I don’t know any well-off people who are chronically depressed. The two wealthiest guys I know (incredibly different from one another) seem pretty well-adjusted, don’t flaunt the moolah, and freely pursue their interests outside of work. With them I don’t think it’s so much a matter of money buying happiness as it is being unburdened by financial concerns allows them to live life on their own terms. I knew them both when they had less than nothing. While I know I’ll always have to balance my checkbook several times a week, I can’t begrudge either of them anything because I know the dues they’ve paid.
I’m acquainted with a woman who is close to (if not) a billionaire (to the extent that she would recognize me and know my name) but I really can’t say if I could really tell that she is happy or not… although she sure seems to be.
I’m also friends with someone with multi-millions (to the extent that he has my number in his cell phone contacts, and my kid was at his house yesterday, and has flown on his private jet). I can tell you that he is very happy for the most part. Actually, it probably depends on the day… just like for the rest of us. When I first met him I had no clue of his life situation… he seemed like just any other guy I might meet watching our kids play sports. Overall, I’m pretty sure they are just like the rest of us. Some are happy, some are not. They may not have the same problems as some, like how to make a certain payment, but I guarantee they have other issues we can’t imagine that stress them out just as much at times.
Then again, I wouldn’t describe myself as rich, but I would describe myself as very happy, so I don’t know what you will gain from this thread.
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but I think the qualities that enable a person to accumulate wealth are some of the same qualities that enable them to find satisfaction with their accomplishments and status, which lead to happiness.
I know several “rich” people- a couple in my family, and one multi-millionaire I used to work for. We know each other well enough that I could call him this morning to arrange a lunch date, if I was so inclined. My family members are happy, not because of the money necessarily but their wealth does allow them to be comfortable with how they’ve provided for themselves and their immediate loved ones, and to look forward to spending their retirement doing activities they enjoy.
So, for instance, if traveling makes you happy, and you have the means to travel and are in a position to take the time to do it, then I guess money does buy happiness, in a way.
I have a classmate from high school who is a genuine millionaire. He made it by inheriting a family business and investing. I have two cousins and a brother who make six figure incomes and are wealthy by my standards. All of them seem very happy, indeed.
I do, and one who commited suicide.
Of the rich people I know, those who grew up thinking money grows on trees tend to be unhappier than those who know that no matter how much you happen to inherit, you still need to work (at the very least, you need to watch the fund’s managers).
I also know someone who was upper-middle-class economically, local high class socially and is now a muchimillionaire. He built up a business whose model revolutionized its field; at one point, the business pretty much managed itself and he got bored and tired of petty crap and ass-kissers, so he sold it and started another one in the same field but with a different (and also very unusual) business model. He’s keeping this second one to a size where he actually feels like his presence contributes, where he doesn’t feel like a cog in his own toy. So that’s someone who went from the stress of the startup to “aarrgh if this is success give me failure”, back to the intensity he enjoys.
My late stepfather was for many years a senior partner in one of Washington, D.C.'s most prominent law firms. He owned a very roomy 3-story Georgetown townhouse. He also bought a house on several hundred acres of land up in the Blue Ridge outside of Washington, VA four or five decades ago when it was a lot cheaper than it is now. In short, he was rich.
He frequently drank himself to sleep at night, which would lead me to believe he wasn’t all that happy.
Like many people in this thread, I have an uncle who started his own business. He ran the business with very comfortable profits for 20+ years before a nasty situation involving his business partners led to him selling his share of the company. I don’t know how many millions he got from it, but the emotional impact of losing the company was that there’d been a death in the family.
He’s eventually recovered from that and found new things to do with his life. Before selling the company he had a very nice house (not ostentatious, mostly just big enough to accommodate four daughters) and a time share in an airplane (his hobby). Since getting his millions I think he’s bought a plane, and went to school to learn to service the engines himself. He’s since been drafted into running the school. My aunt still snipes her ebay purchases (though I think that’s as much from a competitive streak as a thrifty one). They’ve taken in a young student from the school who hit hard times and are having ‘fun’ re-parenting him. They bought the house across the street for my grandparents to move into now that they need more care. As best I can tell, they’re happy.
In my experience, money mostly acts as an enabler for whatever is already there. If you are prone to being happy, money will make it a lot easier for you to do stuff that will make you happy. If you are prone to self-destruction, money makes it spectacularly fast and easy to self-destruct. If you are melancholy, money will help you be melancholy in a mansion. People with vices are going to find it a lot easier to get in trouble. Caring, giving people are going to find bigger ways to give. It works on what you’ve got.
The richest person I know is a mixed bag. She’s not unhappy, per say, but she has some pretty devastating lifelong health problems that make it hard for her to see her life as fabulous. She’s a caring woman, and she works hard, but she’s always kind of got a shadow over her. The money has absolutely been a part of why she is alive today, and while she doesn’t live an extravagant lifestyle, she has no problem buying what she wants and and the sense is that it doesn’t really make up for it, but at least it is something.
Hang around more with lawyers and you will.
I know the mother of the head of the world’s largest media empire and she is 100 years old and happy as a clam. She has devoted her life to helping others achieve their goals, she says this makes her happy. A wonderful and seriously rich Australian.
I know of a guy second hand that went to my school. He went on a road trip, made fast friends with an investor of some sort and is now worth half a billion. His current hobby is smashing up Aston Martins, which from what I’ve heard makes him very happy.
It’s hard to know who the richest person that I know is because they don’t walk around with their assets stamped on their foreheads. It’s probably my cousin’s brother-in-law who owns a big regional development company. I can say that he’s a generally unhappy person, but it has nothing to do with his money. It’s more to do with his job, which pits him against politicians, other real estate firms, and lawyers on a daily basis. When you spend a good deal of your time fighting with people, you’re going to be pretty unhappy. I think that’s why a lot of lawyers are unhappy.
I have an acquaintance who is a retired professional athlete with a net worth around $16 million. He seems pretty happy, but he seems like he’d be a pretty happy guy without it, too. Maybe not as happy.
Wow! Didn’t know there were so many people here who knew rich people. Thanks for sharing all your stories. As I was reading them in the beginning, it looked like people with money were really happy and then it took a dive and then it went back up a bit.
I think money is a FACTOR in having happiness in your life. It’s not THE factor, just A factor from what I can tell.
So interesting to see these stories. Please keep them coming!
Also, do these stories inspire anybody else to start their own business and start raking in the dough?
Probably the Rockefeller heiress I knew at one point; she was brilliant but all over the map and not really very happy.
Another person I know, who sold his company at just the right time during Dot Com Boom 1.0, is definitely happy.
My partner’s nephew is probably the richest person I know. He started out as a hairdresser and now has controlling interest in about 30 salons plus a line of hair care products (all of this is in Japan). He seems like a nice person, he is always nice to us (as his uncle, my partner can demand a certain amount of respect just by existing).
It’s hard to tell if he’s truly happy, but I think he enjoys the rough and tumble of business. He is very driven to succeed. His first marriage failed, but it might have done that even if he was less driven (I suspect she married him for his money or his prospects of making money). He seems to have a good relationship with his two daughters. His main squeeze now is his chief assistant at the business. He is currently about 53 years old (his mother is much older than my partner).
Since he worked hard for his money I think he is fairly proud of it, and he certainly doesn’t hide it. He drives nice cars, and recently built a nice (but not huge) house, giving his old condo to his mother. He frequently pays for vacations for his mother and her siblings (including us if we’re in the area) at luxury resorts. I think the family thinks of him as hard-working and generous, not as showing off.
Roddy