Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book. Over the years, I’ve professed a ton of admiration for Thomas Stanley and William Danko’s excellent personal finance book The Millionaire Next Door . It was the first book I reviewed on The Simple Dollar and it’s still one I turn to regularly for ideas and inspiration. One of the most interesting themes in The Millionaire Next Door is the idea that you really can’t judge a book by its cover when it comes to personal wealth. In fact, quite often, public displays of affluence disguise a debt-ridden underaccumulator of wealth, while many exceptional accumulators of wealth possess ordinary, often seemingly outdated things. The underaccumulators of wealth focused on appearance, while the exceptional accumulators of wealth focused on how things functioned. Thomas Stanley expands upon that single idea here in Stop Acting Rich . The entire premise of the book is simple: lasting wealth and happiness is rarely found through buying expensive things. Throughout the book, Stanley relies on extensive research of people who have acquired financial security – much the same group as in The Millionaire Next Door – to illustrate and reinforce his points, painting a pretty convincing case of the actual buying habits one should adopt if one is seeking lasting personal wealth. 1 – The Difference Between Being Rich and Acting Rich Stanley opens Stop Acting Rich by defining a group of people he calls “aspirationals” – people who choose to act like the super-rich, but don’t have the financial resources to truly back it up.

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