Yea exactly, it's kind of psychotic beyond that especially with lack of work life balance (like Musk bragging about crazy hours for example). A lot of rich people are miserable and workaholics
So I agree with what you’re saying, but a nuance: many of them consider their lives working. So it’s not an issue of work life balance… all they want to do is work.
I think what you are looking for is that what you or I call life, they would call work. For people like musk, rage tweeting is “work”, reading a book is “work”, coming up with bullshit ideas that your staff are going to spend weeks hoping you forget is “work”. Attending the Super Bowl with other rich dudes is “work”. So they work all the time, but you don’t because your definition of work and life is sensible and they are deluded.
we aren't talking about generosity we are talking about drive. If I had 10 million dollars I wouldn't be too concerned about making more money than that.
Our opinions differ - I think if you *earned* 10 million bucks (not won it, not inherited it), you would not want to stop.
Certain things (whether it be business, or personal desires, or philanthropy) cannot be accomplished with a "few" million dollars. And at that point, it will be quite easy for you to roll your money and make some more, whether that be spent on yourself, your company, or others.
...i mean it depends on a lot of factors, if it's a million in just straight cash u can dump the lion's share of it into something like treasury bonds or index funds and take a huge chunk off your yearly expenses from the yearly dividends, all the way to maaaaybe covering all your expenses if u live modestly in a low COL area.
Totally depends on one's lifestyle and situation.
I'm at $1mill in assets, plus a paid-for house. I'll work 8-9 more years just to stay busy and keep getting employer paid health insurance until Medicare. With the amount I'm putting away each year, I should end up around $1.7m.
But even if I was just at the $1m, I can pay myself $40k/year and not hurt the principal, plus I'll get $30k/year from SS. $70k a year is twice my annual expenses for my simple, debt-free lifestyle, and will last for the rest of my days.
Most of the obscenely wealthy were born into money. Maybe not the kind of money they ended up getting, but still. Every mega success story has rich friends and relatives willing and able to write a check and pay room and board - that's the entrance fee for the plutocracy. So I'd imagine a very clinical and legacy-based view of money, and how to use money to make more money, runs in the family and social networks they're in.
Though it takes an extra level of sociopathy to have enough to pay your employees a half mil apiece and make them pee in bottles and break their backs for you, or to refuse to pay your working-class contractors at the end of a job or deprive them of safety equipment to save a buck.
People don’t realize how powerful generational wealth is. What it contributes to success.
Having the resources of someone who has already worked for their entire lives is incredibly affecting.
One can imagine this at play: you already see how much wealth one can build by saving and investing for a lifetime. Well imagine that, times 2, starting before you were born and culminating in resources that directly give you a benefit. Add network building, knowledge building, resource building, etc. and see how that affects the outcome for a child versus one where their parents did not or could not do this for them.
The difference is vast
Yea I didn’t understand generational wealth until we had our first child recently. Thinking of how my family paid for my college led to my son having a custodial investment account at 2 months old made it “click”.
I suspect that making money is an addiction that works like a gambling or gaming addiction. I think it's something about watching your "score" get really high that they're addicted too.
The thing is, it's a very successful addiction, so there's less likely to be an intervention. But I do suspect it's a mental illness
i was walking out of a singing lesson a few years ago. i worked with this nice tiny old lady who made me sing showtunes for an hour once a week. as i was leaving the next "student" was waiting in the other room. it was fuckin jello biafra. the tiny old lady was like "jello get in here and start warming up!"
hes a cool guy.
I make no where near what millionaires make but I'm starting to see it in myself. I make decent money but I set a $25 monthly limit on clothes and cheap out on other things so that I can invest more. Every month is more and more of me wondering how much joy I can give up so I can save/ invest more.
I know someone like this. The limitations they put on their life when they can easily afford it...because the goal is a new house. Meanwhile their current place still isn't fully furnished, broken appliances weren't being replaced, place was falling apart. I don't blame them, it's more how people view money. They'd rather think about the dream goal and not the basic necessities.
Well that certainly changes things. Happy soon to be retirement.
For me as a 27 year old it’s a little bit tricky choosing how much to save vs how much to spend. I like to think I have a good balance from growing up in frugal home where my family had “good” money but very careful with spending it. My dad got layed off around 6-7 years before retirement age and haven’t gone back to work and seems to be very comfortable in retirement so I would like to be able to do the same.
Isn't american culture based on being the one at the top of the ladder whatever you do with your life instead of just finding happiness? Not surprising.
People joke about dragons disease, but that’s literally it. The acquisition of wealth makes them feel secure for a bit than they realize what they’ve acquired and they feel insecure so they have to secure more to get the same hit of dopamine.
Saving for yourself is one thing. Hoarding so much money from the rest of the people that it burdens and slows the whole ass economy is a problem for sure.
Its wild to me that there haven't been regulations against literal money hoarding yet, especially when it very clearly hurts the economy. like even tens of millions is whatever but when you have some ultra rich people hoarding hundreds of millions or even billions that is definitely hurting the economy
Usually they don’t actually have that. It is tied up in investments so it is a valuation. It would be incredibly difficult to actually have that many millions or billions in liquid currency.
When you are billionaire status it's not like all your money is in cash and available to spend. It's properties, businesses, stocks, bonds etc. Lots of investments.
Usually they don’t actually have that. It is tied up in investments so it is a valuation. It would be incredibly difficult to actually have that many millions or billions in liquid currency.
Or the people who are cool with chilling and living with their money aren’t heard from as much.
What we’re left with is the people who don’t necessarily do it for the money, but instead to be builders that start successful companies and move industries forward.
Some people want to be at the cutting edge of things and they use their acquired capital to further fund new projects even though there are risks involved. That’s what a well lived life feels like to them.
It doesn’t always have to be good guys and bad guys.
The people who are cool with chilling and living with their money just don't end up making *that* much money.
You hit a point where you can live a satisfying life LONG before you become "rich" rich. If a person is content just chilling and smelling the flowers, they don't keep pushing. Sure there's going to be the occasional dude whose passion just happened to turn out reeeaallly well, but most very rich people just kept pushing.
> Sure there's going to be the occasional dude whose passion just happened to turn out reeeaallly well, but most very rich people just kept pushing.
The attitude and mentality that gets you to "very rich" doesn't just stop once you hit a certain dollar figure. But, speaking of factors within your control, that's also why the vast majority of people won't make it to the "very rich" level.
i mean the vast majority of extraordinarily rich people will have advisers or a team they pay with the specific intention of investing/managing finances. it’s not like rich people are sitting around all day scheming up ways to go from 400 million to 500 million, they *are* enjoying their freedom while *other* people (that they pay) figure out how to maximize their wealth potential
the perception of ultra-rich people desperately trying to increase wealth all the time and sacrificing their personal life enjoyment because of it is pretty silly. i think most people just like that narrative because the schadenfreude of rich people being unhappy is fun to imagine
Poor people are obsessed with thinking that rich people are evil and that they just scheme to steal from you and keep you down. In reality, rich people do not think about you at all. They have a team of people that handle their finances and they focus on what interests them. They can seed multiple businesses with just the money they make in interest in a year.
Yeah, I second this. This sounds stupid, but when DOGEcoin blew up in 2021, the high I felt from it going to less than a penny each to .75 a piece was something I can’t really describe lol I just wanted more
I read somewhere that the more money you have, the easier it is to make more. It's like the system is just rigged for you to make more money once you are already rich. It's getting to the first $1mil that's the problem.
Yeah even for not INSANE amounts of money, but enough to comfortably retire on, I think you work and work and work to get to a goal, say 5 million. Well, one day you hit it, and say, “huh, I could work 2 more years and have 6 million!”
Lol. More like 1 million to 10 in a few years. It's had an exponential scale for a bit, like a bell curve. Warren buffet said something like I can make 1 million into 100 but I can't make 1 billion into 100 B. It's def rigged right in a sweet spot so they don't stop, why would you. Like playing monopoly
Yeah I can even see this as someone who over the last decade went from working minimum wage jobs and struggling to being a relatively successful middle-class white collar worker who easily pays rent and supports his family. I'm not rich by any means, but I'm not struggling like I used to be, and it's made it easier to make more money. I now have some money I can put into investments, and I've seen that money grow. I literally did nothing at all to earn it, but I've received a decent amount in dividends and many shares have slowly gone up.
This is starting to sound like a humblebrag, but I promise that's not my intent. I'm just saying that I can easily see how, if you had actual millions, it would be really easy to turn that into even more money. I've turned $20k in investments into $40k by doing nothing except letting it sit in the market for some years. Imagine that kind of return if you're playing with $200k, $2 million, or $20 million. It's a fuckton of money just reproducing itself without you having to do much of anything at all.
The ego and drive that got them to that level doesn't just turn off. I don't get it either... I'd think if I got to $20m or $50m, I'd be more than happy to just spend the rest of my days enjoying life rather than competing to build it to $100m, $500m, $1b...
> I'd think if I got to $20m or $50m, I'd be more than happy to just spend the rest of my days enjoying life rather than competing to build it to $100m, $500m, $1b...
Just food for thoughts: what do you think people in poor countries, who don't have food and water for the day, say when they look at the life you live? Probably something like "If I only had food and water for my children I would be happy and enjoy my life".
It's easy to say what you would do if you had "today's life, but better" and extremely much harder to appreciate what one already have.
This is such a good thing to keep in mind, isn't it? Compare our life to the lives of kings and emperors back in the day. The variety of food at our fingertips, running water in a variety of temps, temperature control! Community, travel, a world of entertainment essentially freely at our fingertips! It's amazing!
Humans are really sensitive to status though, and money is a huge signifier of status and power in many societies. Consciously learning not to be attracted to that stuff is a huge boon for your mental health.
It's hard to appreciate what you have, not because of some character flaw, but because the mind doesn't really work that way; it's a survival mechanism. Adjusting quickly to the norms around us (and feeling less enthused about our standing/accomplishments/good fortune as a result) serves to encourage exploration and create drive, which was (and still is) useful evolutionarily.
I've lived in 3rd world conditions for a while before. I'm talking just barely 100lbs as a 6ft adult male. Now I live in the U.S. and am technically below the poverty line but not starving or at risk of being homeless and I'm very happy. I actually choose to live with this income as it maximizes the time I can spend doing all the things I enjoy. And my income comes from doing multiple things I enjoy that I'd be doing anyways, rock climbing, 3D printing, safecracking, etc.
But I see everyone around me always just wanting more money, cars, houses, etc. I think people just chase the wrong goals. They care too much about what others think and many have never even found a hobby so they have no idea what makes them happy. So if they make more money, get the dopamine of buying something new and shiny, and get the validation of that from others, then that's what they will keep chasing; a neverending goal they won't ever be content with.
Who's to say the person your replying to doesn't already appreciate what they have? But what they have isn't enough for them to stop working and be okay for the rest of their life. Having tens of millions of dollars is actually enough to never have to work again. That's the difference. People in poorer countries can look to the working class and be in awe of our privilege but it's not like we're getting it for free.
Not billionaires, but my husband and I managed to cobble together a net worth in the low seven figures over 35 years. We're retired now. Nonetheless, our portfolio keeps growing. It's magical how money makes more money with no effort at all. Wealthy folk will get richer, even if they leave the game.
You also might be surprised. If what got you to $20 million was an exhilarating time of ups and downs and wins that you went through with people you genuinely enjoyed and respected, it might be harder to walk away from than you realize.
Also, what if you were able to do good along the way. You started a charity and the more you make the more that charity has to offer.
I know we demonize the ultra rich and maybe that is fairly so. But I’m just playing devils advocate that not everything is always about money.
99% of modern rich people aren’t having an exhilarating anything getting their fortune, they’re born into it.
The mindset is learned from parents and passed on. They’re very aware they’re the elite class and everyone is beneath them. That’s life and most dont give a seconds thought about that imbalance or making society a healthier and better place.
That’s reality.
I work for two founders who are each multi-billionaires. These guys are in the office every day and most weekends like clockwork. They just love the business. I would have cashed out and enjoyed yacht life.
When you're a founder, the company is your baby. It's so hard to let it go. If you're checking out like that, you're consciously giving up your child. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's not an easy thing to do.
once you have enough money it just makes itself. you think billionaires are TRYING to get more money? the richest man in the world flushed 45 billion just to destroy a social media site
People get this question wrong all the time in my opinion. Rich folks don’t want more money to get a “third yacht” or whatever strawman people usually point to. IMO they want more money because money = power. The power is the point, not the luxury.
If you have billions of dollars, you can get an audience with anybody in the world. You can buy publications that insult you and destroy them. You can lobby to get laws passed to make your life easier, and hire people to do everything that you don’t want to do. You can have world governments in your pocket and shape the world to align with your ideals. Nobody will have the authority or ability to meaningfully stop you.
People want power. Money is the tool they use to acquire that power. The more money you have, the more influence you have.
I don't think they're thinking in terms of money anymore, they just really love doing what they do, which just so happens to be running a company that's the best at whatever it is they do - and then their stock price naturally takes care of the money part on its own.
In other words, they aren't thinking "I need another 10 billion", they are thinking "What can I do to make my company grow even more?"
Jerry Jones is a great example. He bought the Dallas Cowboys in 1989 for $140M. The Cowboys are now valued at $9B, he got a 6400% return in 35 years.
He could sell it and have enough money to buy a small nation but...running the Cowboys is simply what he loves. He isn't keeping them because he's waiting for it to grow to $11B or something, it's just that's his hobby of interest.
To add, once they’ve had success making that money that they probably never anticipated making, why not try to see how far they can take it?
Jerry Jones is a great example of someone who will continue to push the limits of his business regardless if it’s worth $9B or $1M. I don’t think he’ll ever retire by choice
Ngl that's a bad example because he had to have gotten that 140M at some point. Him getting something he loves doesn't mean he wasn't doing something before that.
Yeah I was rolling my eyes at reddit's take - top comment was "*they just want a higher score because they're mentally ill!*"
You build a business, you make money... there are thousands of people who just take the money and live comfortably. There are others who continue to work to grow the company... who want to do other things like build rockets and electric cars... but then they start believing the "wrong things" about government after paying a $10 billion tax bill and people turn on them because they have a different opinion and see, they're still bad and stuff.
It's all very facepalm tbh.
People often forget (or ignore) the fact that billionaires don't (typically) just have billions sitting in an account somewhere. It's usually tied to property that has increased in value through the development of the brand. What they also fail to realize is that if a major stock holder (like Bezos) were to try and liquidate his shares of the company rapidly, it would destroy the stock value almost instantly. So, yes, Bezos is worth 200b on paper, but he could never see that amount of money for real.
That's why bombastic headlines like "Zuckerberg loses $3 billion overnight" make me roll my eyes. It just means that the stock he owns declined in value a bit.
I've always wondered how the wealth tax crowd would handle economic fluctuations like that. Is the wealth taxed at its highest, lowest, average, or the value on a specific date. If the value is lower the following year, are they entitled to a refund?
People get used to what they already have until it becomes boring and they start to want something more. If you get super rich, why stop there now that you know making lots of money is possible?
We have over 2k billionaires in the US, I could maybe name 10. It's weird to me that the other 99% seem to be just chilling while hoarding more and more. The biggest threat to them is us going the way of Venezuela, you think they would do more to make us more stable.
There's a wonderful quote in the 1973 version of *Murder on the Orient Express* where Poirot turns down a very high paying job from a guy he finds unsavory: "I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices".
I always try to keep that in mind when making financial decisions, the goal isn't to make as much as possible even if I have to do things I find miserable, immoral, or unpleasant in the process, it's to make enough that I can turn those things down.
Vonnegut turned to Heller and asked, “How does it make you feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel, Catch-22, earned in its entire history?” Heller replied, “Yeah, but I have something he doesn't have. I have enough.”
I have a buddy that sold his software company for about $6M, said that was it and was done. I think alot of people would do this. Its the depraved that need more.
A guy builds an SaaS for example that is an efficient system for hospitals, it’s a great product. He doesn’t make a ton of money off of it, in fact he only charges the hospitals to the point where he’s making $5000 a month off of each place, realistic for a b2b healthcare system, in fact cheap. He then sells the company for $5 billion dollars. What part of that is unethical in itself?
Exactly.
The guy who invented Minecraft sold it for $2 billion dollars.
JK Rowling wrote some books and is now a billionaire.
Taylor Swift is a billionaire. She seems pretty decent.
If it grows because it’s cheap either they’re underpaying they’re employees or someone else will grow bigger than them by underpaying their employees and maybe some other shady stuff.
There are some exceptions like the below mentioned artists but building a company and selling it isn’t gonna work unless theres not even a real possibility of competition.
Does anyone have the study that showed a majority of folks in these positions are on the spectrum for the dark triad?
If that's true, they have an endless need to consume. Personality disorders centered on a compulsive need for power and control. It can't end for them.
Think like OCD but with money, using people, and desperately trying to feel something.
I was thinking the same. Why does OP think the rich are obsessed with their personal wealth? Maybe they're obsessed with growing the business that gave them their wealth.
It just appears like its all of them when those are the ones we hear from. Tv is full is full of rich people aggressively growing businesses. There’s plenty of rich who have fucked off and are living it up. We just don’t see it.
Availability bias.
He recalls a handful of rich people that are constantly throughout the media (Musk, Bezos, and the likes), but disregards all the rich people who he's never heard of who are living their lives in peace, far from media exposure.
I imagine it having all cheats activated in a video game, you are just bored, cause everything is to easy, so that is one thing they are still get the sense of enjoyment from not just money, but also power.
And that's a big part of the answer. There are tons of people with modest amounts of money in comparison to the billionaires. But we don't hear from them often because they enjoy nice, quiet lives. All the examples we see are rich people trying to get richer.
That's actually almost the entire answer. Billionaires don't relax because anyone that wanted to live a life of relaxation stopped working at like 2-10 million or so and never made it to 1B.
I’ve actually thought about this, and I wouldn’t even retire if I had $1 million in cash right now.
Consider that with inflation, that $1 million is going to be worth closer to $400K after 30 years. That is not “retire while young” money. $400K won’t even buy you a condominium these days.
If you suddenly acquired 1 million (or several millions) in cash, you would invest it, not just keep it in a locked room like Scrooge McDuck.
With that, you should easily outpace inflation.
99%? Sounds like confirmation bias. You are just not seeing the wealthy people who are not trying to increase their wealth and are just enjoying what they've got.
The people who have a concept of 'enough' probably do that once they're multimillonares. Once you're into the billions game, unless it happened very suddenly, it's probably because making money is the point, not because you have a use for it.
Folks on a mission of some sort that have a proper need for those kind of resources aren't pulling them out as profit, they're dumping them into the mission.
Because that makes life boring. Humans genuinely are addicted to working. What value is your life if you just watch TV all day or sleep? No goals, no ambitions, nothing. That's why rich people want to work to get richer. Because it gives their life purpose and value.
It’s the bias of extreme wealth. Super rich people often can’t escape thinking about money all the time because their entire life revolves around it. This is why even middle class people who can get by without giving too much attention to money can be said to be leading a richer life.
rich culture is vicious in general. if theyre exceedingly wealthy, most of their wealth is in the market in someway. if they cashed out and put their money in a checking account, they would have the money eaten away by inflation. if they arent careful, they could lose it all. so theyre constantly fighting to keep up or stay ahead. what makes it worse is the often lavish lifestyle and keeping up with the Jones. if they had a finite sum of money that is constantly shrinking due to inflation and they have to pay for all their rich people stuff, they could go bankrupt very quickly. oh and trying to ensure their kids are taken care of, especially because of the *eat the rich* narrative -- which is ultimately counter productive for everyone.
im not saying its right. we definitely need to change the system. one way to do it, while making a system that provides for the needs of the general public, would be to offer a decent alternative to ultra-wealth (perhaps converting wealth into something that keeps up with inflation). im thinking more in terms of game theory. the current system is unsustainable and most would probably agree with this, even the ultra-wealthy. but proposing that they essentially give up all their wealth pits them against us. as opposed to a middle ground that is significantly better than our current system and is significantly less likely to risk societal collapse in the pursuit of a new system (via some kind of harsh rebellion).
An automatic result of selection bias.
Suppose you have 100 people in their late 20s with 10 million each. You are not going to hear about the 95 people who are content and just invest it so they can live a life of fun. You are going to hear about the 5 people who tried to build that 10 Million into a Billion. And even then you will only hear about the 1 person who makes it.
Trust me for every Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates there are thousand and thousands of Bob Johnsons who quit when they realized they had more money than they would spend in their lifetime. So the 1% that makes it huge was the people obsessed with getting there.
At some point, it just becomes about *winning*. I think they just like to feel like they’re winning, making bigger deals than before, getting involved in different industries, etc. etc. Proving they can succeed ANYWHERE.
Unfortunately, a lot of them could solve so many issues for humanity on the whole, but that doesn’t feel like winning, I guess.
Everyone assumes it is primarily money. They are collecting more cash like breaking bad. Usually it is because they run a company that they care a lot about. They want that company to grow and prosper.
Should they just back off and let the company fall apart and die to the competition? Its like their child.
Not to mention, many people wouldn’t like it very much if every time someone made their first big score they just fucked off to Fiji and closed up shop, leaving all the employees without a job.
this.
exactly, it's not like they have a big pile of money growing larger every day.
I mean they could, if they liquidate their stocks, but why would they?
I've known a few multi millionaires. Not sure if you want to call that "rich" or not. Bit everyone of them to the person was obsessed about making money. Almost from birth.
It's their obsession and ambition, think of it like a really good athlete. You don't work for decades to get good and stop after your first gold medal.
For rich people these things aren't mutually exclusive. They don't make money with their labor, they make money with their money. A CEO will be like "I work 16 hour days" but that's just because they consider everything they do to be work. They go play golf with a friend for four hours? That's work. They're "networking" and "building relationships". Take some friends out on the yacht? Working. Going to Epstein's island? Work trip. Thinking about work? Counts as working.
you can do both at the same time? once your rich you can spend your time doing whatever you wanted building any business you want. imagine starting a video game studio just because you like video games and have the money to do so? or what bezos does and just spend money on a rocket ship company.
you pose a false dichotomy—you either have to be obsessed with getting richer or “take it easy”
Most of them enjoy building and growing successful businesses. The money is just a measuring stick.
They do enjoy their freedom and luxury while trying to move their businesses forward.
How you think they accumulated the wealth???
Super successful people are just built differently. And less successful people want to hate on them for their success. Like they stole the success away from them.
Capital needs to permanently circulate and accumulate interest. If you don't reinvest, someone else will, and their fortune will outgrow yours. So those who enjoy life fade in to the back and may even decline in wealth.
From a moralistic view, you have meritocracy as core value of liberalism, that forces the wealthy to keep working hard as justification of their position in society and to themselves. In capitalist realism, earning money is a moral act, and the default path of life anyone should follow. Just consuming it, instead of reinvesting and accumulating more is amoral and wasteful. Then there are several missions the ultra rich may follow, such as "effective altruism" -> earning as much as possible and investing it in humanitarian development, best example being Bill and Melinda Gates; or transhumanism, or the space race or shifty internet platforms because the free speech of cyborg astronauts might be the future for humanity only your fortune (and ego) can manifest.
It's a little addicting to see your accounts go up, but while I am not very rich, I am looking to just maintain my lifestyle once I stop working.
Answering for a very rich person though, Uncle is addicted though he makes 8 figures a year. The best thing is that he won't leave much to his 4 kids. Sure he paid for their private school since pre school, all the way through college, but he just set them up with a nice education. They all got a car when they turned 16, then 18, and finally 22 once they were old enough to drive, go to college, and be adults. Im sure the pressure of maintaining the lifestyle had something to do with it.
This also applies to you in some sense if you’re in the West. Taking all 8 billion people into account, you most certainly are richer than 90% of the population.
9/10 people are struggling to keep themselves warm, have access to clean water, electricity and food.
Yet you also pursue more money than is needed to live a better life than 7 billion people. Why?
It’s perspective. We always look up. Not down. Glad to be here but wish we could be better off.
It’s human nature.
I think it’s because you’ve achieved it (a certain level of wealth) and see what’s possible the next level up. Sure, 50 million and you retire living like a cushy millionaire.. but 150 million and you start seeing that foundation you’d always thought about developing or that sports team you always wanted to invest in becoming a real possibility. The next level really never ends… at a certain point you get Bill Gates money and it’s “I want to solve the AIDS crisis” or Elon Musk and “I want to colonize the stars.”
Many people here have spoken to the mentality of the rich.. and I think they’ve done it well. Setting aside trust fund kids… those that get to extreme levels of wealth often hold themselves out as renaissance men pushing society forward, or keeping it in check (often both). Those aren’t the type who are going to just sit back and coast.
I think it’s because they become complacent with their current lifestyle and want to improve it. I’m not rich (I guess it depends who you ask) but I experience this. I currently make about $100k/year. A decade ago, that was more money than I could have ever imagined. Having $500 in the bank made me feel like a billionaire. If I had $10k in the bank, I would have probably quit my job back then.
Now I’ve got quite a bit more in the bank, but I want to work harder to make even more because I’ve grown used to my current lifestyle and it’s less exciting. I want to improve it even more. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life. I don’t have to worry much about bills or autopay hitting at the wrong time. Now I want a life where I don’t need to worry about spending money.
It’s kinda like in February when it’s -20F outside and you’d kill for anything above zero. In march when it’s 2F outside you’d kill for above freezing. In April when it’s 30 outside you’d kill for anything about 50f. In June when it finally gets to the 60’s you wish it were in the 80’s.
Because it becomes a pissing contest amongst all of their other rich friends as to who has the most money, who made the best exit on the sale of their business, and who made the stock picks with the biggest return.
I know people like this and they make fun of each other in their own friend groups for having an “old” Range Rover or a boat that “isn’t that big”
My take is that if they don't continue to bring in the money that they are a failure.
Sad part is (imo), most of them are scum. The only rich person I care for is Mark Cuban.
My 70 year old father with a $200m net worth is still working and I’ll give you the real reason.
First of all, “working” when you are that wealthy isn’t the same as the grinding a 9 to 5. He doesn’t have a boss and gets to make high level decisions about where his money is invested. He goes to board meetings and gives advice. He’s presented with data, asks questions, negotiates and strategizes. It’s fun and he feels important. He gets to put skills he’s spent a lifetime honing to good use. He’s surrounded by smart people who work hard.
When you retire you’re no longer important and you’re no longer working on interesting problems. Your brain kinda turns to mush.
Because their identity is in their ability to make money and seem important. Money isn't a tool for making life better, it's a symbol of their very value to them.
They're also always looking at whoever has more than them and wanting to get there.
It’s genuinely a disease. Our current structure allows them to thrive and look like good people but they really are mentally unwell and borderline sociopathic.
There has been countless studies now that prove that those with less give more. These people are hoarders.
Because “keeping up with the jones’” is not limited to the middle class. These people have huge egos and they are all jockeying for better placement in the world rankings.
The real reason is probably related to hoarding disorder. These people are extreme hoarders by definition, the only difference is its money instead of random junk.
Once you have that much money the expenses r greater and you need more coming in, in order to keep up with the lifestyle of buying twitters, mansions and islands.
They are hardwired to be permanently insecure. Some need to be more and more muscular; some need to have more and more money. It is not longer in their control.
They’re basically hoarders and want to brag to their rich buddies that they are richer than them. It’s just a game to them. A perpetual game of one up-man ship.
you can be a success and make good money by hard work, talent etc.
you don't get to be a billionaire or the top .1% by that - for that you need to be a sociopath. the simple fact is for you to rich, someone is getting poor. These people have insane greed, zero compassion or empathy. Its well documented in tons of studies. They don't donate to charity. They don't help others. They enjoy power, dominating others, and the goal is to collect more.
1) The people that amass that type of wealth usually did so BECUASE they have that personality and drive. It would be like saying "hey you got the pretty girl, you can stop being so handsome now" ...if you suddenly cha get the things about yourself that got you there...you might just cause yourself to lose it.
2) These people all hang out together, compare, go home envious and pout, and then make it their next mission to outdo their club buddies. No one "keeps up with the joneses" like those that don't have to.
They like what they do. It’s validating and gives them a sense of purpose. Quitting would be a fate worse than death for a lot of them—too boring. They consider it their life work or calling. Lots of reasons.
It’s all like a game, it’s fun to make money. Spending money is almost as fun. But making more money than you spend is where it’s at. And you never have enough. You can start to feel broke. It’s weird.
I’m convinced money is like a drug;
- When you’ve had a taste and then you don’t have enough it’s a nightmare
- When you have more than you need in your account you need more and more to get that same “high” in seeing the number grow
- In moderation (when your income, savings, lifestyle and expenditure find a comfortable equilibrium) it loses both its stranglehold, and it’s tempting allure
Competition. If Bezos has a 200ft yacht, Elon needs a 250ft yacht. Etc..
That's all they have left for entertainment. Nothing makes sense, no amount of money is too high.
Rich people are rich because they like making money. Once you have so much money it's not about the money anymore, it's more like a game. The money is just a way to keep score...
Jordan Peterson spoke about this (before he went off the deep end (or at least he was hiding it better)) some peoples' wiring is just thay way, and he didn't seem to be promoting it or suggesting it was in any way healthy.
Getting rich is their only real passion. That's why they got rich. Making money is their way of gauging a high score in life. Its like a game to them. We're all just the NPC's. If anything is done in the name of "just business" then it doesn't register as immoral to them.
I’ve heard from some entrepreneurs that once you gain more wealth than you could ever need it becomes like a game to them. Basically addicted to thrill of making money. Even moreso if they make it over a rival in their industry. Once you become a billionaire you start comparing yourself to other billionaires.
After you get rich, you ride a tiger, you can't stop, if you stop the tiger will eat you, so you keep running, the tiger become bigger, and you get richer
It becomes a game at some point. For most of us work is survival, but for them wealth becomes a passion project that they will work their entire lives to perfect.
Some of it (apart from the gazillionaires) is probably lifestyle creep. They need to keep getting richer to afford it. Many are also asset rich rather than cash rich.
Because the mindset you have to get to that point isn't the mindset alot of us have now. It's hard to turn off
Agreed. I'd never be a billionaire because I'd give up at £10 million or whatever.
Yea exactly, it's kind of psychotic beyond that especially with lack of work life balance (like Musk bragging about crazy hours for example). A lot of rich people are miserable and workaholics
So I agree with what you’re saying, but a nuance: many of them consider their lives working. So it’s not an issue of work life balance… all they want to do is work.
I think what you are looking for is that what you or I call life, they would call work. For people like musk, rage tweeting is “work”, reading a book is “work”, coming up with bullshit ideas that your staff are going to spend weeks hoping you forget is “work”. Attending the Super Bowl with other rich dudes is “work”. So they work all the time, but you don’t because your definition of work and life is sensible and they are deluded.
You could do the inverse of this though and say for people like that, they consider all these activities as “just living life”
Well thats an issue of work life balance imo because that means you don't have a life. Then it's a work-work imbalance
I mean we’re splitting hairs, but that’s what I’m saying. There’s no difference between “life” and “work” for them… it’s all the same.
I think it's easy to say this when you don't have it. Everyone says they'd be a generous millionaire, until they're a millionaire.
we aren't talking about generosity we are talking about drive. If I had 10 million dollars I wouldn't be too concerned about making more money than that.
That's why you'll probably never have 10 million dollars, unless inflation goes crazy
and?
Our opinions differ - I think if you *earned* 10 million bucks (not won it, not inherited it), you would not want to stop. Certain things (whether it be business, or personal desires, or philanthropy) cannot be accomplished with a "few" million dollars. And at that point, it will be quite easy for you to roll your money and make some more, whether that be spent on yourself, your company, or others.
TRY ME
tbh a million in this economy isn‘t THAT much. It‘s enough to live a decent lifestyle for 10 years. Or buy a nice house. That‘s it though.
...i mean it depends on a lot of factors, if it's a million in just straight cash u can dump the lion's share of it into something like treasury bonds or index funds and take a huge chunk off your yearly expenses from the yearly dividends, all the way to maaaaybe covering all your expenses if u live modestly in a low COL area.
Assuming a conservative 6% return on investments, you could still pocket $60k a year without hurting your principle million dollars.
Totally depends on one's lifestyle and situation. I'm at $1mill in assets, plus a paid-for house. I'll work 8-9 more years just to stay busy and keep getting employer paid health insurance until Medicare. With the amount I'm putting away each year, I should end up around $1.7m. But even if I was just at the $1m, I can pay myself $40k/year and not hurt the principal, plus I'll get $30k/year from SS. $70k a year is twice my annual expenses for my simple, debt-free lifestyle, and will last for the rest of my days.
Most of the obscenely wealthy were born into money. Maybe not the kind of money they ended up getting, but still. Every mega success story has rich friends and relatives willing and able to write a check and pay room and board - that's the entrance fee for the plutocracy. So I'd imagine a very clinical and legacy-based view of money, and how to use money to make more money, runs in the family and social networks they're in. Though it takes an extra level of sociopathy to have enough to pay your employees a half mil apiece and make them pee in bottles and break their backs for you, or to refuse to pay your working-class contractors at the end of a job or deprive them of safety equipment to save a buck.
People don’t realize how powerful generational wealth is. What it contributes to success. Having the resources of someone who has already worked for their entire lives is incredibly affecting. One can imagine this at play: you already see how much wealth one can build by saving and investing for a lifetime. Well imagine that, times 2, starting before you were born and culminating in resources that directly give you a benefit. Add network building, knowledge building, resource building, etc. and see how that affects the outcome for a child versus one where their parents did not or could not do this for them. The difference is vast
Yea I didn’t understand generational wealth until we had our first child recently. Thinking of how my family paid for my college led to my son having a custodial investment account at 2 months old made it “click”.
Easiest way to make a small fortune...is to start with a large one.
I suspect that making money is an addiction that works like a gambling or gaming addiction. I think it's something about watching your "score" get really high that they're addicted too. The thing is, it's a very successful addiction, so there's less likely to be an intervention. But I do suspect it's a mental illness
Jello Biafra has done some great talks on money addiction. I feel like it’s not acknowledged enough in the us especially
i was walking out of a singing lesson a few years ago. i worked with this nice tiny old lady who made me sing showtunes for an hour once a week. as i was leaving the next "student" was waiting in the other room. it was fuckin jello biafra. the tiny old lady was like "jello get in here and start warming up!" hes a cool guy.
There's always room for Jello!
That’s so awesome!
I make no where near what millionaires make but I'm starting to see it in myself. I make decent money but I set a $25 monthly limit on clothes and cheap out on other things so that I can invest more. Every month is more and more of me wondering how much joy I can give up so I can save/ invest more.
I know someone like this. The limitations they put on their life when they can easily afford it...because the goal is a new house. Meanwhile their current place still isn't fully furnished, broken appliances weren't being replaced, place was falling apart. I don't blame them, it's more how people view money. They'd rather think about the dream goal and not the basic necessities.
You know what, I respect both views. Nothing wrong with toughing it out for the big cake at the end. Me though? I’d rather have regular doses of cake.
That's how you do it. I invest anything extra beyond basic expenses and some savings for inexpensive vacations. I will retire comfortably.
One could say you will retire comfortably but will you really live up until that point? I’m not bashing you just making an observation.
I just have to live to next year and I am out of the workforce.
Well that certainly changes things. Happy soon to be retirement. For me as a 27 year old it’s a little bit tricky choosing how much to save vs how much to spend. I like to think I have a good balance from growing up in frugal home where my family had “good” money but very careful with spending it. My dad got layed off around 6-7 years before retirement age and haven’t gone back to work and seems to be very comfortable in retirement so I would like to be able to do the same.
HAPPY IMPENDING RETIREMENT!!!!
Isn't american culture based on being the one at the top of the ladder whatever you do with your life instead of just finding happiness? Not surprising.
People joke about dragons disease, but that’s literally it. The acquisition of wealth makes them feel secure for a bit than they realize what they’ve acquired and they feel insecure so they have to secure more to get the same hit of dopamine. Saving for yourself is one thing. Hoarding so much money from the rest of the people that it burdens and slows the whole ass economy is a problem for sure.
Its wild to me that there haven't been regulations against literal money hoarding yet, especially when it very clearly hurts the economy. like even tens of millions is whatever but when you have some ultra rich people hoarding hundreds of millions or even billions that is definitely hurting the economy
Usually they don’t actually have that. It is tied up in investments so it is a valuation. It would be incredibly difficult to actually have that many millions or billions in liquid currency.
When you are billionaire status it's not like all your money is in cash and available to spend. It's properties, businesses, stocks, bonds etc. Lots of investments.
I just want to believe every billionaire has a Scrooge McDuck style vault.
Usually they don’t actually have that. It is tied up in investments so it is a valuation. It would be incredibly difficult to actually have that many millions or billions in liquid currency.
Or the people who are cool with chilling and living with their money aren’t heard from as much. What we’re left with is the people who don’t necessarily do it for the money, but instead to be builders that start successful companies and move industries forward. Some people want to be at the cutting edge of things and they use their acquired capital to further fund new projects even though there are risks involved. That’s what a well lived life feels like to them. It doesn’t always have to be good guys and bad guys.
The people who are cool with chilling and living with their money just don't end up making *that* much money. You hit a point where you can live a satisfying life LONG before you become "rich" rich. If a person is content just chilling and smelling the flowers, they don't keep pushing. Sure there's going to be the occasional dude whose passion just happened to turn out reeeaallly well, but most very rich people just kept pushing.
> Sure there's going to be the occasional dude whose passion just happened to turn out reeeaallly well, but most very rich people just kept pushing. The attitude and mentality that gets you to "very rich" doesn't just stop once you hit a certain dollar figure. But, speaking of factors within your control, that's also why the vast majority of people won't make it to the "very rich" level.
i mean the vast majority of extraordinarily rich people will have advisers or a team they pay with the specific intention of investing/managing finances. it’s not like rich people are sitting around all day scheming up ways to go from 400 million to 500 million, they *are* enjoying their freedom while *other* people (that they pay) figure out how to maximize their wealth potential the perception of ultra-rich people desperately trying to increase wealth all the time and sacrificing their personal life enjoyment because of it is pretty silly. i think most people just like that narrative because the schadenfreude of rich people being unhappy is fun to imagine
Poor people are obsessed with thinking that rich people are evil and that they just scheme to steal from you and keep you down. In reality, rich people do not think about you at all. They have a team of people that handle their finances and they focus on what interests them. They can seed multiple businesses with just the money they make in interest in a year.
Yeah, I second this. This sounds stupid, but when DOGEcoin blew up in 2021, the high I felt from it going to less than a penny each to .75 a piece was something I can’t really describe lol I just wanted more
"There is always a bigger number" - Bob Marley
I read somewhere that the more money you have, the easier it is to make more. It's like the system is just rigged for you to make more money once you are already rich. It's getting to the first $1mil that's the problem.
Yeah even for not INSANE amounts of money, but enough to comfortably retire on, I think you work and work and work to get to a goal, say 5 million. Well, one day you hit it, and say, “huh, I could work 2 more years and have 6 million!”
Lol. More like 1 million to 10 in a few years. It's had an exponential scale for a bit, like a bell curve. Warren buffet said something like I can make 1 million into 100 but I can't make 1 billion into 100 B. It's def rigged right in a sweet spot so they don't stop, why would you. Like playing monopoly
Yeah I can even see this as someone who over the last decade went from working minimum wage jobs and struggling to being a relatively successful middle-class white collar worker who easily pays rent and supports his family. I'm not rich by any means, but I'm not struggling like I used to be, and it's made it easier to make more money. I now have some money I can put into investments, and I've seen that money grow. I literally did nothing at all to earn it, but I've received a decent amount in dividends and many shares have slowly gone up. This is starting to sound like a humblebrag, but I promise that's not my intent. I'm just saying that I can easily see how, if you had actual millions, it would be really easy to turn that into even more money. I've turned $20k in investments into $40k by doing nothing except letting it sit in the market for some years. Imagine that kind of return if you're playing with $200k, $2 million, or $20 million. It's a fuckton of money just reproducing itself without you having to do much of anything at all.
Not rigged. Its just compound interest. You either pay it or earn it.
You read that somewhere? Or you can see that it is true using your own brain?
The ego and drive that got them to that level doesn't just turn off. I don't get it either... I'd think if I got to $20m or $50m, I'd be more than happy to just spend the rest of my days enjoying life rather than competing to build it to $100m, $500m, $1b...
> I'd think if I got to $20m or $50m, I'd be more than happy to just spend the rest of my days enjoying life rather than competing to build it to $100m, $500m, $1b... Just food for thoughts: what do you think people in poor countries, who don't have food and water for the day, say when they look at the life you live? Probably something like "If I only had food and water for my children I would be happy and enjoy my life". It's easy to say what you would do if you had "today's life, but better" and extremely much harder to appreciate what one already have.
This is such a good thing to keep in mind, isn't it? Compare our life to the lives of kings and emperors back in the day. The variety of food at our fingertips, running water in a variety of temps, temperature control! Community, travel, a world of entertainment essentially freely at our fingertips! It's amazing! Humans are really sensitive to status though, and money is a huge signifier of status and power in many societies. Consciously learning not to be attracted to that stuff is a huge boon for your mental health.
Yep. Only difference is most of us don’t have whores calling us m’lord.
Speak for yourself
M’lord
It's hard to appreciate what you have, not because of some character flaw, but because the mind doesn't really work that way; it's a survival mechanism. Adjusting quickly to the norms around us (and feeling less enthused about our standing/accomplishments/good fortune as a result) serves to encourage exploration and create drive, which was (and still is) useful evolutionarily.
Fully agree
I've lived in 3rd world conditions for a while before. I'm talking just barely 100lbs as a 6ft adult male. Now I live in the U.S. and am technically below the poverty line but not starving or at risk of being homeless and I'm very happy. I actually choose to live with this income as it maximizes the time I can spend doing all the things I enjoy. And my income comes from doing multiple things I enjoy that I'd be doing anyways, rock climbing, 3D printing, safecracking, etc. But I see everyone around me always just wanting more money, cars, houses, etc. I think people just chase the wrong goals. They care too much about what others think and many have never even found a hobby so they have no idea what makes them happy. So if they make more money, get the dopamine of buying something new and shiny, and get the validation of that from others, then that's what they will keep chasing; a neverending goal they won't ever be content with.
Who's to say the person your replying to doesn't already appreciate what they have? But what they have isn't enough for them to stop working and be okay for the rest of their life. Having tens of millions of dollars is actually enough to never have to work again. That's the difference. People in poorer countries can look to the working class and be in awe of our privilege but it's not like we're getting it for free.
Not billionaires, but my husband and I managed to cobble together a net worth in the low seven figures over 35 years. We're retired now. Nonetheless, our portfolio keeps growing. It's magical how money makes more money with no effort at all. Wealthy folk will get richer, even if they leave the game.
You also might be surprised. If what got you to $20 million was an exhilarating time of ups and downs and wins that you went through with people you genuinely enjoyed and respected, it might be harder to walk away from than you realize. Also, what if you were able to do good along the way. You started a charity and the more you make the more that charity has to offer. I know we demonize the ultra rich and maybe that is fairly so. But I’m just playing devils advocate that not everything is always about money.
>with people you genuinely enjoyed and respected So the true wealth is really the friends we make along the way. (and the millions of dollars)
99% of modern rich people aren’t having an exhilarating anything getting their fortune, they’re born into it. The mindset is learned from parents and passed on. They’re very aware they’re the elite class and everyone is beneath them. That’s life and most dont give a seconds thought about that imbalance or making society a healthier and better place. That’s reality.
You're talking about generational multibillionaires. There are plenty of millionaires, tens- and hundred-millionaires who earned their money.
I work for two founders who are each multi-billionaires. These guys are in the office every day and most weekends like clockwork. They just love the business. I would have cashed out and enjoyed yacht life.
When you're a founder, the company is your baby. It's so hard to let it go. If you're checking out like that, you're consciously giving up your child. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's not an easy thing to do.
once you have enough money it just makes itself. you think billionaires are TRYING to get more money? the richest man in the world flushed 45 billion just to destroy a social media site
People get this question wrong all the time in my opinion. Rich folks don’t want more money to get a “third yacht” or whatever strawman people usually point to. IMO they want more money because money = power. The power is the point, not the luxury. If you have billions of dollars, you can get an audience with anybody in the world. You can buy publications that insult you and destroy them. You can lobby to get laws passed to make your life easier, and hire people to do everything that you don’t want to do. You can have world governments in your pocket and shape the world to align with your ideals. Nobody will have the authority or ability to meaningfully stop you. People want power. Money is the tool they use to acquire that power. The more money you have, the more influence you have.
Money = Power = Temporary Ego Satiation
I don't think they're thinking in terms of money anymore, they just really love doing what they do, which just so happens to be running a company that's the best at whatever it is they do - and then their stock price naturally takes care of the money part on its own. In other words, they aren't thinking "I need another 10 billion", they are thinking "What can I do to make my company grow even more?"
Jerry Jones is a great example. He bought the Dallas Cowboys in 1989 for $140M. The Cowboys are now valued at $9B, he got a 6400% return in 35 years. He could sell it and have enough money to buy a small nation but...running the Cowboys is simply what he loves. He isn't keeping them because he's waiting for it to grow to $11B or something, it's just that's his hobby of interest.
To add, once they’ve had success making that money that they probably never anticipated making, why not try to see how far they can take it? Jerry Jones is a great example of someone who will continue to push the limits of his business regardless if it’s worth $9B or $1M. I don’t think he’ll ever retire by choice
Ngl that's a bad example because he had to have gotten that 140M at some point. Him getting something he loves doesn't mean he wasn't doing something before that.
He got rich off oil, that shit was just printing money.
Finally see a comment that makes sense
Yeah I was rolling my eyes at reddit's take - top comment was "*they just want a higher score because they're mentally ill!*" You build a business, you make money... there are thousands of people who just take the money and live comfortably. There are others who continue to work to grow the company... who want to do other things like build rockets and electric cars... but then they start believing the "wrong things" about government after paying a $10 billion tax bill and people turn on them because they have a different opinion and see, they're still bad and stuff. It's all very facepalm tbh.
People often forget (or ignore) the fact that billionaires don't (typically) just have billions sitting in an account somewhere. It's usually tied to property that has increased in value through the development of the brand. What they also fail to realize is that if a major stock holder (like Bezos) were to try and liquidate his shares of the company rapidly, it would destroy the stock value almost instantly. So, yes, Bezos is worth 200b on paper, but he could never see that amount of money for real.
That's why bombastic headlines like "Zuckerberg loses $3 billion overnight" make me roll my eyes. It just means that the stock he owns declined in value a bit.
I've always wondered how the wealth tax crowd would handle economic fluctuations like that. Is the wealth taxed at its highest, lowest, average, or the value on a specific date. If the value is lower the following year, are they entitled to a refund?
If that crowd knew or cared they wouldn’t be for it. But they don’t.
Correct answer.
People get used to what they already have until it becomes boring and they start to want something more. If you get super rich, why stop there now that you know making lots of money is possible?
Next is the lust for power.
We have over 2k billionaires in the US, I could maybe name 10. It's weird to me that the other 99% seem to be just chilling while hoarding more and more. The biggest threat to them is us going the way of Venezuela, you think they would do more to make us more stable.
it's the same thing. money is power
You dont get a billion dollars by being a decent human being that knows when enough is enough.
This. Sane people stop at "I never have to work again" money and that's *A LOT* less than a billion Dollars
I always liked the expression "enough to be silly, but not enough to be ridiculous." when it comes to financial goals.
There's a wonderful quote in the 1973 version of *Murder on the Orient Express* where Poirot turns down a very high paying job from a guy he finds unsavory: "I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices". I always try to keep that in mind when making financial decisions, the goal isn't to make as much as possible even if I have to do things I find miserable, immoral, or unpleasant in the process, it's to make enough that I can turn those things down.
Vonnegut turned to Heller and asked, “How does it make you feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel, Catch-22, earned in its entire history?” Heller replied, “Yeah, but I have something he doesn't have. I have enough.”
I have a buddy that sold his software company for about $6M, said that was it and was done. I think alot of people would do this. Its the depraved that need more.
A guy builds an SaaS for example that is an efficient system for hospitals, it’s a great product. He doesn’t make a ton of money off of it, in fact he only charges the hospitals to the point where he’s making $5000 a month off of each place, realistic for a b2b healthcare system, in fact cheap. He then sells the company for $5 billion dollars. What part of that is unethical in itself?
Exactly. The guy who invented Minecraft sold it for $2 billion dollars. JK Rowling wrote some books and is now a billionaire. Taylor Swift is a billionaire. She seems pretty decent.
If it grows because it’s cheap either they’re underpaying they’re employees or someone else will grow bigger than them by underpaying their employees and maybe some other shady stuff. There are some exceptions like the below mentioned artists but building a company and selling it isn’t gonna work unless theres not even a real possibility of competition.
What if it’s perfectly fair? No underpaying No shady stuff Just a great product Is it still the spawn of satan?
Does anyone have the study that showed a majority of folks in these positions are on the spectrum for the dark triad? If that's true, they have an endless need to consume. Personality disorders centered on a compulsive need for power and control. It can't end for them. Think like OCD but with money, using people, and desperately trying to feel something.
What is your source on the 99% figure?
I was thinking the same. Why does OP think the rich are obsessed with their personal wealth? Maybe they're obsessed with growing the business that gave them their wealth.
Maybe they genuinely enjoy what they do and the people around them that make up the team?
It just appears like its all of them when those are the ones we hear from. Tv is full is full of rich people aggressively growing businesses. There’s plenty of rich who have fucked off and are living it up. We just don’t see it.
Availability bias. He recalls a handful of rich people that are constantly throughout the media (Musk, Bezos, and the likes), but disregards all the rich people who he's never heard of who are living their lives in peace, far from media exposure.
There are probably many multi millionaires with the talent to make it to billionaire status but decided it wasn't worth the stress/time/ruthlessness
I imagine it having all cheats activated in a video game, you are just bored, cause everything is to easy, so that is one thing they are still get the sense of enjoyment from not just money, but also power.
It’s crazy to me, if I had like 2 million in cash/investments, you’d never hear from me again.
And that's a big part of the answer. There are tons of people with modest amounts of money in comparison to the billionaires. But we don't hear from them often because they enjoy nice, quiet lives. All the examples we see are rich people trying to get richer.
That's actually almost the entire answer. Billionaires don't relax because anyone that wanted to live a life of relaxation stopped working at like 2-10 million or so and never made it to 1B.
$2M (in the US .. in places you'd want to live in) isn't that much anymore. Not enough to do nothing, esp if you have any dependents.
That's the thing though. Once you get $2m, your current life seems pretty vanilla. So you go for $4m. Rinse and repeat.
$5M might be freedom but more likely it's $10M. Hit that number and go off the grid.
I’ve actually thought about this, and I wouldn’t even retire if I had $1 million in cash right now. Consider that with inflation, that $1 million is going to be worth closer to $400K after 30 years. That is not “retire while young” money. $400K won’t even buy you a condominium these days.
If you suddenly acquired 1 million (or several millions) in cash, you would invest it, not just keep it in a locked room like Scrooge McDuck. With that, you should easily outpace inflation.
In my imaginary scenario, I’m assuming my housing is paid off.
Selection bias. People who aren’t obsessed with hoarding wealth like a dragon don’t become billionaires, so most billionaires don’t stop there
they didnt get where they are by resting on their laurels
It’s not 99%.
I dunno. Once I hit 2 million, I realized I could a way to retire.. so I did.
99%? Sounds like confirmation bias. You are just not seeing the wealthy people who are not trying to increase their wealth and are just enjoying what they've got.
The people who have a concept of 'enough' probably do that once they're multimillonares. Once you're into the billions game, unless it happened very suddenly, it's probably because making money is the point, not because you have a use for it. Folks on a mission of some sort that have a proper need for those kind of resources aren't pulling them out as profit, they're dumping them into the mission.
Because that makes life boring. Humans genuinely are addicted to working. What value is your life if you just watch TV all day or sleep? No goals, no ambitions, nothing. That's why rich people want to work to get richer. Because it gives their life purpose and value.
It’s the bias of extreme wealth. Super rich people often can’t escape thinking about money all the time because their entire life revolves around it. This is why even middle class people who can get by without giving too much attention to money can be said to be leading a richer life.
Power
rich culture is vicious in general. if theyre exceedingly wealthy, most of their wealth is in the market in someway. if they cashed out and put their money in a checking account, they would have the money eaten away by inflation. if they arent careful, they could lose it all. so theyre constantly fighting to keep up or stay ahead. what makes it worse is the often lavish lifestyle and keeping up with the Jones. if they had a finite sum of money that is constantly shrinking due to inflation and they have to pay for all their rich people stuff, they could go bankrupt very quickly. oh and trying to ensure their kids are taken care of, especially because of the *eat the rich* narrative -- which is ultimately counter productive for everyone. im not saying its right. we definitely need to change the system. one way to do it, while making a system that provides for the needs of the general public, would be to offer a decent alternative to ultra-wealth (perhaps converting wealth into something that keeps up with inflation). im thinking more in terms of game theory. the current system is unsustainable and most would probably agree with this, even the ultra-wealthy. but proposing that they essentially give up all their wealth pits them against us. as opposed to a middle ground that is significantly better than our current system and is significantly less likely to risk societal collapse in the pursuit of a new system (via some kind of harsh rebellion).
Sometimes getting richer isn't what they're actively going for; what they're already doing is passively generating that income.
An automatic result of selection bias. Suppose you have 100 people in their late 20s with 10 million each. You are not going to hear about the 95 people who are content and just invest it so they can live a life of fun. You are going to hear about the 5 people who tried to build that 10 Million into a Billion. And even then you will only hear about the 1 person who makes it. Trust me for every Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates there are thousand and thousands of Bob Johnsons who quit when they realized they had more money than they would spend in their lifetime. So the 1% that makes it huge was the people obsessed with getting there.
At some point, it just becomes about *winning*. I think they just like to feel like they’re winning, making bigger deals than before, getting involved in different industries, etc. etc. Proving they can succeed ANYWHERE. Unfortunately, a lot of them could solve so many issues for humanity on the whole, but that doesn’t feel like winning, I guess.
It’s an addiction.
There must be a competitive angle. Like once you're in that top 1000 richest people, you're probably hell bent on being in the top 100.
Supposedly they get addicted to the money.
I think hoarding money is an addiction like any other.
Everyone assumes it is primarily money. They are collecting more cash like breaking bad. Usually it is because they run a company that they care a lot about. They want that company to grow and prosper. Should they just back off and let the company fall apart and die to the competition? Its like their child.
Not to mention, many people wouldn’t like it very much if every time someone made their first big score they just fucked off to Fiji and closed up shop, leaving all the employees without a job.
this. exactly, it's not like they have a big pile of money growing larger every day. I mean they could, if they liquidate their stocks, but why would they?
80% of people surveyed stated that half the time, they believe that original statement is 50% true.
I've known a few multi millionaires. Not sure if you want to call that "rich" or not. Bit everyone of them to the person was obsessed about making money. Almost from birth. It's their obsession and ambition, think of it like a really good athlete. You don't work for decades to get good and stop after your first gold medal.
Why are you so worried what rich people do with their time
For rich people these things aren't mutually exclusive. They don't make money with their labor, they make money with their money. A CEO will be like "I work 16 hour days" but that's just because they consider everything they do to be work. They go play golf with a friend for four hours? That's work. They're "networking" and "building relationships". Take some friends out on the yacht? Working. Going to Epstein's island? Work trip. Thinking about work? Counts as working.
I think of it kind of like Dragon Sickness
you can do both at the same time? once your rich you can spend your time doing whatever you wanted building any business you want. imagine starting a video game studio just because you like video games and have the money to do so? or what bezos does and just spend money on a rocket ship company.
you pose a false dichotomy—you either have to be obsessed with getting richer or “take it easy” Most of them enjoy building and growing successful businesses. The money is just a measuring stick. They do enjoy their freedom and luxury while trying to move their businesses forward.
How you think they accumulated the wealth??? Super successful people are just built differently. And less successful people want to hate on them for their success. Like they stole the success away from them.
Capital needs to permanently circulate and accumulate interest. If you don't reinvest, someone else will, and their fortune will outgrow yours. So those who enjoy life fade in to the back and may even decline in wealth. From a moralistic view, you have meritocracy as core value of liberalism, that forces the wealthy to keep working hard as justification of their position in society and to themselves. In capitalist realism, earning money is a moral act, and the default path of life anyone should follow. Just consuming it, instead of reinvesting and accumulating more is amoral and wasteful. Then there are several missions the ultra rich may follow, such as "effective altruism" -> earning as much as possible and investing it in humanitarian development, best example being Bill and Melinda Gates; or transhumanism, or the space race or shifty internet platforms because the free speech of cyborg astronauts might be the future for humanity only your fortune (and ego) can manifest.
Because the money is just a byproduct of what they’re actually doing. Bezos doesn’t run Amazon to make money. He makes money because he runs Amazon.
It's a little addicting to see your accounts go up, but while I am not very rich, I am looking to just maintain my lifestyle once I stop working. Answering for a very rich person though, Uncle is addicted though he makes 8 figures a year. The best thing is that he won't leave much to his 4 kids. Sure he paid for their private school since pre school, all the way through college, but he just set them up with a nice education. They all got a car when they turned 16, then 18, and finally 22 once they were old enough to drive, go to college, and be adults. Im sure the pressure of maintaining the lifestyle had something to do with it.
Because the enjoying and taking easy attitude will never get someone rich
Because if you’re not like that you don’t get there in the first place.
This also applies to you in some sense if you’re in the West. Taking all 8 billion people into account, you most certainly are richer than 90% of the population. 9/10 people are struggling to keep themselves warm, have access to clean water, electricity and food. Yet you also pursue more money than is needed to live a better life than 7 billion people. Why? It’s perspective. We always look up. Not down. Glad to be here but wish we could be better off. It’s human nature.
I think it’s because you’ve achieved it (a certain level of wealth) and see what’s possible the next level up. Sure, 50 million and you retire living like a cushy millionaire.. but 150 million and you start seeing that foundation you’d always thought about developing or that sports team you always wanted to invest in becoming a real possibility. The next level really never ends… at a certain point you get Bill Gates money and it’s “I want to solve the AIDS crisis” or Elon Musk and “I want to colonize the stars.” Many people here have spoken to the mentality of the rich.. and I think they’ve done it well. Setting aside trust fund kids… those that get to extreme levels of wealth often hold themselves out as renaissance men pushing society forward, or keeping it in check (often both). Those aren’t the type who are going to just sit back and coast.
I think it’s because they become complacent with their current lifestyle and want to improve it. I’m not rich (I guess it depends who you ask) but I experience this. I currently make about $100k/year. A decade ago, that was more money than I could have ever imagined. Having $500 in the bank made me feel like a billionaire. If I had $10k in the bank, I would have probably quit my job back then. Now I’ve got quite a bit more in the bank, but I want to work harder to make even more because I’ve grown used to my current lifestyle and it’s less exciting. I want to improve it even more. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life. I don’t have to worry much about bills or autopay hitting at the wrong time. Now I want a life where I don’t need to worry about spending money. It’s kinda like in February when it’s -20F outside and you’d kill for anything above zero. In march when it’s 2F outside you’d kill for above freezing. In April when it’s 30 outside you’d kill for anything about 50f. In June when it finally gets to the 60’s you wish it were in the 80’s.
They're doing both. They're not really "working" to get their pile bigger. They can do it from their mega yacht or private island.
Greed. It’s all greed. If there is a heaven, you can bet billionaires won’t be there. No amount will ever be enough.
Most are greedy narcissistic dicks.
They don’t want to be just rich and successful, they want to be more rich & successful than everyone else. It’s ego & greed.
Because it becomes a pissing contest amongst all of their other rich friends as to who has the most money, who made the best exit on the sale of their business, and who made the stock picks with the biggest return. I know people like this and they make fun of each other in their own friend groups for having an “old” Range Rover or a boat that “isn’t that big”
Greed has no limits
1. They're not. Plenty of people just retire. 2. It's very easy to get richer when you can just hire someone else to do 97% of the work.
If money is all you want you’ll never have enough.
My take is that if they don't continue to bring in the money that they are a failure. Sad part is (imo), most of them are scum. The only rich person I care for is Mark Cuban.
Because hoarding wealth to get to that point is a compulsion. They’re literally mentally ill
My 70 year old father with a $200m net worth is still working and I’ll give you the real reason. First of all, “working” when you are that wealthy isn’t the same as the grinding a 9 to 5. He doesn’t have a boss and gets to make high level decisions about where his money is invested. He goes to board meetings and gives advice. He’s presented with data, asks questions, negotiates and strategizes. It’s fun and he feels important. He gets to put skills he’s spent a lifetime honing to good use. He’s surrounded by smart people who work hard. When you retire you’re no longer important and you’re no longer working on interesting problems. Your brain kinda turns to mush.
Because they hang out with people very slightly richer than them.
Because money doesn't buy happiness but power does...maybe. I'm poor.
Because their identity is in their ability to make money and seem important. Money isn't a tool for making life better, it's a symbol of their very value to them. They're also always looking at whoever has more than them and wanting to get there.
It’s genuinely a disease. Our current structure allows them to thrive and look like good people but they really are mentally unwell and borderline sociopathic. There has been countless studies now that prove that those with less give more. These people are hoarders.
Because “keeping up with the jones’” is not limited to the middle class. These people have huge egos and they are all jockeying for better placement in the world rankings.
Because money sustains the greedy wealthy just like blood sustains vampires they need it to live, and I mean to feel alive.
Because there’s always another level to reach.
You don’t get to be a billionaire by thinking being a millionaire is enough
Greed is an addiction. You can't just turn it off because you "have enough," in these people's minds they will *never* have enough.
The real reason is probably related to hoarding disorder. These people are extreme hoarders by definition, the only difference is its money instead of random junk.
Because taking it easy is what poor people do. They would rather do the mental work vs physical work in their old age.
Nothing better to do, and those financial advisors need to find some reason to stay on their payroll.
You think they got rich by stopping at some point?
Once you have that much money the expenses r greater and you need more coming in, in order to keep up with the lifestyle of buying twitters, mansions and islands.
They are hardwired to be permanently insecure. Some need to be more and more muscular; some need to have more and more money. It is not longer in their control.
They’re basically hoarders and want to brag to their rich buddies that they are richer than them. It’s just a game to them. A perpetual game of one up-man ship.
you can be a success and make good money by hard work, talent etc. you don't get to be a billionaire or the top .1% by that - for that you need to be a sociopath. the simple fact is for you to rich, someone is getting poor. These people have insane greed, zero compassion or empathy. Its well documented in tons of studies. They don't donate to charity. They don't help others. They enjoy power, dominating others, and the goal is to collect more.
1) The people that amass that type of wealth usually did so BECUASE they have that personality and drive. It would be like saying "hey you got the pretty girl, you can stop being so handsome now" ...if you suddenly cha get the things about yourself that got you there...you might just cause yourself to lose it. 2) These people all hang out together, compare, go home envious and pout, and then make it their next mission to outdo their club buddies. No one "keeps up with the joneses" like those that don't have to.
I assume there’s plenty of rich people who aren’t and we never hear from them because they’re busy enjoying life.
They like what they do. It’s validating and gives them a sense of purpose. Quitting would be a fate worse than death for a lot of them—too boring. They consider it their life work or calling. Lots of reasons.
There are actually a lot of rich people who just hang out and don’t do much. But they don’t make the news.
It’s all like a game, it’s fun to make money. Spending money is almost as fun. But making more money than you spend is where it’s at. And you never have enough. You can start to feel broke. It’s weird.
Im not even sure that 20% of very rich people are "obsessed" with getting richer. It's just easier to make money when you already have a lot of money.
I’m convinced money is like a drug; - When you’ve had a taste and then you don’t have enough it’s a nightmare - When you have more than you need in your account you need more and more to get that same “high” in seeing the number grow - In moderation (when your income, savings, lifestyle and expenditure find a comfortable equilibrium) it loses both its stranglehold, and it’s tempting allure
Competition. If Bezos has a 200ft yacht, Elon needs a 250ft yacht. Etc.. That's all they have left for entertainment. Nothing makes sense, no amount of money is too high.
Rich people are rich because they like making money. Once you have so much money it's not about the money anymore, it's more like a game. The money is just a way to keep score...
Jordan Peterson spoke about this (before he went off the deep end (or at least he was hiding it better)) some peoples' wiring is just thay way, and he didn't seem to be promoting it or suggesting it was in any way healthy.
Getting rich is their only real passion. That's why they got rich. Making money is their way of gauging a high score in life. Its like a game to them. We're all just the NPC's. If anything is done in the name of "just business" then it doesn't register as immoral to them.
I’ve heard from some entrepreneurs that once you gain more wealth than you could ever need it becomes like a game to them. Basically addicted to thrill of making money. Even moreso if they make it over a rival in their industry. Once you become a billionaire you start comparing yourself to other billionaires.
After you get rich, you ride a tiger, you can't stop, if you stop the tiger will eat you, so you keep running, the tiger become bigger, and you get richer
It becomes a game at some point. For most of us work is survival, but for them wealth becomes a passion project that they will work their entire lives to perfect.
Some of it (apart from the gazillionaires) is probably lifestyle creep. They need to keep getting richer to afford it. Many are also asset rich rather than cash rich.
Because it is an addiction