Over the past 40 years, Tom Stanley and his daughter Sarah Stanley
Fallaw have been involved in research examining how self-made,
economically successful Americans became that way. Despite the
publication of The Millionaire Next Door, The Millionaire Mind, and
others, myths about wealth in American still abound. Government
officials, journalists, and many American still tend to confuse income
with wealth. A new generation of household financial managers are
hearing from so-called experts in personal financial management due to
the proliferation of the cottage industry of financial blogs, podcasts,
and the like. In many cases, these outlets are simply experiences shared
without science, case studies without data based on broader populations.
Therefore, the authors decided to take another look at millionaires in
the United States to examine what changes could be seen 20 years after
the original publication of The Millionaire Next Door. In this book the
authors highlight how specific decisions, behaviors, and characteristics
align with the discipline of wealth building, covering areas such as
consumption, budgeting, careers, investing, and financial management in
general. They include results from quantitative studies of wealth as
well as case studies of individuals who have been successful in building
wealth. They discuss general paths to building wealth on your own,
focusing specifically on careers and lifestyles associated with each
path, and what it takes to be successful in each.