Jesus, that was long. I started reading, then skimming, then just scrolling to see how long it was.
Hahaha, yes, that's the New Yorker! While I don't mind the length, I felt kind of lost in the progression of the article. There was a lot of "... and then this happened, then that happened, then somebody said this" but missing a bit of glue, analysis, opinion or well, anything other than telling random bits of things that apparently happened...
I wonder who - other than readers of his blog - could be the target readershpip for such an article. On some of the elementary aspects of his approach it was very short on detail. Like for example:
- He started at forty-one thousand dollars a year, with no savings or possessions except “a bike, a backpack, and a diploma.” He made the rookie mistake (“what a clueless young man!!!”) of buying a sports car with a loan from his sister.
- He got his first raise soon afterward, to fifty-seven thousand and six hundred dollars. By the end of year one, he’d saved five thousand dollars.
- A year later, he had twenty-three thousand.
- By year five, a quarter of a million.
Going from earning 57K before taxes and 5K savings to 23K savings in one year sems like a somewhat natural progression if you recently start saving a lot (19K of savings/interest/return a year). But going from there to a quarter of a million in another 4 years is somewhat extraordinary (another 227K in 4 years, or on average 57K a year - that's more savings/return a year than what he started out making before taxes just a few years earlier). And it's not explained or referenced anywhere else in the article. For someone that's not already familiar with the concept and ideas it would be rather difficult to come away with a good understanding of how this can actually be.
Regarding the CC referral fees - well, there's a reason they have such high payouts, because obviously they are able to earn a lot from their CC-customers. I remember a period when online-bookies were paying out referral fees for new customers and it was also somewhere in that ballpark. I still find some irony in the fact that you participate in the earnings from creditcard-customers while at the same time preaching a life without debt... Not criticizing though! If people were giving me free money for stuff I am recommending anyway I would take it as well (no harm as long as it's transparent, which MMM has always been).
I would have been surprised about the 400K number a few years ago. But after learning what a lot of the high profile youtubers earn, I am not so surprised anymore. It's not the website itself, it's the attention that it gathers and "shares" what is worth the money. It's not easy to gather attention - even if you do everything right.
Does it take away from the core message? A little bit. There is a difference between being living proof that a certain approach works longterm, or having generated large amounts of other income / windfall / changes that significantly modify the context from the original premise. But of course there is no necessity of being or staying a living proof for anything.
