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Things I Like

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Groceries & Retail:

  • Costco
    • We get 2% cash back through our executive membership. Executive membership costs $120 vs the normal $60, but we spend more than enough to pay for the entire $120 membership fee, let alone the $60 executive premium ($60/0.02=$3k to break even on executive upgrade; $6k to break even on entire membership). If you become an executive member and don’t get at least $60 back, you can ask them to refund the difference. This is by far my favorite store on the planet.
      • Here’s my tutorial on how to shop like a pro there (link).
  • Amazon:
    • What we don’t buy at Costco we get at Amazon. Amazon pricing is very dynamic and volatile. If you can be patient, set a price alert at Camel Camel Camel and have them email you when the price drops. I’ve saved at least a grand using this tool over the years.
    • You can share prime benefits with one other adult. Fine print here and here.
      • The catch is that the credit card of the secondary credit card user will be available as a payment option to the primary account holder. Amazon does this to prevent random strangers from sharing account benefits. However, purchase history, account login, etc. remain as if you had a single account.

Tech stuff:

  • Password manager:
    • You should use a password manager for everything important. We use Bitwarden. It’s free for individuals (they make their money on the enterprise side). It has great cross-platform capabilities (Chrome, phones, etc). 2FA capable. Great for storing credit cards, secure notes, etc. It is fantastic (link).
  • Favorite Chrome plugins:
    • uBlock Origin ad blocker (link).
    • Bitwarden plugin (link).
  • RSS Readers:
    • Since Google Reader bit the dust, I’ve used feedly.com. Here’s my tutorial on how to do so (link). Being able to efficiently use RSS feeds is a superpower you’d be crazy not to utilize.
  • We bought three mac mini M2’s in 2023 back for $400 each, but Apple released an updated version in late 2024 for the same price. I spent my entire life an Apple skeptic (I hated the walled garden, the pricing, the cult-like following), but the mac mini has made me an unapologetic convert. They are silent, perform well, are tiny, and are cheap. Pair well with up to three 4k monitors. Such incredible value if you stick to the base configuration (256gb storage + 16gb ram on M4). I paired with a $200 4TB external SSD and it’s working great. A bit of a transition unlearning almost 30 years of PC usage, but I’m a convert. I won’t go back to PCs. To reiterate, never pay the “Apple tax” on hard drive storage upgrades.
    • The M4 variant sells for $500 with edu discount (link). It occasionally goes on sale for $500 at other retailers (Costco, etc).
    • I still think iPhones are incredibly overpriced relative to android phones like Pixels, so I’m not totally drinking the Apple kool-aid.
  • My favorite android app is AirMusic, which allows Android users to seamlessly AirPlay to Sonos products (link).

Phones:

  • For the past decade, we’ve paid no more than $1/month per phone. I document how we do so here: https://frugalprofessor.com/phones
    • Several years ago, we transitioned to Xfinity mobile. It’s $12/month for Unlimited talk/text up to 5 lines. The catch is $12/GB per data so simply use wifi and enjoy a fantastic plan on Verizon’s network. My review is here (link).
      • Update May 2024: It looks like the price/gig has gone up to $20/gig. Still a fantastic price when shared across 7 people, for example. Less than $3/mo (across the 7 of us) for unlimited talk/text + 1/7 of a gig per month.
      • Supposedly you can have up to 10 lines per account. We’ve had 7 at one point but never the full 10.
    • Also consider RedPocket, which has plans as low as $30/yr for minimum-use plans (200 min/month, 1000 texts/month, 200mb/month). When you utilize wifi at home/work/retailers, you realize that there isn’t really much need for fancy data plans. Despite your profound skepticism at this claim, I assure you that you are capable of living life without cell data. I’ve done it my entire adult life. Checking your fantasy score while on the toilet during halftime of your kid’s soccer game really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things.

Internet:

  • You don’t need super fast internet. You need a decent router placed in an unobstructed centralized location.
  • For a 5-year period in grad school we had 2Mbps internet. 2Mbps was sufficient for remote access to my school computers for research, VOIP, videoconferencing, and streaming 720p video. In other words, 2Mbps is good enough for most people.
    • In the 8 years since grad school, we’ve upgraded to a cheapish 50Mbps fiber plan. We have a seemingly infinite number of devices connected and streaming concurrently across the seven of us living in our house. 50Mbps is more than sufficient for us. 4k is the biggest consumer of bandwidth in most houses by an order of magnitude, consuming roughly ~25Mbps per device. Your ISP will tell you that 50Mbps is good for email and web browsing and that you need gig internet to stream. Nonsense.
  • If you’re a parent, you should use almost surely use (free and easy-to-use) DNS filters on your router, assuming your router allows it (info here). We use the following settings and it works great.
    • Primary DNS: 1.1.1.3
    • Secondary DNS: 1.0.0.3

Insurance:

  • We had Geico for auto/umbrella 20 years before recently switching to State Farm once teen drivers came onto the scene and wrecked our absurdly low insurance rates. Thanks to State Farm, we saved almost 50% of what we were paying for Geico for auto/umbrella. It pays to shop around with regularity.
  • We use Esurance for homeowner’s insurance, but shop around. Quotes on our annual premiums ranged from $600-$2600/year for the same coverage. I could not believe it.
  • Self insurance through high deductible plans is the way to go. We don’t carry comprehensive insurance any of our cars. We carry very high deductible ($30k) homeowner’s insurance.

Investing:

  • Vanguard is the pioneer in low-cost investing, but other firms have responded by offering low-cost funds. As a result, Fidelity, Schwab, etc. have competitively priced index funds that can compete fine with Vanguard’s. You really can’t go wrong with any of these brokerages, provided you chose a low-cost index fund. For a domestic index fund, expect to pay about 0.04% in fees. For an international index fund, expect to pay about 0.10% in fees.
  • DIY investment strategy:
    • Three Fund Portfolio.
    • Or pick a target retirement fund (link) and forget about it (though these often times have slightly higher fees which is why I avoid them).

Books:

  • If You Can. Summary: Be frugal and invest in index funds for the long run. It’s really, really, really well written. Read it. It’s short (14 pages). Do it now. Reread it until you understand the meaning of every paragraph. Each paragraph is packed with meaning and intent.)
  • Little Book of Common Sense Investing. Summary: Invest in index funds for the long run.
  • Millionaire Next Door. Summary: Millionaires are frugal.
  • Richest man in Babylon. Summary: Educate yourself, spend little, invest wisely.
  • Life‑Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Summary: Simplify your life by keeping only those possessions in life that bring you joy.
  • My “book”, which is a brain dump on how to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes over your lifetime.

Blogs:

Podcasts (Podcasts make your brain grow):

Podcatcher: Pocketcasts

Credit Cards:

Banking:

  • For years I banked with Ally and was relatively happy with them, though I grew tired of the 6/month transaction limit. I have since moved all of my banking to Fidelity and love it: https://frugalprofessor.com/cash-management/
    • I keep $1 in a checking account at a local credit union in the rare event that I need to deposit cash (which is subsequently transferred to Fidelity).

Identity protection:

  • Paying for credit monitoring is a mistake. The much better, and secure, option is to place credit freezes on your accounts through all three credit bureaus. Here are the links to do so:
  • Get rid pre-approved credit card solicitations in the mail (link).

Travel:

  • We’ve had great success with VRBO for reasonably priced vacation rentals.

Air Travel:

Online Money Management:

  • Personal Capital
    • Note that if you sign up for Personal Capital, they will call you and ask if you want to use their financial planners for a 1% fee. To avoid bothersome calls, I give them a phone number I don’t check and an email address I don’t use.
    • While I love their tools, I’m convinced they give overpriced and crappy financial advice.
      • A friend of mine deviated from the above advice and signed up for their advising services anyway. I was appalled at the asset allocation they dumped him into. They dumped him in dozens of individual securities rather than simple index funds. To unwind the dozens of positions, my friend had to incur non-trivial capital gains taxes. This is insanity.
    • Yodlee & Fidelity FullView are decent substitutes but PC really excels in its investment analytics.

Pets:

  • Preventive drugs from Australian Pet Store.
    • At the time of this writing, a 12-month supply of Simparica Trio is $116/yr (including shipping) vs $276/yr at my local Costco, a 58% discount.
    • No Rx required. No foreign transaction fees. 5.25% cash back from BoA for online shopping.

Kid Stuff:

Blogging:

  • When I first started blogging, I used Bluehost. They were fine but the performance wasn’t great and the renewal price was steep (intro offer of $3/month went to renewal price of $8/month). A few years into blogging I transitioned to a $5/month DigitalOcean VPS droplet, which gives me 25GB of SSD storage and 1GB of RAM. At the time of this writing, Linode and Vultr are similarly-priced competitors worth checking out as well. They are all pretty similar from what I understand. Dealing with a VPS is a bit intimidating at the beginning, but the one-click WordPress installation does the heavy lifting. Since transitioning from Bluehost to DigitalOcean, my load times were reduced by more than 50%.
    • A warning about DigitalOcean: you’re on your own. You have to maintain your own backups, etc. If the site crashes, it’s on you to fix it.
    • Even with the above caveat, I’d recommend first time bloggers to start with the VPS. The hardest part for me, by FAR, was learning how to migrate an existing site from Bluehost to DigitalOcean and not botching the transferring of the DNS, wp-admin, etc. Had I started from day 1 on the VPS, life would have been much simpler.
  • I use a free Cloudflare CDN. Seems like a smart idea. Easy enough to implement.
  • I use the GeneratePress theme.
  • I use Porkbun for domain name registration. $10.37 /year with privacy included (as of 2024).
  • I paid a one-time $50 for the premium version of the WP Fastest Cache plugin. It seems good.
  • I use the free version of Smush to compress images. I should probably compress before uploading to WordPress but am generally too lazy to do so.

Clothing:

  • I borrowed a nice pair of thin wool socks from my father for a 16-mile hike one day, and my life has never been the same since. I’ve since converged on Men’s Light Hiker Quarter Lightweight Hiking Sock (link).
    • They are expensive, but you can get them on sale if you track them on SlickDeals.
    • I wear them to work, backpacking, climbing, running, sleeping, etc. They never leave my feet. Some of the best money I’ve ever spent in my life — literally.
    • Lifetime warranty that they honor generously if you get holes, etc.
  • Walmart Wrangler pants (link).
    • Life changing. My climbing buddy bought me a pair for a trip and they have not left my lower body since (in cold weather). I own 4 pairs or so. Nice-ish enough to wear to work, comfortable enough to sleep in. Stretchy. Breathable. Fast drying. I wear them for everything (running, climbing, backpacking, work, sleeping, etc).
  • For active shoes, I’ve converged on Solomon Speedcross for backpacking, disc golf, biking, trail running, etc (link). Great shoes. They ran a little narrow, so I opted for the Wide variant. I ordered several pairs from Amazon and kept the one that fit. I’m on my 3-4th pair of the Speedcross 5 shoe since discovering them in 2020.

Totally Random Misc:

  • Ben Rector is my favorite musician, by a mile.
    • Here’s his YouTube.
    • Here’s his tour schedule. I’ve taken the family to see him twice now and can’t wait to do it again.
  • We use bidets (link). I’m baffled that we don’t use these things in the U.S. We have the Luxe Bidet Neo 185 model, but they all seem pretty similar.
  • I’m a fairly recent convert to Garmin watches, but I love them. Find one with the Garmin Coach feature. I snagged an Epix 2 Sapphire for about $300 and love it. Other highly reviewed ones are the Instinct 2 and Forerunner 255.
  • Two of my daughters wear these Miraflex frames (link). They are were a life saver when they were younger. When my oldest got her first pair of glasses, she broke two pairs within the first week (head-to-head collisions with siblings). A week later a friend told us about Miraflex frames, and we’ve been fanatical customers ever since. The model we’ve had for years is the rectangular “new baby” model, which comes in a variety of sizes and colors. We’d be lost, and much poorer, without these glasses.
    • We also tried these frames from Zenni Optical which is also great cheaper option for those with very young kids. Same basic idea as Miraflex at a fraction of the cost. Something like $35 shipped for us (link).
  • Decades ago a dentist recommended a particular flossing tool to me and I love it (link). I’ve tried others and this is my favorite. Here’s a horrifically boring video of the product, but it gives you a glimpse of it in action (link).
    • Speaking of dental hygene, I like this water pick a lot (link). It has measurably improved our gum health.
      • The sink version is what we use several times a day because it’s a lot less cumbersome than hopping in the shower every time you need to floss.
  • I use a minimalist rubber-band wallet (link). Perfect for carrying the few cards I need: driver’s license, credit card, etc.
  • ReelGood is a website that allows for cross-platform searching of movies available and allows you to apply filters such as a minimum IMDB filter of 8.0.
  • We have used an electric pressure cooker for about a decade now (link). We primarily cook black beans or lentils in the thing. Dry black beans and brown rice cost nothing, and this is one of things we do to keep our food costs low.
  • We do a lot of dishes (a load a day) and for the longest time we would systematically sort utensils and dump them into the corresponding drawer. Then I had an epiphany that we should dump them all in a cup like this one from Ikea. Who knows why it took me over 30 years to figure out this life hack.
  • Innova “factory second” disc golf discs here (link).
    • Buy 10 and get 20% off. Free shipping over $75. Works out to $8.80/disc for their top-tier “champion” plastic.
    • This is a pretty handy tool to compare flight paths of different discs (link). You may filter by manufacturer.
    • There are surely many free and great disc golf courses by your house. Google “disc golf near me” to find out where. Such a fun an addictive hobby, particularly with a good group of friends. I prefer this a million times to real golf, a sport I grew up playing.

 

YouTube Channels:

I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that YouTube is the future of streaming entertainment, easily surpassing network television and maybe even paid streaming platforms (Netflix/Hulu/etc). Here’s a list of YouTube channels I follow:

  •  Climbing/Outdoor:
    • Mediocre Ameature
      • Some dudes based out of Orem UT who do some pretty adventurous stuff. Probably my favorite YouTube channel.
    • Beau Miles
      • A really adventurous Australian dude who documents his crazy adventures. Probably my second favorite YouTube channel.
  • Last Week Tonight
    • John Oliver is brilliant.
  • Mark Rober
    • Former NASA/Apple mechanical engineer who makes videos about extreme science experiments. He graduated from my undergrad ME program about a year ahead of me.
  • Kid stuff:
    • Jelle’s Marble Runs
      • Pretty intricate marble racing with hilarious commentary. My kids love this channel. I first learned about this channel through John Oliver when he announced that This Week Tonight was becoming their first sponsor.
    • Dude Perfect
      • Five dudes from Texas who produce hilarious content for kids. I resented them for about a year because I was envious of their jobs, but I’ve grown past that.

 

The above is a 90-minute lecture I share with my students every year. Perhaps you may find it helpful.

 

Disclaimer:
This site is for entertainment purposes only, as disclosed here: https://frugalprofessor.com/disclaimers/

Step 1: Be frugal

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I love this brilliant SNL video (link). If I could improve upon this brilliant video at all, I’d say the path to wealth accumulation not only to “not buy stuff you can’t afford” but also to “not buy stuff you CAN afford.”

Frugality is the most important factor in accumulating wealth, not income. No matter how much you earn, you can always spend more of it. However, if you’re frugal you can save on pretty much any level of income.

When my family of 7 was making $25-$30k during graduate school, we still managed so save well over $10k per year. Now that we make substantially more, we continue to live like we’re poor college students.

Why do we do this? Because we’re happy living on nothing. This, by far, is our most valuable asset. If I could give anyone any advice it would be to learn to be happy with less. Resources like The Minimalists and this Anti-Clutter Book make a compelling point that we’ll actually be happier with less stuff.

I think that most of us underestimate what goes into generating $1 of consumption – let’s say a candy bar. In order to buy the candy bar, I need to have $1.08 in cash if the sales tax is 8% in my state. In order to have $1.08 in cash, I need to have earned well more than $1.08 due to federal, state, and payroll taxes. If my federal income tax rate is 20%, my state income tax rate is 5%, and my payroll tax rate is 7.6%, my combined tax rate is 32.6%. Thus, in order to buy a $1 candy bar, I need to generate $1.60 in pre-tax income (1*(1+8%) / (1-(20%+5%+7.6%))).

Reducing your expenditures by $1 will increase your net worth by $1, which is the same increase in net worth generated by earning an extra $1.60 in income. Likewise, if you can decrease your expenditures by $10,000, you will be just as rich as if you had earned an extra $16,000.

Frugality is multiplicative. Reducing your expenditures has substantially more effect on your net worth than changing your income the equivalent amount.

Permanently reducing recurring expenditures is the best way to generate lasting wealth. Recurring expenses include rent/mortgage, car expenses, insurance, cell phones, TV service, groceries, etc. If you can optimize these recurring expenses, you will be well on your path to wealth accumulation.

Most people unsuccessfully chase wealth by aspiring to higher paying jobs. Unfortunately, high taxes, lifestyle creep, and high stress accompany higher paying jobs leaving the individual with an ulcer and no increase in wealth.

Here’s a brief summary of what our family does to save money (and thus accumulate wealth), in a roughly decreasing order of importance:

  • Live in a low cost of living area
  • Avoid debt like the plague
  • Be tax savvy (more on that in Step 2: Minimize your tax burden)
  • Shop at Costco/Sams/Amazon almost exclusively
  • Live close to work
  • Bike to work
  • Eat at home for pretty much every meal (Very rarely do we go to restaurants)
  • Avoid cell phone plans (We do free cell phones + google voice + OBI for free VOIP home phones. More info: https://frugalprofessor.com/phones/)
  • Go without cable TV
  • Self-insure with high deductible plans for car, health, and home
  • Get 2% cash back on every credit card purchase
  • Use $15/month 2mbps internet through TWC
  • Stash unused cash in money market funds

Here’s a related post if you want more ideas on how to save money: https://frugalprofessor.com/frugal-analogs/

Most people find budgeting to be a useful tool. Since I don’t like to spend money, budgeting has never been necessary for me. Nonetheless, we’ll be sharing our monthly expenditures to show how dumb-simple this is.

Links to other steps in series:

 

Disclaimer:
This site is for entertainment purposes only, as disclosed here: https://frugalprofessor.com/disclaimers/

Start Here – The recipe for wealth accumulation

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**** I wrote the below series of posts three years ago. I think all three posts are now much better summarized by this “book” that I started last year (but haven’t finished). You may download the ~60 page draft pdf here. ***

 

Given how taboo talking about money is, many of us are financially illiterate – we have no idea how to save, how to invest, etc. This illiteracy is problematic and needs to change.

My own financial illiteracy was evident when I was hired as an intern by a Fortune 25 company during my undergrad. During orientation, some HR woman was yapping about a 401k. I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, so I opted out of the 401k. I figured, “I’m a poor college student why should I care about investing in retirement, which is 45 years away? I need the money now.”

It turns out that my company matched 75% on contributions up to 8% of my salary. In other words, I threw away 6% of my salary because I didn’t exploit the company match. In hindsight I realized that even if I had needed the money during my undergrad, I could have taken an early withdrawal on the 401k and paid the penalty and still been way better off.

It was this experience which prompted me to learn more about personal finance. Over a decade later, I’ve devoured every blog and book I could get my hands on.

Fortunately, anyone can master their finances. It does not require a PhD or a high IQ. With a bit of guidance, practically anyone in the U.S. can be a millionaire.

The recipe to generating wealth is dumb simple, as I’ll document thoroughly in this blog:

 

Following the above advice, I will regularly update our journey here:

 

Disclaimer:
This site is for entertainment purposes only, as disclosed here: https://frugalprofessor.com/disclaimers/

About me

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I’m married with 5 kids. My wife is a stay-at-home mother, though she taught elementary school for a year before putting her career on ice for a couple decades until the kids are older (maybe after they graduate high school?).

I spent 5 years getting an undergrad degree in mechanical engineering. I then spent 4 years at a Fortune 25 company doing grunt engineering work. I was surrounded by grey-haired people who had been doing the same thing for their entire careers. Convinced I would rather kill myself than rot in cubicle hell for the next 40 years, I plotted my exit. First, I tested the waters by temporarily leaving my well-paying job (I was making $90k/year when I left) to pursue an MBA while on educational leave. Emboldened by my positive experience outside of cubicle hell, I took the plunge into 5 more years of school. It was brutal, but miraculously our family survived.

Thus far, we’ve accumulated wealth the old-fashioned way with frugality. I haven’t tracked our net worth religiously to prior to starting the blog, but here’s a rough timeline of our income & net worth.

  • Mid twenties.
    • Earned $15k/year in income working as teacher’s assistant + random summer jobs before graduating.
    • Finished our undergrad degrees.
    • At graduation, our net worth was $10k ($0 debt).
    • Took first job paying $56k/year.
  • Late twenties.
    • Got several raises and earned $90k/year before leaving on educational leave.
    • Started & completed MBA.
    • Net worth $100k ($0 debt).
  • Early thirties.
    • Took 5 years earning PhD, during which I earned $25k-$30k/year.
  • Mid thirties.
    • Completed twelfth year of college with net worth of $225k ($0 debt).
    • Took job paying $200k/year.
    • Bought first home for $400k with 20% down payment funded by Roth IRAs.

Our goal is to be financially independent in our mid-forties with ~$1.5M in investments (producing $45k/year in income in perpetuity at a 3% withdrawal rate). Let’s see how this goes, huh? It’s not as impressive as some of my blogging counterparts (Mr. Money Mustache, etc) who retired at 30, but with five kids and 12 years of college under my belt, I didn’t necessarily take the fastest path towards financial independence.

I created this blog to document our journey and illustrate how dumb-simple the process is. Hopefully someone will get use out of it.

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Family photo about when I started the blog. October 2016.

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Grinnell Glacier hike at Glacier National Park. July 2019.

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Backpacking in the Wind Rivers, WY. I’ve backpacked there in 2018, 2019, 2020 (x2), and 2021 but the above was taken August 2020. Photo credit Jason Carr.

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First multi-pitch trad climbing excursion. Johnny Vegas. Red Rocks, Vegas. December 2019.

blankPretty good Costco haul. I can probably count on two hands how many times we’ve driven to Costco in the past 3 years.

The above is a 90-minute lecture I share with my students every year. Perhaps you may find it helpful.

 

Disclaimer:
This site is for entertainment purposes only, as disclosed here: https://frugalprofessor.com/disclaimers/