A book based on data, no concepts. A simple, well-written gem that's full of insight. ( )

The Millionaire Mind has been sitting in my Kindle feed for quite a long time. I thought that reading it before 2019 started would help me identify strategies for more success. I have to admit, I really enjoyed what Dr. Thomas Stanley put together and learned a great deal. Readmore
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Joe Millionaire is just like you; he puts his pants on in the morning and brushes his teeth and shaves. He might be worth millions of dollars, but you are not. Why is that? Dr. Thomas J. Stanley argues that there are thought processes and certain types of resilience built into the Millionaire Mind. They have different thought patterns and ideas that allow them to navigate the marathon of life. Maybe they were creative enough to see an opportunity that no one else did, or they occupy a niche that no one else can easily specialize in.

With this book, Dr. Stanley sent out questionnaires to homes and zip codes that were likely to house millionaires. He found some surprising things; although I suppose not all of it is surprising at all. Many of them value hard work and determination more than luck, which makes sense. They know of the stock market but that isn’t how they made most of their money. Some of them were high school dropouts. Some can’t write very well. A great many of them questioned authority and had an excellent support system at home.

There is a lot of interesting data in this book, and it is listed over and over. The book is slightly older than I thought it was, but that isn’t really a problem since it looks for common factors to people that have a net worth of a million dollars or more. The cover sort of irks me, mainly because it reminds me of one of those old Phrenology charts but other than that it is fine. Dr. Stanley had a previous hit with The Millionaire Next Door, a book that I can’t really comment on since I haven’t read it. ( )

I actually didn't quite finish reading it. I thought some of the concepts were very interesting, and the reader was good, but I found it very repetitive. It was also targeted more to the young (establishing your path from an early age). I decided not to finish it, though I may send print copies to my nephews just starting out - as food for thought. ( )

I found this follow-up to The Millionaire Next Door to be rather less interesting and less applicable to “regular people.” For one thing, it is focused less on low-level millionaires and more on those with between five and ten million dollars; a person with an upper five-figure income and frugal habits might break a million in net worth, but would not be in that five-to-ten club. Almost all of the people he talks about are successful entrepreneurs. The section on house buying is perhaps the most applicable to non-entrepreneurs. (To summarize, millionaires buy houses in good school districts, shop for a bargain, and live in those houses for a long time. They don’t have houses built because it takes up too much time.) ( )