I read and loved the original Millionaire Next Door with its ground breaking (well, at least to me) findings that ordinary Americans can achieve riches using the American way of hard work and a frugal life style (and a bit of luck too!). Finding, for example, that people who drive flashy cars may well be living paycheck to paycheck and from lease payment to lease payment, made me view conspicuous consumption in a new light. It seemed to me that Dr. Stanley was intrigued by his research into wealthy people and by the paradox he found that wealthy people often didn't give the impression that they were wealthy, frequently being particularly frugal, while people who did give the impression of being wealthy (flashy cars etc) often had very little wealth, frequently having negative net worth due to debt.
In the original book, a clear path ahead was laid out to becoming wealthy by spending less that you earn and investing savings in appreciating assets. These findings have been echoed by many others since the original book was published. If you haven't read the original Millionaire Next Door, then I would suggest that you do so, even though some of the data are out of date. I did follow the advice in the original book (and advice in other books) and I am now a multi-millionaire so I can vouch for the validity of the ideas in the original Millionaire Next Door.
Dr. Stanley was tragically killed in an auto accident and his daughter has now undertaken to carry on her fathers work and has published this book.
Sadly this book does little to advance the themes of the original Millionaire Next Door. There have been a number of potentially significant changes since the original book was published including the increasing concentration of wealth into the top few percent, the stagnant or decreasing wages of those without a college degree, and the increasing college debt of younger people. How has all this affected how ordinary working Americans can achieve wealth? Few new ideas are presented. Consequently I am unable to recommend spending the money on it. Perhaps if we follow the advice of the original Millionaire Next Door of being frugal, frugal, frugal then maybe borrow it from you local library and put the money saved in appreciating assets.