Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 114 total)
  • Why are rich people always so dull ?
  • If you’ll excuse the attention grabbing hyperbole in the headline, why is it so rare to hear of someone with lots of money who spends it in an interesting way ?

    I tend to mix with working class* people with interesting hobbies and limited funds.
    The sort of people who have to think carefully before spending their money, whether it’s £10 on Meccano parts, £100 on a sewing machine, or £1000 on a bike frame.
    There are obviously people about who have no such worries, but most of them don’t appear to be able to think of anything more imaginative to spend their money on than a big posh house and car.

    There are one or two exceptions, Pete Waterman and his steam trains being the first that springs to mind.
    He is very much an exception though.
    Most large projects, whether it’s a preserved railway or a mountain bike trail centre are short of money.
    There are people out there who could easily buy a years supply of coal, or the land and materials to build a trail, but they don’t.
    Why are they so dull ?

    *Can we leave the argument about the definition of “Working Class” to another thread and just take it to mean people who have to work full time to pay the bills and have a bit of disposable income for now ?

    geoffj
    Full Member

    There are some notable exceptions – http://www.gatesfoundation.org

    rogerthecat
    Free Member

    Because all of their attention has been focussed on making money rather than enjoying it perhaps?

    I love the ingenuity and genuine camaraderie of folks with less money, bit of a sweeping generalisation, but on the whole I’d stand by it based upon my experiences in the VW scene.

    BigDummy
    Free Member

    Sorry, an “interesting way” to spend masses of money would be to buy a load of coal for some nerds who have a preserved railway?

    As opposed to, you know, building a spaceship, or cloning some neanderthals, or organising a coup in an obscure African country?

    andymc06
    Free Member

    Most rich folk have got there by being tight and not spending anything!

    djglover
    Free Member

    Probably not what you want to hear, but lots of them are petrol heads an have a collection of old, fast and obsure, and obviously very expensive cars. Chris Evans and Simon Cowell are two such people. Not that I can stand either but they obviously have a keen interest in their collections

    LHS
    Free Member

    As you get older and earn more money, you realise that you never ever want to be in a position where you are not able to afford to live a lifestyle that you have become accustomed too. That is why most wealthy (I hate the word rich) tend to invest their money in their property (historically a sound investment) and something that impacts your quality of life the most.

    There are then far more fun things to spend your money. Travel being the next one (including investing in holiday homes). I know for sure i would rather have a property in the sun and a property on the slopes than being able to drive a Ferrari 458 at 12mph down the Kings Road on a Saturday.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    There are some notable exceptions

    David Choe

    I listened to an interview with him the other day. It could be said that he was “enjoying” his money.

    BoardinBob
    Full Member

    Dan Bilzerian

    As opposed to, you know, building a spaceship

    I think Elon Musk sank a lot of his own money into SpaceX?

    binners
    Full Member

    Unimaginative stuff it’d be fun to spend lots of money on if you were rich….

    1. Coke
    2. Hookers

    wordnumb
    Free Member

    Assuming we’re talking about the rich rather than the better-off-than-most, privacy can be bought.

    willard
    Full Member

    Does John McAfee have lots of money? I think he either has, or did have, before blowing it on Binners’ favourite hookers and coke.

    Either way, he’s interesting.

    BigDummy
    Free Member

    Branson has a space-ship, a submarine, and a private island covered in lemurs.

    Jeff Bezos has spent $42million on a 10,000-year clock, the “Clock of the Long Now”.

    Elon Musk builds spaceships and is going to colonise Mars soon (as somewhatslightlydazed points out).

    Obviously, it depends on your definition of “rich”, but if you’re rich enough, your “hobby” can quite literally be “attempting to change the course of human history”.

    Whether that is better than £10 worth of Meccano is a matter of opinion, of course, but I’d want to have tried both before pronouncing Meccano better, as it looks incredibly lame. 🙂

    iolo
    Free Member

    Rich, can’t say I like her, but not dull.

    mudshark
    Free Member

    I dunno, loads of people do great stuff, some keep it quiet.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Bannatyne#Charity_works

    Was more prevalent in Victorian times it seems.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    Most rich people try and keep their spending and charitable donations out of the public view, so we don’t hear about them.

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    If you’ll excuse the attention grabbing hyperbole in the headline, why is it so rare to hear of someone with lots of money who spends it in an interesting way ?

    It isn’t. Perhaps the fact that it is so unremarkable is a reason why it’s rare to hear people make a point about it?

    stilltortoise
    Free Member

    @MTQ Graham
    Where does one hear about what the rich spend their money on? Is there a Facebook page or Twitter feed for it? If so I’ll have a look and come back to you, since currently I’m completely unqualified to comment (except for Chris Evans, who I know spends his money on some mighty fine automobiles that are far from dull).

    psling
    Free Member

    Yep, I think you’re confusing rich with famous and rich. You don’t really know what the ‘non-famous’ rich are squandering their wad on. I’ve been surprised by the wealth of some ‘ordinary’ people I’ve mixed with without them making it apparent that they are rich and they certainly haven’t been dull. Mind you, I also know a few people who think they are the life and soul of the party who are so far up their own sphincter that they are annoyingly dull 8)

    gobuchul
    Free Member

    Nick Mason has got a fantastic car collection, which he does actually drive.

    geetee1972
    Free Member

    I read a few books by George Soros. He’s a fascinating guy and one of the most philanthropic billionaires you’ll ever hear about. His Soros Foundation is pretty amazing.

    simon_g
    Full Member

    For every “interesting” working class person, there are dozens with nothing better to spend their time and money on than booze, fags, watching football or crappy TV.

    I imagine similar ratios of boring/interesting apply to the wealthier end of the spectrum too.

    BigDummy
    Free Member

    Where does one hear about what the rich spend their money on?

    I think the “How to Spend It” section of the FT would probably assist.

    I have just realised that if I was massively wealthy, my current hobby would be “travelling to Siberia to hunt wolves with a spear”. I would travel by icebreaker to the mouth of the Lena River, and then paddle upstream in an open canoe for 1,000 miles. Then I would leave my canoe and travel on foot through the forest. I would hunt wolves, bringing them to bay using my trusty wolf-hounds and would then battle them with an artisan-crafted organic wolf-spear. I would skin them, and use their pelts to make hats on my return to civilisation (assuming I survived).

    I would probably be away for several years.

    Once I was done with that, I would probably take up something else. Posibly Meccano.

    edd
    Full Member

    For every “interesting” working class person, there are dozens with nothing better to spend their time and money on than booze, fags, watching football or crappy TV.

    I imagine similar ratios of boring/interesting apply to the wealthier end of the spectrum too.This this sums it up.

    Where does one hear about what the rich spend their money on?

    I was thinking of general life experience and my own particular interests.
    A lot of the examples above are what I would consider “The Super Rich”, which isn’t exactly what I had in mind, although it is closely related.

    Two million pounds for a house is not unusual these days, therefore, there must be a lot of people around who can afford them.
    The projected cost of Tornado was £1.6 million.
    Everyone’s got their own interests, but I think that most of the people that I find interesting to talk to, would rather have a modest house and car and the ability to take their hobby to the extreme, than a posh house and car and no hobby.

    jekkyl
    Full Member

    I assure you sir I am anything but dull. 😉

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    I imagine theres two other points:

    1) They’re rich because their hobby is something that makes truckloads of cash (e.g. Gates and Jobs are/were geeks who liked making computers).

    2) They’re rich because they don’t spend >5% of their income on a bike frame. If I had done nothing with the money I’d spent on bikes, hollidays and other bike related costs (renting a house with a garrage etc Vs a flat I’d otherwise ‘need’) over the last 10 years I’d probably have in the order of £20k (I’m actualy worried it may be substantialy more!), which could have been invested in some sort of startup etc, then I’d (maybe) have been rich.

    The ‘new rich’ probably look on other people as boring for driving a ford focus when they could have a Range Rover Evoque. Their hobby is just spending money and looking like a bit of a tit.

    BigDummy
    Free Member

    Where does one hear about what the rich spend their money on?

    I was thinking of general life experience and my own particular interests.[/quote]

    So rich people aren’t as into Meccano as you are, therefore they lead bleak, shallow, empty lives?

    😉

    mudshark
    Free Member

    Buffet’s pretty boring – he lives in a very modest house anyway….

    thestabiliser
    Free Member

    All those quoting cars as an exciting way of spending money. You are wrong. That said, better than meccano.

    IanW
    Free Member

    I read somewhere recently that being impulsive is the characteristic most likely to make you financially poor.

    BTW the properly rich folk I know tend to have crap cars, something fancy is usually a status symbol/self reward for the nouveau riche or or on credit.

    mudshark
    Free Member

    Yeah that’s getting into the old v new money thing. All the rich people I meet have land, wonder about in wellies and clothes full of holes and a gun dog or two.

    brooess
    Free Member

    Rich people who spend their money in an ‘interesting’ way aren’t rich anymore, they’re poor… they’ve spent it all!

    Exhibit a: George Best

    I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    BTW the properly rich folk I know tend to have crap cars

    Yep, sort of! Not normally crap cars, but older good cars. Like old Mercedes or Volvos for example. No, I’m not, but the premise stands. Look at some of the best streets in SW3 for example, and for every shiny new Ferrari, there are three or more older BMWs or slightly careworn Mercs.

    *Edit*

    Exhibit a: George Best

    Sad story that. I remember seeing him shortly before he died, in the Trafalgar, on the King’s Rd (SW3, as well!) Quietly sitting there alone, tipping back the booze. 🙁

    core
    Full Member

    I’d have to agree with the general point of the op, I live in a relatively affluent (depending on the circles you mix in) rural area/community and hobbies/interest vary greatly between classes/amount of wealth.

    Most of the wealthy people (farmers or business owners) I know have few, or no hobbies in general, preferring to have a brand new car every 3 years, property assets and material goods. Even my ‘working class’ friends who have done or are doing well for themselves don’t spend much on hobbies, and prefer to have ‘stuff’.

    Me, I’d rather live in a modest house, with a boring car, but have some relatively expensive hobbies to enjoy my evenings and weekends. Sitting in a big house or being out socialising all the time, thinking about, looking at, or telling people how much stuff I have wouldn’t do it for me.

    But, you need to be careful and balance it all out, don’t you. A poor man who spends too much on hobbies will always be poor. Have heard stories of people re-mortgaging houses to pay for autograss cars ffs!

    stilltortoise
    Free Member

    ^maybe they have no time for hobbies because they’re too busy working and getting rich, but it’s easy to buy “stuff”

    timc
    Free Member

    Check out Dan Bilzerian, you might not like how he spends his $$$ though 😀

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    I know a number of wealthy people (£10m plus) who don’t spend money on cars as they think they are a waste, eg one guy with a £1m yacht who doesn’t own a car at all, he spends 6 months a year on his boat so what would he do with a car ? I know plenty of people with less money who have nice cars (Aston’s, Ferraris, Lambo’s etc) but equally one guy I know built a garage under his (large) garden to house his car collection (EDIt3 – this guy ran his own privateer team Maclaren at Le Mans)

    Rich people do tend to have different hobbies than the rest of us, collect art, wine, etc (EDIT4 Sir Alex is selling some of his wine collection, £6m estimate, clearly targeted at Asian ManuU fans he is selling it bottle by bottle, so his hobby will make him a handsome profit)

    @CFH as I’m sure you know they don’t park their nice cars on the street, the BMW/Merc is the run-around. EDIT 2: I saw George Best a few times in the Dover Street Wine bar and then towards the end on the train down to Portsmouth, sad tale indeed and a lesson in addition.

    EDIT: Americans tend to be generous donars as they have large tax breaks for doing so, that’s one of the reasons you see so many foundations and US Universities like Harvard have very large endowment funds.

    konabunny
    Free Member

    I have just realised that if I was massively wealthy, my current hobby would be “travelling to Siberia to hunt wolves with a spear”.

    You need a budget about about three grand to do everything that you mentioned. Why wait?

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