The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco: Book Review & Summary 2022
Unlike other business and personal finance books that convey the idea of building wealth within 30 or 40 years. The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco provides a different perspective to reach the financial independence status when you are still young to enjoy the life you desire.
The long-term plan approach to help people build their wealth over time is to put more effort into the job and constantly put money in a savings account. Absolutely, there is nothing wrong with this wealth approach because people are more comfortable with the secured path.
” Crack the code to wealth and live rich for a lifetime”
by MJ DeMarco.
The purpose of this post today is to review and summarize one of the business best-selling books: The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. The book gives you a fresh viewpoint of how to accelerate wealth and enjoy the life you desire.
Here are links to additional coverage of different personal finance and business books. You should find out those relevant articles if you missed out.
→The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau: Book Review & Summary
→Book Review & Summary: Principles of Life and Work by Ray Dalio
→Book Review & Summary: Why The Rich Are Getting Richer By Robert Kiyosaki
1. About the Author- MJ Demarco
MJ DeMarco is an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and author who has established several successful businesses including a limousine rental company, and Viperion Publishing Corp, a media company.
Before starting his career as an author, he managed to build a limousine company valued at millions of dollars. Interestingly, MJ sold the company in the first place, and later on, he came back and repurchased the company a second time to build it a success again.
At this time of writing, he is a multimillionaire businessman and currently a founder of Viperion Publishing Corp, a media firm that specializes in online and content distribution.
Besides his stunning success on the entrepreneur journey, MJ DeMarco is also well known for his popularity as the best-selling author. What makes him special is he came up with a different wealth approach that differentiates from the traditional road map, which is a shortcut to wealth.
We should move into the main content of this review and summary to give you further information about this book.
2. Part 1: ” Wealth in a Wealthchair”
In this part, the author provides his unique style of argument that everyone can achieve financial freedom while they are still young. In particular, he firmly believes that people can retire early if they follow the shortcut to reach the road to wealth.
He often uses road trips and cars as an example to explain his perspectives towards wealth because he is especially in falling in love with cars.
Interestingly, MJ DeMarco challenged the idea of getting rich slow by saying it’s a losing game. He argued that you can’t achieve financial freedom by just saving 10% of your income and working in a retail shop. It’s because most young millionaire entrepreneurs often acquire some luxury items such as mansions and luxury cars because they are smart enough not to invest in the mutual fund or (401k) as it’s a slow lane to wealth.
There is nothing wrong with getting rich slow, and you will achieve your financial freedom by the time reaching retirement age. Like most of us think, we need to constantly work harder to get a good grade at university, which gives us a chance to receive a higher salary package from the job. As a result, we use the money to max in (401K) and invest in the stock market.
It’s a slow lane to wealth because you can’t get rich quickly just to find clipped coupons and invest in a mutual fund. It’s because you can’t rely on some things that you can’t control as it’s a complete waste of your energy. Thus, it takes a longer time to achieve financial independence by following the get rich slow approach, which you can retire rich by reaching the age of 60 or in a wealth chair.
The author had used his real-life experience as an example to support his brilliant idea of achieving millionaire status at a young age. In particular, he was amazed by a young man who drove a Lamborghini, one of his favorite cars.
MJ approached the young man to ask him what he does for a living? and the young man gave him the answer by saying that he is an “inventor”.
The 90s answer changed MJ’s life as he figured out to the millionaire fast lane that has got to do with proper plan and a talent.
3. Part 2: ” Wealth is not a road, but a road trip”
The author uses the road trip as a comparison with the road to wealth, he mentions the reason people fail to reach their final destination because they often pay too much attention to the road instead of the road trip.
For this reason, the journey is usually ended up by stopping in the middle of nowhere because they don’t have a proper plan for their journey, which is required to have a map, fuel, and car service before the trip.
A similar approach to the road trip to wealth, your journey to wealth will be impacted if you neglect the important factors that require to cover along the trip to financial freedom. It’s the process of accumulating a series of actions, which you are required to follow the process over the year in order to become a successful person.
Here are the three main roadmaps to wealth in the book, which give you different perspectives of each one.
- The Sidewalk Roadmap– this is the slowest pathway to reach the destination.
- The Slowlane Roadmap– just like the rest 90% of us follow the normal lane to achieve our long-term goals.
- The Fastlane Roadmap– fastest way to shortcut your way to achieve financial freedom, this is the main topic that the author emphasizes throughout the book.
Before starting to work on something, people must force themselves to change in terms of their beliefs and actions. It will determine the future success of an individual if they choose to take action or not.
4. Part 3: ” The sidewalk roadmap”
The sidewalk roadmap often described by the author is the deed end of the road to wealth. Most people follow this path because they have some negative perceptions about wealth, which lead to making several poor decisions.
They continue to make some serious mistakes in terms of managing their personal finance and having a proper plan in place. For example, they tend to spend money right after receiving the paycheck from the job such as luxury items and expensive trips.
When it comes to managing your finance, one of the vital ingredients for success is to practice ” delay gratification” because it teaches people how to use money in a proper way.
Poor people often seek instant gratification to fulfill their pleasure, enjoyment immediately. Hence, those people are the victim of their actions, which make them become a slave to luxury products that they can’t afford to own.
As a result, those people who follow the sidewalk roadmap normally have no financial plan which they are too vulnerable to the economic recession. This is because they have nothing (such as no saving and overspending, mortgage repayment) to protect themselves from the ugly events.
5. The difference between slow lane road map and fast lane roadmap
The slow lane to wealth is the opposite of the get rich quick scheme. It requires individuals to constantly put more effort every single day, which they may walk slowly to the path of financial freedom.
Most of us follow this traditional wealth approach as we aim to work for others by working 5 days a week. Then, save 10% of our paycheck, and max 401k for over 25 or 30 years. As a result, we still can get rich at the age of over 60 years old.
In other words, the slow lane is the continuation of sacrificing your time, hard work, and effort with the hope that you will achieve millionaire status after 40 years.
The following are several perceptions that fast lane people believe:
Debt: is bad at all costs.
Time: they tend to use the time to trade-off for every hour earned.
Education: emphasizes the important role of education in getting bigger money from the job.
Income source: their job is the sole and only main income source that covers their living expenses.
There are other slow lane wealth perceptions in part 4 of The Millionaire Fastlane book, which I will not list every single one of them in here. For further information and to improve your general knowledge, you should continue to read the book in more detail.
After mentioning the sidewalk and slow lane, there is an alternative to those options that you could choose is the fast lane road map. It’s considered the shortcut route to reach the destination within a short time frame.
In particular, this rapid wealth acceleration is about creating a business, in which you have the power to control the things that you do. In other words, you are the driver of your vehicle and have full control of what direction you should go to reach the final destination.
If you want to increase the chance of success in this lane, you must have a strong commitment, discipline, actions. It’s because the actions you take today will be shaped your life after 1, 2, and 3 years.
The following are several perceptions that fast lane people believe:
Debt: is not always bad, it becomes useful if I can use debt to grow assets.
Time: is by far the most important asset of rich people
Education: Constantly learning is one of the vital ingredients for success because it helps them to improve skills and knowledge.
Income source: have multiple income sources: from investment and business.
Overall, The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco is one of the best finance books that I have ever read so far because it proves to provides some significant perspectives associated with a fast lane roadmap.
Most of us normally don’t believe in this notion of getting rich quickly because it seems to be a non-sense, but the author used the combination of his brilliant arguments and real-life experience to share with us how to achieve financial freedom at a young age.