Are You a Thrillionaire or a Realionaire? By Daniel Gross

Are You a Thrillionaire or a Realionaire? By Daniel Gross: "Are You a Thrillionaire or a Realionaire?
The five kinds of rich people.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, March 24, 2006, at 5:51 PM ET

Pity the poor American millionaire. Retailers and financial institutions look at him and see only a giant pile of money, not the living, breathing, laughing, loving person buried in it. Admit it, even you have cruelly judged plutocrats by nothing more than the content of their wallets.

This must end.

In 2004, there were some 8.9 million households in the United States with investable assets of $1 million or more (this excludes homes and retirement accounts). The simplistic way in which we view millionaires—be it as high-living Trumps or as the bourgeois penny-pinchers of The Millionaire Next Door—isn't helpful to those who are trying to sell products and services to the rich. As Susan Hirshman, managing director and wealth strategist at JPMorgan Funds, notes, 'to serve them, we have to understand the underlying person and what his or her value system is.'

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