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Small correction, 85% of America's millionaires consider themselves to be self-made millionaires. As this comment section has shown, smart and wealthy people ha
by mikeyouse 12y ago
Small correction, 85% of America's millionaires consider themselves to be self-made millionaires. As this comment section has shown, smart and wealthy people have plenty of delusion to that point.
The mobility charts don't lie, if you take all of the kids born to households in the bottom 40% of income -- fewer than 10% of those kids will ever earn top quintile salaries. Keep in mind how low of a bar that really is, in 2010, the cutoff line for upper 20% of single-earner incomes was at $42,000.
- WalterBright 12y agoSalary isn't the same as wealth. I know millionaires who have never earned more than a lower middle class salary, and the book I mentioned showed how this was done.
- mikeyouse 12y agoNo offense, but the book you mentioned is a case study in selection and survivorship bias. They interviewed 350 millionaires (out of how many millions that live in the US?) and prescribed spending and living habits based on those millionaires' responses. What happened to all of the people who invested, worked, and lived exactly like the millionaires who never accumulated a million dollars? Or bet on the wrong housing market and went bankrupt? Spend less money, save more money -- all fine advice, but the average $40k/year individual can't possibly become "a millionaire" in any sense of the real value of a million dollars. Ignoring inflation then showing $1,000,001 in a bank account in 40 years doesn't really count. As a general rule, pop culture personal finance books exist to make the authors wealthy -- not the readers.