Review of The Millionaire Next Door

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating book! The authors spent a lot of time researching millionaires and studying their lifestyles and habits. The bottom line I gleaned from it is to be frugal, don't live beyond your means. Instead of trying to live a perceived lifestyle of the "rich" invest, be content, and accumulate wealth. A lot of time was spent on emphasizing the benefits of not buying flashy, expensive cars or other expensive "toys".

Millionaires are those that take the time to plan out their financial goals, make good budgets, and invest wisely.

There wasn't a lot of time spent on the habit of giving in this book, which was disappointing. I know that one of my goals of becoming wealthy is to be able to give away and help others with my cash.

Definitely a good book to read and glean insights from.

View all my reviews

So What’s New with the Reagan’s???

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This poor little blog has been sorely neglected for quite a while now. Seems like neither of us has felt particularly inspired lately…. But we’ll try and change that. We both enjoy coming up with posts, but it seems that it has been put on the back burner for a while – now it’s time to just sit down and write!

So what’s new with us lately? Well, first big piece of news: JC’s “Proof of Permanent Residence” paperwork finally came in the mail! WOOHOO! He is all approved as a Permanent Resident in Canada. He just has to leave and then come back in through the border to “officially land” so that border services can do all their official stamping and signing and then he’s good. Then he can finally look for work and we can have dual incomes. Until I go on maternity leave for a year that is… but still, mat leave pay (in Alberta) is 55% of my normal salary for a whole year, which is still pretty awesome.

After much planning and trying to figure out logistics, we finally have a plan in motion to go down to Butte and get the rest of his stuff, and then he can “land” on the way back up. We leave Friday (tonight!!!), drive part of the way, crash at my parent’s place, then get up bright and early Saturday and finish the drive. We’ll then get to spend the next 48 hours madly sorting through boxes and boxes of his stuff, selling his car, doing some necessary banking, packing a U-Haul and a truck, and still finding some time to visit with JC’s parents. It’ll be a whirlwind trip, but it’ll feel so good to finally have all JC’s belongings here in our little duplex in Canada!

We’re very thankful for JC’s parents and their willingness to help with sorting and whatnot, and for allowing us to sleep in their spare room and eat their food. : ) We’re also very thankful that my Dad happened to have next Monday/Tuesday off, and that he and my Mom were more than willing to drive down in their truck and pull the U-Haul back up to Canada, plus let us ride with them. I am also thankful for the big cab on their truck, which will allow all 4 of us to ride fairly comfortably…. This is an especially big deal to the Prego! I like comfort!!! : )

Speaking of prego… I’m 19.5 weeks along now. Just about halfway there!!! So far this has been an easy-peasy pregnancy and for that I am very thankful. Some very slight nausea for the first trimester, but thanks to the awesome-ness that is ginger-ale, it never bothered me much at all. The slight nausea left completely around week 14 and I’ve been feeling awesome since. Having energy now feels so nice, however around 7:00 at night, I definitely crash big time. If I want to accomplish anything after work, I better do it right away or it doesn’t happen cause I’m half-asleep. It’s kind of funny – JC is a major Morning Zombie and I’m now the evening Prego Zombie.

Next Tuesday is ultrasound day! We’re hoping and praying that baby Peanut behaves and cooperates and allows the ultrasound tech to tell us what the gender is. : ) It totally doesn’t matter to me what the baby is... I just want to know!!! I am planner at heart and not knowing the gender is driving me nuts! How can I pick fabric and sew curtains without knowing to make them boy-ish or girl-ish??? How can I wash and fold an entire 3 month wardrobe of baby clothes and put it away in the dresser if I don’t know to go with pink or blue?!?!? The horror!!! : ) I’ve had a feeling the whole time that it’s a girl, but that is just a feeling and nothing more… but we’ll see. I do have a bet going though – if I’m right and it’s a girl, my friend Brittany owes me a cute baby girl outfit. However, if I’m wrong and it’s a boy, then she wins and I owe her a cute outfit for her baby girl. Frankly, either way I win… either I get a cute baby outfit or I get to go shopping for a cute baby outfit… oh darn! : )

We will be sharing what the gender is on facebook and also on here, but we’re not sharing our name choices… the name shall remain a secret from everyone until little Mr or little Miss makes his/her appearance! : ) But I can give you some background:

We’ve had many, many discussions over the past several months on what names we would like for our baby – boy or girl. First we had to decide if we should go with traditional family names or something brand new. While we both can appreciate the cool tradition of naming our baby after a family member, we both agreed that we wanted our baby to have their own name and identity, separate from Grandparents or Aunt or Uncle. Than decision firmly made, it then took a while a finally find a girl and a boy first name we both agreed on, let alone middle names. If I loved a name, JC vetoed it. If JC suggested a name, I made a yucky face. And on and on. Finally one day a month ago I spent an entire lunch time at work pouring through an online list of top 1000 boy and girl names. I came away with my top 5 favourites of each and brought home the list for JC. Luckily, he immediately really liked one name from each list! Phew! Since then we’ve gone around and around on middle names… but we had a bit of a breakthrough in our baby name decision earlier this week. I had a sudden inspiration for girl middle name while at work and when I told JC, we slightly modified it and both loved it. We felt inspired and then changed the boy middle name too. So I think we’re finally 99.9% happy with both names! Sheesh, I thought picking a name would be easier…. : )

Well, that is pretty much it for Reagan news. I promise we’ll be better at posting from now on!