The Millionaire Next Door by J. Stanley, William D. Danko
Publishers blurb
" Who are the rich in this country? What do they do? How do they invest? How did they get rich? Can you ever become one of them? Get the answers in The Millionaire Next Door, the never-before-told story about wealth in America. You'll be surprised by what you find out."
The premise is that a vast majority of the wealthy in this country got that way by saving their money. The book spends an extensive amount of time explaining why ostentatious symbols of wealth just aren’t worth it. The book puts discusses buying homes in high status neighborhoods, new cars, expensive suits, and luxury watches. The purpose of getting wealthy, it seems, is not to live large, but to pass wealth successfully down to your children.
The book was published in 2000, and frankly, it has not aged well. Millennials today are in vast amounts of debt and putting off the most basic lifestyle choices like marriage, children, homes, cars in exchange for the graduate degrees they need just to afford rent. They moonlight in the sharing economy, working 60-80 hours a week to afford their lifestyles. I do not believe that the average American can get rich just by saving. It may have been that way before the bubble burst in the optimistic 2000s, but not today. There is a reason we Instagram our starbucks coffees. A 4$ cup of coffee is the only luxury we can afford. Telling a millennial that a not buying a $4000 dollar suit to become a millionaire is laughable.
Todays Millennials are praising Jen Sincero for You are a Badass at making money, a book that essentially tells you the opposite of what “The millionaire next door” preaches. You are a badass tells you to dream your luxury Instagram fueled dreams, and you’ll even get it if you want it bad enough. Sincero tells us spend our money to fuel our lifestyles. Stanley and Danko tell us to tame our lifestyles to save more money.
There is a reason why You are a Badass resonates today.
It was nice to read the book, sure. I spent the week I spent reading it denying a few niceties to myself, most notably, being rent the runway. I calculated that Rent the runway would cost me $2000 dollars per year, and the book specifically mentioned how $2000 per year spent on clothes was absolutely ridiculous.
But overall a throwaway. I did not get excited for life and working hard knowing that denying myself a new car after 20 years of would make me marginally richer in the long run. What is money for anyway? For the authors of “the millionaires next door”, its certainly not for spending.
