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 also had the opportunity to speak to the congregation about Financial Peace University. Usually when I speak in front of people part of my brain goes away to a happy place and the mouth just does its thing until my time is up. This time; however, I actually prepared, and made notes, and thought about what I would say before I got up there. That worked out pretty good, so “sorry” to all my speech teachers in school – you were totally right and I was wrong.

I do, apparently, have to start numbering my points. Derin was cool enough to point out that I delivered first, second, second, second, and last points during the speech. Oh well, those middle ones were tied for significance anyway.

We did have a few sign-ups to come to the preview class which, by the way, is free and is taking place on January 7th, so that was encouraging. It is no secret that it comes highly recommended from me. There is something for everyone in there – even those of you that have handled every dollar perfectly from the very first – I know, that’s everybody

In his book, The Total Money Makeover, Dave Ramsey recalls a pastor he had that said living right is difficult, but not complicated. It applies to almost everything, especially money. He goes on to say there are no “secrets of the rich” because the principles they use to become so aren’t secrets. Being a movie star or founding Microsoft would be the rarest of exceptions to the rule, that being that almost every millionaire in America did it the hard way. Hard, but not complicated.

I think we (humans) like to make things more complicated than they need to be because it creates more points of failure. More points of failure means more opportunities for excuses when we fail. I should expound upon that someday…

But not today! Looks like this’ll be the last from me until after Christmas, which we’ll be spending up in Iowa with the family.

Merry Christmas to everyone and travel safe!