‘Millionaire’ Sequel Repeats Advice For Attaining Wealth

Thu., March 9, 2000

Marta Salij Detroit Free Press

“The Millionaire Mind” by Thomas J. Stanley (Andrews McMeel, 406 pages, $26.95)

Before you indulge in too many fantasies of making your millions by sitting across from Regis Philbin and ranking Kevin Costner movies in order of release, let us remind you: Real millionaires don’t get that rich from appearing on game shows. Nor do they get rich from playing Lotto or gambling in casinos.

We know because we’ve read “The Millionaire Mind,” the sequel to 1996’s “The Millionaire Next Door,” and if you’ve read that book, you don’t need this one - unless your goal is to make the author, Thomas J. Stanley, a multimillionaire.

This one just adds more tables and anecdotes to the advice the first book made well-known: If you want a net worth of more than $1 million, own a business in a field with little competition but high potential for profit. Borrow money to build your business, but not to buy consumer goods. Live below your means. Be honest. Make time for family and friends.

Still, Stanley has done much to disabuse Americans of some poisonous beliefs about how to get rich.

Millionaires don’t necessarily go to Ivy League universities or enter glamour fields. Instead, they open businesses that clean office buildings and salvage truck parts. And few make their millions playing the stock market. They do invest in the market judiciously, but they invest more often in their own businesses.

They also don’t get rich by paying more than they need to for goods and services, which makes this next advice inevitable. Buying this book for $26.95 is spending too much, when you’ll be just as well-served with a paperback copy of “The Millionaire Next Door” for about $14.

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