Book Review: The Millionaire Fastlane

I just finished re-reading The Millionaire Fastlane, by MJ DeMarco. I first read it in August 2012 and enjoyed it at the time. DeMarco makes sense, and he has a very different message from the usual sources we have here on the site.

However, this time the book electrified me. It kind of meshed with everything I have read and done over the last three years and made me take a long look at what I am doing. I guess I went back to it at exactly the right time in my life.

The Millionaire Fastlane is aimed at entrepreneurs. In it, DeMarco rubbishes what he calls The Slowlane: working at a job and saving for the future. “No-one got rich early in life doing that”, he says. He then lays out very methodically the conditions to establish and grow successful businesses.

Serving a need, keeping control, being able to grow, defining a brand, being able to separate time from earning.

Despite the cheesy title and superficial obsession with objects (the Lamborghini in the first sentence), this is a very deep book that aligns with many of the key concepts we have talked about in the past. DeMarco emphasizes that freedom, not possessions, is the real source of happiness, along with relationships. Money is just one way to increase your freedom and improve your relationships by removing constraints on your time and actions.

There are a few things I didn’t like in the book. DeMarco, like many popular personal finance authors, writes misleadingly about stock market and real estate crashes. He talks about how you would have lost 60% of your money in 2008-9. Of course, that is only true if you sold your stocks. If you held on to them, they recovered and went onto new highs. If you bought more as the stock market went down, you tripled your money.

DeMarco also rubbishes saving and investing, but fails to consider the extreme range (saving rate of 50%+). I agree that saving 5% is unlikely to improve your financial situation, but as many bloggers show, saving much more than that can be a route to financial freedom.

Despite these two reservations, I loved The Millionaire Fastlane for it’s refreshing and logical take on money and earning and it has inspired me to put pedal to the metal for the next few years. Let’s see where the Fastlane takes me 🙂