Hey, this is Craig Cannon and you're listening toe y Combinator podcast. Today's guest is Pete Aid Me, also known as Mr Money Mustache. So Pete worked as a software engineer for about 10 years and then retired at the age of 30. He started blogging about it at Mr Money moustache dot com, where he'd write about a saving strategy where he invested the money and how we thought about life. His bog became super popular, especially among engineers, so he's been one of the most requested guest for the podcasts. I met up with Pete in Longmont, Colorado, at the newly constructed Mr Money Moustache headquarters and had a blast talking with him. So I hope you enjoy this one. And before we get started, just want to let you know that the winner 2018 application is open. So if you'd like to apply toe,

I see the link is why. Combinator dot com slash apply. All right, here we go. The first question I had for you, not on the not on the paper is if I want to start a cult like mustache. Ian's what do your pro tips?

And that's a good question. And if I had prepared, I would have brought my little talk that I gave a few years ago at a blogger conference that was called Don't Start a Blawg Started cult. But anyway, I think the pro tips are You need to have a identifiable philosophy that's maybe a bit different than with the normal world is into. So because your people, your cult members are gonna organize around the sculpt. So you maybe want just a little bit of a feeling of us versus them and like, Oh, we are, you know, we got these values and their noble but but the other, the outside world doesn't quite support us. We're a little bit oppressed. So then you have the sense of identity, and then this is all stuff. I stumbled on accidentally because,

really, I was just saying, Here's a good idea for living. Yeah, and then other people like, Yeah, I like that idea, too, But nobody agrees with me. So that's why I accidentally had this slightly cult, uh, thing going on and other things that are useful. You know, a couple more pro tips would include, like use of terminology and silly words. Um,

and that's true with, like, whether you're the cult of Star Trek or iPhone or the various religions. They all have these sort of special terminology, and it helps to have unidentifiable leader to so cult, which I am better. Worse he came, Yeah, got Steve Jobs or Captain Couric or the leaders of the religions or the gods. All this stuff is Ah is handy for creating called People. Think of a cult is a bad thing because they're thinking of Waco, Texas, and Kool Aid. But really, it's just a social organization structure, which is a basic built in thing two human beings.

And it's what allows us to live together and cooperate. So if you can make your brand or your company or your blawg have these cult like properties, then that's probably a good thing for making it last and have ah, having a real audience. How do

you feel about the cult of Elon Musk?

Well, I'm part of it, so I think that's ah, I'm gonna have a biased answer. But it certainly fits the description that we were saying, um, that I was just saying now about what a cult is, and he's definitely unidentifiable leader. He's definitely got unusual ideas, but the reason I and so much in this cult is everything that guy says or rights. I just agree with it so almost fully. And I really like the way he explained stuff. It's like that finally, someone is running a company. And instead of disputing like this corporate bullshit like we are, considering the needs of our customers, way will get back.

You know, he's always like, No, I think it was a bug in like the 3.0 software will get a release out. Yeah, next week, you know, like it's proper. He speaks like a combination of an engineer, but with a much bigger perspective on everything. And he has these clear goals. So that's why I'm so favor, you know. And so far he's done very little, um, like evil,

you know, like maybe as personal issues, in the sense that you so driven that it's hard to relate toe the line mosque if you work directly for him. But his overall goal seemed to be absolutely spot on for, you know, a good person. That's a kind of cult I want to be

on. Well, I was curious. If the cult leader, you know, needs to be like, somewhat maniacal in their pursuit, like they have to be polarizing to a certain extent,

probably a little bit or they at least have to be so convinced that their way is is the way or a viable way that they're going to get some disagreement from Some people you know in my personal views, for example, have become more hard core over the last year that cars are just like the biggest stupid inefficiency that we have in United States. And we need to just cut that whole shit down by at least 90%. And because 99% of people are completely car dependent, that makes me a polarizing figure. What crazy bicycle sandals man try to tell them? Do you like? It's just so different from anything I can imagine. So, uh, in that way, that might be actually enhancing. My, um, status is an imaginary cult. Yeah,

Well, are you Are you excited about self driving cars? I I get the sense sometimes that they're just going to encourage mega commutes. Oh,

yeah, That's a good question. Yeah, even though it's a slight um, you know, jump. I guess you were thinking Ellen Mosque, and then you thought, self driving cars. So I think there are, like, a tool, but not the only tool. And right now it is the the only place I disagree with the Elon Musk vision is that a car should be thought of as like a luxury racing wheelchair. So there's times in your life you want a luxury recently racing wheelchair, for example, when you're with your friends and you're all going up into the mountains in like high altitude and a blizzard and you won't have some beers and your snowboards are in the back perfect time for a car.

But if you just want to goto work four miles or even 40 miles, there's better ways to design your life. You know, don't go 40 miles to work. And so, yeah, if we can keep the self driving cars around so that they can reduce our crash rate and they could make our cities not be filled with inefficient parking lots on, that's a win. But if you're just doing a mega commute from, like Pleasant in over to San Francisco or something, that's a loss and you're still wasting all this land to make giant roads. And the cars themselves take way too much space because they're bigger than one person. So I would hope that weaken go both ways like denser cities, bike friendly and then self driving cars to eliminate the dumb stuff we do with cars now. So we'll see.

So, one of the questions I was wondering if you have a lot of software engineer, you know, cult members or followers like entry level cult

member. Just call them readers now, scaring people off cult label.

Um, one of the questions I was curious about is, you know, for people who were interested in, ah, retiring early or saving more of their money. You know, if you're living in a big city and so you're making, like, 30 grand, what is your advice for people like that? Um, yeah, because I know it's easier when you're making 152 Say, save more

of the money. Yeah, well, it's good to figure out why you're in that city in the first place, because you could make $30,000 anywhere, including a really affordable places or even working from home. And, ah, I mean, like the location of your choice in other countries. So that's the first thing is like, Are you willing to pay the premium to live in that city? If you're actually gonna make that wage that you could make just, you know, working as a manager at a at a fast food places something on the second choices are. The second answer is, if that answer is yes or regardless of the answer,

what are you gonna do with that money? Because there's always hacks you can do to get your living to be cheap or to get your food to be cheap. There's a lot of people who live in San Francisco for little to no rent, just through special arrangements, like their friends with somebody who has a space or their trading services for rent. Or they own a place and then Airbnb out the rest of it or whatever. So the less you earn in your regular job, the more valuable your time becomes in these frugality hacks of cutting down your expenses and figuring out how to get around for free and where to get the food that is good for you, but not super

expensive. Did you have a special arrangement cause you move toe Colorado from Canada when you were just out of school? Yeah.

Um, no, I was I worked a few years in Canada first, and so I did do a few things even back then. Like instead of seeking out my own apartment, I was always splitting this. He's nicer, bigger houses. I would go on to the equivalent of Craigslist back then. The use net groups find stuff for rent go there, like in my best clothes. And so, yeah, we would like to rent this place in several professionals. Young professionals. It would like to use the bedrooms. And then the owners like,

OK, I guess we'll let you are fancy house. And then all the all the boys would move in. And they were my co co workers as engineers that were friends. So we'd split a four bedroom place among, like, four guys, for example. And then we would each pay $300 a month at the time when an apartment by yourself might be 700. So it was a win win because we would have a much nicer place with a huge kitchen, a nice backyard and then But ah, for less cost than you'd pay for a junkie beige apartment. And unlike the 13th floor. So I did that from beginning, and then when I moved to the U. S.

Even back at the time, I was probably making in today's dollars, like close to $100,000. I still went straight to Craig's list and got a roommate situation for the first year cause I had to save up a down payment and eventually about a house. And then, Ah, I've chosen the living houses that I owned since then, but it's not necessary. I could still do rentals. We just, you know, we spend more on our housing because we find it to be a nice luxury. It's one of our many indulgences

now that you're at that point to afford it

and even earlier, like long before retirement, we still chose to live in a house. My girlfriend and I now wife. So um yeah, we knew that it's just something that was worth it to us, and because I like working on houses. It kind of paid for it as well, because I was increasing the value in my hobby time, which makes it easier to sell your house for more later.

And throughout this process were like, you know, when you're just starting toe work, Did you just happen to have Ah, you know, you weren't spending the money, so you were just looking for ways to take advantage of it as you were saving it. Like, why did you Why did you start connecting the dots and realized like, what caused you to realize it, that you could retire early?

Um, I probably started fairly early because I was a kid. I was used to like I earn my dollar bills when I was a kid and put him in a photo album $5 for cutting the grass. I'd iron that five and stick it in. So I liked money as, ah concept, even when I was young. And then, as I earned more money throughout my minimum wage jobs that would not spend it all. And although I did tend to blow it at the time because I didn't know about investment so I would save up a bunch and then I'd buy like a dirt bike. Motives okay. And then I save up for another year and then buy really expensive stereo system or whatever. But then eventually, one of those things was pain from my education. You know, I saved up for the first year of tuition, so I was getting a bit more reasonable.

But then it around 19. Someone handed me like I think is like a wealthy acquaintance of one of my sisters handed me this book on investing in wealth building, and I, like, burned through that whole thing in one day. And then I thought, Whoa, investment is good. So then I kept reading books like that, and then I realized something else you could do with money. Yeah. No. By the time I was in my twenties, it made sense that the surplus money would just go into investments. And at the time, to me,

that just meant stock investments. And then I didn't do anything especially smart with them. But over after reading more books over the years, I started to do less dumb things. And then that's why I kind of settled on this index fund, a model for stock investing nowadays in

that process of, you know, learning how to invest in getting going and and then actually saving, Like, what, 50% 60 70% of your income. Something like

that. Yeah, that's what it was. Towards the end. We got it over into the sixties cause our income was going up. But are household spending

wasn't going up? Yeah, well, what did that feel like? Socializing? Because we you know, we posted this to Twitter before he did the interview. And, ah, lot of people were really curious about the social implications of, you know, you're trying to put away 50% while your friends, you know, your co workers make the same amount of money roughly, um, what was that like?

Well, at our level, it was pretty easy. You know, to be honest, it's kind of privileged when you have to text salaries. You don't really have to give up any visible stuff in order, you can still go out to dinner. You can still have a ski pass and go skiing and everything. It was Maurin, the hidden stuff that we cut out. For example, we would keep the same bike instead of upgrading our bikes all the time, and we would eat that, eat lunch at our workplaces instead of going out to work and driving around all the time and waiting an hour just to so you could spend $20 for lunch. Those kind of things don't cost you anything in social fun, but they're just more efficient and similar with cars like,

we would keep our used cars and our friends would buy new cars. Your friends don't care what kind of car you have, so you're not You're not getting any social cost by keeping your Honda Civic when your friends have, like, a brand new, you know, top of the line BMW. So no, there is basically no pain. Yeah, I think this

address is like the issue, or rather, the reason why so many people like your blood. It just feels much more relatable than many of the other early retirement blog's, which, you know, like live in your van, eat ramen noodles forever. Um, where those around as you started to save money and you just found it inaccessible? Or did you not even realize that that was a thing,

right? I didn't even know existed, to be honest, and there weren't really many blocks until the mid two thousands. Maybe. And that's when I retired. So I just did everything according to my own strange values and then retired roughly like it just before it turned 31. So that's why I still claim I retired at 30 and, uh, then lived that way for about six years before even thinking of writing this down in the form of a blawg. And then when I did, eventually I I went to the search engine and I typed, like, early retirement frugality. And then there was this plug called early retirement Extreme by this super great frugal guy named Jacob. I was like, Crap.

I can't start a block. This is already covered. Yeah, so total. I'm not gonna waste my time duplicating it. But then I read his his whole blawg and I had already written a bunch of articles kind of in advance. Just stuff that I wanted to tell people and turned out that we had different takes significantly enough that I thought I was still worth publishing. Yeah, and then Jacob and I ended up communicating quite a bit since then over the years, so yeah, I'm glad I published but there weren't nearly as many financial and retirement blog's even when I started in 2011. Then there are now. I feel like now we have thousands of them. Who were you looking up to at the time? I don't know. If I really operate on a role model basis like that.

I'm kind of more of Ah, a strange, like floating around by myself in the ideas sphere. So, like I read books, I was interested in in in the ideas in, for example, investing books. Yeah, but I didn't really have any personal lifestyle role models because I didn't read any blog's. It was just, you know, I'm just an independent guy, had local friends family. Um, and I still don't really have any role models I clearly identify with and copy.

I'm just interested If people are good at stuff they're doing, like the Elon Musk example we use before then I follow their their progress, and I think, Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Um, but it's so different from the quest than I'm on that I don't really have any role models exactly like in how to be Mr Money Moustache.

And then there wasn't even someone who you found was was kind of blazing their own trail. And you're like, out, you know, even like family members were like, they kind of got it figured out there doing

their own thing. Uh, no, I think that's maybe one of my advantages and disadvantages in life is that I don't even really look around to see what other people are doing. I just have these opinions and sometimes they're considered quite crazy. Yeah, Other times, people find use in what I do, but I I'm kind of this. Maybe I'm like a first principles person where I just look at something I'm like, Well, that's bullshit. I'm not gonna do that. And other times I look at other things and I follow it and ah, yes, sometimes that gets me. I'm a misfit in society because of this,

you know, like giving, finding stuff to buy people exactly on their birthday, for example, I don't understand that tradition, so I don't do it. And then other people who you know who expect that they're like guys. Not very thoughtful. He didn't get me out of it. Yeah, but I'll get I'll do stuff for people when I when I think of something they need or some service or help they need. So I'll do it, Um, whenever not I don't align it with the calendar stuff. So that's one example I never understood. Fancy weddings is another one.

Like, I think marriage is a fine thing, and parties air great things. So having a party for your marriage is great, but the whole thing with, like, special flowers and arrangements and table stuff that seemed like nonsense to me. Special own wedding rings

all know? Yeah. You're not wearing a wedding ring.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Well, I'm not against wedding rings, but what I was thinking is the engagement ring, the whole tradition with, like, diamonds and expenses that came across that later in life and was like, Man, that is total total nonsense. Like why where this tradition come from, So I just totally rejected it. Luckily, my girlfriend at the time also was a reject er of that. So it didn't cost me. Uh, this

is a super common question. People are like, you know, I'm you know, following Mr Money mustache or anyone and, um or I'm just personally like like you like I'm just on my own, interested in time, retiring early, interested in saving money. How do I get a partner onboard thoughts

there? Well, it helps to pick that person in advance. Like this strategy there's You are already committed to somebody who has certain values. And then that could go. Either way, they may be flexible. They may be diametrically opposed to you on this stuff, and so you got to figure that out separately. But if you're still looking for a person or like in the circulating dating stage, finding someone who has the similar lifestyle values is awesome, and I've met so many couples now that are of that style, and they really are, they get along well. That's why um, intra mustache and inter mustache in dating is really a good thing when I wanna have these events now and I see people getting together or even like on the Forum through my website section together. Yeah,

yeah, and actually there is an app coming out made by money mustache readers, and the joke is that it's going to include a mustache e and tender feature. It's great, and I was really adamant that that is a valuable thing because people want to meet each other. And when they do, when single mustache ends, meet each other. Which sounds silly, cause if you don't understand the word mustache and they're like, Well, that's just that's just silly. But basically what it really means is unusually thoughtful people that some of certain personality traits in common. And they're often like, to be honest, quite clever,

because there John, from like tech workers or well educated people. For whatever reason, that type of person has a hard time finding their same type, especially ones that aren't blown out completely in consumerism and spending all their money and no concern for environmental or resource stuff. So when they meet each other, the sparks really fly. So you might as well make that easier if you're in my position. I would love to see more a good relationships like that forming.

Why do you think that, um, we talked about this a little bit, but why're engineer types where these clever types is? You busy but, um, interested in Mr Money Moustache Interested Early retirement?

Um, maybe because they like things to be logical and they might have the same tunnel vision that I have in the sense that they they don't just follow social norms. They try to evaluate things on a case by case basis. Like Do I like this tradition of society and or do I like this one? And when they see somebody going through that same thought process, they resonates with them because that's not what you It's not the same type of thing you'll see in like CNN news or, you know, or television

shows and stuff. But maybe now with you.

But yeah, yeah, if mustache ins on CNN News. But everything else is very much like Let's take society as it is and then just talk about it. Whereas mustache in principles is more like, let's take human nature based on what we understand as a science and adjust our lives so that they work well with our nature, you know that society is kind of irrelevant. That's more like a byproduct that's just formed the random processes, and you don't have to follow that. I mean, if your goal is happiness, just understand yourself as a creature. Every podcast always boils down to this concept, But

yeah, you might as well just get into it right now.

Stand yourself is a creature. And what's your goal? Well, that's living a happy life. What does that mean? It means having a Siris of Happy days and then figure out how to have the experiences in your life that lead to a za many happy days as possible. And that's not going to be That's not gonna come from like car upgrades or following lame social traditions. It's more about, um, thinking deeply about what makes you happy and then doing it. And it's It's not like what makes me happy is different from him or her, like we actually have much more overlap in what makes us happy than we would care to admit. So that's where some of these fundamentals really get useful, you

know? So, yeah, I mean, given that obviously you like doing construction, you know, we're at the H Q. Which we should talk about, Um, but with happiness, if if more things are in common that we think what are the things that make you happy, and especially in the long? Because, like, you know, if eating pizza makes me happy, but that's not like my retirement strategy. Yeah,

Yeah, I'd say eating pizza doesn't make you happy eating pizza. You know, it makes you have, like, goods like sensual experiences, you know, like your salt and sugar buds are all, like, nicely tingled. But if you if you measure what happens in your happiness after a lake increasing your pizza consumption so do you like a little experiment on yourself? Are you actually happier after a month long of eating more pizza and because it because there's other factors, right? There's your health and there is your activities you gave up in order to eat pizza and foods and everything. So the stuff we have in common no, is we. We have genuine social needs of a varying degree,

so we like to be connected with people we like toe smile at people and feel valued. So that's that's a social side, which many people say is the most important. So you want to feel like you're part of a community and that people value you and that you're contributing to that community. You're not just taking and it really helps to read books on this stuff. So if you confined books on somewhat scientifically based things for human happiness. Just grab them from the library and read through them, because it chances are it'll blow your mind if you haven't been studying this. All right, so then, secondly, there's things like your personal health affects your happiness because it just changes the level of stuff that's circulating your brain, like just the plain old dopamine and related chemicals. So like walking, eating salads sounds kind of boring, but it genuinely makes you happier and third on the self actualization level,

like being able to create stuff that you're proud of, working on something that's difficult, overcoming challenges and then having to something to show for it at the end and then continually doing that. That's a really big happiness boosting activity so on. And that's why TV shows watching TV is not a life boosting activity. To a certain extent, it might have a second order effect of boosting happiness because you might get to talk about TV shows with your friends. So then you're creating that social bond. But if you throw that away and instead, for example, using the construction example, I solve problems in my little construction projects and I do a lot of stuff with my physical body, which makes me healthier. And then I could bond over those activities with my other friends who were into that. Like my carpenter friends are I have a lot of kind of Renaissance man friends, you know,

who like carpentry, But they also like nerdy science experiments and in money and engineering So we can bond over, like, all the stuff we did in our construction projects and how that became a great rental house. Yeah, and how that became led to these need experiences and then what the neighbors did in response. So you get all the whole happiness project satisfied? All pressing all the happiness buttons. Yeah, and that's why I keep doing construction is it's for me. It's like the super smoothie, like our thing that I can chug that makes me happy in so

many ways. And you kind of compartmentalize that we were talking earlier before we recorded about doing this alone in its similarities to engineering like the time it takes to get into a flow state. And, you know, you need, like, a block of time, right? Um, do you try and you know, like combined this stuff or have you just found it's much more satisfying to kind of, you know, this is your social check box. This is your, like, hard work, you know, working out or carpentry or whatever. Yeah, yeah,

I do. Try toe, put it in separate sections and make sure they're all addressed. So because it's Ah, daily routines kind of make things happen automatically. And when you don't have a daily routine, it's easy to forget stuff that's important to you. So I've got I've been in for at least the last six months since I bought this place. I've been a pretty neat daily routine where I get up, have a healthy breakfast bike downtown where this building is and then work for 34 hours, typically early, when my family's still asleep for part of that time. So I'm I'm getting all these buttons press like physical health problem solving. Um, you know, having time to and I always listen really good music. Well,

I do this, too. It's kind of like a nice Zen flow state, and then you have something to show for it. At the end of it, you have more of your building. Done. And you could be like I can imagine. People are gonna enjoy this feature later on when we open it up. Yeah, and then I bike back home and then to do family time. We're like, I'm helping with my son and raising him and, you know, being a good dad and all that stuff. And then later on in the day, it'll be You might have friends over or do some stuff to help your friends. Okay? With their projects.

Yeah, because that was a question from Twitter. David Lang. I may be mispronouncing, um, basically asking, you know, prior to H Q Construction. Did you have trouble finding this routine in your 9

to 5? Yeah, right. Like the daily routine? Yeah. When I do have a dealer routine, that's when I am happiest. I find cause I've been retired for a long time, so I've kind of had ups and downs

longer than you were working,

right? I might be at this point. Yeah, it's a full time in 12 years. You have been 12 years since I quit riel work. And then my total of work career was about nine or 10 years, depending how you count for the early years. So you're right. And, um, the times that I've been most happy have been when I have ah, routine. Like, right now, I'm kind of on a really nice high point of my life's happiness. I would say over the last six months and especially this month, I never alive any downs.

But I have, like, different levels of up. So this is a really high level of up, and I think it's because the routine has been really solid, like just super Yeah, physical, lots of healthy stuff. Not a lot of self destructive things

going on. Well, you're also bringing people together like you just had two weeks of the pop up business school. You know, helping other people get started like it's all converging like you're building a place to socialize.

Yeah, that's true. So that really takes care of the social side, because I had 85 people that I was hosting here in this building. So lots of talking and seeing other people be happy. Yeah, so that's obviously a pretty big advantage in making you feel like your life is worthwhile if you're surrounded by wonderful people. Yahoo in their your life's kind of buzzing with activity. In fact, it got to be too much for a while, and I had to take a whole weekend of just like sleeping in and eating salads because there was no productive personal time, which, which I find is one of my building blocks, is like I need to do stuff alone and think and plan and and have time for all the thoughts to kind of go together. And that's because I'm kind of ah Barschel introvert in recovery time, according to the season Cane book. Why it is, ah, recharge with quiet time, whereas other people might recharge from, like a Denver Broncos game

or something like that. Yeah, I'm in the same way. Um, do you do much long term planning? Because, obviously, you know, within the next year, this place will be mostly completed, right? Do you plan on what happens

after that? I have a lot of tentative long term plants like, I liked the idea of maybe expanding this place to take over another building so that we can just have a bigger coworking space or and then in a longer term, I have a bunch of maybe ideas like, Can we start a town that's founded by on mustache in principles instead of car principles? Yeah, but I don't put dates on these things until I'm really ready. So I try to avoid, like, next year. Do you want to do something huge than I say? Well, let's find out. Let's ask each other and next year. And if we still like it, then we'll put it like a week into our calendars, A week in the future.

Okay, so I get stressed out a little bit with too much stuff on my calendar. Yeah, there's one thing that makes me different than most people I've learned is I don't like planning lunch for next week or three weeks from now. I like planning stuff less than 24 hours in advance, according to a bigger picture,

though. Well, I appreciate you scheduling this a couple of

events. This was definitely an exception, but I just figured, you know, because there's nothing else I have planned this week, then it's probably okay for correct to come over and broadcast, but it could have gone either way. You know, I could have last night Been like shit. I can't believe I told crack to come over

the pocket. I can't do that. I have other stuff to do. I could just take a weird turn right now. Um, so ah, a handful of people asked online, like, what is the plan for the Coworking space? The mustache and co working space. Are you going to expand into other locations? Not just literally. The building, like other cities.

Yeah, that's similar to the question we just talked about. It is, in theory, it sounds good. Definitely don't want to make any fixed plans on it. Especially this is the first Monday that Coworking Space has even been open and normal people to just pop in and do some work. So, uh, it's if it continues to be fun for at least maybe six months or something, okay. Or three. Even then we'll know if it's worthwhile expanding. And if it did, then I can personally expand this Teoh another building. And then another person asked in the question less Can we franchise this because they like the idea of one being in their town. And the answer to that is probably a song as I don't have to do any of the work force.

If we just come up with principles that work for you, what we're now calling Triple M headquarters and the principles are really just like a place to hang out. And you're not milking people for a za much money as you can by running it sort of cooperatively based. Um then, yeah, people can open them, other work, other places. And I would support them in the sense of like making a directory of them so people can share with their community. The biggest obstacle to making this in any town is that you have to reach the people who are interested. And I had this advantage that I could just type some shit into the computer, and then people immediately signed up wild. And that's like a block is a really, really useful thing for creating Yeah, um, groups of people. And if the other people starting it don't have their own blawg, that means my job would be to use mine block, which is collectively no help. Everybody who reads it to find the place

is Well, that was kind of related to another question on the expansion of mustache Ian ism. So Lee Marshall asked if everyone in the world adopted it, would it help or hurt the U. S? But, I mean, I think you can expend that to the whole world.

Yeah, Yeah, it depends on your definition of what they're adopting. Early in the days of the blogged, people would say, Well, if everybody just put all their money and index funds and then quit working and then never did anything again productive, that would wreck our economy. And then in that case, I do agree, because that would be there would be no workers and system and the stock values would be inflated because we were so much demand for it. And yeah, of course, that's not sustainable. But that's not really the definition of mustache in is, um, or not even frugality.

So what really happens is I'm an anti waste blawg. Really, like I'm not against spending money, but I'm against wasting money, especially when there's external effects. So, like if someone says, should I fill up my 40 gallon diesel pickup truck and then drive up into the mountains to go a TV ing all day? No, that's a waste in so many ways. You know, you're burning up these vehicles, you're bringing up the fuel, you're not getting any physical exercise and you're wrecking everybody else's life on the planet. So if you if less of that type of stuff happened, that doesn't hurt our economy at all,

it just shrinks the fossil fuel section and the Recreational motor vehicle section, which I would argue, are just drains on human productivity. Really? Now, instead, if we spend our money on things like clean energy systems, you know, like instead of going a TV and you could figure out solar panels and install them on your garage like like I've done here, that's just one, like, kind of really overly obvious example. Or you could spend your money and time fixing stuff in your town That also brings you a lot of social fund and exercise and things that you might build trails. And, um, so anyway,

when you have, when you get a lot of money saved up and invested, yeah, that's just really a psychological, you know, springboard to give you the freedom to do what you want to do with your life. Okay. But very Pew. Few people quit being productive at that point. They just quit a job. If they don't like it, yeah, and then they typically will start another business doing something they like. Or they'll start volunteering Mawr or start being an interesting, better person

in some other way. Yeah, well, that was that was actually one of the things that I also was interested in. You know, you were just saving the money while you were working. Um, and I think what's more common is to start a business, right? You know, you're like, OK, I have 200 k in the bank. I can just go. Um I forget the exact wording of the question. Yeah. I mean, it's greener pastures. Ask how do you balance mustache and frugality with spending to start and grow a business?

Yeah, that's a good question. And, um, if you think about mustache and principles in starting a business, you might be more efficient in it. For example, you'd say, OK, I have ah, flower delivery business. A normal person might be saying like, OK, I'm going to buy the biggest six wheel pickup truck that I can and then put one little flower truck bed and drive that around because that's a business vehicle and mustache. And I'll say, Well, I'm just gonna buy like a They used Ford Transit connect these little like van cars that are efficient and cheap on the used market.

And so they're both accomplishing the same thing in flower delivery, but one of them spending six times more money than the other one. So, um, so that's that's 11 partial answer to the question. And then the other thing is, if you think about cash flow quickly in your business instead of like years of investment in hopes of finding your first customer, that's more of a risk to your money. Whereas if you think, how can I start my business small and go right to sales and then scale up only after I've proven it with sales, that's, Ah, that reduces your risk. And that's kind of what the pop up business school was about as well. Yeah, so one example that I didn't follow and I wish I had is when I quit working,

I immediately started a construction company because I said, I love building designing houses and I'm gonna make some good. I got the style. Yeah, yeah. So? So we borrowed money to buy land and then borrowed money to build these big 3000 square foot houses. And then they had to sell before he could even get your money back, let alone make a profit much better. Designed, much better designed for business would have been. Just grab your tool belt and make sure you have good tools with almost no investment and then find customers to do stylish renovations on their houses and then watch that cash flow build up. And if you still like it, then maybe you expand to building custom houses for existing people where they buy the land and they hire, use a builder. And then, if you like that, then you might choose to expand by buying land to doing the craziest thing. But that would be only once you have so much money saved from it, and so much confidence that it's not a

big risk anymore, right? So it's Yeah, it's all about lowering the risk and getting feedback away,

all right? And I sure didn't know that when I first, even though I was supposedly kind of wise enough to have an early retirement. I still blew it when it came to starting my own business, and it was stressful and terrible. And I lost a friend out of it. Quote the business partner. So Ah, yeah, it's you don't You don't automatically know everything,

do you? Get involved on the other side. So, um Gabe dot ai just the Twitter handle asked you what you thought about angel investing. Do you? Do you ever get involved in

that? It sounds neat. I have this guy named ah friend named Nords who has the early retirement for military Retire. Yeah, block on. He talks about Angel investing all the time, and it sounds great, but his stories are the only thing I know about it. So, um, apparently it's a good use of you can think of it as like a business starting philanthropy. If you don't make money on it and then you can make money on it, maybe as well, I'm good at it. But he says, you should think of your 1st $100,000 or more as tuition in angel investing school. So I think it's a good use if you have the money. But I wouldn't advise people to think of it as a money making technique unless they are passionate enough about it to be quite good at

it. Okay, Um and so basically, what you do advise people in another person? Laurent asked, Um, basically, what are the skills that someone ought to build up just at the bottom of that one? Um, you know, obviously. Ah, you're pro Vanguard Index funds. Eso That's an investment strategy. Ah, pro carpentry construction skills. Um, what are the other skills you advise someone toe learn?

I would say Get good at anything that you get good at producing anything that you like consuming, especially if it's expensive. So you might not care about getting good at producing lettuce, for example, unless here you're passionate about it. But if you really like having a car, then you should get good at understanding cars and how to buy them and how to maintain them. If if you drive enough that maintenance is an issue, and then that part of your life can become free or even profitable, if you don't really care about cars and using very much, then you might skip that skill. And for example. Just use bikes or just have a cheap car that you minimally you put minimal money into it. And I'm I'm passionate about housing are like spaces and having a cool place for people to hang out into host gatherings. So because of that, my skill at producing housing or buildings and maintaining them is more valuable than it would be for somebody who doesn't care about it. Because I can create these things.

And I get houses effectively for free because by putting by finding him cheap and putting my labor into them than they could become profitable. So yeah, basic skills instead of saying everybody should have the same basic skills it should issued, really align with what you like to do. Um, I mean, I guess cooking might be kind of ah, a universal one, because everybody Yeah, yeah. So if you're really shitty at creating food, but you really want to eat expensive food all the time and you just go to restaurants for it, Yeah, that's, ah, fundamental tax on your life unless you're good at making the money for that. But most people specialize in buying restaurant meals, and they don't have much income. So that's a misalignment. So it's no good.

Um, And then what? What about if you have kids? What do you what skills are you focusing on teaching your son?

Yeah, so that's a good one. And kind of like the last question. So, um, learning about parenting is a good thing. If you have, kids can not following the necessarily the social norms about raising kids. Because, at least in wealthy areas of the US, there's this really weird tradition where people like to book up their kids and just have them do stuff all the time, like paid activities. And you're driving around town. And that makes no sense at all to make his kids are learning. Machines like the reason kids are different than adults. And the reason I like playing and playing with each other and stuff is is because that's how they learn best is they need to be in an environment where there stimulating stuff that they can figure out how it works and have new experiences. And none of that is part of of kid hit evolutionary history like,

you know, a forest, or this is why Lego is a good to us. It recreates a forest stuff that you can put together to create different experiences. So I would say, if you if you have kids, learn about learning and don't fall into the trap of booking up your kid's life with organized activities, because then you're depriving them of all the rial learning that that they're built to do.

And do you have any like, um, force mechanisms ensure they're physically active or you just kind of, you know, you do stuff and he does stuff with you, And that's just how it goes,

Yeah, I try to make it. I try to make that happen because my son is very mentally based, like he loves computers and he loves Ah, computers. So because he's 11 now, so I tryto. But he also we get along really well. So he loves Dad. So I try to make myself not available for computer activities with them and if he wants to do stuff with me, has to be physical. So I'm like, Well, we can go play Frisbee in the park beyond our house, or we can go down and play at the creek where we like bike down to this natural area and do forest jungle jungle guy stuff. And so that's what how we get physical stuff more and, you know,

we encourage friends to do sporty things with them. And, uh, yeah, some kids are naturally drawn to team sports, and in that case you should support it. But my son is like me and that he doesn't you just doesn't go for he's like, Well, why would I obey an adult's rules on how to play a game like that's That's lame. I want invent my own game. Okay, so, uh, I was always like that as a kid, too. So I have toe have sympathy for that.

Yeah, I'm definitely a solo sport kind of person is. Well,

yeah, So he likes biking and ilex tree climbing, and hopefully he likes being strong. I think that's the rial thing that will keep you out of trouble. As you grow up is if you have a desire to be healthy and strong than that that'll affect your your habits through the rest of your teenage years. I was kind of inspired us a kid by, like, Arnold movies and Stone. Really? Yeah, because I like the idea of, like, the tough, confident man, you know, as a kid, because I was nerdy.

So, uh, so that made got me into, like, the whole physical training and bodybuilding stuff. Yeah, and not that I was like a bodybuilder, but that was just in awe inspiring to me. So I lived that way where I was, like, you know, getting exercise and working on my health and stuff, and that really helped me avoid stuff that happens to people at my age. Now, if I hadn't been like that throughout

my life, Yeah, £1 a year and then it's a lot from 20 to secure, right? Yeah. Um And so what about ah, what about his education? Do you have any thoughts on? You know, should you go to college? Should he focus on? Obviously, he's into computer. Should to be an engineer. Do you? Ah, do you got him in any way there?

I would say no, like, we definitely have explained the university model and why it was good for us parents and ah, and then it's up to him to decide if it's good for him. Because the stuff has changed so much. The world of jobs and businesses. The Internet has blown it apart Teoh degree that most people don't understand. But as I've become more of an Internet person myself and I see all the businesses that exist out there, it turns out almost everything is possible Without schooling formal schooling, you can probably do it better and learn it better yourself. It's only like the most traditional professions now, like medicine and other, like certain types of law that enquire this really formal stuff. Yeah, um, and if you're a self guided person like I think my son is, he might not have the patients or the desire to go into any kind of traditional things like I want to create when I want to create and sell it to whoever is interested in it.

Yeah, so I don't mind if he doesn't go the formal university. If he does, I'll definitely support him in that way, too. But I would never force him because you know where he's. It's so easy to make a living in so many different ways that it's not. There's no stress like, Oh, you got to do this or you're gonna be in the ditch.

Okay, living, and I support him. You mean support him? Not financially. You mean mentally? Just

like well, when we would certainly pay for whatever needs to be paid for.

You wanted to go to a fancy liberal arts, you know, 70,000 or $100,000 a year school by the time he's 18. You're like,

All right, I'm in. Well, if there were talk about that with them, okay. I mean, first of all, I think it's good for kids toe pay for their own education to the most degree that they can, because it's good to understand the money part of it. Secondly, that sounds like kind of Ah, you know, that's beyond because school kind of has, like, this exponential thing at the top of the cost, where you get into ridiculous costs for no reason, like the private ones.

Whereas you can go to, like the Harvard, the Ivy League schools for pretty much free. If you're good enough to get in, then you generally don't have to pay a huge amount to to do it. So that would be another thing I'd encourage. But let's say hypothetically, like the only path that will make him have the best life is to pay the super tuition for this thing. And you can't pay for himself, then, yes, we would pay for it and are in this situation because we've come into extra money in our old situation. If I hadn't, you know, if I was living off $25,000 a year and just had, like,

the $1 million of savings and have never done any more work to build it, then we would say, no, I can't afford it. So we're not gonna go into debt to pay for your school, Okay? I think that's a valid thing for parents to do. They should not pretend that they're multimillionaires. Just because that's the American standard people should pay for their should buy the schooling that they can afford. I think

it's really valuable for a kid to figure out how much it actually costs before you, you know, sign that look like yeah, This month is my last month of, ah, expensive and wire student loan payments. And so it's become much clearer How expensive it was those four years. Yeah, after the

fact. Yeah, people really students don't really see the dollars. I just see it like vaguely and remember, Yeah. Yeah. And I think you should learn that from the beginning. I remember my first year of school, which I was paying for, mostly myself. I went in with the attitude that you probably did where I was like, Oh, yeah, I guess these are the books I need. I'll just put him on the on the account or whatever, and then I was, like,

vaguely had this vague feeling. Mantis physics textbook is $89. That sounds like a lot, but I guess that's what you do. But then by the end of that year, I thought you could just sell them back to the bookstore. But you can't books. There was like, we'll give you five bucks for that one, and this one is obsolete. Like using the next version. Yeah. Yeah. Physics has changed. Yeah. So mad you

stole my money s.

So then, from that point on, I would look at was like no books or five bucks, like I'm not gonna buy this thing. And I would like share textbooks with multiple friends and we would photocopy them and have these nice binders of well printed shared books. Yeah, because that was my money, You know, I was, like, $89. That takes me nine hours at minimum wage to make that back in high school. So I'm not gonna spend that just to just to have a giant book that's should be on a digital format anyway, because at that time, digital stuff was already invented. Even that was a long time ago. So why are they even giving us paper books?

Yeah, So you gotta get mad when things are expensive, Like housing. Like you don't stay in the dorm room unless it's competitive with off campus. Reynolds sharing with roommates and in both the price and quality. You and you don't have a car when you're a student because you don't have any money. Cars, air, a rich luxury persons, gas powered racing wheelchair. So why should you have one when you don't even have enough money to pay cash for your for your student? Ah, yeah. For your courses, that kind of stuff cuts your bills a lot

big time. Yeah, I mean, I think folks who take this gap here between high school and university if they choose to do it super valuable for many reasons. And that's one of them. Like, you see how much work it actually takes to pay for a you know, 50 grand a year

Education. Yeah, if it's a gap working here. I mean, I've also heard of taking Gap years to travel to go drink beers in Thailand. Yeah, with other people's money. And that's also something I was against as a kid. So this is where my non privileged upbringing probably turned out to be an advantage because I was thinking, Well, how could people go traveling like that costs money, which I don't have, So it's automatically out of the question. And secondly, I need to get to the other side of this hump of the engineering degree because that's where the money is. So I'm going to start as soon as possible. E don't want to delay it at all because I know I won't have the money ever. Yeah,

that's a great point, s So I just kind of curious where what you think about planning for the future, given that you have such an influence now among millions of people, you know, if if the I assume people.

Yeah. I don't know if that would like to know the real number, but let's just say there's if there is influence than yeah. What's the exact question? What my land for?

Well, you're because you can kind of be prescriptive to a certain extent. Um, you know, say climate change happens. Or maybe the U. S economy doesn't necessarily, like, keep up the pace it has been. Um What? How do you feel about that? How do you How do you plan for it? And how do you recommend other people plan for it?

Oh, right. You mean. So if things are not perfect like they have been since the last recession since we came out of it Um, yeah. How do you make your life Antony? Fragile? I guess you could say. And luckily, the same principles that get you to early retirement in good times are the same ones that make you more crash proof in bad times. So which is not designing a bunch of costs into your life that don't have to be there and not, um no, not compromising her health, because that's just another cost. If you're if you get sick, or if you're less productive because you're less healthy. So all the basic principles of mustache,

like building multiple skills reduce that increases your production, um, living toe live learning to live efficiently. So that decreases your consumption, hanging out, you know, building social connections with people of all different sorts. So you have, like, a mesh of people to lean on and that you can help. All that stuff is the same things we would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse as well. So it works in all in all times.

Okay. Cool. Um, well, I I think we're good. Do you have any closing words for ah, mustache, Ian's or people on the road to early retirement?

Oh, man, you just sprung that one on me. No, I don't have any closing words. I'm just a general words as they go as life goes on type of person, So Okay, I'll be, uh, the next time I have words that will appear on the blogged. Thanks, man. Thank you.

All right. Thanks for listening. So, as always, the transcript and video are at blogged out y Combinator dot com and if you'd like to apply to the winner 2018 batch,