Flash or Substance-Secrets to Wealth Building

March 20, 2012 - PRLog -- So,here we are continuing our march through the book, Stop Acting Rich and Start Living Like a Real Millionaire, written by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley and published in 2009. We are now in Chapter 4 which is titled “Brother, Do You Have the Time?” In this section, we are going to be looking at the choice of watches that most millionaires purchase. Is our watch going to end up being like shoes where millionaires do actually end up spending a lot upfront in order to have a quality product for a long period of time? Or are their top watches going to end up being like a car or a home, to a millionaire, where they actually don’t pay that much for it, but they do make sure they buy quality?

What a lot of people do is they buy their watches or their clothes in order to make them feel happy. So what Dr. Stanley did, and as he writes to us on page 89 of
his book, he did a survey to try to figure out the level of happiness according to people and their brand of watch that they wore. From the millionaires surveyed who wear the following watches, their average level of satisfaction with life, measured on a five point scale was: Rolex = 4.26, Seiko = 4.20 and Timex = 4.23. “The differences are not statistically significant and certainly
not worth the price differential between a Rolex and a Timex. Those who wear a Seiko or Timex are just as happy statistically with their lives overall as those who wear Rolex.” On Page 90, Dr. Stanley writes, “Watches, no matter how much they cost, are better at telling time than making a person happy.”

From the 25 years of both observation and empirical surveys, what has Dr. Stanley
learned about what watches millionaires wear? Here’s what we learn on Page 90:
“Over the years, I have observed that among focus group participants the most
popular watch is Seiko. It is a fine time piece, yet it is moderately priced.
Has Seiko been dethroned by Breitling, Cartier, Movado, Omega, Petite Philippe,
Rolex or Tag Heuer? Certainly, by now the dull Seiko must have moved down in
popularity among America’s socioeconomic winners.”

Then as we skip down to the bottom of Page 90, what we read is: “Seiko remains in first place among America’s affluent. Nearly one in five millionaires wear the Seiko. Do you want people to think that you are a millionaire? Then wear the number one watch brand worn by millionaires: Seiko. Show it to all of your friends and associates. Tell them that you own the ‘millionaire watch’. What if you cannot afford to buy a $200 or $300 Seiko? Well, what about the third most popular brand of watch among millionaires? Go for the $100 Timex. Nearly one in nine of the millionaires surveyed wear the Timex.”

So Seiko is the number one watch. Rolex is the second most popular watch among millionaires, and Timex is number three. However, there is one important note that must be added in regard to the Rolex being the second most popular watch among millionaires. Nearly one half of those surveyed who wore Rolex received it as a gift. In contrast, only 17.1 percent of the Timex wearers received their watch as a gift. So if we take this into consideration and we look at what millionaires are actually purchasing, Seiko and Timex would be the top two watches by a wide margin.

So this was an excellent chapter that continued to go through and talk about how certain people want to buy Rolex’s and Porsches and wear Gucci clothing, and
that most millionaires simply don’t operate that way. In fact, it gives an example of a very highly compensated CEO of an investment management firm who wears a Seiko watch, but gives $5,000 Rolex watches to his salesmen. This chapter ends with the following sentence: “More often, the scrap metal dealer, the bottler, the timberland owner have more wealth and are more productive than Wall Streeters, and these millionaires usually wear Seiko’s, not Rolex’s.”

So as we can see from the surveys and the 25 years of research that Dr. Stanley has done on millionaires, millionaires’ purchases are geared more toward simply
what is best for their financial situation and what is best for them without regard to how it makes them look. They go out and they get the best watch that
they can find, for the money, that is going to last. They do not go out and buy something that is going to make them look better in the eyes of people around
them. What kind of watch do you own?

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