From Publishers Weekly
Entertaining and informative, this book by first time author (and reality TV semi-regular) Corey sheds light on the plans and processes that led him to achieve his goal of amassing a million dollars by his third decade. In a winning narrative, Corey leads readers through his post-collegiate career as the cheapest of cheapskates, starting each chapter with a cute but revealing paragraph letting readers know all that he had yet to grasp in pursuit of money-ma…
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While not everyone will be interested in using all of Alan Corey’s techniques to become a millionaire (eating ramen noodles every day for three months, for example), I think most people will benefit to his no-nonsense approach to saving money and building wealth.
His book is full of funny stories (like going with a group of friends on the Jerry Springer show with a made-up story, as a way of getting a free spring vacation) and some extreme cheapskate anecdotes, but mainly this is the story of a guy who set up a very ambitious goal: to become a millionaire by age thirty and, despite having a low salary in the most expensive city in the country, managed to accomplish his goal–ahead of time. As he said, he couldn’t control his income but made sure to control his outcome.
I thought this book was a good read, but most people are going to miss the point that the author’s outcome (ie, having a net worth of $1 million) was mostly due to luck. Just look at his breakdown of what his assets were at the end of the book. His multifamily house essentially doubled in value in the space of a couple of years, and accounted for a large chunk of the $1 mil.
To borrow one of Taleb’s (Fooled by Randomness) phrases, you have to look at “alternate histories” here. Not what just happened to occur, but think of what COULD HAVE occured if the author used the exact same techniques, but in different environments that he would have no control over. The author happend to be the right age and live in the perfect time and place to benefit from an unprecendented real estate market. What if he instead was born five years later (or at any other time for that matter) and did the exact same things? If he did the exact same things NOW, he could easily have wound up with negative equity in his property, if he could finance it in the first place. His outcome discussed in this book would probably be in the top 1% of possibilities. He even addresses the fact that he benefitted from luck, but totally undervalues that impact of course.
Don’t get me wrong, his money saving techniques are all valid, but that is no where near the reason for his net worth getting to $1 mil that quickly. Eating ramen is more for show, to try and make a statement to your friends. In the end, doing those type of things will certainly help, but it’s still a drop in the bucket when compared to luck beyond one’s control.
In the book, Corey makes the point that you have to spread out your assets so that you can be in the position to get lucky with one of them. I agree with that completely. But you still have to GET lucky!
While I think most readers could learn something from the author, it would be wildly inaccurate for the author to claim this is an instruction manual on how to get to $1 million. You can’t just say “buy real estate in a perfect environment, and it’s value will increase by 50% per year.” Not to mention the fact that he got his last $100k or so from the advance on this BOOK DEAL! Haha. If the book was titled, “A Sure Fire Way to $100k by 30” that would be much more reasonable and would factor out randomness.
I wanted to hate this book because it basically says ‘if you are okay with not having a life until you are 30 then you can be a millionnaire’.
But when I started reading it, I kind of got into the whole concept. The author is actually funny (sometimes when he is not even trying to be) and some of his tips are dowright unethical (reuse the same popcorn bag for free refills – time after time after time), but I found his story kind of inspirational.
You can tell that the author firmly stands behind his recommendations and he has the guts to get out there and just do it (although a fair amount of luck was also involved).
I liked the writing (straightfoward and entertaining) and if you are ready to basically stop living for a set number of years, then this is the book for you.