Samuel Seibert

 

Book Recommendation:

“Stop Acting Rich: …And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire“

by Thomas J. Stanley

 

 

Meta

• Who would benefit from reading this book?

   If you need encouragement about the path you are on making purchases based on value rather than prestige. If you are not on that path and perhaps you have confused success with purchasing rather than achieving.

 

• What could you get out of this book?

   If you have read The Millionaire Next Door , I think the first thing you will get is encouragement if you are following the principles from that book. Second, the research described in the book provides a shopping list of brand that millionaires buy. I found this helpful because I struggle with wanting to buy value but it’s not clear to me when the cost is for branding frills or if I’m buying a product that will last additional years. If found Stanley’s research on the purchasing habits prescriptive.

If you’ve not familiar with his earlier work, you might get an adjusted worldview about how high net worth individuals act with their money.

 

 

• How long to read?

  Give it a week. 

   

 

• Pages & Highlights:

  289 Pages 72 sections highlighted 

 

• Structure: 

  Stanley walks through differences between (high net worth vs. high income) individuals in purchasing habits for items that people typically buy to display their money. The items reviewed are: (Car, Alcohol, Clothing, House).

 

• Thesis: Success is not purchased it is achieved. 

 

 

What is Success?

 

Since I was already understood Stanley’s big point of, most millionaires do not spend and act the way you see mega millionaires spend in pop-media, what I took away was a list of shopping recommendations and a big thought about success.

 

Stanley emphasised multiple times in the book, based on his research, individuals who are purchasing high-end prestige goods above their means are linking success to buying things rather than accomplishing goals.

If you build a successful business, climb the corp. ladder, or invest in a way that you are able to buy a prestige good below your means, great!!!

The individual who does that, knows they are successful because of what they have achieved.

Someone on the other side seeing just the goods and not the hard work buys the goods confusing the link between success and the goods.

This confused link also makes its appearance in a phrase like, “you need to enjoy your success”, typically used to imply that success becomes real once you have bought something.

Stanley encouraged me to press forward in working towards achievement in my vocation and to continue to ignore the prestige goods.

 

The Shopping List

 

Stanley profiles the survey purchasing habits responses from effective wealth builders and talks in detail about the brands they buy. I found it to be a helpful shopping list from financially wise people who keep their eyes looking for the best intersection of cost and value.

 

This is a collection of some items mentioned in the book :

 

• Timex watch

• Suit from JCP

• $10.6 Bottle of Wine

• $20 bottle of Crawford’s Scotch

• $13.5 Haircut (man)

• Toyota Camry

• Dinner $19.59

 

After reading the  book, I need to bring my haircut spending back in I realized. 

I’d also been thinking about getting a watch, now I have a couple of value brands as a starting place.

I found this so helpful because it seems like the details on how to not spend are legion, but when it’s time to spend, what is the very best value? And the best seller on Amazon isn’t necessarily it. 

 

 

Challenge

 

What items do you feel more drawn towards in spending extra for prestige goods?

Tell me about in the comments and we can help encourage each other.

 

 

-SRS
 
 
Disclaimer:
The Amazon links used in this post are affiliate links.

If you click through the Amazon links and buy the book,

it does NOT cost you anything extra but Amazon does send me a tiny % as a thank you.

If you found this helpful, and do decide to get the book,

please purchase it through one of the links here.

Thanks ^_^