Over a hamburger tonight I began reading an interesting little book, The Millionaire Next Door, published in 1996. It has survey results showing that most people who became millionaires in one generation (about 80% of all US millionaires) did it by living simply, driving old cars, saving and investing regularly, and watching for smart business opportunities, then working hard.

That got me to thinking about another story about making a million dollars that sounds much easier: Just take $1 and double it 20 times. You can run the following VFP code to see that the premise is true:

CLEAR
LOCAL nTotal, i
nTotal = 1
FOR i = 1 TO 20
  nTotal = nTotal * 2
  ? "Step " + TRANSFORM(i,"99") + ":   " + TRANSFORM(nTotal,"$9,999,999")
ENDFOR

It seems like such a good idea that I'm going to head out Saturday morning with ten $1 bills and visit a few yard sales to pick up items that have considerably more value than priced. Then, I'll find a way to resell them (perhaps on Ebay) to net out at least double my money after fees and any tax consequences.

Doing that once a week, by Christmas I should have been able to double the original investment at least 20 times, if I don't skim too much money off the stack too soon for another Caramel Macchiatto at Starbucks. :-)

Somehow, I have a sneaking feeling that the last 10 steps are much harder to accomplish than the first 10, but it should be fun to find out. In past attempts, I have managed to get to about step 7 or 8 before cashing in for some "emergency." This time, however, I've got a steel will.

Want to join in the fun? If you have a least a dollar in your pocket (or whatever your local currency), you can play, too. You can start with a larger amount if you prefer and knock a few steps off the chart all at once. We can document our progress, log it all into a database of course, analyze the results, and publish a best-selling book about the adventure!

If you wish, you may donate some or all of it to charity at the end and start over, or we could keep on going and eventually pay off the US national debt. At least we will all be independently wealthy and not worried about future dips in the IT market.

Anyway, first things first. Humble beginnings and all that. I'm in, starting tomorrow. Anyone want to take up the challenge with me?