Set for Life: Dominate Life, Money, and the American Dream (Financial Freedom, 1)

This book's primary audience is people 30 and under who are just starting their professional lives post-college. I would highly recommend it to those folks. I cannot recommend it for anyone who is already deep in their career and looking for ways to make a transition out into a more self-directed lifestyle.The author doesn't acknowledge people in the latter circumstance, so I wish the focus was made clear in the book description.That being said, I'm one who can always find nuggets of truth in any book. I found the sections on time utilization helpful where he talks about the day job taking up so much of your day. My job, including commute time, takes up 12 hours of my day. Finding a job with a shorter commute could get me 6+ hours of time back a week that could be spent on earning more money.There are other truths that I picked up as well, but not enough to recommend to my peers.

A little background on me before getting started, I’m a successful real estate investor despite having a full time career and am looking to take my investments to the next level and become “set for life” over the next 5 years. I had such high hopes for this book after it was recommended by a colleague. Unfortunately, it only documents one way to grow your position in life - house hacking. Google it if you don’t know what that is. And while that’s a fascinating concept and a great way for someone who is just starting out to eventually become “set for life” (or start to be), what if you’re already on your way to financial freedom? This book documents nothing along the lines of how to buy multiple properties, rent out cash flowing multi family housing that you don’t live in, leverage one paid off investment to buy more, etc. It is extremely BASIC.Part 1 of the book is a solid foundation - live frugally and put yourself in position to succeed financially. Part 2 is similarly strong, begin using this foundation to grow. Part 3 is what the book is supposed to be about - becoming SET FOR LIFE - and there’s no plan for that other than continue doing what was outlined in parts 1&2. And yet, parts 1&2 are basically living like a college student so you can eventually live the life you want to live. This makes me think the author is not actually set for life and is just hypothesizing. All of this is way too elementary. What about the investor who wants to scale? The investor who plans to buy 100 rental units so that can live off the cash flow and have this replace their job? The book glances at these ideas and says you should just house hack. Way too one sided.Instead of calling it set for life, it should be called “Put off your dreams and live like a college student forever.” While I’m being a little facetious there, for those who don’t want to live in a duplex because you’ve graduated past this stage in life, or those who actually can afford to drive a car we like and not bike to work, the author’s advice is too basic.If you’re younger and you are just starting out, you can and should check out this book. And if you have any financial footing underneath you, buy something by Robert Kiyoaski or another financial guru who can teach you how to scale. Very disappointed. This reinforces everything I think about Bugger Pockets, that group is made up of 99% dreamers and 1% do-ers. Avoid this book if you already know anything about real estate investing.

This book was an absolute game changer for myself and my family. I've always been deeply interested in personal finance and real estate, but this book motivated me to take action. This book released on April 23rd just one week before my wife and I were prepared to sign a new lease on a 3 story, very large town home. Thankfully, Set for Life caught us just in time. We ripped up the lease and decided to totally change our future. We immediately got to work and found a tiny basement apartment for $250 a month with ALL utilities and internet included. It's centrally located, less than 1 mile from both the grocery store and the hospital. So we packed up myself, my wife, our 6 month old newborn daughter and our Shitzu and humbly moved in. Fast forward a few months and we are still here in the basement apartment, happily living WELL below our means saving up piles of cash. My wife works from home and I recently accepted a remote position with a University that I start next week. This is huge considering I drove nearly all day for my former job. I put an average of 150 miles per day on my car, 5 days per week. So this well not only save me gas, maintenance, etc, but it will also be a huge relief for me to not be sitting in a car most of the day. Now that our offices are literally in our home, we'll be selling one of our cars and becoming a one car family. Our next step is hitting the $25,000 cash reserves and we are well on our way. We plan to be a multifamily property and house hack after that. Our goal is to never directly pay rent or a mortgage with our own income ever again. To put it practically, this is how your book changed our monthly cash flow:Previous Rent + Utilities = $1,320/moCurrent Rent + Utilities = $250/mo + $100/mo for a storage unit.Total Savings = $970/mo or $11,640/yrPrevious Total Car Payments + Insurance = $566/moNew Total Car Payments + Insurance = $310/moTotal Savings = $256/mo or $3,072/yrPrevious Average Fuel and Oil Costs = $505/moNew Average Fuel and Oil Costs = $175/moTotal Savings = $330/mo or $3,960/yrTotal Change in Positive Cashflow = $1,556/mo or $18,672yrOver $18,000 per year. That's unbelievable and is absolutely life changing. Of course, there will be more savings, but those are simply the savings from drastically cutting our two largest expenditures.

Many people list Rich Dad, Poor Dad as a favorite personal finance, business, or even real estate book. I love it as well and have read and reread it many times. The truth is though, it doesn't really provide very much in the way of actionable steps to take on a daily basis to achieve your goals. Enter Set for Life!!! This book takes all of the theory and guidance introduced in the Kiyosaki classic but wraps daily actions and habits that every individual can apply to this framework. I envision reading this book every few years as I personally move through the phases that this book lays out in detail. Much sacrifice and creativity is necessary to employ the methods in this book, but life is too unpredictable to not take these actions and secure a lifestyle that is predictable scalable, and able to be controlled.