Reddit mentions of The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Rich

part 2/2

Relationships:

• You deserve to be in stable, happy, fulfilling relationships with your family, friends, partners, and coworkers. A large part of this is tied into self-esteem & what you think you deserve & what you're willing to accept, so a big part of it is figuring out where your line in the sand is. Everyone is free to do whatever they want, but there's a big difference between tolerating situations, getting by, and being content, versus actually being truly happy & having great, fulfilling relationships.
  
• It's important to realize that relationships aren't 50/50, they're 100%/100%. They are a tremendous amount of work, whether it's a romantic relationship with a partner or a familial relationship with a sibling or parent or a relationship with friends, and the road is often rocky, which is why you have to give a lot & deal with a lot during the course of all relationships. A lot of relationships die not because they're not good, but simply because of a lack of effort on both ends.
  
• A really good book is "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. The basic idea is that there are only a handful of ways people typically feel loved, and identifying your primary method of input can help you figure out what you want from a relationship, and also figure out how to make your partner feel loved. The five "languages" are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Do you remember the girl in high school who always needed flowers or chocolates or teddy bears to feel like she was in a loving relationship? That's not shallow, that's just her love language.
  
• If you don't know what does it for you & then if you're not getting what you like in your relationship, then you're not going to feel very fulfilled on a regular basis, and likewise, neither is your partner. So it's not just about drawing a line in the sand about what is & isn't acceptable in a relationship, but also about what you want to have in your life & what you need to give to others to help them feel loved.
  
• I really like the love-language concept because instead of just "I need to try harder in my relationships", it gives you a clear path forward, i.e. figure out what you want & figure out what those in your lives want & how best to give it to them on a regular basis. Like, my wife really likes the "time spent" one, so anytime I do something like plan a date, she loves it because that's simply how she feels loved, so my effort on that is a way to express my love for her in a way that actually makes her feel loved, rather than what I think will make her feel loved in my mind, but doesn't actually do it in reality, haha!
  
  Finances:
  
  
• The first thing to do is to pick a number, i.e. figure out how much you want to make every year, based on the cost-of-living in your area & the lifestyle you want to lead. You can literally pick this out thanks to sites like Indeed & Glassdoor, which provide realistic pricing tiers for intro, well-versed, and guru-level experience in different job categories. So the payscales aren't really a question mark anymore...you can literally figure out how much you want to make, research jobs that pay what you want & also match your interests, get training for them, and get to work!
  
• The second thing to do is to work out a personal financial system that manages your money for you. You will only accomplish what you set out to achieve & then work on persistently. You already have a solid principle saved up, but managing finances on a day to day basis successful always benefits from having a well-defined set of personal rules for handling things, which includes figuring out how much you want to make at your job & then getting educated in that field & pursuing jobs persistently until you get what you want, as well as having a solid financial system in place for how you deal with each aspect of your financial life - fixed expenses, variable expenses, debt management, retirement savings, living below your means, and so on.
  
• The first book I'd recommend is "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" by T. Harv Eker, which is a little cheesy, but contains the critical component of changing your mindset about how you think, interface, and deal with money, which is the first place that people get goofed up - having a system comes later; learning how to mentally approach finances is a really huge first step that a lot of financial books miss, because they don't address the psychology behind why we do what we do & how we think.
  
• The second book I'd recommend is "The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy Paperback" by Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko. This is a data-driven book, so it's not the most exciting read, but it illustrates a lot of actual, factual information & statistics about wealth management. I'd also recommend reading up on FIRE. Again, you only accomplish the things that you work on, so the more good stuff you can invite into your life through research, selection, and effort, the better your long-term results can be!
  
  Habits:
  
  
• "Atomic Habits" by James Clear is a really fantastic book about how habits operate. I'd highly recommend picking up the audiobook & listening to his story about how he got injured & used tiny habit changes to make huge impacts on his life. Lots of really fantastic concepts in this book!
  
• Just to throw an idea out, consider adopting a "personal productivity system" or "PPS", which is simply a set of methods for how to force yourself to do stuff you want to & have to do. Everyone has a PPS, and sometimes they're not so useful because you're stuck with no clear path forward in your life. Having a strong PPS enables you to solve problems & work on things effectively & efficiently. One of the tools I use in my own PPS is the "3P Approach" mentioned earlier, where I break things down into the premise, parts, and procedures required to accomplish what I have to or want to do, rather than just walking around confused with no idea how to really proceed & no idea what I really want, exactly.
  
  Anyway, don't get overwhelmed by all of this - this isn't all stuff you have to do overnight, instantly, in one big shot. It's like high school - you went there for years, chipped away on things, and eventually grew up & moved on. Improving your life isn't just reading a motivational poster or feeling happy for a day, it's a lifestyle change, and it's going to take some time.
  
  Just don't be afraid of the big amount of work that it looks like on the surface, because remember, we can only ever really do one thing at a time, so all of the stuff listed above was, for me, the result of decades worth of working on self-improvement to get better results & be happier in my life, because those were really big struggles for me for a long time! The good news is that it gets better, and your results are directly correlated to your decisions & your efforts, so simply by deciding that you want better & then chipping away on it, you'll start to do better & feel better over time!

You beat me to it, and I'm sure someone will mention
The Millionaire Next Door so here is a link.