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The Millionaire Mind
by Thomas J. Stanley
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (2000-01-01)
ISBN: 0740703579
EAN: 9780740703577
Dewey Decimal #: 305.5234
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 416 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: 7034-Stanley-R
Condition: Collectible: Like New
Comments: Andrews McMeel, 2000, 1st printing. Fine copy.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
This work targets a population of millionaires who have accumulated substantial wealth and live in ways that openly demonstrate their affluence. Exploring the ideas, beliefs and behaviours that enabled these millionaires to build and maintain their fortunes, Dr Thomas J. Stanley provides a look at America's financial elite and how they got there. For example: what were their school days like? How did they respond to negative criticism? What are the characteristics of the millionaire's spouse? Is religion an important part of their lives? The author uncovers surprising answers, showing readers just what it is that makes the wealthy prosper while others feel dejected or beaten. It delves deep into the minds of America's wealthy and answers universal questions with solid statistical evidence.
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Amazon.com Review
What do you do after you've written the No. 1 bestseller The Millionaire Next Door? Survey 1,371 more millionaires and write The Millionaire Mind. Dr. Stanley's extremely timely tome is a mixture of entertaining elements. It resembles Regis Philbin's hit show (and CD-ROM game) Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, only you have to pose real-life questions, instead of quizzing about trivia. Are you a gambling, divorce-prone, conspicuously consuming "Income-Statement Affluent" Jacuzzi fool soon to be parted from his or her money, or a frugal, loyal, resole your shoes and buy your own groceries type like one of Stanley's "Balance-Sheet Affluent" millionaires? "Cheap dates," millionaires are 4.9 times likelier to play with their grandkids than shop at Brooks Brothers. "If you asked the average American what it takes to be a millionaire," he writes, "they'd probably cite a number of predictable factors: inheritance, luck, stock market investments.... Topping his list would be a high IQ, high SAT scores and gradepoint average, along with attendance at a top college." No way, says Stanley, backing it up with data he compiled with help from the University of Georgia and Harvard geodemographer Jon Robbin. Robbin may wish he'd majored in socializing at L.S.U., instead, because the numbers show the average millionaire had a lowly 2.92 GPA, SAT scores between 1100 and 1190, and teachers who told them they were mediocre students but personable people. "Discipline 101 and Tenacity 102" made them rich. Stanley got straight C's in English and writing, but he had money-minded drive. He urges you to pattern your life according to Yale professor Robert Sternberg's Successful Intelligence, because Stanley's statistics bear out Sternberg's theories on what makes minds succeed--and it ain't IQ. Besides offering insights into millionaires' pinchpenny ways, pleasing quips ("big brain, no bucks"), and 46 statistical charts with catchy titles, Stanley's book booms with human-potential pep talk and bristles with anecdotes--for example, about a bus driver who made $3 million, a doctor (reporting that his training gave him zero people skills) who lost $1.5 million, and a loser scholar in the bottom 10 percent on six GRE tests who grew up to be Martin Luther King Jr. Read it and you'll feel like a million bucks. --Tim Appelo
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Customer Reviews
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There's nothing new in this book
Rating  (1)
Date: 2010-08-09
A really bad book. Here's why
1. The first two chapters pretty much cover everything in the book. The rest of the book is full of examples.
2. Not a very scientific study. For an author with a PhD, this is sad.
3. There's nothing new this book has to offer, that isn't already in his previous book.
4. Some of the examples come across as outrageous. And these are anecdotes - no way of verifying if they are true.
5. The author comes to conclusions too soon, too fast. Lacks in-depth research.
I bought this book for a penny, and thought it was a great deal. There's a reason why people are selling it for next to nothing.
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Lousy Analysis
Rating  (2)
Date: 2010-07-30
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I really liked "The Millionaire Next Door", but this book is a pale imitation.
Here is the central logical flaw: the author offers a number of characteristics of the wealthy. In short, they are: people of integrity, hard working, tenascious, married, not necessarily straight A students, and good at getting along with people, frequently religious, and health conscious.
And all of these characteristics may be frequently found among the wealth. I don't really doubt that.
However, all of these characteristics can also be found among millions of people who are NOT wealthy.
It is almost like saying: the wealthy typically own some socks. Ok. I am sure that is true. And yet it really doesn't help anyone understand the wealthy in a meaningful way since everyone, poor, wealthy or in between probably has some socks!
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I know 4 Millionaires
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-07-16
If you wan't to know what millionaires are like read this book, I know 4 of them and they are exactly like this.
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Decent
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-04-29
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
There are some good points in this book, but I did get annoyed multiple times, and those are the parts that I like to write about and make fun of.
First, it's incredibly repetitive; you can easily grasp the concept by reading the first chapter only.
Second, it feels ethnocentric. He mentions church and Christianity multiple times, often spinning the statistics to make it sound like it is more important than it really is (see James L. Lippard's review). In reality, it seems that millionaires are actually less religious than the rest of the population. Also, he continually recommends church as a place to meet a spouse, but why not yoga or meditation classes (or non-religious places)? Yoga would be a good option for men for multiple reasons, as it fits with his other points (go someplace where the ratio of men/women are in your favor and his point about exercising being important). If this were mentioned only once, I wouldn't have a problem, but if you read the book, it is clearly biased toward not just Western religion, but specifically Christianity. It seemed out of place, considering it is a business book.
Third, his acronyms are annoying. I had to look back to remember what OPM, EOC, and WO meant.
Fourth, his point about the lottery is ridiculous. For example, he says that it takes 10 minutes to buy a lottery ticket worth $1 million, and that time could be spent making $300/hour. He concludes that because millionaires don't play, we shouldn't. There are lots of flaws here:
a) The lottery is often worth more than $1 million. As of right now, the Mega Millions jackpot is worth $224 million... this completely changes the argument.
b) Even if the lottery is worth only $1 million, utility theory tells us that the extra $1 million gained by a decamillionaire provides much less utility than $1 million to the average person, just as $1000 means a lot more to a homeless person than to the rest of the population.
c) Just because millionaires don't play, doesn't mean we shouldn't. They are not millionaires because they don't play the lottery.
d) Who takes 10 minutes to buy a lottery ticket? It takes maybe 1 minute if you're already at a gas station or supermarket.
e) The average person doesn't make $300/hour, so this information is useless.
Last, and related to the lottery example, his "time wasted" principle only appears when it justifies his bad logic. For example, he then goes on to say that clipping coupons is worth it because 5% off all grocery items can equate to $500k saved over a lifetime, but in this case, he conveniently ignores the time principle. Now THAT is something that takes 10 minutes or more. Based on his $200/week for groceries figure, I'd argue 40 minutes a week wasted, which includes the extra time needed to find the particular product in the store, search and find the coupons, cut the coupons, organize them, and the extra time it takes cashiers to scan all of them. Now let's use his logic. 40 minutes/week x $300/hr x 52 weeks/yr x 50 yrs = more than $500k. Oops! There goes the argument.
That being said, I'll agree that there are some good points, but again... just read the first chapter. That sums it all up, and then you won't have to read all the annoying parts that I just talked about. :)
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Disappointing
Rating (2)
Date: 2010-03-27
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
The Millionaire Next Door was well-written and enlightening. This book is a rehash of that book with constant repetitions of the same few conclusions the author has reached. Even at half its length, it would be overlong.
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