Thomas J. Stanley’s follow-up to his well-received book The Millionaire Next Door, follows a pretty interesting premise. It basically picks the brains of millionaires to find out how they got their wealth and how they keep it. It certainly offers an interesting read and I do recommend it, but not as a book that is going to teach you how to go out and make money today. It serves its purpose as a guide to help you understand how the rich think, but if you’re looking for step-by-step advice on how to make more money right now, it falls a bit flat.

This is basically a series of interviews that cover how some people managed to get rich. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t go very in-depth into these techniques. Instead, we get a whole chapter devoted to the process of picking the right spouse. What’s love got to do with it indeed? This rather antiquated view of picking the kind of spouse that will support you and be advantageous to your career is a bit out of place in today’s society. While there is a lot to be said for marrying someone who is going to stick it out with you, it lost me when it got down to bypassing the standard reason that most people do get hitched - love - and boiled it down to a merger.

Next up, the author discusses the importance of picking a vocation that you can truly be passionate about and one that is not already too filled. This is all well and good if you’re just starting out, but the primary audience for this book is most likely already well established and it’s a little too late to start thinking about changing horses in midstream. I would have liked to have seen more discussion on alternate streams of income that can supplement your existing paycheck.

Frugality plays a big role in this book as most real millionaires don’t live high on the hog. If they did, they wouldn’t be millionaires for long. The problem is most of us already get that. We know that if you spend money like water, it won’t be long before the tank runs dry. That knowledge is as old as the hills and about as useful. It is all well and good to teach reader’s about being frugal and not overspending, but this is a concept that most of us over the age of 30 (again, the intended audience) already get.

Due to this reason, this book is best classified as an interesting volume on how rich people think and it is well suited for those who are just starting on their financial journey. For those of us that were hoping for a book that would unlock the secrets of how these people made their money, it falls a bit flat. It’s still worth the read, but only as a reaffirmation of what most of us already know. It certainly won’t show you how many of these millionaires managed to spin straw into gold, and that is what most of us want to know.

Originally posted 2008-11-12 03:29:03. Republished by Old Post Promoter

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Categories:

Book Review, Personal Finance, Wealth

Tags:

audience, brains, changing horses, frugality, high on the hog, how to make more money, love, merger, midstream, millionaire next door, millionaires, paycheck, premise, step advice, streams of income, tank, thomas j stanley