Executive Summary
The Millionaire Next Door became a NY Times Bestseller in 1996 by revealing how little we understand about millionaires, and the behaviors that help people to become millionaires. While the traditional view was that wealth comes from an inheritance, or becoming an executive in a major corporation, and that you can identify millionaires by their high-end suits, luxury cars, and large houses in affluent neighborhoods, in reality a huge swath of millionaires become such simply by living frugal lives of cheap suits, practical cars, and modest homes, which allows them to convert a substantial portion of their income into wealth over time.
Of course, having a healthy income, and willingness to take calculated risks for success, do clearly help in the wealth-building process. But the key point was that not only is affluence not necessarily correlated to outward signs of wealth, but in reality some of the greatest wealth-building behaviors come from not flaunting that wealth and being “socially indifferent” to trying to keep up with the Joneses.
Now, a company called DataPoints – founded by Sarah Stanley Fallaw, the daughter of The Millionaire Next Door author Thomas Stanley (and herself trained as an industrial psychologist) – is turning The Millionaire-Next-Door insights about wealth building behaviors into a series of assessment tools that financial advisors can use.
For advisors who are trying to expand their practices to work with “younger” wealth accumulator clients, the DataPoints assessment tools provide a unique research-based approach to actually understand which prospects are likely to be successful wealth accumulators, and which prospects should be avoided because the assessment reveals in advance they will be especially difficult to work with. And for new and existing clients, a rigorous wealth building assessment tool as a part of the discovery process can help the advisor understand where to focus their advice and efforts to help the client actually change their financial behaviors for the better.
In other words, while as financial advisors we increasingly find ourselves talking about the “behavioral” value of financial planning advice, DataPoints is actually creating tools that help to measure what a client’s wealth-building behaviors actually are. Which on the one hand makes it easier to be effective with clients – as we can get a better understanding upfront of the client’s financial tendencies – but also makes it possible to actually measure the success of the advisor-client relationship by the extent to which the advisor actually helps their client (measurably) change their financial behaviors and attitudes!
Building Wealth And The Millionaire Next Door Book
Stanley and Danko were market researchers who had initially sought – as marketers do – to better understand the tendencies, habits, attitudes, and other psychographics of the affluent (a segment of the marketplace that companies have long wanted to better understand). In fact, Stanley had already published several books on working with the affluent, including “Marketing To The Affluent,” “Selling To The Affluent,” and “Networking with the Affluent”, based on nearly a decade of prior research he had conducted through his Affluent Marketing Institute.
Yet Stanley and Danko aimed to go even deeper into understanding the millionaire mindset. Accordingly, they launched a new comprehensive survey of nearly 1,000 affluent individuals in the early 1990s, and conducted interviews with another 500 affluent individuals via focus groups. And the end result of the study revealed that the typical idea of what a millionaire looks like – living in an affluent neighborhood, driving a luxury car, and exhibiting other similar indicators of wealth – is not actually a fair characterization of a huge segment of the affluent.
Instead, it turned out that nearly one-half of millionaires don’t live in upscale neighborhoods. Nor did they commonly inherit, as (at the time) the researchers found that 80% of America’s millionaires are first-generation “rich”. A wealthy individual was simply someone who was able to earn a solid income, and exhibited certain “wealth-building” behavioral traits along the way, that made it especially likely they would be able to convert that current income into long-term wealth.
Specifically, the researchers found that “Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth” (PAWs) tended to have 7 core traits:
- They lived well below their means
- They allocated their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conducive to building wealth
- They believed that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status
- Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care
- Their adult children were economically self-sufficient
- They were proficient in targeting market opportunities (i.e., finding/creating wealth-building business opportunities)
- They chose the “right” occupation (one with good income-earning potential)
Of particular note at the time was the recognition of the first three points – that wealth builders tended to be frugal (i.e., live well below their means, and save 20%+ of their income every year), tended not to pursue social status symbols (i.e., are more likely to wear inexpensive suits and jewelry and drive non-luxury American-made cars), and that to the extent they did spend they tended to allocate their dollars differently (e.g., buying cars for the long-run instead of leasing them, owning homes instead of renting them). In other words, being a millionaire wasn’t about inheriting wealth or just earning the big bucks; millionaires were also a sea of frugal tightwads living in modest homes in non-affluent neighborhoods (the very antithesis of the “traditional” view of a millionaire at the time!).
In addition, though, the research did find that millionaires were more likely to proactively create opportunities for themselves – at the time, self-employed people made up less than 20% of workers in America, but accounted for 2/3rds of millionaires (either by being entrepreneurs, or self-employed professionals like doctors or accountants). And affluent accumulators did tend to have pursued above-average-income job opportunities in the first place (though not necessarily of the high-visibility variety, as the millionaires profiled included not only doctors and lawyers, but also welding contractors, paving contractors, and even owners of mobile-home parks).
To some extent, it’s perhaps not “surprising” that those who manage to find above-average job opportunities ended out creating above-average wealth. But the key recognition of the Millionaire Next Door was that above-average income alone does not necessarily lead to above-average wealth, because not everyone translates their income to wealth in the same way (or at all)! Instead, it’s the other behaviors – about being able to live within their means (even or especially when their income could afford a much higher standard of living than what they were currently enjoying), allocate dollars to things that appreciate rather than depreciate, and their “social indifference” to keeping up with the Joneses, that resulted in accumulating wealth and reaching millionaire status.
Which, again, was somewhat “surprising”, because it meant millionaires didn’t look like what most people expected millionaires to look like. They often didn’t live in millionaire-looking homes, drive millionaire-looking cars, or buy millionaire-looking jewelry. Which was actually the point. Because those were the behaviors that led them to not spend as much, and be able to accumulate wealth in the first place!
DataPoints And The Further Study Of Building Wealth
After the success of The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley went on to conduct further research on the behaviors and psychographics of the affluent, further extending the quantitative and qualitative data on wealth building under the Affluent Market Institute (AMI), and publishing “The Millionaire Mind,” “Millionaire Women Next Door,” and “Stop Acting Rich” to help consumers understand how to better adopt the behaviors and mindset of those who successfully accumulated wealth.
And to better put the research to use in application, in 2013 Thomas Stanley’s daughter Sarah Stanley Fallaw (a researcher in industrial psychology with a Ph.D. in Applied Psychology herself, who had joined AMI in 2009 as its Director of Research) founded DataPoints to begin the process of adapting the research into a series of assessment tools that can be used to evaluate someone’s wealth-building potential.
In the years since, the DataPoints researchers have found that beyond someone’s circumstantial factors that lead to wealth building (i.e., having grown up more financially independent, and having a high-income job), there are a series of distinct and consistent factors that are predictive of wealth building. They are:
- Frugality (one’s willingness and ability to spend below their means);
- Responsibility (to what extent does the person believe they have control over their financial [and other] outcomes, versus whether they are externally determined);
- Confidence (does the person have the confidence to believe they’re capable of improving their situation);
- Planning and Monitoring (can you set goals and effectively monitor your progress towards achieving them)
- Focus (do you have the discipline to avoid distractions and stay on track to your goals); and
- Social Indifference (do you feel a need to spend to display social status, or are you socially indifferent to the spending habits of others)
Combined together, these Wealth Factors help to reveal who is more or less likely to actually convert their income into wealth, which is relevant not only to individuals who may want to improve their situation (and need to understand what behaviors to change), but also to financial services firms who may want to understand who is a “good” potential wealth-building client in the first place.
After all, with the growing shift from focusing on baby boomers (who have already accumulated wealth), to Gen X and Gen Y clients (who are still in the wealth-building phase), it’s especially important to understand whether someone already has the right wealth factors in place to be able to accumulate, or whether there are key behavioral areas that the advisor will need to work and focus on in order to help the client achieve financial success.
Datapoints Engage And Advise Assessment Tools
As currently constructed, DataPoints provides a series of 4 “Engage” and 3 “Advise” modules to better understand an individual’s financial attitudes and habits.
All of the DataPoints tools have been psychometrically tested to affirm their validity and realibility, and the questions that DataPoints asks uses a “biodata” approach, where instead of asking people about their personality (e.g., “are you frugal” or “do you like to spend money on social status”) they’re instead asked about their “personal biography” and to reflect on their past behaviors to understand their traits (e.g., “I live well below my means” [agree or disagree] or “Most of the clothes I buy for myself are:" [trendy / practical / etc]).
Engage Assessments For Prospects
The DataPoints “Engage” questionnaires are a series of relatively short screening-style assessments, containing 10-13 questions and taking no more than about 2-3 minutes to complete, that prospective clients can complete. The four Engage assessments evaluate a prospect’s “Spending Patterns”, “Career Fit”, “Wealth-Building” potential, and their tendency to engage in their own “Financial Planning” and self-monitoring behavior.
The brief questionnaires can be sent as a link directly to a prospect, or even embedded on an advisor’s website, as an opportunity to both add immediate value for a prospect (who might be curious to know how their spending behaviors or wealth building potential stack up), and for an advisor who wants further insight into the client’s potential issues and concerns. The advisor might offer one or several Engage assessments for prospects to try out, depending on which one(s) are a good fit for that advisor’s particular type of target clientele
Advise Assessments For Clients
As contrasted with the Engage assessments, the Advise modules are longer (45 – 54 questions) and meant to go deeper (more likely with new or existing clients).
The first is a “Building Wealth” assessment, which directly measures the six wealth-building factors identified in DataPoints’ research (building on Stanley’s original Millionaire Next Door) behavioral habits. The second is a “Financial Perspectives” assessment, which looks deeper at a client’s financial attitudes, for instance their tendencies towards altruism, budgeting, status, spending, and (financial) independence. And the third is an “Investor Profile”, intended to be DataPoints’ take on financial risk tolerance and the client’s propensity to take financial risks (given that Stanley’s original research clearly showed that Millionaire wealth accumulators are significantly more likely to be willing to take at least calculated risks)
To some extent, the idea that “people who are frugal and don’t try to Keep Up With The Joneses” may seem intuitively obvious (especially since The Millionaire Next Door book itself came out, and also from the experiences that most financial advisors have witnessed first-hand with their clients). Yet until now, financial advisors have lacked a systematic process to make this assessment with clients (and prospects).
But with standardized assessments, it becomes possible to really understand how clients’ wealth-building behaviors compare to one another… and to potentially explore issues that may otherwise be difficult to talk about.
Sample Advise Assessment: Building Wealth
For instance, in putting myself through the Building Wealth assessment profile, it turns out that I have a very high level of confidence and personal responsibility – for better or worse, I believe that I am in control of my own destiny, and am confident in my ability to find positive financial outcomes. In addition, I am rather frugal (having long lived on far less than I make), and I have never been one to try to dress in the latest fashion trends. (Thus the Kitces Blue Shirt phenomenon!)
On the other hand, the assessment tool also correctly identified that I struggle tremendously with Focus (a lifelong battle with ADHD), and that I am not actually very strong in planning and monitoring for my own future (thus why I rely heavily on third-party tools like Mint.com to make it easy for me by automating the necessary tracking!).
Notably, though, my “Wealth Potential” score is still strong, despite my moderate score in planning and low Focus score… in part because the DataPoints research has shown that one’s wealth-building capabilities are not merely the additive sum of each factor. Instead, the interrelationships are more complex.
For instance, the DataPoints research notes that for more affluent individuals, an inability to focus may not be as critical, as financial management tasks can be outsourced (via professionals like financial planners, or now increasingly via technology as well). And DataPoints has also found that ironically, clients who are high in Responsibility are more likely to build wealth but also can actually be more problematic in bear markets, as their desire to exert control over their situation (which helps them create wealth) also makes it very difficult for them to sit by and do nothing in the midst of market turmoil (and instead feel a strong need to “do something”, given their tendencies, even when they shouldn’t!).
Financial Planning Applications Of Financial Behavior Assessment Tools
Ultimately, financial behavior assessment tools like the ones that DataPoints has created appear to have two primary applications to aid in the financial planning process.
Screening Prospects With Wealth Building Potential
The first is to use DataPoints’ assessment tools as a form of screening process to identify clients who are likely to be wealth accumulators in the first place.
For those advisors who are trying to work with younger clientele who don’t meet the firm’s current minimums – or in particular, are trying to identify young accumulator prospects who may not be profitable clients now but are likely to be in the future – the Building Wealth assessment tool, or even the shorter Wealth Potential engagement tool, can help give the advisor a better understanding of the client’s long-term potential. Or viewed another way, the Building Wealth assessment tools can help reveal which clients are most likely to be effective at implementing the financial advisor’s advice and recommended strategies – as opposed to those more “challenging” clients, who seem to struggle to follow through on ever implementing the advice that’s given to them
In this context, the advisor might, as a part of their initial “Get To Know You” process, send a DataPoints Building Wealth assessment to the prospective client, with a statement to the effect of “This assessment is meant to help you understand a little more about your own financial habits and tendencies. Please complete it before our first meeting, so that we can have a better understanding of whether or how we can best help you.” Or alternatively, the advisor can actually embed the DataPoints Engage asssesments directly into his/her website, and simply make it available for prospects to take themselves (and then the advisor can decide to follow-up on those who show a strong wealth-building potential, to see if they’re interested in working together).
On the other hand, though, the relevance of the DataPoints assessment tool is not merely about identifying young accumulator clients who have a good potential to actually accumulate. It would also be relevant for older and already-affluent clients, as their scores in areas like “Frugality” and “Social Indifference” can provide a valuable indicator of whether their natural tendencies are to sustain their accumulated wealth, or to dissipate it away.
And the assessment may be especially helpful for those who have had “Sudden Money” events, whether an inheritance, divorce (for the spouse who receives the settlement!), business liquidity event, or other surprise windfall… where the client did not necessarily establish their wealth through the usual accumulation-style means, and as a result it’s not always clear whether – once they achieve their wealth – they are likely to sustain it or not. A DataPoints assessment can help provide that information up front, to better understand where the likely challenges will be with the client.
And notably, DataPoints’ own research has found that not all Wealth Factors types are equally likely to engage a financial advisor in the first place. For instance, their research has found that those who already have a high propensity to accumulate wealth are the least likely to hire an investment manager (as they likely feel the Confidence and Responsibility to manage it themselves). Those who have the least propensity to accumulate wealth are the most likely to seek out a financial planner (ostensibly in recognizing that they need help, though obviously not a good fit for advisors using an AUM model!), and those who have “medium” propensity (recognizing some capabilities, but recognizing the need for some hep as well) who are the least likely to eschew a financial planner and use a robo-advisor instead! On the other hand, all the groups are equally likely to leverage personal financial management technology to help them on their path (and drawing an important distinction between the desire for technology to track finances, and the need for a financial planner about what to do about their finances!)!
Profiling Clients For Behavioral Finance Coaching Needs
With prospects, it’s necessary to keep the assessment brief, and thus why DataPoints makes its short Engage assessments available. On the other hand, the DataPoints “Advise” tools – which are the longer and more in-depth assessments – could actually be used as a part of the advisor’s data-gathering process once the individual has already agreed to become a client, to truly understand what the client’s natural financial behaviors are, and how best to work with the client.
For instance, those who are low in Focus may need regular guidance and nudges to stay focused on their long-term goals. Those who struggle with “Planning & Monitoring” may be especially interested in the advisor’s regular updates (while those who already score high in that area probably have their own systems for tracking, and won’t care about the advisor’s quarterly reports at all!). Clients with a low social indifference will need constant reminders to focus on their own goals and not what others are doing. Those with low confidence may struggle to implement the advisor’s recommendations, because they aren’t confident in their ability to succeed, while those with high confidence and high responsibility may have trouble staying the course in a bear market and want to intervene (because they feel the situation is in their control, even if it’s not).
The process may be especially helpful for working with couples as well, where the reality is that both spouses do not necessarily align on all of these wealth building behaviors and financial attitudes. In fact, major gaps in areas like social indifference and frugality between a husband and wife may help to explain a lot of financially-related marital strife. While gaps in areas like confidence and responsibility will tend to be a guide about which spouse is likely to be the financial decision-maker in the household, and which tends to be more hands-off in the process.
A New Way To Measure Advisor Behavioral Impact “Success”?
A natural extension of how the DataPoints research might be applied is the recognition that not only do the assessments help provide an indicator of who has the behavioral tendencies and attitudes to accumulate wealth, but they can also be used to track the positive impact of the financial advisor over time, and become an alternative way to measure an advisor’s “success” and quality!
Accordingly, DataPoints has introduced a new “Performance Plan” module that monitors how the client’s financial attitudes and wealth factors change over time in working with the advisor, providing both the advisor and client guidance on particular areas to focus on for improvement, and then tracking that progress (by sending the client periodic assessment updates).
In this context, not only can the advisor avoid being judged based on whether a portfolio happens to hit benchmark returns or not, but instead moves their value proposition away from market returns and goal progress altogether (recognizing that often setbacks to goals are beyond the advisor’s control anyway, from a sudden health event, to a natural disaster, to a job loss or market decline). The focus of the advisor-client relationship instead becomes, as many advisors already espouse, a focus on “behavioral coaching”, with results that can be tracked and measured (via DataPoints), and a recognition that if the right behaviors and attitudes are in place that are conducive to wealth-building, the wealth itself is likely to come eventually (even if the path remains a bit bumpy in the short run).
Ironically, though, some advisors may be wary of going so far as to measure client’s behavioral attitudes and change over time, recognizing that in the end, we are financial planners, and not trained psychologists. And once you begin tracking a client’s financial behaviors and attitudes, you’re truly accountable – as the advisor – to helping to change them!
Nonetheless, with the rise of behavioral finance, the commoditization of financial services products, and an increasing focus on the intersection of technical financial advice and the empathy, coaching, and behavioral-change skills necessary to help clients actually implement the advice, arguably the DataPoints Performance Plan assessment provides a potential framework for whole new ways that advisors can measure their “success” and “effectiveness” in the future.
At a minimum, though, in a world where a person’s income and outward signs of affluent aren’t necessarily very good indicators of their wealth, nor their propensity to accumulate or sustain the wealth they have, DataPoints provides a new way to deepen the discovery process… whether with a new client to really understand their financial attitudes and behaviors… or to be used as a way to engage prospects and identify those whom the financial advisor is most likely able to help and work with constructively in the first place!
In the meantime, for advisors who want to check it out themselves, the DataPoints Engage and Advise assessment are available now. The Advise module (which includes the comprehensive Building Wealth assessment) is available for $59/month for up to 100 clients, the Engage lead-generation assessments costs $109/month, or a “Complete” package is available for $139/month which includes both. Further information is available on the DataPoints website, and pricing details are found here.
So what do you think? Would a solution like DataPoints be helpful to better understand which clients may be more or less effective at building wealth? Would you use DataPoints as a screening tool to understand which clients will be easiest to work with, or as an ongoing advisory tool to understand which behaviors your clients need help with? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
My firm has been using Data Points for over a year and it has been absolutely fantastic. It has allowed me to learn more about my clients and help facilitate stronger, deeper conversations with them. I am thankful that I gave Data Points a shot, they have been a key resource for my business (and they have excellent customer service which I have found to be rare with software these days).
My firm has also been using the assessment for about a year. The assessments help reduce the time it takes to develop a better understanding of a client’s views on money. The assessments also lead to some interesting discussions to help determine if there is a mutually good fit between prospective clients and myself.
Thanks for sharing Michael!
My firm WorthyNest has used DataPoints for a year. I love this tool and ask all prospective clients to take the Building Wealth assessment before our initial meeting. The engage “Wealth Potential” link is prominently displayed on my homepage and has been beneficial as well.
Awesome, thanks for sharing Debbie!
Do you find that a lot of prospects are coming to take the Wealth Potential questionnaire even before they ever contact and talk to you?
– Michael
Michael, it’s been a mixed bag. I had one prospect take a quick “engage” test earlier this year and later become a client. I’ve had other prospects take the test and never respond to my follow-up email … perhaps they are other advisors looking to try out the engage test themselves.
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