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Q: How much did you pay for that? [Most common question IRL]
A: Probably nothing, unless it looks expensive in which case, probably more than you think. I buy luxury items from the “upper class” used (and so do they) and swap and recycle items with the “middle class” for free. You’ll rarely see me in the mall.

Q: Do you clip coupons?
A: No. Coupons are mostly for preprocessed foods and poor goods that aren’t selling well. Cooking from staples is less expensive and requires less time if you consider the flexibility and the time saved from clipping and going to multiple stores. Good stuff do not need coupons to sell and staples are like commodities: You can’t brand name potatoes or lettuce. More generally speaking, I would say I am in a different class of frugal. I am not frugal because I need to cut cash outlays. I can plunk down $5000 easily. Now, if I can pay $5000 for something and sell it in five years for $4800, I have only spent $40 a year compared to buying something for $600 with a $100 rebate and having to throw it out 5 years later. This is how I save money.

Q: How much did you pay for your degree?
A: I didn’t pay anything because I grew up in a country where advanced education was/is free. If I had grown up in the US I would probably have done the stupid thing and get into student debt because I was still ignorant about money when I was 18. In hindsight, that is, knowing what I know now… and what I’m telling you… I would have either gone to a state university and paid rent to my parents to get a degree in a skilled profession (engineering, accounting, …) or gone to a community college and gotten a degree in a skilled trade. I think the latter is very underrated. This is probably because universities have more money available for advertising than do community colleges even though if you are equally ambitious you will be making as much money with a trade as you will in a profession.

Q: How can you possibly pay for health insurance on a total budget of $500/month? I pay $500 per month on health insurance alone, so your budget does not make sense. [Most common question on the blog]
A: Your health insurance is probably “fully loaded”. I pay $71 each month for a high deductible health plan which I obtained on the free market, that is, no “corporatist cheating” of having to get it through a job or a family member’s job. In fact, I think tax laws favoring employer sponsored group insurance is grossly unjust!

I max out my HSA which reduces my taxes by $450 a year (I’m in the 15% bracket). My net costs of health insurance are thus $402 per year. Back when I was in the 25% tax bracket making my net cost $69*12-0.25*2900 = $103/year. How do you like them apples?

When I was working I intentionally dumped my company health insurance for the HDHP—note that many companies only offer the fully loaded plans. Ask your employer if they offer a HDHP. In such cases it is not unusual that employers would cover you for free.

HDHP’s are cheap because most of the responsibility is on the consumer. They remain cheap too. For example, when I am 55 years old, the cost will be $155 per month in today’s dollars. Read this post . It should also be noted that I don’t have any pre-existing conditions and that I take a more conservative (continental) approach to health care, that is, I believe in prevention rather than treating symptoms and I don’t medicate for everything. DW has her health insurance through her company, so we have separate health insurances.

Q: What about dental or vision?
A: I don’t have dental insurance(*). I floss and scrape religiously. I try to get my teeth fixed out of country where they are less obsessed about teeth straightening and whitening and other crazy cosmetic ideals. When out of country I simply make an appointment with the local dentist and they will take a look and fix what needs to be fixed. The total cost is less than the co-pay in California(!) mainly because those dentists are not paying off student loans, fancy X-ray machines, built in movie LCD screens in the chairs, etc.

(*) Paying insurance that covers “regular maintenance” (like teeth cleaning or contact lenses) makes no sense whatsoever. The point of insurance is to cover rare events with a high cost. If there were a high deductible dental plan (maybe there is?) I would get that, just in case I get my teeth knocked out of something.

Q: I couldn’t see myself living in a RV if that’s what it takes.
A: We pay $475/month to live here or $5700 per year. I budget for half of that which means in my budget, I count it as 475/2 = $237.5/month. Note that $5700/year with, say, 1/3 paid in property taxes and maintenance would make for a mortgage payment of $3800/year, which at a 4% yield would correspond to a house of around $100,000. This will get you a shed (or an RV parking space) in California but a middle of the range house (2 bathrooms, 3 bed rooms, 1 garage) in many parts of the country. So no, you don’t have to live in an RV although it’s quite fun.

Q: What about children? Do you plan to have them?
I have heard everything from how children leads to a fulfilling life to the opinion that life without children is meaningless. Now, I am the older sibling and when I was a kid my mother was running daycare for another kid eight years younger than me. In addition, my xGF had two teenagers. I have thus seen all aspects of parenthood from the first step and the first word to helping with homework and to be honest, my preferred ideal of having kids would be if they were 20 years old and moved out already Yes, it may be that there is a difference if they shared my own genetic material, but I don’t think so.

Q: How can someone with children retire early?
A: The same way as people without children. By themselves, children actually spend very little money. The problem is parents spending money on their children without limits. If you adopt the same basic guidelines for your children as you do for yourself, the cost will be low. The fiscal or frugal problem happens when parents are willing to spend less on themselves but still create a consumer lifestyle for their children. I believe this is doing the children a disfavor. Unlike stuff which you can just put in your garage, children need attention which you can either provide yourself or pay someone else to provide for you. Early retirement is a great way to provide time and attention and if you’re smart you will wait the 5 years it takes to save enough money to be financially independent before having children.

Q: What about DW? How does she feel about work?
Like most people, DW does not consider her going to work for 8-10 hours a day as big a sacrifice as I do. Although it is impossible to predict how you feel about work down the line (The “I can see myself passionately working in my career until I die” statement is usually made by people with only a couple of years of working experience. I know. I used to say the very same thing.) she may be working until her late 50s or so.

Q: What is your net worth?
A: My net worth is higher than the median of practically any age or income range in the US (If you are more than 70 years old and you made bank in your career, that is, you were in the top income quintile, you’re probably wealthier than me, otherwise I’m probably wealthier than you). Due to the low savings rate and the tendency to blow (retirement-)savings on emergencies, this sadly does not take much. The average person does not have a lot of money. This also means I probably have less than you think. If you are a long time reader, I have dropped enough hints to allow you to estimate it fairly accurately.

Q: How can you retire on less than a million dollars?
A: The great majority of people never manage to accumulate a million dollars and so not that many actually retire on a million dollars. A million dollars is simply what is required to replace the expenses of an average consumer family, that is, about $50,000/year. Now obviously many families live in less than that. Consequently, they need less retirement funds. Conversely, some people can not live on less than $100,000. I can’t even imagine how someone is able to spend that much money—if you gave me 100k and told me to spend it within a year, I’d probably still have 90k left by December despite trying very hard to waste it—but these families would need at least 2 million to retire.

Q: How do you deal with all your sacrifices?
A: How do you deal with yours? A sacrifice does not mean giving up something. A sacrifice means exchanging something for something better. I have given up shopping, credit cards, expensive cars, large houses, season tickets, and vacations in exchange for the joy of not having to work, the ability to spend all my time as I want, and the lack of stress from never having to struggle to make ends meet. If you know the answer to how you can sacrifice 60 hours of your life a week for the next 40 years, you know the answer to how I can sacrifice not eating out or buying stuff without thinking about the cost.

Q: [Related] how can you live comfortably on so little money?
A: First, I spend my money more than twice as efficiently as the average person. This means I get more utility out of each dollar. Second, don’t confuse spending money with living comfortably or having fun. Comfort is mainly about living without constant stress and fun is mainly about what you do rather than what you spend. If you can’t do anything without spending, naturally you wouldn’t have fun and you would probably also be stressed due to this inability. However, it is possible to overcome this inability.

Q: You’re not retired. You’re just a stay at home spouse.
A: The difference between a stay at home spouse and me is that I am independently wealthy and don’t need my spouse’s income/handouts. In other words, I am not a “dependent”.

Q: You can not be retired if your spouse is still working.
A: Why not? Is there a rule that states that either both must be working or both must be retired? I suspect part of the confusion comes about because married couples used to run all their finances jointly. This made sense when there was only one income earner. In our case there were two and we entered marriage with very different levels of wealth. In addition we had different goals. Therefore we kept our finances separate. This avoids a lot of arguments about whether or not to spend on something. We only need to agree on things we buy “for the house” and are free to buy things for ourselves without consulting the spouse.

Q: Your budget is confusing me.
A: This is technically a statement, not a question. I will usually discuss budgets in terms of expenses per person, where by person I mean adult. So if I say $6000/year, it means that DW and I pay $12000/year. If you ask me about rent, I will give the full figure. If you ask me about health insurance, I will give the individual figure for me; however if we weren’t individually covered, I’d give the family number and divide it by two when putting it into the budget/person. Does that make sense?
Note that there is an economy of scale by including more people in the household. For instance, we can share bedroom and bathrooms. Also, obviously, adding children cost much less. On the other hand there are also compromises. For instance, we have a car whereas if I were on my own, I would never have a car. The only reason we have it is due to a compromise I did not have a car when I was saving money for financial independence but now I have enough money to afford it. This means that my budget now is slightly higher than what it used to be. I believe this is how it should be. If I can afford something (like martial arts training), why not spend the money once the ability to pay for all needs out of investment income has been achieved.

Q: This may work for you, but it would never work for me.
A: Is this your problem or mine? Regardless, don’t get too involved in copying what I do. I primarily write with the intention of providing guidelines rather than plans. I show you that this could work and give you one specific example of how I made it work. I know there are a few other bloggers who work along similar lines and they do things slightly different from me. What we all have in common are really high savings rates and rather low levels of expenses which in monetary terms would be considered poverty levels or at least be much lower than the money we would be expected to spend to keep up [ in the spending competition] with out incomes. We differ in terms of how we invest e.g. stocks, real estate, or private businesses or how we manage not to pay for things e.g. repairing things, being minimalists, work camping, or homesteading.