Millionaire Women

I'm reading a fascinating book I picked up somewhere a while back, Millionaire Women Next Door : The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen . I'm not in that category yet myself but it's interesting to read and see how many traits I admire and, hopefully, share.

For one thing, most of these women have a pretty frugal lifestyle. They seem to enjoy themselves but they do and buy things because they enjoy them, not to impress anyone. They're also very charitable, giving away a much higher percentage of their income than the national average. Most were raised in nurturing families and encouraged to earn their way, have plans, and be independent. A small subset had very unnurturing parents and families however and still managed to succeed way beyond the norm. Interesting to me was the statistic that over half of them paid their entire way through college! Very few went to private schools, but more than half of them pay for the private schools of their grandchildren.

What's interesting to me is that many of them, despite their successes, seem to set up their children to not be as successful or independent. I know I've read before that it is fairly common for one generation to earn wealth, the 2nd to enjoy it, and the 3rd to lose it.

And the statistic most interesting to this blog, male or female: self-employed business owners have the highest chance of becoming financially independent.