His portfolio was valued at $600,000 at the time of his retirement, which could support his family's annual expenditures of about $25,000 indefinitely according to this rule.Īdeney has made money aside from his initial investment portfolio since his retirement in 2005, through the blog and other sources of income, but he maintains that none of this additional money was ever necessary to fund his family's normal expenses. Īdeney believes in the 4% rule, which states that, with a balanced investment portfolio, a retiree can withdraw 4% of their portfolio's initial value each year, adjusted upward for inflation each year thereafter, with a low probability of ever running out of money. At the time of their retirement, they had amassed approximately $600,000 in investments in addition to a mortgage-free house valued at about $200,000. They lived frugally, investing the majority of their take-home pay during their working years.
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Adeney and his then-wife both worked in software engineering, averaging an income of approximately $67,000 per year, per person, over the course of their careers. The primary aspect of the blog which has caught the attention of many media outlets is Pete Adeney's extremely early retirement at age 30. The blog has been featured and cited in various media outlets including Market Watch, CBS News, and The New Yorker, as well as others. He has described the typical middle-class lifestyle as "an exploding volcano of wastefulness," particularly citing the overuse of and overspending on new cars as an example.
Adeney lives in Longmont, Colorado, and contends that most middle-class individuals can and should spend less money and own fewer physical possessions, and that they can live with increased financial freedom and happiness as well as a decreased environmental footprint as a result. Adeney retired from his job as a software engineer in 2005 at age 30 by spending only a small percentage of his annual salary and consistently investing the remainder, primarily in stock market index funds. Money Mustache is the website and pseudonym of 45-year-old Canadian-born blogger Peter Adeney.