The Millionaire Fastlane (3 page)

Show me a 22-year-old who got rich investing in mutual funds. Show me the man who earned millions in three years by maximizing his 401(k). Show me the young twenty-something who got rich clipping coupons.

Where are these people? They don't exist. They're fairy tales of impossibility.

Yet, we continue to trust the same old tired gang of financial media darlings who espouse these doctrines of wealth. Yes sir, get a job, work 50 years, save, live mindlessly frugal, invest in the stock market, and soon, your day of freedom will arrive at age 70 … and if the stock market is kind and you're lucky, 60! Gee, doesn't this “wealth in a wheelchair” financial plan sound exciting?

In today's tumultuous financial climate, I am shocked people still believe these strategies even work. Wasn't it the recession that exposed “Get Rich Slow” for the fraud it is? Oh I get it, if you're employed for 40 years and avoid 40% market downturns, “Get Rich Slow” works; just sit back, work, and hope death don't meet you first because, golly-gee, you're going to be the richest guy in the retirement home!

The message of “Get Rich Slow” is clear: Sacrifice your today, your dreams, and your life for a plan that pays dividends after most of your life has evaporated. Let me be blunt: If your road to wealth devours your active adult life and it isn't guaranteed, that road sucks. A “road to wealth” codependent on Wall Street and anchored by time with your life wagered as the gamble is a dirty rotten alley.

Nonetheless, the preordained plan continues to wield power, recommended and enforced by a legion of hypocritical “financial experts” who aren't rich by their own advice, but by their own Millionaire Fastlane. The Slowlane prognosticators know something that they aren't telling you:
What they teach doesn't work, but selling it does.

Wealth Young: Is It Bullshit?

The Millionaire Fastlane
isn't about being retired old with millions, but about redefining wealth to include youth, fun, freedom, and prosperity. Take this comment posted on the Fastlane Forum:

“Is it bullshit? You know, the dream to be young and live the life-to own the exotic cars, to own the dream house, to have free time to travel and pursue your dreams. Can you really get free of the rat race young? I'm a 23-year-old investment banker in Chicago, Illinois. I make a modest salary and modest commissions. By most people's standards, I have a good job. I hate it. I cruise Chicago's downtown and I see some guys living the life. Guys driving expensive exotic cars and I think to myself … They're all 50 or older with silver hair! One of them once told me, 'You know kid, when you finally can afford a toy like this, you're almost too old to enjoy it!' The guy was a 52-year-old real estate investor. I remember looking at him and thinking 'God … that can't be true! It's gotta be bullshit! It's gotta be!'”

I can verify-it isn't bullshit. You can live “the life” and still be young. Old age is not a prerequisite to wealth or retirement. However, the real BS is thinking you can do it by the default “Get Rich Slow” construct, at least by the time you hit your 30th birthday. Believing that old age is a precursor to retirement is the real BS. The real BS is allowing “Get Rich Slow” to steal your dreams.

Reinvent Retirement to Include Youth

Say “retirement” and what do you see? I see a crotchety old man on a porch in a creaky rocking chair. I see pharmacies, doctor's offices, walkers, and unsightly urinary undergarments. I see nursing homes and overburdened loved ones. I see old and immobile. Heck, I even smell something musty circa 1971. People retire in their 60s or 70s. Even at that age, they struggle to make ends meet and have to rely on bankrupted government programs just to survive. Others work well into their “golden years” just to maintain their lifestyle. Some never make it and work until death.

How does this happen? Simple. “Get Rich Slow” takes a lifetime to travel and its success is nefariously dependent on too many
factors you cannot control
. Invest 50 years into a job and miserly living, then, one day, you can retire rich alongside your wheelchair and prescription pillbox. How uninspiring.

Yet, millions undertake the 50-year gamble. Those who succeed receive their reward of financial freedom with a stinking lump of turd:
old age
. Gee thanks. But don't worry; patronization rains from the heavens: “These are the golden years!” Who they kidding? Golden to whom?

If the journey devours 50 years of your life, is it worth it? A 50-year road to wealth isn't compelling, and because of it, few succeed and those who do settle for financial freedom in life's twilight.

The problem with accepted norms of retirement is what you do not see. You don't see youth, you don't see fun, and you don't see the realization of dreams. The golden years aren't golden at all but a waiting room for death. If you want financial freedom before the Grim Reaper hits the on-deck circle, “Get Rich Slow” isn't the answer. If you want to retire young with health, vibrancy, and hair, you're going to need to ignore society's default “Get Rich Slow” roadmap and the gurus spoon-feeding you the slop in the trough. There is another way.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• “Get Rich Slow” demands a long life of gainful employment.
  
• “Get Rich Slow” is a losing game because it is codependent on Wall Street an anchored by your time.
  
• The real golden years of life are when you're young, sentient, and vibrant.
  

CHAPTER 2: HOW I SCREWED “GET RICH SLOW”

The object of life is not to be on the side of the masses, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Exposing the “Get Rich Slow” Dreamkiller

As a teenager, I never gave myself a chance of becoming wealthy young. “Wealth +youth” was an equation that didn't compute simply because I didn't have the physical capabilities. Common roads to wealth for the young are competitive and require talent; become an actor, a musician, an entertainer or a pro athlete-all roads that had a big “ROAD CLOSED” sign that laughed, “Not a chance, MJ!”

So, early in life, I conceded. I gave up on my dreams. “Get Rich Slow” made it abundantly clear: Go to school, get a job, settle for less, sacrifice, be miserly and quit dreaming about financial freedom, mountainside homes, and exotic cars. But I still dreamed. It's what teenage boys do. For me, it was all about the cars-specifically, the Lamborghini Countach.

The 90 Seconds that Changed My Life

I grew up in Chicago and was a porky kid with few friends. I wasn't interested in teenage girls or sports, but lying around in a beanbag stuffing my face with doughnuts while watching Tom-n-Jerry reruns.

Parental supervision was absent; Mom divorced Dad years earlier, which left my older siblings and me to be raised by a single mother. Mom didn't have a college education or a career, unless a deep-frying job at Kentucky Fried Chicken qualified. That left me to my own indulgences, usually consumption of sweets and the latest episode of the A-Team. My exertions were epitomized by a long broken broomstick: I used it as the TV's remote control since the real one was broken and I was too lazy to move. When I did move, the local ice cream shop was often my target; a sugary delight was a motive I could count on.

That day was like any other day: I sought ice cream. I plotted the flavor of my next indulgence and headed toward the ice cream parlor. When I arrived, there it was. I was face to face with my dream car; a Lamborghini Countach famous from the 80s hit movie Cannonball Run. Parked stoically like an omnipotent king, I gazed upon it like a worshiper beholden to its God. Awestruck, any thoughts of ice cream were banished from my brain.

Posterized on my bedroom walls and drooled upon in my favorite car magazines, I was acutely familiar with the Lamborghini Countach: cunning, evil, obscenely fast, spaceship doors, and ungodly expensive. Yet, here it was just a few feet away, like Elvis resurrected. Its raw tangible grandeur was like an artisan coming face to face with an authentic Monet. The lines, the curves, the smell …

I gawked for a few minutes, until a young man left the ice cream parlor and headed toward the car. Could this be the owner? No way. He couldn't have been more than 25 years old. Dressed in blue jeans and an oversized flannel shirt with what I spied to be an Iron Maiden concert shirt underneath, I reasoned this couldn't be the owner. I expected an old guy: wrinkled, receding gray hairline, and dressed two seasons late. Not so.

“What the heck?” I thought. How could a young guy afford such a kick-ass automobile? For God's sake, that car costs more than the house I live in! It's got to be a lottery winner, I speculated. Hmmm … or maybe some rich kid who inherited the family fortune. No, it's a pro athlete. Yes, that's it, I concluded.

Suddenly, a daring thought invaded my head: “Hey, MJ, why don't you ask the guy what he does for a living?” Could I? I stood on the sidewalk, dumbfounded while I negotiated with myself. Emboldened and overcome with adrenaline, I found my legs moving toward the car as if my brain weren't agreeable. In the back of my mind, my brother taunted, “Danger, Will Robinson, danger!”

Feeling my approach, the owner hid his trepidation with a forced smile and opened his door. Whoa. The car's door flung up into the sky, vertically, as opposed to swinging out sideways like a normal car. It threw me off what little game I had and I tried to maintain my composure, as if cars with futuristic doors were standard fare. What couldn't have been more than 20 words seemed like a novel. My opportunity was here and I snatched it. “Excuse me, sir?” I nervously muttered, hoping he wouldn't ignore me. “May I ask what you do for a living?”

Relieved that I wasn't a teenage derelict, the owner kindly responded: “I'm an inventor.” Perplexed that his answer didn't match my preconception; my prepared follow-up questions were nullified, paralyzing my next move. I stood there frozen like the ice cream I had sought minutes earlier. Sensing the opportunity for escape, the young Lamborghini owner took the driver's seat, closed his door, and started the engine. The loud roar of the exhaust swept through the parking lot, alerting all life forms to the Lamborghini's formidable presence. Whether I liked it or not, the conversation was over.

Knowing it might be years before such a sight would happen again, I took mental inventory of the automotive unicorn before me. I left awakened as a neural pathway suddenly smacked open in my brain.

The Liberation from Fame and Talent

What changed that day? I was exposed to the Fastlane and a new truth. As for the sweets I pursued that day, I never made it into the store. I turned around and went home with a new reality. I wasn't athletic, I couldn't sing, and I couldn't act, but I could get rich without fame or without physical talent.

From that point forward, things changed. The Lamborghini encounter lasted 90 seconds, but transcended a lifetime of new beliefs, directions, and choices. I decided that I would someday own a Lamborghini and I would do it while I was young. I was unwilling to wait until my next encounter, my next chance experience, and my next poster: I wanted it for myself. Yes, I retired the broomstick and got off my fat ass.

The Search for the Millionaire Fastlane

After the Lamborghini encounter, I made a conscious effort to study young millionaires who weren't famous or physically talented. But I wasn't interested in all millionaires, just those who lived a rich, extravagant lifestyle. This examination led me to study a limited, obscure group of people: a small subset of fameless millionaires who met these criteria:

1. They were living a rich lifestyle or were capable of such. I wasn't interested in hearing from frugal millionaires who lived “next door” in the middle class.
   
2. They had to be relatively young (under 35) or they had to have acquired wealth fast. I wasn't interested in people who spent 40 years of their life jobbing and penny-pinching their way to millions. I wanted to be rich young, not old.
   
3. They had to be self-made. I was broke. Silver-spoon winners of the lucky sperm lottery weren't invited to my lab.
   
4. Their riches couldn't be from fame, physical talent, playing pro ball, acting, singing, or entertaining.
   

I sought millionaires who would have started like me, an average guy without any special skill or talent, who, somehow, made it big. Through high school and college, I religiously studied this millionaire divergence. I read magazines, books, and newspapers and watched documentaries of successful businessmen; anything that provided insight into this small subset of millionaires, I absorbed it.

Unfortunately, this zest to uncover the secret to fast wealth led me to disappointments. I was a late-night infomercial marketer's dream come true-gullible, willing, and armed with a credit card. I bought into countless opportunities, from “one tiny classified ad” to the Asian real estate mogul and his sexy bikini-clad yacht vixens. None of them delivered wealth, and despite the slick commercials and their claims, the large-breasted models never materialized.

As I fed my appetite for knowledge and endured one odd job after another, my research uncovered some remarkable common denominators. I was confident I had uncovered all the components to
The Millionaire Fastlane
and fameless wealth. I was determined to become rich young, and the journey would begin after college graduation. Little did I know what lay ahead-the roadblocks, the detours, and the mistakes.

Resistance into Mediocrity

I graduated from Northern Illinois University with two business degrees. College was a five-year prenatal employee brainwashing with graduation as the overrated climax. I viewed college as indoctrination into corporate droneship; an unfulfilled marriage between me and a life of jobs, bosses, and being overworked and underpaid. My friends were hired for great jobs and bragged about it: