It's not easy being a billionaire

[Meecar]

For those who dont subscribe to BT

 

here is a good article to share with you

 

Happy reading

 

 

It's not easy being a billionaire

 

The rich don't know how much is enough and are plagued by insecurities

 

 

By MICHAEL JOHNSON

 

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(BORDEAUX, France) A Seattle billionaire I once worked for ran into money trouble a couple of years ago when his business went sour.

 

 

He had to sell his private island and get rid of his yacht (one of the world's largest) as he slid into relative poverty.

 

My former employer, a cell-phone magnate, has now dropped off the bottom of the most recent Forbes magazine list of billionaires as he struggles to get by. He has only a few hundreds of millions left and he is not a happy man.

 

Despite the extraordinary wealth of this entrepreneur and others in his league, it never seems to bring them serenity. They know how fast it can be lost, and that makes them ask, 'Why isn't enough really enough?'

 

Even custodians of old fortunes are plagued by this question. A consultant friend of mine who once advised Nelson Rockefeller remembers hearing him complain of his recurring bouts of insecurity.

 

Mr Rockefeller's personal net worth was about US$3 billion. Asked how much he would need in order to relax, Rocky paused briefly and took a stab: 'Four billion ought to do it,' he said.

 

 

 

 

 

The Rothschild dynasty had similar problems. On assignment for BusinessWeek, I once met separately the French, British and Swiss branches of the family. I was struck by the family bickering over how they had turned their large fortune into small fortunes.

 

A member of the Swiss branch of the family confided to me his utter disgust over his French relatives, who managed to lose money in French real estate. 'To do this,' he said, 'you really have to try.'

 

I suspect there is no such thing as having enough money. In fact, many of the super-rich agree that the more you have the more you worry about it. Their stories emerge in a great book, Richistan, by Robert Frank.

 

Mr Frank quotes one American entrepreneur identified only as George as saying he and the other billionaires (1,125 of them at last count by Forbes) are afflicted by a combination of greed and fear. 'If people stay worried, it's part of what motivates them,' George is quoted as saying. 'We're always worried.'

 

With great riches can come great unease, according to people who have studied the psychology of wealth. The overriding problem is 'affluenza' - nagging guilt about the chasm between the very rich and everybody else.

 

A second pitfall is a compulsion to continue to accumulate even more. Paul Wachtel examined this problem in his landmark paper, 'Full Pockets, Empty Lives', in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.

 

'The pursuit of money and material goods as a central aim in life comes at a rather high price,' he writes. Studies have shown that money plays 'a strikingly small role' in a person's real happiness or well-being. In fact, intimacy and family life are often sacrificed in the name of providing for one's family.

 

And envy feeds the greed impulse, argues Dr Wachtel: 'We may want not just what others have but more than others have, or more for more's sake.'

 

People in the six-figure income range have trouble controlling the quest for more, Dr Wachtel told me. 'They become slaves to supporting the material level they have gotten themselves into. It becomes a pleasureless treadmill.'

 

He had some advice for the unhappy rich. 'If the upper 5 per cent of earners would work two-thirds as much, and earn two-thirds as much, their lives would be immeasurably richer,' he said. 'Time, they would find, is a much more valuable commodity than money.' - NYT

[Shull]

they so worried..can pass some of their wealth to me..10% i also wont mind..

[Meecar]

I apologise if I appear to intrude on your privacy

 

but can I learn from you what really makes you happy

 

are you happy with your job

 

are you happy with your financial situation now

 

if answers are no what do you intend to do to correct the situation

 

thanks

 

just learning

[Throttle2]

let me do the difficult job......

 

 

no need billion just $100mil Sing dollars is alright..

 

[Jayzee]

Spending power overwhelm their earning ..

[Zirco]

haha when u get to the first 100mil, i am sure you wan the next 100mil