> The book “stands today as a sort of promise that everyday people have a shot at accumulating true wealth through habits and not just outsize risk,” wrote Ron Lieber at the New York Times. Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Clements called it “a roadmap for everyday Americans who want to accumulate significant wealth.”
That piece links this one: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS394135834820131016
> When Thomas Stanley and William Danko published their best-selling book in 1996, they made much of the statistic that “80 percent of America’s millionaires are first-generation rich.” The majority, they pointed out, were entrepreneurs, many working in blue-collar professions.
> Anyone could make it big, the two authors all but proclaimed; all you need is frugality and a few tax breaks. Don’t live in a pricey home. Put a cork in the Cabernet, and pop a Coors instead. But most important, open your own business. When it came to the secret sauce for scoring a million bucks, “a very big factor is self-employment,” Stanley said.
> The ensuing years have not been kind to the working-class millionaire.
> A little-noticed marketing report released last month by U.S. Trust contained the disturbing statistic that while almost a third of Baby Boomers worth more than $3 million claimed to have grown up in lower-middle-class homes, the number fell precipitously for younger cohorts, with 18 percent of Gen Xers and a mere 6 percent of such Millennials saying they came from working-class stock.