I first became aware of Mr. Money Mustache thanks to his legendary Car Clown post, which I highly recommend to everyone. I’ve almost certainly posted about it before, but since it is legendary here is a taste:
Yet these intra-city trips are commonplace. When I see a car ease into a parking spot, I always run to assist the driver with getting out into their wheelchair, but I am stunned to find that they usually have working legs after all! People drive to the school to pick up and drop off kids. To the grocery store. To the restaurants. To the gym. To each other’s houses. Back and forth on Main Street to show off. Every road sees plenty of cars and personal trucks, some of them in dangerous numbers. And inside, every vehicle is equipped with a La-Z-boy recliner, upon which a tragic clown sits, pushing the soft-touch pedals, turning the power-assisted wheel, and talking on some sort of Clownophone.
The clowns have to wait in line when the traffic light turns red. They have to bumble though the parking lots and wait for each other to back out of parking spaces, because their machines are so bulky that two cannot pass each other in a space less than 20 feet wide. They line up at special events and fight for places to park on the streets. Then they line up at the gas station and the car wash and the oil change shop. And the machines make them fatter and poorer every time they use them.
And we haven’t even addressed the most clown-like invention of them all: the drive-through (or ‘drive-thru’ as it they spell it here, which is suitable because “thru” is not even a word, just as drive-through services should not exist). The clowns actually sit for several minutes in a self-imposed traffic jam, engines idling, just so somebody can hand them some shit through the window of their car!
I am 1000% on board with car-dependence being a root cause of many social, environmental, and health problems plaguing U.S. cities. Now, his proposed remedy for Car Clown-ism was for people to ride bicycles on public streets. In my opinion, riding bicycles on most public streets in the United States is way too risky. I don’t blame the (potential, frequent) victims, the riders themselves, for this. I blame cowardly engineers, politicians, and public officials who cling to 50-years-outdated street designs when modern safe designs are well known. And to a lesser extent poor construction, maintenance, and enforcement.
Anyway, I chose to ditch my car and live in a walkable community starting in 2004 and have never looked back. I estimate it has saved me $300-700 a month every month since then, which I have either saved (in B.C. – before children) or spent on other things (children, mostly). And I have very few regrets, other than maybe spending less time in nature than I might have liked, but I don’t think living in a car-dependent suburb would have changed that much.
Back then (April 2013), MMM was posting up a storm, with 10 posts or so a month. His post this month (September 2026) is his first since April, so the heyday of the blog has past, but I will always have fond memories. Whether I agreed with every single thing or not, it was an entertaining, inspiring blog. Thanks MMM!
