Hey boys, I wanted to thank you for all the support you showed me recently with my post about getting monkey branched. Its nice to have a community of like minded men that can relate to you and it goes a long ways towards building strong & positive mental health. Being single in this day and age comes with its own perks and pitfalls. In an effort to give back and try to contribute more high quality content to this sub, I’ve decided to put together this post about some of the aspects I feel are important to living your best life as a MGTOW follower. The first one being finance. These aren't tenants that only a MGTOW has to strictly follow, I feel that this is advice that all men can benefit from. Feel free to add/contribute in the comments. If this does well, I might consider other topics.

A little about me and my financial situation before we start. Early 30s Millenial, live in the midwest, have a job in a STEM field that pulls in around 55k a year so nothing too crazy but more than enough for a single guy to live on. Currently have a 6 figure net worth which includes owning a small paid off house, 2 vehicles & very little debt (owe about 8k left on the truck). Working on paying that off in the next year and half to be completely debt free.
When it comes to money, society teaches us from a very young age that the normal thing to do is to spend money that you don’t have on things you don’t need in order to impress people you don’t like. Then you can spend your entire life trying to pay all that debt down so that maybe someday you will be able to retire when you’re old and decrepit. This is the first line of conditioning that you have to break if you want to be successful with money and you’re already halfway there if you are browsing MGTOW.

To me, money is a tool to accomplish a means to an end. The one thing that you can never get more of in life is time. As Ricky Gervais says, we are all going to die someday and there is no sequel. We literally spend our entire lives exchanging our finite, limited amount of time on this earth for money. So everytime your girlfriend or wife decided to buy that Chip & Joanna Gaines, $29.99 decorative knick knack accessory for her floating shelf- she was literally spending your’s and her time on junk that is going to end up in a Goodwill donation box a few years down the road.

If you want to be successful with money, you need to fundamentally change your relationship with money and how you view it.

Until you do this, I truly believe you wont make substantial financial change in your life. As long as you continue to view money as a resource that you can always make more of, you will be prone to spend it just as casually. Once you can view money as a tool that you’re spending your literal minutes until your feet hit the grave, then you can start making smarter financial decisions.

To me, there are 3 steps to building wealth. They are:

  1. Acquiring money via income.
  2. Saving said money made through your income.
  3. Spending said money to generate/accumulate more income.

Acquiring money via income

This step is pretty straight forward but it can be broken down into 2 parts. The majority of people in life generate their income through a job/profession and their salary. Some people earn vast sums of money while others may only make minimum wage. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re on the bottom end of that spectrum, that is not a limiting factor in building your wealth. All too often you hear stories about the janitor or cook that lived below his means and then donated a vast fortune to charity after his death so it can be done. But increasing your income will make things easier. The 2nd part to it is if you can save money in particular areas of your life, that is the equivalent of generating more income in my book.

If I was going out to eat at a particular restaurant that was going to cost me $20 but I step on a $5 off coupon as I’m walking in the door, I just made 5 bucks back. Sure, it is not literally increasing my income but it is freeing up money to be spent elsewhere in my life. I have used coupons many times taking out women during my former dating life and had a wide range of reactions from “Seems reasonable” to getting straight up ghosted. It is ironic that women want a financially smart man but then call you cheap when you actually are one. I would love to ask any woman today that laughs at the idea of a man taking them out on a date with coupons: how many paid off houses do you own? Because I am quite confident I own one more than you do.

It is your responsibility as an individual to try and maximize the income that you make and the easiest way to do so is furthering your education/skillset. Now that doesn’t mean run off and go to college and get into student loan debt out your ass. While college is a reliable method for some, it isn’t a necessity. With the invention of the internet, you have all the knowledge known to man at your fingertips. There is no excuse for you not to be able to learn a reasonable amount about any particular topic out there. When I purchased my first house I decided to learn how to DIY (which could be an entire other mini series of its own) out of a desire to save money and this is coming from a guy who was barely comfortable with a screw gun. I looked at it as I would rather go out and buy an expensive specalty tool to complete a particular job myself, fuck it up a few times but still learn a lot in the end rather than pay a contractor to do the same thing for me for the same price; then at the end of the day I now own that tool and the knowledge to do it again in the future. After having done this long enough now, I have flipped entire houses and own almost every major power tool you can think of and I guarantee you I could land a job on a framing crew without having ever gotten professionally paid to do so before. This is an example of how you don’t always need college to further your skillset to make more money.
Saving said money made through your income.

Okay, you made some money but now what do you do with it? You save it. This is one of the hardest things to do in our consumerist, instant gratification society but it can be done. Saving money gives you power, its gives peace of mind, it gives you the ability to say fuck you. Your car takes a dump? No need to stress, you got it covered. There is a lot of power in not having to stress about having money. An ironic thing too is that if those out there who have the “normal” view on money find out you have even a modest amount of money saved, you will be ridiculed for it. I’ve gotten comments from friends and family members along the lines of “must be nice”, etc. These come from people who have little self control with their spending and don’t realize that in order to keep large amounts of money on hand, you can’t spend it. I had friends in my mid 20s that lived pay check to pay check who couldn’t afford to go out on a random night of the week because they only had $20 in the bank and would tease me because I could do what I wanted when I wanted and I didn’t have to check my bank account every time we were about to do something. We aren’t even talking ridiculous sums of money here either, I like to keep at least a few thousand dollars in the bank at all times and get very anxious if my bank account ever drops down to triple digits. A good rule of thumb is you should at least try and save up 6 months worth of expenses in an emergency fund first. If that is too much, try for 3 months first.

If you would like more advice as to how to save, I recommend checking out Dave Ramsey on Youtube. He offers great financial advice for the uninitiated. He does tend to get a little preachy at times with his christianity beliefs but I just ignore most of that. He also pushes for marriage too which is the opposite of our goals here but his financial advice is still rock solid.
Spending said money to generate/accumulate more income.

Here comes the fun part, spending it! Warren Buffett once said “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until the day you die”. So much truth is in that statement. Our goal is to accumulate enough money that our money eventually makes more money than we do.

Most simply put, there are 2 things you spend your money on. Assets & liabilities.

Assets are what you should be spending all your money on. These are things that either increase in value over time or generate income for you over time. We want to buy things like stocks, gold, firearms, valuables, etc. If I buy a share of stock in a reputable company, it is most likely going to increase in value overtime (although no investment is without risk). Another way a stock makes you money is through dividends. Dividends are when a company literally gives you a share of the profit they made off of the good or service they sold. These are just a few examples of how one asset generates income. There are many more out there.

If you aren’t familiar with stock investing, I suggest you learn. Too many people I know of, particularly women, have no interest in learning about finance and investing. Most find it boring or complicated. I personally enjoy it because learning to invest in the stock market puts you in control of your own financial destiny. There is a reason that compound interest is considered the 8th wonder of the world. Go ahead and play with this compound interest calculator to see what kind of results you get over 30 and 40 year spans. Use 8% to 10% returns which is what the SP500 usually averages.

With the invention of the smartphone and commission free stock trading, there is no excuse for anyone not to invest in the stock market. I personally enjoy M1 Finance but there are a number of reputable brokers out there that you can find with a quick google search. M1 focuses on long term investing and a hands off, no frills model. You pick the stocks you want to buy, set up auto deposits and boom, you never have to touch it again if you don’t want to. Do your research and pick the brokerage that may best suit your needs. For noobies, I recommend purchasing etf broad based index funds to start. Once you get comfortable, then you can start picking individual stocks. For fun, here is a fund I built consisting of companies beaten down by Corona virus. I’m up 35% since I started investing in these stocks in the beginning of April. Here is a screenshot of my account balance to show I’m not just blowing smoke and actually have money in the game. With my current account balance, I could generate a guaranteed $1,200 a year right now if I invested it into 4% paying dividend stocks. It may not be much but its fun to see that number slowly climb over time..

As for liabilities, these are things that tend to decrease in value over time. The first one that may come to mind for you are women but there are a number of others out there. Typically anything with a motor and/or wheels tends to decrease in value over time so never buy a brand new car, camper, boat, etc. Always buy used. Let some other guy take the depreciation hit for you. You may get that feel good endorphin rush of owning a nice new 2020 pickup but that will soon fade and you’re still left with your $650 payment every month for the next 7 years.

Random site notes/wrapping up here, I’m a huge believer in Dave Ramsey’s philosophy of trying to lead a debt free life. Your income is your most valuable tool for building wealth and every dollar you tie up in debt is one less dollar you can use to build wealth. Alright, the ADHD is kicking in and my attention span is waning so I’m going to call it on this one. Let me know what you blokes think and feel free to comment with your favorite financial advice.