joining us once again on the program is mister money mustache he runs the
personal finance blog
must mister money mustache dot com it's great to have you back let's start there
do you call it I a personal finance blog I know is in that category
broadly speaking heard you call it something else I still like to call it a
personal finance blog because I love people go out looking for personal
finance blogs and that's what this one is about about
fixing your monetary situation in order to have a better life
it's just that once people get there we tricked them into not wanting to spend
the money anymore
which is accident secret way to get wealthy alright so after you run the
program last time to kinda recap last time we talked about
how people should kinda think about their daily expenditures in a different
way
we talked about the formula for figuring out if I'm spending fifteen dollars a
week on coffees
what is that really add up to over five years or ten years of my life if I take
into consideration the interest they would have burned
had i save that money instead invariably
as you get on your blog after your appearance I got a ton in the mail
saying listen
this mustache guy was interesting but
he's basically advocating just taking out all the pleasures in life but what
will cares if if two times a week
I want to get a coffee at Starbucks and it's a five dollar copy
and I get enjoyment out of that what's wrong with that
now do you have a specific thought I know you get these emails all the time
broadly how do you respond to people who have that point of view
yeah we call those on know the emails complain the parent emails as a broad
category
and but really it's a it's a valid thing I mean of course should be seeking out
the happiness in your life
I'm a big argument though is that on
think when you when you think that your happiness is coming from coffee is our
dinners are like a BMW instead of a Corolla
I think you've been fooled you know that's that's not really where the
source
happiness is but if you've just grown up your whole life watching TV you can
program to think that
and there's a much better way to live which is just erase the whole that a
program you know you got from the ads in
figure out what really makes you happy and there's a much deeper layer stuff
that does that
you know for example having having good friends and being close to family and
being generous people
and just getting out and enjoying the world in nature and learning is a big
thing for me is
I'm a lot happier learning man and consuming so if you find that you think
you happiness coming from buying stuff
you gotta dig deeper and work on it cuz you can be happy
you know living on a beach in now in the tropics with their feet just and
coconuts in a beautiful
can you to go fish from you know that's been happy people have been happy doing
that in the past
and you can too Brazil have to do that but
just just totally separate this whole idea of spending is what makes you happy
so let's use me as an example here because I don't by myself someone who is
kind of obsessed with the consumer culture
I think about every purchase and say does this really make sense
I don't buy it right away I weighed a say do if I still feel like a need this
then I'll reconsider purchasing it
you know I have a car would with good gas mileage all these things they have
friends I enjoy learning I like the outdoors however
most to the week I work either in my office
studio or just at home at my desk once or twice a week
I like to on my half day off take my laptop to a coffee shop
get a two dollar and fifty Cent drink and just sit there with my laptop
and do my work there I don't go every day I otherwise don't get these five
dollar coffee drinks
even is is that even excessive or I've
evaluated and said within the broader context that my spending
that make sense to me is that okay or do I still need to change my priorities
I think you don't have to change priorities it's just a matter of being
aware
so where you describe that as the the description a very aware person
was not going to get themselves into financial trouble and you know
in a in a country like the United States there's so much money to go around you
know even if you're making
twenty thousand dollars a year that's enough for plenty of food and a place to
live
you know you you can have a lot to love lectures and i know im
as you go up you can afford more and more so really what you have to do is
just what so
forgetting over the top 10 most people are just seriously over the top
as an example buying a car when you don't even have the cash in the bank to
pay for that car outright
is an example have extreme behavior but its
it's so common that people think it's normal that the car loans are normal in
this country which is completely like a financial experts
foods just it's ridiculously terrible way to manage their money
but it is common so you know separate coffees from
from the car loans and and at all scales according to how well you're doing
in other areas the last if you have credit card debt your ping 24 percent on
it
no you can't even get one QA you know you got a beating like
boats an hour potatoes and that's it you know until the emergency
love your debt is done but there's all kinds levels a
reasonableness so speaking a reasonableness let's talk about Black
Friday with you because it just so happens we just had this crazy start to
the holiday
a buying season on Friday called Black Friday
earlier in the show we had the videos of people stampeding at Walmart in this
entire thing
I've told stories from when I worked at the now-defunct Circuit City when I was
in high school
and I used to have to work Black Friday sometimes in the morning now then it
wasn't nearly as crazy as it is now
whenever I hear about Black Friday the one thing that sticks in my mind is the
following
when people are talking about how much they've saved
it assumes they had to buy those products
they should be thinking no no no I've spent
X amount not I've saved X amount it why does nobody think that way
that's true well it's because they've probably been programmed to think that
buying
at a discount as the same thing saving annex saving is a measure of how much
you've grown your investment account what you've contributed to for example
your 401 K are your
other investment account at the end the month that's worth saving is
om buying stuff is totally different Black Friday sale might be good like for
example with you
think right now what do I need and you write it down if you still want it by
next
Black Friday 2014 then it's probably a good idea to
to get it on sale at that point but if you're just going out to sea
let's see what's on sale and you go into the stores in 2010 discount on the Nexus
11 in all this stuff that's a that's not really saving money is dis creating
wants that you didn't have before the sale came up
so and that's really what that the kinda consumer culture is about right which is
let's create a
look first let's create demand and then let's create these false discounts which
Wall Street Journal has widely shown
a Black Friday sales are often marked up over the three
month that go before it so then you create a higher
retail price of which you can create a discount this is all common retail
tactics
and then once you've created that demand you create urgency
right is this basically the mechanism first the demand then the urgency to act
right now that sounds like a reasonable technique you know I've never been black
credit for a shopping on
so I didn't even know all the tricks that they do I just gonna stare the
whole scene and
it's a nice place to be I just wanna actually yesterday I spent the whole run
for
Black Friday that the whole day just biking around town in building some
part to the new house I'm working on renovating in a
the whole thing came and went in there was no lineups I didn't even know there
was like to read it
alright so the last thing I want to ask you about it this also relates the
emails that I got after last appearance when you talk about in you write about
this extensively on your blog how twenty thousand dollars in the United States is
more than enough money to live comfortably
when people invariably say the job I have is in an area with a much higher
cost of living in order to live
with twenty thousand dollars a year I would need to move
is your response well yeah everybody should move out of those expensive areas
should be an option think it's great to some
delivered an expensive area usually those prices are high because
salaries are right so you should get one of those salaries that
that justifies living there or consider moving on
courses of other the other stuff like family and friends
to consider but yeah you should never think of your living situation as fixed
as soon as they open up your mind to moving
well kinda stuff can happen that you can certainly live within walking or biking
distance at work
you can live in a place where property taxes are almost no
none but yet you get great city services in
and a high salary like the place that I live here colorado is is like that
so yeah just keep your mind open for fordice in
and you can also live in expensive places cheaply I get I get letters from
New Yorkers in
Silicon Valley people who have these amazing like two thousand dollar-a-month
lifestyles
just by being innovators like figuring out who to live with them where to shop
what to do after work alright I don't know why he's just like a friendly guy
but he's very controversial every time is on the show people must actually be
listening to the content of what you're saying because every time it's just
crazy and it's the same thing on your blog people just get very agitated when
you tell them this thing
I don't know what that if you look at the comments section reblogged yeah
the complainers have mostly been scared away I they have okay that's good
so much that people accuse us of being freaky call to prayer ready just agrees
with each other
yeah it's great that they can't wait till it's like minus 10 tomorrow and I
can ride my bike with a hundred pounds the groceries up the hill
they're bigger it be challenged and yeah that's that's the way the blogs
readership has become these days in I think it's great the way
you know people feed off each other and get inspired to live more rugged and
you know Hyatt effort lives all right mister money mustache check out his
website
I'm a reader mister money mustache dot com thanks again for being on
alright thanks for the invitation