Quotes from Thomas J. Stanley

About one-half of the millionaires in America don't live in upscale neighborhoods.

It is unfortunate that some people judge others by their choice in foods, beverages, suits, watches, motor vehicles, and such. To them, superior people have excellent tastes in consumer goods. But it is easier to purchase products that denote superiority than to be actually superior in economic achievement. Allocating time and money in the pursuit of looking superior often has a predictable outcome: inferior economic achievement.

The majority either ignore their critics or use criticism as an inspiration to succeed.

Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all, you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high.

But critics are a necessary part of our social system in America—they screen out those who lack the courage and resolve to take criticisms and triumph in spite of them.

Unfortunately, most Americans think that they are emulating the rich by immediately consuming any upward swing in their cash flow.

America is still the land of opportunity. Over the past thirty years I have consistently found that 80 to 85 percent of millionaires are self-made.

Nearly all (95 percent) of the millionaires we surveyed own stocks; most have 20 percent or more of their wealth in publicly traded stocks.

Nearly all (95 percent) of the millionaires we surveyed own stocks; most have 20 percent or more of their wealth in publicly traded stocks. Yet you would be wrong to assume that these millionaires actively trade their stocks. Most don't follow the ups and downs of the market day by day. Most don't call their stock brokers each morning to ask how the London market did. Most don't trade stocks in response to daily headlines in the financial media. Do

Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires.

What you probably don't know is that your neighbor in the $300,000 house next to yours bought his house only after he became wealthy. You bought yours in anticipation of becoming wealthy. That day may never come. Each

Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by ten. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be. For

Mrs. Rule wants to be free of financial worry before her sixty-fifth birthday. Each time she tabulates, she tells herself she is reducing her fear of never being able to retire in comfort.

Why aren't you as wealthy as you should be? It may be because of the way you operate your household. Would a business, especially a very productive one, ever hire a key employee without doing a serious background check and an in-depth interview? No! Yet most people, even those with high incomes, hire financial advisors after obtaining little or no background information about these "employment candidates." Some

I have always been goal-oriented. I have a clearly defined set of daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, annual goals, and lifetime goals. I even have goals to go to the bathroom. I always tell our young executives that they must have goals.

To many successful, achievement-oriented children of the affluent, accumulating money is not the superordinate goal. Instead, they want to be well educated, to be respected by their peers, and to occupy a high-status position. For

Most people who become millionaires have confidence in their own abilities. They do not spend time worrying about whether or not their parents were wealthy. They do not believe that one must be born wealthy.

Victor wants his children to have a better life. He encourages them to spend many years in college. Victor wants his children to become physicians, lawyers, accountants, executives, and so on. But in so encouraging them, Victor essentially discourages his children from becoming entrepreneurs.

Mr. Denzi can teach us all something about accumulating wealth. Begin earning and investing early in your adult life. That will enable you to outpace the wealth accumulation levels of even the so-called gifted kids from your high school class. Remember, wealth is blind.

Courage can be developed. But it cannot be nurtured in an environment that eliminates all risks, all difficulty, all dangers.

millionaire has told me that true diversity has much to do with controlling one's investments; no one can control the stock market. But you can, for example, control your own business, private investments, and money you lend to private parties. Not at any time during the past thirty years have I found that the typical millionaire had more than 30 percent of his wealth invested in publicly traded stocks. More often it is in the low-to-mid-20-p

Wealth is not the same as income.

Once you're in a high-income bracket, say $100,000 or $200,000 or more, it matters less how much more you make than what you do with what you already have.

After twenty years of studying millionaires across a wide spectrum of industries, we have concluded that the character of the business owner is more important in predicting his level of wealth than the classification of his business. But