
Retire in your Mind even if you Love your Job - simonreed
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/30/weekend-edition-retire-in-your-mind-even-if-you-love-your-job/
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vassvdm
Another great post by MMM. Before starting a Lean Startup every founder should
try to lead a Lean Life as per his advice...

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lsc
I'm not sure. I think that when you are running a business, time and money are
much more exchangeable than they are otherwise. I mean, outsourcing
housekeeping duties is likely the least Mustachian thing I can think of, but I
think it makes a lot of sense if you can easily work a few more hours for
significantly more after tax dollars than what the housekeeper charges.

Or cooking. Man, what a time sink, and that one is actually kinda hard to
solve; restaurants are sub-optimal, unless you can schedule meetings during
the wait time, simply 'cause they are so slow. I mostly eat frozen food and
salads, which is suboptimal, 'cause frozen food is crap. I guess learning how
to cook quick and easy stuff would be one solution. So would having someone
come and cook for me, but I suspect that'd be significantly more expensive
than just eating out every day.

But yeah, I'm trying to say that when you are running a business? you have a
whole lot more power to increase your revenue (vs. when you are working for
other people) - often it makes more sense to spend limited time on increasing
revenue than it does to spend that time on decreasing expenses.

Which isn't to say decreasing expenses isn't good. I've started my company by
living off 1/3rd to 1/2 what my job role is usually paid, contracting, and
putting the difference into capital goods for my business. There's no way I
could have started a capital intensive business if I wasn't able to earn like
the upper middle class while I lived like the lower middle class, So cutting
costs was pretty essential. But at this point? my food budget is about a grand
a month, while my co-lo/bandwidth budget is closer to ten grand a month.
(fifteen, if you count all the temporary stuff that I need to move out of) -
the thing is, I can get a lot more mileage out of putting effort into making
that $10K number smaller than I can out of making that $1K number smaller.

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eru
I read that batch cooking can be quite efficient: You spent a day every month
cooking a huge amount of food that freezes well. Works especially well, if you
are not bothered by eating the same meal for a few days in a row.

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JacobAldridge
We've been 'Once a Month Cookers' for almost 8 years now. I swear by it,
though my wife is starting to waver.

 _"eating the same meal a few days in a row"_ has never come into it. We batch
cook 6 different meals by 4 portions = 24 dinners, and mark the calendar so we
mix them up but don't have 3 quesadillas left at the end.

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makerops
Even once a week cooking can save a ton of time, and you can pump out a lot of
food in an hour or so if you plan correctly.

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eru
Or you can even pay someone to come over once a week and do it for you.

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JacobAldridge
I'm not sure if we'll get to this point, though it interests me. We originally
started as a cost-saving measure (I took a pay cut to move to a better city;
mortgage; and a wife-to-be still at university), and my beautiful wife
actually enjoys cooking so we'll outsource other time sinks long before food
preparation.

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eru
Oh, if you enjoy cooking, then by all means do it yourself.

But otherwise, you might want to do it in the most efficient manner possible
(or let somebody else whose time you are paying for do it efficiently).

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azatris
I wonder if I could be another MMM, but with buying stuff that are of
extremely high quality and improve my life?

A simple example would be a fairly high priced mechanical keyboard... I would
be using it every day.

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6d0debc071
It depends what you mean. There's certainly something to be said for buying
stuff that's decent quality if you're going to be using it for a while, but
just buying things that are high quality isn't going to free you from a job if
you still have bad spending habits.

