The Millionaire FastLane Book Club | Part 4 - Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, & 15

The Millionaire FastLane Book Club | Part 4 - Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, & 15

PART 4: MEDIOCRITY: THE SLOWLANE ROADMAP

This section was definately a lot longer than previous Parts and Chapters we've covered. My main takeaways from this Part of the book is the following....

1. Unlike the sidewalk in which there's no financial plan and sidewalkers trade future security for happiness now, slow laners often start out as sidewalkers and then decide to be responsible and start following slow lane advice. It's better and smarter than the sidewalk, but your trading your soul and your future for a potentially happy twilight years if you make it that long and if everything in your plan ie job, investments, industry go right. They don't 70% of the time though. 

2. It's all about settling for less and trading in your dreams. You give up 5 days a week for 2 days of freedom, a net 60% loss. 

3. Wealth is best when your young, not when your old if you make it that long. 

4. WIth the slow lane life isn't great but it's not that bad either which is why people get stuck there. The Oasis analogy dictates this. 

5. If you don't control your income you don't control your financial plan. You don't control your income if you work for someone else. 

6. Slow laners trade time for money. Trading time for money you will never get ahead. You have to leverage your time to make more money and to make money more passively. With a typical salary or hourly job you only have so many hours in a day you can work. Your income is capped. 

7. There's nothing wrong with being frugal, being smart with your money and investing but it shouldn't be the plan, it should be an element of a plan. 

8. MJ touches on conventional education. He learned more being an entrepreneur for 2 months than 10 years of schooling. The best education is doing.
9. Education isn't really that great of an investment. We hear about how much more college grads earn over their lifetime and how much more an MBA will get you. But how much time and money have you invested upfront in an MBA which may make you a little more 20 years from now. How many people with degrees and MBA's they spent time and money on are doing jobs a high school graduate could do?
10. MJ touches on the hyprocrisy of Gurus. Not make money gurus but more so financial gurus though the sentiment still is valid for any type of guru. Suzy Orman, Dave Ramsey, they preach being smart financially, paying off debt, living within your means and investing in index funds. Is that how they got rich? Did Suzy Orman make 25 million investing in bonds or in the fastlane pitching programs. NOthing wrong with the advice but that's not how they got rich. This concept is called the Paradox of practice.
11. If you don't take control of your life your at the whim or markets, bosses, your industry, etc. The slowlane has many dangers which cannot be controlled. 

CHAPTER 10: THE LIE YOU’VE BEEN SOLD: THE SLOWLANE

What if I told you ‘insane’ was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to piss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane? ~ Steve Buscemi (Con Air, Paramount Pictures, 2003)

Chapter 10 Quotes and Highlights

• However, with increased responsibilities, perhaps a growing family, mounting debt loads, and future expectations not matching reality, the Sidewalker comes to terms with the uncertainty of the Sidewalk
• The plan is a failure because the plan is based on time and factors you can’t control.
• It’s my responsibility to provide for my family although for that plan to work I have to rely on others, including my employer, my financial adviser, the government, and a good economy.
• Settle for less. Give up on big dreams. Save, live frugal, don’t take unnecessary risks, and one day I will retire with millions.
• While coupons and other Slowlane strategies aren’t worthless in a plan, they shouldn’t be the plan. The Slowlane as a total plan is the problem, not the Slowlane being a part of a plan.
• Have you become so numbed by making a living that the living has been sucked out of your life?
• Friday evening is glorified because people celebrate the dividends of their trade: five days of work-bondage exchanged for two days of unadulterated freedom. Saturday and Sunday is the paycheck for Monday through Friday, and Friday evening symbolizes the emergence of that payment, freedom for two days. The prostitution of Monday through Friday is the reason “Thank God it’s Friday” exists. On Friday, people are paid FREEDOM in the currency of Saturday and Sunday!
• Monday through Friday is prostituted for Saturday and Sunday. While people easily recognize and reject a negative 60% return on their money, they do it willingly with their time.
• Both instinctively know that something is wrong. They’re settling. They’ve accepted normal. They’ve forsaken their dreams for the insane plan of everyone. Throughout the movie we witness their attempts to escape, and with perilous consequences.
• Folks like us just don’t get rich playing pro ball, rapping, singing, acting, or entertaining, so we’re left with the Slowlane. And for some, that just might be OK. But for the rest of us with big dreams, big goals, and big ideas, it just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• The Slowlane is a natural course-correction from the Sidewalk evolving from taking responsibility and accountability.
• Wealth is best experienced when you’re young, vibrant, and able, not in the twilight of your life.
• The Slowlane is a plan that takes decades to succeed, often requiring masterful political prowess in a corporate environment. For the Slowlaner, Saturday and Sunday is the paycheck for Monday through Friday.
• The default return on your time in the Slowlane is negative 60%—5-for-2.
• The 5-for-2 trade inherit in the Slowlane is generally fixed and cannot be manipulated, because job standards are five days a week.
• The predisposed destination of the Slowlane is mediocrity. Life isn’t great, but it isn’t so bad either.

CHAPTER 11: THE CRIMINAL TRADE: YOUR JOB BY

working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day. ~ Robert Frost

Chapter 11 Quotes and Highlights

• If you don’t control your income, you don’t control your financial plan. If you don’t control your financial plan, you don’t control your freedom.
• Despite two dozen different jobs over the years, I noticed nothing changes when it comes to office politics. It’s the same story, different people, different day, in a different office.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• In a job, you sell your freedom (in the form of time) for freedom (in the form of money).
• Experience is gained in action. The environment of that action is irrelevant.
• Wealth accumulation is thwarted when you don’t control your primary income source.

CHAPTER 12: THE SLOWLANE: WHY YOU AREN’T RICH

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows. ~ Michael Landon

Chapter 12 Quotes and Highlights

• Intrinsic value is determined by the marketplace and is the price at which you can trade your time for money.
• For the hourly worker, your maximum upper limit is 24 hours, and guess what. There’s nothing you can do to change this limit. In theory, you can trade 24 hours of your day for income, but you can’t trade more.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Slowlane wealth is improbable due to Uncontrollable Limited Leverage (ULL).
• The first variable in the Slowlane wealth equation evolves from a job that factors to intrinsic value that equates to your nominal value for each unit of your life traded.
• Intrinsic value is the value of your time set by the marketplace and is measured in units of time, either hourly or yearly.
• In the Slowlane, intrinsic value (regardless of its time measurement) is numerically inhibited because there are only 24 hours in the day (for the hourly worker),and the average lifespan is 74 years (for the salaried worker).
• Like the Slowlaner’s primary income source (a job), the Slowlaner’s wealth acceleration vehicle (compound interest) is also pegged to time.
• Like a job, compound interest is mathematically futile and cannot be manipulated. You cannot force-feed the market (or the economy) to give you phenomenal returns, year after year.
• Wealth cannot be accelerated when pegged to mathematics based on time.
• Time is your primordial fuel and it should not be traded for money.
• Your time should not be an expendable resource for wealth because wealth itself is composed of time.
• Your mortality makes time mathematically retarded for wealth creation.
• If you don’t control the variables inherent in your wealth universe, you don’t control your financial plan.

CHAPTER 13: THE FUTILE FIGHT: EDUCATION

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. ~ Albert Einstein

Chapter 13 Quotes and Highlights 

• A survey of college borrowers found that the average college senior graduated with nearly $19,000 in student loan debts, and graduate degree pursuers more than $45,000. A 2007 Charles Schwab survey revealed that teenagers believe when they get older they will earn an average salary of $145,000. The reality? Adults with a college degree earned an average of $54,000. Unfortunately, the future isn’t so bright that you have to wear shades. The truth behind reality and expectation is about a $100,000 chasm. This disparity might explain why the debts of our youth have exploded as they bridge their reality to expectation. If I can’t make $145,000, I can look like I make $145,000!
• wealth is “I don’t have time.” Well, why don’t you have time? Because you have a job. Why do you have a job? Because you need one. Why do you need one? Because you have bills to pay. Why do you have bills to pay? Because you have debt. Why do you have debt? Oh yes, because you went to school for six years and have six figures in student loans.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions Slowlaners

• attempt to manipulate intrinsic value by education.
• Indentured time is time you spend earning a living. It is the opposite of free time.
• Parasitic debt is debt that creates indentured time and forces work.

CHAPTER 14: THE HYPOCRISY OF THE GURUS

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody. ~ Adlai Stevenson

Chapter 14 Quotes and Highlights

• The Slowlane roadmap is sanctimoniously trumpeted by best-selling book authors who dispense financial advice through TV, radio, and books. The strategies they sell are a travesty of grand illusions. Do you seriously think these people are rich from their preachings? Or, are they selling you the Slowlane while they get rich in the Fastlane?
• the rich use the markets for income and wealth preservation—not to create it!
• Are they rich because of what they preach, OR what they sell? Once you’re familiar with Fastlane mathematics, it should become clear to you which gurus are likely guilty of the paradox. Is the underlying mathematical equation which governs their teachings the same one that made them rich? If the “do as I say” doesn’t match the “do as I do”, you should be suspicious.
• In other words, the “do as I say” matches the “do as I do.”
• Economic recessions expose the Slowlane as a risky fraud with lifetime ramifications.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Take advice from people with a proven, successful track record of their espoused discipline.
• Many money gurus often suffer from a Paradox of Practice; they teach one wealth equation while getting rich in another. They’re not rich from their own teachings.

CHAPTER 15: SLOWLANE VICTORY. . . A GAMBLE OF HOPE

I’d rather live in regret of failure than in regret of never trying. ~ MJ DeMarco

Chapter 15 Quotes and Highlights

• Life is a menagerie littered with crisis points, which make the Slowlane roadmap a risky bet that consumes your most precious asset: time.
• If you assign your retirement unto others, you then accept external risks that you can’t control.
• Slowlane Variables:
  • Manipulate intrinsic value by increasing hours worked. (I need to make more money!)
  • Manipulate intrinsic value by changing jobs or adding jobs. (I need to get paid more!)
  • Manipulate intrinsic value by going back to school. (I need a better career!)
  • Manipulate compound interest by seeking better investment yields. (I need better investments!)
  • Manipulate compound interest by expanding investment time horizon. (I need more time!)
  • Manipulate compound interest by increasing the investment. (I need to save more!)

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• The Slowlane has seven dangers, five of which cannot be controlled.
• The risk of “lifestyle” is the one risk Slowlaners will try to control.
• The Slowlane is predisposed to mediocrity because its mathematical universe is mediocre.
• Slowlaners manipulate the “expense” variable because it is the one thing they can control.
• Exponential income growth and expense management creates wealth—not just by curtailing expenses.
• You can break the Slowlane equation by exploding your intrinsic value via fame or insider corporate management.
• Successful Slowlaners not famous or in corporate management end in the middle . . . middle class and middle age.
• Slowlane millionaires are stuck in the middle class.
• $5 million is the new $1 million.
• A millionaire cannot live a millionaire lifestyle without financial discipline.
• Lottery winners fall into the millionaire trap and go broke because they attempt to live a “millionaire” lifestyle, not understanding that a few million doesn’t go very far.