the burden of wealth – or why i never want to win the lottery
If you ask most people their top 5 wishes I am almost certain that 99% of people would have “I want to win the lottery” or something similar in there, something that would have them end up extremely wealthy.
Having read around the subject of what makes us happy and also the many car crash stories of people who’ve won the lottery, I’m pretty certain that I’d never want to become so extremely wealthy overnight. On top of that, there seems to be many issues with people who inherit wealth.
So maybe the link here is receiving money, for whatever reason, that we didn’t really “earn”?
So, if I work my way up and earn my extreme wealth, things will be rosy will they? I’m not so sure. There are also plenty of stories of people who have (on a technical level at least) “earned” their wealth, and it has messed things up royally for them as well.
OK, you say, they are the sort of people who would have messed things up anyway and the money just helped them get there faster. You’d be a different story, right? I’m sure most of us on the FI scene
Either way, here are some examples of how your extreme wealth might be more of a burden you than a blessing.
Keeping up the family estate
A while ago I watched a short series about the estate at Longleat (that’s the picture, above), where they also have a safari park. It seems like a very stressful job keeping all of that inherited property and other wealth in check! To help stop haemorrhaging money, they’ve had to open up their private living quarters to guided tours so they don’t have to pay tax on the expensive antiques contained within. Even just the size of the estate means it is a general ballache to keep on top of everything, and they have to employ hundreds of staff just to keep on top of things. Fair enough you might not have to run a safari park with your inheritance but there would no doubt be some sort of expected upkeep of the family estate along with all the complexities and stresses involved.
In a way I admire Lord Bath’s son for trying to honour the family tradition and preserve the history there, and certainly for keeping the safari park going (which is definitely worth a visit if you are ever down that way!), but surely you can’t call this the good life facilitated by wealth, which is what most of us on here are chasing? No sir, I am very glad I wasn’t born into that kind of wealth.
Being a spoilt rich kid
In many ways Lord Bath Jr is quite lucky, as your life as a “rich kid” could get FUBAR before you even get anywhere near the inheritance stage.
You don’t have to search far on the internet to hear about super rich kids acting very dysfunctional. It seems it is very easy for rich kids to grow up with no connection with the real value of money, and become, let’s be honest, undeserving little shitehawks and generally horrible, horrible human beings. Check out this instagram feed for some awesome examples of top class wankers in action showing off how much better they are than the rest of us cos of their awesome stuff they totally didn’t earn 1.
The flip side of this is they become clinically depressed:
They show disturbingly high rates of substance use, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, cheating, and stealing
There are many obvious issues with why rich kids might go delinquent or get depressed but the obvious one is living in the shadow of their uber successful parents must actually be quite a burden. Maybe some of them actually feel undeserving of their untapped wealth? You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t!
Finally, reading the hilarious yet excruciatingly annoying examples of spoilt kids here and you quickly realise that some of these aren’t even from what I’d call the super rich, they are probably just moderately wealthy parents who have not learnt the word “No” when it comes to little Tarquin or Tamara.
In sum… Be careful what you wish for your kids, folks.
Losing all your normal friends
It is very likely that if you become extremely wealthy and your friends do not then you will gradually lose touch with them. They will either resent you, try to extract money from you, or you will try to give them money and things will get awkward.
Having to hang out with people who are richer than you
Once your normal friends desert you, you are going to need some new ones to hang out with. Guess what… they will likely also be super rich, and some of them considerably richer than you are! Take this comment from SexHealthMoneyDeath:
Jim McG: “My friend, a fund manager, said he was so sick of going out with guys worth (say) four hundred million and all they would obsess about was the absolute idiot they knew who was worth four hundred and fifty million. Either that, or they were so scared of losing their four hundred million they were making themselves ill.”
Plus there is the fact that the large majority of other rich people are dicks 2
Or you end up with no friends at all
Another cautionary tale of someone who won the lottery and ended up more lonely than ever.
Not only did the ladies husband resent her and they ended up divorcing, but friends:
“may not want to adapt to some of the changes created by sudden wealth”, and will push away, adding to the loneliness.
This is probably my biggest fear of becoming wealthy overnight or even over the years whilst chasing FI if the information leaked out. Would people treat me differently if they knew I had £500,000 in the bank (for example)? I hope not but you never know who your real friends are until it happens, and even then you might be wrong. Which brings us onto…
Fighting off the leaches
There will be plenty of people being nice to you with your new found moolah, wanting a slice of the action. How can you be sure which ones are being genuine? I’d say the majority of them will not be! The worst thing is you could end up cutting off people who are genuine friends, you could get it all wrong. Arghhh! This is sending me under just thinking about it! Burn that lottery ticket now! 🙂
Becoming a selfish prick
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that when people become financially untouchable they start to think that they owe the world nothing. They quickly forget, even if they are “self made”, that they are already standing on the shoulders of giants. Not only of all of the people in the world that have build up civilisation up to this point, all of our social organisations, governments, and physical infrastructure, but on top of the environment itself, of mother nature who has provided the materials to make the widgets or create the thing that they have made their money out of.
The reason behind this is the self-inflated opinion of themselves combined with the fact that they can buy their way out of any trouble now they are rich. They don’t have to rely on anyone else and so not only are their close social ties far more shallow, but they see other people in general as a bunch of undeserving scumbags.
“Why is that African village starving and why do they want my money? Can’t they do what I did and work their way out of trouble?” – Is what they might say. Probably. Pricks!
You lose your edge
I found a great post on The Motley Fool which suggests that being too comfortable means it is very easy to lose focus. Maybe you will just end up spending your days in your mansion’s man-cave, playing pool and arcade games and drinking beer? While this sounds fun for a while it is certainly not going to provide long term life happiness. As the article says, putting yourself deliberately into a tight spot and giving yourself some stress will force you to fire on all cylinders. The obvious thing to do here if you are extremely wealthy is start up some new and risky business ventures, which is great if you are the next Elon Musk, but most of us are certainly not 🙂
Having to attend posh/snooty venues
I can’t stand going to posh places, they make me feel awkward. Either the staff are ridiculously over the top which is obviously nice in itself, but I’m certain I’ve got to the age of 35 and managed to hang my own coat up, and tuck my own chair in at the dinner table. Likewise washing my hands in the toilets without assistance. Awwww-kwwwward.
Alternative you will find the staff or other customers looking down their beak at you, probably thinking that you are not as wealthy as them and therefore do not deserve to be there. Obviously they were spot on with their assessment with my current experiences up till now, but if I’d won the lottery I’m sure the same thing would happen, because, well how would they know?
Having to buy loads of shit to fill up your massive mansion
I don’t really enjoy the process of shopping and acquiring stuff all that much and having to fill a mansion or even large house would be tedious (although I’m sure Mrs T would give it a good go 😉 )
The thought of all that junk just sitting there not even being used for 99% of it’s existence would make me sad!
Also having to insure all the crap you’d end up buying would probably cost an arm and a leg and give me a heart attack (I hate paying for insurance!)
Final thoughts
Of course maybe none of this would happen to you or me if we won the lottery. I always think I wouldn’t change at all and would invest a lot, give loads away to charity, and start up some exciting business ventures to improve the world, but until it happens we just don’t know how it would affect us, and we certainly can’t control how other people in our lives react to our new found wealth.
Spike Milligan famously said “All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.” but in terms of getting rich overnight, I’m almost certain I’d not actually want that chance.
What about you, dear reader? I am almost certain most people are going to disagree with me on this but really interested to find out what you think!?
P.s. Further reading from the brilliant as always Monevator
Discussion (28) ¬
My ideal life: win the lottery!
And the go into stealth wealth mode, keep the same house, cars, … Get a sweet stromer e-bike. Work on things I like and love, become a business angel investor, improve the world, maybe by a plastic harvesting vessle or so,…
Hi Amber Tree,
You know there are probably plenty of people out there who either won the lottery or came into wealth, or built it up themselves, who are in stealth wealth mode, living an awesome life and using the money wisely. I guess we just never hear about those people as much as they do not make click bait headlines very well.
So maybe I was a bit hasty with my final assumptions 😉
Cheers
Great timing for this post (no, I didn’t win Euromillions last night).
Last night my wife randomly asked me what I’d do if I won the lottery. I asked how much had I won, because the number really changes the answer.
If it were “only” £1 or £2 million I may be tempted to swap the rental we live in for something we purchased, but with our kids happily settled in local schools, friends living close by, etc that would account of pretty much all the winnings given the house prices in the neighbourhood.
Or (more likely) I’d invest most of it. For example the passive income thrown off by £2m invested in something like VWRL would be around £40k a year (before tax), potentially forever.
At that point she threw something at me and complained I was boring, which may well be a valid observation.
What I’d really like to do is go live by the beach someplace sunny and warm, but somewhere that I/she could still work should we choose to, and somewhere that we wouldn’t be sabotaging our kids schooling by doing so (Fiji is lovely, but not renowned as an educational powerhouse for example… the same is true of many small coastal towns in lovely parts of the world).
Winning £5 million or more would be a lovely problem to have, starting to get into truly life changing territory then.
That said I’m not sure I’d rush out to buy a super yacht or a Ferrari, or even a bigger tv… we reached “peak stuff” quite some time ago, and these days on the rare occasion I get duped into visiting a Westfield there isn’t anything I feel compelled to buy. Maybe that means I’ve “made it” already, when the prospect of a much increased bank balance is unlikely to make a significant difference to the day-to-day goings on.
Or maybe my wife is right (she usually is) and I’m just boring.
Either way it was an interesting thought exercise.
That’s funny, I first started the draft of this post one time when I heard that the Euro millions jackpot had gotten huge, then forgot about it, and randomly just completed it last week, I didn’t even realise it was a big jackpot again!
I agree the number might make a big difference (hence me talking about “extreme wealth” a lot in the post).
I think anything up to a mill would be quite nice because you could justify only treating very close family to something, or ever just keep it completely secret, I wouldn’t be going out buying a Ferrari or anything that obvious that’s for sure!
I reckon a slight upgrade on the house (and pay it off), a few decent holidays and invest the rest to live off some and start up a business on the side to see how that went. Similar to yourself though, Mrs T might have other ideas 😉
Always fun to think about this stuff yea, thanks for chipping in with your thoughts as always!
Hey TFS,
Interesting theme. I guess I’d see things slightly differently – I know you were being a bit tongue in cheek, but the rich people I’ve encountered have often been generous in spirit.
I’d also raise that the arts are littered with rich “wastes of space” such as, say, Lord Byron, who could never have produced what they did whilst also holding down a day job. Hard to put a value on, of course, but leisure does give space for creativity to flourish sometimes.
Having said all that, hedonic adaptation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill) means that I doubt winning the lottery would make me happier, even if I did, improbably, produce something worthwhile artistically.
FS
Glad you got the tongue in cheek aspect of the post 🙂
I guess my main point was that getting a lot of money is not the answer to all of your problems, it will just make some of them go away (not all) whilst creating new ones you probably didn’t even think about.
I agree that most wealthy people I’ve met are very generous, although I’d still contend that most of those are going to be the self made types, not the inheritance generation. What do you think about that? I’ve never met anyone who has won the lottery (as far as I know) so can’t comment on that apart from what I’ve read in the media, which picks out the worst and most shocking stories so we should really probably ignore it (although as much of that was the basis for the post, I couldn’t really haha).
And it’s OK, when robots are doing all of our jobs in 10 years there will be plenty of time for all of us to be creative snowflakes, we’ll be so knee deep art we won’t have enough wall space to hang it on! 🙂
Great point about hedonic adaption, I should have included that in the post. We’d be really happy for maybe 6 months at a push, then it’s very likely we’d adapt to the situation and go back to our normal level of happiness. Although you could argue again that at least you’d have plenty of scope to change up your situation now to get you out of that hedonic funk again, either by constantly putting yourself into new situations (travelling?) or starting up new businesses to keep things exciting.
Cheers!
I still play the lottery but I wouldn’t want to win too much, ie those ridiculously large Euromillions prizes.
I only play the lottery within a syndicate so any prize would be shared between around a dozen friends/ex-colleagues and the amount wouldn’t be obscene.
I would use whatever tax-friendly way possible to share any large win with immediate family and close friends.
Invest some of it, use some of it to fund travelling, purchase a residential property.
As you say, it’s all very well saying this, I won’t know I’ll do all this if in the unlikely event I did ever win.
I would certainly remain anonymous for as long as possible or not let on how much I won as you can’t control how other people will react to the new found wealth.
A Syndicate is a great way of both increasing your chances of winning a prize and making sure any given prize is not too obscene, yes!
Sounds like a great plan, in theory, as we’ve both mentioned 😉
Stealth wealth would be key to keeping any normal parts of your *old life* intact, for sure. Good luck weenie 😉
I actually did inherit about one million a couple of years ago. Didn’t change a thing about our lives. I was already early retiring and the extra money didn’t change my net worth that much. It is nice insurance if the market dips but I really expect I’ll never spend any of it and it will just increase what my kids inherit from me some day. We live fairly simply, buy used cars with cash, paid off the house many years ago and have pretty inexpensive hobbies.
Hi Steveark,
You are our millionaire next door that proves it does not have to be like it’s portrayed in the media! Thanks for chipping in and restoring my faith in humanity 😉
Cheers
Hi TFS,
Always fun to read these sort of things. I think £1m or so would make absolutely no difference – other than accelerate the time to FIRE.
I do play the Lottery (just bought my ticket) – would I be sorted on £99m? That would sort me out and allow me to FIRE now, however I wouldn’t want anyone to know, so likely I would carry on working for a while as the money is deployed.
I would like to find out how it would affect me 🙂
Cheers,
FiL
That’s a good point about carrying on working to defuse any suspicions… I like your thinking there 😉
Glad you found the post fun, a lot of was relatively tongue in cheek, if someone offered me 1 million I would snap their hand off as I could FIRE right now, if someone offered me 100 million or nothing, on balance I would probably still take the money if I’m really honest.
How about 100 million but you had to go public? Bit of a harder choice perhaps?
🙂
Yes – 1 million or 100 million I would take it, but having to go public? I don’t know. With 100 million then I could move to Monaco so it wouldnt matter, but I would lose a lot of friends…. I will let you know when it happens 😉
I once read Hunter Davies’ Life on the Lottery, about some of the early winners of the UK National Lottery. The one that stood out was a man who hit the jackpot, probably a rollover, and came from a very deprived background with a number of friends and relatives who would have pressurised him for money had they known.
His solution? He and his wife bought a beautiful country house, a Range Rover, all the trimmings, and invested the rest. Then – genius! – he told everyone he knew that he’d been offered a job as caretaker to the luxury home of a multimillionaire who spent most of his time abroad, in tax exile. Result? No-one questioned the apparent change in lifestyle.
As someone who has one or two similarly inclined relatives, I’d probably do much the same.
Hi M,
Haha… that is genius I have to say!
Sounds like an interesting book, one to add to the “to read” pile that I will ironically only ever get to read if I won the lottery and had all the free time in the world on my hands no doubt 😉
Cheers!
TFS,
I think everyone has had the conversation, or at least thought, about what they would do. I think that £1m would be enough for me to retire and I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. I also wouldn’t tell anyone – note to your friends/leechers part of your post. I always think that a huge win of say £50m, if you gave friends £1m, there would be one saying ‘can I have £2m?’…
Like people say, it’s not the money that would get you happiness, but the freedom that it creates.
What if the millionaire isn’t yourself? I worry about how money can create a comparison in families. What if Grandparents A are mega wealthy and Grandparents B aren’t. Could the former warp the vulnerable minds of grandchildren? After all, we can’t control the wisdom they impart.
The Doffer
“if you gave friends £1m, there would be one saying ‘can I have £2m?’…”
Yes… this, and also what about the “friends” that you give nothing to? Where do you stop the giving? There has to be a line drawn somewhere and you are going to end up pissing someone off.
“What if the millionaire isn’t yourself?” – Another interesting thought exercise for sure. I know at least one friend who’s very young child is going to have one fairly wealthy set of grandparents and another extremely (and I mean mega mega) wealthy set of grandparents. I’ll let you know how it turns out in about 5 years, so stay tuned! 🙂
Cheers!
Yes, I imagine a lot of emotional difficulty with that much money! Giving twenty friends and family £1,000 each is a very generous thing to do until they realise you got £1,000,000! It’s easier to be a secret millionaire but then I imagine some guilt comes with that as well!
The best thing to do with it would be to invest it and live off of the interest/dividends. Immediate early retirement however no feeling of accomplishment! I don’t think it’s enough of a challenge for FIRE minded folk 🙂
I like what the family did by showing around the rooms to tourists! Its a creative play that keeps their tradition in tact so long as they don’t crave more privacy! I also used to admire what Susan Boyle did in asking for a weekly allowance of ‘only’ £500 despite her millions in the bank!
The mind boggles at all of the options you would have with that much money!
Differentli
“I don’t think it’s enough of a challenge for FIRE minded folk”
Totally agree with this but then you would be free to make your own challenges wouldn’t you? You could sail around the world, build schools in Africa, set up a new business… the possibilities are endless as you say. The more I think about it the more I disagree with my original post title… hah 😉
Thanks for chipping in Differentli 🙂
“Being a millionaire” seems to be a thing that the press like to focus on and they generally talk with schadenfreude about how it turned the recipient into a destitute drunk who lost all their money and all their friends. Of course for those whose lives it changed positiviely we never hear about as of course it is not newsworthy but I suspect there are many.
But I suspect there are many more (like me!) , who are secret millionaires where the welath crept up over a number of years of sensible saving and frugal consumption. As we approach retirement its actually quite difficult to turn the taps on which means (I expect) that we will leave a large inheritance. I now actively look at ways that I could spend my money ….but …the house is already too big for the two of us…..and our car is perfectly functional so what to buy?
If we did win a million (and having just put a chunk of money into premium bonds it could actually happen) then I suspect we would need to raise the level and I’ve no doubt there is a nice Porsche out there with my name on it. But I wouldn’t actually “spend” it. More likely i would stick it into a mix of equities/bonds and crowdfunding and fund my purchases off the 50k of so that a million would throw off.
Yea there is definitely a reverse version of survivorship bias at play here isn’t there?
“the house is already too big for the two of us…..and our car is perfectly functional so what to buy?” – Love this! 🙂
Plus agreed that you are best off spending the income that the original lump would throw off, although I’d certainly pay off my mortgage first (presuming you have already done that bit though)
Cheers for the interesting comment Captain Scarlet 🙂
Well, I’ll say the obvious. If anyone wins the lottery and thinks they might not be able to cope. Then I am happy to take the burden away from them …
I have a different and very simple plan for when I win the Euro Millions. I plan to give it all away to charity. Every last penny. I don’t plan to keep any of it for myself. So, I won’t have to worry about any of the above. sorted.
I mentioned this to someone else here at work. They at first said I was an idiot, then they asked what the point of play is? Well, that is simple, I don’t have £99million to give to charity. But I play the Euro Millions in the hope that one day I will.
Wow! I would love to see you win AAJ if only to see how true to your word you are. Not doubting you of course, but that would take some balls.
I don’t think you are an idiot at all, that is a much better reason to play than the usual one which is surely just based on greed.
Cheers!
Great post!
People have this vision that “once I become massively wealthy, I will be happier, more charitable, more elegant, more eloquent, funnier,…” I used to think that way.
Truth is, you just become a more enhanced version of who you already are. All the good and all the bad. Me? I’m a worrier and tend to be insecure. Would all my worries magically go away if I became instantly wealthy? Some would go away naturally but I’d probably just find other things to worry about (like the multi-millionaires you referenced that worry themselves sick about losing their huge piles of cash).
The good news, is there’s a magical middle between struggling to earn a living and obscenely wealthy. It’s what most in the FIRE community are striving for, I think. “Enough”. Enough money to feel in control of the direction of your life and to feel free to do whatever you think is best with your time on earth. Enough money to buy the time needed to figure out how to actually be the best possible version of yourself.
Well worth thinking about. Thanks for the article
Spot on with your comments there CC!
I think being moderately wealthy, enough to direct your own time is the best compromise (although I guess we would both say that as that is what we’re aiming for eh 🙂 )
I actually know someone that has won a decent lottery winning not once, but twice! What a guy am I right? As most of us would probably expect, the winnings are all gone. Like you said about feeling it as “earned” vs the unearned money, I think in general we feel much more attached to and committed to things we work for in life. Anyways, great article thanks for running through this!
Jordan @ New Retirement
Thanks Jordan, glad you enjoyed it and good to hear some more anecdotal evidence that reinforces my point… 😉 🙂
Cheers!