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03/23/2007: "Book Review: The Millionaire Next Door"
This book should be a reading requirement in high school and/or college. Most of us have grown up with pretty convoluted ideas about how one goes about accumulating wealth, or even becoming self-sufficient for that matter.
The authors of this book surveyed many millionaires and came up with some interesting results. Millionaires are not necessarily people who have high incomes. In fact people with high incomes many times have very little net worth, in other words they spend all they earn. This is not the definition of a wealthy person. A wealthy person is often someone who has lived on a modest income most of their lives. Here are some key characteristics of millionaires, according the the authors:
* They allocate their time, energy, and money in ways that tend to accumulate more wealth.
* They live well beneath their means.
* They value financial independence more than high social status.
* Their parents have not financially supported them as adults.
* Their adult children do not rely on them for financial support.
* They chose the right profession.
The book explores all of these areas in detail, and the results are very interesting. Basically, anyone can become wealthy if they possess the right mindset, and that mindset very much contradicts the lifestyle many Americans value. It's basically a choice of what's more important to you.
The copy of this book that I have is from 1998, so some of the statistics are out of date, but it looks like it was re-published in 2003. You can get a used copy cheap enough it is definitely worth the read.
You can buy the book or read more reviews of "The Millionaire Next Door" by at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/1567315682/creativehomemaki
Rachel Paxton
Editor/Publisher
CreativeHomemaking.com