The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy Paperback – November 16, 2010

This is an excellent, data-backed look at what the wealthy look like in the United States. Contrary to popular belief, most wealthy people do not drive Teslas and eat caviar. They are not tech CEOs or Wall Street financiers. They are small business owners and self-employed professionals who probably drive a 3-year old BMW or a Ford pickup truck or SUV. They probably wear a Seiko watch, not a Rolex. They probably wear a suit bought from Men's Wearhouse, not Brooks Brothers. They probably have a run-of-the-mill Visa credit card, not something from Sak's Fifth Ave.Some of the many useful insights and takeaways from this book:A Useful Definition of Wealth -- Wealth is much more than how much money you pull in every year and how much your house costs. It's more a reflection of your investments and how much money you save. Not how much you spend. There are a lot of people who pull in a ton of money every year but live paycheck-to-paycheck.Wealth and income are not the same thing -- Not all wealthy people pull in a hefty income. In fact, many purposely pull in relatively low incomes in order to reduce their tax obligations. Ross Perot is a great example of this (when the book is written). Perot pays millions in taxes, but is worth billions. Even your neighbor next door might be a millionaire, but maybe the household only brings in $79,000 a year.Most Millionaires Are Self-Made -- While children of millionaires are more likely to become millionaires, very few millionaires (less than 20%) are not self-made millionaires. In fact, regular handouts from parents make it less likely that an individual will become a millionaire someday. Most millionaires worked for their money and were not constantly given Economic Outpatient Care (EOC) from their parents.Frugality Reigns Supreme -- The authors give a great analogy about building wealth. You can play a great offensive (i.e. pulling in money) and you can make a great defensive (i.e. saving your money and preserving your wealth). Playing a great offensive is wonderful, but it is really only useful for building wealth if you don't play a great defensive too (some people are capable of playing such a great offensive that the defensive really isn't important, but this is very few people). They buy discount suits, discounted new cars or used cars, they rely on very, very little credit, and status symbols aren't all that important to them.Mindset Matters -- Most millionaires are not worry-warts. The only things they really worry about are government policies that will destroy their livelihoods, but even then, they know that they can't really control the outcome of these issues directly, so they only give so much effort and so much weight to these decisions.My only quasi-criticism of this book is that the data are from 1992-1996 and the book was written in 1996. This obviously isn't the fault of the authors, and some of the conclusions are reinforced in a 2010 preface, but just take some of the data with a grain of salt. Take inflation and general industrial changes into account.Well worth the read, especially if you are looking to join the ranks of the Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth or work with them.

Although this book is outdated in many ways and there has been much criticism about the authors' research methods, it is still well worth reading. I certainly wish I had read it back when I was in high school or college.The title may give the impression that the book is geared toward materialistic people who are obsessed with getting rich and living the high life, but that's not at all what it's about. In fact, the authors' main point is that most people who accumulate a lot of wealth are not at all interested in living the high life. Rather, they are thrifty and live below their means, with the result that they often don't appear wealthy at all. For example, your next door neighbor who manages a maid service -- not a very glamorous-sounding occupation -- could be surprisingly rich. By contrast, a large percentage of people who appear to be rich -- people living in fancy houses, driving expensive cars, wearing designer clothes -- don't actually have much saved up at all.The authors were surprised to make this discovery, and that is what inspired them to write the book. For years, they have compared the behavior of people who are successful at building or maintaining wealth with those who are not successful. Using elementary statistical analysis, they identify key habits and attitudes that enable people to accumulate wealth -- even if they don't have a particularly high salary. Thus, even if you earn a teacher's salary (as I do), you can still hope to retire comfortably and be a relatively wealthy teacher if you manage your spending and investments well. It does help, of course, to have a large salary, but with bad spending habits you can still end up accumulating nothing. (The authors do recommend choosing your occupation wisely.)The habits that they recommend are very practical. For example, you should keep track of all your expenses so that you know how much you spend each month and year on housing, food, entertainment, etc. Then make a budget and stick to it (or create a false sense of scarcity by stowing away a big percentage of your earnings before you even think about spending anything). Invest time and money in financial planning and research. And very importantly, invest your savings in stocks or other equity, making it your goal to have more of your financial growth come from growth of investments than from taxable wages.Overall, the authors present sound principles for building wealth, and they offer compelling evidence for the effectiveness of those principles. They provide a lot of interesting anecdotes that make the book fun to read most of the time, as well as basic statistical analysis of survey results. Again, although their methods may not be "scientifically rigorous," the main ideas are basically sound. I highly recommend the book, especially to young people who are just getting started in their careers -- regardless of how much money they expect to make.

This is the second time I read this book. It does provide a lot of tips and financial advice. The reason I give it a four star review instead of a five is because the book provides a lot of statistics and trends from the 90's. I think otherwise is still a very good book to read.