Beth H. (suburbanalien) reviewed on 7/7/2010 + 63 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

When you search out books containing financial advice, you'll almost always sort them by publication date, because timeliness is important. This book was written in the mid-90's, which was a vastly different financial landscape than now. However, about 70% of the book discusses long-term themes and results of interviews and studies that is not affected by the ups and downs of any particular monetary climate. The other 30% of the advice given you will probably glance over and discard (heavy emphasis on the stock market and other types of investments, and we all know what happened in the late 90's / early 2000's in that world). I can't believe I never read this book before, as many times in the past 10 years or so I've heard it quoted and heard people mention things that were in it. I finally got around to reading it, and I'm glad I did. Even disregarding the out-of-date part, which really does not affect the main themes of the book, it was an interesting read. I have also noticed that financial books mostly center around a particular person or group's "plan", and this one was different, as it was an assemblage of plans by people who had already reached their financial goals, not a road map to how "you can be rich too!" like a lot of the others. It's more of a study and conclusion style book than most other financial advice books. With that in mind, I almost don't classify it as financial advice (although 70% of the book is worth taking to heart!), more of an academic case study using a hundred or so cases to make their point. Parts of it are so academic and dry you won't know what to do with the information - such as the involved charts explaining the ethnic background of millionaires they interviewed, how many millionaires per thousand their country has, home values by state, and some other charts that didn't seem to really help me any (I'm Irish and in South Carolina, and I found out that anecdotally anyway, there's not much hope for me ... but really, does that matter?) but again, that's more of a study than a guide. I do recommend it. By far the most interesting was the parts about family relationships and the success of your children, the things millionaires do that consistently bring about success for their children, and also the many ways children of wealthy people fail. Uncomfortably, I could put names of people I know in many of those spots (failure mostly). You will recognize patterns and learn how to avoid the pitfalls. Even though the book is 15 years old, I recommend it.

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