Wow, has it been a year already?

If you’re getting this email, it hopefully means that you have been receiving (and diligently reading) these MMM Boot Camp series emails for an entire journey around the Sun. And if everything went as planned, you have picked up at least a few new tricks, life philosophies, ways of thinking and even permanent habits that will help you continue on your own path to ever-better living.


A totally optional way to say "thanks":

If this series has been valuable to you, and you'd like to contribute a small token towards helping me keep the newsletter going and funding strange, new interesting projects to write about and ongoing philanthropy, I'd welcome any thanks you'd like to pass along here.

It works via PayPal or with any credit card, and thanks again for your support if you choose to do so!


Of course, if you’re doing it right there should be no real “End” to this practice of learning about yourself and the wider world, and the subject of money is just one little part of it. In fact, the wealthier you get in a monetary sense, the more you realize that none of this is really about money in the first place.

Which would be a bummer if you were focusing only on getting rich, but a joy when you realize that you now get to enjoy the rest of your life in a state of highly engaged freedom, seeking knowledge and wisdom and experience just for the joy and satisfaction of it.

And there will always be new ideas, findings and life experiments you can try on yourself and the people you care about in your life. Welcome to Earth, the ultimate eternal flying laboratory of Science and Love!

From my perspective, it has been loads of fun to put this series together and there’s still more work to do. Since many of these articles were first written years ago, I had to dig them out of the crate and wipe off a considerable layer of cobwebs and dust before they were ready to be sent out. This meant that for the past year, I have been running along just ahead of the first round of readers, throwing down planks on the suspension bridge right before the trampling feet arrived (or sometimes a little bit too late, as you may have noticed if we missed a few Mondays.)

But now the work is done, and I hope that many more people will go through this series and keep providing feedback and ideas and sharing it around so it can keep doing its work for many years to come. I like to think of it as a living, time-release book that gently forces you to keep returning to these ideas over and over, week after week, for a period of time that is long enough to create real habits.

So What Now?

First, you might want to celebrate with the official Mustachiansism Music Video!

video preview

Although you have inhaled the equivalent of about 300 pages of Mustachianism with these lessons, you’re still at only at about 10 percent of the total quantity of stuff that is on the MMM blog alone (available in the handy All Posts List). You’re welcome to read as many of those articles as you like, join me for very occasional short-notice chitchat (and sometimes get notified of real life events) on my Twitter account,

And if you happen to live nearby, maybe even join as a member and help support our rather splendid local community though the HQ Coworking Space here in Longmont, CO.

You can also participate along with tens of thousands of others in the old-school-but-still-vibrant MMM Forum, or get into the archives of literally thousands of other finance and life blogs out there, including my friends JL Collins, the Mad Fientist, Paula Pant, Mr. 1500 Days and too many others to list.

However, sometimes researching can be the enemy of doing. And reading too much stuff on the Internet can definitely be the enemy of living a good life.

So if you think you’ve got the basic ideas down, why not hang up the keyboard and tuck the phone away somewhere inaccessible as your next move, and just go out into the real world more often?

Join meetup groups, cancel your Netflix and TV subscriptions, and start keeping a paper-and-pen notebook for exploring your thoughts and plans, right on the kitchen table where you normally have your phone while eating breakfast.

The reason I barely got this email boot camp done on time, and the reason I only get around to writing a new blog post every month or three these days, is because I’m finally practicing everything that is preached within this boot camp. I’m out walking along the forest trails with my son every day to catch the best sunrises and sunsets and Eagle sightings. Building houses and going on camping trips and riding bikes and hosting events with my best friends, giving us all lots of opportunities to meet even more of them.

It’s nice to have plenty of money, but really it’s something most of us don’t think about much as we get closer and closer to financial independence (and then usually cruise way past the finish line accidentally). There are much bigger challenges and interesting puzzles to work on during the remaining decades of your long and prosperous life.

And I wish you great satisfaction as you muscle your way through the thick foliage and challenging rope ladders of your new Badass Life of Leisure.