Thomas J. Stanley : Millionaire Next Door Author; Researcher; Expert

In his acknowledgements, James D. Hornfischer, author of the excellent, New York Times' best selling book, Neptune's Inferno, wrote: . . . three years of research and two of writing . . . . Imagine spending five years of your life producing one book!  Even if you worked only 20 hours per week for, say, 50 weeks a year, that's 5,000 hours total.  By the way, if you like military history, you will likely find the book to be outstanding. The odds of hitting the topseller list are very small.  So why do so many authors spend thousands of hours...

A recent news headline read: "Senate even losing money on haircuts; Critics say $400K deficit for hair salon symbolic as Congress seeks military, domestic program cuts."  Yes, even in these times when families are struggling financially, our government in Washington is providing subsidized haircuts for members of the U.S. Senate. Last year the Senate Hair Care Barbershop (SHCB)/Salon ran a $401,000 deficit providing $20 cuts to senators, staff . . . . Just imagine it, members of Congress, many of whom want to dictate how American business owners operate their enterprises, can't even run a profit making barbershop.  According to my...

Some questions are asked so often that they deserve their own blog.   One such question has to do with career choice framed in the context of "the need to become wealthy."  Early in my teaching career a distinguished senior professor and colleague once gathered all of the young faculty members together.  He told us that in life often just one single decision can be the difference between a stellar career and an average one.  His research findings were absolutely correct.   His wisdom applied to career building in general and also to building wealth.   He became very wealthy via his number one...

I was delighted to learn of one of my reader's (Mr. RK) transition from being a member of the income statement affluent segment to one in the balance sheet affluent population.  Congratulations! The examples (of income statement types) are endless.  My personal example was similar.  Professionally, I'm an engineer.  I'm really good at math and people pay me to solve problems.  Financially, I sucked.  That's a hard thing to have to admit to yourself, especially with my (high) income and profession where 'I know all the answers.' Most engineers are members of the balance sheet affluent segment.  In Stop Acting Rich, I suggested...

Thanks go out to John Doe who pointed out an error in yesterday's blog.  It has been corrected.   But here is some additional insight into the blog.  Mr. and Mrs. Teddy Friend Sr., as pointed out, purchased and consumed 50,370 packages of cigarettes over 46 years.  That translates into 1,007,400 cigarettes in total.  Why did this couple spend so much on cigarettes while they never owned as much as one share of a publicly held corporation?  It is easy to say that neither one of them had any formal education.  But I would counter that even college graduates do not...