The book is subtitled “The Amazing Secrets of America’s Wealthy.” I think that is a little misleading, because most of what is in there isn’t really a secret. It’s just that we’re so well trained that no one bothered to stop and ask. The core message is still “live on less than you make.” It is the simplest of concepts, and yet it is uncommon to see it put into practice. I guess that is why we aren’t all millionaires!

First things first, I have absolutely no reservations in recommending this book. As far as I’m concerned, you shouldn’t be able to graduate high school without understanding the truths that live in this book, if not reading it specifically.

The bottom line is this:

Think of the people that you know that you’d describe as wealthy. Statistically speaking, you are probably wrong about those people. High net income doesn’t translate to high net worth, and the more outwardly displayed that net income is, the less likely there is any net worth backing it up. People that look rich in America usually aren’t.

This concept – the surprisingly (or maybe not so much) inverse relationship between status and wealth – is the focus of most of the material presented. Stanley divides people into PAWs (prodigious accumulators of wealth) and UAWs (underaccumulators of wealth). Each chapter presents case studies on the behavior of PAWs versus UAWs when it comes to everything from automobile purchases to  clothing and how they teach their children.

One thing to keep in mind as you journey through The Millionaire Next Door is that it is written by two gentlemen that are in the business of figuring out how to market to the affluent. Everything is written from this perspective and its a good view of how the affluent handle money. There are some parts that get a little obscure. I felt like they spent an unnecessary amount of time talking about cars. There’s a long chart in this book that lists automobiles by their price per pound. I’m not sure where they were going with that…

Road bumps aside, it’s well worth reading and will provide you with a lot of great context and insight into the minds of successful wealth builders. It will challenge the way you measure success, and that challenge is well worth taking to heart.

I think this was on Friday and I started reading it when she got home after work. I ended up finishing it that night. Now there were several contributing factors in that, not the least of which was the larger than average font. Also, it was only 300 pages long. That said, it really held my attention and that made it a pretty easy read.

Any stereotypes I might have had about high school or college wrestlers were held up nicely. Mr. Hughes was pretty full of himself and got in lots of fights! Now, I say that a little tongue-in-cheek. Life was obviously not all peaches, including the bankruptcy at the farm that ultimately led to the separation of his parents.

The latter half of the book gets more into what most people are probably interested in – the fights. Hughes takes us through the issues in and outside the octagon and gives a real feel for which ones were more personal than others. In the midst of this, he illustrates his conversion from church-goer to Christ-follower which nicely rounds out his tale of fighting, family, and faith.

Whether you are already a fan of Matt Hughes or not, your mind won’t be changed after reading Made in America. There is no deep philosophy on success or any great insight about winning at life or anything like that. The best I can say is that I now know a lot more about Matt Hughes, and that it’s a pretty interesting story. With as many title fights as he has won, I can highly recommend Made in America to any fan of MMA and especially the UFC!

And as an aside… my daughter apparently has a little trouble telling Matt Hughes and Shane Gadbury apart

Dr. Meg Meeker’s Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know is required reading for anyone that has a daughter and probably-better-read-anyway reading for those of you with just boys.

Also, on the subject of spoilers, don’t run out and buy this book if your name is Joe. There is a high probability that someone got you this as a baby present but couldn’t give it to you Saturday because the store didn’t have it in stock and it had to be ordered.

Back to business! I don’t know why the “10 Secrets” tag line is on there. It seems like books anymore can’t be content to just have a title. They have to have a summary built into the front of the book as well. Most of these principles aren’t really secrets anyway, but they do provide a lot of encouragement and reassurance that you’re doing (or are going to be doing) the right thing.

That reassurance is important as you bring up a daughter because if you are raising her right, you will be going against the cultural grain. Pop culture would have to back away from all of the challenges of child-rearing. If you and your daughter aren’t seeing eye to eye, you just need to give her space to explore and express herself. Or ruin herself.

A new born baby doesn’t know anything about money, drugs, sex, faith, clothing, culture, or anything else. Someone is going to teach her. It is going to either be you or the world outside, and that is the main focus of this book. It’s guidance for fathers that are facing the daunting task of raising children in a culture where masculinity and paternal authority are increasingly frowned upon – a culture where being the man of the house is painted as oppressive behavior.

The book isn’t all doom and gloom by any means. Dr. Meeker breaks up the pace a little bit with anecdotes from her personal practice. Some are pictures of life done right and some wrong, but nearly all of them are emotionally moving. When culture cries out for you to let your daughter be free, they are deceiving you. They don’t want her to think for herself, they want her to think like them… instead of you. Someone, somewhere is going to have the dominant influence in her life, so who is it going to be? Will it be her father who has loved her from her very first breath and for whom she is his whole life? Or will it be a consuming culture for whom she is just another abused statistic?

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters comes highly recommended no matter where you are coming from. I already felt pretty confident about where I was going to lead my own daughter, but even so – it’s nice to get some encouragement from the pros!