The Millionaire Next Door

The Millionaire Next Door Prescribed for Pharmacy Students!

While  waiting at the pharmacy in a large supermarket recently, I saw 5 or 6 young pharmacists working very hard filling prescriptions, taking orders, and consulting with customers.  Yes it is hard work, but they are very well paid (nearly twice the median income of an American household).  Typically these pharmacists spent 5 years in a very demanding pharmacy curriculum in college.  In their case college taught them how to make a fine income.    But, as I said in my list of wealth building commandments, college does not teach people how to build enough wealth to become financially independent.   In America, based on my numbers, it is much easier to generate a good to great income than it is to accumulate significant wealth. 

I thought to myself it is likely that in 30 to 40 years these pharmacists will have filled countless numbers of prescriptions and generated millions of dollars each in income.  Yet they may very well end up being members of the income statement affluent, i.e. high income, low net worth. 

However I was encouraged last week when I read a review of The Millionaire Next Door written by the mother of a pharmacy school student.  She was kind in assigning the book a 5 star rating but it was even more rewarding to read:

This book [The Millionaire Next Door] is required reading for my son’s pharmacy school
class. He remarks that it is a very interesting and
informative guide on how to personally handle
finances–something we’re not always taught or know how to do.

4 thoughts on “The Millionaire Next Door Prescribed for Pharmacy Students!”

  1. That’s pretty cool. Hopefully the students will absorb the same level of information from your book that they will need to absorb to become pharmacists. And of course put it in practice.

  2. Pharmacy has been a 6 year college program for at least ten years now.
    Your observation regarding the general wealth-building desires of pharmacists is correct for the majority of pharmacists.

  3. It’s true most pharmacy students graduating these days will probably fall into this trap of being high income low networth individuals. I think a lot of it has to do with the length of school and increased tuition. Most of my peers are graduating with their pharmacy doctorates after 7-8 years of school (no 5 year programs exist) with anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 thousand dollars in debt. It’s sad to hear their contentness with making minimum payments on these loans over the next 25 years while starting mortgages and families. Not my case thankfully.
    -Pharm D candidate 2015 and past reader of the millionaire next door.

  4. I would agree with your statement about many Pharmacists becoming Income statement affluent rather than builders of net worth. I have been a Pharmacist for 17 years now, and I would say that the vast majority of my colleagues are big spenders, and terrible savers. I would speculate that many even live virtually paycheck to paycheck despite making a 120-160k yearly income!
    Any time I get a new intern or new graduate to train, I always make mention of your teachings, as well as that of Dave Ramsey. The fact is that these kids have not been taught how to handle money, and they see “making it big” as having a nice new car and a big house. I try to steer them in the right direction and refer to your books as a guide to what truly wealthy people live like.

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