I have always dreamed of being wealthy…so I wonder what like is like for those who inherit great wealth. Here’s the scenario:
-you are a young man of average intelligence
-your grandpa started a business, and built it up to a multi-million$ level
-your Dad continued…and you watched the business kill him (he worked 18 hour days, spent months on airplanes, sweated blood) to get the family firm through tough times…after two heart attacks and ulcers, Dad finally had a fatal stroke at 52!
-you decide that you don’t want to follow your father, so you :
-sell the firm
-put the proceeds into tax-free bonds
-settle down for a life of leisure
Do most people doing this have decent lives? Or do most of them succumb to drugs, booze, boredom?
Please cheer me up (I’m hoping that these rich people are really unhappy!).
I know of several who follow their favorite bands all over the world. They seem pretty happy, if a little whacked-out.
My friend-of-a-friend who doesn’t have to work, is a divorced crack addict. Pretty sad overall. She used to work in her husband’s business (dog training) and was actually quite good at it from all reports before the drugs got really crazy. Somewhere along the line he got sick of her shit, and the result is as you see in the first sentence.
I’ve got quite a few rich friends who haven’t really done much because they never had to do much. Mostly they hang out writing screenplays that will never get finished, working odd jobs, and talking about the lives they wished they had.
Seems like a pretty aimless existence to me. Something about not having to make a living makes it hard to really light a fire.
Read some Victorian novelists, like Trollope, about the gentry who didn’t have to work at jobs.
I wouldn’t mind being a trust fund baby at my stage of life now, altho being 56 hardly qualifies me as a baby… or even a babe… 
I’ve accomplished what I have and become who I am because of the choices I made and the opportunities I took advantage of. I’ve got a feeling if I didn’t have to work or budget or plan or dream, I’d have been bored, or gotten in trouble, or died drunk and doped in a gutter somewhere. However, I can handle it now, if anyone has a trust fund they need spent.
My ex-Boss inherited a thriving business and over a million dollars. It all went up her and her husband’s noses.
I watched “Born Rich” on HBO a couple of years back. I found it interesting, if a little depressing. It seemed like most of these people were pretty unhappy and unable to trust others.
Here’s a review of the DVD: DVD Talk
From the review: “The question, what would you do if you never had to work a day in your life, suddenly becomes less one of wish fulfillment, than one of dread.”
I’ve known a few.
One’s trust fund isn’t enough to let him do more than survive at a lower middle class level. He works to supplement that, but he hasn’t always. The trust fund lets him travel, has let him pursue dream jobs (he’s a community organizer). Another lives a little better off his trust fund, and is an artist.
Others have been lost souls - drugs. Or Sven’s haven’t done much because they don’t need to do much.
I imagine it varies greatly by the individual.
It’s surely possible to lead a productive and fulfilling life as a wealthy person, just as it’s possible to let it destroy you.
Unfortunately, I can’t speak from personal experience on this issue. My guess, though, is that happiness is a bell curve at most levels of net worth.
I’d have a hard time fitting four bills up my nose, I’m impressed.
My best buddy’s ex-girlfriend was a trust fund baby. She spent her share on rent, a car, eating out, cats, and stuff like laptops and expensive cameras. She didn’t supplement her income that well with a job, so she eventually ran out of money (in about a year and a half) and had to move back in with her mom.
I knew two brothers who were from a very wealthy family. They split up the cliches, one was a coke head and the other dated strippers while totaling expensive cars, then they launched their ‘entertainment career.’ Now I think they just kind of wait around for the parents to die.
Maybe you should introduce them to Lyle and Erik Menendez
I know a guy who, while not filthy rich, doesn’t have to work because of a trust received from his father.
He’s got a cool house out in the middle of nowhere (where he likes it); he’s got a woman who he’s been with for 20-some-odd years; he’s got a shit load of land with gardens and ponds all over; he’s got all the musical equipment he’d ever want; and as far as I can tell he’s got a heart of gold and I’ve never heard a cross word from him.
Sorry, OP. Maybe if he *was *filthy rich he’d be unhappy.
One of my best friends is a trust fund baby in her late 30s.
And for the most part, she has been in therapy her whole life. She is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women I have ever known, with the sweetest disposition and potential, but is constantly struggling to find purpose in life. She has gone to school to be a personal trainer, a pilates instructor, a musician, and more. She has traveled the world and dined on the finest cuisine (well, like me), but always seems wanting something that she doesn’t have – and this is not in a materialistic sense because she is not acquisitive of “things.”
I always get kind of freaked out when I hear the stories about people who get a lot of money and ruin themselves with drugs. Because it means for lots and lots of people, the only reason they haven’t ruined their lives with drugs is because they can’t afford to buy enough drugs to ruin themselves. It’s kind of scary.
The one friend-of a friend I know who is really rich, is a member of a well known Dutch brewery family. He used to spend his days checking his stock portfolio and his hobby, motorcycle-racing. He cherishes his friends and is afraid new " friends" and romantic interests will only like him for his money. Weirdly, he fell in the hands of a Thai gold-digger who didn’t know just how rich he was, only that he was a Westernener , and that was good enough for her.
Now that his stock has plummeted, he has taken to work as a trcuk driver, until his portfolio goes up again.
He is about as happy as a nine to fiver, I’d guess.
Yes and no. The lack of a need to worry about providing for one’s present and future survival removes the primary evolutionary driver for development and growth - which is to say, a purpose in life. For many that means filling the void with destructive things like drugs.
I’d imagine there are other paths for “trust fund babies” to find purpose in life:
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Religion, i.e., take Franciscan vows or something
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Competition in sports; many top athletes require a lot of time to equip and train and start from a young age, for example in polo or equestrian riding which require stables, horses, etc.
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Creative endeavors that are true passions and not just filling in time (unfinished screenplays, dabbling in oil painting, etc.). For example Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a very successful comic actress best known for playing “Elaine” on Seinfeld and the lead role in “The New Adventures of Old Christine” after doing a run on SNL, is from one of the wealthiest families in the world.
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Competition, period. Many top Wall Street and hedge fund types are long past the point of “needing more money”, the money is just a way of keeping score as every year you can prove to yourself and the world just how much smarter, ruthless, better connected, lucky, etc., you are than anyone else.
Well, here’s a sampling of some that I’ve met over the years:
My older cousin sort of dabbles in film and art in NYC and is very into the “scene”. He is 40, single, has never had a real job for as long as I’ve known him and seems perfectly happy. OTOH, his sister (also my cousin) works for their dad’s insurance company and is raising a family like a regular person.
My two younger cousins are a few years out of college and are still in their “backpacking through Europe/Asia/South America phase.”
I don’t know if they are true “trust fund” kids but that side of our family seemed to have done well for themselves.
Sadly, I do not have a trust fund. If being unemployed has taught me anything, I think I’d be a good trust fund kid.
My GF has a former coworker who quit his job and opened a very successful wine bar in the West Village. He had a falling out with his partner (business) and her partner (gay), but he came out of it owning the whole thing and it seems to do very well. He’s in his 40s, single, spends his weekends up in a cabin in New Hampshire or whereever and seems to enjoy it.
My GF has a cousin who shall we say, when we watch his favorite baseball team with him, we watch from the owners box. He and his wife have a couple of teenage daughters. I don’t know them that well, but they seem pretty level headed. They were talking about how they were all watching My Super Sweet Sixteen and how it was ridiculous with the girls on the show throwing tantrums because they couldn’t get Jay-Z to sing at their party. But you did get a sense from the way they talked that this was something that could conceivably come up in a non-abstract way in their house.
My aunt married some retired, divorced investment banker who comes from family money. His kids are in their 20s and 30s and are some of the most drug-addled psychotic or retarded bitches I’ve met.
When I was a 1st year associate in a Big-4 accounting firm, a guy in my start class was from a family that owned a famous office supply company. He was a Harvard grad, pretty smart, laid back, good looking, had surfer hair, rode a motorcycle and seeed like a likable guy. Kind of reminded me of Owen Wilson in the Meet the Parents films. His family’s company was one of my clients and I happened to notice from the pictures on the wall in the lobby that all the men in his family tended to go bald. So take that!
There were kids at college who I knew had trust funds. I didn’t know all of them that well. Some were drug addicted fuckups with the same last names as campus buildings who constantly wrecked their Mercedes. (Or in the case of my roomate’s girlfriend, let her boyfriend and his fraternity brothers drive it until THEY accidently wreck it. Oops). Others you would have no idea they were going to inheret $25 million or their parents owned a popular brewery.
What I’ve noticed about people who have money is that it can be sort of isolating. It frees you to do whatever you want to do (for good or ill), but I think it can make it difficult to relate to regular people or for them to relate to you. A big part of how people define themselves relates to their attitudes and outlook on money, their job or career, wealth and what they did or did not have growing up.
Think about it like this. Even if you are a trust fund kid who wants to work and have a career, how much shit will you eat from a crappy boss? The fact that you can actually have an answer besides “all of it” means you think in a fundamentally different way from most other people.
Or another way to look at it is what if you had the money to do whatever you want? What happens when you no longer have an excuse for not being a successful architect, actor, writer or whatever (other than you suck at it)?