saying it doesnt make it true..
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pf_article_110333.html
7 myths about millionaires:
2. Millionaires Just Inherited Their Money
According to Thomas J. Stanley's book, "The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy," only 20% of millionaires inherited their riches. The other 80% are what you'd call nouveau riche: first-generation millionaires who earned their cash on their own. Many millionaires simply worked, saved, and lived within their means to generate their wealth -- think accountants and managers: regular people going to work every day. Most millionaires didn't get their riches overnight when a rich relative died -- they worked for the money.
Well I guess I'd better pack it in. You're right and I'm....hahahaha I can't even fake that.
I ask for proof and you give me a piece of history from '96 based on interviews with professed 'self-made' men with 'how to' tips.
No, the correct answer, is we don't really know the answer definitively because the matter is more complex than the puff piece you dished up. The 80/20 split is nonsense. For Christ's sake, Mitt Romney thinks he's a 'self made' man. "Just ask your parents for seed money to start that new business.."
Sen. Ron Johnson was poor but he married the Boss's daughter and became a millionaire by virtue of that happy circumstance. Is he selfmade in the sense of productive effort? I guess so if that means wrangling to bang the boss's daughter and marry her.
The point is, there is no definitive answer. I include inheritance and living inheritance which is nothing more than the old seed money advice of Mitt Romney, i.e., help from your family. If a guy inherits a business from his dad valued at half a million and it grows to net him a million, is he truly self made? I don't know.
Here's what I look at. Here's a hint, it has to do with economic mobility (which is damn near dead in the US) which sort of puts paid any notion of self-made millionaires on any sort of meaningful scale--Bill Gates or Bust, nepotism, governmental incentives, contribution of labor, intelligence and luck. Ed Wolff does some good work in this area.
A recent Barclay's survey found that
only 21% of millionaire respondents attributed their new wealth to the sale of their enterprise or profits. What the hell do you make of that? It's certainly at odds with the 80/20 survey.
Anyways, what I take from this is that the
opportunity to create wealth is the defining factor and that is what is so hard to pin down. There's no doubt that money makes money and coming from money creates whole lot of opportunity, better schools, insider connections / information, better gov. expenditures aiding upper class mobility into the realm of the rich (to the tune of $746 billion of federal assistance (takes many forms)).
So that's my answer. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that if you're born with rich parents, Horatio Alger is not your story.