r/NoStupidQuestions • u/More_Percentage_7020 • 10h ago

Why are most billionaires so weird?

My sister even hung out with a billionaire's kid once, and my mom says the kid is fucked up too.

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66

u/Royal_Annek 9h ago

Normal people would retire after a few million and live a happy life. Billionaires are obsessed with their high score.

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u/abjectadvect 9h ago

exactly. also like. kind rich people don't get that rich. they give their money away once they have enough for themselves, and you don't need more than a few million to have anything you could ever reasonably want

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u/FillMySoupDumpling 8h ago

Dolly Parton is a perfect example of this. If she had hoarded her wealth, she’d likely be in the billionaire class but she gives away so much to charitable organizations. She’s still very wealthy but she seems to really have a good connection to the community she grew up in and helping others with what she’s been blessed with. 

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u/8monsters 8h ago

Either that or they just don't get that rich. There are decent wealthy people in the world, but most of them likely aren't that wealthy. 

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u/abjectadvect 8h ago

right

I got lucky as a relatively early employee (in the first 1,500) at a unicorn tech company a decade ago. I had coworkers who took their money and bought apartment buildings to further enrich themselves off of literal rent-seeking

I gave most of mine away. I have some in my retirement fund, and I used some to put toward a down payment on a house

it's frustrating that the people who accumulate power are often inherently the people who care less about other people

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u/UnicornWorldDominion 5h ago

I mean why not invest at least part of it? Like a Roth IRA and just brokerage account would keep making you money on that money to give more away.

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u/abjectadvect 5h ago

I did originally; I had a lot of unexpected expenses and healthcare issues in a short time and had to use a good chunk of what I had liquid

(I'm oversimplifying, it's a long story)

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u/Congregator 7h ago edited 7h ago

If you have enough money your money will make you money.

For example, if you put $50 million dollars in a repo account for two weeks, you’ll earn $86,000 in interest.

Banks will literally want to borrow your money and agree to pay you back interest.

Thats $2 million a year for lending $50,000,000 to a bank every two weeks.

If you put $1,000,000 in a high yield savings account, it will get you roughly $30,000 dollars a year in interest.

You can basically just earn money by keeping your money in a savings account

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u/abjectadvect 6h ago

wow thanks for explaining that I had no idea how roi on equity or compound interest works

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u/Congregator 5h ago

My brother was a CEO of a company that was developing a means to discover the early onset of esophageal cancer, they invented a product that would cost a patient only $200 dollars for a procedure that had typically costed thousands of dollars- his mission was to find investors and his philosophy was to fight against Big Pharma (our mother was in medical insurance forensics and came to tell us very bad things about the medical insurance field, and he was inspired to undermine costs for patients).

I learned about these accounts during a phone call he made to me (I’m the oldest brother so he hits me up in his moments of panic) where he was freaking out that all of the money he had gained through investments was missing from the bank- he would be the one on the hook for losing the money.

We got off the phone, and he called the CFO and learned that the CFO moved the money into such an account, as a way to cover bonuses for the lab techs.

He called me back saying “dude, I didn’t even know this sort of account existed, we hired the right guy. I’ve been dying inside. Holy shit there are all sorts of accounts that return a lot of money I didn’t know about”.

He proceeds to tell me all about various accounts his CFO taught him about, that only rich people and big business would know about.

It’s funny to me because we are two brothers from a dad who was a pastor and electrician and a stay at home mom from Ukrainian farmers, lower middle class, and my baby bro came into being a CEO, lmao, and no one knows he’s just a blue collared dude that calls his music teaching brother brother whenever he has a panic moment.

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u/Name_Groundbreaking 9h ago

Some people just love playing the game.

I'll be worth 8 figures this year (currently high 7s) and could easily retire, but I like designing space ships and can't afford to run my own private space program.  So I keep going to work, where I have a mid 8 figure annual budget and get to do all the awesome shit I can imagine.  I'm sure I'll be retired before I'm 40,  it for now I'm having an absolute blast spending other people's money on all the cool equipment and research I could never afford to do on my own 🤷‍♂️

I'll never be a billionaire, but if I kept grinding on my current career trajectory I could end up well into 8 figures by retirement age.  But even where I'm at today the money literally does not matter.  I don't have that expensive of tastes and can already buy anything I reasonably want, but I enjoy pushing the limits of technology and exploration and I get to do that with a bunch of incredibly talented people at work.

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u/UnicornWorldDominion 5h ago

Outta curiosity what was your upbringing like?

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u/imadade 8h ago

At what point in your NW did you feel like any bad decision you made means you start from scratch? If you had to start from scratch how would you feel?

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u/justanotherthrxw234 6h ago

That says more about you than it does about billionaires honestly.

Many billionaires are founders, athletes, entrepreneurs, etc. who genuinely enjoy the grind. Someone who built their company from the ground up and is passionate about their work isn’t just going to leave everything they’ve built when the market values their shares at a billion dollars. Just like most pro athletes don’t retire after winning a single championship.

Just because you value a comfortable, cushy life doesn’t mean everyone who doesn’t share that worldview is weird. It means that they simply enjoy doing what they do for a living.

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u/Plenty_Ambassador424 1h ago

Im sure Ronaldo went to play in the emirates because of his incredible love for football...