Make Frugality Great Again!

August 19, 2020 | Richard Meadows

What comes to mind when you think of the word frugality? For me, it’s a used tea bag sitting in a saucer, waiting to be re-dunked. Or arguing with the store manager to try to get a discount. Or ‘mum says we have food at home’.

And that’s coming from someone who loves this thing. The first post I ever published was my viral 2016 ‘coming out’ essay on the life-changing power of frugality. This is still the best experiment I’ve ever run, and set me up for everything that followed.

But longtime readers might have noticed that I’ve moved away from this kind of material over the years. Partly, it’s because I find early retirement blogs interminably boring. If I see another ‘monthly income report’ post I will scream.

I’ve also been feeling a little uneasy about the virtues of frugality and the early retirement movement. My upcoming book is about how I fell out of love with these ideas, and my attempt to build a more well-rounded philosophy. Whether or not you read the book, I feel like I should explain how my thinking has changed in recent years…

Kindly Stop Saying The Efficient Market Hypothesis is Dead

May 14, 2020 | Richard Meadows

There are whispers that the Efficient-Market Hypothesis (EMH) is dead.

Smart people say the EMH may have been the real victim of the coronavirus. These people, or their friends, were able to get ahead of the recent market crash. They sold stocks before the market reacted, or shorted them, or bought ‘put’ options, and made handsome profits.

They beat the market without having any special information! They were reading the same news and reports as everyone else. They made a profit by acting on public information that was right there for anyone to see. And so, the EMH is dead, or dying, or at the very least, has a very nasty cough.

I say this is wishful thinking: rumours of the death of efficient markets are greatly exaggerated.

How to Profit From Coronavirus

March 24, 2020 | Richard Meadows

There are a couple of cheap/free options you can to take out to limit the near-bottomless downside risk of COVID-19. I mentioned them in the last post, but they’re time-sensitive; hopefully you took those steps before the panic-buying began.

Now it’s time to think about the upside. When a black swan flaps its wings, great risks and opportunities swirl out of the same chaos.

So: what would it take to not just weather this situation, but profit from it?

Life of Paisa: The Cost of Living in Medellín, Colombia

February 17, 2020 | Richard Meadows

Shortly after arriving in Medellín, I got The Fear. I barricaded myself in my tiny, claustrophobic Airbnb, binge-watching Narcos and compulsively reading up on the lurid crimes that still plague the former murder capital of the world. Every backfiring engine was a gunshot. Every taxi driver was scheming to deliver me into the hands of the paramilitaries lurking in the jungle. At the calisthenics park, I carefully guarded my water bottle, in case someone slipped in the scopolamine drops that would turn me into a zombie.

My salvation came, as it often does, through a basic grasp of statistics…

2019 spending report: the year of becoming a fancy bitch

2019 Spending Breakdown: The Year of Becoming a Fancy Bitch

December 27, 2019 | Richard Meadows

Well, time to hand in my frugality card. In 2019, my expenses jumped 38 per cent!

…or perhaps not just yet. I spent most of the year in the Americas, including three of the most expensive cities in the world, which was a shock to the system after so much time in Asia.

It’s only fair to separate this out. After doing some very technical analysis, I calculate that my lifestyle has inflated by 1.25x this year.

Not quite as bad, but still a big leap. This was the year of becoming a Fancy Bitch. Honestly… I’m kind of into it.

Better to Reign in Hell Than Serve in Heaven

October 28, 2019 | Richard Meadows

‘Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven’ is the fervently-held belief of many freelancers, entrepreneurs and digital nomads I’ve met over the last few years. They’ve all walked away from overbearing bosses, steady paychecks, and nine-to-five office hours to build their own dominions.

There are no rules in hell! You can set your own hours and fire annoying clients and be your own boss and blow off work to go drinking at 11 in the morning. But liberty always comes at a price…

The Optionality Approach to Getting Lucky

Last updated: November 20, 2020 | Published on October 11, 2019 | Richard Meadows

We’ve established that there is no such thing as cosmic justice: it rains on the just and the unjust alike. But over the course of a lifetime, we at least vaguely shuffle in the direction of getting what we deserve. The goal of this post is to get us from ‘vague shuffling’ to ‘slightly-more-purposeful ambling’.

If you want to get lucky, the usual advice is that you have to be prepared, and then wait for opportunities. This is not very helpful.

Instead of wandering aimlessly and hoping for the best, we can use a simple framework to figure out which opportunities are worth pursuing.

This is the filter I run over pretty much every decision these days. It’s called the optionality approach…

How to Make Your Own Luck

September 26, 2019 | Richard Meadows

There’s no such thing as cosmic justice. Plenty of good people suffer in various horrible ways; plenty of bad people die rich and happy and surrounded by loved ones. This is not part of some grand plan. It doesn’t ‘mean’ anything. It’s just the arbitrary shuffling of atoms bouncing around a universe-sized billiards table.

There are three common ways of responding to this situation. Unfortunately, two of them are kind of messed up…

stockmarket charts: how safe are index funds, anyway?

Beware of Geeks Bearing Formulas

Last updated: July 3, 2020 | Published on July 29, 2019 | Richard Meadows

The history of finance is a history of brains dashed on the pavement. The fact that many people tend to be ‘irrationally’ wary of the markets starts to take on a new significance: the suspicious folk-wisdom has often been correct, while the ‘experts’ have consistently been dangerously wrong.

Hence Warren Buffett’s warning: beware of geeks bearing formulas…

wall street bull: what if the market crashed today?

If the Stock Market Crashed Today

July 6, 2019 | Richard Meadows

The sky is falling! The market is about to crash! The youth of today are corrupted! Every innocuous thing you love is Bad, Actually! Doomsaying is the grift that keeps on giving. Spread fear and doubt about some looming crisis—real or imagined—and you instantly take on a mantle of wisdom and moral authority. Best of all, you don’t need to […]

The Barbell Strategy for Buying Quality Stuff

March 26, 2019 | Richard Meadows

There is a piece of folk wisdom that says investing in quality stuff will actually save you money in the long run. This idea is overrated. Sometimes it does make sense to splash out on the good stuff. But most of the time, it’s far more cost-effective to go for cheap and cheerful…

Living on $10,000 a year: Deep Dish 2018 spending report

Living on $10,000 a Year: Attempt #2

December 27, 2018 | Richard Meadows

Last year, my goal was to live the good life on less than US$10,000. I ended up going about six hundred bucks over my target, but was pretty happy with the attempt. This year, I didn’t have any particular goal in mind. Since I’d already built a spreadsheet and got in the habit of tracking my expenses, I kept up […]

Fuck-You Money Part II

Last updated: May 31, 2020 | Published on October 19, 2018 | Richard Meadows

If you ever need a refresher on the importance of fuck-you frugality, go peel off a $100 bill, and subject yourself to the silent, brooding judgment of Benjamin Franklin.

The side-eye is so doleful it traverses time and space. It’s almost as if Franklin knows his face is about to be a) rolled into a tube and stuck up some degenerate’s nostril, or b) used to purchase another superfluous piece of junk that will, in short order, be discarded upon a mountain of previously purchased superfluous junk.

Franklin’s not mad; he’s just disappointed. He wants us to be better…

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