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Ask Slashdot: What Would You Do If You Were Suddenly Wealthy?
An anonymous reader writes: There are a few articles floating around today about comments from Markus Persson, aka "Notch," the creator of Minecraft. He sold his game studio to Microsoft last year for $2.5 billion, but he seems to be having a hard time adjusting to his newfound fame and wealth. He wrote, "The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance. ... Found a great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style and went with a normal person instead. I would Musk and try to save the world, but that just exposes me to the same type of a$#@%&*s that made me sell minecraft again." While he later suggests he was just having a bad day, he does seem to be dealing with some isolation issues. Granted, it can be hard to feel sorry for a billionaire, but I've wondered at times how I'd handle sudden wealth like that, and I long ago decided it would make the human relationships I'm accustomed to rather difficult. So, how would you deal with Notch's problem? It seems like one the tech industry should at least be aware of, given the focus on startup culture.
How about volunteering time and money and spend some time helping people in need instead of whining, blaming, and name calling?
Becoming wealthy (whatever "wealthy" is considered these days) comes with its own challenges.
People with no money have very specific challenges: find food and water and shelter for your family. Everything else is secondary.
People that have a job and shelter but not enough money have different challenges: Buying a car, paying for school, You have enough for basic necessities but not enough for aspiration items.
People with lots of money have unique challenges: Who do you trust? Taxes become problematic. Gold diggers. How do you raise kids without spoiling them?
It seems to me that the sweet spot is around 100K per year. You're not rich but you have enough. In many cities that is enough to buy a nice home and a new car every 4-5 years. It's a nice place to be.
then we could all still hang on roughly equal levels.
i'd ONLY have $1.5 billion left to myself, oh noes :-(
Money is money. It can't treat a person well and it can't treat a person poorly. People on the other hand is another issue, especially people who you don't know yet who know you (or think they know you).
Money can be buried in investments, or dispersed if you want to go to the trouble too. Bury a person though, that will get you in trouble with the law. Disperse people, and they will think you're antisocial.
I can't honestly say what I would do if I had that much money. I would like to think that I'd bury it in investments, skimming just enough off the top to behave like a typical person. Yet I would do my best to avoid the fame bit. Relationships are awkward enough when you know them and they know you. Having the imbalance where people know you, but not the other way around, is something to be avoided.
Peter Gibbons: What would you do if you had a million dollars?
Lawrence: I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.
Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.
Peter Gibbons: Well, not all chicks.
Lawrence: Well, the type of chicks that'd double up on a dude like me do.
Peter Gibbons: Good point.
Lawrence: Well, what about you now? What would you do?
Peter Gibbons: Besides two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Well, yeah.
Peter Gibbons: Nothing.
Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
Peter Gibbons: I would relax... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.
Lawrence: Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
I agree. He bought a bunch of shit and found out that it doesn't bring happiness.
Personally, I'd own less 'stuff' than I do now, and live out of a suitcase. With 1.5 billion dollars, I'd travel the world and probably never stop. Buy an unassuming-looking car in Europe or the UK and drive all over, meeting new and interesting people and exploring new places. Hike the West Highland Trail in Scotland; ski the Alps in Switzerland; explore the catacombs of France, rent a speedboat and putter around on Lake Como in Italy, etc.
That, to me, is being rich - it means being free to go anywhere and do anything. I don't need a lavish life of luxury; I just want to be free of the shackles that keep me from seeing the world.
Suddenly everybody wants a piece of you and you have to distrust their motivations. Because the amount of people looking to sink in their teeth isn't going to be small.
Conversely, how do you expect to have a normal relationship with a non-wealthy person? Suddenly they're trying to keep up with a zillionaire and haven't got the means ... which means they're living on the charity of rich people and whatever their mood does. That tends to be present no matter how much you want it to not be. Get into a fight in some faraway location you can't afford to be in on your own, and you're a nobody.
Get rich over time, and you can build up some friends in the same situation. Get rick quickly and you can't. In which case you better hope your family and your existing friends can cope with it.
I've seen TV shows with some lottery winners ... and they constantly get letters from random people looking to get handouts, or people trying to scam them. Because people are greedy bastards. Oh, and the other rich people want nothing to do with you because you're new money.
I've always said I have no interest in being rich and famous ... I want to be rich and anonymous, precisely because I don't want to deal with this bullshit.
The real question is ... as tragic as this is, how much sympathy do recent billionaires expect from the rest of us? The whole "I'm a billionaire, now what?" is one of those questions which you can't expect a serious or helpful answer from anybody who hasn't done it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Realize that your life is yours to live. You choose your lifestyle, not the other way around.
I've been my own boss for a while and I've grown a successful company. I'm a millionaire many dozens of times over. I drive an old Volvo wagon I bought used for $2500. I live in a 1500 square foot house. I buy clothes at Kohls. Only a very small handful of people know what I'm worth, and they are sworn to secrecy.
I chose to life the lifestyle of a regular Joe. Here's a step-by-step guide to coming into a lot of money quickly:
1) SHUT THE FUCK UP. Keep it secret to the best of your ability. If you can't, come up with a plan for that. But, do the best you can.
2) Decide NOW what kind of lifestyle you want to live. Think 5 years down the road about the company you will want to keep. Birds of a feather flock together. White people hang out with white people. Rich people hang out with rich people. It sucks, but you have to decide now.
3) Put the principal away, and pay yourself what it takes to live the lifestyle you decided to live in Step 2.
4) Finally, and most important, change NOTHING right away (except, paying off debt is perfectly okay). Stay at your job. Don't run away. Don't take a vacation. Don't throw a party for all of your close friends unless you want to find out how many of them actually aren't your close friends. Just maintain the status quo and make decisions SLOWLY.
That is the best advice I can give, from one rich guy to another.
A successful celebrity was once asked if money buys happiness.
Her reply was, "I'd rather be rich and miserable than poor and miserable."
Table-ized A.I.
You'd lose it all paying bribes before you managed to build your first factory. Every local official wants whatever they can bleed out of you. The third-world is littered with half-finished hotels and other abandoned construction projects.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I would buy /. and make sure questions like these would be relegated to reddit & digg.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Until one dies of an overdose, one disappears into some kind of cult, half of the rest spend it all and blame you when you won't give them more because now they're entitled. It sounds like a good plan, but it can go bad pretty easily, too.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Actually, this would be a perfect idea. There used to be a guy in Maryland known as the "Route 29 Batman" who would dress up in a (really nice) Batman costume, and would go to hospitals to visit sick children and entertain them.
And sadly, he was killed in a car accident just a few weeks ago, so there's certainly an opening for it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Hindsight is 20/20, but I've always thought that were I to come upon a windfall of some large(ish) caliber, I'd likely not tell a soul, and not change my lifestyle significantly and suddenly. Sure it's tempting to run out and buy a Ferrari, but if one thinks about it, those are childish wishes and whims - a lack of self-control, if you will. The first things I'd do is settle all my debts (house, car, etc.), which aren't as visible to others. I'd also start winding down my employment (i.e. 1-month or even 2-month notice).
By simply slowing the transition down significantly, perhaps even "embellishing" the nature of the windfall (i.e. "I just closed a deal that's going to do very well for me over the next 2 years") such that the changes are logical and incremental vs. sudden and drastic, one can avoid such "acclimation pains" in one's social circle.
In the end, if you change your life drastically there's a very good chance you'll run into the same isolation issues - windfall or no. So it's about the (perceived) speed of the climb, not the steepness.
Besides, if you make the change slow it's easier for people to see that you're not changing - just your lifestyle and economic conditions. Less scary that way I think.
PS/ what's he bitching and whining about women for? he can afford any (set of) pornstar(s) he wants now!! :D
Down to a certain point, I've also learned that "less is more" when it comes to material possessions. The posessions can start to own you instead of the reverse.
Studies have shown that most people would be very happy if their income doubled. But then they get used to the new level and need another double fix. There is never enough money.
I think that the sweet spot is $500k, especially in an urban area. I would never pay a million dollars for my house, but that is what it will sell for.
A large increase in money means moving to a new house in a new social strata. If you are 1000 times richer than your neighbors and friends, life is impossible.
Reading everything is helpful. You learn from Jane Austin that ones "wealth" was not how much money was in the bank, but how much one could spend in a year.
"Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping."
-- Bo Derek
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Anyone who thinks money can't buy happiness has never bought a week's groceries for a poor person.
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Depends on the animals. Cats are extremely low-maintenance. You could leave them alone for a week with an automatic litterbox and food dispenser. Or hire someone from Craigslist to check on them every few days. Some of them actually travel really well too, so you could always bring them with you. The main problem is finding hotels that'll take them, but you can always just sneak them in if they're not very vocal.
What I really don't understand is why so many people have dogs, and not just any dogs, but big dogs. There's no way you can get away when you have one of those things. They have to be walked at least once a day, they have to be let outside several times a day to relieve themselves (since they can't use litterboxes), if you live in a subdivision that means you need to accompany them outside so you can pick up the poo or else get fined (or you let them into your back yard and pretty soon the place looks like a Mad Max scene but with piles of dog poo all over), you can't easily take them on a plane (cats go in carriers under the seat), when you do take them they need a giant cage, and then frequently the pilot forgets to turn on the cargo bay heat so the dog freezes to death during the flight. The food cost is huge because they eat so much of it, so count on $50-100/month just for that, and on top of that now your house stinks and is filthy unless you invest a ton of time into constantly cleaning both the dog and the house (since they apparently can't keep themselves clean). You can board your dog when you travel, but that costs $30-50 per day, which adds up fast. Hiring a pet sitter from Craigslist is also doable, but most likely isn't going to work well because they can't visit often enough to let the dog out before it shits on the carpet or in his cage. You can't even spend an unplanned night at someone's house with a dog, because there's no way to arrange a pet-sitter that fast unless you have some very accommodating neighbors (and it's not good to assume they'll be around to take care of your dog at such short notice).
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