Review: The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth

The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth by Thomas J. Stanley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read the original “Millionaire Next Door” when it came out, and I found it one of the most affirming books I’ve read. This book described how I thought about money, and let me know that that way of thinking, as a “prodigious accumulator of wealth,” is how “balance sheet” millionaires (as opposed to the “income statement” millionaires that make a lot but don’t save at a high rate) think and live. Low key, not flashy. I ended up reading all of Dr. Stanley’s books, and I looked forward to this one when I saw what I thought was his update.

But it isn’t. This is a book written by Dr. Stanley’s daughter, who explains in the introduction that her father was killed by a drunk driver years before. His contribution to the book are a number of blog entries written about the topics he enjoyed writing about. Stanley’s daughter arranged the book loosely in the same kind of organization as the first “Millionaire Next Door”, covering about the same topics. But her father’s contributions to the book are disjointed. While interesting, you still know you are reading loosely organized blog posts, sometimes not very related to the rest of the book, and often setting a different tone. I did not like the way this book was written. I found it a bit of a mess in terms of voice of the author and organization. The author seems to drop in the concept of FIRE (representing financial independence and early retirement) in random places, sometimes where it makes sense, sometimes not, seemingly pandering to this audience. The author is also a statistician, gathering data through research and survey, and focused on the kinds of people profiled in this book. While certainly appropriate for this book, the tone I felt was one of self-promotion. I can live with a little of that – this went a bit over what I was comfortable with. I also found the writing just difficult to read, and found it hard to maintain interest.

To the good, I found the update of research on the practices of millionaires marginally interesting, though for the most part the research showed that nothing has changed. I think this book provides an update to the original, but the original still has this one beat based on readability and impact. While I really wanted to (and expected to) like this one, I would recommend the earlier "Millionaire Next Door" for those interested in this topic.


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