Thomas Crouse
Mr. Biel
Economics 6th
11 December 2014
The Millionaire Next Door The first chapter of The Millionaire Next Door revolves heavily around the characteristics of people who are millionaires. Many people believe that people who are bathing in money will act, dress, and show they are. For example,” These people cannot be millionaires! They don’t even look like millionaires, they don’t dress like millionaires, they don’t eat like millionaires, they don’t act like millionaires—they don’t even have millionaire names. Where are the millionaires who look like millionaires?” This was from the vice president of a trust department. This view is seemingly shared by many other people who are very wealthy. Although these views do make the millionaire out to be a greedy scrooge, here are some facts. Most millionaires (about 97%) are homeowners with their house being at the value of $320,000 who lives in their home close to 20+ years. Some millionaires even have a fund to where in case they lose all their current money, they have a back up account that they could live healthy on for close to twelve years, with some saving 15% of their income enabling them to last longer. Eighteen percent of millionaires have Master’s degrees, eight percent law degrees, 6 percent medical degrees, and 6 percent Ph.D.s. About two thirds of these wealthy people work between forty-five and fifty-five hours every week. On average they invest about twenty percent of their household realized income each year. An ideal occupation that these wealthy parents seek for their offspring is to put them into a field that will make a fair amount of money, such as accounting and law. The threshold of being a millionaire starts when a person obtains a million dollars. This comes along with a person’s Net value, which is defined as the current value of ones assets less liabilities. Here in America the average net value of a millionaire is between one million to ten million dollars, with only 3.5 percents of wealthy households being considered wealthy. The reason the book centers on this certain group of people is because the level of wealth being explained is obtainable in one generation, making it very easy for one to attain wealth. What makes a person rich? If someone a man and his wife have a totaled income of $55,000, how do they sustain themselves on that small source of cash? People like these usually keep a tight budget, enabling themselves to invest in things that are
