Book Review: The Lazy Millionaire

I bought this book at Popular Mega Book Fair in Johor Bahru.  It is really a simple and straight forward book.  The author, Marc Fisher, gives a number of good ideas on how to have your life nice and easy.


This book is divided into two parts.  In Part 1, even though some concepts are straight forward, there are still might caught you in surprise.  In particular, I like the Concept of Differential.  Let's take an example.  Say you are paying a month car installment of RM1,000/month to own a car.  In order to maintain the car, you need to have car maintenance cost of, say, RM200/month.  As car is depreciating in value, it generates no income to you but requires you to contribute some more.  Now, we further assume that this car you are paying is your second car and you own it just because you like it.  With millionaire mind, we may consider, instead of buying this car, to invest RM1,000/month into, say, property investment by taking a housing loan.  Let also assume that you are able to rent out the property at RM1,000/month as well.  It seems you gain nothing but, as a matter of fact, you are earning RM200/month in terms of savings on car maintenance if you opt to not to own the car.  Got it?

The essence of the book is in Part 2 which shows us how to have easy life.  I appreciate Marc's way of thinking.  Just imagine, we have been busying from day to day, from night to night.  Stop for a second and ask yourself a question, what is your purpose and objective of life?  You might say you want to earn as much as possible for better future.  Therefore, you need to sacrifice you time with family as well as what you actually love to do.  Think again, by the time you reach the said target, will you able to slow down or will you still able to enjoy what you suppose to enjoy by then.  I would like to quote a few sentences at page 110 of this book and may be it is time for us to really slow down and think what we actually want:

"If you still don't have time, and if you still never take you time, you are poor, it would seem.  Yes, POOR, even if you have millions of dollars in your bank account, a huge house, and fancy cars.


You overlook the essential, the real beauty of life, and its true objective.  In order to discover these things, and especially to be able to appreciate them, you need" time!"

In fact, your time is to be decided by yourself, nobody else.  Your boss may ask you to submit a report in 2 days.  It is up to you to get it done within a day or last minute.  Therefore, whether you have time with you family or doing what you love to do, it is totally up to you.  Remember, you will be rich if you have time for yourself.