my friends/co-workers/colleagues lose their jobs. At that point, I really cranked up my savings and investing. I did not like the feeling of uncertainty.
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I'm not that frugal, but the stress of getting into debt in my 20's/early 30's made me realize there was a better way to live. So I resolved to vanquish debt, and save for the future. Finding MMM a few years ago really helped me fine tune things; I realized how much money I was still wasting day in and day out. My wife thinks I've gone too far, that I'm too frugal, but I'm not even close to frugal by this website's standards -- it's just that she's so, so far from frugal that my common-sense spending looks crazy frugal to her.
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My father was terrible with money but an incredible dreamer. Before I was born he ran the family farm, did some land deals, and owned a produce market. He was a millionaire by 30 and this was in the early 80's. When he sold the farm he parlayed all that money into a nursery and landscaping business. That was the early 90's. A couple years after he opened Walmart and Lowes came to town, followed by the commercial real estate crash in the mid-90's. The business went bankrupt and the property couldn't be sold. The bank foreclosed and we were penniless by the time I was 11. Every venture he tried after that failed but he never stopped trying until a few years ago when his health started declining.
I believe that my frugality came from not wanting to end up like my parents did, and my entrepreneurial spirit and initiative came from seeing him working for himself my entire life. My mother worked with him until they divorced and she began working a traditional job to support us (since my father was no good for any money due to his terrible monetary habits).
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Necessity.
My wife decided she wanted to be a stay at home mom when my oldest was born. We didn't make any money when she was working and that got cut in half when she quit. We started down the Dave Ramsey path (which got us rolling). Since then work has always been the motivator to be FIRE.
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Necessity.
My wife decided she wanted to be a stay at home mom when my oldest was born. We didn't make any money when she was working and that got cut in half when she quit. We started down the Dave Ramsey path (which got us rolling). Since then work has always been the motivator to be FIRE.
Same here.
Luckily we didn't know about MMM before my wife stopped working because we probably wouldn't have had kids so early but I wouldn't change it for the world. We were 26 when my daughter was born. My dad died when he was 54 and my brother was only 13. Didn't want that to happen with me.
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Like a few others here I think I was just born with it, and also like JZinCO I listened to a lot of Punk Rock as a teenager :). Now that I'm 25 I've also forgone the left leaning politics but am still anti-consumerism, and I suppose really just the desire to have that freedom is my driving factor. My parents are also terrible with money, and from them I learned what not to do.
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Just went back to how we lived growing up. We were poor, so no choice in frugal. After I started making some $$ I went a little crazy for a while, realized the stuff didn't make my life any better and came back for the most part.
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I wish I was born frugal and/or learned the way of the mustache earlier. My mother was a single mom to two kids. She worked full-time so often she would get fast food for us for dinner, every night and she bought new cars every couple of years. As of now she still owes over 50,000 on student loans even though she makes over 6 figures a year. So I grew up thinking that was normal (and sadly it is somewhat normal, for America at least). I followed in her footsteps as I got a job, ate out often and indulged in consumerism. During my twenties I made a decent wage but felt poor because of my spending and did not pay on my debt at all. The only good thing about that is it led to bad credit, which was good because my bad credit meant that I didn't have any credit cards so my debt is really limited to student loans and my pre-MMM car.
My path to frugalness started with my of my friends, she is quite frugal and would talk about expenses and choosing not to indulge because she was saving or paying off bills. I started to review my finances and be aware of what I owed and actually paying on my debts (minimal payments). I met my boyfriend through that friend and he introduced me to MMM, I got addicted and read through all his posts. It was something I would never had thought possible. This new knowledge furthered my progress. I started a budget, quit going out to eat for lunch, quit smoking, and started paying more than required. I am not bad-ass at it yet, I am still optimizing my spending but every year I am better and I am motivated to keep on this frugal journey.
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Well I was raised by a single mother of three. She provided to the best of her ability and it wasn't until I had my own job and was paying for bills how hard she must have worked. We never starved and had our needs met despite the little income that was coming in. So I never had any spendypants examples. I went to community college and had a part time job where i saved a few pennies. Got through that with the help of grants, scholarships, and money from my mother and me. Once I graduated and got my first job I moved out from home and in with a good friend.
The only real mistake I made looking back on things now was I bought a 3 year old car that I now know depreciates fast and is expensive to work on right before getting that job. The payments were affordable though :p I then got Dave Ramsey as a xmas present from mother and new stepdad that really piqued my interest. So I spent down most of my savings towards the only debt I had, that car. Eventually my roommate's gf moved in and that really cut down on living expenses. Payed that car off in two years and haven't look back.
I stumbled onto MMM along the way and I'm chugging along. Still have improvements I can make but I'm ahead of the game compared to a lot of Americans.
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Like a few others here I think I was just born with it, and also like JZinCO I listened to a lot of Punk Rock as a teenager :). Now that I'm 25 I've also forgone the left leaning politics but am still anti-consumerism, and I suppose really just the desire to have that freedom is my driving factor. My parents are also terrible with money, and from them I learned what not to do.
Glad I'm not the only one!
I'll also add that punk rock gave me a perspective from which to assess others' habits. For example, I was highly critical of my parents decision to sell their starter home, buy some property and build a house as well as owning 4 vehicles (one commuter and 3 fun vehicles). Though it was their 'dream', it was all financed and my dad works in a very volatile industry of which he was laid off in 2008. They still struggle to make payments today.
My sister and BIL were also planning to go the same exact route and the BIL was laid off this year (in the same volatile industry). Despite being out of work for a few months, I believe that saved their ass from making big mistakes.
I doubt I will ever make as much (inflation adj) as my parents or older siblings but at least I have learned second hand from their decision making.
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Funny: Some of us were raised in poverty; some not. Some had thrifty parents and learned from their examples; some had spendy ones and learned from their mistakes. Many of us have siblings or other relatives who spend way more than they earn, despite having been raised in similar environments. Many of us were already frugal before finding MMM and his forums.
It looks like we were born with a frugal temperament, so we all found our way to that philosophy & lifestyle regardless of our origins.
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Also a child of immigrants. They've done very well for themselves, have always been very very frugal, and instilled these values on me and my sister. I was born and raised this way basically.
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Interesting thread. Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories!
I was raised in a large family with a low income so things were always very tight. My parents were very frugal and believed in living debt-free. But there were lots of things friends got to enjoy that I didn't. I wasn't bitter and totally understood but when I started making money, I spent it all. Got married to someone who was raised poorer than I was and had no interest in saving. He felt we were rich because we could pay all of our bills. But not really because a lot was on credit cards, car payment, etc.
About a year into our marriage, we were both unemployed and got down to less than $100 in the bank before I finally got a job. It was terrifying for me. We ended up declaring bankruptcy and the entire experience fundamentally changed my financial outlook. I realized I needed to count and take care of myself. I was rabidly anti-debt after that. Read Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman, etc voraciously, started saving in 401k, personal savings, etc. Still not nearly as good as I could have been doing but way more than "normal."
My husband never was interested in saving and wasn't as affected by that situation as I was and this was part of the reason we ended up divorcing. I got really serious about MMM-style living a couple years ago. Wish I had embraced it sooner but am grateful to be there now.
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I grew up middle-to-upper-middle-class, and my parents were pretty good with money. They've never carried a loan on a car or balances on their credit cards. Most of our yearly vacations were road trips across country where we stayed with friends or relatives- we did one trip to Disney World that all of us would now agree wasn't worth it; we were too young to really remember it, and my sister was sick the whole time. My dad taught me a lot about finances and taxes. My mom was frugal to the point of being cheap and a lot of that rubbed off on me. I was taught to eat (and appreciate) what is put in front of me and not waste food, and so I'm about the least picky eater imaginable as a result. Although I don't remember ever actually hearing it used, the adage "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" was our mantra.
Aside from that, the other big impact on me was working as a bank teller in high school and into college. I regularly witnessed customers (who I knew had well-paying jobs) get into major trouble from a single mistake with their paycheck or a deposit because they had no emergency fund or savings built up. I decided then that I never wanted to be in that situation, so even before I knew about MMM I was determined to be debt free and have enough in savings to weather any emergencies that may come up.
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I came from a large family with a very good income. My personal wants were always either few or met quickly and easily at which point I was just satisfied. I also have a naturally non-jealous/covetous temperament. My parent’s still tell the story of how when I was twelve months old on Christmas I opened my first present, a Rudolph toy that would walk and blink his nose, and I was literally done opening gifts. I had absolutely no further interest in all the other presents my parents got me. I was their first child and they were so bummed even as I was happy as a clam.
Somewhere along the way this morphed into my believing that my parents believed that my siblings and I were all ungrateful and spoiled. Heck maybe we were, it’s not really easy to be objective about these questions from the inside. My mom didn’t work and my dad was always “joking” about how she got to stay home eating bonbons all day. My mom once went on a rant about how I’d be on my own if I ever made the decision to move in with a boyfriend (I was a teen in high school and not even dating or partying at the time, I have no idea where this came from). When I went to college, classes became hard for the first time in my life and my grades suffered which lead me to feeling extremely guilty and depressed about wasting my parent’s money.
All of this is lead to a subconscious and eventually fully realized conclusion that money is power. If someone gives you their money, they have some power over you. They get to have a say in how you spend your life or emotionally manipulate you. I have no desire to control anyone else or let anyone else control me. My draw to the MMM site has very little to do with the anti-consumerism, environmentalism, or even retiring early. I just want to do everything in my power to be fully and completely independent of anyone else’s control, having the power to eventually quit my job is just a part of that.
It’s not all psychological trauma though. I always knew that credit cards should be paid in full. In fact, I remember when I first learned that there was even an option to not pay the full amount and thought it was so weird and dumb that anyone would ever buy something that they couldn’t pay off right away. I also saw that if something (furniture, electronics, clothing) was good enough then there really wasn’t a need to replace it right away even if you could easily afford it. Listening to my grandparents talk about how rough things were when they were briefly extremely poor (had to purchase food from the general store on credit back when it was basically understood it was charity) made me realize how going through rough times sucks but you can bear through it because it’s not going to be like that forever. To put it another way, a little bit of short term suffering and delayed gratification is fine as long as you’re working toward a long term goal.
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Just how I was born, I guess I saw it from how my parents were even though they are less frugal than I am.
Just seems like common sense to me.
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grew up poor.
Learned to not spend money I didn't have.
Eventually started making more money and spending more. Found out about the Simple Living Forums from an article in the LA times, back in 2000-ish? Found out about Complete Tightwad Gazette.
That's about it.
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Grew up poor, got pregnant and single young, so found myself living below the poverty line on my own with a baby and no support. After 5 years very close to the breadline while working/studying, I got my first professional job. Then spent the next 3 years putting every extra cent earned into:
a) a car (purchased a lemon 2ndhand, blew up 2 weeks later, had to buy another, cost me $18k over three years), and
b) dental bills (having never had good dental care, I paid out of pocket for multiple root canals, crowns, work that was badly needed - around $20k all up.
Around three years ago I came to a curious point where every cent I earned wasn't going to a much needed bill, and it started amassing (it was the oddest thing, for ages I was waiting for the other shoe to drop!). All those years of never having a cent to spare had trained me really well to living on the minimum. So I've kept saving, I've added $20k extra to my student loans over the past two years, and will wipe them out totally by August. I'm also paying upfront for my grad school fees ($5k/semester), and saving for a wedding (yay!). The lifestyle has put me in a wonderful position, where I'll soon be free to switch careers, find something I actually love, without worrying about supporting an inflated lifestyle.
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I never was particularly spendy, but I was more of a cash hoarder as a kid than frugal, per se. I was pretty aware that whenever I spent my saved up birthday/Christmas money on something today, that meant I wouldn't be able to spend it tomorrow if something I wanted even more came around. My parents had a policy of going halfway with me on gifts if they were bigger-ticket items; I think that helped a bit.
I liken it to hoarding potions and consumable items while playing a video game: I'm so reluctant to use them that I end up finishing the game with almost every item I picked up. I was introduced to MMM by a friend and classmate in college, and I've been plotting my takeover of the world saving with a purpose ever since.
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I liken it to hoarding potions and consumable items while playing a video game: I'm so reluctant to use them that I end up finishing the game with almost every item I picked up. I was introduced to MMM by a friend and classmate in college, and I've been plotting my takeover of the world saving with a purpose ever since.
Heh. The video game theory is interesting. I used to play a lot of video game RPGs as a kid. My strategy was always to hoard money and items, and just deal with the difficulties by levelling up my character. Usually about half way through the game you can buy super powerful items which, once combined with your superpowerful characters (from working harder than the designers expected) made the rest of the game a cake walk.
It makes me wonder if I owe a large part of my frugal habits to video games. :P
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I was never really interested in money itself, and that carries on today. Managing my investments requires a nearly impossible level of thought, since my eyes glaze over and I fall asleep withing minutes of starting.
I had a vague intuition growing up that money was pretty tight, but my folks never talked about money at all, other than to say "That's too expensive" when I wanted something. I had one friend at school whose family was really hard up, and I learned a lot hanging out with him. They had no TV, and did all car repairs themselves, sometimes with hilarious results. Except for a brief few years in my late twenties when I was a bachelor with a good income, I have always lived small, no car, cheap apartments, few purchases. It seems normal to me. We have cars and a house now, but still keep expenses low.
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I liken it to hoarding potions and consumable items while playing a video game: I'm so reluctant to use them that I end up finishing the game with almost every item I picked up. I was introduced to MMM by a friend and classmate in college, and I've been plotting my takeover of the world saving with a purpose ever since.
Heh. The video game theory is interesting. I used to play a lot of video game RPGs as a kid. My strategy was always to hoard money and items, and just deal with the difficulties by levelling up my character. Usually about half way through the game you can buy super powerful items which, once combined with your superpowerful characters (from working harder than the designers expected) made the rest of the game a cake walk.
It makes me wonder if I owe a large part of my frugal habits to video games. :P
I was pretty terrible about this in RPG's too. Except Diablo 1; I pictured make character ODing every 5 mins from all of those pots.
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My parents are frugal, which helped.
Plus, I just never had any interest in expensive or fancy things.
I don't give a damn about jewelry, fancy cars, expensive clothes, designer anything. I prefer functional over "hey, look at me" in anything I buy.
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My parents never had a lot of money and after making a couple dumb consumer purchases that I regretted I figured it was time to start saving and Investing. Got started with Dave Ramsey and then quickly picked up MMM. I wouldn't say I'm super frugal but I make sure what I do spend my money on will be worth it to me in the long run. About 4 years have passed and we are sitting on a nice 224k net worth and about 60% savings rate at the ages of 26 and 23. I'm also starting to help my parents with Investing and retirement planning as well. Better late than never I guess....
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I was making $9 an hour as a draftsman. Had to get something fixed on my car. Mechanic rate was $40 an hour. Eye opener.
Decided I would try to get as much money as possible by going into computer programming. Suffered through 16 years as programmer, making good money, living frugally, then pulled the trigger to retire.
What I have always found fascinating is there are so many people doing hard jobs that help the economy who make low wages, like $10 an hour, and other jobs that really don't help the economy, that are easier, that make more money than the productive jobs. i.e. it seems some jobs are underpaid and some are way overpaid. I'd give some examples of overpaid jobs, but I don't want to offend anybody! Ha HA. And yah, I guess I would say yes if offered one of those overpaid jobs, but still....
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What I have always found fascinating is there are so many people doing hard jobs that help the economy who make low wages, like $10 an hour, and other jobs that really don't help the economy, that are easier, that make more money than the productive jobs. i.e. it seems some jobs are underpaid and some are way overpaid. I'd give some examples of overpaid jobs, but I don't want to offend anybody! Ha HA. And yah, I guess I would say yes if offered one of those overpaid jobs, but still....
Agreed -- and I too am in one of those overpaid jobs, and grateful to have had the education and savvy to pick a lucrative career path.
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Long before I had heard of Mr. Money Mustache, I read the book Possum Living and it changed everything. I reevaluated my entire lifestyle and sat down and made a plan with my then boyfriend to live differently. Due to a weird and very coincidental circumstance, I ended up meeting Dolly Freed and becoming email buddies with her. Eight years later, despite all the life changes that have come my way (including the end of the relationship with above boyfriend and losing touch with Ms. Freed), and falling off the financial wagon several times, I'm back at it and determined to make it stick. I've always been frugal in big purchases, but I haven't always made the best decisions about what to save for or how to save. I'm changing that, and I still credit that book for opening my eyes to the idea that life can be different than the status quo.