Since starting on my ‘absurb’ goal of wanting to earn a million dollars, I started to gravitate towards being more financially astute and ways that I can get there within a few years (not lifetime). I’m going through a kind of motivational classics phase this time round, and after The Magic of Thinking Big, I chanced on The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco. 

He talked about how we had been hoodwinked into believing this narrative of wealth creation:

Graduate from college, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to Wall Street, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich.

The book does an excellent job breaking down the various wealth acceleration myths of the “Sidewalk” and the “Slowlane”, and then goes on to propose the “Fastlane” to wealth. I really enjoyed the myth-busting, and there were some good broad pointers on how to get on the fastlane to a millionaire, though the more recent books and thinkers on wealth creation in the exponential age of the Internet might have more specific and practical pointers. This book was after all written in 2011, a lifetime in computer age.

Sharing them here as reference for myself, and for anyone who might find it useful. This is not a book review, just raw notes lifted directly from the book, with some minor edits, interpretations and categorisations of my own.

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The Sidewalk to Poorness

A Sidewalker has no financial plan and is only concerned with instant gratification. It’s a chronic lifestyle that mortgages the future for a pleasurable today.

Money doesn’t solve everything

Money doesn’t solve money problems, if you have poor money habits. More money is not the solution to poor financial management.

Poor money management is like gambling: the house eventually wins.

If your wealth is “wealth = income - debt”, then wealth is an illusion, because it is vulnerable to unforeseen circumstances. When income disappears, so does the illusion of wealth. 

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Do you think money is dirty?

The perception of wealth in society had generally been toxified. We had been conditioned to believe that wealth is an accumulation of material possessions, i.e. faux wealth.

True wealth’s trinity: the 3Fs

- family (relationships)

- fitness (health)

- freedom (choice)

No wealth without freedom

Often, your lifestyle upgrades and material possessions start to trap us in an endless cycle of work to upkeep them. It destroys real wealth, i.e. your freedom. “I’m not living a dream, but my dream is living me.”

Money owning you

Fact is, many millionaires are miserable, and it had nothing to do with money. It has to do with their freedom. Money owns them, instead of them owning their money. Money doesn’t work for them, they work for money. Misuse money and money will misuse you.

“If money doesn’t buy happiness, does poverty?”

People who declare, “Money doesn’t buy happiness” have already concluded they will never have money. This old equivocation becomes the torchbearer to their poorness. And since money doesn’t buy happiness, why save it? And then logic begs, if money doesn’t buy happiness, does poverty? Money, properly used, can buy freedom, which can lead to happiness. 

Asking if you can afford it means you can’t

Affordability is when you don’t have to think about it. If you have to ask whether you can afford it, then that is a warning you can’t. You can bluff yourself but you can’t bluff the consequences. When you can pay cash and your lifestyle doesn’t change regardless of future circumstances, you can afford it.

How the poor see luck

Process creates events that others see as luck. Nobody mentioned luck when it came to doing the hard work. “Rich people got lucky” is a poor person’s creed and a disempowering belief that strips you of your free will. Luck can create riches via lotteries, but long-lasting wealth is where luck is a product of process, action, work and being out there. Luck is not an event but an aftereffect of process. Luck is a residue of process. Poor people love events but hate process. Luck is nothing more than action engaged with better probabilities.

The myth of getting rich in one big hit

Renounce the “big hit” as your financial plan. When you believe in sudden miracles or events, you omit process. Renounce these 3 beliefs:

1. Luck is needed for wealth

2. Wealth is an event

3. Others can give wealth to me

To get rich, you can’t hitchhike

You can’t hitchhike your way to wealth. You can’t be a victim if you don’t relinquish power to someone capable of making you a victim. People who don’t take responsibility are victims. These people seek the easy life yet want someone else to pay for it. They are victims of the system. 

“Responsibility is the price of greatness.” ~ Winston Churchill

Wealth demands accountability

Being responsible is taking ownership of a problem, and being accountable is modifying your behaviour or doing something to prevent it from happening again. Most bad situations are consequences of bad choices. Failure doesn’t become the badge of victimhood—it becomes wisdom. Deny responsibility and accountability and assign control to someone else in the driver’s seat to your life.