⭐ The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley
| Full Title | The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko |
| Year Published | 1998 |
| Date Read | October 08, 2016 |
| Rating | 1/5 stars |
What I’ve noticed about books that are described as ‘first in their category’ is that many times they contain disappointingly small amounts of information. Why might that be?
In this case, I’d been looking at a few financial independence blogs and reddit threads, and saw this book mentioned a handful of times. I was aware of it previously as one of the first that examined people who became financially ‘free’ in their lives; “rich people don’t buy new cars, just read TMND.” What surprised me about this book was the utter lack of new information. After getting 25% in, I had to put it down; you could glean any of this information from a half-decent reddit wiki or introductory blog post on FI. So why do people call it so great?
My theory is that since originally topics like these were uncovering unexplored, fertile ground, readers were so amazed with the revelations that there was enough ‘newness’ to excuse, or possibly even warrant, such long-winded
explanations. But when a category gets more popular and the basic knowledge becomes widespread, returning to the exploratory piece makes it seem dated and unoriginal. The reason it gets recommended is because those in the community doing the recommending did really perceive it as new when it was first released, and remember that experience of reading the book when recommending it to others. Unfortunately, as someone who likely already knows some basics, you won’t have this same experience.
In summary, the book presents very little new information in a haphazard and difficult-to-read format of throwing tons of absurdly specific data at you (like answering, “What percentage of Irish-Americans save at least 2x the normal amount of money according to our made-up benchmark?”). It provides less value than you could get from spending 20 minutes reading the reddit financial independence FAQ. Definitely skip this
book.