The book the millionaire next door goes into great depth and detail about what the majority of millionaires spend money on. A lot of the people driving mercs are not rich. Most have bought their cars using lease schemes which is a really expensive way to own a car you can't afford

Yep. Too bad very few people figure this out in time. "The Millionaire Next Door" should be required reading in high school.

'The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy', the author of this book has also pulled together data to show that wealthy families usually end extending financial life-lines to their children. It's not surprising that most wealthy neighborhoods are inhabited with people who are the first generation to become rich sprinkled with a few wealthy inheritors but most of the time the wealth stops with them.

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS.

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, but I encourage you to dig more into financial independence, and how living more frugally can help you save more money to invest in the right ways to generate wealth. There's plenty of books on these habits, "The Millionaire Next Door", and even some popular communities that attest to it such as https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/.

You don't need to be rich to generate wealth, but it takes sacrifice (like everything in life), or even habits to get there.

"If Read suffered from poor health during his working years or required long-term care, his estate would be a fraction of what it was."

So don't bother saving or trying to get rich, because you might become ill and have to spend the money on your health?

The whole article seems weird. What is their point? So 300$/Month is not enough, but 500$ would be? Surely that is something many people could at least aspire to?

I think the poverty discussion often overlooks the fluent nature of the economy. People who have low paying jobs today (say pizza driver) don't necessarily have the same job forever. But new "poor people" (often young people) will enter the market and become pizza drivers.

Should pizza drivers give up all hope and just "live"?

Also afaik the markets had good returns in the long run pretty much always. If it really would not be worthwhile to invest anything anymore, some serious questioning of politics would be in order.

I only recently read "The Millionaire Next Door", and while I didn't really like the writing style, I think it still made some good points.

I’ve been reading The Millionaire Next Door and surprisingly few descendants stay rich. By fourth generation the wealth is completely destroyed. Likely because each generation didn’t have to work as hard and value the money. Of course there are exceptions, but this was what their data said.

Also I think only 20% of millionaires in USA inherited it, which really surprised me.

He recently publicly announced his successor. No issues. No one blinked. One of the best long term companies to own shares in. Investing to build wealth is a long game. All of my "bets" are looking out 20-30 years. Short term some years I have not out performed the market, but over the lifetime since I started I have (15 years so far..)

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/who-is-greg-abel-warren-buff...

There is a booked called "the millionaire next door" that is a good read.

Thomas Stanley was a marketing by professor who made a name for himself teaching others how to sell to the rich.

The Millionaire Next Door was largely written to dissuade people of the notion the hyper consumerism and associated advertising was an effective strategy for reaching a majority of upper wealth households.

Wealthy households are generally frugal compared to their level of net worth. This is particularly true for wealthy households at the lower end of the scale (e.g., the millionaire teacher who got that way by investing 15% of their net income consistently over 30-40 years).

Immigrants and business owners do have an advantage, and he goes into detail about how living in less wealthy neighborhoods is a wealth building advantage, but his main argument is that thrift, savings, and simple math are the main drivers of wealth.

> The book The Millionaire Next Door provided data to support "Seek wealth, not money or status". […] I like the Tweet thread, but prefer the Millionaire Next Door cause it's backed up by actual data.

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb, most/more famous for Black Swan, pokes holes in the methodology used in TMND, specifically survivorship bias.

Another observation from FbR:

> I will set aside the point that I see no special heroism in accumulating money, particularly if, in addition, the person is foolish enough to not even try to derive any tangible benefit from the wealth (aside from the pleasure of regularly counting the beans).

* https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/553605-i-will-set-aside-the...

Thomas Stanley and Sarah Fallaw (Stanley's daughter) published an updated book in 2016 called The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth. They argue the conclusions from the Millionaire Next Door still hold and directly address Taleb's survivorship bias claim.

Remember that Thomas Stanley had a PhD in finance and didn't do garbage research.

There is a leanfire subreddit if you're looking for real world stories of people that are currently living the high savings lifestyle: https://www.reddit.com/r/leanfire/

Here's a great video of a young, modern leanfire couple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb3Z5cGOksY&ab_channel=CNBCM...

Millionaire Next Door might not be possible for minimum wage workers in HCOL areas anymore, but seems to me like lots of folks are still figuring out how to make it happen and become financially free at a young age.

The Millionaire Next Door is about as misleading as it gets, at least for today. Let's not forget that $1M in the mid 1990's is about the same as $2M today, at least in terms of terms of CPI. Even then, that is after 20+ years of housing prices outpacing inflation by 2x or more.

In the mid 1990's, the top 20% could get to $1M with some good financial discipline and hard work. Today? Maybe the top 1% could save $1M, and unless you inherited the family home, you're still living a lifestyle that is somewhat median in 1995 terms.

The fact that $1M is still some kind of mental benchmark that we hold up for being "rich" tells us everything we need to know about today's economic conditions.

So the principles of the book may still apply, but the outcomes are worlds away from reality.

The book The Millionaire Next Door provided data to support "Seek wealth, not money or status".

The book was written by finance professors who examined the characteristics of actual millionaires. They found a lot of people who appeared to be millionaires did not actually have a net worth over a million dollars.

High status professional are expected to drive nice cars and live in a big house. It's harder to be a millionaire if you're spending a lot of money.

The authors were surprised to find that a lot of the Americans with a net worth over a million did not fit any of the "millionaire stereotypes" at all. They drive an old pickup truck and drink Bud Light.

I like the Tweet thread, but prefer the Millionaire Next Door cause it's backed up by actual data. It also seems like the Tweet thread is focused on advice that'll get you a net worth in the top 0.1%. The central premise of the Millionaire Next Door is a lot of people have "regular jobs" and get rich (depending on your definition of rich). See the janitor that amassed an $8 million dollar fortune: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/janitor-secretly-amassed-an-...