Caviar and vintage Budweiser
As part of their research, the authors of The Millionaire Next Door interviewed a group of decamillionaires—people with a net worth of $10 million or more. To make the decamillionaires at home, they rented a Manhattan penthouse and put on a spread of four pates and three caviars along with expensive vintage wines.
The first decamillionaire to arrive turned down the spread and asked for a Budweiser if he was paying, or any brand of beer if it was free. All the others did pretty much the same when they arrived. The Ph.D.s had to eat the fancy spread themselves afterward, with the help of some bank trust officers from down the penthouse hall.
One of the main findings in The Millionaire Next Door is that it is far easier and cheaper to impersonate a millionaire than it is to become one—and for most people, impersonation is enough.
How do you impersonate a millionaire? Texans have an expression for it: “All hat and no cattle.”
If you got it, flaunt it. And if you ain’t got it, fake it. Look like those get-rich-quick gurus on TV: expensive resort-area homes (DelDotto on the beach in Hawaii), yachts (Carleton Sheets), expensive new cars (The Milins), expensive clothes and watches, expensive vacations. Will you be rubbing elbows with real millionaires when you are arranging to lease your new Mercedes? Nope. Real millionaires generally do not lease cars, and they generally do not drive expensive foreign cars or new cars of any origin. They buy used cars.