My pals, Kristy and Bryce, just released their new book, Quit Like a Millionaire.
Want to know what I think? Well, they asked me to write the Foreword and here it is:
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Foreword
by JL Collins
Some of you are going to hate this book.
At least if you are a proud member of the coalition of whiners, complainers and naysayers. The ones who say reaching for Financial Independence (FI) is only for the privileged and their personal hard-luck situation makes it impossible.
Before you go there, run your story through this filter:
- Did you grow up under a totalitarian regime?
- Did your family ever live on 44 cents a day?
- Was your first Coca-Cola the most incredible experience of your life to that point?
- Did the empty can then serve as your most precious possession?
Here’s my hard-luck story growing up:
When I was five, I collected dirty pop bottles from the roadside for the 2-cent deposit and sold flyswatters door-to-door for a nickel.
Here’s Kristy’s growing up in rural China:
When she was five, she sorted through a medical waste dump looking for treasures she could make into toys. Wonder if she ever found one worth a full nickel?
My family worried about my father’s failing health and business.
Her family worried about the Chinese communists bursting through the door and hauling her father off to a labor camp.
As tough starts go, my story doesn’t hold a candle to hers, and I’d bet yours doesn’t either.
Here’s the key. Her beginnings didn’t hold her back. Her hardships didn’t hold her back. The obstacles thrust in her path didn’t hold her back.
They became her tools. Her motivation. Her guides.
This little girl who made toys of medical waste and treasured an empty Coke can, now travels the world, eats in fine restaurants, writes books and created an acclaimed blog.
She takes us on her journey from poverty in China, to being a teased outsider in school in Canada, to university, to engineer, to investor, to millionaire. To freedom.
This book is going to make some minds explode.
Kristy is going to tell you things like:
“Money is the most important thing in the world.
Money is worth sacrificing for.
Money is even worth bleeding for.”
Wait! What heresy is this? Isn’t money the root of all evil?
Not in this modern world, it’s not. It is the single most powerful tool we have. Used well, it makes everything better. Easier. More interesting. It creates wonderful options right out of thin air. It is a magic wand.
What about love? What about family? What about education? What about culture? What about…? Aren’t these the most important things in the world?
What about them?
You want to take care of your family and those you love? You better have money.
You want to spend more time with them? You better have money.
You want the time and leisure for education? For reading? For culture? You better have money.
You want the best of all those things, and the time to fully enjoy them? You not only better have money, you better have money that works for you.
If your mind doesn’t explode, Kristy can show you how.
This book is going to make some of you Millionaires.
But just some.
You have to be ready to drop your excuses and put in the work. Most aren’t.
You have to be ready to take your financial life, and the rest of your life along with it, into your own hands. Most aren’t.
If you are that rare person who is, in Kristy you have found your guide.
Along with her story that reads like a good novel, she’ll walk your through the process of building your wealth, protecting it from the taxman and market plunges, and nurturing it into a powerful machine that provides for your needs while replenishing itself.
You’ll learn about practical things like the insidious nature of investment fees and how to minimize them.
She details where she has invested and why, and walks you through how to do the same.
She presents cool techniques on managing, moving and withdrawing your money once it is invested.
You may not agree with it all, but one of my great pet peeves is people who criticize a book because it doesn’t conform to their own ideas.
A great book should expand your horizons, not just confirm your biases. The ideas in it should be evaluated not against your own, but based on the soundness of the logic behind them and the clarity of the way they are presented.
This book is the soul of logic and clarity.
This book knows the journey can be scary.
Kristy gets that. She shares her own objections, fears, doubts and stumbles on the path. Then, one by one, she provides tangible ideas and strategies to circumvent them.
She takes us by the hand and explains:
“…money is not this big complicated thing that requires a genius-level IQ to understand. Instead, it’s a series of simple lessons that, individually, are not difficult to grasp, but when you put them together they become a superpower.”
She’ll introduce you to powerful concepts that help make achieving financial freedom easier and less risky. Things like Geo-arbitrage, SideFIRE and Partial FI.
She examines and explodes the myths that you need a six-figure income to do this, that it can’t be done with kids, or that it is not necessary or worth doing if you enjoy your job. Trust me. Everything is better with money backing you up. Especially your job.
For those still skeptical, in the appendix she even details the exact dollar figures, year-by-year, in her climb to millionaire status.
This book wants you to be rich: in money, in time and in life.
Of course, you are probably not a whiny, complaining naysayer. You picked up this book. You haven’t the time to waste building a case about why you can’t do this. You want to get started. You want to know how it is done.
With this book, you have come to the right place. She’ll take you through the process step-by-step. Actionable things that you can do no matter what your age, location, background or education.
Finally, let me leave you with my favorite line in the book:
“If you understand money, life is incredibly easy. If you don’t understand money, life is incredibly hard.”
Choose easy, I say.
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So, that’s what I think. If you think you might like it too, pre-order before July 9th and you get some cool bonus stuff.
Meanwhile, in a few days I’ll head up from Winchester, where we are hanging out at the moment, to London to record my part for their audio book version. Should be a blast!
