
Money can't make me happy, says millionaire giving his riches away - ojbyrne
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/story.html?id=2537790
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swombat
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.

~~~
jcl
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.

~~~
swombat
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.

~~~
hugh3
I agree. He doesn't even seem to have a good idea of what he's going to do
next. If he were retiring to a cabin in the Alps or a shack on the beach I
could envy him a little, but living in a tiny studio apartment in Innsbruck?
With a bed in the living room so he can't even experience the pleasure of
having a friend around to dinner?

And I, too, would like to know what his wife has to say about this. Setting up
a charity is fine, but moving from a villa to a bedsit? I'm starting to think
there may be some divorce-related spite involved here.

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orangecat
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.

~~~
hugh3
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.

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justin_vanw
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.

------
steveplace
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.

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

~~~
megamark16
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.

------
hugh3
I might find his asceticism more admirable if he hadn't apparently sent out a
press release about it.

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

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

~~~
Dellort
You are already in space.

------
tjic
> "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.

------
goatforce5
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qui...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid)

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huherto
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...](http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/02/01/rich-o-
meter-20/tab/article/)

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

~~~
hugh3
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.

------
padmanabhan01
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.

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

~~~
tjic
I wondered the exact same thing.

------
Groxx
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.

------
cubix
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
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.

------
samd
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?

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

I find this fact to be singularly depressing.

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

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

What's "faux" about it?

They clearly prefer it. How do you know that they're wrong? (Hint: they're not
you.)

~~~
_delirium
I grew up in a suburb, and as a _community_ it seemed pretty faux; it made an
effort to keep up trappings of a community, but was pretty clearly just a
bunch of houses.

I do agree people may well prefer it. It had no community, but the houses were
quite nice.

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chops
Money is not an end. Money is a means.

------
Dellort
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.

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

~~~
abstractbill
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.

~~~
axod
Surely turning $1M into $10M is fairly trivial compared to making that first
$1M. Maybe turning $1M into $100M :/

