Monetizing interest in extreme personal finance

[Stahlmann]

As in "Your biggest weakness can be your biggest strength"...

Any ideas?
How to find client base?

I don't mind charging 20-30 USD/45 min globally for personal coaching.
In reality, I would focus on more local clientele.

I hope this topic won't be deleted by jacob on the ground of creating competition for him.
After startup phase, I would donate something to the official ERE Fund (if there's one) to show gratitude for the insights I've gained from this community.

[zbigi]

People who want to DYI everything and go to extreme lenghts to not spend money are probably the worst imaginable customer base.

[jacob]

People who want to DYI everything and go to extreme lenghts to not spend money are probably the worst imaginable customer base.

True that. The number of people here who "waited 6 months to get the ERE book from the library" is rather large.

The money is in the clientele with more money than time. Doctors, lawyers, ... The people who pay $400 for a one day conference on how to open a broker account. Or $2700 for a weeklong retreat with FIRE people. See JLCollins' https://www.fichautauqua.com/ MMM's followers are close enough in that regard.

Keep in mind, people who make $200,000 per household think that living like a normal household on $60,000 is pretty extreme. They wouldn't blink dropping that amount of money on a trip.

[xmj]

You could create yet another FIRE blog, write one post every two three days for a few years, then at some point launch a podcast, publish a book, go on a publishing tour (through the other FIRE podcasts), and then do Consults. Now of course this is not a new approach, and it'll take you a while to pull in any meaningful reader numbers so as to make money from affiliate income.

But it might also be worth it to document your own learnings!

[GardenDee]

When they started organizing these FI pilgrimages for thousands of dollars it was the exact time that I stopped reading MMM. I look at it once or twice a year now, but it has become too Hollywood for me

[prudentelo]

Biggest customer base probably "get out of debt". Look at Dave Ramsey.

[Dream of Freedom]

You could write a book compiling practical frugal skills. Use good pictures and get someone here to help edit.

The table of contents might look something like this:

introduction
food
cutting your own hair
DIY cleaning supplies, pest control, personal hygiene products
simple car and tire repair
bicycle repair
things to look for before calling the repair man heat pump, refrigerate, washer, dryer etc.
probably tons of other things

[Laura Ingalls]

Can you teach people to have an optimizer brain?

My late father was the ultimate scrounger. He was always finding firewood, building materials, etc. His love language was helping friends with their home improvement projects.

My DH when he was in the corporate world was a master at getting sales guys/gals to take him to expensive meals, golf, fishing, sports ball activities. He is fun loving and easy going and people like to hang out with him.

He also writes and makes money at covered calls which I get in principle but couldn’t pull off.

I am really good at “mining” the best deals out of the weekly grocery ads. DH and elder child suck at it. They just buy what they want to eat instead of building a pantry of things they like that are on sale. Younger offspring gets it and is careful that things are rung up properly. I think his brain is wired to see them.

I also currently have an income stream that is about JAFI per year that is legal, tax free, not gambling, and pretty passive (~10 minutes daily.) I am not sharing because sharing would kill it. It will die a more natural death eventually.

I have other people in my life that would never be able to pull off any of these.

Anyway not sure you can really coach or teach some of these activities?

[Seppia]

The number of people here who "waited 6 months to get the ERE book from the library" is rather large.

There's a difference between being frugal and being cheap.
If one extracted a shitton of value from ERE, buying the book is a good way of staying in good terms with karma.
I personally first downloaded it illegally, but after I read the first pages I bought it in kindle form, and after a few years also in paper.

I'm in the "making more money than average and living on average money" camp (I don't consider that extreme - just normal), so maybe I'm just living life on level EASY

[candide]

I'm going to back this conversation up and ask why someone would even do this?

The parts of the wider market where the money is are saturated, and the parts of the market you could try to make a niche are ones where are people are inclined to the message of not spending unnecessary money.

If you have the myriad skills it would take to make money with this idea, there should be easier ways to make money. (Also, if you've mastered making money the easier ways, or already have your FI hoard, most of the frugal audience will wonder why you need to try to get money from them -- and that's a reasonable question to ask, isn't it?)

If it doesn't lead to financial remuneration, I don't see how this would be particularly meaningful or fun.

[Ego]

Kirsten Dirksen at https://faircompanies.com/ would be a good model to follow for monetization.

Travel the world interviewing people who are doing extremely frugal things. Be kind and enthusiastic about their projects.

[jacob]

Can you teach people to have an optimizer brain?

[...]

Anyway not sure you can really coach or teach some of these activities?

I don't think this is something one is born with, so my answer is yes.

In MHC the "optimizer brain" corresponds to stage 11 or so-called "critical" or "scientific" thinking. The tricky part is getting someone to think that way. The majority of adults' native thinking-language exists around 9ish (8-10) and so if presented with examples of optimized solutions, they're simply going to translate these examples into their native language of "rules", "facts", and "simple steps".

It's possible to learn a new thinking-language in the classroom. But will this new thinking-language be used outside the classroom? Mostly it will not, because classroom examples are somewhat limited. This requires more than 300 hours of instruction. However, if the new thinking-language is used pervasively and thousands of hours (of concentrated thinking) are accumulated, it begins to spill "out of the classroom/work box" and into the rest of one's life. Eventually the new thinking-language replaces the old thinking-language.

[jacob]

I'm going to back this conversation up and ask why someone would even do this?

The parts of the wider market where the money is are saturated, and the parts of the market you could try to make a niche are ones where are people are inclined to the message of not spending unnecessary money.

If you have the myriad skills it would take to make money with this idea, there should be easier ways to make money. (Also, if you've mastered making money the easier ways, or already have your FI hoard, most of the frugal audience will wonder why you need to try to get money from them -- and that's a reasonable question to ask, isn't it?)

If it doesn't lead to financial remuneration, I don't see how this would be particularly meaningful or fun.

Why would anyone want to become an art historian, an archeologist, or an adjunct professor?

The title needs to be further unpacked. If the primary goal is to make money and other goals in the web matter less, then art history, archeology, or [coaching] extreme personal finance are suboptimal choices because they lead away from the money rather than to it. If the primary goal is something else, like personal interest, helping other people, finding alternatives, researching ways of life, ... and making money is secondary or tertiary goal, then the monetization question is still valid.

The next thing to consider are trade-offs. For example, being a scientific researcher in academia requires a myriad of high-level skills (coding, math, engineering, technical writing, public speaking, domain knowledge) that given the working hours translates into something like $6/hr in grad school and $15/hr as a postdoc. Why do this when one could work in software engineering and be paid $50-100/hr to solve comparably easier problems that one may well be overqualified for? Because the latter might be boring to the point of apathy and maybe the former pays enough/a living wage?

In any case, it all depends on that the goals are.

[candide]

Why would anyone want to become an art historian, an archeologist, or an adjunct professor?

The title needs to be further unpacked. If the primary goal is to make money and other goals in the web matter less, then art history, archeology, or [coaching] extreme personal finance are suboptimal choices because they lead away from the money rather than to it.

I must admit I was making a lot of assumptions here, and I should have framed it even more as questions. If apologies are due, then I am willing to offer them.

Still, it is my contention that attempts at selling ERE much beyond the level it is already at is too damaging to the ethos for it to really work -- I mean this both ERE 1.0 and 2.0. In ERE 1.0 it's the first e, in 2.0 the last e.

Extreme -- that can't be sold (ETA as a service). I concede that high earners in theory could be coached to spending a little over U.S. median spending, and it would lower the amount waste in the world for each successful client, but that would really, really be a tough job. It's hard to be the hired help and then tell your lord what to do. If you don't care if you succeed, you might be able to bill anyway. Then there are glossy, fun ways of selling the fantasy -- those might make money, but I doubt their ability to deliver results.

Ecology -- monetization doesn't seem like the way forward. I don't see any way out of the metacrisis/ capitalism (late stage, or otherwise) without people relearning that good things can be free and then that good, free things should not be put through artificial scarcity just so someone can seek yet another rent. And I'm not arguing against any IP, rather I am saying renaissance ecology is only going to emerge when people wise up to salesmanship devoid of ethos.

I'm less sure of my ecology point than my extreme point. Which leads me just now to realize I can give a suggestion in response to Stahlman's question: try to frame the practice in ecological and resilience terms.

[Sclass]

This may be timely.

I’m seeing a lot of online and print stories about economizing now. The inflation problem is very real for a lot of people. I guess it’s a hard sell if they have to choose between your educational materials and eating.

My wife has been pointing out some interesting things. There are a lot of unwashed cars driving around in our area. Usually things are really shined up. We also noticed the whole bean Peets coffee was sold out at our local supermarket. I guess people aren’t paying the barista? The lot at our local movie theater was packed at matinee time yesterday.

When I was mowing my lawn Sunday two clean cut kids came by and offered to mow my lawn for $20. I was shocked. Definitely children of affluent neighbors. It was like falling into a time warp. Kids mow lawns? My neighbors find it comical that groom my own yard. Apparently mowers are a big seller right now.

Maybe this is a good time to sell an ebook or monetize a video on how to cut $500 a month out of your budget.

[unemployable]

When I was mowing my lawn Sunday two clean cut kids came by and offered to mow my lawn for $20.

How big a yard? That's what I was getting back in 1988 for maybe half an acre of grass. My mom pays $50 now, or maybe it's a bit higher now, for a quarter acre lot, not all of which is grass of course, in one of the lower cost-of-living parts of the country.

[Sclass]

Huh think it was an insurance scam? Or they’re really desperate? They weren’t really dressed for it. They wore shorts and athletic shoes. No eye protection, ear protection or masks. It was really odd having a couple of clean cut suburban kids offer to mow the lawn. They had a really old mower.

I was left slack jawed thinking WTH…is it that bad out there?

The lawn is 1/2 of an acre. It has a gentle slope so it’s real work. The gardeners I fired charged $200 a month but they did the entire mow, cord trim, hedge trim and blower thing.

Yeah so I was really thrown off by that.

[theanimal]

I think you guys are overthinking this. Some teens want some spending money and their parents told them to get a job. Could be they're tired of giving them spending money, they want to teach them something or the kids just want to try on their own. I was offering $20 to shovel driveways in the mid 2000s. I see kids offering about the same thing now. Inflation doesn't exist in kids brains.

[clark]

I think that there is a very modest amount of money to be made by expanding some of the ERE ideas into journal form: an ERE Quarterly, if you will. Many of the ideas discussed in the forums (ERE 2.0 ideas, Wheaton levels, web of goals, perhaps some anthrological studies about the type of people that do ERE) could be given extended treatment by amateur academics at first, but eventually professional ones.

A journal like this would have more of a cultural or intellectual, rather than monetary, impact, but could make a bit of money as well. I like this idea more because it gets out of the “tips and tricks” thinking and into theory. It would have a target audience of intellectuals and academics, who tend to be less consumerist to begin with. As a further side effect, you might convert a few more people to ERE modes of thought.

[Scott 2]

About 20 years ago, I went to a seminar on developing your revenue as a personal trainer. The guy had one core message - "poor people suck!".

Being young, I missed the wisdom. It's hard to make money, from people who don't have it. Especially if you want to help them. His advice was monetize the wealthy, give to the poor. I wonder if he privately called it the Robin Hood talk.

The money is in selling an aspirational ideal. But I think it requires the charisma to put on a sustained performance. MMM did it well.