MMM Turns 10

[odput]

I didn't want this occasion to go unmarked, so I figured pointing it out in the forum is the best I could do - the very first post of MMM is dated 4/6/2011:
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/06/meet-mr-money-mustache/

So to celebrate, I thought I'd share my overall MMM picture. I didn't start reading until late 2012, but at the time I had a large student loan balance, a mortgage (FHA w/ 3.5% down, so around 97%LTV), a car loan, a wife's car loan, and some credit card debt in the form of store 0% promotional purchases for furniture and appliances. I was mostly paying my monthly credit card bills on time and in full, but some months I would miss the "in full" part. We had a small 401(k) amount stashed away, but we were contributing maybe only a little more than company matches.

Fast forward to today. Student loan is killed. Car loans are killed. We've moved twice, and still have a mortgage, although we're at about 79% LTV in a slightly more expensive housing area of the country. Haven't apid interest on a credit card since 2016. We are renovating our kitchen, mostly ourselves (outsourcing some work like countertops) and paying cash for the whole thing. Wife and I are both maxing 401(k)s, and have a balance that would probably support a very lean FIRE. We're still working and stashing to get to our desired FIRE expense level, which should be coming in the next few years.

How has MMM affected your financial and life picture? Anyone been around since the beginning have a big transformation? I know a lot of the early readers and forum goers were already the frugal types, so following MMM was an exercise in back-patting for a lot of folks, but surely there were some in the beginning that, like me, didn't have all this stuff spelled out for them by mainstream financial advice and had their world turned right-side-up, and are nearing the end of the stashing phase of their FIRE journey. I'd love to hear some success stories, now that the MMM blog has been around longer than the MMM software career.

[fuzzy math]

In 2011 I was in debt, had 2.5 children, a $40k minivan loan, a house that I was $100k underwater in, and about $15k saved in retirement. I found MMM in 2012 via some article that had gone viral and devoured his content. Not believing I could do it, a couple years passed and I didn't do anything / forgot. Another article went viral and I went back and reread everything and started to make changes. 9 years after my first exposure to MMM I've saved over $700k and am on track to retire in 2 years. He is truly one of the most influential people in my life (ie that I've read). Someday perhaps he will either read this, or I'll get the chance to tell him that he changed my life quite profoundly.

[mozar]

I started reading in 2012. It didn't change my financial picture so much, but because of the website and forum I have profoundly improved my mental health.
I was suicidal and there's a chance I wouldn't be here anymore if it wasn't for this forum. I know that sounds crazy for just a personal finance website, but this website gave me a pathway to the light, and the tremendous amount of support (and face punches!) I've gotten from people on the forum has been life changing.

[Mr. Green]

It changed my life. Found the site in December 2014. Had never heard of a Roth conversion pipeline, and we were intentionally NOT maxing out our 401ks because we knew we would retire before 60 and didn't want that money tied up in a vehicle we couldn't access without penalty. What a personal finance noob I was. We also had ton of money sitting in cash.

Over the course of a few month's education here I optimized our investing. We started paring back our spending as we realized how much waste there was, and how much closer to FI we'd be if our costs came down.

Who the hell knows what we'd be doing if I'd never seen the site. Maybe still sitting at my desk! *shudder*

[Life in Balance]

Wow, @mozar, that's amazing.  You never know what small thing will change the course of your life.

I am so grateful to MMM and the forums for letting me know ER was possible.  Ten years ago I was caretaking for my parents and worried about my own health.  Reading here (and at Get Rich Slowly) helped me make big decisions (e.g. downsizing my house and mortgage and then saving the difference as much as possible pre-tax) that otherwise might not have occurred to me.  15 months ago I had to leave my job due to health concerns and, while I was only at 20x expenses, I felt confident that I could figure things out.  As it turns out, my health has slowly started to improve as a result of leaving my job.  I never would have been able to take that leap if I hadn't had the savings cushion.

[ericrugiero]

I found MMM about 3 years ago.  Before that, I was fairly good with money and just coasting to retirement at 60.  We made good decisions on major purchases but didn't optimize the small things and we weren't aggressive savers because I hadn't seen a path to early retirement.  We were already going to have plenty to retire at 60 so it didn't really matter. 

We still haven't fully optimized our day to day expenses because my wife and I aren't totally on the same page but we are much more aggressive about paying ourselves first and living on what's left.  401K balance, Roth IRA, mega backdoor Roth 401K are all climbing nicely.  I'm not sure what the future holds for my career but it's nice to have FU money and be well on the way to FI.  It looks somewhat likely that my plant will close by the time I'm 50 so that could possibly coincide with FIRE.  MMM has taken a lot of the stress out of that situation.  Now plant closing could just take away the option of OMY rather than being a super stressful event.  Optimizing and saving just gives us a lot more options. 

[RWD]

Had never heard of a Roth conversion pipeline, and we were intentionally NOT maxing out our 401ks

This was us as well. Understanding investments and such was the biggest benefit for me as we were already frugal.

Ten years ago we were very upside down on our house (owed maybe 50% more than it was worth), still had my student loans, and was only putting the minimum in my 401k to get the match. By the end of 2011 I had finished paying off my student loans, the house bottomed out in value (~$100k less than we paid), and I started thinking about investments. I started dabbling in hard money loans which went okay but were kind of a hassle and very tax-inefficient. My wife and I both got raises putting our household income over six figures for the first time in 2012. We bought a brand new car in early 2013 (total cost write-up here) which I definitely wouldn't have done if I had discovered MMM just a little earlier.

In early 2014 I started researching how much money is needed for retirement. I found a lot of different articles but nothing really resonated with me. Most commonly I found articles parroting the 80% of income replacement which didn't make any sense to me. But on the other end of the spectrum I found someone who claimed to have "retired" on $7k (not income, total stash/savings = $7k) while their significant other continued to work, which was just as useless. Eventually (June 2014?) I stumbled across the MMM blog (don't remember exactly how, maybe a link from Reddit). Finally something that made sense! I binged the entire blog over the next few months. After I caught up on the blog I joined the forums.

One of the first changes I made was maxing my 401k. Having investments and retirement accounts demystified was what I really needed to finally embrace the stock market and stop looking at weird alternate investments.

[djadziadax]

I started reading in April 2017. It changed my life.

We started with 180K in retirement and 20K in brokerage, 10% savings rate, and on a verge of losing one salary. Anxiety galore. Fast forward to today - 1.2MM in investments. All from making changes related to reading MMM "cover to cover" along with other FI bloggers.

[Adventine]

In 2011, I was early in my career, struggling with a 2 hour one way commute (so 4 hours of my life wasted daily in bumper to bumper traffic).

I didn't have any debt, but didn't have much in terms of assets or income, either.

I found The True Cost of Commuting through a Lifehacker article and it opened my eyes that life didn't have to be this way.

I joined the forum shortly after. It changed my life.

Some things that happened because of MMM (the blog and the forum):

- became financially independent of my parents much earlier than my peers did
- moved to cheap places within walking distance of my job and based most career decisions on how easy I could get to the job without a car
- met my now-husband
- moved to a different country much earlier than expected and less prepared than I thought I would be, in terms of physical possessions and readily available assets. But I'm adapting well so far because of my ultra-minimalistic Mustachian habits.

[techwiz]

Wow 10 years!





Thanks MMM

[WhiteTrashCash]

Before discovering MMM and the FIRE movement, I was -$80,000 net worth. Now I'm +$500,000 net worth. Not too shabby. MMM and the FIRE movement have completely changed my mindset about money, possessions, values, pursuits, employment, and many other things. Thanks for everything, Pete!

[Zikoris]

It's mostly just kept me entertained and helped me meet other FIRE-oriented people. I was learning about FIRE just as MMM was starting up, and I was mostly following ERE then, which was REALLY life changing for me, because it's much more in line with my beliefs and lifestyle preferences.

As a non-American, the only posts that are relevant to me are the more philosophical ones, as the nuts-and-bolts posts are so American-specific.

[FIRE Artist]

I started reading MMM in 2014 on a recommendation from someone in a YNAB forum.  I was already frugal, already really good at saving and had been for years so nothing changed for me on that front, but what it did do is make me realize that instead of retiring rich at a normal age, I could just retire early.  Why I hadn’t figured that out on my own, I don’t know, but I chalk it up to a combination of failure of imagination and lack of any role models.  The possibility of retiring early, even earlier than the old Freedom 55 commercials of the 80’s boasted about, has really changed my relationship with work, and how I think about what life in retirement looks like in general.  MMM gave us a role model where previously there was none. 

[WSUCoug1994]

I found this site in 2014 on our flight to Thailand for our honeymoon.  Married late and figured I could retire early and hang out with my non-existent kids at the time.  I was pretty good overall B+/A- with my money - maxed out retirements, lived on 30% of my income but my mutual fund fees were killing me and were not really good investments overall.  This was about finding like minded people, understanding how to calculate not only how much money I would need to retire but also how to calculate my impact on the world/environment.  Found some pieces of Stoicism that resonated and became unhealthily obsessed with SORR.  Although we were never bad, we are much more thoughtful with our spending and our impact - which I love.  This site changed my life - no question.

[meandmyfamily]

Wow this post made me look up when I joined and I literally joined exactly 6 years to the day!!!  April 6, 2015

I didn't start tracking net worth until June of that year.  Our net worth was $147,000 then and it is now $475,000.  Every year is better and better.  We are a single income, homeschooling family with 4 kids.  Our mindset has been changed.  I am very thankful for finding this site.  We are excited to have a plan to be in an excellent position at 51 with all the kids over 18 and the flexibility to do what we want with our time.

[ender]

It's mostly just kept me entertained and helped me meet other FIRE-oriented people. I was learning about FIRE just as MMM was starting up, and I was mostly following ERE then, which was REALLY life changing for me, because it's much more in line with my beliefs and lifestyle preferences.

As a non-American, the only posts that are relevant to me are the more philosophical ones, as the nuts-and-bolts posts are so American-specific.

What's crazy to me is how much closer to ERE this forum used to be compared to now.

[pdxvandal]

Discovered in early 2013 when my job was annoying the f@%# out of me and made my first post in April 2013. I sure sounded like a noobtastic neophyte in those first 6 months before I had really digested the entire blog. And I considered myself naturally frugal at that time, amassing a net worth of about $325,000 (house not included). But MMM helped me kick it into a much higher gear, and my NW now stands at just over $1M, and this includes taking almost a year off from FT work and not working in high-wage jobs. The FU money is real and I'm going to continue working until everything opens back up, then reassess and plan my exit in 2022 or 2023. MMM has been very instrumental and inspirational in my own financial journey, more than anyone else in my life.

[MoneyTree]

Good thread topic!

Found the site after some major news outlet featured MMM, probably around 2013. Back then, was a single guy, making $50k a year.

I was already doing what I thought was kicking butt, saving about 25%. I probably would have saved more, too, but didn’t really have any good reason to save more since I assumed that I’d be working til 60. Didn’t know that there was another option, so might as well spend the surplus.

When I learned that you could actually use that money to purchase freedom instead, it blew my mind and changed my life. There is a distinct “kink” in my net worth chart where the slope increased and my NW started increasing at an accelerated rate after finding MMM.

Later joined the forums, learned a ton of useful stuff about investing, tax optimization, side hustle ideas.

Got married, changed jobs, had a kid, now I am earning over 3x what I was back then, DW is no longer working, and I could FIRE if i wanted to, but just adding some extra padding to the stache, in case of unforeseen life changes.

I still can’t really believe it.

[Mr. Green]

It's mostly just kept me entertained and helped me meet other FIRE-oriented people. I was learning about FIRE just as MMM was starting up, and I was mostly following ERE then, which was REALLY life changing for me, because it's much more in line with my beliefs and lifestyle preferences.

As a non-American, the only posts that are relevant to me are the more philosophical ones, as the nuts-and-bolts posts are so American-specific.

What's crazy to me is how much closer to ERE this forum used to be compared to now.

Definitely. Feels like in early 2015 the FIRE spend most people aspired to was 20-40k and now it's more like 40-80k. That's going mainstream for you!

[WSUCoug1994]

It's mostly just kept me entertained and helped me meet other FIRE-oriented people. I was learning about FIRE just as MMM was starting up, and I was mostly following ERE then, which was REALLY life changing for me, because it's much more in line with my beliefs and lifestyle preferences.

As a non-American, the only posts that are relevant to me are the more philosophical ones, as the nuts-and-bolts posts are so American-specific.

What's crazy to me is how much closer to ERE this forum used to be compared to now.

Although I read a lot of personal finance blogs - ERE just never really resonated with me for some reason.  I am one of those "new age kids" that wasn't striving for the $25K a year.  I am likely part of that inflation problem the site has seen since going mainstream.  I really did feel like I found my tribe here that I couldn't find with friends or family.  The MMM philosophies have really had an amazing impact on my finances but also on my life.   Although I won't retire until next year (Age 51) because of this site I will be able to be a huge part of my wife and kids lives (2.5 and 5 years) that this 80 hour a week job would never have let me do without the insights from this site and the forum.

I will forever be grateful to Pete and all of you for sharing your insights and wisdom.

[Alternatepriorities]

It's kind of fun thinking back on the last 10 years.

April 2011 - I didn't know there were other people making engineering money and saving most of it. I thought I was the only one and probably crazy so I didn't even think to look. I'd just hit 100k invested in retirement accounts by the age of 30 and figured I the money for nice regular age retirement as long as I didn't spend it early. Work wasn't great, but the rest of life seemed to be going pretty well.

April 2012 - Turns out things at work were worse than I realized. I had more than a years expenses stashed on top of the previous 100k, so I used my money to walk away and travel the world for for a year.

April 2013 - Returned to work with a new job. The transition was a bit of a system shock but it went alright and I was saving 50% again.
Oct 2013 - Discovered MMM. Learned a bunch and started optimizing in new ways.

April 2014 - Gave notice at the new position after deciding to follow (now) DW to a remote village off the road system. Left June 1st for an 800 mile bike ride before moving.

Nov 2014 - Started my first business.

June 2016 - Left the remote village and took two months to walk across Spain and visit friends in Europe with DW.

(Four years of Mustachian life with extra travel)

Nov 2020 - FI! Promise my best client I'll finish one last project since it's cold and dark here and world outside is shut down anyway.

April - 2021 - I'll be fully vaccinated and finished with "one last project" by the end of the month!

[Midwest_Handlebar]

It was roughly 2013 when I found MMM. The new bride and I had roughly $100k in NW and $120k in income. We had lived it up in the "big city" the year prior, but had finally got that out of our system. Moved back into a rental property I had in a LCL area where we started prioritizing what was important. Fast forward 8 years and we have 4 paid off rentals and a primary with 2.5% financing, and $700k in retirement. We've tripled our income and had two kids during all this. I'm debating on pulling the plug this year, but it's the best work environment I've ever had. MMM truly changed my life and I'm just amazed what we've been able to accomplish in such a short period of time. So grateful.

[RobertFromTX]

I came across the MMM blog in maybe 2013? 2012? But I was kind of dismissive because I thought I already had a good handle on my person finances. I was around 25-26 at the time, modest homeowner, small vehicle loan, no CC/student loan debt.

It wasn't until 2016/2017 that I circled back around to it and really dug in to the articles. It completely changed the trajectory of my life - savings/investments took off like a rocketship.

I don't regret how it all happened for me, I was ready when I was ready.

[chemistk]

I found MMM after reading an article on, I think it was, Jalopnik - the author was writing about her experience ditching car commuting for bikes in Japan and on a whim I decided to dig into MMM.

Like others here, it really changed how I saw money and finances. My wife and I recently had our first child and I was starting to feel frayed thinking about how our financial picture would be changing. I really got hooked on the idea of Early Retirement and I think I originally targeted 40 to retire. That's not the case now (having a newborn, I was seriously hooked on MMM's posts about being able to spend time with his son, not stopping to think "wait...at 40, he'll be a highschooler"), and I've shifted that target to closer to 50. The FI part is massively more important to me now, and I've been able to see that thanks to the enormous wisdom and insight on these forums.

Sometimes I think about how I would have done things if I hadn't ever discovered MMM/PF media, and given the track record of my parents and in-laws I think we'd be in a way worse place.

[socaso]

I think I started reading in 2014. At the time it was inspirational but our budget was so tight and the COL so high where we were that it seemed impossible to get ahead. We were caught in a cycle of running up about $5000-7000 in credit card debt, struggling to pay it off and swearing "never again" then totally doing it again. Both of our jobs were pretty low pay and we had a young child so daycare expenses were very high.

Since then we have moved to a LCOL area, bought a house, got much better jobs, paid off about $30k of consumer debt (car loan and CC) and saved over $130k in retirement accounts. In general life is more peaceful. We now have savings accounts with targeted goals like travel and buying a new car.

I had done a lot of personal finance reading prior to MMM. I had read "Your Money or Your Life", "Start Late Finish Rich", and my perennial favorite "Tightwad Gazette". The difference with MMM was reading the comments, case studies, and forums were people were implementing these changes in their lives. Some posters have great relationships with each other and really encourage each other.

[lemonlyman]

My networth was close to -$170k when I found MMM in 2014 with student debt and mortgage. I was having a bit of a panic about money with my first child on the way. The blog really helped set me down a good path. My net worth is closer to $2 million now and I ~retire at the end of the year. A lot of my opinions have divulged from classic MMM over the years as I've learned more about money and investing but massively influential on my life.

[Slow road to freedom]

Great to reflect on what Pete and MMM have done. For me, I discovered in 2016 and it felt like I’d found the missing piece of my life jigsaw. It shone a light on practical tactics that aligned with my nagging doubt that I didn’t want to wait for a conventional retirement age to pursue other interests with gusto.

The last 5 years have seen 100k mortgage disappear and savings get soooo close to FI level. Without MMM I was sleep walking. Now I’m really excited about FIREing to unpaid work!

[thesis]

FI was something I had always wanted but never known I could achieve. After starting to read MMM 4 years ago, as well as other sites like ERE and Millennial Revolution soon after, everything started to click. I'm about 25% lean FI, for what that counts, but even more than a FI number of any kind, my life has magnitudes more freedom in it because of my financial decisions, largely inspired by the FIRE community. Cheers.

[use2betrix]

Just last week I was looking back at my first post from March 7th, 2015 thinking it would be fun to start a thread where everyone reflected at where we started when we joined, vs where we are now. Fortunately, this thread has nicely taken that direction.

When I started:
26 y/o - 155k income
Savings/Investments: $53k

Debts:
Student Loans: $12k
Truck/Trailer (lived full time in trailer and traveled all over the country for work): $95k

Net Worth: -$83k

Today:
32 y/o - $350k income
Savings/Investments: $925k
Debts: Owe $35k on a truck but it’s worth $70k, also don’t consider my other paid off vehicles which would push my NW over $1MM.

I can firmly say that MMM changed my life. I probably read every single blog post twice before I ever knew that the forum existed. I am a bit of an “outsider” highlighted by a few above where my spending definitely isn’t around ERE or MMM levels.

That being said, I do believe that if people can follow the guidance of the blog and use it to drastically improve their life, their savings, their impact on the environment, and their future, then it’s a big benefit.

The financial comfort that this site has provided me has helped exponentially, year after year. I have worked as a contractor in industrial construction most of my career, which means every 6 months - 2 years I’m typically finishing a project, and moving somewhere else in the country for the next job. In 2017, I got to the point where I was able to comfortably take a life changing 4 month sabbatical (2 months backpacking Asia, 1 month motorcycling through Baja, camping on the beaches with my wife). Worked for 4 months, then another 4 month sabbatical with several months camping around the U.S. and Canada.

In regards to my career and my success, the financial security has helped me in a few ways:
1. Having FU money allows me to perform my responsibility at the utmost levels. I am in a position in which integrity must be unwavering, although there is significant pressure from cost and schedule restraints which are constantly pressuring this. Knowing I have the money to say “FU” if they won’t accept my decisions in certain aspects where I believe safety, environmental, and quality concerns could eventually be impacted, goes a long ways. Fortunately, my career has never come to this, but having that in my back pocket always helps.

2. The financial security also hasn’t made me desperate to get pigeonholed into accepting positions between contracts because I’m not “desperate” like so many others in my industry. Instead, I can wait out for the good positions.

3. Lastly, points 1 & 2 has caused my career to peak to a level I probably never could have truly imagined. I went from being a welder at 21 with just an associates degree, to an upper level manager over construction on a several billion dollar project. The financial security has allowed me to take risks and stand incredibly firm in my negotiations from big raises to negotiating pay at new projects.

One of the most important things I’ve also learned - I have no idea what my future holds, and no way of truly planning beyond what actions I can take today. I may find a permanent job in 2 years, cut back to a few months of work a year, start my own small business and coast to FIRE.. who knows? To many factors I have no way of predicting now, but I can better accept that, after spending so many years stressing about it.

[LightTripper]

I don't know when I found MMM, but there were at least a couple of years of posts and I remember binge reading them in order!

I must have Googled "early retirement" because I came here via ERE which was - erm - a bit extreme for me :)

I was already earning a good income and hadn't let my lifestyle inflate too much, so for me the stuff that really made a difference was (a) the stuff about investing, and (b) working out how much you needed to actually retire. 

On investing, the mental image of my money working for me (rather than lazing around being gobbled by inflation in my savings accounts) was very powerful: when I found MMM I was nearly entirely in cash other than my pension, having previously sold out of my non-pension equities in the run up to the Dot Com boom.  It made me realise that although I was right about that particular bubble, and had sold out in good time, I had been much too slow getting back in after - so my attempts at "market timing" had cost me money despite my assessment of the original bubble being right.  Now I leave that stuff to the experts and just stick to my (cautious) allocation regardless of how crazy the world around me seems.

On "how much is enough", although I'm more a 3.25% rule person myself, and lean more towards the Big ERN approach to risk, this was the first place I saw the mechanics of a method to work out how much was enough, and that was life changing. 

Without those two realisations, and even with my very good income and savings rate, it would have been very hard for me to convert my stache to actual freedom.

[engineerjourney]

Interesting to look back.

In 2011, future husband and I were graduating with our masters and moving across the country for my new job.  Networth -$100K due to his student loans (I had some loans but they were offset by my savings for a networth of $0 for me).  I have always been a saver.. I had high school graduation money in my bank account still.  But wasn't an investor by any means.  We bought a house 4 months after moving as home ownership was very important to us.

In 2013, my grandpa passed away and left his grandkids some money.  We paid for a wedding, finished off all the student loans, and then decided to replace the student loan payments with a mortgage payment on a lakeside cabin (second home within 45 mins of our main one).  It was awesome but also stupid.  We also used some money to refinance our main mortgage into a 12 year loan with 2.7% interest (which was soooo good at the time).  This was the best financial decision we had made that year.  Husband also got a job with a 401K finally that year and so I started researching investing stuff (thankfully was all index funds before this anyway).  Came across bogleheads and MMM.  Joined the MMM forum that year (still haven't signed up for a BH account but do lurk there often) and my mind was blown.  Whoops the lake house was a poor financial decision but at least we were networth positive!

In 2015, Birth of our first child and the realization that we were totally over owning the lake house.. it wasn't a terrible financial decision but with a kid we were going to use it less and daycare is SO EXPENSIVE.  It was no longer worth the money spent on it to us.  I think we finally sold it in 2016. 

Now 2021, Expecting our 3rd kid and a networth of $1M!  Just socking away all the "extra" money instead of going super inflated lifestyle with two engineering salaries has been enough to rocket our networth (currently make $210k combined so good money but not some crazy salary).  Not "needing" the money has allowed us to avoid following the money in our careers and we still mostly get to work 42 hour work weeks.  There is such power in not "needing" the job.  So glad I found MMM. 

[Bateaux]

Looks like I started out a millionaire in 2014.  NW now over 3M.   Still working at 52, not nearly as angry at work as I was then.



 February 11, 2014, 07:42:33 PM »
Hey I'm new to MMM, but not new to the quest to retire early.  I'm 45, married and have two boys in college.
We have our mortage paid off and have a little over 1 million saved in retirement accounts.
My goal is to retire before 50, which I reach in 2018.
Being debt free is wonderful.   Get it done.

[Sid Hoffman]

In early 2014 I started researching how much money is needed for retirement. I found a lot of different articles but nothing really resonated with me. Most commonly I found articles parroting the 80% of income replacement which didn't make any sense to me. But on the other end of the spectrum I found someone who claimed to have "retired" on $7k (not income, total stash/savings = $7k) while their significant other continued to work, which was just as useless. Eventually (June 2014?) I stumbled across the MMM blog (don't remember exactly how, maybe a link from Reddit). Finally something that made sense! I binged the entire blog over the next few months. After I caught up on the blog I joined the forums.

Sounds like almost exactly the same timing as me, though in specific I found the blog while looking to do a full money makeover as my wife announced she was divorcing me in February 2014. I too went through all the blogs, generally 3-5 a day for the first push through, then taking them start to finish again after that one at a time to apply as much as possible to my own life as I was then a month or two out from leaving my house to move into a small rental with my son and effectively start life over again. It looks like I joined the forum fall of 2014 then once I think I'd extracted all I could from just reading the blogs and decided to get ideas, inspiration, learn, and argue with people (in a good way!) over here on the forum.

As for numbers, I think the non-housing net worth and savings rate tell a good story of pre-divorce, post-divorce, and present day:

Year / worth / savings rate
2013 / $300k / 3%
2014 / $335k / 50%
...
2020 / $835k / 68%

If my good fortune and discipline hold true through 2022, I should be solidly over $1M by the end of 2022 with an 80% or higher total savings rate and down to maybe my last 3-5 years of working at that point.

[Trifle]

The blog and forum definitely changed my life for the better.  I found the blog and immediately gobbled up all the info on the nuts and bolts of early retirement -- the Simple Math, Roth conversions, etc. -- and joined the forum in early 2015.  I was always pretty frugal, but didn't have a goal until then.

Shortly after that I was diagnosed with a serious cancer, and I wanted to FIRE as soon as possible to spend whatever time I had left with my family, doing things I love.  The information and support on the MMM forum got me over the finish line and I lean-FIREd at 51.  I will forever be grateful to MMM and this community.  (I got lucky and cancer is in remission -- doing well so far).

[Channel-Z]

I don't remember how I found the site originally. Nothing much has changed with me; I just like having various avenues of online interaction. I was a low-earning individual in 2011 and still am today. But, I have a little more than $300k and 20 years left to work if I don't retire early. I recognize that half the country is in much worse shape, and I should be fortunate to have a place to sleep.

[chrisgermany]

I joined in June 2015, 2 years after ER with DH.
YMYL had shown the way years before on a vacation in Seattle.
It was great to find my tribe.

[meandmyfamily]

Inspiring Trifele!  Glad you are in remission! 

[LightTripper]

That is great news Trifele - really makes what we are all doing here very real - thank you for sharing!

[Monocle Money Mouth]

I've had similar results to everyone else. I found the blog in 2015 when I was looking for ways to pay off my mortgage sooner and I found the "Your debt is an emergency" post via Google. I wasn't really interested in early retirement at that point, but I kept reading the blog and the seed was planted. I gradually lowered my expenses and upped my investment contributions. Even with my gradual implementation of his advice, I paid off my mortgage and my net worth has skyrocketed thanks to increasing how much I invest.

After seeing both of my parents being forced to retire before they actually wanted to, I saw the importance of planning for early retirement. Thinking you can just work until you are 70 isn't realistic. Unless you have some rare and valuable skill, most employers aren't interested in having a bunch of septuagenarians hanging around. I also don't want to spend the next 30 years in an office. Even the most pleasant office job is bullshit or can turn into bullshit if the organization is mismanaged.

[PoutineLover]

It looks like I made my profile in 2015 but I think I had discovered the blog earlier. It has had an impact on my life, but hard to separate my progress due to my upbringing and from the other early retirement and personal finance blogs I've read and absorbed lessons from. I've always been a good saver, but I think seeing the concepts laid out in a straightforward way and all the environmental stuff helped me make some good lifestyle choices that are starting to pay off. More importantly, the forum is full of intelligent and helpful people who share so much collective wisdom and advice, and I really appreciate the community MMM sparked.

[NorthernIkigai]

I guess this is as good a thread as any for delurking.

When I first encountered the blog many years ago, I was put off by the over the top style and (especially) the facepunches. But when I came across it again a few years ago I was hooked, first on the blog and later on the forum. I love the not-so-secret environmental agenda, and have also come to accept that even though I'll never be a DIY person like MMM I can balance that out with smugness about not having a car. Until now I've stuck to lurking to try to not get too involved and reply to all kinds of stuff, so we'll see how that goes from now on...

Saving money was never a problem for me, but for many years it seemed that investing was something only for greedy people with dollar signs in their eyes. But I got over that once I was earning a regular salary and needed to do something with all that cash. So I started investing 10+ years ago, and have actually been very happy with both how it's gone and how well I've been able to stick with the plan and keep my cool through the 2008--2009 recession and last spring's Corona dip.

I used to assume that the equivalent system to social security in my country wouldn't be around when I become eligible (in the late 2040's...), and thought I should probably save and invest to create a pension type income for myself. Now I realize they can't let the system collapse (because most people aren't doing what I'm doing). Meanwhile, I've kind of gotten over the whole "working is your duty and what gives meaning/content to your life" ideology that is pretty common where I'm from.

MMM's shockingly simple math and all the rest made me realize that I don't just have to save a huge pile that I can then spend when I retire in my late 60's, but that it's actually possible and acceptable to retire much, much earlier instead, if I just put my mind to it. This blog and forum has really given me a goal and a path towards it, instead of just investing because it's the intelligent thing to do. It's also made me a bolder investor (in terms of not hoarding too much cash just because cash makes you feel saaaafe -- well, that's still work in progress). We're about 1/3 of the way towards FI, and my spouse is still completely unconvinced of the RE part (or actually any kind of retirement ever, see the ideology above). And that's a really great place to be! I might test the waters by taking a sabbatical already within a few years, and am really looking forward to that.

[Trifle]

I guess this is as good a thread as any for delurking.

Welcome!

[NorthernIkigai]

Welcome!

Thanks! (See, this whole not posting thing is going downhill already... :-p)

[achvfi]

In 2011 at this time, I started big boy job with a negative $50000 net worth of student loans.

Thanks to google I found MMM late in 2016. Big thanks to his lifechanging articles on MMM blog and many contributors to this forum I was able to accelerate my FI journey since. You all give me many savings and investment strategies.

You all helped me set higher goals. Goals for net worth, savings rate, passive income

Before

In 2011 my goal was just to pay off student loans
In 2012 it was to save 50000 in bank account - no investment experience yet
In 2013 buy a house.

After I found this forum my goals were like

- Achieve 50 - 80% savings rate over the years
- Reach million dollars in net worth
- Grow passive income equal to barebones yearly expense.

Just better goals. Comparing my goals to others on this forum was highly motivating for me.

Now we have over million $ in assets and in reaching distance of million in net worth all with a single income for the most part. It would have been crazy to imagine this 10 years ago.

[Steeze]

2011 - 23 Years old, still in undergrad (started at 16!), 80k in debt soon to be 100k, DUI, on probation, waiting tables (20k spend)
2016 - found MMM, about 1/2 way through student loan payoff, <10k in 401k, no emergency fund, making ~$60k/yr (25k spend)
2021 - 33 years old, wife, newborn, paid off house, sober, debt free, making combined ~200k, 500k invested, 800k NW (45k spend)

[marty998]

I found the blog in April 2012 and joined the forum in October that year. I would have been 26, paying down a huge (at the time) mortgage, with a net worth of about $270k.

Previously was hooked on a property forum (which has been rebadged and is going stronger than ever). I was always keen on investing but leaned more towards stocks than property.

I read every single blog post. Even the ones that didn’t really suit me (I am not a DIY person).

Didn’t earn as much at the time but had the right savings and investing habits. Paid off the mortgage, started throwing cash at shares and bought two more properties. Maxxed out retirement accounts. The standard basic boring stuff. Nothing fancy, no risks. Along the way did the right thing at work, got promoted a couple of times, got some decent pay rises. Not shooting the lights out but enough that I’m satisfied.

Yesterday the stash hit $1.75 million.

This shit works.

[Catbert]

My profile was set up August 1, 2012 so I probably started reading in June or July of that year.  At that time I'd already been retired for 3 years.  Retired "early" for the general population, but MMM taught me it should have retired earlier.  I had a buyout opportunity in 1998, I shoulda taken it.

[Just Joe]

This forum and all of you wise people have been life altering for me and for DW. You insights into life, work, family and money have been the education I wished I would have had much, much earlier in life. I discovered the life challenges I was (we were) puzzled about were often pretty common, and solvable in some cases. Sometimes we just need to step back, acknowledge it, and realize life and the people around us are never going to be perfect and go on living.

Our financial situation is MUCH improved since I was steered to MMM by a good friend. Friend gave me a shove in the right direction and then stepped away so I could explore on my own. Falls in line with the "lead by example" attitude that I like so much. 

For the longest time we could not grasp how or why some people were hugely financially successful and secure while others spent a lifetime moving from one crisis to another. More income was only part of the solution. While we might have found the answers on my own over a lifetime, this forum has shown us many different perspectives and taught us so much.

We were on a low efficiency glide path. Golden handcuffs (good), CC debt (very bad), unnecessary car payment (bad), student loans (bad), little savings (bad), eating out far too much (bad), working too much for too little (bad), etc. After studying the forums, reading the blog, evaluating the kind of present and future what we wanted, we began to develop a plan modeled off of things we've read here. Just as importantly we decided what we didn't want to do - choices that kept us perpetually in debt, working well into our 70s, lifetime debt, etc - examples of which are easy to find in real life.

We're still constrained by the golden handcuffs. We started this journey much later than many of the most participants here. We'd like to retire sooner but we'll be comfortable, secure, and young enough to enjoy it. Meanwhile, starting this year, we're trying to get out more and have more adventures like we did when we were in our 20s.

Thank you all.

[markbike528CBX]

Welcome!

Thanks! (See, this whole not posting thing is going downhill already... :-p)

I guess this is as good a thread as any for delurking.

Welcome!

@NorthernIkigai   Don't take it personally, Trifele welcomes everybody:-)

I was the original poster for the 2019 FIRE cohort.
I FIRED early, and got too busy being retired.
Trifele took over the list building and welcoming of the thread.

Thanks Trifele!

[Alternatepriorities]

Welcome!

Thanks! (See, this whole not posting thing is going downhill already... :-p)

I guess this is as good a thread as any for delurking.

Welcome!

@NorthernIkigai   Don't take it personally, Trifele welcomes everybody:-)

I was the original poster for the 2019 FIRE cohort.
I FIRED early, and got too busy being retired.
Trifele took over the list building and welcoming of the thread.

Thanks Trifele!

I'm looking forward to having the same problem this summer. Looking at everything I'm trying to squeeze in, I can't help but wonder how I ever had time to work...

October is looking pretty chill though...