The other night I began reading The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. I did so after being convinced by Vicki that I should read the book before I try to invest my millions (Whoops, paradox alert: if I truly had millions, why would I bother reading The Automatic Millionaire?). So I read the first chapter about the author David Bach’s meeting with the automatic millionaire, one of his students (who was thirty years older than Bach; the teacher has become the student, apparently). This is when I realized that the only concept the book relies on is a farce.

Before I continue any further, let’s discuss the point of Millionaire for those who are unfamiliar with the work. Bach’s "one-step plan" is actually a series of steps toward becoming a millionaire in the very distant future and retiring early (the millionaire Bach meets with retires in his early fifties). The first step of one total step is to take your money and start paying off debt early (mortgages, etc.). The second step out of one is to stop amassing debt. The third and final step of the one-step plan is to cut down on how much you spend on worthless, over-valued things and save more money (while not necessarily taking in more money). These steps are great and I really like how Bach emphasizes that people need to save more (instead of making 50% more but spending 100% more), but I have yet to find an irrefutable reason to follow Bach’s three-step one-step method. I also disagree with Bach’s mathematical system, in which any combination of numbers adds up to one.

Here is my problem with Bach’s plan. Becoming an automatic millionaire relies on being niggardly and cheap for the young, fun, vivacious part of one’s life in exchange for having all the time and money in the world when one is old! In addition, there’s no guarantee that one will even live long enough to ever become a millionaire. Hence, Bach’s plan has a very high chance of failure in that if one dies before retirement, he fails. His plan is rooted in living a "now" that, although possibly acceptable, is limited all for the sake of achieving a "then" that probably will not even be that great if it ever comes.

For those who don’t grasp what I am saying, most likely because I am horible at explaining things, I’ll use an analogy. Bach’s plan, applied to sports, would imply that one should spend the majority of his life training and building the skills necessary to be succesful and then only actually competing in the sport when one is around the age of 50. Sure, one will have a lot of talent, but at some point the body starts to age and becomes unreliable. All the talent and resources in the world mean nothing once one can’t move due to a broken hip! This is what Bach’s plan is: save money for the entirety of life before retirement. The problem here is clear: no one knows if they will even reach retirement and if that point is reached, what about all the times one was required to limit himself when he was still young and sprightly?

The root of the problem is simple and omnipresent: People die. It happens. And Bach says to forget about that inevitability and assume that "it won’t happen to you; you’re exempt from everything in the world that seeks to destroy life." My feeling is that people need to accept the inevitability of mortality and live in the present. Spend today, buy a latte; it won’t make you evil or poor. Plan for the future but don’t let the prospects of consequences ruin what you have or can have now.