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SAVVY SISTERS TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO MAKE YOUR FINANCIAL DREAMS A REALITY

It's one thing to make a million dollars; it's quite another to be worth a million dollars. In fact, many of us who work for a salary will earn at least a million over the course of our lifetime, yet only a tiny fraction will ever accumulate a net worth approaching that amount. Why? Because earning wealth is not the same as retaining wealth, as the bankruptcies of Toni Braxton and M.C. Hammer showed.

"American capitalism does many things to support people making money," says University of Pennsylvania law professor Regina Austin, who has studied Black women and wealth. "Unfortunately, our understanding of the economy and how money works is not as sophisticated as it needs to be." Research shows that we tend to be wage earners rather than business owners, renters rather than home owners and spenders rather than savers--all poor behaviors that limit our ability to attain wealth.

Yet wealth is what separates the powerful from the powerless and, as Austin says, "gives a woman greater control over her welfare and circumstances, and greater peace of mind." As Joe Louis is reported to have said, "I don't like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves."

Louis's comment gets to the heart of the ambivalence we as African-Americans have about money. We like to make it and spend it, but typically disdain talking about how much we make or what we're worth. Such attitudes are a legacy of our slave past, in which we made no money at all for 12 generations. Our centuries of economic deprivation help explain why the notion of Black wealth creates some level of discomfort among both those who possess it and those who don't: Those who possess it sometimes feel slightly guilty; those who don't are often vaguely angry.

"We grow up learning that how much money you have is nobody's business," says Austin. "It's one of the things people use to evaluate you, so we're superstitious about it. Besides, no one, including the Black wealthy, ever feels he has enough." On this last point at least our sentiments are correct, since Black net worth lags behind White net worth by a staggering margin of four to one, reflecting just how much those 300 years of free labor cost us.

But what exactly does net worth mean? The standard definition refers to the figure derived after your total liabilities have been subtracted from all your assets. (For a formula to calculate your wealth quotient, see "Future Wealth" in this month's Essentials column, page 66.) Net worth really gets at financial well-being: How much wealth would you have on hand if all your debts were paid today? How long could you live comfortably without working at all? And what constitutes wealth, anyway? Having a million dollars? Not if you owe $2 million.

According to Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D., and William D. Danko Ph.D., authors of the best-selling book The Millionaire Next Door (Longstreet Press, $22), only 3.5 percent of American households have a net worth of $1 million or more. Surprisingly, though, average millionaires come across as just that: average. They are not likely to drive expensive cars, live in mansions or wear designer labels. In fact, typical millionaires usually live below their means. Most have laid the four cornerstones of wealth building in America: They own property; own a business; invest in long-term, high-return savings vehicles; and pay as little as possible in taxes.

The four sisters profiled here have all achieved a net worth of $1 million or more before the age of 50 (the average age of millionaires in The Millionaire Next Door is 57) and reflect the growing number of Black women who are starting to narrow the race and gender gap on wealth. Like most millionaires, they have made their fortunes the old-fashioned way: slowly and quietly on the strength of personal enterprise and talent.

JUDY WALKER, 48, Detroit ESTIMATED NET WORTH: $2 million plus HOW SHE MADE A MILLION: buying and selling real estate

Unhappy because she felt she had hit a glass ceiling in corporate America, Judy Walker got into real estate by chance. The Detroit native was living in California, trying to make it as a salesperson in the recording industry, when she saw a television advertisement about buying and selling real estate. She look the free course, passed the licensing exams and went to work for a local firm. She was soon specializing in foreclosure properties.

When Walker returned to Michigan in 1984 to care for an injured relative, she had to start all over again. She took and passed the state licensing exams and began working for a White-owned realty company in Detroit. After two years she decided to get her own broker's license, and in 1988 she opened her first real-estate office in Southfield Michigan, a suburb just outside Detroit. There weren't many other brokers in the area, and she felt sure she could carve a new niche. "Opening the office cost me my entire life savings and two insurance policies," she says of the $30,000 investment made in the business. She hired a secretary and "for the first six months the only one who got paid was the secretary." Ten years later Walker has two real-estate offices, employs 57 sales agents and owns a commercial building, six rental homes, a mortgage company and 50 percent of a construction firm.

Wealth-building break: "The office I opened was part of the Red Carpet Keim a real-estate franchise that operated like a Century 21 franchise in the Midwest. The company got into legal trouble with its franchisees, but rather than litigate, 18 of us put up $20,000 each in 1992 and bought the company. In 1996 we sold it to Home Life, Inc., a Toronto firm, and we each made more than a 100 percent return on our investment. We still hold a 20 percent stake in a component of the firm called Guardian Home Warranty."

Wealth from flipping foreclosures: "Finding foreclosures that I can buy cheaply, fix up and flip [sell] for a profit within 60 days has always been an overall part of my business strategy. I also buy single-family homes as rental property rather than large apartment buildings because they are easier to manage. The commercial building I have is a 30,000-square-foot facility that I bought in foreclosure with two other partners. My mortgage company is in the building, and we rent to 20 other tenants. We purchased the building for $500,000 in 1997, and it recently was appraised at $1 million."

Passing on the wealth: "I'm divorced with a 9-year-old son who probably has more money than I do. I have investments for him in trust accounts, mutual funds and stocks."

Perspective: "I don't feel like a millionaire. I live in a very modest home in a good family community and am still working as hard as ever. Just as you made a million, you could lose it if you don't work toward the care and maintenance of it."

TRISH MILLINES 41, Seattle ESTIMATED NET WORTH: $1 million plus HOW SHE MADE A MILLION: buying Microsoft stock

Trish Millines doesn't ever have to depend on a salary again. She is one of the "Microsoft babies," a software designer who went to work for Bill Gates in the early nineties, took advantage of the company's generous stock options, watched its stock split "a gazillion times," and then retired from the company at age 39, a bona fide millionaire, ready to take on what she really wanted to do: bring technology to people of colon She now heads the Technology Access Foundation, a nonprofit organization she started two years ago to provide computer training for young people between the ages of 2 and 18 in Seattle's inner city. The foundation works with 15 community agencies, not just offering training but also supplying computers and software where needed. The first year of operations was paid for solely by Millines; she has since enlisted some corporate funding.

The fact that Millines earned her wealth through corporate investments makes her unusual among Black folks. Less than 7 percent of African-Americans own stocks or bonds. Yet many of the newest members of America's wealthy elite are employees whose assets are not in their salaries but in company stock plans and 401(k) pension programs that have made them sizable fortunes.

For Millines, a native of Belmar, New Jersey, the coffers were not always so full. She earned her way through college on a basketball scholarship, graduating with a degree in computer science. She headed West in 1979, never thinking "the computer field would take offlike it did." In a twist of the more typical route to wealth, Millines started out as an entrepreneur, opening her own computer-consulting business in 1987 and enlisting Microsoft as a client. She decided to join the company in 1990. She stayed six years and left with the means to pursue her dreams.