Hello Andrea, welcome to MMM.
I remember reading your reddit and was taken aback by the hateful comments. I made a comment in support of you. (I went back to try and find my comment, but there are so many comments, I gave up.)
Here you'll find people not only in agreement with you, but give you congratulations and support. When MMM is interviewed in major news publications, even though his story is super compelling, the comments are mostly haters. I've even found it on other financial forums I respect such as the Bogleheads.
Just to let you know, I found your post on reddit inspiring. TBH, I found it a bit unpolished and that even attracted me more because I could see the honesty.
Also I tried the link you posted to your blog, but I had no luck getting to your page.
Interesting dichotomy--here you're respected, in the mainstream you're ridiculed.
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BTW, there's something else I want to get off my chest:
I remember years ago I saw a friend who had lost a lot of weight. I was immediately congratulatory and asked him how he had lost his weight.
Not to brag, but I'm in excellent health and I'm complemented quite often. I was playing tennis with friends this Sunday and a number of them were mentioning how they needed to lose weight and what they were doing.
Just like in finance, I've learned to keep my mouth shut, but nevertheless, I'm surprised that not one of them would at least ask me a cursory question about it.
I really appreciate the support. I fixed the blog link, so it should work now. I just didn't want to copy-paste my blog over to reddit, because I felt it was tl;dr for reddit, so I dashed something off, and...wow. I do think that I'm privileged in the way I grew up, and that my parents taught me a lot about saving, frugality, and just general DIY. They're very mustachian in the way that they lived and are now enjoying the benefits, and I picked up a lot of their habits. My husband had things a lot rougher than me, but he's got an amazing work ethic and he's incredibly smart. I'll admit to being torn, since I do believe that some people just got a bum deal in life. I want to be compassionate to that.
On the other hand, I know so many people who make the same money or more than my husband and I, and they're living paycheck to paycheck. That was my intended audience, rather than those who are already frugal. I mean...do you really need those new shoes or that new purse? That brand new car? The financed furniture?
I'm picking up some lovely new tips from reading around here, and though we'd originally planned to retire at 55, we're now wondering if we can hit retirement earlier! We're both extremely goal-oriented, so now that we've hit this one goal, we're looking to see what we can do next :)
