
OK, You're Rich. Now What? - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704083904576335593881998326.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
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reasonattlm
Being rich means that you have mastered how to turn time into money. Great. So
you've got the hang of half of the game - which is no time to sit back and
rest on your laurels.

Now you have to master turning money into time.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is-
wealth.ph...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is-wealth.php)

We all go through engineering our cycles of property and time; how can we best
optimize time to generate property that can be used to make our time more
effective? We do this in small ways and large, but everyone does it. Some
people do it so effectively they launch themselves into property escape
velocity, exponentially increasing the effectiveness of their time and
exploring the outer limits of what it means to maintain ownership of a great
deal of property.

Interestingly, despite the grand importance of time as the absolute foundation
of wealth, very little progress has been made in the most obvious optimization
of all: creating property that can create more time. More heartbeats, more
health, more time spent alive and active. Rejuvenation medicine, capable of
repairing the damage of aging. Tissue engineering to generate replacements for
worn organs. The cure for cancer. If you could do all that, then the much more
productive form of escape velocity becomes possible - longevity escape
velocity. Why strive to maintain an empire of property that will crumble to
dust when the degenerations of age catch up with you when you could be that
fit-looking guy having a blast swimming in the breakers every other Sunday for
as long as you like?

Wealth is exactly time, and here we are, bordering the era of biotechnology
for the repair of aging. Planning ahead for the best possible personal future
starts with investment now. Think about it.

~~~
DanI-S
As important as this is, I know people whose lives are so consumed by their
quest for immortality that they go without much of what makes life worth
living.

Pursuing the life of an ascetic and munching on supplements in the hope that
you'll still be around when the singularity hits - it's not too far from
giving yourself to religion.

~~~
Eliezer
> I know people whose lives are so consumed by their quest for immortality

Name three. And please note that Voldemort doesn't count because he's not a
real person.

~~~
ignifero
Hundreds of movie celebrities come to mind.

I would reverse your question and name people who, even though they could have
lived more, they chose not to do so: I will name a heavyweight: Albert
Einstein

~~~
Eliezer
> Hundreds of movie celebrities come to mind.

If they're not signed up for cryonics, at their income level, I don't buy that
they're actually consumed by anything remotely resembling a quest for
technological immortality, as opposed to merely trying to grab onto their
fading youth using conventional and uninteresting methods.

------
yason
I wouldn't need billions, really. Not even millions. Just some income, I
wouldn't mind if it was capital income, if some benevolent gazillionaire would
pay me a modest lifetime allowance, or if I inherited some poor but filthy
rich relative as long as nobody told me what to work on.

I'd just sit down for probably four hours every day and write code for
_whatever open source project_ I'd feel like contributing to the most each
time of the year. Sometimes possibly writing my own software, sometimes fixing
stuff in other software, or sometimes just redesigning stuff. Minus all effort
to convince people to accept my patches. But open source anyway. I think that
open source is my best bet of making a difference in the world; I mean such a
difference that scales.

I have four hours to spare these days. But those would be the code-writing
hours only. I would need the ten other hours, while doing all kinds of
everyday stuff, to think about what to write the following day. I can't do
that now that I'm working: I merely spend the four hours to unwind from what I
did for work, to get back to normal.

On the other hand, if I had _lots of_ money then I'd feel being obliged to put
that money into good use. Not just investing it into the most convenient index
fund I happened to find: it would be _my money_ and I'd be pretty picky about
it. And managing money would take time; I'm afraid it'd take enough time to
once again prevent me from just coding whatever I want.

~~~
jamii
4 hours x 5 days x 15 weeks x $100 = $30k

I spend the other 37 weeks working on open source projects. If you have more
in-demand skills you can probably charge more.

------
briggsbio
This article pisses me off. This is certainly a giant windfall, but Reid is
already wealthy and has shown that he doesn't fall into the ridiculous
sensationalist stereotypes proffered by this moronic journalist. And he's been
building this company for 8 fricking years! Hoffman one of the most visionary
and prolific angel investors and (never met but hear he is) a fantastic
person. He had a substantial exit when one of the largest internet
acquisitions happened with PayPal (anyone know his total take?). And with his
stake in Facebook he's had "paper X00 millionaire" status for quite a while.
And Zynga? And about a hundred other angel investments? Not to mention that
with the liquidity now afforded by the secondary markets, the term "paper
millionaire" is ringing a bit hollow when talking about the elite consumer
Internet companies who have active demand in SecondMarket and the like. So to
characterize him as this rags to riches story illustrative of the flash-in-
the-pan excess of some new dot-com "bubble.0" is frankly disgusting. Oh, and
to answer the journalist's question of what to do with all that money? Do what
Reid has done, and usher in the next generation of successful startups (with
surely some casualties along the way, but hey, that's investing).

------
arkitaip
Google actually invited some very high profile people to teach its staff about
wealth and investing [http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-
youll...](http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-
get)

------
Kilimanjaro
I am always coding like a maniac to make enough money so I can finally retire
to do what I love most, coding.

------
holdenc
Is this question really that hard to answer? I'll take some stabs:

\- Dalton (school) for the kids, and a nice donation to the alma matter to
assure legacy status

\- Museum board memberships for the wife

\- A vanity career in writing, photography or abstract art

\- The best therapist money can buy

~~~
iskander
Are there any high profile examples of people who didn't change their
lifestyle much at all?

~~~
ericb
At one time, Warren Buffett would have been a perfect example, but I think he
has a private plane now, which dilutes the impression a bit.

~~~
klbarry
He was forced to be his shareholders, actually, because wasting time in coach
was reducing shareholder value.

~~~
te_chris
He also owns the company - marquis jet (well, it's parent who i can't remember
the name of).

~~~
rdl
NetJets. Warren Buffett was a customer for 3 years before buying the company,
though. The Marquis card is interesting, but I think the traditional
fractional ownership plan is a lot more popular.

------
dr_
Start a spaceship company.

~~~
dfischer
This is exactly why I want to be rich.

~~~
rdl
I wanted to get absurdly (>$25b) rich to be the guy who financed the first
mission to Mars, as a private venture. I think Elon is going to beat me to it.
Somehow, this doesn't really upset me at all.

------
chopsueyar
I thought being rich was having liquid assets, not a billion dollars in stock
that would decrease in worth as you sell large chunks of it.

------
cagenut
Solve education. Use the results to solve food & energy.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
energy is solved. <http://www.energyfromthorium.com/history.html>

potable water is solved as a side effect of thorium reactors.

food was solved by the Bosch-Haber process, it's a matter of distribution now.

~~~
ugh
Politics and engineering are not the same.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I have some nice beach front property to sell to anyone thinking they're going
to solve a political problem.

~~~
ugh
Tons of political problems have been solved in the past†. If politics were
incapable of solving problems society wouldn’t exist.

It’s just that you can’t go about solving political problems like you would go
about solving engineering problems. That’s all.

†A few examples of relatively targeted efforts to achieve set political goals:

\- Women’s suffrage in the UK and other countries

\- Abolishment of the death penalty in France and other countries

\- The civil rights movement in the US

Those are all high-profile examples but solving problems in a way that doesn’t
cause chaos or disasters is one of the core tasks of any political system.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
all of those resulted in awful outcomes to go with the good. political
problems don't get "solved". differing groups get pushed around around over
time. the overall amount of pushiness monotonically increases.

~~~
ugh
That’s an awfully cynical view. Problems remain, politics is tedious and
sometimes mindbogglingly irrational but, looking back, humanity has made
progress and there are countries in the world that are better at this stuff
and some that are worse.

No one serious – and certainly no large portion of the population anywhere in
Europe or North America – demands women’s suffrage to be taken back. I’m not
sure how to interpret that in any other way as seeing clear progress (if my
goal was to enable women equal participation in politics).

But that’s not really all that important to the point I was trying to make.
Politics requires a different sort of mindset compared to engineering (as
does, for example, PR or marketing), you don’t solve problems (or better:
achieve goals – “problem” is such an awfully loaded word) the same way.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I think it is wise to be cynical about zero sum games such as status and
government and optimistic about positive sum games.

as for achieving goals, many of the "conflicts" fall away when you directly
consider the goal of increases in standards of living for all sectors of
society rather than an endlessly manipulated parade of sub goals.

If aliens came to earth and you told them about our problems, they'd probably
first ask why everyone isn't studying the regions with the highest standards
of living.

------
alttab
The most interesting thing about the article was that the advice was not just
for the rich, but general investment advice for anyone.

It seemed as though this sample suggested passive investment with an emphasis
on diversification of speculative tech stocks. This would be especially
important to paper millionaires who "have the money" who now need to safely
and wisely get it to cash.

Not a problem for most of us yet, but I'd imagine I'd hit the books if I
legally obtained access to millions like some of these founders have.

I'd also imagine experienced founders who have seen checks for millions before
would already know what to do.

------
edanm
I once read a great article on asktog, called "How I made a Small Fortune (out
of a much larger one)". It dealt with advice, from someone who got a lot of
shares of Apple when they IPOed.

For some reason I can't seem to find it anywhere. Can anyone provide a link?

------
hristov
Of course there are people calling themselves "wealth psychologists" now.

------
sigzero
If I am rich, I help other people.

~~~
diego
The only thing that happens when you're rich is that you can help more people.
If you were not helping people before (whatever that means to you), you
probably won't do it after.

~~~
klbarry
Not true at all. Many people would be much more willing to give once basic
expenses are taken care of (60k-100K annual income).

~~~
tobtoh
What you said intuitively appears true, but it's actually not the case in real
life. Helping others is not limited by time or money - you can help others in
large or small ways. And the OP is absolutely correct, if you are not already
helping others in some way, having more money won't change your behaviour.

On a related note, I was talking to an university alumni director in Australia
(where philanthropy is not culturally ingrained like in the US) and she was
telling me the statistics on donations. If a student did not make a donation
to the university within 5 years of leaving, 96% of them would never make a
donation. However, if they made a donation within 5 years, a very large
percentage of them would continue to make donations (regular or irregular)
over their lifetime. How much they initially donated was irrelevant - it was
the initial act of donating that determined the probability of them continuing
to donate.

Similarly, if you are not prepared to donate a few dollars when on a 'low'
income, you are unlikely to change your behaviour when you are on a 'high'
income.

~~~
Eliezer
Agree with parent, disagree with grandparent. If there's one thing you learn
when you're doing philanthropy, it's that people who give to charity this year
will probably give to charity next year; and people who are planning to give
to charity "next year" will, next year, be planning to give to charity "next
year". Donors donate, nondonors don't.

------
antihero
Buy a pub. That's what I'd do.

------
known
Create jobs in the economy

------
maeon3
When I read: "Give your money away" as an item in the list, I clicked "x" on
the window. I was expecting advice on how to keep the money, not on how to
blow it all like an idiot.

------
mahmud
fund the thowra.

------
aj700
If I were American, and I was suddenly rich, the first priority would be to
get out of the land of God and guns and sexual repression known as the USA.
Yes, it's a great place to spend time, but not all of the time. It has many
advantages for the entrepreneur. I love it. But the ignorance and attitudes
put me right off.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Austrian_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Austrian_citizens)

You can "invest" your way into an Austrian passport, then live anywhere in
Europe you like. Favourite tax havens include Monaco, Switzerland, Britain
(non-dom).

Europe is not more civilised because it is older, but because we are prepared
to pay for public education, because we do not have world's strongest streak
of anti-intellectualism and minarchism. We are socially liberal in what we
demand but conservative in behaviour. Equality, nationalism, feminism and
statism are not dirty words. Flame away.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
the others are plenty arguable but nationalism is a plenty dirty word.
imaginary lines don't alleviate moral responsibility.

