I drive a 2006 Chrysler 300C, the one with the Hemi engine. I bought it in January 2007 – not just at the end of the model year, but deep into the next one. Got one heck of a deal, and invested the savings. I still drive it, because I have no reason not to: it’s a terrific car, it runs like a top, and – most important – because I don’t care what anyone else thinks about what I drive.

I learned to think and act that way forevermore in 1996, when – along with just about everyone else in our industry, it seemed – I read a new book called The Millionaire Next Door by Dr. Tom Stanley, who was killed by a reckless driver on February 28 of this year.

TMNS changed my life. Tom’s (and Bill Danko’s) groundbreaking research into the modesty, frugality and sheer, cussed inner-directedness of the self-made millionaire was just what I needed, at a moment when my career had been vaulted to a new level, with earnings to match.

He had me at hello: literally from page one, where Tom had written, “Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend” – very much not a widely-held perception in those roaring ‘90s! But then he went on to prove it, in page after page of delightful stories laced with conclusive (but never obtrusive) statistics.

As noted, I well and truly got my bell rung by the chapter “You Aren’t What You Drive.” But the real heart-stopper for me was the finding that the men who were Tom’s PAWs – Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth – were overwhelmingly married to their first wives, who were even more frugal than they were. On page 37 of the edition I own – I’m looking right at it now – he quoted a PAW who lamented, “I can’t get my wife to spend any money!” Dear reader, until the very moment I read those words, I was the only person whom I’d ever heard say that! I’ve always had to drag my beautiful bride around to stores and make her buy things for herself.

Tom Stanley and I crossed paths on the speaking circuit any number of times in the years immediately after his TMNS (and my The Excellent Investment Advisor) came out, and I always found him to be as refreshingly down-to-earth and unassuming as the modest millionaires he wrote about. The fact is that we had quite a lot in common: two poor kids from the outer boroughs of New York City, born just a few months apart; both having startlingly rewarding careers doing something good and valuable in the world; both inexpressibly blessed to have gotten to work with a daughter (Tom’s Sarah and he were working on multiple projects as well as two new books when he died).

If you’ve never read The Millionaire Next Door – and especially if you have, but not for a while – put it at the top of your list. It cannot fail to galvanize your thinking about the kind of prospective clients you really want, and about what a joy it is to work with them. Indeed, it may even focus you more clearly on the kind of person you want to be – as I’m quite sure it did me.

I’ll be going out to dinner in a little while with my first and only wife, driving my 2006 Chrysler – and mourning Dr. Tom Stanley, as should we all.

© 2015 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Nick reviews current books, articles and research findings in the “Resources” feature of his monthly newsletter, Nick Murray Interactive. To download the most recent sample issue, visit www.nickmurray.com, and click on “Newsletter.”