“Be wise in accumulating money by spending way below your means. Live as if you are broke. Spend money smartly but sparingly. Buy what you can afford. Not what you see. Put a small amount of money away and overtime it will accumulate to sustain you for a long time while you work your job. Time is money. Money is time. Invest in both wisely and do not keep up with those who cannot afford to live and do not keep up with those who buy things frequently. Spend time thinking out purchases and always save a percentage of your purchases. Live a simple life and do not get into debt. Instead once finished paying off a financial statement put some of that paid money in savings so that you will be financially well off and stable whilst people around you complain that they cannot afford to survive due to high costs in living. Instead smile and walk away knowing that spending below what you get and saving the difference is better than spending above your allowance and being in debt. And live somewhere where you can afford monthly and not somewhere where you cannot afford to buy what you need in life plus to pay off your debt. Live wisely, spend sparingly, save aggressively, and you will be fine. And be satisfied with what you have by thinking about the future and spend less time thinking and complaining about what happened years ago. Save like no one else now and you can be wealthy like no one else later in your family. Financial stability over financial stupidity is better in my eyes than being in debt and asking people to bail you out. If you don’t have the money and don’t save people aren’t going to help you. Be responsible and learn your lesson now in financial stupidity so you can be financial stable one day at a time.” ( )

It was repetitious and I could not relate to it as it seemed to be written for people with high incomes (not me). ( )

I was disappointed by this book. I really enjoyed Thomas Stanley's earlier work "The Millionaire Next Door" and was hoping for some new insight in his latest work. However, "Stop Acting Rich" had nothing new to say. It only repeated what had already been covered in "The Millionaire Next Door". I don't understand why one needs to write a new book if there is no new material to discuss. Stanley's earlier work is far superior to this and I would not waste my time with this book. ( )

I won this through a goodreads giveaway, which makes me reluctant to rip on it, but this book was not good.

I haven't read any other of Thomas J. Stanley's books, but I have a feeling this one doesn't really cover any new territory. Stanley references the 08-09 Financial Crisis currently going on, but not in any meaningful way. The material covered is enough for a good essay, not a book. It took me back to my college days where you have to get to a specific word count, so you keep repeating the same information to fill paragraphs.

His basic message is that there are two ways to get rich - (he uses a football analogy) either with a great offense (high income) or a great defense (save and spend less). As individuals, we often try to appear rich, spending money to impress others, ironically ruining our chances of ever becoming rich.

I didn't have a problem with the material, its just that I kept waiting for the book to tell me something I didn't already know, or wasn't already covered by the preface.

The author did do a little bit of research, but the areas he covered didn't reveal anything deep about the subject. I don't really care what brand of watches people buy or even worse, which brand of vodka. He must have mentioned Grey Goose 50 times. I also could have told him that people who spend too much are going to be unhappier than those who don't live paycheck to paycheck, regardless of how big the paycheck is. The things I wanted to see analyzed were things like single vs married, wife vs husband in spending, Dem vs Rep, Education reached, Ivy League vs state schools, no children vs lots of children etc etc. The only one he mentioned of any interest to me was the way people were raised. Stanley claims that children who were brought up in neighborhoods with neighbors richer than themselves end up to be big spenders. I'm living proof that's not the case. I thought it was a over-emphasized point and wasn't offset by any other data like where in the country people lived, if they were popular or shy, male/female, the era in which they grew up (Hello - this coming generation has ideas about money that have nothing to do with their parents finances.) Also, it seems to me that people who habitually spend more than they make (or as much as they make) tend to be bad with money in general. This was not mentioned at all. What I mean is, over spenders (or the acting rich) buy at the wrong time, sell at a loss, buy stuff that doesn't retain its value, make bad job decisions, use emotion-based decision making and the like. Write a book about that!

I've read other non-fiction books that are set up similarly with charts and analysis - I just found this one dry, boring, and without much effort. I never found the point of why I should care beyond the message: buy only what you need and save the rest of your money. Maybe I'm the wrong target audience. This book is a dud. ( )

This is a decent update of the earlier books. It was published after the housing and stock markets started crashing and periodically touches on that as a warning. (Although it's pretty strange that a 2009 author would consider a cellphone a luxury item like he still does.) This edition probably wouldn't be very helpful by itself as it doesn't go back and repeat the basics in the original volume.

Like the first book, it does get redundant. But that's not such a bad thing in this context. The basic goal is to get people to reconsider their need for particular luxury items and everyone has a different trigger. So by having a chapter each for cars, watches, vodka, wine, etc., then everyone is covered. And you can just skim -- or even skip -- the chapters discussing items you don't overspend on. He does customize each product. You don't see the same argument against each luxury good. I did quibble with how he only looks at the relative performance of luxury cars and completely ignores the value of aesthetics.

His examples are still almost exclusively 50-65 year old men, but part of that is to explain how they got where they are so that younger people today can end up there too. Plenty of people who are wealthy in their 30s and 40s turn around and lose it all, so there are arguments against including them in the case studies. He has also written a book specifically about women and money, which I haven't read. But I wasn't impressed that one of his examples of how women are naturally more frugal than men (?!) was that they spend less on average per pair of shoes. Completely ignoring the angle of how *many* pairs they're buying relative to men.

It also bothered me a little that he regularly referred back to his original book and its success without ever mentioning his co-author on it, who was not involved in this one. ( )