Schiff defines “middle-class millionaires” as those with a net worth of between $1 million and $10 million who earned their wealth rather than inherited it. They are people, the author says, who live a fundamentally middle-class life, yet are exerting powerful influence on society.
…
Folks who are succeeding in America are knowledge workers, in financial services or creative services, where their brain is their No. 1 asset.
…
They on average work 70 hours a week and take fewer vacation days…They observe information in a more savvy way and tap into the flow of information capital, and they know how to leverage this enlightened self-interest.
…
These are people who have had an average of three career setbacks, and three quarters of the group we surveyed said that each time, they’ve come back in a different way.
…
They work hard every day because they want their kids to grow up in a financially stable environment and have opportunities. Middle-class millionaires are people working on behalf of their families. – Who Are the ‘Middle-Class Millionaires’?, US News and World Report, May 2, 2008
Peter Drucker predicted long ago that the future belonged to the knowledge workers. The reason is that while most people are trained in a skill, they lack knowledge of how to apply that skill, which involves awareness of context and market as well as the skill itself. Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had other skills, but their ultimate skill was as leaders, where marketing, product design and technology converge.
I think the rise of these middle class millionaires — called by the less politically-correct “the upper middle class” — have been around and acting like this for a long time. They are goal-oriented people in a world of people oriented toward entertainment, social status, religious iconography, and who knows what else. The ones I knew when growing up worked always, even when they were relaxing. They liked getting things done and had re-programmed their brains to enjoy the labor required to get there.
The cost of being middle class instead of what the Europeans call “working class” is rising. As our labor costs drop, the cost of quality labor goes up as it gets rarer, and consequently so do the rewards for being quality labor. This in turn drives inflation faster and requires you to have more cash in order to escape the vicious cycle, and so on.
Out of my twelve readers, I think one of you is independently wealthy, one of you made himself independently wealthy, and the rest of us are working toward this goal, so I post it for your enjoyment. Articles like this never go out of style, because they give us insight into the people who succeed not by the long shots but by the slow and steady, which is more likely to return value and so is probably a better path than something with a low statistical average of success (rock stardom, criminal kingpin, best-selling author, nuclear terrorist).