by Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko
ISBN: 1589795474
Buy on Amazon
Found in 10 comments on Hacker News
PaulHoule · 2025-01-28 · Original thread
Some people are going to argue that a millionaire isn't really "rich". It's not that hard to become a millionaire if you make a decent income, sock a lot away, and invest in stocks in the 1930-2024 time frame. [1] You'd be pretty old when you make that milestone though.

I think the OP wants to be rich when he's young.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer...

WalterBright · 2023-10-15 · Original thread
> without having to buy that book

You can get the book for $2.74:

https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer...

Unless there is some other reason you don't want to buy it?

btilly · 2023-10-15 · Original thread
This is something that free range parenting advocates have been talking about for a long time. See https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/03/6412565....

For me one of the most compelling data points wasn't even a parenting reference. It was https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer.... First published in the mid-1990s, the chapters on the children of millionaires found that the more support millionaires gave to their children, the worse that those children turned out. Armed with that theory, I've always doubted the wisdom of extreme helicopter parenting that has become popular since.

subsubsub · 2017-09-02 · Original thread
Here are all of the books, without the affiliate links:

- The Millionaire Next Door [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1589795474]

- On Writing Well [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0090RVGW0]

- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1607747308]

- Why Men Love Bitches [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1580627560]

- The Low Down on Going Down [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMX939C]

- Blow Him Away [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WSV866]

gk1 · 2017-04-21 · Original thread
You may like reading The Millionaire Next Door. It explains that the majority of millionaires in the US are like those you describe, and not like the flashy movie ones we see in the media.

Edit: Link for convenience: https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer...

Htsthbjig · 2015-01-24 · Original thread
Criminals and marketers already know how rich you are based on where you live.

Not true.Read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/d...

The fact is that most rich people live without showing off. They enjoy having the freedom to do in their lives what they want but they do not want other people kidnapping their children or blackmailing them. Or just people behaving different with them because of the money.

You know Bill Gates used to park his car like everybody else in MS, until it became impossible for him to park without having 1 or 2 people ask him for money(on the tens of thousand of dollars each time).

Or ask me. I am not Bill Gates, but for people in my environment I have "made it".

Just putting my name in my HN account will significantly change how people react to my comments.

jseliger · 2013-05-12 · Original thread
(Depressing news: in spite of the "economic miracle" that college is supposed to work, but hasn't for a long time, the #1 predictor of whether someone will be wealthy is having wealthy parents.)

That might be "the #1 predictor," but out of how many predictors? What "percentage" is it, if that term is even meaningful here? How do we decide what counts as "wealthy?" Is it income or assets? If income, what happens to people making $300,000 a year but spending it all (I have met these people). What happens to the Millionaires Next Door (http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/d... ; it has done more to shape my thinking about wealth than any other book. One surprising fact: most millionaires don't have extraordinary incomes but do consistently live below their means and save their extra money)?

If having "wealthy" parents is the #1 predictor and accounts for, say, 20% of the likelihood of the next generation's wealth, and, say, education accounts for another 10%, what happens if 40% is noise / randomness? Then noise accounts for twice as much as wealth! Most of the actual peer-reviewed studies I've read about this topic come to the conclusions they do through some dubious data decisions.

I'm not trying to pick a pointless, semantic fight here, but I see a lot of statements that try to compress a complex set of issues and questions into a single metric. As usually happens with this sort of thing, there's also an element of anecdote here: I have seen kids from wealthy families piss it all away and kids from poor families do the opposite. My own grandparents had virtually nothing and didn't speak English.

Personally, I prefer the book Millionaire Next Door. Helped me develop some effective money saving ideas: http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/d...