Mustachian Spotting UK
Do you know this potential Mustachian?!?! 🙂
Seeing as us Financial Independence seekers are generally a modest bunch and tend to keep ourselves to ourselves I often find myself thinking “Hey, this guy could be a Mustachian and neither of us would even know it”.
I’ve therefore invented a game called Mustachian Spotting, whereby I look for behavioural trends that we tend to see in people who are either seeking or have already achieved Financial Independence. And then like a big judgy type person complete with wig and gavel I cast out markings out of 10. It’s great fun, maybe you should try it some time?
To give you an idea on what sort of scores you can dish out there are some examples of potential Mustachians I know below. I’m not actually saying that any of these dudes/dudettes actually read MMM or ERE (and certainly not theFIREstarter! 🙂 ), but they exhibit behaviour that could, I think, mean they more receptive to the ideas of FI, simple living, sustainability, anti-consumerism and ultimately achieving true freedom, than the average Josephine.
TFS Senior (My Dad)
Badass: Handy with skills around the house and general DIY (like many men of his generation I guess!). Knows how to handle a power tool. Engineer by trade and therefore lives a relatively efficient lifestyle. Moans about work a lot 🙂 (don’t we all!). Likes gardening etc… Has good survival skills so would know how to live on low/no money if the zombie/financial apocalypse ever does happen.
Sad-ass: He has a lot of Mustachian qualities which he has passed down to me, but could have done with a nudge in the right direction to allow them to fully blossom. Also I am pretty sure if my ‘rents re-organised their finances and took an ever so slight lifestyle hit my Dad could retire right now if he wanted to, but it looks like he is destined to work till the standard retirement age (about 5 more years) which is in the main funding a larger than necessary house and some extravagant holidays by anyone’s measure. Maybe I should buy him Your Money or Your Life
MSFPBR (Mustachian Spotting Federation Potential Badass Rating): 7/10
Uncle P
Badass: Quit a stressful job about 15 years ago. Lives a simple life and now works at a supermarket to pay the bills. I don’t know their exact financial position; as you know, it’s rude to talk about that sort of thing isn’t it?! But I’m guessing at least the mortgage must be paid off by now as they’ve had the same house for years.
Sad-ass: I guess you could argue that he’s not fully early retired yet, although again hard to gauge what might be achievable on that front without knowing the financial position.
MSFPBR: 6/10
Uncle M
Badass: Quit his potentially lucrative job early doors to go and live his dream in and join a band! Massive respect for this from TFS Towers!
Sad-ass: Unfortunately unless you hit the big time life as a musician is not the best of paying jobs. Maybe he’d have been better sticking out the lucrative job for a few years and doing band stuff on the side, then going full time once the stash was large enough to support the new lifestyle?
MSFPBR: 6/10
Cousin E & Mr M
Badass: Mr M is my cousin E’s husband. From what I can gather he is ex-financial industry, and they both quit their jobs and moved from London to the Garden of England 2 last year. They’re reportedly loving life doing not that much right now with their new born baby. They clearly have a big nest egg to fall back on… I wonder if it conforms to the 4% rule 🙂 ? They also seem to like gardening, cooking at home, cycling, and other Mustachian activities.
Sad-ass: Nothing I can think of. Maybe they even actually read MMM or similar blogs!? Someone needs to do a fact finding mission at the next family gathering I think! 😉
MSFPBR: 9/10 (only fails from being a 10 because I don’t know if they are fully FI or just taking a few years off and will find work again soon. Either way very high on the badass scale I am sure you will agree!)
Mr H
Badass: Mr H is my old boss. He would spend our yearly reviews practically evangelising how I should pay down my mortgage instead of actually talking about what he should have done. I found this quite amusing and just thought he was just a bit mental back at the time but now I wish I’d paid more attention*. He also got made redundant and must have cashed in big time on that. He took at least a year off just dossing around before having to get another job. He also owns a rental property
Sad-ass: While the financial ship was unquestionably watertight, I would say apart from that he did not seem remotely Mustachian. I would question what he was using the freedom he was buying for, and didn’t seem to live a particularly healthy lifestyle, in terms of exercise and so on. Each to their own of course but we unfortunately we must deduct some marks on this account!
MSFPBR: 7/10
*Side note: The key missing ingredient was actually the “how”. It’s no good just telling someone: “Save 50% of your income” or “Aggressively overpay your mortgage”. They’ll generally need a few little pointers in the right direction on how and where to make the savings to enact on such advice. It was good advice but it wasn’t actionable advice. I remember thinking at the time “That’s easy for you to say as you’re getting paid 3-4 x the amount I am!”, however I missed the point that I was spending all of my money on fun stuff like holidays. In fact I didn’t even miss that point as I was fully aware of that and wanted to spend the money on that stuff at the time, but there was certainly some fat I could have trimmed out of my budget back then without missing out on the things I truly valued.
Chavzilla
Badass: This is our ex-next-door-neighbour, whom we bestowed upon the unkindly moniker you read above. Bit of an odd one. She has a lot of time freedom because she doesn’t/didn’t have a job (as far as we could tell) but then also relies on the state benefits (or everyone else from another view point) to live off of.
Sad-ass: Unfortunately I think we can be pretty sure there is no stash and therefore no monetary freedom at all in her life.
MSFPBR: 4/10
Conclusion
I guess the thing that relates all of these people is that they are all attempting to find happiness and freedom in their own ways, and really that is what we are all after. I think a lot of them could well have been full blown Mustachians given the right nudges at the right times in life.
I count myself very lucky that I found the nudge I was looking for when I randomly discovered MMM in January 2013, and will try to pass that on as subtly as I can to both loved ones and people I meet over the next few decades of my life.
As usual some final things to ponder and maybe reply if you get time:
- Do you know any potential Mustachians?
- If so are you afraid to ask them outright if they are seeking FI?
- Have you got any ideas on turning potential Mustachians into full blown FI seekers?
- Is it as simple as just sending them a few articles to a blog?
- My thoughts as mentioned above are that, especially for the older generation, maybe a book suggestion or gift might be more appropriate? Personally I am still apprehensive on what reaction that might elicit, is that too judgy 3 – “Oh look I noticed that you are probably completely shit with your finances and could use a book to help you out with that” – or am I overthinking this a bit?
Let me know what you think and happy moustache spotting folks!
Notes:
- This page contains affiliate link(s) to amazon
, each one is brought to your attention with the ‘*’ denotation. What is an affiliate link you ask?! OK well it’s fairly basic… If you click through and then subsequently buy anything (not just the originally linked product) on amazon I may receive a small fee, which will help to support theFIREstarter blog. The key thing is that it will not cost you anything extra to use these links, although don’t go clicking on them willy nilly just because it may help me! If you think you will find the product/service useful and do click through, then a sincere “thank you” for your support. ↩
- That’s Kent, for the uninitiated in old English phrases ↩
- Yes, yes… ironic considering the post content. I get it. 🙂 ↩
Discussion (26) ¬
I love the game, and shall admit occasionally playing it myself. So far the closest I’ve come to identifying a true ‘hidden mustachian’ was sat in another company’s office doing some contracting work and behind me one guy was trying to explain to the other that if he stopped buying coffee everyday he could put that into a mortgage overpayment/investing and retire 10 years earlier instead. I wanted to turn around and shower him with praise but thought it a tad unprofessional..
Wow… that is almost text book Mustachian speak. If he didn’t know of MMM he has surely read one of the finance books on the subject like YMOYL.
Maybe he even reads your blog, now that would be cool. You should have asked him 🙂
Great spot ERG!
Haha, quite a nice idea.
I have to admit I don’t really think about other people’s position along the spectrum a great deal other than my immediate family. Sadly, in this regard almost all are extremely low of the scale, I fear.
Miss DD has the potential to move rapidly up the scale but currently seems a little reticent to do so as it involved thinking long-term financially which is not a strong point (not due to lack of ability but interest…though we are experiencing some wiggle on this!).
That’s a shame DD, no chance of dropping a few select MMM posts that might help them out, or do you think it would not go down well? That is the only reason I have not really sent anything out to basically everyone I know, I think people might miss the good intentions and just think I am meddling with their lives. Most people I know seem happy enough so what is the point in poking my nose in, right?
Good luck with Miss DD! My plan was always dragging Mrs T along with me on this journey whether she likes it or not… (although now we’re a bit along the route and seeing results, she is tending to like it more and more) 🙂
This is hilarious! I totally do this every single day. It’s hilarious the comments you get when you casually bring up something like “you know, if you save up 25 times your annual spending, you could just retire.” I haven’t sniffed out any around me yet. But I sure do love to get reactions. Of course I never mention that’s our plan. I just mention it as a passing thing I’ve heard. It’s usually written off immediately. “That’s ridiculous! No one could actually do that!”
Glad you found it an amusing post as well Maggie, just a bit of fun really 🙂
I think I need to start dropping things like that into conversation, it sounds like fun and I haven’t really tried it yet.
There’s this one guy at my office who only drinks the free coffee, bikes at home, chose to live in one of the least expensive neighborhoods in the city… I never tried to ask, but I think he’s totally mustachian.
A bunch of my colleagues go to starbucks everyday, that reduces their score by several points already 🙂
I meant “bikes from home”, not “bikes at home”
Haha, well he could have just had a cycling machine at home I guess instead of paying the monthly gym bill which is also a decent money saver 🙂
We clearly need to come up with some sort of code word and get it out there on the MMM forum to work out if people are on the same page:
“Does the grey fox grow long stash?”
“Yes, he abides to the rule of 4”
🙂
I know one potential Mustachian. She’s super handy, raises chickens, quit her job as a scientist and generally does what she wants. Of course, this is enabled by her fiancee who is a doctor-to-be in residency, so I’m not sure if it counts…
I find it pretty easy to suss out the people not striving FI. All it takes is one reference to how much they’re putting into their retirement accounts. And unless they are halfway there and understand that savings=good, I have no idea how to convert someone.
She’d definitely score high on my rankings I think Norm, she sounds like she would be very suggestible to the ideas of FI etc… then? Maybe give her a nudge in the right direction? 😉
Very true on working out who is not. It’s basically 99% of the people you meet, haha!
I shall be playing this today 🙂
I’m mentioning the subject in passing more and more. Passing someone a blog link or two. Thing is, it’s a big other culture that can take a while to read around. So it can easily be dismissed!
Thinking about it a fair few of my friends have good jobs, but live in cheapish houses and run one small car between a couple. Hmmm. Something smells like mustache…
Mr Z
It would be so good to find out one of your friends read MMM or were generally into the FI type ideas wouldn’t it Mr Z?!
Thanks for the comment!
Hahaha, excellent game. Once in a while, my wife and I play this game. Ever since we are discussing the topic, we discuss behavior of people that could point to “abiding to the rule of 4”
My wife also read/saw somewhere a subject on it: how do stealth wealth people behave: They are relax at work, seem to have no stress that hits them when things heats up at work. Based upon that, an old co-worker of her could be FIRE.
Stealth wealth is a nice concept that’s been around for a while yea 🙂
Sam from Financial Samurai often writes about it and I think it may have come into pop culture in the book The Millionaire Next Door (although I’ve not read it so can’t be 100% sure).
Glad you like the game and let me know if you make any “finds”! 🙂
Can’t remember if i mentioned it here on a previous comment or not, but anyway, for those new readers… a few years ago I was fortunate enough to befriend Mr Fish (formerly The Contender) http://getintheringwithme.blogspot.co.uk/ at a local group for stay at home dads after he’d already quit his job & was living on equity income.
My brother-in-law is also a firm mustachian type, which helps keep a good control on wider family expenses on days out etc where costs are often pooled & bills split.
Cheers for the link LCIL 🙂
That’s good you have a general theme running across the family so gatherings and days out aren’t awkward with completely different spending philosophies.
Great post and game, TFS!
Sadly, I don’t know anyone I could really pass any blog links to. However, my ‘frugal ways’ have rubbed off on a colleague who has started to bring her own packed lunch in every day after I mentioned that I begrudged spending what amounted to £50 a month (£2.50 a day) in the canteen when I could eat a healthier and cheaper lunch I made myself. When to start mentioning savings rates, haha?
Nice work with that weenie!
It’s good to know good habits do eventually get noticed by our friends and colleagues and so we are making a positive impact on people around us and not just on our own lives.
Let me know how the saving rates discussion goes! 🙂
Too funny. Yes, we try to figure out who might be “one of us” on a regular basis. I like the idea of the “rule of 4”. It can be used in the form of an ambiguous question that can only be understood by the converted…kind of like a secret handshake. It’s definitely easier to identify the clueless, the ones who practice the rule of excess.
Yea it totally is because they are so much more in abundance aren’t they F2P?
I think slowly and surely we’ll start to take over the world though, like a FIREstorm or something 🙂
I never meet one mustachian in flesh and bones. Yet. And i generally give little hints to friends just to point them in the right direction.
I am sure they are out there George, we just have to keep looking!
There are always the UK meetups that Huw organises if you want to meet up with real life FI folk, check out this post here for more info on the next one:
http://financiallyfreebyforty.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-votes-are-in-down-south-location.html