Middle-class Millionaire

[savingmama]

I just read the book “The Middle-Class Millionaire” by Russ Prince and Lewis Schiff. It reminded me of the discussion we had on here a couple months ago about “What makes up the middle class.”

In this book they talked about those “middle class millionaires” who have a networth between 1 and 10 million and still consider themselves middle class. The study talked about how this particular group still considers themselves middle class because their views and beliefs are more similar to the general middle class and also how they how they are self made millionaires (vs. people in the upper class who mostly are given their money). I was wondering if anyone else had heard of this book and what they thought of it.

[Sporkman]

No, but I've read "The Millionaire Next Door", which is a similar sort of book. Interesting read, talks about how they live amongst us, has basic values like we do, tend to be small business owners, etc.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I read it. And honestly most of those people still work jobs because they have to. It's very easy to lose it all. I wouldn't consider anyone rich with a $1m in the bank. Well maybe if they are debt free and it's $1m in stocks minimally, but $1m with home equity? Nah.

[savingmama]

Originally Posted by LivingAlmostLarge

I read it. And honestly most of those people still work jobs because they have to. It's very easy to lose it all. I wouldn't consider anyone rich with a $1m in the bank. Well maybe if they are debt free and it's $1m in stocks minimally, but $1m with home equity? Nah.

Yeah, the book talked about how this group was worried about financial security just as much as the middle class. They felt they needed on average 28 million net worth before they were financially secure.

When I read the book it made me think about how our social classes are more about views and beliefs than necessarily our incomes and net worths. It seems like however we grew up: lower, middle, upper class, that most likely the class we will always associate with. I grew up middle class/ lower middle class. My husband is currently in residency and will soon be a practicing doctor, making a decent salary. Now even if he came up with some patent and made a million plus a year and we had lots of money in the bank/ investments, I see myself as still having my views and beliefs more similar to those of the middle class because that is how I was raised.
It just made me question how easily do people change social classes in their lifetime. Even people that win the lottery and have millions, it would be very difficult to be apart of an upperclass society. They haven't been raised with the same beliefs, customs as the upperclass, so they wouldn't really fit in. How easy do you all think it is to truly change social class?