By Jill Fraser

Thomas J. Stanley Ph.D. knows more than most about millionaires. He spent the last 30-plus years studying them and during the process became one himself, several times over.

He has interviewed thousands of members of this exclusive club, penned six best selling books on the subject and discussed it on every conceivable media outlet, including twice on the Oprah Winfrey show.

“Develop a millionaire’s mindset if you want to acquire those six highly coveted zeros” is the line Stanley, a doctor in business administration and a former professor of marketing at Georgia State University, keeps repeating to would-be club members.

His fascination with the affluent began as a young child living in the Bronx across the park from a suburb that boasted street after street of opulent old mansions of the rich and famous.

“I was mesmerized by them and I remember thinking, these people are different,” he told FatCat.

One Halloween he and a group of his nine-year old mates ventured across the park for Trick or Treat.

“We picked one of the biggest houses we could find, a massive hacienda style home with a large wall around it and a big iron gate. There were no lights on but I walked through the huge yard to the front door and started banging on this big knocker.

“Eventually the door opened and standing in front of me was the distinguished British actor, James Mason,” recalls Stanley.

Mason didn’t have any candy so he emptied handfuls of silver coins into the young Trick or Treater’s pockets.

“That was my first experience of affluence,” says Stanley.

His marketing degree incorporated a thesis on the wealthy, his first job was a study into wealth accumulation for the prestigious Bankers Trust Corporation and in the late 1990s he wrote his first book, The Millionaire Next Door, described by one reviewer as one of the most important books published on the subject of personal finance.

Common to the majority of millionaires, says Stanley is the desire to offset their productivity and drive to attain wealth with a balanced lifestyle.

He discovered that most millionaires live in fine homes in well-established, older neighbourhoods, enjoy life, are not workaholics, spend a lot of time with family (a recent Merrill Lynch survey showed that 80-85% of millionaires are married) and friends, borrow very little money and in most cases became wealthy before the age of 45.