#475: Mr. Money Mustache — Living Beautifully on $25-27K Per Year (Repost)

The average middle-income American spends like $12,000 per household [on a car], which is just on driving around in these gas-powered racing wheelchairs, and that's more than they even invest in their future. That's more than they're spending on their freedom. So, step 1: Don't have a car that's worth more than about 10,000 bucks at the most unless you're at least like a single millionaire ... You can get a great, perfectly great, car that'll be trouble-free for 10-plus years for under $5,000.

It's pretty well-studied that happiness is not very much affected by adding positives to your life ... It's mostly accomplished by removing things that are a strong negative to your every day.

You don't have to know much to be a very good investor. You can be a top-10% investor by just buying one Vanguard fund and... putting all your extra money in there forever.

You should never get a job, unless you're at gunpoint, that requires you to drive to it. Either find a new job, find a place to live near that job—even if it requires moving to a new city or a new country.

Walking is so powerful and so underrated. Your brain just goes into overdrive. All of your problems sort of start to solve themselves in the background.

If you can't afford to lose it, you can't afford to buy it yet. Otherwise. the object owns you rather than vice versa.

I think 'Stumbling on Happiness' by Daniel Gilbert is a good exploration of this—oftentimes, what we think will make us happy does not make us happy.

Most of our spending is a sign of weakness. It's a bunch of stuff that we do to compensate for our weaknesses because we couldn't solve the problem in a smarter way.