Hi everyone,
My name is Ben, just over 30 from Europe. I have first read the millionaire fastlane book about 8 years ago while attending uni. At uni, I spent about 2 years as a trainee, spending the last year as a software engineer trainee. I have found the book in my last year and after reading it, it motivated me to pursue my own goals instead of staying at the job I was proposed after finishing uni. Thanks to that, the same day I finished university I have also quit my job.
I had about 3 000 dollars saved up from the trainee job, I have spent half of that on a computer to deepdive into a field that I was interested in and I thought that fits the fastlane criterias and I thought I could be good enough at to succeed, which is software and video game development specifically. I started the journey with 2 of my friends and spent 12 hours learning the ins and outs of unreal engine 5 and C++ programming to make a game. Needless to say, both of them quit in less than year. I also quickly ran out of money and did some freelance work where one of the clients was very pleased with the speed and quality of my work and asked for a long term partnership at their startup. That was 7 years ago and I am still working with them.
This partnership was useful: I was getting paid to learn even more in this field, I was very motivated and I was paid an amount which was 8 times the median salary in my country. Over the years, the scope of the work expanded and my skills improved too, I learned to design and maintain complete systems. I also started earning a salary which felt like could be enough to retire early at a comfortable standard of living.
Fastfoward to today, I have a home completely paid for worth about 400k-500k USD with my own gym, and about 600k USD saved up and invested. I am also making around 200k per year, bumping up to 300k by the end of the year, which would be considered a good income by most probably. I have also mastered literally every part of the field I am working in. To be fair, I am pretty satisfied with it, in my country, I could retire now with this amount of money. However, there are a few problems with the above plan and some dilemmas in my mind and this is part of the reason I decided to join the forum and look for advice from people who have made it.
First of all, my original idea was to make video games, which are something that I do like, that I think that I could be exceptional at now with the level of technical knowledge I have (Over 25 000 hours of experience now). I have enough money saved up to work on games and keep doing it until I make it. Part of the reason for this is that although I feel like I made it, I still want to prove to myself that I am capable of creating a successful product on my own without working for someone else.
Second, the project I work on became VERY dependent on me. I am the sole programmer who is designing and maintaining the systems and doing everything in the engine (it is an archviz software). It is partially good because it gives me leverage to earn a relatively high salary, but it is also problematic because if I quit, the project comes to a halt for many months or maybe even for a year. The plan is to release it this year as a subscription based service to regulars users to start generating substantial revenue (we already have B2B clients who use it for their own work).
Third, I know it very well that what I am doing right now is not a fastlane thing, but a simple slowlane job. Although I have my own company, I am the sole person working in it and I work for an hourly rate. The project I am working on however is definitely a fastlane thing.
What I thought of is to decouple my time from the current project and maybe pursue my fastlane goals. I have many ideas on this, but I am not sure which would be the ideal:
- I thought of hiring a few people in my own company to work under my hands and take over the majority of the work. I make about 20k dollars per month, if I paid 4k per month for 2 programmers to do my job, I would still have 12k per month left, which is more than enough for me. This would also free up time for me to work on a game while still having liquidity to pay for my day to day expenses and maybe even continue accumulating my wealth (althought +100k per year feels slow now).
- I thought of doubling down on my current position and instead of focusing on creating a game, I would focus on making sure the current project I work on succeeds and get equity in the company, which I was already offered for my participation in the project.
My dilemma is that if I just kept working for a few more years, I could probably retire while making 10k per month passively from the saved up money. If the project succeeds, I could probably negotiate a way higher salary too, especially because it is highly dependent on me.
On the other hand, if I made a great game, 500k per year is nothing compared to the millions a good game can generate (especially if I build a franchise with multiple sequels), and I could prove myself that I can do it. But it is also way riskier.
I am curious what you guys think or if you have any ideas to make the most of my situation which I may not have thought of?
Best,
Ben
My name is Ben, just over 30 from Europe. I have first read the millionaire fastlane book about 8 years ago while attending uni. At uni, I spent about 2 years as a trainee, spending the last year as a software engineer trainee. I have found the book in my last year and after reading it, it motivated me to pursue my own goals instead of staying at the job I was proposed after finishing uni. Thanks to that, the same day I finished university I have also quit my job.
I had about 3 000 dollars saved up from the trainee job, I have spent half of that on a computer to deepdive into a field that I was interested in and I thought that fits the fastlane criterias and I thought I could be good enough at to succeed, which is software and video game development specifically. I started the journey with 2 of my friends and spent 12 hours learning the ins and outs of unreal engine 5 and C++ programming to make a game. Needless to say, both of them quit in less than year. I also quickly ran out of money and did some freelance work where one of the clients was very pleased with the speed and quality of my work and asked for a long term partnership at their startup. That was 7 years ago and I am still working with them.
This partnership was useful: I was getting paid to learn even more in this field, I was very motivated and I was paid an amount which was 8 times the median salary in my country. Over the years, the scope of the work expanded and my skills improved too, I learned to design and maintain complete systems. I also started earning a salary which felt like could be enough to retire early at a comfortable standard of living.
Fastfoward to today, I have a home completely paid for worth about 400k-500k USD with my own gym, and about 600k USD saved up and invested. I am also making around 200k per year, bumping up to 300k by the end of the year, which would be considered a good income by most probably. I have also mastered literally every part of the field I am working in. To be fair, I am pretty satisfied with it, in my country, I could retire now with this amount of money. However, there are a few problems with the above plan and some dilemmas in my mind and this is part of the reason I decided to join the forum and look for advice from people who have made it.
First of all, my original idea was to make video games, which are something that I do like, that I think that I could be exceptional at now with the level of technical knowledge I have (Over 25 000 hours of experience now). I have enough money saved up to work on games and keep doing it until I make it. Part of the reason for this is that although I feel like I made it, I still want to prove to myself that I am capable of creating a successful product on my own without working for someone else.
Second, the project I work on became VERY dependent on me. I am the sole programmer who is designing and maintaining the systems and doing everything in the engine (it is an archviz software). It is partially good because it gives me leverage to earn a relatively high salary, but it is also problematic because if I quit, the project comes to a halt for many months or maybe even for a year. The plan is to release it this year as a subscription based service to regulars users to start generating substantial revenue (we already have B2B clients who use it for their own work).
Third, I know it very well that what I am doing right now is not a fastlane thing, but a simple slowlane job. Although I have my own company, I am the sole person working in it and I work for an hourly rate. The project I am working on however is definitely a fastlane thing.
What I thought of is to decouple my time from the current project and maybe pursue my fastlane goals. I have many ideas on this, but I am not sure which would be the ideal:
- I thought of hiring a few people in my own company to work under my hands and take over the majority of the work. I make about 20k dollars per month, if I paid 4k per month for 2 programmers to do my job, I would still have 12k per month left, which is more than enough for me. This would also free up time for me to work on a game while still having liquidity to pay for my day to day expenses and maybe even continue accumulating my wealth (althought +100k per year feels slow now).
- I thought of doubling down on my current position and instead of focusing on creating a game, I would focus on making sure the current project I work on succeeds and get equity in the company, which I was already offered for my participation in the project.
My dilemma is that if I just kept working for a few more years, I could probably retire while making 10k per month passively from the saved up money. If the project succeeds, I could probably negotiate a way higher salary too, especially because it is highly dependent on me.
On the other hand, if I made a great game, 500k per year is nothing compared to the millions a good game can generate (especially if I build a franchise with multiple sequels), and I could prove myself that I can do it. But it is also way riskier.
I am curious what you guys think or if you have any ideas to make the most of my situation which I may not have thought of?
Best,
Ben
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