"The 1996 book The Millionaire Next Door examined the financial habits of millionaires. A key finding was that the path to millionaire status didn’t require a high-paying job."The finding is not even close. That book had laughable bad research. P. 249-250 showed its "research". It used a non random sample of 385 people (!!!). That would mean there is no way you could have any confidence in any of its conclusions.Not saying that its perhaps true that "millionaire status didn’t require a high-paying job." Just that you can't call it a "finding" with the book's shoddy F- grade research.I have read that an estimated 45% of wealth in America is inherited. I would be deeply skeptical of that statement too. It would be extremely difficult to do any kind of rigorous study on the rich.That would require a huge random sample to obtain enough rich people to obtain statistically valid results. Which would be massively expensive.
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"The 1996 book The Millionaire Next Door examined the financial habits of millionaires. A key finding was that the path to millionaire status didn’t require a high-paying job." The finding is not even close. That book had laughable bad research. P. 249-250 showed its "research". It used a non random sample of 385 people (!!!). That would mean there is no way you could have any confidence in any of its conclusions. Not saying that its perhaps true that "millionaire status didn’t require a high-paying job." Just that you can't call it a "finding" with the book's shoddy F- grade research. I have read that an estimated 45% of wealth in America is inherited. I would be deeply skeptical of that statement too. It would be extremely difficult to do any kind of rigorous study on the rich. That would require a huge random sample to obtain enough rich people to obtain statistically valid results. Which would be massively expensive.
Post: Endowment Lessons
Link to comment from February 21, 2026