Pragmatic Wisdom

Simple lessons for our complicated modern times, drawn from philosophy, religion, and common sense

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Peering Into the Minds of Millionaires

Clifford Jones
Pragmatic Wisdom
Published in
5 min readApr 17, 2025

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Portrait of a senior woman smiling into the camera
Photo by Ravi Patel on Unsplash

When I first read The Millionaire Mind by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley in the early 1990s, I was building a business as an investment advisor serving wealthy families. My clients were relatively normal people who worked hard, saved, invested, and counted on me to help them plan for college educations, retirement, and special investments.

Beyond the lessons I learned helping hundreds of families for over a decade, I learned from people like Thomas Stanley, who took a different, more academic approach. Dr. Stanley was a college professor and researcher.

He didn’t just guess what made people wealthy. He studied them.

Stanley took an academic approach to studying wealth

For over 30 years, Stanley surveyed and interviewed thousands of millionaires. He collected the data, crunched the numbers, and looked for patterns.

What he found flipped the script. Most wealthy people didn’t look the way we expected. They weren’t flashy. They weren’t famous. They didn’t inherit their money. They were teachers, small business owners, engineers, and farmers. They lived in modest homes, drove regular cars, and made smart, simple choices over time.

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Pragmatic Wisdom
Pragmatic Wisdom

Published in Pragmatic Wisdom

Simple lessons for our complicated modern times, drawn from philosophy, religion, and common sense

Clifford Jones
Clifford Jones

Written by Clifford Jones

Author, visual artist, and family man. Discover the art of life; everyone is an artist. Follow me for inspiring stories about clarity, purpose, and prosperity.