The Next Millionaire Next Door
Sarah Stanley Fallaw
Copyright 2018
Read: 5-2-2021
My Rating: 2/5
Started out strong, and then went way off the rails.
This was a new read for me and I was very interested to see how things changed between the first book in 1998 and this one in 2018, 20 years later.
In short, all the changes are for the better. On a sad note the original author Thomas Stanley was killed by a drunk driver before this book was finished, and his daughter Sarah Stanley Fallaw finished it. I think "finished" is a misleading term here. I would say she wrote this book and referred to notes from her father. All of this is to the better.
The first part of the book is where she really shines. A clear, concise, and organized layout of the major themes in the book. When I read the original I couldn't put my finger on the issue with the first 50 pages and all I could think was how boring it was. After reading this, the issue was crystal clear. The original came across as a mess of ideas just thrown about.
From the section "Portrait of a Millionaire" where she condenses his list from 22 to 16 items it shows some good editing with each of her items being more clear and distinct. Unfortunately, here is also where the first of many issues start to creep in. Since I have both I can compare them side by side and there are some oddities. Why doesn't the new version give the percentage of spouses that both work? What happened to homeowners, Private Education, or percentage of people that own stock?
Or more importantly, why is there no mention of how things have changed in the last 20 years since the publication of the original? This omission is hard to understand. The very people interested in a book like this, are the kind of people that would be interested in how things have changed over time.
As then after the first third or so, the book goes off the rails into pure Libertarian preachiness. It's not that I disagree with the Libertarian ideas, it's just that now I know enough to see dirty dishes in the corner. All of her "traits of the wealthy" are put into a very "hard work good, if you work hard you will be wealthy" spin. Again and again, cause and effect are conflated with causality.
At one point I think she is going to rise above and starts a paragraph about education with something like "Higher education does not mean you will get ahead, it just gives you a seat at the table to try". But then immediate falls back to the mantra that hard work and dedication is what it takes to get ahead and luck has nothing to do with it.
This eventually reaches its fever dream apex with "How do I categorize millionaires who inherited all or most of their wealth? I do not consider them to be fortunate. Actually, I think of them as being deprived. They were deprived of the great pride and satisfaction derived from building one’s own fortune."
Who would I recommend this to? If you are a large fan of the original, this update fixes lots of issues and is more concise and orgainzed. For everyone else, just move along.