# My Top Questions from Internet Strangers

## By Mr. Money Mustache

## Thu, 26 Feb 2015 22:22:19 +0000

Every day, the ever-generous Google search engine sends thousands of random new people from around the world to the shores of our Mustachian Nation here. Do they find what they are looking for?

Just for fun, let’s take a rapid-fire tour through the top questions people have asked the Internet over the course of the last month, which were in turn referred to Mr. Money Mustache.

Since I view this blog as an ongoing experiment, I find it fascinating to learn what types of things the world wants to know the most. Plus, some of the questions are pretty funny.

I’ve grouped them into categories:

## Getting a Job:

> jobs that pay 20 an hour without a degree
> jobs that party you 26 dollars a hour
> how to get rich without college
> jobs that pay 50k a year without a degree
> 50000 a year is how much an hour
> how to get rich without college

These queries are showing up because of a two-post series I wrote last year called “50 Jobs over $50,000 – without a degree“. It has become an accidental hit with the search engines, and is now the second most popular post on this whole blog.

Quick Answer: Take control of your pay rate. Think like an entrepreneur and try something different. And $50,000 is equivalent to about 25 bucks an hour.

## Saving and Investing:

> how to make money in the stock market
> betterment
> betterment review
> betterment vs vanguard

QA: Accumulate low cost index funds consistently over your lifetime. Vanguard funds will do just fine. Just keep buying, don’t worry about market fluctuations, and work on earning lots and spending little. Those Betterment results are showing up because I wrote an article about my new investing experiment with Betterment here.

> simple math behind early retirement
> how long will my money last if i withdraw 4%

QA: Save 50% of your net income and retire in under 17 years. With wise spending, this can last a lifetime. Full details here.

> i only make 2600 a month can i save 10000 in a years time

QA: You sure can – that works out to $833/month, so keep your spending below about $1700.

## Mobile Phones:

> republic wireless
> $10 a month phone plan
> mr money mustache cell phone
> cheapest phone plans with unlimited everything

QA: Mobile phone service has come way down in price in the last few years and should not cost anywhere close to the $100/month some people are still paying. We use two Republic Wireless lines in my household, but Ting is great as well, and Straight Talk if you need to keep your iPhone.

## Cars:

> top fuel efficient cars

QA: Just get a Honda Fit from Craigslist. Manual transmission, pay cash. For more variety, my old top 10 Cars list still applies.

> depreciation on car and economics of distance of 110 mph at 20.00 hr ?

QA: Hmm.. you might want to rethink your units, but 110 miles will cost you about $30-60 every time you drive it, including gas, wearing out your car, and other costs. You don’t want a commute like that for any job, especially not one that is paying you only $20 an hour.

> how can you avoid the stress of traffic if you take a way about 50 km to work place

QA: you can move closer to work or get a new job. I know I keep harping on this anti-car-commuting thing, but that is because Your Spare Time is Worth Way More You Think.

> find vehicle that will carry 12 foot ladder

QA: Anything with a good roof rack will handle a small ladder like that. My painter friend carries a 32-footer (retracted to 16′) on his stock Subaru Outback rack in a pinch. But the ultimate roof rack vehicle is a compact pickup with an over-cab-and-bed roof rack.

> is awd worth it?

QA: Not for people who drive on roads.

> whats too big a commute

QA: one that you feel is too long to do by bike.

> top 4 suv

QA: SUVs are generally a losing choice, but you might enjoy my article on the Top SUVs for growing families.

> hypermiling

QA: Just remember the rhyme, “If you need to brake, you’ve made a mistake”. More detail here.

## Food and Nutrition:

> average grocery bill for family of 4
> how much does it cost to join costco
> how can I save on groceries
> how to lose fat

QA: Eat mostly foods your great grandmother would recognize, lots of fats and healthy oils, and no sugar. It is possible to eat very well for about one dollar per person per meal, and although my family averages closer to $2, that is the result of millionaire-style grocery shopping. Think of that as the upper limit.

## Philosophy:

> hedonic adaptation

QA: It is your biggest shopping weakness: incorrectly thinking new things will make you happier.

> what is stoicism

QA: It is your biggest life ally, teaching you the true sources that embracing hardship and expanding your General Badassity is a powerful source of true happiness.

> your money or your life

QA: it’s a great book that is credited with starting this movement of ours. Think of money as “life energy”.

> how to stop worrying about money

QA: By accumulating more of it, as well as increasing life resilience with a mesh of interlocking skills.

> when i’m rich what do i do with my money
> marginal utility of money

QA: If your goal is happiness, anything other than spending it on yourself will probably be fun. The marginal utility of money really drops, once you get your food and shelter taken care of. This is why I suggest that buying freedom would be one of the next targets.

> is it ok to only have one child

QA: Great news, Yes it is!

> who is the most optimistic person in fiction or the real world

QA: I am honored that Google referred this search query to me. I am a strategic and very happy practitioner of Outrageous Optimism, and you should be too.

## Do It Yourself Handyman Stuff

Although this is supposed to be a financial blog, I’ll occasionally throw in some stuff about building houses. That is because it’s the task I spend most of my happiest days doing, and I have no editor to keep me on topic here. Freedom is great.

> how to build your own shower
> how to build a tile shower
> DIY shower base
> how to frame a shower floor on a basement floor

QA: You can do it! Building a relatively sweet shower is not as unattainable as people assume.

> diy radiant floor heating
> does adding more pex increase suction pressure in radiant system
> can you use a water heater for radiant heat

QA: Yes, it turns out you can build your own heating system. Longer runs of PEX would increase the backpressure and slow the flow. And yes, you can use a water heater (preferably a really efficient one) instead of a boiler.

> run the air conditioner with the windows all closed, or open windows and shut it off all together

QA: If we’re talking about a house, open the windows, dude! You’re a human, and you need to be connected to the great outdoors. Plus A/C wastes a shitload of electricity. In the car, running the A/C burns about $1 of fuel per hour, and the crossover point for that vs. the aerodynamic drag from partially open windows is about 45-55 MPH.

> metal roofs for homes
> the best way to replace a shingle roof with sheet metal roofing
> is metal roofing cheaper than shingles

QA: Metal roofing is far superior to shingles. It should be almost as cheap, but in most areas the contractors rip you off because there is not enough competition. So I bought the metal myself from Metal Sales Inc and built my own.

> aquaponics

QA: I don’t know much about it other than the fact that it is the Automated Ubergarden of the Future.. however my friend Jeremiah Robinson is the National Grandmaster of the field, and he taught us about it here.

## SUPER RANDOM

> watching d activities of competition as a means of bus survival

QA: Huh? I can only guess that Google decided that reading Mr. Money Mustache is a better way for this person to pass the time while riding a bus, than watching d activities of competition.

> extreme frugality

QA: I have no idea why this person ended up at MMM. This blog is not about extreme frugality.

> investments i can make 100 % within 3 months

QA: Hmm. You could get lucky on a penny stock, but that’s not investing. Buying a foreclosure and doing a rapid rehab/resale might come close. There’s also paying off your payday loan, or paying off your car loan early so you can sell it on Craigslist, then buying a less expensive one with the cash in hand.

> is it good to buy a house when im 13

QA: Sure, if your Mom will let you and you have a solid 20% downpayment in hand. You can build some solid equity by renting out spare bedrooms as you go through college. Just don’t let all your partying friends destroy your investment!

> working really hard will make you look old

QA: In a cubicle or a coal mine, this is probably true. But in general, working hard at healthy pursuits will keep you young and vigorous much better than any plastic surgery or Botox treatments will.

> mr money mustache book

QA: Sorry, no book yet. I still haven’t figured out how to fit this into my oddly packed days, short of abandoning the family. But other people have done it, which means it can be done.

> how to share one internet connection between buildings

QA: You put a TP-LINK WA7510N outdoor access point at each end. Plug them into your existing routers and set the outbuilding side to “client” mode. Invent a new Wi-fi network name and get them to link up to each other. Set the outbuilding’s router to serve up DHCP addresses on the 192.168.2.x network to avoid IP address conflicts with your main house network. Eventually you’ll get it working despite the terrible translated instructions and it ends up really reliable.

> frugal toque

QA: Hooray for my friend Mr. Frugal Toque! There’s only one of him on the Internet, although he does write novels under another pseudonym. You can find all his articles by using the URL https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/category/mr-frugal-toque/

> is it possible if in anyhouse have peerpgumbr mjhar

QA: no, this is currently impossible

> money

QA: You’ve come to the right place!

> describe me a 10 year old could earn money

QA: see if you can get your parents to pay you a dollar for each book you read. Also, if you get a bike and keep track of your miles with a speedometer and send me pictures and stories about biking, I’ll pay you 10 cents per mile you ride plus a 10 dollar bonus for each good story.

> benefits bike in avery small paragraph

QA: A bicycle is an automatic life-balancing machine. It is a money-printing fountain of youth. You can’t really make any rational decisions about life, finance, or national planning unless you have the context of bicycle transportation as part of your frame of reference.

> Additional Visitors From Unknown search terms:116,619

Of course. No matter how many questions you answer, there will always be more to learn and more to be written about. So until next time, I remain your faithful Mr. Money Mustache.