Here’s an extraordinary book which tells you how America ’s
millionaires came to be so. Stanley and Denko (both PhDs) in their book The Millionaire Next Door. The Surprising
Secrets of America ’s
Wealthy, demolish many myths or notions about the wealthy. Almost every
line has a nugget of information, based on studies and surveys, that show how
most of them accumulated their wealth the hard way: by working hard and
steadily, minimizing expenditure, and saving and investing assiduously. The
majority are self-made millionaires in their own lifetime, not inheritors of
fortunes. The secret is that they don’t live like millionaires: they live in
ordinary neighborhoods, drive ordinary cars, they maximize their assets
(investments, nest-egg, cumulative capital), not their consumption expenditure,
they are “compulsive” savers and investors.