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Comment by jmtame | Hacker News Reader

This mans sounds pretty cool, although I'm not about to defend IBM either. Lots of money, yet lived frugal. Reminds me of Buffett (although I recently keep wondering why Steve Jobs, who is very frugal, bought an SL 55). Anyone know why people buy stuff like that when they typically lead pretty frugal lives relative to their monetary wealth? Same thing with Larry and Sergey buying a jet. Any ideas?

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An SL 55 is about $120k. Plenty of non millionaires drive cars that cost half that (and I bet there are non millionaires that drive SL 55s) - for a billionaire, where it's a rounding error on his net worth (though probably not on his liquid cash), it basically is frugal.

Quite. He could afford to have a custom iBentley made if he wanted to. Also I don't know how the SL55 stacks up in this respect but if it's more reliable than average, then that's a frugal choice too. Remember it doesn't mean cheap it means best possible value for money.

I don't usually respond to say I agree with something because it's against hn rules, but that's a really interesting perspective. I didn't think about it that way and it makes a lot of sense.

People with enormous wealth who typically live frugally buy (or charter) private jets to preserve something far more valuable than money: their time. Buffett has a private jet as well, btw.

Buffett has a private jet company as well, btw.

Buffett was famous for criticizing biz types that used private jets until just before he acquired said company and started using one himself.

Don't know about Sergey and Larry, but Jobs has a thing for vehicles that he considers a great combo of engineering and aesthetic design.

According to Guy Kawasaki, he bought a BMW motorcycle during the development of the original Mac, which he kept parked near near the lobby of the building where Mac development took place. According to Kawasaki, Jobs referred to it as living art.

Supposedly he later kept a BMW motorcycle, (not clear if it was the same one) in the living room of Jackling house, his mansion in Woodside.

do you have any sources of steve jobs' frugality? just curious. i regularly read buffett

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