Rating: 
Summary: Solid Theory but Too Detailed at Times
Review: The Millionaire Next Door makes some excellent points about the way people utilize money. Basically it boils down to a question of whether you want to have a lot of money or look like you have a lot of money. The differences between "new money" and "old money" are interesting as are most of the stories describing the frugal millionaires vs. those concerned with status at any cost.I did find portions of the book too number-intensive. Often after a point is made, scores and scores of charts, figures, and analysis will follow. It makes for some pretty dry reading. The bottom line is that this book can be utilized as an excellent resource for pulling your personal finance goals together. However, skip ahead when the numbers really start flying!
Rating: 
Summary: Discipline and time may make you wealthy
Review: Stanley and Danko have written an excellent book based on hard-nosed research about who are the real rich in America. They define rich as having $1,000,000 in net assets, and then examine how they got rich. They find that the rich person is quite oppposite to the rich stereotype portrayed in media. The rich stereotype is a prodigal spender, while the rich person is a judicious spender (they do reward themselves occasionally for their hard work). The rich stereotype has all the visible signs of wealth, while the rich person deliberately choosed a lifestyle that minimizes peer pressure to spend and "keep up". The rich stereotype is more concerned with image, the rich person values financial indenpendence (both current and in the future). The authors laud starting early, and say that the lure of a financially independent retirement is more important to the rich than the here-and-now envy/adulation of one's peers and neighbours. The book is readable for the most part, but I suggest you pay close attention to the data that the authors present - there may be insights there that they have chosen not to highlight. While the authors study the rich, who are mostly self employed, they also do admit that becoming self-employed is very risky. The most telling part is that most of the self-employed rich want their children to become professionals. They conjecture that this may be due to the parents wanting a higher prestige for their children than they (as self-employed) have, but I wonder whether it is not also due to the fact that the parents recognize how high a risk self-employment actually is, particularly given that their affluent children may not have the drive they had to succeed. Finally, I personally find the most revelaing part of their research to be the section on how parents shape the wealth proclivities of their children. The examples of well-meaning wealthy parents crippling their children's abilities may be the most important contribution of this book. You will find a lot of information in this book from which to shape your own savings strategy. Even if you are too far down the road to get to a million, you can certainly learn about how to help your children get there.
Rating: 
Summary: Good info but too dry for me
Review: This book is just as advertised but very boring to me. I was amazed by many of the little factoids sprinkled throughout the book. However, I quickly lost interest and never could bring myself to finish it. I think the information is valuable but I had a hard time staying intterested once I decided that I did not accept the authors definition of wealth. I found "wealth" in the authors view, to be very stringent and constricting and it flew in the face of one truly enjoying life. But if you are interested in seeing into the mind of an owner of local pizza shops, who drives the same car he drove in 1972, then this is the book for you.
Rating: 
Summary: I was robbed!
Review: I was robbed! - and don't mean by Amazon. I bought this book in hopes of gaining some insight on how the wealthy became so. The book has one exhaustingly repetitive point. That point is that if you never buy anything nice for yourself, you could be "rich" [standard set by author] while only flipping burgers and dipping fries. This makes sense, but I disagree with the good doctor's contention of wealth. Furthermore, if you followed the preachings of the book, you wouldn't buy it anyway... It would be a $... luxury you simply couldn't afford if you wanted to stay on track to a wealthy life.
Rating:
Summary: Get rich the old fashioned way
Review: Very interesting study of the millionaires in America. I listened to the audio version of this book while travelling to and from work. I found it to be very entertaining and well done. I've learned a great deal and would recommend this book to anyone who's wondering 'when am I going to be a millionaire?' or 'what does it take to become a millionaire?' in America.
Rating:
Summary: Good general study of millionaires
Review: If you enjoy in-depth demographic studies or just really want to know what makes a person wealthy, this is the book for you. For the most part the book is an easy read that uses disguised real-life case studies to show how people become rich and how some people with high incomes never accumulate wealth (net worth). The authors are professors and have done a great deal of quantitative study on the subject. To that end the book is packed with tables of numbers to help the reader understand the subject. The tables have a lot of good data but sometimes you feel like you are reading a thesis. If you spend the time to really understand the numbers it will help you get a much more in-depth understanding of people with a net worth of one million dollars or more. If you gloss over the tables and concentrate on the personal stories you will still get a pretty good idea of the type of person they are talking about. At the end of the book is a chapter with a few hints on how to target market wealthy people. These are high level ideas and not a "how-to" section. The authors sell that advice as consultants and are not about to give away all of thier valuable secrets. Also, there is a discussion of what type of work millionaire's do. This part is very wishy-washy, as the authors explain that millionaires do all types of work.
Rating:
Summary: Who Are the Affluent?
Review: During the first 150 pages of this book, I kept saying, "How did they sell so many of these books? This book has too many grammatical errors, and too many statistics!" I was reminded of a passage in Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren's book, "How to Read a Book" -- "Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not." Then, I noticed, as I really pondered the messages of this book on frugality, that I had been writing 101 goals, in a notebook, while reading this book. This book has been and is good for me. Also, because I was raised with status symbols, with no education on how to be wealthy, I learned, while reading this book, that when I slow down, and really do what I love to do, when I really focus upon thinking like someone whose net worth is at least $1 million, I am free to appreciate all that I have, and all that will come to me, in due time. I am grateful to these authors, because I no longer look at other people's status symbols, and decide to feel pain --- I have created a vision for myself, based upon what is right for me, as opposed to external measurements of what I should have to prove who I am. Reading this book has definitely lifted a burden from my shoulders. Thank you. I will definitely read other books written by these authors, because I want a net worth that comfortably places me in the millionaire club, while I make a difference.
Rating:
Summary: A look into the Affluent
Review: The Millionaire Next Door does an excellent job of getting into the minds of millionaires. Upon finishing the novel, I found myself wondering about the affluence of people I know in different settings: my neighborhood, my place of employment, my temple, even my friends' families. If there was one thing I learned from the novel, it is that millionaires do not spend their money casually. "They live well bellow their means." (10) They don't drive European luxury cars, wear Rolex's or even live in the biggest and most extravagant houses. They are smart with their money, living comfortably rather excessively. Millionaires often choose to focus on putting their money towards investments and careful financial planning.
This book offers many insights into how to become a millionaire. The strategies and understandings the authors provide hold much truth and make sense. I found "The Seven Factors," listed on page 4-5, to be particularly insightful. Number seven states, "They chose the right occupation." This was the factor I was particularly most interested in. What is that "right" occupation? What I have found through my reading, is that most millionaires have started from the bottom up. They are entrepreneurs who have started empires: drycleaners, contractors, owners of mobile-home parks. They are smart businessmen who are disciplined and make smart sacrifices. Overall, this novel is smart and interesting and easy to read and enjoy
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and informative - but be careful!
Review: Let us get one thing out of the way. This is NOT a bad book. In fact, it is a well-done, interesting, and much needed study that gives us all new insights about what millionaires are really like as opposed to people's misconceptions of them. If this was merely a study of what millionaires are like, I would give it five stars. The problem begins when people see this book as a recommendation: "most millionaires are frugal, hard-working, well-educated, and diligent investors - so if I will act like that I will be a millionaire". This is simply not true - and for a very simple reason discussed below. Indeed, most millionaires ARE like that. Indeed, it is good advice to be frugal, hard-working, and well-educated as opposed to the opposite. It is also gratifying to see that sometimes "doing the right thing", the protestant work ethic, and the "nose to the grindstone" attitude sometimes pay off not only in "being a better person", but in concrete monetary success. Apparently good guys DON'T finish last after all. But the book suffers from a double survivorship bias. "Survivoship bias" is what happens when one only pays attention to those who survive a certain activity, peril, or risk, and makes ungounded conclusions about cause and effect from that. One famous example is Neitzsche's famous saying, "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger". It is based on the survivorship bias that those who survive terrible calamities tend to be stronger than other people. But it doesn't mean the calamity MADE them stronger - it might mean simply that only those who were strong to begin with survived the calamity. What survivorship bias do we see here? First, it interviews ONLY millionaires. It doesn't interview ALL of those who are frugal, hard-working, and concerned about education - it only interviews those of them WHO BECAME MILLIONAIRES. It could very will be (it probably is) that 99% of those who are hard-working, frugal, and concerned about education still fail to become millionaires. This, of course, doesn't mean that being hard-working and educated is "bad"; it just doesn't mean that it is the CAUSE of becoming a millionaire. If anything, only the opposite that is true: that if you are lazy, a big spender, and a cropout, you probably will NOT become a millionaire. But that is NOT that same thing! A second survivorship bias is the time of the survey. The people interviewed were, almost to a man, "dilligent investors" - especially in the stock market - who started investing at least 20 years before. They were interviewed in the late 1990. This means that, by sheer coincidence, they started investing in what turned out to be the largest bull market in US history. On the average, $1 invested in the stock market in 1980 would be worth about $20 when the Dow hit its high in 1999. Naturally, this significantly increased the net worth of many of these people. But was this due to any foresight on their part, or sheer luck? If the stock market had gone the other way, how many of them would still be millionaires? Furthermore, what about all the hard-working, diligent investors who started investing at the same time (early 1980s)... but unluckily invested in the wrong companies or industries, such as the "safe" oil or car industry which tanked, ruining many people? How could you tell - BEFORE it happened - that one investing method was better than the other, that one will make you a millionaire and the other leave you broke? You coudln't. Once again, this doesn't mean that investing is "bad". It is NECESSARY to invest well and succeed in your investments in order to become a millionaire - if you don't invest, you won't become a millionaire. But again, this isn't the same thing: you might very well invest with all due dilligence, safety, and careful planning - and still lose everything. In summary, good book? Yes. Interesting book? Yes. Teaches you things you didn't know? Yes. Shows that the old protestant work ethics is good after all? Yes. But does it show you how to become a millioniare? NO! Buy it, by all means... follow its advice... but do so because it is generally good advice on how to live, NOT because it will make you rich. That is just an illusion based on survivorship bias.
Rating:
Summary: The Millionaire Next Door
Review: The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J Stanley and William D Danko is sumed up by the title. it portrays the true life of a millionaire as researched by the authors. they talk about the lies of millionaires, their financial issues and the misperceptions about them. stonley and danko do a great job at analyzing the millionaires of today. unlike the "big spender" misconception many of us have, they portray them as regular people who save their money consistantly. its a very interesting book. it does broaden horizons on the millionaire issue, but its mostly meant for people who are looking to become millionaires or learn about finance. i would definatly recommend it to these people.
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