I read “The Millionaire Next Door” a number of years ago. I thought the book was incredibly enlightening, and I fully understood why the book was so popular.

It reaffirmed many of my suspicions about the wealthy, and believe it is a book worthwhile of the time for any person hoping to see success in life.

I read this book again last week after being shared the review from Adam Kirdzik. I think it is helpful to re-read books, and while I try to read about 20 books a year that are new, I often reread other books as well. There are a number of books I’ve probably read over a dozen times.

After I read the book, I was jazzed up, and was doing some ancillary research online. I like to do research on books I read and get further engaged with the content than simply reading what is on the page.

In doing so, I found a semi-sequel called “The Millionaire Mind”. I call it a semi-sequel because its not officially a sequel, but it came out afterwards on the same topic, references the original book, but was by only one of the two researchers who created the first book.

Still excited about the Millionaire Next Door and ready to engage more, I picked up the book and went at it. Its a nice concise book, and I got through the whole thing in a single sitting in a single evening.

I enjoyed the book, and it gets substantially high reviews on amazon and elsewhere. The problem occurred however when I actually started thinking about what I read. Despite several reverences to the Millionaire Next Door, some of the information Stanley presented was in direct conflict with the research in the Millionaire Next Door.

While I love direct research which presents new insights instead of simply regurgitating the same public statistics everyone else is looking at, there seems like there is direct conflict between the two research studies with no explanation or clarity regarding why the conflict exists.

The clearest is that in the first book, the authors suggest that the Millionaire is living in the same neighborhoods as less affluent middle class individuals, and yet the second book suggests that they decided to do their entire survey on only the wealthier neighborhoods where millionaires resided.

Then they drew their conclusions based only on these wealthier neighborhoods that they chose to study. This introduces what we know in statistics as “Selection Bias”. If you choose only red haired millionaires as part of your survey, then all millionaires will be reported as having red hair. This is not representative of the actual market.

Some statistics really seemed concerning, like the idea that about 75% of those surveyed in these neighborhoods actually were millionaires, which completely and utterly conflicts with the statements alluded to in the millionaire next door. In fact the title of the book supports this inconsistency.

Once this single inconsistency is called into question, then we have to question everything that is read. Stanley states things like the average house value and why those wealthy people choose the houses they live in, but earlier in the book fully acknowledges that he only chose certain neighborhoods based on other research showing they had high concentrations of wealthy individuals. Then Stanley’s findings state things such as the value of those houses which he had control in selecting?

If one of the data analysts who works on my team submitted research like this to me, I’d take it as a teaching moment and have them head back to the drawing board on the conclusions they are making, and I’m surprised someone with Stanley’s credentials is falling into this pitfall.

All in all, I found it a good read given how quick it is. Anyone reading it however should be strongly advised that the research is more anecdotal than a real representative sample. It is original research, and it is enlightening in many cases, but when you are reading it keep in mind that it is not fully objective, and the results presented cannot be interpreted as fact.

Just because it isn’t fact doesn’t mean it can’t still over value in understanding the lives and behaviors of the wealthy. Take each stat with a grain of salt, but go ahead and pick the book up off the shelf and give it a quick read.

You can buy it from Amazon below:

After trying for over a month to get through the “12 Rules for Life”, I needed a quick book to get me back on track. The book is a lot shorter, with only 274 pages, and I was extra interested because the author self-published the thing on CreateSpace (Through Amazon).

OK, I’ll give this crazy sucker a shot.

In summary form, I bought “Choose Yourself!” at like 2 AM on 7/11, and had the entire book read by 2 am on 7/12.

Now honestly, I don’t know if I would have had the same reading response had I not just tried to get through the other book. I’m going to be straight forward about a few things: It really wasn’t written that well, I disagree with a lot of James Altucher’s thoughts and beliefs, I think there were parts that were just simply wrong, and there’s a lot of reasons I could see someone saying it wasn’t so hot.. It also could be a bit crude at times and I generally only like “G” rated books, but I’d put this at PG-13.

But on the other hand it was real, refreshing, light hearted. This is the most “personal” writing style I’ve ever experienced. After just one book, I feel like me and the author are friends. I’d say hi to him on the street- I even thought about sending him an email, just because I feel like I know the guy (creepy eh?) Just that factor alone should intrigue some of you enough to read it. It made me think, question my own thoughts, and ultimately I believe it made my life a better place. Any book that improves my life has to get at least a few positive remarks, eh?

If you don’t know James Altucher, the author, he’s a little quirky. His voice is not like a voice you expect to hear reading a storing, and his style is lighthearted and fairly easy to read, although the editing leaves a tiny bit to be desired when a few sections stop you up. In general though its worth the time it takes to read it.

Like many books, James hits a few points that I believe many other experts are pointing out right now such as the idea that the middle class dream is kind of dead, and that if you want to be successful today you have to grab life by the horns and make something of it. I fully agree with this. He then really illustrates the argument that no one is in control of your future but YOU, and the biggest challenge you will face is exactly that- letting someone else control you. I think this is a big deal and something so many of us miss. We expect someone else to bring us happiness and success when the truth is, its in our control- only us. If we aren’t willing to take control of our own lives, then we have no chance of success. We can’t let ourselves be at the mercy of others.

The second thing he does is talks about the importance of the “daily practice”. Honestly the first time or two I read it I thought “oh sooo zen of you- hippie!”. Really, I rolled my eyes and thought of how painful this book was going to be. But by the end I wanted to pat him on the back and say “yes. Yes.”. In a way, this was the perfect book to correct for the “12 rules of life”, not just because he offers 4 rules for life instead, and 4 is easier than 12, but because I think he’s right about the 4 rules. I could mention those 4 “rules” or habits, but then I know what you’d do. 1/2 of you would say “duh” and brush the book off, and the other 4 would say “Hippie” and brush the book off, and I think only James himself can talk about those 4 areas in a way that makes you think “Yes. your right, and I’m going to do it”.

I think he’s right, I think my life is better after reading this book, I think it had an impact on me, and I think I’m going to recommend it as long as you can get past some of the shortcomings.

In this case, I actually urge you to read the paper version and not the audio book. The audiobook oddly doesn’t follow the written book precisely, and its almost more of an audio podcast ABOUT the book than it is the book in audio form.

So if this book is of interest to you, go ahead and check it out on Amazon. Its less than 10 bucks, so what do you have to lose?

Even I sometimes get compelled to try odd books that don’t fit into my normal listening choices, so when I came across “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”, I thought this was an odd book worthy of my time.

I bought the book on April 17th, 2018 after falling on Amazon’s charts as #1 most read, with a high 4 1/2 stars with 3011 reviews. Sounds like a no brainer eh?

Many of you probably already figured out what I think of this book. You see, I’m the type of person that when I pick up a book, I can’t stop reading it. I often read a book in just a couple of days, eager to soak it all in… but despite the great reviews and the seemingly clear love for this book, its now near the end of July and I have only made it half through. I find myself forcing myself to work through it “just because” I bought it, and finally I came to the realization that if I have to poke and prod myself to read the book over the course of months, I should probably just shelve it and move on to something different.

Now I’m not fully critical.. The first day I was ready to hang up the book but I made myself go through it. Then I got to some of the later chapters… like about “Treating Yourself like someone you are responsible for” and “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them” that were somewhat engaging, but then I’d move on to another section that was just bland as bland could be. I enjoy learning about apes or chimpanzees and psychological experiments. I don’t like excessive verbosity and simple concepts expressed as profundity. One of my favorite thoughts was the alpha-conversation, because while its not politically correct, it is something I think about frequently. Take your kids for example- in theory we want our kids to be loving and kind, but we subconsciously know that playing an alpha role will probably improve their lives significantly. So what is a parent to do? That thought process was the most valuable take away I had.

And this is what makes it challenging. I actually LIKE many of the arguments the author makes. I think he’s right at many times. I think his 12 rules are suitable. I think the take-away from the book is good.

But when its all said and done, I’d rather read it as a blog post. Or on quora. or in a summary form. There’s simply no value in reading 409 pages on it. The language is unnecessarily complex, and I get that some people love using every single term in the thesaurus, but in this case there’s no value in it. It felt kind of like when one of my students writes a paper and goes through the whole thing looking for every word they can find where they can right click and select “Thesaurus” to find a more complicated word to use just to make themselves sound smarter. In fact it reads somewhat elitist, like what I expect from those journals no one but other college professors actually read… And therefore I urge you to read it like us professors DO read those journals, focusing on the executive summary or abstract, and picking through the rest as you see fit.

But then again I’m the guy frustrated at the author who spends 20 pages describing the color of the coat a character is wearing. He’s wearing a coat- That is all that matters to me. I don’t care if its airy and grey like the tone of charcoal blowing in the wind.

I did like how the author mixes in the bible- while objectively not supporting it, and adolf hitler. These types of integrations give it some level of power, but there are so many conflicting statements and misrepresentations, I couldn’t tell you what is truth and what isn’t… which is probably part of the author’s intent. I can’t even tell you what this guy believes, and thats tough. I’d rather deal with someone I disagree with, than someone where I can’t figure out where they stand.

But I don’t have time for that. Give me fact, or give me opinion, but don’t give me arbitrary statements presented as fact. I don’t have time for that. Speaking of which, I’d recommend avoiding this book, but go ahead and read the 10 rules in summary form. Its probably worth half an hour of your thought. I can however assure you it is not worth 409 pages of thought. There’s too many other great things you could be doing instead.

So this one is “me vs the world”. Amazon reviews say this thing is amazing. Its a best seller right now, and many people seem to love it.

If I failed to talk you out of it, here’s where you can go to get it yourself!