JanineWiggins.com
Faith & Family

Millionaire Myths:

We all have are preconceptions about millionaires: they're tax evaders who just inherited their money from rich Aunt Flo, and they hang around the golf course all day with their snobby, elitist friends. So what's the average millionaire really like? Here are seven millionaire myths, and the real facts about the ones who seem to have it all.

1. Millionaires Don't Pay Their Taxes
Fact: It is estimated that millionaires, those in the top 1% of earners, pay about 40 percent of all taxes. Current tax regulation shifts may change these numbers to make this even larger than that -- so think twice before accusing the millionaires in America of not paying taxes.

2. Millionaires Just Inherited Their Money
According to Thomas J. Stanley's book, "The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy," only 20% of millionaires inherited their riches. The other 80% are what you'd call nouveau riche: first-generation millionaires who earned their cash on their own. Many millionaires simply worked, saved, and lived within their means to generate their wealth -- think accountants and managers: regular people going to work every day. Most millionaires didn't get their riches overnight when a rich relative died -- they worked for the money.

3. Millionaires Feel Rich
From the outside looking in, you would think that millionaires feel rich and secure, but that's not so. Most millionaires worry about retirement, their kids' college fund and the mortgage just like the rest of us. Those worries are greatest among new millionaires, the people who just recently acquired their wealth.

4. Millionaires Have High-Paying Jobs
It certainly doesn't hurt to be gainfully employed, but half of all millionaires are self-employed or own a business. It does help to have a college degree, as about 80 percent are college graduates, though only 18% have master's degrees.

5. Millionaires All Drive Fancy Cars
You can get that idea of the rich guy in a fancy German car out of your head when you think of a millionaire: They actually drive a Ford, with the carmaker topping the millionaire preferred car list at 9.4 percent. Cadillacs run second on the millionaires' favorite car list, and Lincolns third according to on moneymaking.com.
Car payments are an investment with little return, which is why someone looking to grow wealth avoids high-priced vehicles in favor of a more economical set of wheels.

6. Millionaires Hang Around the Golf Course All Day
Those millionaires are all retired, with nothing else to do but hang around the golf course, right? Wrong. Only 20 percent of millionaires are retirees, with a full 80 percent still going to work. It's not as glamorous or fun, but millionaires go to work just like you do; it's how the money gets in the bank.

7. Millionaires Are Elitists
We've already established that most millionaires earned their money and not inherited it, still go to work, drive a Ford, and worry about their kids' college expenses. Sounds a lot like the rest of America, right? Millionaires come in all shapes and sizes -- some may be elitists, but most are just regular Joes who successfully managed their money.

The Bottom Line
Maybe you see a pattern here: Today's millionaires are people who live within their means, budget and spend wisely, and focus on financial independence first. These are habits that take discipline, but ones we can all adopt to begin growing wealth. If these facts prove anything, it's that every one of us can strive to become a millionaire -- you can start by driving your old car with pride.

Men tend to store fat on the surface of the body, often on the outside of the stomach area. Most females store fat internally at first. Thousands of areas between muscle cells are filled up first. Many young women feel that some dramatic change has occurred around the age of 30 when they suddenly start showing fat accumulation on the outside of their bodies, while maintaining the same diet and level of exercise. They've actually been storing fat inside for many years. Once the inner areas are filled, women notice a dramatic change on the outside of their thighs or stomachs, often in less than a year.

And one final topic for today. It's on neuroplasticity,
which is the term used to describe your brain's ability to
form new neural connections as you go through different
life experiences.

Neuroplasticity is of special interest to physicians and
scientists that study ways to decrease risk of Alzheimer's
and other forms of dementia.

Of all of the life experiences that affect neuroplasticity
and your ability to ward off dementia, the very latest
studies are indicating that no factor is more powerful in
preventing dementia than BEING SOCIALLY ACTIVE.

More-so than drinking from engaging literature, playing high
level sports, or using your brain to do crosswords or sudoku,
PUTTING YOURSELF IN A WIDE VARIETY OF SITUATIONS THAT
REQUIRE YOU TO INTERACT WITH NEW PEOPLE AND IDEAS appears
to be the single most important way to keep your brain
healthy.

Intuitively, this makes sense, since being social often
requires multiple layers of thinking and communicating, with
surprises around every corner.

And no, updating, liking, and commenting on our facebook
pages doesn't stimulate our brains the way that live,
face-to-face-type social situations do. :)

Interesting stuff, right? If you have family members or
friends who live like hermits but might shake things up if
they had this info in their melons, maybe pass this bit along.

1. Live below your means

Groner lived in a tiny one-bedroom cottage she inherited from a friend. She didn’t own a car and bought her clothes at rummage sales. Mr. Buffett lives in the same Omaha, Neb., home he purchased in 1958 for $31,500.

2. Let it ride

Groner let her investment – three shares of Abbott stock – grow untouched, a strategy of investing often touted by Buffett. While most stocks won’t see the type of returns that Groner saw, “value investing” – which Buffett has come to define as “finding an outstanding company at a sensible price" ­– and reinvesting the dividends will let you take advantage of the power of compound interest.

3. Discretion

Groner was more circumspect than the megabillionaire. While Buffett’s wealth is well known due to the public nature of his position, only Groner’s attorney knew about her vast reserves until she passed away recently, giving her $7 million estate to her alma mater.

As Thomas Stanley and William Danko write in The Millionaire Next Door:

Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and you spend it all, you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.

Maybe no one ever called her that in her first 100 years. Orphaned at 12, taken in by family and friends until she was adopted, Grace Groner worked as a secretary for 43 years. She bought her clothes at rummage sales, never owned a car and lived alone in a one-bedroom cottage. Today, 1,300 Lake Forest (Ill.) College students who will have scholarships, internships and studies abroad because of her call her "Amazing Grace."

When she died in January at age 100, Groner left $7 million to her alma mater, Lake Forest College. She never sold the three shares of Abbott Laboratories stock she bought in 1935 for $180. When she died, after many stock splits and dividends reinvested, her initial investment had grown into a $7 million fortune.

Last week, I listened to a professor sound off about "this generation," meaning his college students. He stereotyped them as addicts to "instant gratification and instant communication." His caricature would be one of his students wolfing down a Big Mac (instant food paid for with instant — plastic — money), text-messaging with the other hand ("im chewing bm now") while steering the car with his knees.

John McPhee, 79-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Princeton professor and author of 25 books, claims he hardly ever has written more than one single-spaced page a day. "If you put an ounce in a bucket every day," he explained, "before you know it, you have a quart."

Aesop's ancient story about the turtle and the hare may be truer in our times than ever. There's still something to be said for eschewing immediate pleasure for taking a longer view of things; something to be said for the discipline and perseverance of the turtle. Or John McPhee. Or Amazing Grace.

From: FirstName LastName [mailto:XXXXchosen1@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 8:45 AM
Cc: recipient list not shown:
Subject: URGENT MESSAGE.

Hello,
How are you doing ? hope all is well with you and family,i am sorry that i didn't inform you about my traveling to England for a seminal. I need your urgent help, I misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money and credit cards are kept. I urgently need a loan of $3,400 from you to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.
I will appreciate whatever you can afford and i'll pay you back as soon as i return.Let me know if you can send the money?so that I can get the details across to you soon.
Your help will be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
FirstName

There's two skills required of a pastor, and only two skills. There are a lot of character qualities that are required, but only two skills. No. 1, he must be able to teach. No. 2, he must manage his household well. Our churches are filled with biblically disqualified pastors.

Titus Chapter 1 makes it clear. If you do not have faithful children, and if your children are accused of rebellion or dissipation, you are disqualified biblically, and you hear that - and I know we hear that and we go, "Oh, brother, that's harsh. Nobody's perfect." Listen to me. The same passage says - and here's what boggles my mind, same passage, same paragraph - must not be addicted to wine.

That says he must not be a drunkard. He must not drink in excess. We say he can't drink at all. Listen to me. I'm not a drinker. I'm not promoting drinking. I've never had a drink, but this is what I want you to hear tonight. Not drinking is easy for me, and it's easy for most of you, 'cause most of you never drink, and you stick your chest out and pop your collar 'cause you don't drink. It means nothing to you unless you've been an alcoholic. It is not hard for you to do.

Discipling your family is a different story, and it amazes me that in the same paragraph we take one of those requirements and raise it and the other one and lower it. You wanna know why our families are in turmoil? 'Cause most of you, when you got hired at the church that you're at right now, they never even met your family.

They heard you preach and voted on you, when the Bible says if you're not discipling
your children in an exemplary fashion, you're not worthy of being called a pastor. From the top down, we are wrong on the family, and we are losing the culture war one family at a time, and we have gotten so pathetic that now there's a euphemism in our culture called a PK.

Why do we use that term as a euphemism? Because pastors' kids who live like they were raised by the devil has almost become the norm. If the church is a corporation, that's completely acceptable, because all you have to do is stand at the top of a machine and make sure that people go in one side of it and out the other and that there's more of 'em going through the machine next year than this year. But, if the
church is a family of families and if God is serious about families being expected and equipped to disciple their children, then the people who stand at the helm had better be exemplary husbands and exemplary fathers. Until we believe that, we'll continue to lose the culture war one family at a time.

O my God, I thank you for this cross you have allowed me to carry. Please give me the strength and faith to persevere so that I may bring glory to your name while withstanding the burden of its weight. Thank you for offering me a share in your suffering. I know that you have always been, are now, and ever will be at my side every step of the way. Thank you also for every "Simon" that you have sent to help me bear this cross. I have prayed so often that this thorn in my flesh would be removed, but I trust that your grace is sufficient. Change my heart's troubled cry of - "How long, O Lord?", into words of trust: "However long, O Lord." May I seek only to do your will and to unite my sufferings with your passion. Help me to not get lost in my own self concerns, but may I find in these trials a way to greater virtue, a call to prayer and a path to trust in you alone. Permit me not to waste my pain, but to make of these struggles a sacrificial offering for others. Lord, when I am weary and I fall, exhausted under the weight of this cross, please give me the courage to press on as you did. Lord Jesus, I embrace with love my cross, as a share in your own. By your grace, may I carry it all the way to the vision of your glory. I abandon myself totally to your will. Christ Jesus, I trust in you. Amen.