[grimlock]

Originally Posted by Whostheboss

My philosophy is:
Normal people have normal lives and have normal bank accounts.
Crazy people have crazy lives and crazy bank accounts.

My point is, you can never be rich if you are normal and think logically. You have to be insane, crazy, greedy and damn near psycho to make a lot of money. You got to use this insane mentality to drive your energy.

So that's the answer to why it seems like Rich people keep getting rich and are greedy.

And to answer OP's question. I say US$10 million.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time trying to get rich, I'd say this is true.
And it takes someone who gets laid inordinately to see this - what I have always suspected- that the purpose of getting rich is, as with most things, to get laid in the end.
Someone pls correct my skewed thinking.

[gtron]

when you start thinking about how to maintain your wealth for generations rather than just your lifetime.

[MiddleAgedAl]

Once you amass a certain amount of wealth, the social circles you keep change, and thus your expectations do too. That's the problem.

For me, $150 million would be an absurd amount of money. For Lewis, the folks that he associates with now are often quite above that level, so the boats and planes and homes they own make the lifestyle that he can enjoy with 150 million seem less extravagant. You get recalibrated when hanging out with the new crowd, and the problem is, there's always a bigger fish.

Even at the multi-billionaire level; supposedly Paul Allen and Larry Ellison got into a pissing match with their boats, which led to Pauls "Octopus", which is clearly more boat than anyone needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_%28yacht%29

It stopped being about the boat itself, and became about beating the other guy's boat.

I've seen many happiness studies which prove time and time again that absolute wealth is not the key to happiness; relative wealth is. Human nature is what it is, and will not be denied. If you are the wealthiest person in your social circle, you probably will be happier than if you are in the bottom half of wealth in your social circle, even if example 1 is 100K per year, and example 2 is 1 million per year.

[Alfisti]

I have fantasized about this at times and number i settled on was $40M cash. hear me out ....

I figure i need about $5m to $10M, so $7.5M for a primary residence, sounds insane but Sydney is more expensive than most in the US can begin to imagine. That's gonna buy you nice place on the east coast but no mansion. Maybe another $2M for a vacation home, wherever the hell that is.

Let's assume you invest very conservatively and anticipate a return of 5%, so you need to shuffle away another $10M to earn $500K a year, which you will need as you are now rich, right?

So i've blown through $20M before so much as scratching my arse.

I'd "give" $2m to myself and to my mrs for no questions asked spending money. Then another $10M, $5M each, split between her family and mine. Again, sounds insane but median house price in Toronto is $1M, nearly double that in Sydney. Chuck a bit in for charities etc. and you're at $35M.

That leaves about $5M for shit i have surely forgotten.

[dreamingat30fps]

Originally Posted by Alfisti

I have fantasized about this at times and number i settled on was $40M cash. hear me out ....

I figure i need about $5m to $10M, so $7.5M for a primary residence, sounds insane but Sydney is more expensive than most in the US can begin to imagine. That's gonna buy you nice place on the east coast but no mansion. Maybe another $2M for a vacation home, wherever the hell that is.

Let's assume you invest very conservatively and anticipate a return of 5%, so you need to shuffle away another $10M to earn $500K a year, which you will need as you are now rich, right?

So i've blown through $20M before so much as scratching my arse.

I'd "give" $2m to myself and to my mrs for no questions asked spending money. Then another $10M, $5M each, split between her family and mine. Again, sounds insane but median house price in Toronto is $1M, nearly double that in Sydney. Chuck a bit in for charities etc. and you're at $35M.

That leaves about $5M for shit i have surely forgotten.

Damn you need a lot more than me. I'd be just fine with about $2M. At 5% make a nice $100k "salary" not having to work. Not even sure I would move, fix a few things on the house and spend my time traveling around.

$40M I think is drive you crazy money. Even if I said I was going to buy an insane house just to blow money I couldn't see spending more than $2 million maybe? Of course if I did that I would need another $100k just to pay the taxes. That's where shit spirals out of control and then you're broke on your $40M. Taxes on the mansion, housekeeper to clean the 10 bedrooms, landscaping, gas and maintenance on the exotic cars, docking, fuel, crew etc for your yacht, membership fees to the country club and the list goes on and on.

[Alfisti]

Originally Posted by dreamingat30fps

Damn you need a lot more than me. I'd be just fine with about $2M. At 5% make a nice $100k "salary" not having to work. Not even sure I would move, fix a few things on the house and spend my time traveling around.

$40M I think is drive you crazy money. Even if I said I was going to buy an insane house just to blow money I couldn't see spending more than $2 million maybe? Of course if I did that I would need another $100k just to pay the taxes. That's where shit spirals out of control and then you're broke on your $40M. Taxes on the mansion, housekeeper to clean the 10 bedrooms, landscaping, gas and maintenance on the exotic cars, docking, fuel, crew etc for your yacht, membership fees to the country club and the list goes on and on.

Two things, the OP said "when does money not matter", you're talking stress relief, I'm talking when you stop looking at price tags on consumer goods (yeah like towels or whatever).

And secondly, i could about buy Florida, as in the entire state, for what it takes to buy a comfortable property in Sydney. It's another planet.

[Alfisti]

Look, some of these are AWESOME but some are fairly humble and even those DON'T HAVE A PRICE.

http://www.domain.com.au/search/buy/...088&displmap=0

[dreamingat30fps]

Originally Posted by Alfisti

Two things, the OP said "when does money not matter", you're talking stress relief, I'm talking when you stop looking at price tags on consumer goods (yeah like towels or whatever).

And secondly, i could about buy Florida, as in the entire state, for what it takes to buy a comfortable property in Sydney. It's another planet.

It's all relative I guess because I don't look at the price of towels right now. My gf always bitches when I go to the grocery store like how much were those limes??? Hell if I know.

Personally I would find having that much money MORE stressful. Like I said before, the more crap you buy the more money you need to maintain it all. It really becomes a never ending cycle. You can't just go out and buy a yacht because now you need more money to maintain the yacht, otherwise the yacht becomes another source of stress when it needs repairs etc.

That being said I wouldn't turn away the $40M if anyone offered it to me.

[MFL]

Originally Posted by SKBMW

The day one can pay for a Fincantieri in full with 30 hand selected escorts on yearly payroll

Serene by K B, on Flickr

I'll never step foot on a Fincantieri ship ever again

Wealth is where your wants/needs aren't limited by your financial means and is completely relative.

[MrPrena]

I think billionaires are more interested in "deals" "M&As" and other business deals. Having a jet or 300'+ yacht is probably least of their concern.
Sometimes the multibillionaires needs to go "soft" and buy some toys too.

I am afraid that I will be even more frugal if I have money like them.
"ah,,, I could've bought 10% of XYZ instead of that dumbass 350' Yacht!"

[Mr Tonka]

Originally Posted by MiddleAgedAl

Once you amass a certain amount of wealth, the social circles you keep change, and thus your expectations do too. That's the problem.

For me, $150 million would be an absurd amount of money. For Lewis, the folks that he associates with now are often quite above that level, so the boats and planes and homes they own make the lifestyle that he can enjoy with 150 million seem less extravagant. You get recalibrated when hanging out with the new crowd, and the problem is, there's always a bigger fish.

Even at the multi-billionaire level; supposedly Paul Allen and Larry Ellison got into a pissing match with their boats, which led to Pauls "Octopus", which is clearly more boat than anyone needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_%28yacht%29

It stopped being about the boat itself, and became about beating the other guy's boat.

I've seen many happiness studies which prove time and time again that absolute wealth is not the key to happiness; relative wealth is. Human nature is what it is, and will not be denied. If you are the wealthiest person in your social circle, you probably will be happier than if you are in the bottom half of wealth in your social circle, even if example 1 is 100K per year, and example 2 is 1 million per year.

So what you're saying is, get friends that are poorer than i am, and i'll be happier with what i have?

[MrPrena]

I see the point. Some of my friends who hangs around with multi-mill guys are spending their well hard earned $ left and right to fit into that fictitious circle of friends to "keep up" with their living style.
kissing ass and etc.

I am a loner, so I am okay.

Originally Posted by MiddleAgedAl

Once you amass a certain amount of wealth, the social circles you keep change, and thus your expectations do too. That's the problem.

For me, $150 million would be an absurd amount of money. For Lewis, the folks that he associates with now are often quite above that level, so the boats and planes and homes they own make the lifestyle that he can enjoy with 150 million seem less extravagant. You get recalibrated when hanging out with the new crowd, and the problem is, there's always a bigger fish.

Even at the multi-billionaire level; supposedly Paul Allen and Larry Ellison got into a pissing match with their boats, which led to Pauls "Octopus", which is clearly more boat than anyone needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_%28yacht%29

It stopped being about the boat itself, and became about beating the other guy's boat.

I've seen many happiness studies which prove time and time again that absolute wealth is not the key to happiness; relative wealth is. Human nature is what it is, and will not be denied. If you are the wealthiest person in your social circle, you probably will be happier than if you are in the bottom half of wealth in your social circle, even if example 1 is 100K per year, and example 2 is 1 million per year.

[NemesisX]

Originally Posted by MiddleAgedAl

Once you amass a certain amount of wealth, the social circles you keep change, and thus your expectations do too. That's the problem.

For me, $150 million would be an absurd amount of money. For Lewis, the folks that he associates with now are often quite above that level, so the boats and planes and homes they own make the lifestyle that he can enjoy with 150 million seem less extravagant. You get recalibrated when hanging out with the new crowd, and the problem is, there's always a bigger fish.

Even at the multi-billionaire level; supposedly Paul Allen and Larry Ellison got into a pissing match with their boats, which led to Pauls "Octopus", which is clearly more boat than anyone needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_%28yacht%29

It stopped being about the boat itself, and became about beating the other guy's boat.

I've seen many happiness studies which prove time and time again that absolute wealth is not the key to happiness; relative wealth is. Human nature is what it is, and will not be denied. If you are the wealthiest person in your social circle, you probably will be happier than if you are in the bottom half of wealth in your social circle, even if example 1 is 100K per year, and example 2 is 1 million per year.

You know it may sound silly at face value but what you said about relative wealth is absolutely true. There's a famous set of studies done in the late 20th century called the Whitehall studies (feel free to google it) that looked at health outcomes along the social class gradient within the British civil service.

Here's the upshot: health outcomes (e.g. life expectancy, risk for developing cardiovascular disease, etc) follow a gradient along the socioeconomic spectrum within the civil service.

Someone who makes $45,000/year has better health outcomes than someone making $40,000/year. The person who makes the most money had better outcomes than rank 2, who had better outcomes than rank 3, and so forth.

If you told the average person that a CEO (in the U.S., for example) had better health outcomes than a homeless person no one would be surprised. The CEO likely has some 'Cadillac' health insurance plan, and worst case scenario he or she could likely afford to pay out of pocket for major health care expenses if needed. In other words, most people might be tempted to think that money buys access to better care and thus this observation is not surprising.

People in the British civil service all have access to the exact same healthcare (which is why the authors chose them as a test group to begin with) and they're all at least middle class or above. No one is severely economically disadvantaged in that group. The differences in health outcomes were largely a function of their relative position within the British civil service hierarchy, and these results have been generalized since then.

If you make $25,000/year and you live in a neighborhood where the median income is $10,000/year and $25,000/year puts you in the "local" top 1% or .1%, you're going to have better health outcomes (all else being equal) than someone making $25,000/year who lives among rich plutocrats making $35,000 or $40,000/year.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by dreamingat30fps

It's all relative I guess because I don't look at the price of towels right now. My gf always bitches when I go to the grocery store like how much were those limes??? Hell if I know.

Same here. I never look at prices when shopping, except when I buy Scotch.

[Joekerr]

Originally Posted by Mr Tonka

So what you're saying is, get friends that are poorer than i am, and i'll be happier with what i have?

I'm poor, and I'm willing to be a friend to all of you therefore to improve the happiness of my new "friends".

For a small fee of course.

[MiddleAgedAl]

Originally Posted by Mr Tonka

So what you're saying is, get friends that are poorer than i am, and i'll be happier with what i have?

That's absolutely what dozens and dozens of studies have shown to be true, yes. No joke.

Most (not all) people tend to compare themselves to others, so if increasing wealth puts you into a different altitude as far as lifestyle goes, then you'll soon get used to your new wealth, and it wont seem that fantastic any more, because everyone else at that level has even more. The bar gets higher.

The average American is many, many times wealthier than literally billions of others in poorer parts of the world (in an absolute sense, raw dollars net worth), and yet they do not report significantly higher levels of happiness.

[ShocknAwe]

Depends on habits and expenses. Impossible to judge without accounting for typical human insanity.

[Billup]

Even if I had a ton of money, I would probably live in a 3br 2b house on a decent plot of land, with a garage filled with cars and I'd be happy.

I get that if you have a ton of money you buy big houses and shit because you can, but how often does all the extra space get used other than burning energy and the cleaning lady out? Seems pointless.

[Alfisti]

Originally Posted by Billup

Even if I had a ton of money, I would probably live in a 3br 2b house on a decent plot of land, with a garage filled with cars and I'd be happy.

I get that if you have a ton of money you buy big houses and shit because you can, but how often does all the extra space get used other than burning energy and the cleaning lady out? Seems pointless.

Yeah, well sort of.

I live in a neighbourhood that has exploded lately with all these huge houses being built and I don't get the opulence. They take these beautiful lots of land and plonk these MASSIVE houses on them ... but that's it. I'd shave the house down from 4500 to 5000 sq feet to maybe 2700 but I'd build functionality and lifestyle.

So big garage, huge mud room, big sun drenched back room, well landscaped outdoors area with nice BBQ with a sink and power, pool etc ... not just a flash house the size of a small asian island.

[UncleWede]

At the end of the week, if I just had $20 more . . .

[MetsFan]

Others have mentioned this already, but it really is all relative. I remember reading an article that asked different people how much they needed to make a year in order to be rich. These aren't the exact numbers, but basically people making $15K said about $50K, the people making $50K said $120K, and the people making $120K said $500K.

If I had enough money to afford a house like this, I would consider myself rich.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14...56036512_zpid/

[Mr Tonka]

Originally Posted by MiddleAgedAl

That's absolutely what dozens and dozens of studies have shown to be true, yes. No joke.

Most (not all) people tend to compare themselves to others, so if increasing wealth puts you into a different altitude as far as lifestyle goes, then you'll soon get used to your new wealth, and it wont seem that fantastic any more, because everyone else at that level has even more. The bar gets higher.

The average American is many, many times wealthier than literally billions of others in poorer parts of the world (in an absolute sense, raw dollars net worth), and yet they do not report significantly higher levels of happiness.

I didn't mean that as a real question. Totally agree with your post.

Originally Posted by Billup

Even if I had a ton of money, I would probably live in a 3br 2b house on a decent plot of land, with a garage filled with cars and I'd be happy.

I get that if you have a ton of money you buy big houses and shit because you can, but how often does all the extra space get used other than burning energy and the cleaning lady out? Seems pointless.

That's the thing. Until you have that incomprehensible amount of money, you won't know what you'll do with it. And continuing to live in a reasonable house may become tiresome when you have the means to do what ever you want with it.

This is kind of funny, to me at least. One of my lottery fantasy moments happened and like you i thought that i'd just continue to live in the house we have now. It's on 2 acres, on a ski lake, with LOTS of trees. This was how the conversation with myself went in my head....

I thought, well, we'll just really kick up the landscaping, put in a dock with a dock house and call it a day. Maybe expand our current screened in patio area with some pavers. Well, i'd like to add a room for a gym. And i know i'll have another car or two so i'll need to expand my garage from 4 spaces to 6. I'll likely have lots of cash on hand so i'll upgrade my current safe to a mac-daddy model. Well, actually, maybe i'll turn our master closet into a vault room instead of just having my gun safe in there. OR.... maybe i'll add a gun room and make that the vault room. yeah, i'll do that. Ooh... i'll build a rifle range down the side of my house. With the length of the property being 350 in depth, i can easily make a 100yd rifle range. Well, it kind of sucks to just shoot in an indoor range all the time. Maybe i'll buy a larger piece of property a little north of my house and make that my outdoor action shooting range. It's so hot here for most of the year though.... Maybe it'll be better to get a multi-thousand acre property. That way i can build an indoor range, have an outdoor range, and plenty of space to hunt as well. Still have to deal with that FL heat. I think i should just buy a ranch in Montana or Colorado. Plenty of space for shooting sports, hunting, new house designed they way i want it. Wide open roads better for driving the fleet of sweet cars, build a big ass pool that looks like it's a natural lake. yeah, that's what i'll do. Wonder how much all that would cost. googlegooglegoogle.... Hmm, looks like $50 to $100 million should cover it.

I'd like to think i'll just be content sleeping on a pile of cash in my 3 bedroom house, but i doubt it will end up that way if i had billions to burn.