The Millionaire Fastlane (9 page)

Normalcy Is the Rat Race, a Modern-Day Slavery

Why am I wealthy, versus the guy stuck in morning traffic driving to work? I have freedom. I wake up and do what I want. I pursue dreams. I write this book without worrying about how many will sell. I hop a plane to Las Vegas for two weeks without worrying about jobs, bosses, or unpaid electric bills. Freedom is fantastic.

Yet my lifestyle is not “normal.” Like wealth, society, through its “Get Rich Slow” mandates, has defined “normal” for you. Normal is waking at 6 a.m., fighting traffic, and working eight hours. Normal is to slave at a job Monday through Friday, save 10%, and repeat for 50 years. Normal is to buy everything on credit. Normal is to believe the illusion that the stock market will make you rich. Normal is to believe that a faster car and a bigger house will make you happy. You're conditioned to accept normal based on society's already corrupted definition of wealth, and because of it, normal itself is corrupted.
Normal is modern-day slavery
.

I'm amazed that most people perilously operate one crisis away from financial ruin. We have become a nation of undisciplined spenders and consumers. We have become a nation where unfettered spending and material extravagance write our obituaries in the ink of stress. If you're held hostage to your lifestyle, you aren't wealthy, because you lack freedom.

The Proper Use of Money

Money doesn't buy happiness when it's misused. Instead of money buying freedom, it buys bondage. “Wealth” and “happiness” are interchangeable, but only if your definition of wealth hasn't been corrupted by society's definition. Society says wealth is “stuff,” and because of this faulty definition, the bridge between wealth and happiness collapses.

When you don't feel wealthy, you're likely to try to conjure that feeling. You buy icons of wealth to feel wealthy. You crave feelings, respect, pride, and joy. You want admiration, love, and acceptance. And what are these feelings supposed to do for you? You expect deliverance into happiness. You want to be happy!

And that's the bait. We equate the corrupted definition of wealth with happiness, and when it doesn't deliver, expectations are violated and unhappiness is the consequence.

Used properly, money buys freedom, and freedom is one parcel in the wealth trinity. Freedom buys choices. The fact is, there are plenty of poor people who live richer than their overworked upper-middle-class counterparts because the latter lack freedom, they lack solid relationships, and they lack health-all deleterious effects of working a hated job five days a week for 50 years.

Money secures one agent of the wealth formula, freedom, which is a powerful guardian to wealth's sibling ingredients: health and relationships.

• Money buys the freedom to watch your kids grow up.
  
• Money buys the freedom to pursue your craziest dreams.
  
• Money buys the freedom to make a difference in the world.
  
• Money buys the freedom to build and strengthen relationships.
  
• Money buys the freedom to do what you love, with financial validation removed from the equation.
  

Are any of the above likely to make you happy? I bet they will. They certainly won't make you unhappy.

Lifestyle Servitude: The Trap of the Sidewalk

Sidewalkers are embroiled in
Lifestyle Servitude
, where life is forced into a rat race, a constant tug-of-war between lifestyle extravagances and work, a self perpetuating merry-go-round of work for income, income for lifestyle, and lifestyle for work. Wherever there's Lifestyle Servitude, there's a systematic erosion of freedom.

1. Work creates income.
   
2. Income creates lifestyle/debt (cars, boats, designer clothes).
   
3. Lifestyle/debt forces work.
   
4. Repeat …
   

I learned about Lifestyle Servitude in my early 20s. After college graduation, I took a hellacious job as a construction laborer in Chicago and fought city traffic daily. The pay was more than I had ever earned at my young age, and with my increase in income, I felt wealthy. So what did I do? I elevated my lifestyle and financed the illusion of wealth. I bought my first sports car, a Mitsubishi 3000GT.

It didn't take long for me to realize that my dream car wasn't an icon of wealth, but a parasite that fed on my freedom. I hated my job, it was stressful, and it drained my energy, leaving my entrepreneurial dreams tethered. I couldn't quit. I had responsibilities: car payments, gas, and insurance. Because of my obligations to “stuff,” I had sentenced myself to imprisonment in a job I loathed.

Yet, this type of servitude is normal. We're taught to strive for the latest and greatest regardless of consequence. It leaves us indentured for years, condemning us to lifestyle imprisonment… and the more stuff you buy that you can't afford, the longer your jail sentence becomes.

If You Think You Can Afford It -You Can't

Think about the last time you bought a pack of gum. Did you fret over the price? Did you ask, “Hmmm, can I afford this?” Probably not. You bought the gum and it's done. The purchase had no impact on your lifestyle or your future choices. To a rich man who walks into a dealership and buys a six-figure Bentley without thought, the acts are the same. Affordability is when you don't have to think about it. If you have to think about “affordability,” you can't afford it because affordability carries conditions and consequences.

If you buy a boat and resort to mental gymnastics over affordability, YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT. Sure you can assuage affordability and make outlandish arguments, often starting with…

“
I can afford this as long as …
… I get that promotion.”
… my mortgage doesn't adjust.”
… my stock portfolio makes another 10% this month!”
… my sales forecasts are double.”
… my wife finds a job.”
… I cancel my health insurance.”

This self-talk is a warning that you can't afford it. Affordability doesn't come with strings attached. You can bluff yourself but you can't bluff the consequences.

So how do you know if you can afford it? If you pay cash and your lifestyle doesn't change regardless of future circumstances, you can afford it. In other words, if you buy a boat, pay cash, and are NOT be affected by unexpected “bumps in the road,” you can afford it. Would you regret a gum purchase if you lost your job a week later? Or if your sales forecast was slashed by 50%? Nope, it wouldn't make a difference. This is how affordability is measured against your level of wealth.

To overcome wealth impersonation, know what you can and can't afford. There is nothing wrong with buying boats and Lamborghinis if you can truly afford them. There is a time and a place to indulge.
The Millionaire Fastlane
is designed to bring you to that place.

The Bait of Lifestyle Servitude

The siren call of Lifestyle Servitude is the false prophet of feel-good-instant gratification and immediate pleasure. Wouldn't it be nice if everything that felt good were good? Chocolate? That super-sized fast-food combo meal? Sunbathing? Smoking? Unfortunately, short-term feel-good is often long-term bad. Instant gratification is a populous plague and its predominant side effects are easily spotted: debt and obesity.

Many Americans are fat because the easiest (and cheapest) instant gratification comes from food. When you plop your butt on the recliner and maul through a can of Pringles, you choose pleasure now in lieu of pain later. If you live with your parents and you finance $45,000 over 72 months for a new Mustang based on a$31,000-a-year bartender's wage, you let instant gratification win, and Lifestyle Servitude ensues.

Wealth, like health, isn't easy and is cut from the same fabric. Their processes are identical. They require discipline, sacrifice, persistence, commitment, and yes, delayed gratification. If you can't immunize yourself from the temptations of instant gratification, you'll be hard pressed to find success in either health or wealth. Both demand a lifestyle shift from short-term thinking (instant gratification) to long-term thinking (delayed gratification). This is the only defense to Lifestyle Servitude.

Look for the Hook!

Instant gratification is the bait and Lifestyle Servitude is the hook. The advertising industry is on a great fishing expedition, and their goal is to hook you. Their juicy bait? That shiny new car, the bigger house, the designer clothes, the “got-to-have-it now” product. Every day you are bombarded with instant gratification's bait …

“You can't survive life without this product!”
“Buy now and life will be so much easier!”
“You are not a success until you own one of these!”
“Imagine how envious the neighbors will be when you buy this!”

These messages share one commonality: You're their prey and the peddlers don't care if you can afford it or not. Defend yourself by exposing the hook beneath the bait: the bucket of bondage which is Lifestyle Servitude.

When instant gratification entices you to bite the bait, you become a casualty of the hook: Lifestyle Servitude.
Instead of you owning your stuff, your stuff owns you
. Know wealth's enemies and what actions invite those enemies into your life. Wait until you can truly afford your lifestyle luxuries … and in the Fastlane, that day can come sooner rather than later.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Money doesn't buy happiness because money is used for consumer pursuits destructive to freedom. Anything destructive to freedom is destructive to the wealth trinity.
  
• Money, properly used, can buy freedom, which can lead to happiness.
  
• Happiness stems from good health, freedom, and strong interpersonal relationships, not necessarily money.
  
• Lifestyle Servitude steals freedom, and what steals freedom, steals wealth.
  
• If you think you can afford it, you can't.
  
• The consequence of instant gratification is the destruction of freedom, health, and choice.
  

CHAPTER 8: LUCKY BASTARDS PLAY THE GAME

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Psst … Wanna Get Lucky?

I once overheard someone call me a “lucky bastard.” What a sad, delusional Sidewalking belief. I'm not lucky; I'm a player of the game. While Mr. Lucky-Bastard-Hater uttered that under his breath and sat his ass in the dugout, I was at the plate taking swings.

Joe is a Sidewalker and believes luck is required to get rich. He spends his days working construction and his evenings commenting on gossip blogs, playing videogames, and watching TV. He has given up on his dreams of financial independence based on his ideas of luck. “I'm just not a lucky guy,” he laments.

Joe's brother Bill also has a job in construction, except Bill spends his evenings surfing the Internet, researching the newest practices of inventing and engineering. Bill's dream is to be an inventor and has created four prototypes of inventions in various fields. Bill also spends his vacation time at trade shows and marketing seminars. While Joe is killing ogres and wizards in the latest dungeon of doom, Bill is out of the box of nothingness and exposing himself and his inventions to the world.

Who's going to “get lucky”?

Self-Made Millions Arise from Self-Made Luck

Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team (
http://www.blogmaverick.com
) told a telling tale of luck in regards to his success. Mark recalls the struggles of his early successes before his big sale to Yahoo for $5.9 billion. In each story, Mark remembers how people attributed his success to luck … lucky to sell his first company, MicroSolutions … lucky to make money trading in the technology boom … and lucky to sell his company to Yahoo for a few billion. Notice how events are quickly reasoned to be luck and process is swept underneath the rug.

Cuban understands the dichotomy that most don't:
Process creates events that others see as luck
. He goes on to comment how nobody mentioned luck when it came time to reading complicated software texts or Cisco router manuals or sitting in his house testing and experimenting with new technologies. Where was luck then?

“Rich people got lucky” is a Sidewalker's creed and a disempowering belief that strips you of your free will. While luck can create riches by way of lotteries, casinos, and rich parents, it rarely creates long-lasting wealth. To take advantage of
The Millionaire Fastlane
understand that luck is a product of process, action, work, and being “out there.” And when you are “out there” you stand a chance at being in the right place at the right time.

There are right places and wrong places.

The right place isn't on your sofa watching American Idol or slapping greenbacks into thongs at Betty's Booty Cabaret, or down at the neighborhood bar getting jacked-up on Bud Light while watching the Cubs lose another game. If you want to be at the right place at the right time you indeed have to be at the right place-and the right place knows which places are the wrong places.

If you aren't off the Sidewalk taking action and engaging in process, you will never realize luck. Luck is always perceived to be a matter of event: you win the lottery, you win a sweepstakes, or you find a 200-year-old painting in the attic worth millions. Again, more falsities. Like wealth, luck is not an event but an aftereffect of process.
Luck is the residue of process.

Sidewalkers love events but hate process. It's only natural for Sidewalkers to assume wealth is luck, because they believe wealth is an event.

A member of the Fastlane Forum (
TheFastlaneForum.com
) recently posted that Bill Gates got lucky. I had to disagree. Luck didn't create Windows. Luck didn't create a company. Luck didn't create repetitive, concerted action toward a specified purpose. When you consistently act and bombard the world with your efforts, interacting with the waves of others, stuff happens. And that stuff? Sidewalkers interpret it as luck, when it is nothing more than action engaged with
better probabilities
.