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Comment by throwaway713 | Hacker News Reader

I saw that Reddit post a while back. It’s interesting, but I wonder how much it really applies to all of the super wealthy. There are certainly billionaires and centimillionaires who reject that lifestyle out of hand (I know I certainly would). The average person doesn’t know their name and they prefer it that way. Even the local billionaire near where I lived for a while was pretty modest, all considered (his kids not so much). I was surprised to see him and his family sit down next to mine at a restaurant one day. Could overhear him talking about the local farmers market and commenting about the tomatoes of the season haha

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There is certainly a wide spectrum in how people behave, and an important factor is also how they would like to be perceived by others. Rundowns on how wealthy people live will tend to overindex on the behavior of people who want others to know they’re wealthy.

As an example, there’s a culture among what people refer to as "old money" families in the US northeast (with generational wealth from long ago), wherein they tend to avoid seeming outwardly wealthy or really talking about money at all…generally aiming to project an unpretentious vibe, eschewing designer clothes and driving 20 year old Volvos, but still spending vacations at long-owned family getaways worth tens of millions, flying first or charter, and send their kids to specific, expensive schools to socialize with others of similar backgrounds.

What wealth buys you is the freedom and opportunity to make that choice. It’s not that you have to use your influence; it’s that if your local billionaire whose name nobody knew decided to make a phone call or two, people would still pick up his call.

That isn’t true for your local plumber.

The local billionaires here own a large family business. The founders (parents) were great people. They lived life poor for the first 50 years of their lives. They were super down to earth.

The next generation are mostly good people. They're involved in politics at the state level and have some philanthropic organizations that really do good work with zero strings attached.

The grandkids, who all have known nothing but having immense wealth are garbage humans. They're entitled, awful, mean spirited assholes. Every. Last. One. They frequent local businesses, and the number of times I've heard, "don't you know who I am" is astounding.

The business mostly runs itself at this point, but I genuinely fear for the future in this area. There's already undercurrents of the family using its connections to bail out one of the grandkids when he was drunk driving. I believe the first murder will happen within the next decade.

The grandparents would be absolutely horrified if they saw what their family was turning into.

> The grandparents would be absolutely horrified if they saw what their family was turning into.

I wonder if they somewhat expected it. The 'third generation curse' is a widely known effect. Question is whether there is anything that could have been done to avoid it.

Donate their wealth before they die and leave only a token amount for the kids. Enough to give them a headstart, but not enough that they never have to try.

I like how Warren Buffett put this:

I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.

There's definitely a whole spectrum, and not every ultra-wealthy person is out there collecting yachts and private islands. Some just want comfort, privacy, and to be left alone to enjoy the little things

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