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10 Suicide Notes Of The Rich And Famous

Johan Tobias — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 21:49:24 +0000

It is tempting to believe that people who have achieved great success in their life must be happy people. When that success is joined by money and fame, surely, we think, they must live in a state of perpetual contentment.

See Also: 10 Gruesome Facts About Suicide And Death Cleanup

However, it seems, no amount of money, fame or success can prevent people from getting old, or ill, and, perhaps, success brings pressures of its own that most people will never understand. Whatever the reasons, there are times when those who appear to have it all, can struggle just as much, if not more, than the rest of us.

Here are 10 successful people who decided that life was no longer worth living, and expressed themselves, for the last time, in the form of a suicide note.

10 Clara Blandick

Clara Blandick had a forty-year career in films, although she is most famous for playing Aunt Em in The Wizard of Oz. She retired from films in 1950 and spent the rest of her life living at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where she received few visitors, and appeared to have largely been forgotten.

Her retirement coincided with a marked decline in her health. Her eyesight was failing, and she was in constant pain from her severe arthritis, which affected her mental health. One Sunday in April 1962, she went to church, then began to rearrange her room. She put out her favorite photos, the mementos of her long career, arranging them with care. On her desk, she laid out her resume, and a collection of press clippings and reviews, so that the emergency services would know who she was.

Then she did her hair and make-up, put on her favorite dressing gown, and sat on the couch with a gold blanket over her knees. She must have been quite a sight, although the plastic bag that she asphyxiated herself with probably spoiled the scene a little.

She left behind a note, which read, “I am now about to make the great adventure. I cannot endure this agonizing pain any longer. It is all over my body. Neither can I face the impending blindness. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”^[1]

9 George Eastman

George Eastman had a profound impact on modern life. He was the inventor of the Kodak camera, the first camera that made photography easily accessible to the public, and began the craze for amateur photography that is still going strong today. Cameras had previously been expensive, complicated to operate, and extremely unwieldy. His cameras were small, cheap, and simple to use, and his company became one of the most successful businesses in the world.

Eastman pioneered a number of developments in photography, but his Brownie camera, which cost $1 and could be used by amateurs and children was his most popular invention. It became a favorite of servicemen during World War I because it could be tucked into a kit bag.

George Eastman was endlessly inventive and a great businessman. He was respected by his employees, whom he treated well, and was known to be a generous philanthropist, giving away over $100 million during his lifetime. His health, however, began to degenerate, and he found it difficult to do the activities that he once enjoyed. In 1932, George Eastman committed suicide, with a gunshot wound to his heart.

The note that he left behind was brief but to the point. It seems that Eastman put his practical mind to the problem, and came to his own conclusion. “To my friends: My work is done. Why wait? G. E.”^[2]

8Tony Hancock

Tony Hancock was an actor and comedian who specialized in playing characters who had been treated badly by life. His characters were puffed up with a sense of their own self-worth, and bemused to realize no one else recognized his genius.

Tony Hancock’s alter-ego was, it seems, drawn very closely from life. Hancock was a troubled man who resented anyone stealing his limelight. He disliked his writers, the hugely successful writing team of Galton and Simpson, getting credit for his lines, and disliked his co-star, Sid James, getting any funny lines, which was awkward, since James was also a comedian. Hancock insisted that they drop Sid James from Hancock’s Half Hour, and then he fired his writers, a decision which he later bitterly regretted.

As his career began to falter without his writers, Hancock’s drinking, which had always been problematic, became much worse. In a last-ditch attempt to resurrect his fortunes he agreed to make a series in Australia. But Hancock was not happy, and, believing that the filming was not going well, he killed himself in his hotel room.

His suicide note had an echo of Hancock’s Half Hour and the character who believed that the world is against him. “Things just seemed to go too wrong too many times”, he wrote, not knowing the Australian TV company had already decided to commission a second series.^[3]

7 Vachel Lindsay

Vachel Lindsay was an American poet, who was particularly well known for his performance poetry, which he described as ‘higher vaudeville’. Much of his work is considered culturally insensitive today, particularly for his naive and racist portrayals of African-Americans. Sometimes, for example, he appeared in black face when he read his poem about The Congo, a place he had never visited.

But, it seems, this middle-class white man tried hard to depict small town America in all its vagaries. And, for a while, small town America appreciated his efforts. His patriotic verses were well appreciated throughout World War I, but, when the war was over, his popularity began to wane. His readings were sparsely attended, his income declined, and he was the subject of much mocking for his overly dramatic style.

At the same time, his health problems increased, until, in 1931, broke, ill and depressed, Vachel Lindsay killed himself by drinking a bottle of lye, which was a typically dramatic, but agonising, way to go. He left behind a note, which read, “They tried to get me—I got them first!”

Quite who ‘they’ were was not made clear.^[4]

6 George Sanders

George Sanders was a successful, Oscar winning, actor, but he was never able to enjoy his life. He had been married four times, including to the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, and then to her sister, Magda. He was known for his rudeness, and even acknowledged it himself, saying, “I am not a sweet person. I am a disagreeable person. I am a hateful person.”

This self-awareness did not seem to enable him to enjoy life more, and neither did his seven psychiatrists. Sanders believed that he was passed over for roles that he wanted, and it seemed to eat away at him. In 1972, at the age of 65, George Sanders downed five bottles of Nembutal in a hotel room in Spain. Typically for Sanders, his suicide note was not one that expressed remorse, or love, but rather, disdain and more than a little contempt, for the whole of humanity.

“Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”^[5]

5 Lupe Valez

Lupe Valez was a young and beautiful Mexican actress, who seemed to epitomize the excitement of the frenetic jazz era the 1920s. She was often cast as the fiery Latin consort to the bad guy, and was nicknamed The Mexican Spitfire. Velez was known in Hollywood circles as a party girl, but she was also a staunch catholic. So, when Velez found herself pregnant, at the age of 36, she would not countenance a visit to the ‘health spas’ that many starlets of that era frequented when they were in the same situation.

She was briefly engaged to the father of her child, an Australia actor named Harald Ramond, but the engagement lasted only a few days before they broke up, the week before she died. On the night of her death, she held a dinner party at her home, and, after her friends left, Lupe Valez killed herself with poison, leaving a note which read, “To Harald, may God forgive you and forgive me too but I prefer to take my life away and our baby’s before I bring him with shame or killing him, Lupe.”

Lupe Valez’s death was certainly tragic, but the rumor that she meticulously planned a beautiful death for herself, only to succumb to nausea and die with her head in the toilet, appears to be an urban myth.^[6]

4 Terry Kath

Terry Kath was the lead guitarist in the rock band Chicago, and the musician who Jimi Hendrix called ‘better than me’. Like so many other musicians, Kath was addicted to drink and drugs, and prone to periods of deep depression. He also decided to collect guns as a hobby, which was a dangerous combination.

In 1969, Chicago opened for both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and they were riding high. By 1977, however, the band was beginning to fracture, and Terry Kath fell out with several band members. He was taking large amounts of cocaine, and had got himself a new hobby, Russian roulette. He played the game often. Carl Wilson, of The Beach Boys, once knocked a gun out of his hand in alarm and in return, Kath punched him in the face.

On the day of his death, in January 1978, Kath had been snorting cocaine for two days straight. He decided that was this was the right the time to clean his guns, and, after being told to be careful, replied “What do you think I’m gonna do? Blow my brains out?”

He fired the gun directly into his temple. Despite the fact that Kath had removed the clip, the gun still had one bullet in the chamber, and he died instantly. It is not clear whether he intended to shoot himself in that moment, or whether his death was the tragic result of his increasingly dangerous obsession with death, but his last words were horribly prophetic.^[7]

3 Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Her work received wide recognition, and her marriage was said to have been blissfully happy. However, Woolf had suffered periods of mental illness for the whole of her life, and it is believed that she probably suffered from bi-polar disorder which, at that time, had not been recognized and was untreatable.

Feeling that her mood was changing yet again, Woolf wrote a long and tender suicide note to her husband. “Dearest, I feel certain that I’m going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So, I am doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier until this terrible disease came. I can’t fight it any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness in my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”

On 28th March 1941, Virginian Woolf filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river near her home, and drowned.^[8]

2 Sid Vicious

Sid Vicious was probably the least talented member of a band which celebrated its lack of talent when it took the world by storm and ushered in the era of Punk Rock. The Sex Pistols were loud, brash, and defiantly aggressive. But it was Sid’s relationship with his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, that would lead to the destruction of them both.

Sid Vicious had a volatile personality. Occasionally driven to outbursts of violent anger, he was known to have assaulted several journalists and even members of The Sex Pistols’ audience, and he sought refuge in drugs and alcohol. Sid and Nancy both had an escalating heroin habit.

In October 1979, Vicious woke up in his Manhattan hotel, to find his girlfriend dead on the bathroom floor. She had been stabbed in the stomach, and she bled to death. Vicious acknowledged owning the knife, and he was arrested for her murder. Over several interviews he gave conflicting accounts of what happened, sometimes admitting to stabbing her, and sometimes saying that he didn’t remember because of the large amounts of drugs that they had both taken. He was charged with her murder.

After several failed attempts at suicide whilst on remand, Sid Vicious died the night that he made bail. His mother, who discovered his body, claimed that she found a note in his jacket pocket, which read, “We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye.”^[9]

1Hunter S Thompson

Hunter S Thompson, the Gonzo journalist and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was a complicated man. Variously described as a southern gentleman and gun-toting anarchist, Thompson was famous for his wildly inventive style of writing, his prolific drug-taking and his love of explosions.

Having spent most of his career chasing, but never finding, The American Dream, Thompson became something of an expert on ‘the underbelly of America’, and his writing influenced a generation.

Thompson himself, however, suffered from a number of health problems, and disliked the process of aging. Counter-culture heroes, it seems, are not meant to grow old. In 2005, he shot himself in the kitchen of Owl Farm, in Woody Creek, Colorado, the home where he had lived for many years. He had written a note a few weeks earlier, which read, “No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax This won’t hurt.”

His prediction was not quite accurate. After his death, his friend, Johnny Depp, arranged for his ashes to be shot from a canon into space, in one last, very large, bomb.^[10]

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
— From “Lady Lazarus”, by Sylvia Plath

If You Need Help: If you or a loved one needs to talk to someone due to suicidal thoughts or actions, there are resources dedicated to helping you:

• United States National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
• Canada Suicide Prevention Service: 1-833-456-4566
• United Kingdom Samaritans Helpline: 116 123

Other countries’ suicide prevention numbers are available here.

10 Fabulously Rich Recluses (That Aren’t Howard Hughes)

Marjorie Mackintosh — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 23:36:35 +0000

The idea of turning your back on wealth, fame, and society is incomprehensible for many. Notoriety isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, however, and for some people, the pressure of their lives in the spotlight seems to have been too much for them.

No one really understands why some people feel the need to withdraw from the world. It seems that some of the following may have suffered from mental health conditions, while others appear to have been perfectly happy to remain inside their homes for years at a time—even when they had enough wealth to do anything that they could want.

10 Huguette Clark

Huguette Clark was the daughter of a copper tycoon. She had immense wealth, with an estate worth over $300 million, but her life was not richer for it. Instead of surrounding herself with beautiful things, Clark chose to spend the last 20 years of her life in a hospital room, despite the fact that she wasn’t sick. She allowed very few visitors and had no personal possessions except her clothes, her dolls, and her collection of violins (which, to be fair, did at one point include Stradivarius’s greatest masterpiece, known as “The Virgin”). She owned a number of homes, including a Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan and a mansion in California, but preferred the sterile environment of the hospital.

The cause of Clark’s reclusiveness is not known, but she once called money “a menace to happiness.”

After her death in 2011, Huguette Clark left over $30 million to her nurse, but this was challenged by distant relatives who hardly knew Huguette, and the nurse ultimately received nothing (but was able to keep most of the $31 million in gifts she’d received from Clark over the years.)^[1]

9 Ida Wood

Ida Wood had been a New York socialite at the very end of the 19th century, but in 1907, she suddenly withdrew from the world and moved into a room at the Herald Square Hotel with her sister and daughter and hid herself away. Each day, the bellhop would knock at the door and ask if the sisters wanted anything. Ida Wood would open the door a crack and request the same things—evaporated milk, crackers, coffee, bacon, and eggs. Each day, she would tip him ten cents and tell him that that was all the money she had in in the world.^[2]

The daughter died in 1928. In 1931, Ida Wood, now in her nineties, suddenly opened the door wide and called for help. Her sister was dying. When staff entered the hotel suite, they found that the bathroom had been turned into a makeshift kitchen, and the suite was filled with empty cracker boxes and rotting food.

Among the debris, they also found share certificates, bonds, and cash stuffed into shoeboxes, as well as diamond necklaces hidden inside the empty cracker cartons. Ida Wood even had $500,000 in $10,000 bills pinned to the inside of her nightgown.

That all seems incredible, but Ida Wood’s life was a series of incredible incidents. She met her husband after writing to him, at that time a stranger, to propose an affair, offering him “agreeable intimacy” and presenting herself as the daughter of a wealthy and aristocratic family. In fact, she was the daughter of poor Irish immigrants. She made her money in a deal with her husband, who was a gambling addict. Every time he won at the tables, he shared the winnings with her 50–50, but if he lost, he also paid her half of his losses. When he ran out of money, she would loan it to him in return for shares in his newspaper business.

He died virtually penniless, while she kept a fortune hidden inside empty cracker boxes.

8 Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson grew up in a prosperous family in Massachusetts, where her father was a respected lawyer. The family were well-known in social circles, but Emily never wanted to be part of that world. After a miserable first year of college, she left and spent the rest of her life in her father’s house, leaving it only to visit a doctor on rare occasions.^[3]

Dickinson never married, though she did have friends. It is thought that she must have been in love at one time, because the poems for which she is famous appear to be addressed to a lover, but no one knows who it may have been. Dickinson appears to have made a definite decision to live this way, and though many have sought to find the reason in her work, it is not clear why.

Dickinson died in the house in 1886 and was buried in the white clothes that she always wore.

7 Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was certainly a genius. The benefits of his pioneering work on electricity are still being felt today. His reputation was never as high as that of his rival, Thomas Edison, mainly because Edison was a relentless glory hunter who was not averse to taking credit for other men’s ideas.

For Tesla, however, it was the idea that was important. He seemed to have little interest in celebrity or even money. While his inventions have generated millions or even billions of dollars, he seems to have benefited little from them. Tesla had an eidetic memory, could speak eight languages, and rarely made notes while inventing, as he didn’t need them, despite the fact that they would have been handy for establishing patents.

It is true that Tesla was always a little eccentric. He almost certainly suffered from OCD. He obsessively washed his hands and would only eat food that had been boiled. He had strange phobias, such as an aversion to pearls, which led to anxiety when speaking to society ladies. He believed that his greatest ideas were borne out of solitude, so he became solitary.^[4]

Tesla’s poor business skills led him to fritter away his fortune, and he spent his last years moving from hotel to hotel and skipping out before paying the bill. He once offered one of his inventions in lieu of cash—a box which, he claimed, contained a death beam but which was too dangerous to be opened. Not one of his more useful inventions.

Tesla died in one of his hotel rooms in 1943. He was, as he had always been, alone.

6 Bobby Fischer

It is probably fair to describe Bobby Fischer as a troubled genius. The chess prodigy became a national hero when he beat the Soviet grand master at the height of the Cold War to become World Chess Champion in 1972 and a traitor when he defied US sanctions to play a rematch in Belgrade during the Balkan Wars 20 years later.

It is unlikely that Fischer was moved by either description. He was not a man who cared for others’ opinions. He became paranoid, obsessed with conspiracy theories, and angry with the world. Having beaten the best chess players in the world, he seemed to lose his purpose. He no longer played chess but could not find anything else to absorb his mind.

After making inflammatory remarks about 9/11 during interviews, he ended up in Iceland, where he spent the rest of his life as a recluse. He invented his own form of chess, which, with his trademark modesty, he named Fischerandom.^[5]

Although in his final years, his appearance had suggested that he was penniless, he left an estate worth several million dollars. He was found dead in his hotel room in 2008. Even in death, however, Fischer rejected the regard of others. He arranged his own secret burial, without regard to the law. His grave was dug during the night, and only five people attended the service, which took place at first light. Even the minister at the church was not informed until it was over.

5 Theo And Karl Albrecht

Theo Albrecht founded his grocery empire, Aldi, with his brother Karl after World War II. They began by running their mother’s grocery shop, which they expanded into a business that made them both multibillionaires.

Theo was kidnapped in 1971. He was freed by his captors after paying a ransom of seven million German marks, 17 days after he had been abducted. He might have been released sooner, but it seems he haggled over the amount and later tried to claim the ransom money as a business expense on his tax return.

After the kidnapping, both brothers kept a very low profile. They were rarely photographed, and they did not give interviews. They traveled separately in cars that never took the same route twice.^[6] The two brothers spent at least some of their time on a remote island in the North Sea, where they played golf, grew orchids, and collected typewriters. Both men died in Essen, Germany, Theo in 2010 and Karl in 2014.

4 John G. Wendel II

At the turn of the 20th century, John Wendel II had a property empire in the heart of Manhattan that would be worth around $1 billion today. He built his fortune on four firm principles—never mortgage, never sell, never repair, and always remember that premium real estate prices on Broadway will move uptown ten blocks every decade.^[7]

Wendel had equally firm principles when it came to his family. Their house was in a commercial district, surrounded by shops and hotels, and thus completely unsuitable as a home but worth a fortune. He did not hold with wasting money on fripperies such as electricity, telephones, or newfangled automobiles. There was no fence around the house, and passersby often pressed their noses against the windows to catch a glimpse of the strange inhabitants, who they dubbed the “Weird Wendels.”

Wendel had seven sisters, who all lived in the house with him. Wendel was referred to as “the hermit of Fifth Avenue.” They lived quietly together, refusing to change with the times.

3 Ella Wendel

After John Wendel’s death, the sisters remained in the house, until Ella Wendel was the only one left. Only one of the sisters had married—and not until she was well past childbearing age because John Wendel had been concerned about gold-diggers. This meant there was no one to inherit the vast fortune. Despite this, Ella Wendel carried on living exactly as she had before.

She had a fortune valued at $100 million, but she continued to live in the vast house alone, without modern amenities. Her only pleasure seemed to be her dogs over the years, all of which were named Toby. At night, she would walk Toby on a vacant lot that they owned, which, following her brother’s business principle, she would never sell, despite it being worth millions.^[8]

After Ella’s death in 1931, over 2,000 “relatives” came forward to claim their share of the inheritance, almost all of whom were totally bogus. A large chunk of the estate was spent in legal fees fending off the claims, and the remainder went to charity.

So, totally worth it.

2 Eliza Donnithorne

Eliza Donnithorne is said to be the inspiration for the Charles Dickens character Miss Havisham, the jilted bride who wandered forlornly around her house in her wedding dress, waiting for her groom to return.

Donnithorne moved to Australia during the 1840s with her father, an official of the East India Company, and continued to live there after he died. In 1889, the Illustrated Sydney News published an article about her being left at the altar, leaving her “completely prostrated.”

Eliza had formed an attachment to a young man of whom her father disapproved, and after resisting his attempts to split them up, the couple set a date for the wedding. Mr. Donnithorne was such an important official that a great deal of interest was held in the wedding, and crowds are said to have lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the bride. Eliza Donnithorne, dressed in her finery, waited excitedly at the altar for her lover.^[9]

He didn’t show.

The article maintained that she had left the wedding feast upon the table “until it mouldered into dust,” after which she never left the house again. She was said to be mortified at the thought of what people’s reactions. Her only interest was her books, and at her death, she left a large collection of books behind.

She probably avoided the romances.

1 Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust was a famous French writer and a celebrated recluse. The author of In Search of Lost Time spent a number of years in an apartment on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris until his death. He rarely went out. Proust suffered from crippling asthma and was said to have been acutely affected by the deaths of his parents and retreated into himself. He soundproofed his workroom with corkboard and put up layers of heavy curtains to blot out daylight so that he could work uninterrupted. He would stay up for days on end, working on his masterpiece, desperate to complete it before his death.^[10]

Nevertheless, time caught up with Proust, and the final three volumes of In Search of Lost Time were left in “an advanced but not final stage of revision.”

Proust died in 1922 in his apartment. Though he did not finish his seminal work completely, the final volumes were sufficiently complete to be published after his death, and the novel has become one of the most important pieces of literature in the world.

Pass the corkboard.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

Ordinary Items That Made People Rich

Johan Tobias — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 14:28:28 +0000

Everyone likes to imagine that there might be a Picasso hidden in the attic. But it is a sad fact of life that when we finally get around to cleaning out the clutter, most of us will uncover nothing but dust bunnies.

However, some people have found out that riches were hiding not in their attic, but in their junk drawers, backyards, bathrooms, dinner plates, or even on their birth certificates. And the things that they made fortunes from weren’t as rare as a work of art—they were things that almost everyone today can find or buy cheaply. Read on to find out about ten ordinary items that made their owners rich.

10 A Name

When Jason Sadler’s mom told him his stepfather was filing for divorce, Sadler responded to the news with a joke. Sadler told his mom he’d just have to sell off his last name to avoid being stuck with the family name of a third divorced dad.

That joke became reality half a year later when Jason Sadler created a website called buymylastname.com. Sadler offered to change his last name to an advertising billboard for any company willing to pay for the privilege. What would happen if Nike wanted to change Jason’s name to Jason JustDoIt? Jason would just do it indeed, as long as the dubbing was for the highest price offered.

Within 24 hours of the auction opening, his name’s selling price skyrocketed to thirty thousand dollars. Forty days later, Jason was paid forty-five thousand dollars to legally become Jason Headsetsdotcom.

While “Mr. Headsetsdotcom” may be a memorable title, Jason decided he would not settle on that last name either. Headsetsdotcom did not go back to calling himself Jason Sadler. Instead, he auctioned off his last name again, and for fifty-thousand dollars Jason was now Jason Sufrapp.

What is in a name? Almost one hundred thousand dollars, apparently.

9 A Cup of Coffee

On a cold winter day, Stella Liebeck and her nephew drove up to a McDonald’s drive-through. After ordering a cup of hot coffee, Liebeck spilled it on her lap as her nephew pulled the car away. Stella Liebeck then sued the restaurant chain for damages and won big time.

In the first court case that followed, Liebeck vs. McDonald’s, the jury awarded her three million dollars in compensation. Though a judge later reduced this prize to about a half a million dollars, and Liebeck may have settled for a lesser amount later, that payout does not seem bad for spending fifteen minutes at a fast food franchise, though maybe not worth spending months in the courtroom.

But before we all head out to the nearest drive-through with a hot beverage in one hand and a phone ready to speed-dial our lawyers in another, this settlement did come with a cost greater than coffee-stained pants. Liebeck suffered third degree burns and required skin grafts to recover, and evidence in the courtroom revealed that hundreds of people each year had suffered similar injuries because McDonald’s franchisees had overheated their coffee. This lawsuit was more a case of justice rather than frivolity.

8 A Spring

Richard James was working in a factory during World War II when he knocked a spring off the shelf. He was amazed when the spring smoothly coiled downwards instead of instantly dropping to the ground. As the spring hit the floor, an idea hit him: what if he could make a coil that would double as a child’s toy?

After two years of tinkering, he came up with a toy that could stretch, retract, and spiral down inclines. His wife, Betty James, pulled out a dictionary and named it the slinky. Together they took out a five hundred dollar loan, and built an empire that continues to sell the toys to this day.

At first James and Betty struggled to make the slinky profitable. Toy shops refused to stock it because it was so ordinary. But once the toy caught on and James earned millions of dollars, he donated most of the profits to a religious group he had joined in South America. Far from being rich, James plunged his company into a seven-figure debt hole. Oops.

Betty took over the company, and miraculously turned it around. While selling enough slinkys to wrap around the globe one hundred and fifty times, she never strayed from the slinky’s simplicity and affordability, and sold it even more cheaply in 1990 than it sold for in 1945.

7 A Tulip

A 17th century Dutchman would be shocked if you gave your significant other a bouquet of tulips for Valentine’s Day. Not because the Dutch preferred roses, but because of what the sheer value of the tulips (or more specifically their bulbs) would be in the arrangement.

In the 1600s, tulips had just arrived to the Netherlands from what is now Turkey. A virus had afflicted harvests, which caused each tulip to be colored in its own unique pattern. Curiously the diseased flowers became worth even more than tulips that were healthy. Scholars coveted different tulip patterns and bought them as if they were collecting baseball or pokemon cards.

Soon the population caught on that people in academia would buy uniquely patterned flowers at almost any cost, and prices for the tulips soared. By 1637, it would be possible for you to exchange a single bulb for one of the largest, most fashionable, houses in all of the Netherlands. While prices collapsed less than a year later, people made and lost fortunes for what today we give out freely as gifts.

6 A Rock

Gary Dahl was drinking at a bar when he came up with a concept that would take the 1970s by storm and make his company over a million dollars in revenue. In a conversation with his friends, he came up with the ultimate pet. It would be docile, housebroken, shed no hair and have a long lifespan too. Rocks, Dahl realized, were the perfect pets in all respects, better than any cat, dog, or goldfish.

Dahl made his drunken idea a reality when he sold rocks in cardboard boxes, complete with air holes so the stones could breathe. For just under four dollars you could possess a stone of your very own. A manual included in the package explained how to care for the rock along with the tricks it could be taught. Among other sardonic jokes, it gave instructions oin how a pet rock could be trained to play dead.

The rocks’ sheer absurdity caught the whimsy of Americans everywhere. Though anyone could pick up a feral rock in their backyard, the pet rock’s value as a gag gift made them fly off the shelves.

5 Garbage

As anyone who lives in a city can tell you, litter is worse than worthless. A New Yorker named Justin Gignac was convinced otherwise. He believed that if someone packaged something right, it would sell (and clearly his point has been well proven by other items on this list also!). He began to collect garbage off the streets and arrange it in glass smell-proof boxes.

Gignac sold them for ten dollars a pop, and people bought them as souvenirs. He raised the price to fifty dollars, and people bought them as artwork. Today the New York garbage costs one hundred dollars per cube and according to his website at the time of this writing, is completely sold out (in not too dissimilar a fashion to New York City itself thanks to de Blasio!)

4 Air

We breathe about twenty three thousand times a day. While we may spend money on basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, and electricity, nobody would even imagine paying for air. Right?

Two Canadians proved that people will pay for the stuff they breathe when the pair began bottling the air in the Rocky Mountains and selling it for twenty four bucks a can. Chinese customers, choking in smog-filled cities, began to purchase the bottles both as a joke to protest against poor air quality (or so they say) and for whiffs of pure, unpolluted, air (more likely).

3 Poop

We flush our waste down the toilet every day without much thought. If we excreted gold instead of poop, we might think twice about doing so.

Artist Piero Manzoni believed that his own waste was just as valuable as gold. In 1961, he put his money where was butt was, and canned ninety tins of his own poop and tried to sell it to his patrons. Less than two years later he exchanged thirty grams of the stuff for thirty grams of eighteen carat gold.

Lest we think that this was another strange byproduct of the 1960s, another can sold in a 2008 auction for over one hundred thousand dollars, meaning that right now Manzoni’s poop is worth roughly sixty-five times its weight in gold.

2 A Red Paperclip

Kyle MacDonald, a 27-year old man from Montreal, started out his summer with no job, no house, and a single red paperclip. When Kyle resolved to get a home for him and his girlfriend to live in, he did not brush up his resume or open a savings account. Instead, he left his apartment with the red paperclip in hand and traded it for a pen that looked like a fish.

Thirteen exchanges later, he traded a movie role for a two story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan. Kyle had traded up the paperclip on his desk for a house in less than a year, in a story that shows even the value of office supplies can bring surprise.

1 Two Boxes of Pizza

In 2010 Lazlo Hanyecz, a hungry developer of a then near-unknown cryptocurrency called Bitcoin had a craving for pizza. Under the internet handle “lazlo”, he offered ten thousand bitcoins to anyone who would order him two pizza pies.

Nine years later in 2019, those ten thousand bitcoins are worth far more dough than the flour in two large pizzas. Anyone who had taken Laszlo up on his offer (at the time of this writing) would now possess more than a hundred million dollars just for having made two orders from Papa John’s.

10 Rich People Blinded By Their Own Hubris

Johan Tobias — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 10:31:02 +0000

From media moguls to tech startups to venture capitalists, there is certainly a sizable crop of rich people one can look at for examples of financial success. However, if there’s one thing we find more entertaining than rich people, it’s the often inevitable moment when everything goes up in smoke for them. From Elizabeth Holmes to Donald Trump to Stockton Rush, there is a bevy of different rich people whose aspirations imploded metaphorically and, in the case of the latter, literally.

10. Elizabeth Holmes

In the healthcare industry, one needn’t look far for tales of corruption and misformation – case in point, Elizabeth Holmes. A Stanford University dropout, Holmes certainly had many abuzz when she claimed that she was about to change the blood testing industry forever. She was at the forefront of what she claimed were breakthroughs in technology that could run comprehensive tests using only a few drops of blood. Her company, Theranos, which she founded in 2003, quickly gained meteoric success, reaching a mind-blowing value of nine billion.

All seemed to be going swimmingly for Holmes, that is until 2015, when things began crashing down for the once-thriving entrepreneur. A series of investigative articles and reports went public, which revealed the unsavory truth regarding Holmes, Theranos, and its widely touted technology. It was quickly made excruciatingly clear that Theranos’ main golden goose, the Edison, was far from the breakthrough device that it’d be hyped up to be by Holmes and her constituents.

It was also revealed that the company had been using standard blood testing machines for their in-house data. This proved to be the end for Elizabeth Holmes, who was no longer seen as a successful tech visionary but rather as a disappointing cautionary tale.

9. Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling

When it comes to flying too close to the sun, you can’t find quite a better example than Enron, as well as its central figures, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. For context, Enron was a corporation that dealt with electricity, natural gas, communications, as well as pulp and paper. Lay, who served as the founder and chairman, and Skilling, who served as the CEO, made Enron the gold standard for corporate success.

However, in 2001, the unsavory truth regarding Enron’s success was revealed, eventually resulting in its demise. They had been implementing a series of fraudulent practices and accounting techniques to inflate their profits, including various partnerships that were kept off of the company’s balance sheets. Additionally, these shady practices also allowed them to sweep any accrued debt under the proverbial rug, helping them maintain their smokescreen of financial stability.

Following these revelations, the sky began falling for Enron at record speed, ultimately declaring bankruptcy in December 2001. Unsurprisingly, Lay and Skilling were hit with a slew of legal ramifications for fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading. When it comes to the dirty dealings of the business world, Enron is a prime example of how badly it can backfire.

8. Adam Neumann

At first glance, Adam Neumann’s charisma was undeniable, as was his passion for his entrepreneurial work and desire to revolutionize office culture. His brainchild, WeWork, was predicated on reinventing the modern workspace, including unique floorplans, alternative desk styles, and countless other in-house amenities. For a time, Neumann’s vision saw great financial success, even reaching a peak value of $47 billion in 2019.

Unfortunately, as time passed, Neumann’s leadership and various business decisions became the subject of increased scrutiny. It seems as though Neumann’s eyes were a bit bigger than his stomach, as he pursued rapid expansion without sustainable profitability. This meant he was leasing properties at a breakneck speed all the while projecting an image of seemingly endless growth. It was revealed that the WeWork business model was predicated on long-term leases and short-term commitments to members.

WeWork’s IPO, Initial Public Offering, revealed significant financial losses, governance issues, and Neumann’s own dealings, which included conflicts of interest and a perceived lack of corporate governance. The public outcry following these revelations proved too great, leading to Neumann’s resignation from WeWork in late 2019, with the company being subsequently purchased by SoftBank.

7. Martin Winterkorn

A common trend amongst this crop of the wealthy blinded by their hubris is immense success undercut by a frequently quick fall from grace. In this case, we have Martin Winterkorn, a truly self-made man if there ever was one, working his way up the ranks within the Volkswagen Group. From 1977 onward, Winterkorn went from a specialist assistant in the research division to head of group quality assurance. Winterkorn’s engineering knowledge, as well as his commitment to product perfection, made him one of Volkwagen’s truly indispensable soldiers. This dedication to the brand resulted in Winterkorn becoming the company’s CEO in January 2007.

His time at the top saw Volkswagen reach new heights of both technological advancement and evergrowing profits, sadly this upward trend was not to last. In 2015, a rather unsavory secret was revealed to the public, specifically regarding the emissions tests for their diesel vehicles. Emissions tests, also known as smog tests, measure the levels of pollutants like hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. It seems that under Winterkorn’s purview, Volkswagen had installed software in millions of their vehicles that manipulated emissions tests, resulting in pollution levels far beyond permissible limits. These revelations caused Winterkorn to resign from his role as CEO in late 2015, resulting in a disappointing end to his once-inspiring success story.

6. Thierry Leyne and Arnaud Mimran

In life, you need to choose your friends wisely. This is likely something that Thierry Leyne should’ve considered before choosing to forge a partnership with Arnaud Mimran.

Leyne, a very skilled financial entrepreneur, opted to join forces with Mimran, a financier and businessman, in 2013, eventually founding an investment firm known as LSK, Leyne, Strauss-Kahn & Partners. Together, the duo cultivated all manner of investments, including real estate, finance, and technology which initially resulted in ample financial success for both of them. For a time, the world was seemingly their oyster, with Leyne and Mimran seeing nothing but rampant success and financial victories.

However, what goes up must eventually come down, which things most certainly did when the truth regarding the duo’s business practices came to light. The duo began facing a siege of legal issues eventually leading to the reveal of financial irregularities and something far more distressing. It seems Mimran was at the heart of a carbon trading scam that many news outlets described as “the heist of the century.” Mimran would see himself incarcerated for his transgressions whereas Leyne ended up taking his own life in Tel Aviv at the end of 2014.

5. Travis Kalanick

Ride-sharing apps are more commonplace and widespread than they’ve ever been, due in large part to Uber and its founder Travis Kalanick. Nowadays you walk too far in a major metropolitan area without seeing an Uber-branded vehicle or one of its various competitors, including Lyft and Zipcar. However, as many would eventually come to learn, Kalanick’s aggressive vision was underscored by a rather distressing dark side.

In 2017, Uber’s reckoning arrived in the dorm of several heated allegations of varying nature and severity. Not only was the company itself hit with several accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination, but Kalanick himself was branded as an abrasive and cutthroat leader. Additionally, it was also revealed that Uber has disregarded regulations in various cities, which led to various issues with local authorities and taxi industries as well.

The final nail in the coffin was hammered in when footage leaked of Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver. With pressure mounting from investors, and the footage thoroughly exposing his problematic behavior, Kalanick finally tendered his resignation as CEO. He’d remain on the board until 2019 when he’d finally sell his remaining shares and depart Uber for good.

4. Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch, the driving force behind News Corporation, found his empire embroiled in a scandal of biblical proportions involving phone hacking that sent shockwaves through the British press and beyond.

The scandal first broke in 2011, when it was revealed that News of the World journalists had been hacking the phone of one Milly Dowler, a teenage murder victim. While engaging in this illicit hacking, they were privy to all the messages in Dowler’s voicemails, mining them for additional information. However, when they deleted some messages to free up space for more to come through, the first domino in their undoing would fall.

In addition to cruelly giving Dowler’s family false hope that she might be alive, it also exposed just how shady not only News of the World was, but all of Murdoch’s media empire as well. It was later revealed that several outlets under his purview engaged in similar practices of illegal hacking of voicemails and the private communications of various individuals, including celebrities, politicians, and other crime victims. News Corporation faced significant repercussions of both a financial and legal nature with the whole incident forever staining Rupert Murdoch’s legacy within the world of media and journalism.

3. Richard Fuld

Much has been said and written regarding the 2008 global financial crisis, the most devastating economic downturn seen up until that point since the Great Depression. It was during this period of economic implosion that Lehman Brothers, once a towering titan of the financial world, suffered a catastrophic collapse.

The person manning the helm during this tumultuous period was the CEO, Richard Fuld. Lehman’s main problems stemmed from their heavy usage of subprime mortgage-backed securities, which were hit hard by the housing market crash. If you need more information on subprime mortgages, definitely check out The Big Short directed by Adam McKay; the whole debacle is summarized by Margot Robbie in a bathtub.

Due to risky investments and an overreliance on complex financial instruments tied to the housing market, the firm’s downfall became quickly inevitable. The value of Lehman’s assets plummeted more and more as the crisis deepened, eventually finding itself submerged in debt. Despite many efforts to find a potential buyer or secure a bailout, the Lehman’s finally tapped out in September 2008, declaring bankruptcy. When the dust settled, a majority of the blame was placed on Fuld’s shoulders due to him ignoring many warnings and remaining confident the film could overcome its impending issues.

2. Donald Trump

Simply uttering Trump’s name in just about any forum is guaranteed to get many people’s blood boiling, especially nowadays. However, let’s hop into the Wayback machine and take a look at one of Trump’s non-political goof-ups regarding his business ventures, specifically his casinos.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Trump owned and operated several casinos, including Trump Plaza, Trump Marina, and the Taj Mahal, all located in Atlantic City. The latter of these three, the Taj Mahal, was even regarded for quite a while as one of the world’s most opulent casinos. Despite being labeled as a revitalization effort for the struggling resort city, issues quickly began to rise for Trump and his casinos. Due to over-leveraging and economic downturns that impacted the gambling industry, his casinos grappled with a sizable amount of debt.

These rising debts resulted in the Taj Mahal filing for bankruptcy in 1991, serving as the first of Trump’s casinos that would suffer this fate. Time marched on and in 2014, the Trump Plaza was shut down, followed by the Taj Mahal in 2016. The latter is most interesting, as 2016 was the year Trump would succeed in his bid to become the President of the United States.

1. Stockton Rush

Founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein, OceanGate specialized in crewed submersibles for tourism, research, and exploration. Rush, an avid enthusiast for undersea exploration, was even quoted as saying that submersibles were “the safest vehicles on the planet.”

That is quite the chilling quote in hindsight, especially after what happened to Rush in June 2023 with his Titan submersible. Before its descent, concerns for the Titan were already spreading, spurred on by a CBS news report that pointed out the ramshackle nature of the submersible. Chief among the concerns was that a $30 Logitech F710 wireless game controller was the only means of controlling the submersible.

Despite these concerns, on June 18, Stockton, as well as four other passengers, descended to take a look at the remains of the sunken Titanic. These passengers included Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, and his 19-year-old son Suleman. Unfortunately, only a mere hour and 45 minutes into their journey, the submersible lost contact with the surface. This loss of communication was later said to have been marked by the distinct sound of something imploding. It wasn’t until June 18 that the debris of the Titan was recovered, officially confirming the demises of all five passengers, including Rush himself.

10 Things That Are Trashy If You’re Poor but Classy If You’re Rich

Johan Tobias — Sat, 17 Jun 2023 16:29:35 +0000

We all know that society is full of double standards. There are many reasons people get preferential treatment or just get away with basically anything because of what they have, how they appear, or their status. Let’s dive into ten things that are classy if you’re rich but trashy if you’re poor.

Of course, these are just stereotypes that you may have heard throughout the years; by no means are these things facts. So with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek attitude, let’s get to it…

Related: 10 Obscene And Ridiculous Things The Rich Do With Their Money

10 Choosing When to Work

This is the dream, right? Most of us work hard to afford the luxuries of relaxing and choosing how to spend our time on evenings and weekends. I’m sure many of us would love to be able to choose when we worked and be able to go lunching on a Wednesday or play golf on a Monday morning. That feeling of freedom is something we could all get used to.

However, it’s not something we can all get away with under society’s watchful eye. The wealthy can spend as much time as they please relaxing or on vacation, and people aspire to it. If you’re a little tighter on cash, society is quick to call those that don’t work (or those that don’t work full time) lazy and that they must be living off of others or off the system.

We are quick to judge those who are not working, even though we don’t have any context or know the circumstances.

9 Retaining a Lawyer

This is a great one because I’m sure it’s something so many of us think about without even realizing it.

So, I bet we would all assume that a wealthy person would have a personal lawyer—because they need one, right? We imagine glamorous high-rise offices and huge hourly billing, and it all seems very corporate and rich (let me know if anyone else is picturing Suits).

But when you aren’t as financially well-off and mention that you have a lawyer, the same thoughts don’t come to mind. It’s automatically “I wonder what they’ve done?” or “How much trouble have they got themselves into?” The blame is turned straight on the individual because, I mean, surely they can’t afford the luxury of a lawyer unless they need one to help them out of a hole? This is funny because if Suits has taught us anything, the wealthy can get up to the most questionable things out of all of us, and yet we rarely—if ever—assume it’s their fault.

8 Not Cleaning Your Own House

Now this one is so true. No matter what house you live in, the size of your family, or what job you have, cleaning an entire house is a lot of work, and sometimes you just don’t feel like doing it.

Society is quick to brand those who don’t have much money as lazy, or their house is dirty if they don’t clean it themselves. For the rich, if they don’t clean their own house, it’s because they must pay someone to do it, which isn’t only perfectly respectable but also looked up to.

In society’s eyes, the poor are the cleaners and the maids and should keep their houses clean and tidy, and the rich are the homeowners that shouldn’t lift a finger. Talk about double standards.

7 Minimalism

We probably all imagine minimalism as beautiful; white houses with carefully curated decor and open space. In reality, minimalism is just being conscious about your purchases and not owning unnecessary belongings. People who struggle with money have been doing it forever. The poor are more money-conscious, and so, of course, they spend their money cautiously and choose things they need (for the most part). They also tend to be extremely resourceful in making things last.

Yet minimalism has become a trend for the rich. It has become popular for people with lots of money or high-profile people to have minimalistic homes and styles, and so all of a sudden, it’s all the rage.

If you can’t afford to buy lots of things, it’s looked down on, but it becomes a trend if you purposefully choose not to buy lots of things.

6 Living in a Hotel

Living in a hotel sounds super glamorous, doesn’t it? Well, regarding societal views, it depends on which hotel you’re living in.

If you live in a five-star luxury hotel, then you’re living the dream and have the best life ever, right? But if you’re living in a motel, then you’re looked down on, and it’s considered trashy. If you think about it, both are the same situations, just at different price points, so it’s funny that people’s perceptions vary so much.

If you think about it, living in a hotel does make sense. You get housekeeping, cable, internet, sometimes luxuries like a pool. It can be at an affordable price if you choose the right place. You also don’t need documentation like proof of employment or good credit history, so it makes sense why it’s an option for people of all incomes.

5 Debt

The majority of people have some form of debt, whether that be school fees, a mortgage on a house, or a loan for a car. Whatever the reason for the debt, most of us have it.

When you’re poor, the idea is to be debt-free, and the money you owe feels like such a burden, and people look down on you for owing the money. But when you’re rich, you can borrow left, right, and center, and no one seems to bat an eye. If anything, you’re being strategic and clever with your money, and wealthy people want to have debt.

If you have debt and are poor—even a small amount—that’s your problem. If you’re rich and have huge amounts of debt, that’s the bank’s problem.

4 Having Other People Raise Your Kids

Having other people raise your kids when you’re poor is considered trashy, and people look down on it. They assume that you can’t take care of your children or don’t want to. Regardless of your career or choice to hire help.

It’s socially acceptable when wealthy people have other people raise their children, whether sending them off to school or having a live-in nanny look after them. Of course, the rich would need help raising their children; they have such busy and important lives that they couldn’t possibly have the time to raise the children as well. Doesn’t every parent have a busy and important life outside of the family!

3 Having a Wedding at Your House

Having a wedding at your house is smart, isn’t it? You don’t have to pay exorbitant prices for a venue, and you don’t need to travel early in the morning or book somewhere the night before.

It turns out it’s only smart and a beautiful idea if you’re rich. You have to be rich to have a nice enough home where it’s socially acceptable and large enough for a wedding. It becomes a lovely idea and a meaningful wedding spent somewhere that you love.

If you’re poor and choose to have your wedding at home, many consider it trashy because your house isn’t massive with perfect grounds that it sits on. Planning something budget-friendly is always looked down on when you do it because you have to and not just because you want to.

2 Tax Evasion

We aren’t condoning anyone doing illegal things no matter how much money they have. However, as we mentioned earlier, the rich often get away with creeping just over the line when it comes to the law.

We know the wealthy like to avoid taxes. It’s probably because they owe massive amounts of it, and we just assume they want to keep their wads of cash in their own pockets. Now, when a poor person wants to avoid paying taxes, that’s tacky and low-rent. If you think about it, it makes more sense for a poor person to want to keep the little money they have in their pockets. And we are not even going to talk about taxes regarding large/rich companies compared to small/poor companies.

1 Addiction

Listen, I don’t think anyone is condoning or advising addiction to anyone, no matter their status. However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the rich and powerful can be more upfront about these things, and people often turn a blind eye. People generally expect the wealthy to drink, do drugs, gamble at high-end casinos—especially if there is a bit of fame attached to the person. It’s all just part of living the high life. If you’re poor and do these things, people make you feel like you need to get your life together.

I don’t think any kind of addiction is classy, no matter what your status, but unfortunately, the wealthy do have a habit of glamorizing taking part in these things. And when the rich become clean, they have been deemed a saint. And when they relapse, it is of no fault of their own. Yet, the poor are often blamed and shamed for relapsing or even having an addiction in the first place.

10 Things Rich People Do That You Don’t

Johan Tobias — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 08:33:08 +0000

One of the strangest aspects of modern society is the number of people trying their utmost to appear wealthier than they are—even to their own detriment. This is fueled, in part, by insane amounts of cheap and easy credit being thrown around by banks under the direction of the central banks and, to be completely honest, it is insanity.

When you step back from the hubbub of life and take an objective look at the behavior of actual rich people, you will be surprised to find that more often than not they are not following those same patterns as those who are outwardly rich but inwardly poor.

This list looks at ten aspects of the life of the typical millionaire that go against our preconceived notions of wealth. It serves as both a guide to understanding the rich, and a guide to copying them in the best possible way: the way that can lead to your own future wealth.

10 Buy Second Hand

Some things you can’t (or don’t want to) buy second hand: things like underwear, food, and bedding. But when it comes to everything else: rich folk are the first in line to get a bargain by buying second hand. Most significantly, rich people tend to not buy cars brand new (understanding the horrendous depreciation that occurs in the first few years of a new car) or if they do buy a new car, they tend to own it for at least ten years, ensuring they get the full value out of it.

Rich people love antiques (which are not always particularly expensive) and second hand furniture, but most importantly they love the value of buying second-hand. Every penny that is saved by buying and re-covering a second-hand sofa versus a brand new sofa can then be invested or saved for a purchase that helps secure your financial future.

9 Buy Affordable Property

Fundamentally, rich people pay cash for their homes or have at least a fifteen percent deposit. And rich people tend to buy properties no more than two-and-a-half times their annual after-tax income. Rich people also tend to buy older pre-war homes and it is very rare for the affluent to buy a brand new home or have a home built. This probably stems from the psychology of the rich in which a high value is placed on quality (which was undoubtedly higher in the past) and not wanting to carry the initial depreciation of new goods (see item 10).

It is not the truly affluent people buying McMansions and multi-million dollar show homes. Those properties are for people with massive mortgages, massive egos, and massive financial problems. And, of course, the few amongst us who have won the lottery (poor them—most lottery winners waste it all and end up back where they were but far more miserable for the loss).

8 Buy It For Life

False economy—the idea that buying cheap is always best. It is better to buy one pair of shoes for $100 that lasts five years, than five pairs of shoes that cost $20 but last one year each and require five trips to the store. But try telling that to most people! “Buy it for life” is a trend for some, but a lifestyle for the rich. Wealthy people will spend time investigating important purchases before they make them, to ensure that they are buying something that will last as long as possible and, ideally, retain some of its value.

This is why a rich man will buy a $1,000 suit—a price that seems exorbitant to most of us. But in the long term a suit in that price range will last for decades. And if the man (or his wife) is able to repair their own clothes, they can last a lifetime. When Prince Charles married Camilla Parker-Bowles, he wore a thirty year old suit with patches in it. But he still looked amazing (Prince Charles has the reputation amongst men’s clothing connoisseurs of being an extremely stylish man).

7 Wait For Good Deals

Human psychology is crazy (so to speak). In study after study, people who were offered $5 now, or $10 in two months chose to take the $5. We all seem to have something wired slightly wrong in our brains because clearly the $10 offer is the best choice (barring such things as an immediate need for money).

Rich people aren’t plagued with this problem. The wealthy will wait months (and sometimes even years) to get the really best value they can for something. That is how the wealthy survive such disasters as the 2008 property crash. The people who were hurt most in that crash were the people who had bought houses they couldn’t afford or used free money from the bank to build up a property portfolio in a get-rich-quick pipe dream.

6 Don’t Retire

You can’t get rich quick. Rich people spend their lifetimes building up their wealth, by scrimping and saving, and following the other patterns described in this list. However, there is more of an incentive to not retire when you’re rich: most wealthy men own their own business (small or large), and when you are self-employed you are far more motivated to keep working because you tend to be passionate about a business you own.

This is compounded by the fact that the affluent tend to like to keep busy, and retirement can be a dreadful bore for a person like that. And let’s face it: the whole concept of retirement is really a modern adjunct to the 9-5 working lives we are all “educated” to strive for. By looking forward to retiring we can take some comfort in the drudgery of our daily toil for the financial benefit of others.

5 Be Frugal

Frugality is not just financially sound, it is environmentally sound! When a person is extremely frugal they tend to waste less. My grandmother kept every piece of string from every parcel she received, and every bag from shopping. She didn’t do it because she was a crazed hoarder, she did it because she knew she would eventually have a use for those things and when that time came, she wouldn’t need to buy them.

Being frugal can be hugely enjoyable and the amount of money you can save just by being a little cautious with each expenditure can be astronomical. It is not for no good reason that the old adage arose: “a penny saved is a penny earned”.

Fun Fact: The somewhat trite proverb “A penny saved is a penny earned” was first recorded in 1633 in George Herbert’s Outlandish Proverbs as “A penny spar’d is twice got.” Less poetic perhaps, but certainly more to the point!

4 Use Coupons

In the book The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets Of America’s Wealthy (which I can’t recommend enough), a number of millionaires were studied to determine their habits. Almost all of the men surveyed stated that they spent more time clipping coupons than they did shopping. It was a very common feature of the rich that at least one of the partners in the relationship was extremely mindful of overspending.

We may not all get to feature on the reality program Extreme Couponing, but we can definitely do our bit to get the best price for the things we actually need. Note how I said: “actually need”? A key difference between the rich and the stars of the reality TV show, is that the rich use coupons for things they typically need or buy for their family, while the extreme couponers are chasing savings whether they need a thing or not (which, in case it isn’t obvious, is not saving at all). Couponing is a great habit of the rich; extreme couponing . . . the mentally unstable!

3 Budget

All rich people keep a budget. And all rich people stick to it. Keeping a budget is essential, particularly these days as prices seem to be rising faster than the central bankers can print new money to enrich themselves and their friends! The most important part of a budget is honesty: you must be honest with yourself up front and make sure you factor in every dime and dollar you spend.

Rich people will pore over their budget for hours, much like the old nursery rhyme King counting all his money in his counting house. This is necessary to ensure that diversions from the budget are accounted for. You could almost say that there is a correlation between how much time you spend on your budget and how wealthy you will get!

2 Invest In Tangibles

Once the rich become dollar rich, they also do something that most of us (including the new rich) don’t do: they invest a portion of their money in tangible goods that enrich their lives in more than just monetary ways. They will buy art (because they love the painting), they will buy fine wine (because they love to drink it), they will buy bullion, and they will buy antiques. Obviously there is a financial benefit to owning those things as they will often increase in value over time, but they have one other characteristic that is perhaps the most important: they are hard to sell.

When you have $1,000 in cash sitting in front of you, it is very easy to spend it on a whim. Not so when your $1,000 is tied up in a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape! The need to sell your goods to free up the cash gives you the time needed to make a more reasoned decision on whether you really want the $1,000 trinket you are lusting for.

1 Don’t Look Rich

Far and away the most significant aspect of the lives of the truly wealthy, is that no one can tell they are rich. They are the regular folk living next door, driving an old car, and working as many hours as you are.

On the other hand, the guy up the road with the luxury lifestyle that everyone wants to emulate is probably cash poor and miserable. And don’t forget, while you are busy trying to keep up with the Joneses, the Joneses are busy trying to keep up with the Smiths.

Break the cycle today! Start focussing on the best parts of your life—the parts of your life that make living worth while. But most importantly, follow your passion. At the end of the path down which your passion takes you is the true pot of gold: happiness.

Jamie Frater

Jamie is the founder of When he’s not doing research for new lists or collecting historical oddities, he can be found in the comments or on Facebook where he approves all friends requests!

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10 Obscene And Ridiculous Things The Rich Do With Their Money

Johan Tobias — Sun, 21 May 2023 07:24:43 +0000

Many people daydream about what it would be like to be rich, but it often seems that the lives of the truly rich are so alien to that of ordinary people lives, it is almost impossible to even imagine it

See Also: 10 Things Rich People Do That You Don’t

It’s a world where you are able to indulge every whim, no matter how fanciful, where you can fulfill every dream, no matter how dumb, and, if you can’t actually climb every mountain yourself, you can pay someone to climb it for you.

So, on the off-chance that you become super-rich overnight, here are 10 ridiculous and obscene things you might want to spend your money on.

10Shoot something rare and beautiful

You don’t need to be rich to be a member of the Dallas Safari Club. You don’t even need to be rich to attend their famous auctions. But if you want to bid on their star items, then you will need to bring the big check book.

The Dallas Safari Club auctions off licences to legally hunt and kill wild animals. The larger, and rarer, the animal, the higher the price. So, while a zebra will only set you back $10,000, if you want to bag yourself an almost extinct black rhino, you will need to shell out $350,000, which is fair, because there are only around 100 of them left in the wild. The South African government currently sells the rights to kill 0.5% of their total black rhino population per year.

Last year over 50,000 people attended the auction, at which members enjoyed a buffet meal whilst bidding for the opportunity to slaughter animals. To be fair, the auction caters for every taste, and pocket. If you can’t afford to kill a rhino or even a zebra, you might be able to afford a deer, a fox or perhaps a sheep.

That’s right. That well-known predator. The sheep.^[1]

9 Get Some Really Weird Art

Rich people often become art collectors. Fair enough. What else are you going to hang on your wall? If you get yourself a nice Renoir, or a Matisse, its likely to be a good investment, and it can cover up all the holes in your wall, which is a bonus.

But if you go in for modern art, it can get a bit trickier. Take Steve Cohen, for instance. The hedge-fund manager, with a net worth of around $11 billion, bought Damien Hirst’s piece, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”. The title doesn’t quite conjure up the sheer, er, scale, of the artwork, which is a 14-foot tiger shark in a tank of formaldehyde. The installation piece is, in effect, a gigantic fish tank, in which the stuffed shark is suspended, open-mouthed, as if it is swimming around looking for its next meal.

The piece was commissioned by Charles Saatchi who later sold it to Cohen for an undisclosed amount, but which is believed to be somewhere between $8 and $12 million dollars. In order to display it to its best advantage the piece, which is 17 feet long and 7 feet wide, needs to be accessible from all sides, so you would need a pretty big living room. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could use it for something useful, like, maybe, a table or something, but at 7 feet high, that’s not very practical either.

Ah well, its art. Art doesn’t need to be useful, because it’s beautiful.

Isn’t it?^[2]

8 Wear a gold shirt

Some people like to keep their money in the bank. Some people invest it. Some people even stuff their money under a mattress. And some people decide to wear it.

While it is not uncommon for people to buy expensive jewelry, Datta Phuge, decided to go one better and he had a shirt made from 14,000 links of 22 carat gold, which he accessorized with enormous gold chains and wrist cuffs. The shirt alone weighed over 10 pounds, and was valued at $250,000.

Phuge, who enjoyed the nick-name ‘the gold man’, was a money lender from the state of Maharashtra in India, and was often seen wearing the shirt when going about his business. Of lending money to poor people.

In 2016, Phuge was beaten to death by 12 assailants. Police speculated that the motive may have been a dispute over money.

Astounding.^[3]

7 Buy a Cupboard

If you are furnishing your home, you might want a nice bit of furniture to make a statement. If you’re super rich, of course, your ‘statement piece’ is going to be a very big statement indeed.

Ordinarily buying a cupboard, even an expensive cupboard, wouldn’t be seen as excessively extravagant, but if you bought The Badminton Cabinet, it would certainly qualify. In 2004, the cupboard sold to a private bidder for $36 million.

The 18th century Florentine chest was made from the finest ebony, and inlaid with amethyst, agates and lapis lazuli, among other stones.

Named after the town in England, not because it is somewhere you keep your shuttlecock, the cabinet was bought by Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, the reigning monarch of Liechtenstein, who also happens to own his own bank.

Nice.

The question remains, though, is just what do you keep in a $36 million cupboard?

Your check book, perhaps?^[4]

6Build a Model Boat

Lots of little boys build model boats. They get a plastic kit, and a big tube of glue, and, if they are lucky, when they are finished, the thing floats. If you are a billionaire, however, that seems a little bit tame.

When the Australian billionaire, Clive Palmer, decided to build a model, he decided to go for a real, working, replica of the Titanic. Not only would it be a faithful copy of the fateful ship, it would be life-sized.^[]

Life sized.

Palmer wanted it to be authentic in every detail but one. Titanic 2 would have enough life boats for every passenger.

The project to build Titanic 2 has hit a number of snags. It was due to be completed in 2016. The project, which had a budget of A$700 million, briefly ran out of money, but in 2018 the build was back on after Palmer found another A$150 million down the back of the sofa.

Whether the project will actually come off is unclear. After all the ship, although the height of luxury for 1912, would be lacking some basic amenities by today’s standards. TV, for instance, and the internet. And those 3rd class cabins might not be very appealing to passengers paying thousands of dollars to cruise the Atlantic.

For now, Clive Palmer seems happy with planning and building his ship. No doubt he learned the lessons that all little boys learn – building the boat is much more fun that sailing it afterwards.^[5]

5 Write Your Name in the Sand

A day at the beach is normally a fairly cheap day out. With a few sandwiches, and a bucket and spade, you can have hours of fun without spending a penny. You can swim, paddle, sun-bathe, build sand-castles or, maybe, write your name in the sand with a stick.

When Hamad bin Hamdan al Nahyan went to the beach in 2011, however, he decided that a stick just wouldn’t do the job. If he was going to go to the effort of writing his name in the sand, he was going to use something a bit better than a stick.

And, obviously, he was not going to do the carving himself. Hamad bin Hamdan al Nahyan decided to have his name, thankfully for the local ecology, just his first name, carved into the sand in letters so big that you could see them from space. Each letter was half a mile tall, and the name covered 2 miles of beach on his private island.

The word could, indeed, be seen from space. However, in order to be visible at such a distance, the mechanical excavators that the Saudi prince used, had to dig quite deeply into the sand. In fact, they were so deep that they formed canals. As the tide came in, water would flow from letter to letter. Like a very expensive water feature.

Ordinarily, when the tide comes in it washes away graffiti in the sand in a few minutes. His channels, however, seemed destined to stay. Hamad’s name lasted a whole year, until the excavators returned and filled the letters in again.^[6]

4 Fly First Class, With Your Hat

There’s nothing more annoying, if you’re rich, than having to talk to strangers on a plane. Flying first class might get you away from the really strange people, but still. Who wants to have to make small talk with people you don’t know?

Most people just have to put up with the inconveniences of travel, but rich people have options. If you are, for instance, Bono, you could buy a second seat in the first-class section, and tell everybody that you bought it for your hat.

Bono is famous for his hats, which, he claims, have ‘iconic status’. He once paid £1000 to have his hat flown out to him when he left it behind on a trip. The hat was given its own seat in the cock-pit before being collected by a chauffeur and driven to a concert hall in Italy where Bono was appearing in a benefit concert to raise relief funds for homeless Iraqis.

Usually, however, if he can’t fly by private plane, he buys the hat its own seat so that he doesn’t have to talk to people. Goodness knows what he does with the sunglasses.^[7]

3 Smuggle a Stolen Dinosaur

Fossil collecting is a popular hobby. And, after seeing Jurassic Park, who wouldn’t want their own dinosaur? After all, if you had a T-Rex skeleton, a lot of money, and a bit of time on your hands, well, the possibilities are endless.

It is not known whether Nicolas Cage was actually trying to build his own Jurassic Park, when he bought the skull of a Tyrannosaurus. Maybe he just wanted something to decorate his den with. Either way, he bought the skull for $276,000, outbidding Leonardo Di Caprio to get it. Unfortunately, it turned out that the dinosaur had been stolen from Mongolia, and Mongolia was not happy about it.

The gallery that sold the piece had previously bought dinosaur relics from paleontologist Eric Prokopi, who, it turns out, was more of a smuggler than a scientist. While neither the gallery nor Nicolas Cage were implicated in any wrongdoing, Cage, who had been given a certificate of authenticity with his purchase, was forced to hand back the skull, while Prokopi had been given a 3-month jail sentence.^[8]

2Enjoy a Drink

Picture the scene. You have had a hard day managing your hedge fund (whatever that is), and you return home to a nice relaxing drink. But when you look into the bottom of your glass you find, to your horror, an irregular shaped ice cube.

Can you imagine anything worse? Well, alright, maybe you can, but if you are very wealthy, you don’t have to. You could buy yourself a beautiful, hand-crafted, perfectly symmetrical, crystal clear ice cube for the bargain price of six bucks.

Only $6 for some water frozen into a nice square shape.

You do have to buy 50 at a time. But still, $300 for ice seems like a bargain.

Doesn’t it?^[9]

1 Build a REALLY Big House

Building your own house may not seem a particularly ridiculous or obscene way to spend your money. After all, we all have to live somewhere, and property is a good investment, so they say. But, if you are living in a very poor city, surrounded by millions of people who own literally nothing, and do not have any sort of shelter, it might seem a little bit tactless to choose that exact spot to build your billion-dollar home.

Mukesh Ambani is the richest man in India, and is believed to be the 5th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $22 billion. So, he could afford to splash out a little when it came to building a new home. And he must have given his builders carte blanche because the total bill for the build came in at $1 billion.

And just in case his poverty-stricken neighbors managed to overlook the house, he built it 27 floors high. And ugly.

Very very ugly.

Built in the middle poorest area of Mumbai, the house has a garage large enough to hold all 128 of Ambani’s cars, with a little extra room in case he finds 128 just aren’t enough. It also ‘boasts’ several swimming pools, a cinema, a ballroom, and a fair few panic rooms, in case the neighbors decide to break in.

Which might be a distinct possibility, not least because, if they were on the inside, they wouldn’t have to look at it.^[10]

About The Author: Ward Hazell is a freelance writer and travel writer, currently also studying for a PhD in English Literature

Top 10 Surprising Disadvantages Of Being Rich

Johan Tobias — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 05:18:57 +0000

It’d come as a surprise to no one that rich people enjoy a certain set of advantages the rest of us don’t. They’re overall healthier, more satisfied with their lives, and—most importantly—have a ridiculous amount of money, which is its own reward, really. The advantages of being rich have been discussed by philosophers and amateur financial bloggers alike, and for good reason; having a lot of money really is pretty awesome!

What they don’t tell you, though, is that there are quite a few hidden downsides to it, too, most of which remain largely undiscussed due to the unsaid social stigma around money. And no, we’re not talking about problems like ‘my lawn is too big’, either. Being rich comes with real issues that could potentially affect everything from your health to your personal relationships.

10 Things Rich People Do That You Don’t

10 Alcoholism

Even if we don’t realize it, a lot of people intuitively associate alcoholism with financial stress and lower income levels. While there may as well be some connection between the two, we can say for sure that it has nothing to do with the money itself. On the contrary—according to one study at least—alcoholism seems to be much more prevalent in the richer sections of the society.

Conducted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the study was carried out in over 40 nations in Europe. They found that countries like Britain, Ireland and Portugal drink the most, though there were differences in the rate of alcoholism within each country, too. Almost across Europe, the rich seem to be drinking much more than the poor.

While it may sound counter-intuitive, other studies suggest that it may simply have to do with access; rich people drink a lot because they have more alcohol to drink.^[1]

9 Anxiety And Depression

There’s no doubt that being rich alleviates mental stress and raises your overall level of life satisfaction, though it comes with quite a few other mental issues, as well.

Being rich has been linked to higher levels of various mental disorders—like anxiety—in many studies in the past, along with a few other problems you wouldn’t expect. One study, for example, found that young people living in affluent suburbs are much more likely to display indicators of maladjustment—like higher levels of anxiety and depression, narcissism and substance abuse—than inner city kids.^[2]

8 Making More Money Only Makes You Moderately Happier

We assume that most of our problems could be solved by just having more money, but as we’d prove—step by step—with this list, that’s not even close to being true. Being rich is associated with quite a few short and long-term problems, and the tradeoff is hardly worth it, too.

Making more money doesn’t increase your overall happiness beyond a point, unless you hit it really big. Research proves it, too; while it’s true that making more money comes with a higher level of happiness, it only applies till you hit a certain number. Beyond that, more money barely has an effect on your happiness level. That means that someone with a net worth of $10 million is likely to be as almost as happy as someone with $100 million, even if earning that $90 million still takes a huge amount of effort.^[3]

7 It’s Boring

The one thing about getting rich that excites most people is the prospect of never having to work again. Imagine how much time you’d have for yourself if you simply had too much money to live off your entire life?

While it’s true that having a lot of money allows you more hours of the day for yourself than someone who has to work for a living, it also gets pretty boring. According to one millionaire, that’s actually one of the biggest disadvantages of making a lot of money. Working for food and shelter doesn’t just provide food and shelter, but also motivation to do even better in life (mostly to get even better food and a bigger shelter). A lack of that motivation and drive can—and often does—lead to other, bigger issues, like depression.^[4]

6 It Makes You More Averse To Taking Risk

It’s a commonly-held notion that the richer you are, the more risk you take than others, simply because you have more money to risk. While that line of reasoning sounds accurate—as rich people do have much more leverage to, say, invest in a risky startup—science says it’s not, or at least not when a lot of money is involved.

Studies show that while rich people do like to take more risks, that only applies when the sum is relatively small. When it comes to larger amounts relative to their overall wealth, they’re actually the safest spenders we know of.^[5]

Top 10 Tips for Success in Everything

5 Stress

Looking at how bad the job market is right now for almost everyone, it’s fair to assume that the most stressed part of the workforce would be the younger and poorer one. Millennials and other younger generations are popularly seen as under higher levels of stress than any previous generation, too. From rising student debt to exorbitant property rents in most urban areas around the world, things don’t look too well for anyone who isn’t old and well-to-do.

As it turns out, though, that perception couldn’t be further from the truth. Quite a few studies indicate that older^[6] and richer^[7] workers actually report much higher levels of work-related stress than their younger counterparts. While that may mean that more money comes with more stress, it may also mean that younger, less-experienced professionals are just more tolerant towards everyday work issues.

4 Wealth Guilt

As the world gets ready to experience (yet another) economic slowdown, the differences between the haves and have-nots have become even starker. No matter where you look, there’s a growing—and rapidly-spreading—wave of discontentment against rising inequality and the excesses of power and money, something that first came into focus in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash.

One of the social impacts of that wave of unrest is a growing sense of something called ‘wealth guilt’ among the wealthy, which is exactly how it sounds. The rich—even the ones doing it the right way and minding their own business—are increasingly taking measures to not come across as too rich, which is in direct contrast to the ‘got it, flaunt it’ attitude of the early 2000s.^[8]

3 It Makes You Less Generous

If you take a quick survey of everyone around you that donates to charity, you’d find that quite a few people don’t do it because they just don’t have the spare cash. That’s fair enough, and would even lead you to assume that traits like generosity are just dependent on how much money you have.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all, and it has been proven by quite a few studies in the past. More money actually makes you more protective about what you have, and in turn makes you less generous.^[9]

2 …And Less Empathetic

Making more money doesn’t just make you more protective about it. Some research suggests that the more power and money you get, the less empathetic you are to the plight of others. While it may sound depressing, there are some valid evolutionary reasons for it.

During our hunter-gatherer days, leaders were supposed to be good at leading, and any distraction or empathy towards, say, an injured member of the pack would have jeopardized the safety of everyone else. The reduced empathy helped leaders get better at their job and successfully pass on their genes. That’s why the people with the most amount of power seldom use it to fix things; they’re just not evolutionarily-wired to do it.^[10]

1 Narcissism

It’s unfair to paint any group with a single brush, though the ‘entitled brat’ stereotype is too widespread to not mention here. It’s a common notion that the richer you are, the more self-absorbed you become, though how accurate is it, really?

If scientific studies are anything to go by, pretty accurate. At least five studies suggest that being rich is overwhelmingly associated with narcissistic tendencies—like regularly looking at yourself in the mirror—and entitlement. The reasons for that, however, aren’t as simple as ‘rich people are just jerks’.

Having more money than others comes with the social and psychological cost of reduced trust in the world around you, as you never know who just likes you for your money. It leads you to only look inwards for solutions, which is obviously not a very healthy way to live in a society, leading to mental issues like narcissism.^[11]

10 Weirdest Stories About The Eccentric Rich

Himanshu Sharma

Himanshu has written for sites like Cracked, Screen Rant, The Gamer and Forbes. He could be found shouting obscenities at strangers on Twitter, or trying his hand at amateur art on Instagram.

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10 Times the Rich and Powerful Tried to Top Each Other

Johan Tobias — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 00:51:13 +0000

Whether it’s fancy houses, jewelry, expensive toys, or the accumulation of money, the game of wealthy, powerful people trying to outdo each other has been going on throughout history. Of course, this kind of behavior isn’t limited to the super-rich, and it must be remembered that there are plenty of those in the higher income brackets known for their philanthropy.

However, stories of shockingly decadent and outrageously lavish lifestyles have always drawn a lot of interest. From rivalries to grand gestures to simply showing off, these are 10 times rich people tried to top each other.

10 Alice and Alva Vanderbilt

Many families are competitive, but few have taken their rivalries to the level of sisters-in-law Alice Claypoole Vanderbilt (married to Cornelius Vanderbilt II) and Alva Vanderbilt (married to William Kissam Vanderbilt). During the late 19th century, the two women tried to top each other with the construction of elaborate summer homes in Newport, Rhode Island. These structures, called “cottages,” were more like palaces.

Designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt between 1888 and 1892, Alva’s Marble House was completed first. Although much of it was marble, and it was said to be modeled on the Petit Trianon at the Palace of Versailles, it would seem that Alice managed to top her with the same architect. Hunt designed The Breakers, a 70-room, five-story, all marble and steel house, 62,482-square-feet with a view of Easton Bay. Both houses are representative of the Gilded Age, and you can visit them to peek into this familial rivalry.^[1]

9 Richard Burton Outbids Aristotle Onassis

Although Richard Burton was an actor from Wales and Aristotle Onassis was an enormously wealthy Greek shipping tycoon, the two men had a surprising amount in common. This included their ostentatiously lavish lifestyles, a taste for celebrated women, and the willingness to spend astronomical sums on jewels for their lady loves.

It turned out that Burton was just getting warmed up when he purchased the 33.19-carat Krupp diamond for his wife at the time, film star Elizabeth Taylor. So when a 69.42-carat pear-shaped diamond went on the market, Burton was interested, as was Onassis, who was shopping for wife Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s birthday. Onassis decided that her gift had to be at least 40 carats because it was her 40th birthday.

When the thrilling auction was held in 1969, Onassis dropped out at $700,000. So it boiled down to Burton’s rep, who was given a limit of $1,000,000, and Robert Kenmore of Kenmore Corporation, which owned Cartier Jewelers. Kenmore won the diamond for $1,050,000. However, Burton quickly bought the stone from Cartier for $1.1 million, naming it the Taylor-Burton Diamond.^[2]

8 Gloria Guinness Shows Up Babe Paley

Two of the 20th century’s most famous socialites, Babe Paley and Gloria Guinness, were part of writer Truman Capote’s exclusive clique of wealthy, glamorous female friends known as “swans.” However, sometimes they behaved more like cats toward one another.

During their longstanding rivalry, Paley did her best to make sure everyone knew about Guinness’s shady past as a nightclub worker in Mexico. But Guinness was a worthy adversary who embarrassed and upstaged her frenemy when they vacationed together on the Guinness’s yacht. She tricked Paley, telling her to only pack casual clothes. Then, on the very first evening, “Gloria emerged from her luxury cabin dripping in jewels and glittering fabrics, all while insisting the group go to a formal dinner,” according to Factinate.^[3]

7 Katy Perry’s Bid for Orlando Bloom

It’s unusual to hear about a wealthy person outspending someone for a good cause, but that’s what happened when pop star Katy Perry paid $50,000 at a charity auction in 2018 for a date with Orlando Bloom. According to People, the event was to raise “money to help Malibu rebuild following the devastating California wildfires.” She outbid a woman who had offered $20,000.

At first, Perry was actually on stage trying to help auction off the lunch date with Bloom but then apparently had “second thoughts.” The most ironic part is that Bloom and Perry were already dating at the time, so she didn’t need to buy a date with him. But it was evidently worth it to her to prevent another woman from going out with her man.^[4]

6 Battle of the Skyscrapers

In what came to be known as “The Race into the Sky,” architect H. Craig Severance, who was designing a building for banker George Ohrstrom, competed with William Van Alen. Van Alen was designing the headquarters for the Chrysler Corporation to build the tallest building in the world. This wasn’t just a professional rivalry. The two men were former business partners whose association had ended badly.

Severance was so determined to outdo Van Alen that he added an additional two stories to the original plans and eventually added another 20 meters (65 feet), making the 62-floor building the tallest. However, the victory was short-lived as Van Alen had a trick up his sleeve. He added a 38-meter (125-foot) spire to the top of the 246-meter (808-foot) Chrysler Building, thereby winning the competition. Ironically, just one year later, in May 1931, the 381-meter (1,250-foot) tall Empire State Building, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, beat out the Chrysler Building for the record, remaining the tallest building until the completion of the World Trade Center in 1973.^[5]

5 The Tobacco Heiress vs. The Dime Store Heiress

Doris Duke, born into a tobacco empire, and Barbara Hutton, who inherited a fortune generated from Woolworth’s 5 and 10 Cent Stores, were among the world’s wealthiest women. Their extravagant, outrageous lives were closely covered by the media, beginning in the 1930s. The heiresses started out as friends but later became bitter rivals. They frequently competed over men. This included when Duke flirted with Hutton’s ex-husband Cary Grant, which was followed up by Hutton marrying Duke’s ex-husband, Dominican diplomat and playboy Porfirio “Rubi” Rubirosa.

One particularly blatant example of Hutton using her wealth to try to steal a man from Duke was when she called Duke’s jazz musician boyfriend, Joe Castro, with an impressive offer, saying: “I’d give you more than she would. If you were with me, you’d have a symphony orchestra,” according to Town & Country.^[6]

4 Another Round of Duke vs. Hutton

During a rare time when the famous heiresses were actually getting along, Doris Duke invited Barbara Hutton to her home in Hawaii. However, Hutton, who was used to having her own way, turned out not to be a very gracious guest.

She didn’t care for the furnishings, so instead of merely giving Duke the name of her decorator, she used Duke’s absence as an opportunity to remove the furniture, which included priceless Asian artwork, replacing it with modern Japanese décor. When Duke came home, she reacted by throwing Hutton out.^[7]

3 Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller

Steel titan Andrew Carnegie and oil baron John D. Rockefeller had a long rivalry, fueled on Carnegie’s part by a hunger for revenge. Carnegie blamed Rockefeller for the “1873 crash that hurt his biggest customers, the railroads.” He also held Rockefeller responsible for the death of his mentor, Thomas Scott, who died just a few years after the crash. Carnegie’s goal was to amass a bigger fortune than Rockefeller and replace him as the richest man in the world. In his effort to accomplish this, Carnegie went into business with the ruthless former coal baron Henry Clay Frick, who helped grow their steel company by buying out competitors.

However, Frick’s irresponsible actions while building an “exclusive men’s club for the rich and famous” led to the horrific 1889 Johnstown Flood that killed 2,209 people. After that, Andrew Carnegie, a member of the club, re-evaluated his priorities. No longer ruled by greed and vengeance, Carnegie launched into the generous philanthropy he is remembered for today.^[8]

2 The Nouveau Riche Vanderbilts Break into High Society

Once upon a time in old New York, the iconic Vanderbilts, who made their fortune in the railroads, were looked down on as “new money” and refused entry into high society by the old guard, which was ruled by Mrs. Astor. This was distressing, particularly to the social-climbing Alva Vanderbilt. However, what the family lacked in pedigree, they often made up for in unabashed extravagance. The thing that finally wore down Astor was her daughter’s desperation to be invited to Vanderbilt’s spectacular costume ball held as a housewarming party for Cornelius and Alva’s French chateau-inspired New York townhouse.

The now legendary ball on March 26, 1883, in which guests wore custom-made costumes, dressing as historical and mythical figures, was over-the-top opulent. The ballroom of their Fifth Avenue home was completely transformed into a “fairyland.” There were vases and baskets filled with myriads of roses, and the rooms were decorated in gold and silver. The Vanderbilt spent $65,000 on champagne, catering, and cigars alone. The entire party cost $240,000—an estimated $7 million in today’s dollars.

In order to score seats at the hottest ticket in town, Astor swallowed her pride and left her calling card at Vanderbilt’s house, signalling that the Vanderbilt family was movin’ on up.^[9]

1 William Randolph Hearst Tops Everyone

The controversial, larger-than-life publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst, best known today as the inspiration for Citizen Kane, topped just about everybody when he built the fantastical and unbelievably lavish Hearst Castle or La Cuesta Encantada (The Enchanted Hill) on his vast San Simeon, CA, ranch. Designed by architect Julia Morgan in the Mediterranean Revival style, La Casa Grande (The Big House) comprises “115 rooms—including 38 bedrooms and 41 bathrooms—and has a cathedral-like facade, complete with two bell towers.”

With an interior décor and architecture that was inspired by European palaces and churches, the mansion features a huge collection of antiques and artworks. The grounds included what was once the largest private zoo. Hearst’s estate is something you would expect to only find in a movie, so it’s fitting that it became the playground of Hollywood A-listers like Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Gloria Swansen, and Clark Gable, who would attend elaborate parties hosted by Hearst’s mistress, actress Marion Davies.

Hearst could be very competitive in his professional life. His fierce rivalry with Joseph Pulitzer is well documented. However, the most compelling part of his legacy may be his home, which makes most other famous showplaces look shabby by comparison.^[10]

10 People Who Couldn’t Handle Becoming Rich

Johan Tobias — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 00:48:02 +0000

Quite simply, some people don’t know how to handle money, and having a lot of money can be a recipe for disaster. While the money management blues could be because of ineptitude or bad luck, the common denominator is that these wealthy people would have been better off with less. Here are 10 people who should never have become rich.

10 A Fall from Grace

Eike Batista is not a rags-to-riches story since Batista’s father had been the Minister of Mines and Energy in two previous Brazilian governments. It was natural that Eike Batista made his living in mining, gas, and oil with his family background. It was then a logical step to finance large-scale infrastructure projects that would support his other concerns.

At the beginning of 2012, Batista had a net worth of around $35 billion—this meant that he was the seventh wealthiest person in the world. Unfortunately, he didn’t last long in the world’s top ten. By the summer of 2013, his wealth stood at $200 million and, a year later, had fallen to minus $1 billion.

There were various reasons for this dramatic drop, but not all of them were Batista’s fault. A general downturn in the precious metals industry, underperforming assets, and poor decisions played a part. But the biggest fall from grace may be that Batista is facing 30 years in jail for bribing the governor of Rio de Janeiro.

So why should Batista never have become rich? The answer is simple. A capitalist economy relies on the operation of free markets that depend on trust. Someone who builds a business empire built on sand warps the economy, destroys confidence, and wipes out the investments that pay people’s pensions.

9 From Bad to Worse

Jack Whittaker didn’t need to win the lottery; the West Virginian was a wealthy and successful businessman in the construction industry. But, in 2002, he won the then-largest jackpot in the Powerball multi-state lottery. His prize was worth around $315 million, but he opted to take the one-off cash payment option that left him with over $113 million after taxes.

Whittaker was kind-hearted and well-meaning as he pledged 10% of his winnings to Christian charities and set up the Jack Whittaker Foundation to distribute food and clothing to the needy in rural West Virginia. He also rewarded the man who worked in the store where Whittaker had bought the winning ticket and threw handfuls of cash from his new sports car around the neighborhood.

Then things started to go bad. In 2003, someone stole over $500,000 that Whittaker had left in his car in the parking lot of a strip club. Not a good look Whittaker, but things kept going from bad to worse.

Next, his teenage granddaughter, Brandi, was lavished with cash and gifts, but in 2004, the body of Brandi’s eighteen-year-old boyfriend was found in Whittaker’s home. The boy had taken a cocktail of drugs leading to his death. Later that year, Brandi went missing, and her body turned up dumped on a friend’s property. She had been taking drugs, but the cause of death wasn’t clear, and authorities filed no charges.

Unfortunately, Jack had problems with gambling, and his uninsured house burned to the ground. He died in 2020.

8 Sky High to Rock Bottom

We can’t know what would have happened if Edwards had won just enough money to turn his life around, but he won a lot.

David Lee Edwards was a connected armed robber who had spent one-third of his 46 years in prison. Broke and unemployed, he borrowed some cash from a friend to pay a utility bill. Unfortunately, Edwards had some change left over that he spent on a pizza and a couple of lottery tickets. He won $27 million.

At a press conference, Edwards swore that he would turn his life around and look after his daughter. Yet, he immediately began spending money left and right. His mansion in Florida was full of expensive gadgets, and his body was full of expensive drugs.

Edwards supported his and his wife’s increasing dependence on drugs. He also paid for his friend’s drugs and funerals if they overdosed. Edwards did spoil his daughter, but by 2006, he and his wife were living in a storage unit surrounded by drug paraphernalia and their own body waste.

Mrs. Edwards left him; he died penniless in a hospice in Kentucky. He was 58.

7 Madame Mayor

Maureen O’Connor, a native of San Diego, California, rose through the local political ranks to become the city’s first female mayor from 1986 to 1992. At the time, she was married to Robert O. Peterson—the founder of the Jack in the Box fast-food chain.

When her husband died in 1994, O’Connor’s personal fortune stood somewhere between $40 and $50 million. In the cutthroat world of politics, all successful politicians are big risk-takers. O’Connor was a political winner, but she was a loser when she began to gamble in casinos.

O’Connor lost around $13 million in casinos. She misappropriated over $2 million from her husband’s charitable foundation, which she immediately spent playing video poker. To raise more cash to fund her gambling, she liquidated all her savings and took out second and third mortgages on her home. She attempted to pay off her debts but found herself charged with wire fraud.

She attributed her gambling addiction to a brain tumor. In 2015, a judge formally dropped all charges against her.

6 To the Bitter End

John Werner Kluge (1914–2010) was a successful businessman who became a television mogul. At one time, he was the richest person in the United States. A hard-working philanthropist, he also found time to indulge in his hobby of getting married. He married four times, and Patricia was the third of his wives.

When the couple divorced in 1990, Patricia kept the Albemarle estate near Charlottesville, Virginia. The couple had built a 45-room mansion on the property that hosted parties for the rich and famous. With her new husband, Patricia Kluge opened the Kluge Estate Winery in 1999. This was an excellent place for growing vines, and their ambition was to create a world-renowned winery that would produce some of the finest vintages in the world. To an extent, they succeeded.

However, they had enough money to launch the project and were rich by most people’s standards, but their plans called for much more money than they had available. Patricia took out $65 million in loans but found that she was over-extended. When the economy crashed in 2008, she put the estate up for sale. Donald Trump eventually bought it for a fraction of the asking price. It is now known as the Trump Winery.

It is possible to be rich but not quite rich enough. This is the trap that Patricia fell into.

5 Transfer of Ownership

Atahualpa (1502–1533) was not rich because of his own efforts. He was rich because he was Atahualpa. What happened to his fabulous wealth was not his fault—he was a victim of history.

Atahualpa was the last supreme emperor of the Incas but was unfortunate enough to be in power as the Spanish rampaged through his lands. In Incan society, everything from the fruits of the trees to the gold from the mountains belonged to the emperor. Everything in these vast, rich lands belonged to him.

When the Spanish executed Atahualpa, all of his wealth belonged to them.

Broadly speaking, this massive transfer of wealth ruined the Spanish empire. The Dutch and the British, among others, built empires based on trade. The Spanish did not have to. This unearned wealth meant they tapped their conquests for more gold and silver; the Spanish exported this back to Spain. Many Spanish and Italian merchants got rich, but the economic consequences were dire. The unbalanced Spanish economy suffered from inflation, and massive estates split the countryside into haves and have-nots.

Although Spain was to remain powerful for a while, the seeds of its future failure were sprouting in beds of unearned wealth.

4 “Spend, Spend, Spend!”

Before online gambling, many people in Britain would wager small amounts on the results of soccer matches through a system called “football pools.” These listed the games to be played on the following Saturday, and you could win a lot of money if you could forecast eight score draws.

Viv Nicholson had grown up in poverty. She was pregnant at sixteen and had four children when her second husband, Keith, won the pools in 1961. The prize was over £152,000—over 3 million today.

When asked what they would do with their winnings, the couple famously answered, “Spend, spend, spend.” And they did.

They spent everything. Keith died in a car accident in 1965, and creditors declared Viv bankrupt. She later said that she had had no idea what to do with so much money and that her win had alienated her from her friends, family, and background.

3 Too Much of a Good Thing

Gerald Muswagon was not a well-educated man but was friendly and well-liked by his family and friends. Yet, he had had brushes with the law in his native Canada since 1981.

In 1998, he bought a two-dollar lottery ticket that won him $10 million. He spent a lot of it on luxuries and gifts but did try to invest in his own lumber business. Unfortunately, his business lost money because of low sales. Muswagon was surrounded by hangers-on who were only interested in his money and never got the guidance that he needed about how to handle such a large sum.

He continued to have problems with the police, and things got worse when his wife died suddenly in 2002. Muswagon hanged himself in his parent’s garage.

2 Millions to Manslaughter

Ibi Roncaioli was Hungarian by birth but moved to Canada, where she married a successful gynecologist. She was not short of money but bought a ticket for a lotto game with a friend. In 1991, the two won $10 million and split the money.

Roncaioli started spending her winnings without telling her husband, but she didn’t spend much of it on herself. Mainly, the money went to her three sons. One of these was the son that she had had with her husband, one from before she married, and the third was a child that even her husband of thirty years knew nothing about.

Most people who knew the Roncaiolis described them as a happy, devoted older couple. However, in 2003, Ibi died. The authorities assumed that she had died from natural causes. Still, after careful examination, they found a toxic level of painkillers and alcohol in her body, and there were needle marks on her legs and feet.

The court found her husband guilty of manslaughter. The couple’s net worth was just $300,000 despite Ibi’s winnings and her husband’s considerable earnings. Her 72-year-old husband was sentenced to seven years.

1 The King

Elvis Presley made a lot of money during his stellar career. However, he had no idea how to handle it. He spent a fortune on a luxurious lifestyle and treating his friends. For example, he would pay to have hotel rooms redecorated to look like a room in his mansion, Graceland—he didn’t want to get homesick.

At the time of his death in 1977, Presley was almost broke. And his money had never made him happy.

His ex-wife, Priscilla, eventually took charge of Elvis’s estate after his death because Lisa Marie, their daughter, was still a minor. If Elvis had no head for business, Priscilla did. She converted what little was left into a $100 million business.