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Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

I wish they asked about health care costs. For a family of three with no corporate job in sight, those have got to eat up a large chunk of the $25k.

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He does have a blog.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/11/01/our-new-237-per-mo...

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/09/21/i-can-never-retire...

Obviously everyone's health situation differs, but my health insurance experiences have been similar to MMM's. For an 'average' person/family, health insurance shouldn't be breaking the bank (e.g. $200-300 per month).

I've heard of some realistic pre-existing health conditions that required $600+/month for specialty meds, but if that $7000+ per year is enough to make the difference in your 'retirement', it wouldn't be too bad to get a part time job to cover your cost.

Decent health insurance for a healthy person in New York is at least $600. My aunt, a cancer survivor in Middland Texas, pays several thousand per month for an individual plan.

A modest HMO that covers a family cannot be had for less than $1k/month sticker price. If you don't want co-insurance it's at least $1200. At least in Massachusetts. Family of 3, no pre-existings. Good plans with a $25 co-pay on popular corporate providers (tufts/Harvard pilgrim) are nearly $1500/month, blue cross is close to $1800.

Expensive. No way around it.

I live in Maine and have 4 kids. We pay $535 a month. The key is setting your deductible high and forgoing co-pays. As long as you have some savings in place (which is easier to do when you pay less) and be smart about visits, it works really well and yet your covered for anything serious.

Having shopped it recently nothing like that can be had in Massachusetts for a family.

Check again in October when the health care exchanges go live. Maybe you will see some doesn't prices there.

We have had those for a while. Same prices on mass health connector.

His family's insurance cost comes to $237/month.

It seems low, but not that low, at least relative to how much I pay as a 20-something guy scaled to three people.

Because it features $10,000 per person deductibles (and then you still have to pay a portion up to $3k). If his kid breaks his leg riding his bike to school in the snow the family income could be cut nearly in half. Better than nothing, but definitely not great. That's a symptom of the US more than it is his lifestyle though.

No, the point is he has $600K+ in the bank as self-insurance. If he has to pay $10K in one year for medical expenses, he would do something like reduce the amount that his family draws by $1K a year for the next ten years, not cut the draw rate in half for one year. The self-insurance bet is that he won't have to do that more than once every ten years on average. Given their healthy lifestyle, he's probably going to win that bet.

I have a plan for two people (wife and I), includes $20 office co-pays, $50 specialist co-pays, and $10-50 prescriptions. Max out of pocket per year is $5k/person. $200/month total.

> For an 'average' person/family, health insurance shouldn't be breaking the bank (e.g. $200-300 per month).

Let's play dueling anecdotes.

$300 a month was right around the cost of my COBRA premium for a group plan covering myself only, circa 2006.

$150 a month was what I paid as for an individual plan in my mid 20s circa 1998, and that was for a plan with relatively spare coverage and high deductibles. Perfectly healthy (arguably above average), living in a community that was also arguably above national averages for health statistics and below national average living costs.

I'm very skeptical of the truth of any claim that one could cover a family at $300 a month. Especially in 2013.

Heck, I'm somewhat skeptical that there are people out there nowadays who've been able to buy reasonable coverage on the individual market at all. I know people who don't have to worry much about money but who've still found it a hassle to get insured.

You can, but it's going to be a high deductible plan. I just did a quick search on e-healthinsurance, for a family of 4 with 2 kids I could get coverage for $265 a month. Of course, the catch is that has a $7500 deductible and then 30% co-insurance after that... At $400 a month I could get a plan with a $10,000 deductible and then no co-insurance after that.

I'm curious about this as well. I'm sure he knows what he's doing better than I in this matter, but I can't help think I would have picked a different country to retire in when attempting to get by minimally.

25k/3 people is like a welfare amount of money to live on.

True, but I'd say %99.99.. of those on welfare don't own their own house.

Yeah but I think it is silly to suggest he has retired on a 25k a year pension. I mean have homeless people retired? Have people on food stamps retired?

One of his themes is to maximize frugality/stinginess. He claims to have no debt. He has some assets, has some income. Still, I doubt it's as easy as he makes it sound. But OTOH, there are a lot of optimizations I know I could make, yet have tended to ignore.

Not just own their own house, but also own a second rental property (another house).

In San Francisco, I think the most a family of three could get a year (GA + CalFresh) is $10,416. Maintaining GA for any length of time is almost impossible, though, and you need to do eight hours of "workfare" a week to remain qualified (so no retirement).

Not to mention that you need to somehow figure out how to rent an apartment for three in SF for less then $300 a month.

He owns and runs a VERY popular blog. He is probably making at least $10k/month from advertisements on the blog alone.

If this is the case, then the figures mentioned in the article are incomplete and misleading.

At one point he was making $4k per month on credit card referrals[1].

[1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/21/i-just-gave-up-400...

Shocking that someone giving financial advice online is not entirely upfront... (Though it is interesting in this case because the sales pitch is pretty universally unappealing.)

"More recently, even my hobby of writing the blog has started producing some cash"

So technically the blog money was somewhat covered in the article, though in a way that I agree is likely very misleading.

As a "living frugal guru" you can't exactly come right out and say "Also, I'm making a bunch of money by selling advertising to you all", though it is almost certainly the truth.

You would need to know the value of their house to fully judge their situation. If we assume they live in a reasonable house that would cost $1,500 per month to rent / mortgage and we assume they save $750 per month on the costs of working (commuting, baby sitting, eating out) they have an effective income of... $52,000. The median household income in the U.S is $51,000 and that's for households that will often have debt too and not be very good at spending little money.

Why does the value of their home factor into their annual income? You can't pay for healthcare with pieces of your house.

The value of their home factors into their annual income when comparing to other household incomes. The grandparent said that $25,000 is a level of income someone would expect on welfare, however MMM does not have costs that people on welfare have. For example I spend $18,000 per year on my rent, I would need to earn $25,000 + $18,000 to have the same effective income as MMM. For most households housing costs are one of the largest (if not the largest) ongoing cost, when comparing MMM and others (as the grandparent did) you need to take that into account.

I'll just chip in here. I don't know where the guy lives, but in some places, living is inexpensive. The rent you quoted (1500$/month) is the entirety of my living expenses where I am.

I pay ~600$/month to have a 4 1/2 apartment close to a big-chain supermarket and all necessary amenities. This includes the Hydro bill, the fridge and oven-stove. I have an interior pool. Yes, at that price. Food is about 500$ a month. Internet a further 60$, for a 30/8 Cable pipe.

I'm about 200km from Montreal, close to a university.

Edit: He actually states his house is worth around $400k, which would make it a nice house for the area. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/01/raising-a-family-o...

He says he lives in a four bedroom four bathroom house. And he says he lives in what he believes to be one of the nicest neighborhoods in Longmont. His wife also states that the house has around 2600 square feet. That means the house is worth at least $200k. I would suggest that it would be worth at least $300k if it was older. You could get a little bit bigger house for $400k though. I wouldn't say that Longmont is an expensive place to live, it is definitely a lot cheaper than its neighbor Boulder, but I would say there are a lot of cheaper places to live.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/05/11/the-elephant-in-th...

True, but fewer places as naturally beautiful or outdoor-friendly that Boulder Valley. There's a reason that Colorado has the lowest obesity rate in the country. There's just so many great athletic activites.

I agree, Boulder is an amazing place to be. World class outdoor activities like climbing and skiing are close by. Plus CU-Boulder is there, so you get the benefits of a big University. Richard Dawkins and Brian Greene both gave talks this year. And housing is reasonable once you get outside of the city of Boulder.

That's only what he spends, not what he's earning. All his income from his investments get reinvested because he doesn't need to tap into that for expenses.

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