Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth: The 8 Secrets of How 5,000 Ordinary Americans Became Successful Investors--and How You Can Too

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Several years ago, after helpful nudges from Oprah and Rush Limbaugh, Thomas Stanley and William Danko found themselves sitting atop the best-seller charts with The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy (1996), in which they profiled the surprisingly frugal lifestyles and spending habits of America's "hidden" millionaires. Now Edelman hopes to garner the same attention with this survey of 5,000 of his clients who are "predominately middle-class" but successful investors. Edelman, a financial planner and popular talk-show host, is already the author of The New Rules of Money: 88 Strategies for Financial Success Today (1998) and The Truth about Money: "Because Money Doesn't Come with Instructions" (1996). He uncovers eight basic "secrets" that, in several cases, run counter to prevailing financial wisdom. Don't pay down your mortgage! Don't diversify your retirement plan contributions! After explaining each strategy, Edelman lets his survey respondents speak "in their own words." David Rouse --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Get as much of a mortgage as you can for as long as you can. Using someone else's money is always better than using your own." -- Michael R Burke, defense analyst

"I don't spend any time tuning 'into the media about personal finance. If you're investing for the long term, what's the point of studying the daily Dow reports?" -- Bill Erbach, clergyman

"Save on a regular basis, even if it's $10 a week, and invest it into a good mutual fund. But just save something. Get, good financial advice from a planner; ignore your friends' advice." -- Jody Pearce, housewife

"The best thing to do is be aggressive with the money you're not going to use for a lot of years. If I don't need it for twenty years, it goes in stocks." -- Duncan Campbell, graphic artist --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (December 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062736868
• ISBN-13: 978-0062736864
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #202,918 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

145 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Big Improvement over The Millionaire Next Door, October 8, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth: The 8 Secrets of How 5,000 Ordinary Americans Became Successful Investors--and How You Can Too (Hardcover)

Mr. Edelman used survey techniques in this book to find the common characteristics of how his firm's 5000+ clients acquired substantial real estate and financial assets with middle and upper-middle class incomes. The author modestly gives the clients the credit for their success, rather than his firm or himself. The lessons are distilled into 8 key points (which the author explains so you understand the benefits were created), and are fleshed out with quotes from clients about those points. The conclusions are at odds with many popular books on financial planning.

The book is simple to read, to understand, and to apply.

For the most part these people do not own their own businesses and do not work for Internet start-ups. Rather they average 57 in age, $120,000 in annual income, have $500,000 in savings, and own a home worth $256,000 with a mortgage of $142,000.

These people carry a long-term home mortgage, even though they could pay off their mortgage. The benefits are that they are more liquid financialy should job-related adversity strike, get more tax deductions, and have more funds to invest.

They invest their retirement accounts into a diversified set of stocks. That asset allocation decision gives them the ability to compound money rapidly over time. They make frequent, small investments (usually through monthly savings) that give them the benefit of dollar cost averaging -- which gives you more stock when the prices are lower. They rarely trade.

They have helpful mental habits, too. They focus on a goal of how fast they want their money to accumulate, rather than comparing their results to market indices. This allows them to avoid taking on risks or getting emotionally confused. Further, they spend little time thinking about their investments. They track costs to trim them, rather than doing elaborate budgeting. Many use Quicken to help them.

There are several other valuable sections. One is on how to avoid making mistakes, which identifies stalls that can cause losses from harmful emotional states like fear, greed, overconfidence, lack of confidence, regret, loss aversion, and fixation. I especially liked the section on the biggest mistakes that people had made in their lives (not starting investments soon enough, making a bad investment, getting bad financial or tax advice, and taking on too much credit card debt). There is also good material on what people did right.

The book's main weakness is that it does not give any advice on how to create greater wealth through entrepreneurial activities. Most of the wealthy people I know are entrepreneurs, not people who saved money while earning normal incomes working for someone else. With a slightly different methodology, Mr. Edelman could have helped his readers with that information, as well. I graded the book down one star for missing this important area. See Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Cash Flow Quadrant if you doubt the importance of this point.

After you finish reading this book, ask yourself how the future will probably be different from the past so that you should adjust what you do to create a more favorable risk-reward ratio. Copying what worked well in the past is seldom a perfect recipe for future prosperity.

81 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money, April 26, 2000

By	Konrad Kern (OFallon, MO United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth: The 8 Secrets of How 5,000 Ordinary Americans Became Successful Investors--and How You Can Too (Hardcover)

First off I'd like to say that the information in this book,8 so called secrets,is valuable. Mr. Edelman explains it in an easy to understand way. The reason I say not to waste your money is this. Each secret has a chapter with an average length of 11.5 pages. So basically the good information is in about 90 some pages. The rest of the book is filled with the authors' clients telling you how they do the things that the book says. In my opinion this should be a 100 page book at the most. It took me 2 hours to get all the valuable information out of this book(it is good information). I think the author expanded most of his energy trying to sell you his other books by the numerous footnotes telling you to by his other books. He was trying to be humorous most of the time with the footnotes but it became annoying.

My recommendation is..The library

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I got a copy for everyone in my family., December 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth: The 8 Secrets of How 5,000 Ordinary Americans Became Successful Investors--and How You Can Too (Hardcover)

If you've ever benefited from the advice of your elders; be it a parent, grandparent, or mentor - and realized the true value of that advice - order this book NOW! This book goes past what all the experts are always telling you to do with your money and looks are what 5,000 ordinary people are really doing to succeed.

Each section begins by going into detail about something each of these successful people share in common. I loved the stories about life from real people called 'In their own words' at the end of each section with. The stories are about the smart, foolish, happy or sad experience in their financial lives. Some of the stories are very moving... don't be surprised if you get choked up or shed a tear while reading. The special 'mind over money' section about psychological/emotional investing was very insightful.

This book packs all the motivation you'll ever need! It's the sledgehammer of common sense that we all need to get hit with to get us going.