498. Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung

Genre:    Non Fiction, Personal Finance, Economics, Self Improvement

336  pages, published  July 9, 2019

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Quit Like a Millionaire is part memoir, part handbook on how to retire early.  Written by husband and wife Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, the two explain how they retired at the age of 31 with a million dollars.  They did it without doing anything extraordinary like selling a company or buying a hot stock.  Rather, their method of living on a lot less than you earn and steadily investing the savings is accessible to anyone.  They also never bought a house (a decision they passionately advocate for) and spend a lot of their retirement traveling the world.

Quotes 

“The more stuff people owned, the unhappier and more stressed they tended to be. Conversely, the less stuff people owned and the more they spent on experiences like travel or learning new skills, the happier and more content they were.”

 

“One of the biggest lies we´ve been sold is that following our passion is the key . Statistically, following your passion will lead to unemployment or underemployment.”

 

“Whenever someone did you a favor or lent you something, you were expected to repay them, either through political favors or with money. Over time, it became ingrained in the national psyche that being in debt to someone gives them power over you”

 

“The idea of relying on the government was laughable. The government’s job isn’t to help you! Their job is to find new and creative ways of making your life immeasurably worse.”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed Quit Like a Millionaire.  Kristy Shen has an incredibly inspiring story.  Both her parents survived the cultural revolution in China and she was born into an impoverished household.  As a young child, she would look for toys in garabage dumps filled with medical waste.  Things changed when her family immigrated to Canada.  She still grew up without any extras, but along the way figured out how to save and invest so that she and her husband could retire at age 31 to travel the world.  They have a great blog called Millenial Revolution that is worth checking out.