Are You A Potential Millionaire Or A Marketer's Dream Consumer?

I just finished a book by Thomas J. Stanley entitled Stop Acting Rich: ...And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire this week. For those unfamiliar with this author, he wrote the best-selling book, The Millionaire Next Door. In Stop Acting Rich, he highlighted several distinctions between the truly rich and those who are faking the funk. For instance, did you know that the number 1 car among millionaires is a Toyota? If you are like me, you were thinking it was a luxury car like a Lexus, Mercedes Benz, or BMW, right? Nope! And surprisingly there were a host of other misconceptions I held about the wealthy. This book really challenged a lot of my understandings of what it would be like to be a millionaire.


But how did we develop these understandings? Where did these misconceptions come from? How were they shaped? Marketers! The geniuses of advertising and marketing brainwashed us. They suggested that one product was the preferred choice of the wealthy and we believed them…hook, line, and sinker.  They told us what cars they drove. They told us what liquor they preferred. They took us on tours of their $1,000,000 plus homes. They showed us the luxury vacations that the rich enjoyed.  They told us that the 5-star restaurant was where they dined.  They defined how we view the rich.

Who are we? We are roughly 80% of the US population, give or take 5% or so. We’re the people who wish to one day to be millionaires. We’re the ones who are looking forward to the spending power our millions will allow us. We are the ones who the marketers are eager to become rich so that we can give our millions to the companies that employ them.

Millionaires are actually a frugal bunch overall according to Stanley. On one end of the millionaire continuum are those who are flashy, but the far majority are on the other end. Those millionaires could be living in $150,000 house right down the street from you right now. They play outstanding defense to keep more of their money. They are guided by a primary goal of financial independence.  They don’t buy into marketers’ fact manipulations about products, services, and preferences of the rich. 

Nope. That would be us supporting these companies by following the old cliché “fake it until you make it” while all along not really having a wealth building strategy to actually achieve the millionaire level of wealth. Go figure.