NYT Article: Why Don't Rich People Just Stop Working?

[TVRodriguez]

I didn't see this posted yet.  Found it interesting and a little sad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/style/rich-people-things.html

From the article:

No One Has a Retirement Number These Days
“What’s your number?” asked anyone caught up in the dot-com boom of the 1990s.

Could you retire to Napa with $5 million? $20 million?

Some hit their number and some went bust, but Silicon Valley is more than ever a showcase for the unfettered capitalism of 2019.

Yet no one seems to talk about their number anymore, said Antonio García Martínez, who sold a start-up to Twitter and served as a Facebook product manager before publishing his memoir, “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley,” in 2016.

Yesterday’s big score is just seed capital for tomorrow’s bigger one.

“There’s never some omega point,” Mr. García Martínez, 43, said. “People who get to that point don’t stop once they get there.”

“People say, ‘Why don’t you develop a hobby, or do philanthropy?’” Mr. García Martínez said “But for many, they simply can’t stop doing it. They derive transcendent meaning from capitalism. Without their money, what else would they have?”

[FireLane]

Thanks, this was a great read. This article answers the question, "What happens when you're a rich person who's never heard of Mustachianism?"

Basically, the answer is that they keep working and piling up useless wealth, because no matter how rich you are, there's always someone richer to compare yourself to and feel like you don't have enough. It's like running on a treadmill and wondering why you're not getting anywhere.

[bacchi]

There's a new Banksy clock: https://shop.grossdomesticproduct.com/collections/frontpage/products/banksy-clock. Get it for the person who has everything...and is still working.

[TVRodriguez]

There's a new Banksy clock: https://shop.grossdomesticproduct.com/collections/frontpage/products/banksy-clock. Get it for the person who has everything...and is still working.

I had no idea that Banksy had an online shop.  I think the tombstone was my favorite:

https://shop.grossdomesticproduct.com/collections/home2/products/banksy-tombstone

[trashtalk]

This is quite interesting to think about!

I know one guy who became a tech millionaire with $40 million at age 40. He has a wife and one elementary age kid. He's being doing tech stuff for 20 years. Should he really retire and go fishing for the next 45 years of his life expectancy? Why not become an angel investor and mentor other founders?

Another guy I know has had two wildly successful small businesses and is probably a decamillionaire. He loves the arbitrage, he likes having a place to go every day, he's good at what he does and creates jobs for people. He is 65ish and shows no signs of slowing. He's never married but has had a girlfriend for 15 years or more. There are absolutely no yachts in his life just a paid-for house and 20-year-old car. I think he eats breakfast at Denny's every day. He continues to earn but also continues to provide value to his customers and community.

Most of the millionaires I know are in the "modest" $1-$5 million net worth group that Dave Ramsey calls everyday millionaires. Many of these people would testify to anxiety about education, healthcare and long-term care/retirement expenses. Reasonable? Maybe not. But still they worry.

[SwordGuy]

Most of the millionaires I know are in the "modest" $1-$5 million net worth group that Dave Ramsey calls everyday millionaires. Many of these people would testify to anxiety about education, healthcare and long-term care/retirement expenses. Reasonable? Maybe not. But still they worry.

I was speaking with a friend last week.   His comment was that a few years ago he and his siblings felt that their dad would never run out of money.   Now his dad is in an assisted living facility that costs $20,000 a month.     Now they are concerned that the money will run out before their dad dies.

$240,000 will blow thru a $3,000,000 portfolio pretty darn fast, especially if there are other medical costs on top of it.  A big recession could cut that portfolio in half for a year or two which would gut the portfolio in short order.

[TVRodriguez]

This is quite interesting to think about!

I know one guy who became a tech millionaire with $40 million at age 40. He has a wife and one elementary age kid. He's being doing tech stuff for 20 years. Should he really retire and go fishing for the next 45 years of his life expectancy? Why not become an angel investor and mentor other founders?

Another guy I know has had two wildly successful small businesses and is probably a decamillionaire. He loves the arbitrage, he likes having a place to go every day, he's good at what he does and creates jobs for people. He is 65ish and shows no signs of slowing. He's never married but has had a girlfriend for 15 years or more. There are absolutely no yachts in his life just a paid-for house and 20-year-old car. I think he eats breakfast at Denny's every day. He continues to earn but also continues to provide value to his customers and community.

Most of the millionaires I know are in the "modest" $1-$5 million net worth group that Dave Ramsey calls everyday millionaires. Many of these people would testify to anxiety about education, healthcare and long-term care/retirement expenses. Reasonable? Maybe not. But still they worry.

Good points.  I also know a couple of tech millionaires, whose assets have only grown in part at least because they are not very spendy, and who are now looking into the best methods of philanthropy to fit their visions because they are starting to realize that they most likely won't spend it all.  They can't or won't just stop making money, partly because they are thrifty and won't blow it all, and partly because they are not really driven by money but are driven to keep creating and developing new projects.  They also do angel investing.

I know another few sets of millionaires who simply enjoy their work.  A couple of them might actually score pretty low on a traditional IQ test, tbh, and they might be described as not knowing anything other than how to make money.  Some of them simply cannot see why they should not continue to optimize their earnings and investments just because they now have more money.  You don't stop being you, which is why so many lottery winners blow their stash asap--they are spenders, not savers, so they simply spend it all like they would a paycheck.

I've had at least one high net worth client who very aggressively negotiated my fees.  He told me that he doesn't think in terms of the dollars spent on the project but instead on the dollars invested to produce the amount needed to pay me.  So if, for example, he was trying to get me to lower my fee by $1,000, he was not thinking of the one thousand that he would pay me but of the principal that would be required to produce that $1,000.

[scottish]

Most of the millionaires I know are in the "modest" $1-$5 million net worth group that Dave Ramsey calls everyday millionaires. Many of these people would testify to anxiety about education, healthcare and long-term care/retirement expenses. Reasonable? Maybe not. But still they worry.

I was speaking with a friend last week.   His comment was that a few years ago he and his siblings felt that their dad would never run out of money.   Now his dad is in an assisted living facility that costs $20,000 a month.     Now they are concerned that the money will run out before their dad dies.

$240,000 will blow thru a $3,000,000 portfolio pretty darn fast, especially if there are other medical costs on top of it.  A big recession could cut that portfolio in half for a year or two which would gut the portfolio in short order.

My father was in almost exactly that situation.    His health was failing badly, but he was so strong minded and independent that he needed to have someone with him 24/7.     However, it lasted just under 3 months.   I think many people requiring that level of care will be in the last stages of life.