“A Million Bucks by 30″ Book Review and Giveaway

I was recently given a copy of A Million Bucks by 30 by Alan Corey to review. In addition to the review I’m also having a contest to win a free copy of “A Million Bucks by 30″. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below. The only stipulations are that you can only enter once and I’ll only ship the book in the U.S to keep my mailing costs down. The deadline for entering is 8am CDT Friday Aug. 15.2008.
This book was an entertaining read. Although, I’m already 40 this book still contains some useful information for me. Alan was able to go from having $10,000 in the bank to being a millionaire in less than eight years. I’d love to be able to duplicate that feat.

He achieved this by being extremely frugal. Living in a cheap part of town, eating lots of ramen, and spending money on only the necessities. This sounds pretty much like what I do. I’ve just forgotten the other part of the equation. Making money and investing it so it will grow.

Alan makes most of his money from real estate investment. I’ve seen others say how he was lucky because he invested in a hot real estate market and most of his net worth increase was the result of that. I’ll concede that he did get lucky but he put himself in a position where he had a chance to get lucky. It appears that he did put some thought and research into his real estate purchases and there is a good possibility that even if there wasn’t a hot real estate market he still would have made a good return on his real estate investments. Maybe he wouldn’t have made a million but he still would have been better off than those that just spent all their money.

If you think he wasted his 20s by being frugal and not having fun he makes it clear that isn’t the case. His part-time jobs were definitely interesting. He appeared on several reality shows as well as being a Shaggy impersonator. His frugal tactics sometimes go beyond even mine and some are just unethical. Even being extremely frugal he still manages to have plenty of fun and it is obvious to me he has a fun personality and doesn’t need lots of money to enjoy himself.

My final recommendation is that you should read this book. No, it probably won’t make you “A Million Bucks by 30″ but it should put you in the right mindset to improve your personal finances. Even if you don’t care about personal finance the book is an entertaining read. Just leave a comment on this post for your chance to win a copy.

*Note to Personal Finance Authors-This is the second free book I’ve received to review and I’d love to review more. If you have a book you’d like me to review send me an email. I can’t promise I’ll give it a good review but any publicity is good publicity, right?