Money can't make me happy, says millionaire giving his riches away

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/story.html?id=2537790

by ojbyrne • 16 years ago

32 52 16 years ago

ottawacitizen.com

samd2• 16 years ago

That guy has way more courage than most people.

I never understood the sheltered life of the ultra-rich. Don't they realize how fake it all is?

michaelcampbell3• 16 years ago

What makes their reality any "less real" to them than yours is to you (or mine to me)?

nfnaaron2• 16 years ago

Interesting point. I do sometimes think of rich people in some sort of un-reality.

Reality is what you see in front of you. Thanks for pointing that out.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

By any objective standard you (and me and everyone else reading this) are ultra-rich.

I find this fact to be singularly depressing.

nfnaaron2• 16 years ago

I try to remember that I am in fact rich compared to the rest of the world, no matter how good or bad things may get from day to day.

I am, for example, very happy that I can get a drink of clean, safe water whenever I want.

I am very happy that I don't live in the middle of war.

I am very happy that nobody cares whether I vote or not, and that if I choose (or don't choose) to vote, no one will try to intimidate me with violence or death.

Life is good.

samd2• 16 years ago

And what do the middle class do with their wealth? Move into the faux community of a suburb.

abstractbill2• 16 years ago

I'd like to at least try being rich though, just to see if I like it ;)

Seriously though, I believe I'd be most happy with just enough money to be able to work on the things that really interest me and not have to worry about making money from them (which is to say a lot of money, but not nearly enough to qualify as ultra-rich).

orangecat• 16 years ago

He isn't exactly giving everything away; he'll be "surviving on $1,341 a month". Which is very wise; using money to buy things rarely leads to happiness, but using it to provide financial security eliminates many potential sources of unhappiness.

hugh34• 16 years ago

Indeed, in order to make $1341 a month without working you'll need to invest about $321,000 at 5% interest. If you want to keep it inflation-adjusted then you probably wouldn't want to take more than 2% of the principal each year, so you'd need more like $700K in the bank.

atk• 16 years ago

Right. Money, like most things cannot keep you happy. You might be happy temporarily, but the happiness fades and then you focus on your next object of desire. I think that's the empty feeling this guy kept feeling - he was buying more and more possessions but nothing really fulfilled him.

csbrooks• 16 years ago

Very interesting article. A little too tidy, though. For example, I wonder how his wife felt about this?

tjic4• 16 years ago

I wondered the exact same thing.

maxklein• 16 years ago

I'm sure many unhappy broke people would prefer to be unhappy rich people.

megamark16• 16 years ago

For some unhappy broke people (although certainly not all) they unhappy and broke for the same reason, either because they are not making sufficient contributions to society and the economy or they are not being compensated/recognized appropriately for the contributions that they are making.

Speaking for myself, part of the reward of a successful career is the joy of seeing my work and talents used and enjoyed by others.

swombat3• 16 years ago

I wonder how he got so rich by being so misguided.

If everyone feels fake to you, you can resolve that by putting yourself in situations where you will meet real, genuine people. There are many places where you can do that in the world. Hint: five star hotels in Hawai aren't it.

Go do some charity work. Go spend time helping people who are poorer than you. Go around the world without checking into five star hotels. Go and do what everyone else does. There's no need to give your money away to live a genuine life. Having the money available also makes things possible that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. When you see an opportunity to make a difference, having $5m in the bank allows you to make things happen that would be simply impossible otherwise.

This is probably a controversial view, but I don't think this guy is brave. I think he's just stupid. He's greatly limited his own freedom, and that after having worked like a donkey his whole life to expand it. What a pointless thing to do.

oldgregg• 16 years ago

I wouldn't be so critical. We all believe the lie, in different ways, that ONCE I get funding/get famous/go public then I'll be happy. Of course it's always elusive.

People often self-destruct when their dreams come true and they suddenly realize they have spent years chasing a lie. People in the startup world are particularly susceptible -- I know I sure am.

When faced with an existential crisis some people cope by doing lines off a hooker's ass-- other people just give their money away. Neither solution deals with the underlying problem, but it's probably better than the alternative.

jcl• 16 years ago

On the other hand, he's greatly limiting his freedom while providing the means for others to increase their freedom:

All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans and advice to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.

He sounds like a guy who has figured out what he wants, after a lifetime of saving for an indeterminate future need.

swombat3• 16 years ago

That's not gonna make him all that happy.

Studies have found that money can make you happy - so long as you spend it on creating great memories that are valuable for you.

If you said he went around a poor part of India and gave all the money away to people that he met there, I would see some merit to that. At least, he'll get the experience of having met all these people and changed their lives. Those memories would stay with him his whole life. Setting up $5m's worth of anonymous micro-loans might make you feel good for a few months, maybe a year or two, but the memory will soon fade. It's too distant.

Even if you decide that your calling in life is to give all your stuff away, there are much more personally fulfilling ways to do it.

rguzman• 16 years ago

> I wonder how he got so rich by being so misguided.

Better lucky than good.

growt• 16 years ago

I think you didn't quite get the message. From his point of view he isn't limiting his freedom but expanding it. I guess you can't tell if he's right unless you have the same amount of money and feel different.

"The things you own, they own you."

tjic4• 16 years ago

> I think you didn't quite get the message.

He got it; he just disagrees.

lolcraft2• 16 years ago

I see your point, but I think that attitude of preserving your own financial freedom is much like an adhesive bandage: If you pull it out slowly, the pain will be bigger. To keep his financial freedom he'd have to: 1) be very careful in which charity to invest (which likely would go like the joke: you are the optimal sort function, always comparing, never evaluating on an external scale), 2) invest just enough to keep it, which means some charity may get underfunded or not be as successful as it could otherwise.

You'd want him to "make things happen that would be simply impossible otherwise [if he didn't had 5 million]". My rebuttal is that he's done exactly that, but he's done so in one take, not allowing his fear of losing independence from later interfering with his ability to change things. That takes knowing oneself, and should be admired.

swombat3• 16 years ago

That's great. So what will he do next year?

nandemo• 16 years ago

>Having the money available also makes things possible that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. When you see an opportunity to make a difference, having $5m in the bank allows you to make things happen that would be simply impossible otherwise.

Why, yes. In particular, having $5M enables one to donate $5M, which is what he did.

paul• 16 years ago

If you're addicted to crack, getting rid of your crack supply might be a good way to help break the addiction.

You may think money and crack are completely different, but you would be wrong.

hugh34• 16 years ago

I might find his asceticism more admirable if he hadn't apparently sent out a press release about it.

tjic4• 16 years ago

Zing!

vinutheraj• 16 years ago

Well that's contradictory, because how would you admire it if you hadn't come to know of it, without his press release :) !

Groxx• 16 years ago

An extremist response, but if it makes him happy, I'd say it's probably the right choice for him. In that case, congratulations on finding and doing what makes you happy; more people need to pay attention to that part of the message.

huherto• 16 years ago

Not super rich. In the U.S he would be in the top 1%.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/02/01/rich-o-meter-20/tab/a...

So that means there around ~750,000 households at that level or more edit: Screwed the calculation. Assuming 300M and 4 people per household. Thanks hugh3

hugh34• 16 years ago

7500? I think you mean ~1.2 million.

Still, this is what I was curious about -- is it possible the journalist screwed up the numbers? Five million bucks doesn't make you especially wealthy nowadays; it's more a "comfortable middle class retirement" sort of sum. And yet this guy supposedly had a net wealth of five million bucks, of which $2.34 million was in his primary house, $1 million in his secondary house and $600K was in his glider collection. Add in some cars and furniture and he would have less than $1 million left over for sensible income-producing investments.

Seems like an unwise proportion of his money was plunged into useless toys; he was trying to live like a super-rich man without the super riches to back it up. No wonder he was unhappy.

Dellort3• 16 years ago

I would just like to say that should anyone of you here feel this way I am more than willing to take this burden out of your hands. For 1 million dollars I could live for the rest of my life not working a single day by surviving only on money generated by interest, as well as spending my time more productively.

axod2• 16 years ago

Would it feel as good being given it vs having earned it though?

abstractbill2• 16 years ago

Not for me, but it would feel just as good if I was given $1M and then worked hard to turn it into say $10M.

Dellort3• 16 years ago

I can't tell you that yet. You give me one million dollars and I'll earn another one and tell you.

padmanabhan01• 16 years ago

The problem is that only a millionaire can say/realize this. So, ironically one ought to become a millionaire to really realize money can't buy happiness.

tjic4• 16 years ago

> "It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realized how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five star lifestyle is," Mr Rabeder said.

You can use money to go to exclusive resorts and hobnob with similar folks.

Or you can use money to go backpack the Appalachian trail, take guitar lessons, and do other interesting things.

I agree that more is not always better ... but money means having options, and just because there are some lame options doesn't mean all options are lame.

zandorg• 16 years ago

My ambition is to get rich just so I can go into space, pay people to invent robots for me, and live forever.

Dellort3• 16 years ago

You are already in space.

justin_vanw• 16 years ago

Listen, you give me $10M, and I will sing songs and make merry while I give $9M away. It is just a case of diminishing returns, when you live in your in-laws trailer with your 3 kids, a $30k trailer can make you a lot happier. When you live in a $500k house, a $1M house has much less effect on your happiness then that trailer did.

Millions of dollars more probably isn't really noticeable day to day. Going from a boat to a bigger boat, a house to a bigger house, an X to a better-X doesn't do much for you.

That first 50k in the bank does everything. When you have a year of living expenses in the bank, you don't fear losing your job. When you have 10 years of reasonable expenses in the bank, you have freedom. It's the points that you have something you didn't have before that make you more happy.

If this guy gives away his money to the point that he starts giving things up, not just having to downsize, then it is a story. A story about an idiot (prophet?), but otherwise it doesn't mean anything.

goatforce5• 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qui...

steveplace• 16 years ago

I guess he's never owned a waverunner.

His quote: "Money is counterproductive - it prevents happiness." Is incorrect. Money is amoral and depends on the subject.

Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. So yes, it's subjective.

chops• 16 years ago

Money is not an end. Money is a means.

cubix• 16 years ago

That's a profound change of behaviour in a short time. I wonder if he has been checked out for a brain tumour or something else affecting his neurology.

h0mee• 16 years ago

well duh, money in of itself doesn't make someone wealthier. Wealth is a reflection of education and social capital. People who are really poor, even if they have high clash flow don't have the social networks built to leverage it. Once you have those connections formed and the insight on how to use it, you can give away all your money because at that point it's trivial to rebuild it.

Money can't make me happy, says millionaire giving his riches away

Related Stories