What a fascinating book. Here is my intro and some rambling musings

[Wild Chinchilla]

(Typing from cell phone... sorry for misspelling and crappy flow)

Currently halfway through the book

Stats
Male
28 years old
Work hours 40-60/ week
Income ~92,000 (job) + ~6,000 (passive)
Student loan debt ~40,000
Passive investments ~50,000
Rental property income 1400/mo
Rental property profit is about zero excluding equity.
Petroleum Engineer
USA - Houston

Goal:
20,000 (2016 dollars) passive income per month preferably after selling a business.
Reach this goal by age 33 (5 years)

Former business ventures were a computer business and a chinese 'video game labor' resale business in college that would have made me rich if i had not been a dumb 'school > money' drone.


Background:

american but grew up in brazil from a young age. My family was expatriates... father worked for a large multinational corporation.

Early in life we were very poor and frugal. My mom would buy us clothes at goodwill and clip coupons. I recall my dad being laid off from his steady job and hearing my mother cry and cry.

in my teen years our fortunes changed. my fathers income increased significantly. We moved overseas and were provided a comfortable life. We had maids, drivers, exotic vacations. Often we flew first class and stayed in five star hotels. My dad golfed alot at country clubs. In retrospect, my parents were actually very smart during the good times - they saved most of the money. But like any slowlane job... those times ended and my parents ended up splitting fot a while.

I ended up poor again, back in the us. With my mom in a dingy double-wide trailer.

Eventually my parents reconciled. My dad returned. They 'stored' their wealth in a pretty nice million dollar custom home - but have lived very modestly since as a middle class family. The rest of my families wealth was lost in the stock market crashes.... including the stock options that made up a large part of my dads income.

When i left for college, my parents did not have any liquid capital - so i worked and took out debt.

It is interesting to note that the "ups and downs" ive experienced were completely out of my fathers control. When you work for others... you are subject to family issues, layoffs, company stock. All of these things can devastate or lift your fortunes. In a sense, the slowlane lifestyle is as much a gamble as anything else.


The book:

I was recommended the book by a friend and am really enjoying the principles Mr.Demarco has illustrated. At first i wasnt going to give it a chance. As a closet nerd, i love finance and mathematics. When i read the back of the book and noticed that his system is 'proven by mathematics', i decided to give it a shot.

As a natural skeptic, and an engineer, I am very mistrusting of anyone claiming to have a 'system' for making money. Anyone with the system should be able to quickly scale it and become rich themselves.... and allow their friends and family to use it. Why on earth would they give the system away? MJ was the first finance writer that actually addressed these concerns and his explanation was transparent and logical.

Compound interest has always been fascinating to me. Yet, every time i run the numbers, the growth is so slow that it defeats the purpose of living life.

Of the four wealthy people i know in my social circles, there is not a single one that actually saved their way to wealth. Two started oilfield businesses. One made a fortune (200mm+ revenue over three years) in retail. The last is a professional criminal, but i do not want to consider that a legitimate way to make money. My fiance is a producer in LA and works around some celebrities that ive met ocassionally... but that does not count as a legitimate way to wealth either since it requires natural talents and connections.

Under scrutiny, the three 'legitimate' rich friends are all fastlaners. Not one of them worked their way up in the corporate world. All three started as middle class americans and made money through a business.

I want to start doing the same thing at some point in early 2016. I want to learn the process of how wealth-creating fastlanes are built. Many rich people who have been devastated financially seem to bounce back within a few years. They seem to have a skillset that they can utilize, regardless of existing wealth. Perhaps its similar to my middle-class skillset that will always place me in the middle income category. I will never have to settle for a low paying job since i already know ways to make a comfortable income... with a small education/skill investment and some job hunting. I assume the rich are the same... they just 'know' how to stay on top. Its a process.

Previous businesses:
In college, i ran a small mobile computer repair business. The problem with the business was that it required alot of time. Either i was inputting direct hours myself, or dealing with clients, booking a tech savvy friend to do some work for me. It really doesnt have a fastlane, since it doesnt scale and have large numbers.

Second business where i missed out:
At one point, a bunch of my friends were playing online games. one became extremely popular.... people would regularly buy and sell in game characters and items.

I had a chinese friend who had a 'virtual sweatshop' that had a bunch of young poor chinese essentially playing games for a living. They would perform the repetitive tasks that players in wealthy countries did not want to perform. I typically could buy game + subscription + labor for around $200-250. It would take five weeks for the chinese to work... my friend would email me and i would make an ebay listing and sell the virtual goods for anywhere from $500-1000 per character.

It took me about five minutes to place an order and about 5-10 minutes to make ebay lists and transfer goods to the customer. I could have easily scaled thile operation up to a $100k/mo operation and even got cheaper bulk labor prices from my chinese contact.

However, i fell into the pressure that what i was doing was 'nerdy' and not a mature way to make money. My mother and girlfriend thought it was stupid (girlfriend certainly enjoyed the cash, though!)

I stopped selling the online characters and focused on school. Later, i read in a gaming magazine about another individual who made millions doing what i had done... only he had dropped out of school and made it a full time job. That avenue for making money was later shut down by gaming companies and is no longer viable.

Anyways, i do believe that each year in our world there are various opportunities to make money. They come and go... just like the dot com boom that helped MJ. Right now i suspect that there could be opportunities dealing with the new trade between cuba and the us.

>i will return and edit this post for coherence once im on a laptop...


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