Think like a millionaire

Image courtesy of Hachette Book Group.

Book Review
Title: "The Richest Man in Town: The Twelve Commandments of Wealth"
Author: W. Randall Jones
Publisher: Business Plus, 2009; 256 pages; $25.99 list ($17.15 on amazon.com)

By now, most personal finance book aficionados are familiar with the Lifestyles of the Rich and Not-Usually-Famous genre exemplified by "The Millionaire Next Door." These titles tend to be equal parts counterintuitive voyeurism ("75 percent of millionaires drive a bucket and hand-wash their own undies) and advice on how to get where the books' subjects are. ("If you drive a bucket and hand-wash your own undies, you, too can be on the path to millions!")

"The Richest Man in Town," written by Worth Magazine founder W. Randall Jones, sticks to the formula of providing interesting tidbits about the lives of his subjects and their path to wealth, and spinning the common threads into a fabric of wealth-building advice. However, there is something inherently compelling about the approach of the book that flips the formulaic genre on its ear.

As opposed to the ostensible thesis of "The Millionaire Next Door" -- i.e., half the folks in town are millionaires, unbeknownst to you, and if you live frugally like they do, you can be, too -- "The Richest Man In Town" shoots straight for the top, and peeks into the lifestyles and paths to wealth of, well, the richest individual in 100 different cities across America.

In "The Richest Man in Town," Jones (refreshingly, to me) does not purport to be offering a recipe of hard and fast investing rules or concrete money management tips. Rather, his "Twelve Commandments of Wealth" are general, aspirational and primarily entrepreneurial standards spun from memorable, inspirational tales told to Jones by his various subjects, whom he abbreviates affectionately as RMITs.

Also, unlike its neighbors on the bookstore shelf, "The Richest Man in Town" features many stories of folks you've heard of -- Stephen King, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin and Carl Icahn, among others -- and folks whose enterprises you've heard of and, likely, patronize -- Leslie Wexner (founder of the company that owns Victoria's Secret and Henri Bendel), Fred DeLuca (founder of Subway) and Pleasant Rowland (the woman who created the American Girl dolls).

So, Jones shoots straight for the uber-overachievers among America's rich, and focuses on what he calls self-made and "self-sufficiently" rich -- focusing on individuals with liquid asset-heavy portfolios and excluding those whose wealth was not a result of their own efforts (e.g., heirs). "The poorest RMIT is $100 million rich and the richest is Bill Gates -- worth more than $50 billion." ...CONTINUED

All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.