Quarter Life Crisis

In America, millions make you middle-class. The book is The Middle-Class Millionaire: The Rise of The New Rich And How They Are Changing America ($24, Currency Doubleday).

Some key points:

Middle-class millionaires exhibit 4 qualities: Hard work (70 hrs/wk rather than 40), Networking (using information as capital), Perseverance (typically fail twice professionally), Risk (choose jobs with greater risk and pay rather than avoiding risk).

These books, reports, etc. that try to find similar qualities within a group of people inherently contain a lot of hindsight bias. In this case these are the 4 qualities are described as “Millionaire Intelligence” by the authors. By looking at the winners (such as “millionaires”) people assume that these particular qualities led them to success. However, there are plenty of people that exhibit the same qualities, yet did not end up millionaires. A lot of “success” has to do with pure randomness. Right place, right time. By being prepared you have a bigger window of opportunity, a higher probability of success, nothing more.

Another middle-class millionaire behavior is choosing a house in the best public school district. Regular middle-class people say three things, almost equally, influence where they live — schools, convenience to work and convenience to shopping.

I agree.

The book also reveals that studying for a post-graduate degree, unless it’s an MBA, is unlikely to make you richer.

This is incorrect. I know JDs (”Juris Doctor,” I had to look that up) that are definitely richer. Even a graduate degree in engineering works. It won’t make you rich, but “richer.”

Prince and Schiff [the authors] reveal that, on average, people believe it takes $13.4 million to feel wealthy. Middle-class millionaires put the figure even higher, at about $24 million.

That’s ludicrous.

Here’s a review on the quarter life crisis from GetRichSlowly.com.  Sounds like it’s really not worth the read - its just a series of interviews about people like us talking about their issues.  Why would you need to read about other peoples’ crisis when you can just talk to almost any of your closest friends? Anyways, there’s some inspirational ideas in it that are pretty handy.  Check out the book review for Quarter Life Crisis.

” 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene is a “guide to the subtle social game of everyday life informed by the … military principles in war.”. ^[1] It consists of discussions and examples on offensive and defensive strategies from a wide variety of people and conditions such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Lawrence of Arabia, Alexander the Great, and the Tet Offensive.^[2]The book is divided into five parts: Self-Directed Warfare, Organizational (Team) Warfare, Defensive Warfare, Offensive Warfare and Unconventional (Dirty) Warfare. ^[1] Each part contains a differing number of strategies, each in a chapter. Each chapter has a similar layout. Descriptions of battles, political and business situations are accompanied by Greene’s interpretation. There are occasional instructional sections followed by examples. All chapters end with a “Reversal” to give a brief discussion of where the strategy may not apply, a contrary view or defense. Throughout the book Mr. Greene includes quotes from a variety of sources. These are incorporated in the margins and between sections.

Although one reviewer has called the book “an indispensable book, [which] provides all the psychological ammunition you need to overcome patterns of failure and forever gain the upper hand,”^[3] another one found it “perplexing — if not downright unhealthy — [to publish] a book on the lessons of war for everything but war at a time when we [Canada] are, er, at war.”^[4] Yet another reviewer found the book’s coverage of military history informative, but the political tales “mostly foolish or just plain wrong”.^[5]

The author’s blog -Power, Seduction and War: The Robert Greene Blog - expands on many of the themes from the book which he commonly refers to as The WAR Book.”