Another blog? Really?

Yep.

I got started in this because of MMM, GCC and jlcollinsnh.

Actually, I got started because I had, and have, a lot of time on my hands and because I want to share. And write. Among other things that I remember from my working life, write and share how I ended up with time in my hands in the busy world we live in. But back to my inspirational blogs, they are all part of the financial independence/retire early (FIRE) growing blog community.

MMM is Mr. Money Mustache, the character behind www.mrmoneymustache.com and founder and spiritual leader of “mustachianism”. MMM is about “early retirement through badassity”.

I stumbled upon this blog a few years ago, probably lead from Yahoo! Finance which I was reading at the time, but never saw the (long-term) value until last year when I was already pursuing financial independence and therefore more mentally ready to soak it in. The biggest eye-opener post was his classic “The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement”, which will tell you 80% of what you need to know about retirement (not just early retirement) in just one post: when you put all the ingredients in the formula you realize that how much you spend is a lot more important than how much you earn and, luckily!, you also have a lot more control over your expenses than over your earnings (isn’t this great?). This realization alone justifies the hours I’ve spent reading MMM, but I’ve learned a lot more. Give it a try.

GCC is Go Curry Cracker!, the traveler running www.gocurrycracker.com. His is a blog about financial independence, avoiding taxes (totally different from evading them!), and “slow travel”.

There is some unavoidable content overlap across these blogs, so the biggest takes I got from GCC are about minimizing taxes and how to build a run a Roth conversion ladder (it’s, fortunately, simpler than it sounds). Him being a traveler, he also introduced me to travel hacking. Yes, there is such a thing and I am also learning about it. All that said, his post most important to me, and the reason I am blogging (you can thank him, hehe) is none other than “Everyone should blog”.

Jlcollinsnh is Jim Collins from www.jlcollinsnh.com author of the blog and book that can help anyone to follow “The simple path to wealth”.

He is best known for his Stock series, a sensible fun, and didactic investment guide, and a must-read. I feel this is the most personal of the three blogs; you get to know Jim Collins at a more personal level than you know the other two bloggers. It may be the voice of experience.

I am a bit older than MMM and GCC (40?) and a bit younger than Jlcollinsnh (60?) and it is great to get the mix of perspectives from the different phases of life and retirement these bloggers are in, and from three bloggers in a very mature stage of their respective personal epiphanies (maturity I haven’t reached yet, which makes me kind of lost).

I read their blogs from start to finish (I am still going through jlcollinsnh as I scribble this). I started reading bits and pieces from MMM but I realized that to get a better idea of where things were going I had to go back to the beginning, the blog was about 4 years old when I started so it took me a couple of months to catch up. I did the same with GCC. And I am now doing the same with jlcollinsnh. Sometimes I read a few posts in a row, and sometimes only one post or one paragraph. I stop when something else comes up or when I need time to chew up or savor what I am getting. I had never followed blogs before. I had read a few posts here and there but never got engaged with a single blog for a long time.

Until now.

What other FIRE blogs can you recommend?

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