CELEBRATING TWENTY YEARS: A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM DAVID BACHIt is with great excitement that I welcome you to the 20th Anniversary Edition of
The Automatic Millionaire. Milestones matter, and the fact that this little book has been able to help millions of readers over two decades is a testament to the timeless advice inside its pages. I promise you that this book’s message is today more timely than ever. If you’re a new reader, welcome. If you read the original book, welcome back. I’ve missed you, and it’s great to reconnect. Most important, congratulations to you for making a decision to create an easier financial future for yourself.
When I originally wrote this book, I had a really simple goal: I wanted to help 10 million people achieve financial freedom by showing them how, over the course of their life-times, they could become “automatic millionaires.”
I knew this goal was a challenging one—but it was also exciting, and I believed it was worth attempting. What I didn’t realize when I first started was the power of word of mouth that comes from people taking action to improve their lives.
As this book reached real people who were ready to take action, it quickly began to make a difference in countless lives. As a result, readers began buying additional copies of the book as gifts, sharing it with their friends, families, and coworkers. In no time at all this little book exploded around the world. Within a matter of weeks,
The Automatic Millionaire had reached the #1 spot on nearly every bestseller list in America, including those of
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and
BusinessWeek. Today this book has over 2 million copies in print around the world and has been translated into over twenty languages.
I’ve been humbled by and grateful to now share its message for over two decades reaching hundreds of millions of people through television shows and networks like
Oprah, Today Show, CNN, CBS, Fox, CNBC, PBS, and more. From live events and online classes to podcasts, interviews, blog posts, and my
Live Rich newsletters, it has been a joy to teach the principles inside this book to so many of you.
WHY THIS BOOK IS NEEDED NOW MORE THAN EVERSo if this little book has had such a big impact, why update it? As Mary, a reader and teacher, wrote to me: “This is still not taught in school and should be.” Mary shared in an email that her biggest regret was not investing earlier and that if she had known what was in this book in her twenties her whole life would have been easier. Mary is now teaching these lessons to her students. I wanted to make sure the book was just as relevant to them (and you) as the aspiring Automatic Millionaires who came before. There are now tens of millions of future Automatic Millionaires who have joined the workforce since the book first came out. My dream is to help YOU and another generation of young people including my two sons who are about to enter the workforce. The world is constantly changing, and learning about money is a never-ending process. Today the world seems to be changing faster than ever. Since the last time I updated this book in 2016, we’ve lived through the brutal economic recession and inflation that resulted from the pandemic, followed by a remarkable recovery.
THERE ARE NOW 24 MILLION MILLIONAIRES IN THE UNITED STATESWhen I wrote this book back in 2003, there were approximately 7.9 million millionaires. Today there are now nearly 24 million millionaires in the United States (58 million world-wide) and growing. Let that sink in for a second. The number of millionaires in the United States has increased by 16 million in just two decades. The speed by which wealth is being created is increasing, not slowing.
Unfortunately, not everyone has bounced back financially from the pandemic years or become a millionaire, to say the least. Higher interest rates, inflation, and job changes have hurt many. And many of us continue to be very worried about our finances. I get this, and I want to help you thrive, not just survive.
TECHNOLOGY IS MAKING THE DREAM OF BEING A MILLIONAIRE EASIER, FASTER, AND MORE ATTAINABLE THAN EVER BEFORE
We’ve also experienced unprecedented technological change since
The Automatic Millionaire was originally published. The good news is that today’s technology makes it even easier to
become what I call an Automatic Millionaire®. And while the core message of the book has not changed, many of the relevant tax rules and laws have, so I’ve updated all the references to them and provided you with my latest recommendations on which companies, websites, investment strategies, and techniques work best
now.REAL-LIFE SUCCESS STORIES TO INSPIRE YOU AND TWO NEW CHAPTERSI’ve also included in this
20th Anniversary Edition an updated chapter that highlights some of the many success stories we’ve received. When I was working to update the book for this new edition, I received an exciting email from a reader named Jorge that read, “David, I have gone from a broke trumpet player with a truck at age thirty-two to an Automatic Millionaire by the age of forty-eight thanks to your book.” He then sent me a picture of himself with a book group he created to teach and share the principles of
The Automatic Millionaire. Jorge’s incredible story can be found in the new “Success Chapter” you will find in the back of the book. And there are many more success stories like his from all ages and walks of life. Including Tiffany’s, who shared how she went from being a schoolteacher to a multimillionaire and is now teaching others how to be smarter with their money.
These stories come from real people like you who wanted to get real results—and now are. The amazing thing about timeless advice that works is that after a decade or so you can begin to see the miracles that small changes make in people’s lives. Read these real-life accounts—and let the people featured in them encourage you that if they can do it, you can do it too. The fact is, you can!
EXPANDED AND UPDATED—THE AUTOMATIC MILLIONAIRE BLUEPRINTIn the back of the book, I’ve added a new chapter I call “The Automatic Millionaire Blueprint.” The simple, powerful one-page chart included in the chapter is designed to give you a road map to making your plan completely automatic. I’ve also created a bonus video for you to watch for free, as my gift to help you quickly take action based on what you learn in this book.
BONUS CHAPTER: YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWEREDFinally, over the years I have received so many questions from readers I thought it would be fun to answer some of them in the back of the book as a bonus. Think of it as a “Questions & Answers” chat. Grab a cup of coffee and sit down with me. I will share some new ideas including how to become an “Automatic Multi-Millionaire” and how to take a “radical sabbatical” or a “mini-retirement.” The one thing that has not changed in this updated edition of
The Automatic Millionaire is the book’s primary goal, which is to make learning how to live and finish rich easy, fun, and actionable.
The Automatic Millionaire is based on the timeless principle that if you take the right action and make your financial life “automatic,” everything gets easier. You are about to learn that automatic changes make millionaire results. And as I love to say, “Do it once—the rest is automatic.”
Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the opportunity to be your guide and coach. Enjoy the journey this book takes you on—and have fun with it. You deserve to live and finish rich—and I know you can. Now let’s get started!
Your new future begins today.
David Bach
Copyright © 2025 by David Bach. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
