TwosWrite things down

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley

by Parker · 226 things on Twos

The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy
Introduction
Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all, you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.
It is seldom luck or inheritance or advanced degrees or even intelligence that enables people to amass fortunes. Wealth is more often the result of a lifestyle of hard work, perseverance, planning, and, most of all, self-discipline.
There has never been more personal wealth in America than there is today (over $22 trillion in 1996). Yet most Americans are not wealthy. Nearly one-half of our wealth is owned by 3.5 percent of our house- holds.
Only a minority of Americans have even the most conventional types of financial assets. Only about 15 percent of American house- holds have a money market deposit account; 22 percent, a certificate of deposit; 4.2 percent, a money market fund; 3.4 percent, corporate or municipal bonds; fewer than 25 percent, stocks and mutual funds; 8.4 percent, rental property; 18.1 percent, U.S. Savings Bonds; and 23 percent, IRA or KEOGH accounts. But 65 percent of the households have equity in their own home, and more than 85 percent own one or more motor vehicles. Cars tend to depreciate rapidly. Financial assets tend to appreciate.
The millionaires we discuss in this book are financially independent. They could maintain their current lifestyle for years and years without earning even one month's pay.
Usually the wealthy individual is a business- man who has lived in the same town for all of his adult life. This per- son owns a small factory, a chain of stores, or a service company. He has married once and remains married. He lives next door to people with a fraction of his wealth. He is a compulsive saver and investor. And he has made his money on his own. Eighty percent ofAmerica's millionaires are first-generation rich.
Affluent people typically follow a lifestyle conducive to accumulat- ing money. In the course of our investigations, we discovered seven common denominators among those who successfully build wealth.
They live well below their means.
They allocate their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conducive to building wealth.
They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status.
Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care.
Their adult children are economically self-sufficient.
They are proficient in targeting market opportunities.
They chose the right occupation.
Building wealth takes discipline, sacrifice, and hard work. Do you really want to become financially independent? Are you and your family will- ing to reorient your lifestyle to achieve this goal? Many will likely conclude they are not. If you are willing to make the necessary trade-offs of your time, energy, and consumption habits, however, you can begin building wealth and achieving financial independence.
Meet the millionaire next door
These people cannot be millionaires! They don't look like millionaires, they don't dress like millionaires, they don't eat like millionaires, they don't act like millionaires-they don't even have millionaire names. Where are the millionaires who look like millionaires?
Portrait of a millionaire
Self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two- thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self- employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.
Many of the types of businesses we are in could be classified as dull- normal. We are welding contractors, auctioneers, rice farmers, owners of mobile-home parks, pest controllers, coin and stamp dealers, and paving contractors.
About half of our wives do not work outside the home. The number- one occupation for those wives who do work is teacher.
On average, our total annual realized income is less than 7 percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than 7 percent of our wealth.
Most of us (97 percent) are homeowners. We live in homes currently valued at an average of $320,000. About half of us have occupied the same home for more than twenty years. Thus, we have enjoyed significant increases in the value of our homes.
80 percent of us are first-generation affluent.
We live well below our means. We wear inexpensive suits and drive American-made cars. Only a minority of us drive the current-model- year automobile. Only a minority ever lease our motor vehicles.
Most of our wives are planners and meticulous budgeters. In fact, only 18 percent of us disagreed with the statement "Charity begins at home." Most of us will tell you that our wives are a lot more conservative with money than we are.
We have a "go-to-hell fund." In other words, we have accumulated enough wealth to live without working for ten or more years. Thus, those of us with a net worth of $1.6 million could live comfortably for more than twelve years. Actually, we could live longer than that, since we save at least 15 percent of our earned income.
Asa group, we are fairly well educated. Only about one in five are not college graduates. Many of us hold advanced degrees. Eighteen percent have master's degrees, 8 percent law degrees, 6 percent medical degrees, and 6 percent Ph.D.s.
Only 17 percent of us or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private high school. But 55 percent of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools.
As a group, we believe that education is extremely important for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. We spend heavily for the educations of our offspring.
About two-thirds of us work between forty-five and fifty-five hours per week.
We are fastidious investors. On average, we invest nearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year. Most of us invest at least 15 percent. Seventy-nine percent of us have at least one account with a brokerage company. But we make our own investment decisions.
We hold nearly 20 percent of our household's wealth in transaction securities such as publicly traded stocks and mutual funds. But we rarely sell our equity investments. We hold even more in our pension plans. On average, 21 percent of our household's wealth is in our private businesses.
As a group, we feel that our daughters are financially handicapped in comparison to our sons. Men seem to make much more money even within the same occupational categories. That is why most of us would not hesitate to share some of our wealth with our daughters. Our sons, and men in general, have the deck of economic cards stacked in their favor. They should not need subsidies from their parents.
Our kids should consider providing affluent people with some valuable service. Overall, our most trusted financial advisors are our accountants. Our attorneys are also very important. So we recommend accounting and law to our children. Tax advisors and estate-planning experts will be in big demand over the next fifteen years.
I am a tightwad. That's one of the main reasons I completed a long questionnaire for a crispy $1 bill. Why else would I spend two or three hours being personally interviewed by these authors? They paid me $100, $200, or $250. Oh, they made me another offer to donate in my name the money 1 earned for my interview to my favorite charity. But 1 told them, “I am my favorite charity.”
We do not define wealthy, affluent, or rich in terms of material possessions. Many people who display a high- consumption lifestyle have little or no investments, appreciable assets, income-producing assets, common stocks, bonds, private businesses, oil/gas rights, or timber land. Conversely, those people whom we define as being wealthy get much more pleasure from owning substantial amounts of appreciable assets than from displaying a high-consumption lifestyle.
Net worth is defined as the cur- rent value of one's assets less liabilities.
In this book we define the threshold level of being wealthy as having a net worth of $1 million or more.
Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by ten. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be.
Scottish Americans tend to be frugal. Being frugal allows them to save more and invest more than others in similar income groups.
The longer the average member of an ancestry group has been in America, the more likely he or she will become fully socialized to our high-consumption lifestyle.
First-generation Americans tend to be self-employed. Self-employment is a major positive correlate of wealth.
Russians-they are the best horse traders.
Frugal frugal frugal
They live well below their means.
It is easier to purchase products that denote superiority than to be actually superior in economic achievement.
Allocating time and money in the pur- suit of looking superior often has a predictable outcome: inferior eco- nomic achievement.
Webster's defines frugal as "behavior characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources."
The opposite of frugal is wasteful. We define wasteful as a lifestyle marked by lavish spending and hyperconsumption.
Being frugal is the cornerstone of wealth-building.
According to our most recent survey, the typical American millionaire reported that he (she) never spent more than $399 for a suit of clothing for himself or for anyone else.
For every millionaire who owns a $1,000 suit, there are at least six owners who have annual incomes in the $50,000 to $200,000 range but who are not millionaires. Their shopping habits certainly have something to do with the fact that they are not wealthy.
The popular media enjoy touting abnormalities in buying behavior. As a consequence, our youth are told that buying expensive items is normal behavior for affluent people. They are led to believe that the wealthy have a high-consumption lifestyle. They learn that hyperspending is the main reward for becoming affluent in America.
His rewards are more intangible than product-related: financial independence; discipline; and being an excellent family provider, a fine husband, and a father of well-disciplined children.
Johnny Lucas, the affluent business owner, is very punctual. He is never late for meetings and arrives at work each weekday at 6:30 A.M.
Fully one-half of the millionaires surveyed never in their lives spent more than $235 for a wristwatch. About one in ten never paid more than $47, while about one in four spent $100 or less.
What are his neighbors to think? They do not know that Johnny is financially independent. They don't give him points for being married and never divorced, fully funding his children's college tuition, employing several dozen people, having integrity, being frugal, paying off his mortgage, and so forth. No, many of his neighbors would prefer that Johnny move out of the neighborhood. Why? Perhaps it's because he and his family don't look affluent, dress like the affluent, drive the vehicles of the affluent, or work in high-status positions.
The affluent tend to answer "yes" to three questions we include in our surveys:
Were your parents very frugal?
Are you frugal?
Is your spouse more frugal than you are?
A self-made millionaire stated it best when he told us: I can't get my wife to spend any money!
Most people will never become wealthy in one generation if they are married to people who are wasteful. A couple cannot accumulate wealth if one of its members is a hyperconsumer. This is especially true when one or both are trying to build a successful business. Few people can sustain profligate spending habits and simultaneously build wealth.
Millionaires play both quality offense and quality defense. And quite often their great defense helps them outscore/outaccumulate those who outearn/have superior offenses. The foundation stone of wealth accumulation is defense, and this defense should be anchored by budgeting and planning.
They became millionaires by budgeting and controlling expenses, and they maintain their affluent status the same way.
Have you ever noticed those people whom you see jogging day after day? They are the ones who seem not to need to jog. But that's why they are fit. Those who are wealthy work at staying financially fit. But those who are not financially fit do little to change their status.
Most people want to be physically fit. And the majority know what is required to achieve this. But despite that knowledge, most people never become well conditioned physically. Why not? Because they don't have the discipline to just do it. They don't budget their time to just do it. It is like becoming wealthy in America. Oh, you want to all right, but you play lousy financial defense. You don't have the discipline to control your spending. You don't take the time to budget or plan. Note that under accumulators of wealth spend three times as much time exercis- ing per month as they do planning their investment strategies.
Four questions you should answer "yes" to if you wish to become affluent and stay affluent:
Does your household operate on an annual budget?
These people invest a minimum of 15 percent of their annual realized income before they pay the sellers of their food, clothes, homes, credit, and the like.
It's much easier to budget if you visualize the long-term benefits of this task.
Do you know how much your family spends each year for food, clothing, and shelter?
Do you have a clearly defined set of daily, weekly, monthly, annual, and lifetime goals?
I have always been goal-oriented. I have a clearly defined set of daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, annual goals, and lifetime goals. I even have goals to go to the bathroom. I always tell our young executives that they must have goals.
Financially independent people are happier than those in their same income/age cohort who are not financially secure.
Financially independent people seem to be better able to visualize the future benefits of defining their goals.
Do you spend a lot of time planning your financial future?
Too many high-income/low-net worth types live from paycheck to paycheck, fearing a sudden downturn in our economy.
Under accumulators of wealth allow "significant others" to determine their financial lifestyle. Interestingly, these "significant others," or reference groups, turn out to be more imagined than real. Are you motivated by "significant others"? Perhaps you should consider a different approach to life. Perhaps you should reorient yourself.
Small expenses become big expenses over time. Small amounts invested periodically also become large investments over time.
To build wealth, minimize your realized (taxable) income and maximize your unrealized income (wealth/capital appreciation without a cash flow).
Perot minimizes his tax bill by investing heavily in tax- free municiples, tax-sheltered real estate, and stocks with unrealized gains
Most millionaires measure their success by their net worth, not by their realized income. For the purposes of wealth building, income doesn't matter that much. Once you're in a high-income bracket, say $100,000 or $200,000 or more, it matters less how much more you make than what you do with what you already have.
People accumulate significant wealth by minimizing their realized/taxable income and maximizing their unrealized/nontaxable income.
Being a well-educated, high- income earner does not automatically translate into financial indepen- dence. It takes planning and sacrificing.
What if your goal is to become financially independent? Your plan should be to sacrifice high consumption today for financial indepen- dence tomorrow.
The millionaires in our latest survey had a total realized income that was about 6.7 percent of their total net worth.
It's easier to accumulate wealth if you don~t live in a high-status neighborhood.
You will never become financially independent without purchasing investments that appreciate with- out income realization.
If you're not yet wealthy but want to be someday, never purchase a home that requires a mortgage that is more than twice your household's total annual realized income.
Living in less costly areas can enable you to spend less and to invest more of your income. You will pay less for your home and corre- spondingly less for your property taxes. Your neighbors will be less likely to drive expensive motor vehicles. You will find it easier to keep up, even ahead, of the Joneses and still accumulate wealth.
Time, energy, and money
They allocate their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conducive to building wealth.
Efficiency is one of the most important components of wealth accumulation.
PAWs allocate nearly twice the number of hours per month to planning their financial investments as UAWs do.
Prodigious accumulators of wealth (PAWs)
Under accumulators of wealth (UAWs)
UAWs spend more time worrying about not being wealthy enough to retire in comfort and never accumulating significant wealth than taking proactive steps to change their tendencies to overconsume and underinvest.
Most experts on wealth agree that the earlier one starts investing one's income, the greater the opportunity to accumulate wealth.
Begin earning and investing early in your adult life.
Many people who live in luxury have little money left over after funding their high-consumption lifestyles.
To PAWS, money is a resource that should never be squandered. They know that planning, budgeting, and being frugal are essential parts of building wealth, even for very high-income producers. Even high-income producers must live below their means if they intend to become financially independent. And if you're not financially independent, you will spend an increasing amount of your time and energy worrying about your socioeconomic future.
Planning and controlling consumption are key factors underlying wealth accumulation.
Operating a household without a budget is akin to operating a business without a plan, without goals, and without direction.
Your spouse's orienta- tion toward thrift, consumption, and investing is a significant factor in understanding your household's position on the wealth scale.
A household divided in its financial orientation is unlikely to accumulate significant wealth.
The goal is to enable you to set aside for investing purposes at least 15 percent of your pretax income each year.
There is an inverse relationship between the time spent purchasing luxury items such as cars and clothes and the time spent planning one's financial future.
Investing when one has little or no intellectual basis for one's decisions often translates into major losses.
PAWs have significantly fewer concerns and fears than their counterparts.
Tax increases are more the concern of UAWs than PAWs. Why are UAWs concerned about this issue? Because they need to maximize their realized income to support their hyperconsumption lifestyle. If the government requires us to pay a higher share of our income, UAWs lifestyles will be threatened.
Most successful people who are self-employed work ten to fourteen hours per day. In fact, this is why many employees shy away from even considering "going out on their own." They want something less demanding. They want to be employees. But most workers, even those with middle-level incomes, also work long and hard.
Nearly all (95 percent) of the millionaires we surveyed own stocks; most have 20 percent or more of their wealth in publicly traded stocks. Yet you would be wrong to assume that these millionaires actively trade their stocks. Most don't follow the ups and downs of the market day by day.
One in five (20 percent) hold, on average, for a year or two; one in four (25 percent) hold for between two and four years. About 13 percent are in the four-to-six-year category. More than three in ten (32 percent) hold their investments for more than six years. In fact, 42 percent of the millionaires we interviewed for our latest survey had made no trades whatsoever in their stock portfolios in the year prior to the interview.
To find a high-quality accountant, ask friends or associates who fit the PAW profile. You may wish to call the accounting depart- ment at your state's university. Speak with several accounting faculty. Ask them for the names of their former students who have established track records in helping clients make enlightened financial decisions.
You aren't what you drive
They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status
If your goal is to become financially secure, you'll likely attain it. ... But if your motive is to make money to spend money on the good life, ... you're never gonna make it.
UAWs work to spend, not to achieve or become financially independent. UAWs view life as a series of trade-ups from one level of luxury to the next.
In most of the cases we have examined, PAWs love working, while a large proportion of UAWs work because they need to support their conspicuous consumption habit.
Money should never change one's values. . . . Making money is only a report card. It's a way to tell how you're doing.
In essence, he feels that products change people. If you acquire one status product, you will likely have to purchase others to fill up the socially conspicuous puzzle. Before long, your entire lifestyle will have changed.
Building wealth is not something that will change your lifestyle. Even at this stage of life, I don't want to change the way I live.
Many status artifacts can be a burden, if not an impediment, to becoming financially independent. Life has its own burdens. Why add excess baggage?
More than 80 percent o f millionaires purchase their vehicles. If and when more than 50 percent begin leasing, we will change our recommendation.
Behind their frugal behavior is a strong set of beliefs. First, they believe in the benefits of being financially independent. Second, they believe that being frugal is the key to achieving independence. They inoculate themselves from heavy spending by constantly reminding themselves that many people who have high-status artifacts, such as expensive clothing, jewelry, cars, and pools, have little wealth. They often tell the same thing to their children.
Used vehicle- prone shoppers are significantly more likely to report the following: My parents are [were] very frugal.
What, then, is our message? If you cannot increase your compensation significantly, become wealthy some other way. Do it defensively. This is how most of the used vehicle-prone shoppers did it. They successfully inoculated themselves from contracting the high-consumption lifestyle that many of their neighbors adopted.
Entrepreneurs become wealthy by taking substantial risks and by leveraging the labor and talent of dozens, even hundreds, of others.
It's more than possible. It is probable and predictable. Great offense and poor defense translate into under accumulation o f wealth.
Economic outpatient care
Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care
The more dollars adult children receive, the fewer they accumulate, while those who are given fewer dollars accumulate more.
Adults who sit around waiting for the next dose of economic outpatient care typically are not very productive. Cash gifts are too often earmarked for consumption and the support of an unrealistically high lifestyle.
Paying for an education is the equivalent to teaching your children how to fish.
There are many forms of economic outpatient care. Some have a strong positive influence on the productivity of the recipients. These include subsidizing your children's education and, more important, earmarking gifts so they can start or enhance a business.
Conversely, what is the effect of cash gifts that are knowingly earmarked for consumption and the propping up of a certain lifestyle? We find that the giving of such gifts is the single most significant factor that explains lack of productivity among the adult children of the affluent. All too often such "temporary" gifts affect the recipient's psyche. Cash gifts earmarked for consumption dampen one's initiative and productivity. They become habit forming. These gifts then must be extended throughout most of the recipient's life.
Giving precipitates more consumption than saving and investing
Gift receivers frequently are underachievers in generating income.
Expensive homes are typically located in what we call high-consumption neighborhoods. Living in such neighborhoods requires more than just being able to pay the mortgage. To fit in, one needs to "look the part" in terms of one's clothing, landscaping, home maintenance, automobiles, furnishings, and so on. And don't forget to add high property taxes to all the other items.
Gift receivers in general never fully distinguish between their wealth and the wealth of their gift-giving parents
Gift receivers . . . the adult children o f the affluent feel that their parents' wealth/capital is their income . .. income to be spent.
About two of every three adult children who receive significant cash gifts periodically from their parents view themselves as members of the "I did it on my own" club. We are amazed when these people tell us in interviews, "We earned every dollar we have."
Gift receivers are significantly more dependent on credit than are nonreceivers
Receivers of gifts invest much less money than do nonreceivers
Gift receivers reported that they invested less than 65 percent of what nonreceivers invested each year.
On average, gift receivers donate significantly more to charity than do others in the same income categories.
Gift receivers consume more, so they have significantly less money to invest. What good does it do to be well versed in investment opportunities when one has little or no money to invest?
Children of affluent parents have (in today's dollars) about a one-in-five chance of accumulating wealth in the seven figures during their lifetimes, while the average child in this country whose parents are not millionaires has about a one-in-thirty chance.
Whatever your income, always live below your means.
Teaching your children to be frugal is critical.
Often those who are not trained to be frugal as children become adult hyperspenders, needing cash subsidies during their young and middle adult years.
In addition to an education, create an environment that honors independent thoughts and deeds, cherishes individual achievements, and rewards responsibility and leadership. Yes, the best things in life are often free. Teach your own to live on their own. It's much less costly financially, and, in the long run, it is in the best interests of both the children and their parents.
If your son has a deficiency in his verbal skills, make a commitment to overcome his handicap.
The more dollars adult children receive, the fewer dollars they accumulate, while those who are given fewer dollars accumulate more.
The most successful business owners are the ones who put much of their own resources behind their ventures. Many succeed because they have to succeed. It's their money, their product, their reputation. They have no safety net. They have no one else to rely upon for their success or failure.
Affluent business owners have overcome most of their fears. They have inoculated themselves from many fears by becoming completely self-sufficient. And it was the very struggle to become economically self-sufficient that helped these business owners overcome them.
Who is more confident, more content, more able to deal with adversity? It's those who have been brought up by parents who rewarded independent thought and behavior. It's those who don't concern themselves with other people's money, who are more concerned about succeeding than about how much is in someone else's estate. Also, if one lives below one's means, one doesn't have to be concerned with the possibility of being forced to reduce one's standard of living.
People often attempt to shelter their children from the economic realities of life. But such shelters often produce adults who are in constant fear of tomorrow.
Webster's defines courage as "mental or moral strength to resist opposition, danger, or hardship." It implies firmness of mind and will in the face of danger or extreme difficulty. Courage can be developed. But it cannot be nurtured in an environment that eliminates all risks, all difficulty, all dangers.
It's amazing what you can do when you set your mind to it. You'll be surprised how many sales calls you can make when you have no alternative except to succeed.
Appearances are much less important than the courage, discipline, and resolve of people who are economically productive.
Affirmative action, family style
Their adult children are economically self-sufficient
Male adult children are more than twice as likely to live at home than female adult children.
UAWs discuss their income, consumption habits, and status artifacts. PAWs speak of their achievements, such as their scholarship and how they've built their businesses.
Being in business for myself . .. When I wake up, every day is a challenge. ... I plan my work ... work my plan. It's why my business is a good one.
If you are wealthy and want your children to become happy and independent adults, minimize discussions and behavior that center on the topic of receiving other people's money.
Most PAWs have long-term close relationships with several key professionals, such as top attorneys and accountants.
Rules for affluent parents and productive children:
Never tell children that their parents are wealthy.
I never knew my dad was wealthy until I became executor of his estate. He never looked it.
No matter how wealthy you are, teach your children discipline and frugality.
Kids are very smart. They will not follow rules that their parents themselves do not follow. We [my wife and I] were well-disciplined parents. ... We lived the rules . .. we taught by example. ... They [the children] learned by example.
There must be congruency between what parents tell their children to do and what we as parents do. Kids are very perceptive in pointing out inconsistencies.
Kids are looking for discipline and rules. Kids must be trained to take responsibility for their actions. Today all my children are well disciplined and frugal. They adhered to the rules. Why? Because their parents did. ... Actions speak louder than rules that are just words, not actions.
Be tough ... life is. In other words, there is no promise of a rose garden.
Never say "poor me" ... [or] feel sorry for yourself.
Don't walk on the back of your shoes. . . . Waste not, want not. In other words, don't abuse your belongings. They will last longer.
Close the front door. . . . Don't waste your parents' money letting the heat out.
Always put things back where they belong.
Flush.
Say "yes" to those who need help before they ask.
Assure that your children won't realize you're affluent until alter they have established a mature, disciplined, and adult lilestyle and profession.
I have set up trusts for my children . . . some estate tax advantages. But my plan will not distribute money to my children until they are forty years ofage or older. Because in this way my money will have little effect on their way of life at that age. They will have already adopted their own lifestyle.
Cash gives them too many options, ... especially in the case of young children. Media, especially TV, controls the values of our young. Just like they try to control what we think is funny with canned laughter. ... [There's] too much emphasis on consumption. . . . I have never just given cash for this reason. What I have always told my children [is] if you need to make a major purchase, you first must fund a good bit of it yourself.
Minimize discussions of the items that each child and grandchild will inherit or receive as gifts.
Never make light of verbal promises: "Billy, you will get the house; Bob, the summer cottage; Barbara, the silver," especially in a group setting, especially when consuming alcohol. You may too easily forget or confuse who gets what, but the kids are not likely to forget. They will hold you and their siblings responsible for being shorted. False promises often lead to discord and conflicts.
Never give cash or other significant gifts to your adult children as part of a negotiation strategy.
Give because of love, even obligation and kindness. Adult children often lose their respect and love for parents who submit to high-pressure negotiating tactics.
Stay out of your adult children's family matters.
Please note, parents, that your vision of the ideal lifestyle may be diametrically opposed to that of your adult son or daughter, as well as that of your son-in-law or daughter-in-law. Adult children resent interference from their parents. Let them run their own lives; ask permission even to give advice. Ask permission also when contemplating giving significant gifts to your children.
Don't try to compete with your children.
Never boast about how much money you have accumulated.
Your children are wise enough to appreci- ate what you have accomplished. Never start a conversation with "When I was your age, I already had ..."
Always remember that your children are individuals.
They differ from each other in motivation and achievement.