Product Description

At twenty-two, Alan Corey left his mom’s basement in Atlanta and moved to New York City with one goal in mind: to become a millionaire by the time he was thirty. His parents and friends laughed, but six years later they were all celebrating his prosperous accomplishment–at a bar Corey owned in one of Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhoods.

No, Corey didn’t climb the corporate ladder to build his fortune. In fact, he worked the same entry-level 9-to-5 job for six years straight. But by pinching his pennies and making sound investments, he watched a pittance blossom into a seven-digit bank account. In A Million Bucks by 30, Corey recounts his rags-to-riches journey and shares his secrets to success.

WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO BECOME FILTHY RICH.

“What a steal . . . For any entrepreneur the advice  in these pages is worth more than a million bucks.”
–Barbara Corcoran, founder, The Corcoran Group

“This is the best personal finance book I’ve ever read. Part self-help, part brass-tacks money guide; Corey’s confessional tales of making it to the million dollar mark are as hilarious as they are helpful.”
–John Reynolds, writer, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #178365 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-26
• Released on: 2007-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345499721
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Entertaining and informative, this book by first time author (and reality TV semi-regular) Corey sheds light on the plans and processes that led him to achieve his goal of amassing a million dollars by his third decade. In a winning narrative, Corey leads readers through his post-collegiate career as the cheapest of cheapskates, starting each chapter with a cute but revealing paragraph letting readers know all that he had yet to grasp in pursuit of money-making and -saving strategies. Though very few readers will be able to follow Corey's same path to riches (he doesn't expect them to), bulleted tips and sidebars ("Extreme Cheapskate Strategy: Buy one pair of multipurpose shoes a year. Don't buy any others") give readers solid advice as well as an appreciation for Corey's discipline. Throughout, the tone is conversational, humorous and occasionally glib; the under-30 crowd (for whom the current American economy can be especially unkind) will find Corey's advice welcome and his story encouraging.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"What a steal...For any entrepreneur the advice in these pages is worth more than a million bucks."--Barbara Corcoran, founder, The Corcoran Group

"This is the best personal finance book I've ever read. Part self-help, part brass-tacks money guide; Corey's confessional tales of making it to the million dollar mark are as hilarious as they are helpful."--John Reynolds, writer, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1

Naïve in New York

This was me:

Wait, I just graduated from college? No more classes??? That was my last test? Does this mean I can’t do what other college kids are doing now? I want to be with them, eating filth, drinking filth, and living in filth—that’s my life. I can’t stop doing that. Every day, 99-cent hot dogs, 99-cent beers, and 99-cent toilet paper. The 99-cent store rules! I can’t leave. Oh man, what about the girls? So many girls! Some of them are actually attracted to me, even with my complete disregard of normal bathing and laundry habits. You know how a shirt is either clean or “college clean”? That’s me every day: college clean. Haven’t shaved since Easter, either. I am living the perfect life. I am within a short walk of every single friend of mine, not to mention every single bar, and on top of all that, I am financing this utopian lifestyle on my meager income from coaching basketball at the Y. I don’t want to get a real job. There are worse lives for sure, but none that I can think of that are better. Damn, I should have stretched this out for five years like everyone else. What the hell am I going to do now? I can’t be that guy who sticks around college for no reason. I mean, I can be, but I don’t want to be. I hate that guy. Barb the guidance counselor says to go get a real job. Yeah, thanks, Barb. My parents must have called her and fed her that line. A real job?? Doing what? It’s not like she does anything great.

Honestly, I didn’t know what my major was until my second to last semester of college. I finally settled on management of information systems. What the Fran Tarkenton is an “information system”? And why does it need managing? That’s what I’m majoring in??? Barb told me that if I changed my major, I wouldn’t be able to graduate in four years. So I’m stuck with it. Luckily, my older friend Clay majored in MIS too, and he coached me through my last two semesters in college. He explained that my major was about computers—databases, specifically—and that I’d make big money once I was done with school. I decided I could live with that. Like most business students, the prospect of a huge salary could motivate me through anything.

I finally graduated two semesters later and was thrown headfirst into full-fledged adulthood. Adulthood is bizarre! All of a sudden I was above couch surfing, started caring about the weather forecast, and was drinking microbrews. What the Fran Drescher was happening to me? I was turning into my dad! Or even his dad.

But that’s what real jobs do to you. You start earning something above minimum wage for once, and you start thinking like an adult. I had been so happy being a broke guy with an open schedule. Hell, everyone was broke and had an open schedule. Now that I had a job, I couldn’t plan anything with anyone. I had entered this whole new world of regular working hours and paychecks. It took considerable self-discipline and self-control for me to handle this awkward transition. Once again, my buddy Clay helped me through it. It took many beers (microbrewed beer), but I got over it.

My first real job after college was in Atlanta, building computers for a family friend. It didn’t pay a whole lot, but it had perks. No dress code, you say? Then college clean it is! Although I wasn’t making big bucks, the job allowed me to buy time to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. Believe me, living in my mom’s basement (which was the current state of affairs) was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

On my drive to work every day, I would strategize about where my life should go. Rock star? Fireman? Evil genius? I considered everything. My one obstacle was that I didn’t have anything to fall back on except a diploma in something I didn’t care about. I was lost. I felt that to be truly happy, I had to leave my comfort zone and my hometown behind. I always liked being a little uncomfortable; it meant that I was learning something. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to move to New York, Australia, or somewhere in Europe. I knew Los Angeles had hot women, so it was always at the top of my list. I figured there had to be some attractive woman on the beach who needed her information system managed. If only she could find my résumé!

For my first five months at work, I saved as much money as I could out of each paycheck. In between building computers, I sent out résumés. I sent them to every computer-based job opening in New York, Los Angeles, and overseas. I wanted a change, a location change, but it wasn’t coming easy. Of the more than seven hundred fifty resumes sent, I got two viable replies.

The first response was from Dublin, Ireland, and they wanted to know if I knew some programming language that I had never heard of before. A response of “willing to learn” did not get me the job. But I didn’t stop searching. Looking back now, I’m pretty sure it was my lack of a professional résumé that garnered me only two decent replies. Using the word proficient on a résumé has a point of diminishing returns after its tenth appearance.

My e-mail address at the time was the first one I had out of school. That meant I got to pick it out myself! I thought that Yahoo! and AOL were way too conven- tional for a dynamic person like me, so I wanted an address that would help me stand out; something that would help me make big money in a big city! I also wanted something to help me meet some ladies. (That’s my motiva- tion with most things in life; it’s a wonder I’m not a production assistant on The View.) I also wanted something free. (Okay, that’s really my motivation in life.) So after some trolling around the ol’ Net, I registered something free, fun, and what I thought might impress the chicks: BigAl@models.com. I honestly thought my MIS degree and a “modeling related” e-mail address were key requirements to making it big. Yes, of course, the plan backfired. But not just because it was utterly lame. Another problem became apparent when I realized that everyone was reading my e-mail name (written “bigal”) as “BiGal” rather than “BigAl.” This was not exactly how I was trying to market myself to the world. I did get a whole lot of dudes contacting me, though. Dudes with plenty of offers, but not of the employment variety.

Twenty-one weeks into my get-out-of-my-mom’s- basement campaign came my second reply, from a start- up company in New York that apparently read BigAl the way it was intended. A phone interview went well. An in- person interview went even better. And the next thing I knew, I was getting offered a job in NYC! I realized that a location change would make me happy, and that it was what my life needed. On top of that, I was relieved (and a bit proud) that I hadn’t stopped sending out résumés until I achieved my goal. The real world would treat me okay as long as I followed my instincts and dreams—and didn’t falsely represent myself as a female bisexual model.

This new job didn’t have a high salary for Manhattan, and it wasn’t a job in managing information systems, exactly. I was in charge of a 1-800 hotline and answering questions about the company’s software. I figured I could do that short term, maybe get a real business e-mail address out of it, my first business card, and then pursue my life’s ambitions. That is, once I figured out what those ambitions were. I knew I’d eventually find my path to earning the big bucks after my move to the big city, and that it wouldn’t be from this job. But I felt that because I’d successfully

Extreme Cheapskate Strategy

Don’t pay for Internet access. With more and more free Wi-Fi in public parks and on university campuses, you can pretty much log on from anywhere. You could even hijack your next-door neighbor’s connection if necessary. If wireless isn’t your thing, you can log on for free at most libraries or go to NetZero for free Internet access. Yes, it’s dial-up, and you have a lot of ads, but free is free, and you can still check your e-mail, which is all you really use it for anyway.

changed my situation to be in New York, I couldn’t be far off.

That January I moved into an apartment in Manhattan. It was during a snowstorm, and I unloaded my stuff with the help of my new roommate, a work-friend of a friend of a friend. My share of the rent was surprisingly cheap for New York City—$400 a month—but that was my payoff for obsessively hunting for an apartment. After scouring multiple real-estate sites, roommate sites, and firing off mass e-mails to everyone I thought might have a lead, I found a place so cheap, it seemed to wow everyone. And that $400 even included utilities! I didn’t care what it looked like. I had agreed to it from my basement in Atlanta, sight unseen. I knew I would be happy just being in New York.

Upon arrival, I unloaded my stuff and finally got a tour of the place. The apartment wasn’t too bad. The wallpaper in the living room was yellowing, my room was painted pink, but, thankfully, the place had working faucets. Good enough for me! Anything was better than living back home and under my mother’s rules. I was really happy (and proud once again) that I had upgraded my lifestyle in such a short amount of time. I was making it, sort of.

A month later two friends from home moved to New York and get an apartment within a short subway ride of me. Just twenty blocks from me, they were paying triple in rent for a smaller place. I encouraged them to keep looking for better deals, but they took the first place they could find. It seemed crazy to spend that much on rent. I knew their incomes were going to be even less than mine, ...

Customer Reviews

Get rich
While not everyone will be interested in using all of Alan Corey's techniques to become a millionaire (eating ramen noodles every day for three months, for example), I think most people will benefit to his no-nonsense approach to saving money and building wealth.

His book is full of funny stories (like going with a group of friends on the Jerry Springer show with a made-up story, as a way of getting a free spring vacation) and some extreme cheapskate anecdotes, but mainly this is the story of a guy who set up a very ambitious goal: to become a millionaire by age thirty and, despite having a low salary in the most expensive city in the country, managed to accomplish his goal--ahead of time. As he said, he couldn't control his income but made sure to control his outcome.

Well written, good tips, but his outcome was still mostly luck
I thought this book was a good read, but most people are going to miss the point that the author's outcome (ie, having a net worth of $1 million) was mostly due to luck. Just look at his breakdown of what his assets were at the end of the book. His multifamily house essentially doubled in value in the space of a couple of years, and accounted for a large chunk of the $1 mil.

To borrow one of Taleb's (Fooled by Randomness) phrases, you have to look at "alternate histories" here. Not what just happened to occur, but think of what COULD HAVE occured if the author used the exact same techniques, but in different environments that he would have no control over. The author happend to be the right age and live in the perfect time and place to benefit from an unprecendented real estate market. What if he instead was born five years later (or at any other time for that matter) and did the exact same things? If he did the exact same things NOW, he could easily have wound up with negative equity in his property, if he could finance it in the first place. His outcome discussed in this book would probably be in the top 1% of possibilities. He even addresses the fact that he benefitted from luck, but totally undervalues that impact of course.

Don't get me wrong, his money saving techniques are all valid, but that is no where near the reason for his net worth getting to $1 mil that quickly. Eating ramen is more for show, to try and make a statement to your friends. In the end, doing those type of things will certainly help, but it's still a drop in the bucket when compared to luck beyond one's control.

In the book, Corey makes the point that you have to spread out your assets so that you can be in the position to get lucky with one of them. I agree with that completely. But you still have to GET lucky!

While I think most readers could learn something from the author, it would be wildly inaccurate for the author to claim this is an instruction manual on how to get to $1 million. You can't just say "buy real estate in a perfect environment, and it's value will increase by 50% per year." Not to mention the fact that he got his last $100k or so from the advance on this BOOK DEAL! Haha. If the book was titled, "A Sure Fire Way to $100k by 30" that would be much more reasonable and would factor out randomness.

Interesting
I wanted to hate this book because it basically says 'if you are okay with not having a life until you are 30 then you can be a millionnaire'.

But when I started reading it, I kind of got into the whole concept. The author is actually funny (sometimes when he is not even trying to be) and some of his tips are dowright unethical (reuse the same popcorn bag for free refills - time after time after time), but I found his story kind of inspirational.

You can tell that the author firmly stands behind his recommendations and he has the guts to get out there and just do it (although a fair amount of luck was also involved).

I liked the writing (straightfoward and entertaining) and if you are ready to basically stop living for a set number of years, then this is the book for you.