The millionaire who doesn’t look like one

“The Millionaire Next Door,” by Thomas Stanley and William Danko, came out of studying real American millionaires for years. Their finding dismantles the whole picture: most lived in ordinary neighborhoods, drove ordinary cars and bought unbranded clothes.

The book’s key point is that income and wealth are not the same thing. There are professionals with very high salaries and zero net worth, and plumbers with their own business who pile up far more than they let on. Wealth isn’t what comes in: it’s what stays.

Hence its uncomfortable lesson: looking rich and building wealth are usually opposite paths, because they’re paid for with the same money. Every euro spent on looking rich is a euro that stops working toward actually being rich.