by MJ DeMarco
Again, majority thinking yields mediocrity, and for that majority, time is an asset that is undervalued and mindlessly squandered. Instead of wasting nine years on Game of Thrones and How I Met Your Mother, why not invest those nine years into a business system that can pay dividends for the next thirty years?
The Titanic: How Fast Is Your Ship Sinking?
People standing in line to save money ought to hold a picket sign announcing to the world, “I value money more than my life.” That choice is a primal mistake.
A great example to time’s reigning dominance over money comes from the 1997 movie, Titanic. As the ship sinks and few lifeboats remain, Caleden Hockley, a wealthy steel industrialist played by Billy Zane, bargains for his life with a ship’s officer and offers cash in exchange for a lifeboat seat. The officer rebukes the tycoon’s proposition with a stiff certainty: “Your money can’t save you anymore than it can save me.”
Reflect on that for a moment.
Your money can’t save you anymore than it can save me.
Powerful.
In those eight seconds, the true value of time is exposed and we intersect with the certainty to our own ticking death-clock. You see, once your time is gone, you’re dead. And when your clock ceases to tick, no amount of cash will save you from the end.
Fastlaners understand that time is the gas tank of life. When the gas tank runs dry, life ends. Time is the greatest asset you own, not money, not the 1969 restored Mustang, not grandpa’s old coin collection. Time.
The fact is all of us are on a sinking ship. Is your time treated as such? Is it treated fairly or carelessly? Or is your primordial fuel squandered as if the tank will never run empty?
You Were Born Rich and Will Die Broke
Time is the great equalizer. You were born with a full tank of gas. There are no refilling stations, and your one fill-up occurred the moment you took your first breath.
Time can’t be created outside of your mortal limits. Sure, we might be able to stretch a 76-year lifespan to 82 with good health and diet, but within mortality, time is transformed from infinite to finite. The greatest theft of all humanity is to act as if our time on this Earth is infinite when it isn’t.
The reality is that time is deathly scarce, while money is richly abundant.
On any given day, $3 trillion is exchanged in the world currency markets. That’s $3,000,000,000,000. To give that perspective, you can spend a million dollars a day for 8,000 years and you still wouldn’t have spent $3 trillion. That’s 109 lifetimes to quantify the total currency trading volume that exists for ONE DAY. Money is abundant and will be abundant as long as the world’s governments print more.
Now, since you don’t have 8,000 years of life, isn’t it logical to conclude that money is an abundant resource while time is not? You can always acquire more money, but you cannot defy mortality. The irony of financial fortune is that no matter how much you have, you’ll die flat broke. You cannot escape time’s continual combustion as your tank bleeds away every second. You can live in blissful happiness or in a miserable depression—time is indifferent and it just drips away. Since time is scarce, wouldn’t it make sense not to waste 3 hours of your life for a $6 bucket of chicken?
Indentured Time Is the Ransom of Free Time
There are two types of time that will make up your lifespan: Your free time and your indentured time.
Your Lifespan = Free Time + Indentured Time
“Free time” is yours to spend as you please: TV, a jog in the park, video games, sleeping, eating, vacation. If you’re like most, your free time is lumped on evenings and weekends, where time is not exchanged for money.
“Indentured time” is the opposite: It’s the total time spent earning money and the consequences of that spent time. When you awake in the morning, shower, dress, drive to the train station, wait, ride to work, and then work for eight hours—this is indentured time. When you spend your entire weekend “recharging” from the workweek, this is indentured time. Indentured time is actual work and the work you must do for the work. Morning rituals, traffic, compiling reports at home, solitary “recharges”—whatever time spent earning a buck is indentured time.
If you won the lottery, you’d quit your job because indentured time is no longer required and is suddenly replaced with free time. Money buys free time and eliminates indentured time.
However, the irony of your free time is it isn’t FREE; it’s bought and paid for by your indentured time. You enjoy a two-week vacation because it was paid by a year of indentured time. You can relax with a cold beer on the couch because you paid eight hours of indentured time earlier in the day. Indentured time becomes the ransom of your free time.
The Right Time Versus the Wrong Time
There’s the right time and the wrong time. The right time is free time; indentured time is the wrong time. The Slowlane ransoms time—time at the job and time invested in the markets. Remember, five indentured days for two free days is a bad trade! A financial plan with time as the linchpin is not a good plan.
If you were born into slavery, your life would be 100% indentured time with 0% free time. While total time can’t be manipulated, you can manipulate your time ratio.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have one day of indentured time and six days of free time? If you can steal free time from the hands of indentured time, life will have more of the “right time” versus the “wrong time.”
Dump the Junk in the Trunk!
If you race cars at the drag strip, you know that every ounce of weight counts. Racers remove everything nonessential to make the car as light as possible. This increases efficiency, speed, and performance, resulting in faster finishes. Unnecessary weight forces the car to work harder.
Yet on our road trip to wealth, we’re guilty of adding weight. Our vehicle is burdened with junk-in-the-trunk that coerces us to work harder. And when you work harder long enough, it wears you out and breaks you down.
This debilitating weight is parasitic debt.
Parasitic debt is everything you owe the world. It is the excrement of Lifestyle Servitude.
Your shiny new Infiniti financed at 60 monthly payments, your home mortgage financed over 30 years, your fancy designer clothes four months removed from out-of-fashion, and yes, even that insidious furniture that seemed like such a good idea at the time.
All of this crap creates servitude and forces indentured time.
When you’re forced to work, you limit choice, and limited choices close roads. Aside from my mother’s creepy doll collection, nothing is more frightening than a parasite leeched to my neck, sucking my blood. Parasitic debt is a counterweight to your road trip; it’s a bloodsucker that steals free time, energy, freedom, and health—all foes to true wealth.
Parasitic Debt Consumes Free Time
The leading cause of indentured time is parasitic debt. Surely you’ve heard the phrase “thief of hearts.” When it comes to parasitic debt, it is the “thief of lives.”
Parasitic debt is a gluttonous pig that gorges on free time and shits it out as indentured time. Any debt that forces you to work is expensed from free time and shifts it to indentured time.
Debt needs a constant drip of blood, and that blood comes from your gas tank of life: time. And since time is fixed, an increase in indentured time comes from only one source: your free time.
The Cost of Parasitic Debt
The average American owes more than they are worth. Having a lifestyle built on credit creates Lifestyle Servitude in the form of indentured time. And because total time is finite, indentured time grows by pilfering from free time. Indentured time leads to the Sidewalk.
The next time you buy some fancy gadget on credit, know exactly what you are buying. You’re buying parasitic debt that eats free time and transforms it into indentured time.
For example, if you buy an audio system that costs $4,000 and you make $10 per hour, what’s the real price? What is the weight of the poop?
That price is
400 hours of your free time, since you must work 400 hours × $10 per hour to repay the debt. Add 10% interest and your final cost stacks up to 440 hours of your free time added to your weight burden.
So next time ya whip out the Visa, calculate the real cost. How much free time is this going to cost me? Everything we buy has not one cost, but two:
(1)The actual dollar cost
(2)The free time transformed into indentured time.
The Law of Chocolate Chip Cookies
When I first moved out on my own, I quickly learned the Law of Chocolate Chip Cookies: If the cookies don’t get into the grocery cart, they don’t get home. And if they don’t get home, they don’t get in my mouth. And if they don’t get in my mouth, they don’t transform into belly fat.
Parasitic debt follows the same law. Control parasitic debt by controlling its source: instant gratification, a trait of the Sidewalk. The next time you feel compelled to buy some trinket at Macy’s, ask yourself: Will this be obsolete in six months and land in the garage with the rest of the junk? In four months, will these stupid sequin jeans be relegated to the dusty side of the closet reserved for painting smocks? Again, when you purchase the next hot fashion fad without being able to afford it, you open the floodgates to parasitic debt that flows downstream to the Sidewalk.
If the cost of that product doesn’t make it to your credit card, it doesn’t become parasitic. You protect free time!
Think!
Will this purchase TAKE FREEDOM?
Will I own this or will it own me?
While some choose servitude behind iron bars, others choose servitude behind velvet walls. Both are the same. The ultimate wealth is having the free time to live how you want to live. The Fastlane is about being both lifestyle rich as well as time rich.
A Poor Valuation of “Free Time” Leads to Poorness
Rich or poor, time is equally possessed, shared, and consumed by all. Every day, you use it. I use it. Your neighbor uses it. No one gets more and no one gets less. Twenty-four hours for everybody. No one has an unfair advantage. You, me, we all have 24 hours to consume, expire, and spend.
Time is the planet’s ultimate equalizer.
Then why do so few get rich while the rest wallow from paycheck to paycheck? The distinction lies in the valuation of free time, the chosen roadmap, and the acquisition of parasitic debt. Guess the behaviors—rich or poor?
✓This person sleeps until noon.
✓This person watches hours of reality TV.
✓This person drives two hours to save $20.
✓This person buys airline tickets with multiple layovers to save $100.
✓This person spends hours surfing social networks and gossip blogs.
✓This person is a Level 10 Druid in World of Warcraft.
✓This person watches every Chicago Cubs game.
Behind poverty’s tangled roots, you will find a poor valuation of free time, which breeds from bad choices.
“Time losers” are poor evaluators of time.
These are the people camped out at WalMart at 4 a.m. waiting to grab the early-bird sales. They’re sleeping outside Best Buy hoping to score a free 32” HDTV. They’re waiting outside IKEA hoping to get a free breakfast.
Time losers are also inconvenient savers.
The inconvenient saver desperately clutches onto every dollar, fearful it may never return. Extreme inconvenience is never a match for saving money.
For example, an old friend of mine wanted an exercise bike and found it on sale at a store miles away her home. I told her just to buy the darn thing locally and pay the higher price, which was an extra $29. Nope, she was an inconvenient saver. Instead, she drove one hour to save $29.
Total time spent? Two and a half hours. Subtract gas and the total valuation of her time is about $5 per hour.
Last I checked, she doesn’t work for $5 per hour, but has no problem wasting her free time at this rate.
The inconvenient saver gladly wastes time to save money. From plane tickets with multiple stops to shared-shuttle airport service, inconvenience is no match for saving a few bucks an hour.
If these people had three months to live, would they be outside Best Buy in a sleeping bag waiting? Six months? Six years? At what threshold will these people pack up their sleeping bag on the sidewalk and say, “Gee, what the hell am I doing lying on a sidewalk outside of an electronics store? Is this a smart use of my life?”
Sidewalkers sleep on sidewalks.
And yes, I’ve been always stingy with my time, even when I was broke.
Fastlaners exalt time as their primary consideration in decision-making because it’s our most valued asset. Fastlaners are frugal with time, while Slowlaners are frugal with money.
Sidewalkers and Slowlaners use money as the sole criterion in decision-making: Which job pays the most? Where is the cheapest item? How can I get some free chicken? Money is scarce and time brings up the rear and sweeps up the mess. If you want to be rich, you have to start thinking rich… Time is king.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
➡Fastlaners regard time as the king of all assets.
➡Time is deathly scarce, while money is richly abundant.
➡Indentured time is time you spend to earn money. Free time is spent as you please.
➡Your lifespan is made up of both free time and indentured time.
➡Free time is bought and paid for by indentured time.
➡Fastlaners seek to transform indentured time into free time.
➡Parasitic debt eats free time and excretes it as indentured time.
➡Lifestyle extravagances have two costs: the cost itself and the cost to free time.
➡Parasitic debt has to be stopped at the source: instant gratification.
[27] - Change That Dirty, Stale Oil
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
~ Albert Einstein
Change the Oil Every 3,000 Miles
The first lesson of car ownership: Change the oil every 3,000 miles. Neglect the lesson and your car dies well before its useful life. Frequent oil changes keep your car running efficiently; unchanged oil goes stale and turns the ride rough. Rough rides stall to the shoulder of the road.
The Fastlane road trip demands fresh oil changes. But what is oil? Oil is education. Knowledge. Street smarts. But be careful . . . it must be the right oil and for the right purpose.
Sidewalkers don’t bother with oil. After 3,000 miles, they’re done. Graduation is the last oil change. Slowlaners oil their vehicles for the explicit purpose of raising intrinsic value. Advanced education and certifications: What’s going to command a bigger salary? Fastlaners oil their vehicles until they hit the junk yard.
Graduation Is Not the End; It Is the Beginning
Face it. What you know today is not enough to get you where you need to be tomorrow. You must constantly reinvent yourself, and reinvention is education.
Unfortunately, graduation traditionally signals the end of education. Regardless of your graduating age, adulthood begins. The party is over and real life begins. To cease learning at graduation is wealth suicide.
Your most effective earning years happen AFTER graduation, so wouldn’t it be smart to continue the educational process long after formal schooling?
Jim Gallagher graduated 11 years ago and is unemployed. Jim is a stockbroker, but because of Internet technology his expertise has become endangered and flirts with extinction. Jim’s education for that specific job-set has become dated and no longer applies to the current world. The world has moved on, yet Jim and his education have not. Jim contemptuously takes a menial sales job at a local furniture store. His financial plan stalls because he operates with the same stale oil last changed 11 years ago. Jim fails to change his oil so Jim’s road trip to wealth also fails.
Education, your oil, is a critical component to your wealth road trip. When you continually inject yourself with new education, new sk
ills, and new competencies, new roads open and things run smoothly. The right education has incredible horsepower. New opportunities rarely follow an old education.
Education’s Role
Education is virtuous under both Slowlane and Fastlane roadmaps, but their roles are profoundly different. In the Slowlane, education is used to elevate intrinsic value, while in the Fastlane it is used to facilitate and grow the business system. Also, Fastlane education is secured by methods that do not produce parasitic debt or conformity. The purpose of education within the Fastlane is to amplify the power of the money tree and the business system. You’re not a cog in the wheel; you learn to build the wheel.
For example, if I go to a training seminar that gives me skills to “hire top-gun sales people,” I’m engaged in activities that specifically enhance the fertility of my business and my money tree. If I read a book on a new computer technology that illustrates how to create new interactive website features, I’d be learning to facilitate the system. Again, Fastlane education is to foster growth of the business system. Conversely, Slowlane education is designed to specifically enhance the intrinsic value of the person receiving the education. It is to become a gear in the system.
A Fastlane Forum user had an opportunity to pursue an MBA and he asked if it was worth it. My answer typically would be no, but this scenario was different. First, the MBA had no money cost, only time cost, as the government was paying for it. Second, this gentleman espoused the Fastlane ideology so his purpose was not intrinsic value elevation, but expansion of his knowledge to facilitate a Fastlane system. I voted yes.