The Millionaire Next Door Summary & Analysis

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy is a 1996 book by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko.This book is a compilation of research done by the two authors in the profiles of 'millionaires'. In this case they used the term 'millionaire' to denote U.S. households with net-worths exceeding one million dollars.The authors compare the behavior of those they call UAWs (Under Accumulators of Wealth) and those who are PAWs (Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth). Their findings, that millionaires are disproportionately clustered in middle-class and blue collar neighborhoods and not in more affluent or white-collar communities, came as a surprise to the authors who anticipated the contrary. Stanley and Danko's book explains why, noting that high-income white-collar professions are more likely to devote their income to luxury goods or status items, thus neglecting savings and investments.