I can appreciate the sentiment of books like that, however reality isn't that ...fair. For any one "millionaire next door" who made it by being frugal, many mo

I can appreciate the sentiment of books like that, however reality isn't that ...fair. For any one "millionaire next door" who made it by being frugal, many more starve no matter how frugally they live. Many will rise and fall, many more will never even rise above poverty. I'd like to see the statistics on lifetime well-being between frugality and financial risk-taking†. I'll bet the disparity is shallower than we'd like to believe. These discussions always interest me, but I'm disappointed by the amount of puritan dogma that usually gets treated as some kind of natural truth. If being poor taught me anything, it's that there is no dogma you can lean on. † Caveat: the risks being made with a goal to "level-up" (read: escape poverty), rather than blind self-indulgence. Ex—do you max out your credit card (/whatever available leverage) to acquire the tool you need to perform a job in the manner of quality you know can be accomplished with said tool, or do you buy the tool you can "afford" and gradually, over time, work your way up to the "right tool" in this case. In the past, more of the latter may have been possible. These days, I think you're at an even more immense disadvantage by taking that path. Admittedly, my outlook might be too coloured by my own experience. Had I not taken the chances (sometimes enormously painful), I would probably still be trying to squirrel-away $5 bills at a time while working 11 hour warehouse shifts.