If you like nice stuff — and hey, who doesn’t — it follows that more cash equals more. I mean, what’s wrong with buying the luxury dream car if you can afford it, right?

Thomas Stanley says that’s an assumption about upward mobility that leads us astray.

“People want to conform. You get out of college, and you have this idea of what people do when they have money, and it’s wrong.”

Understand that it’s not the things we’re really talking about here, but rather the priorities.

For example, back when he first did the research for Middle Class Millionaire, Stanley was stunned to see that, of a quarter of a million homes surveyed, more than half of the millionaires didn’t own a second home. Why? “Owning a second home is fashion, I realized,” he says. “They don’t want to be tied to the upkeep and having to spend every weekend there. They’d much rather put the money aside and rent a place for a vacation.”

“You just think the wealthy are buying things like a second home and a luxury car.”

All right, but there’s no dearth of wealthy people who do own many homes, cars, etc., so what gives?

If they don’t end up like Ed McMahon, for example …

… it’s probably a good bet that they’re pretty good planners, Stanley says. And their plans tend to focus on achieving goals like freedom and fun.

“Even those households that are in the top half of the top one percent of income, you don’t get people who say they can’t enjoy themselves unless they spend $400 on theater tickets. They enjoy themselves in the presence of other people by having them over for dinner, playing poker, things like that.”

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