Multi - Millionaires

[280plus]

I just had to share this little laugh. One of my customers is an ~80 yo who just recently sold the ambulance service he started from scratch right after WWII. The guy has more money than God is the way we put it around here. So today I get a check in the mail from him and I see where he had taken a used envelope, put white stickers over the old addresses, wrote the new addresses on it, put my check in it, taped it back shut and sent it off to me. That's how cheap this guy is. I'll bet he never spends money on envelopes. All you can do is shake your head and chuckle. Incidentally, he is one tough sell, won't spend a dime on anything if he doesn't absolutely have to.

Then this story reminds me of yet ANOTHER multi-millionaire I worked for a while ago. Same kind of guy, 80's still working, more money than God. I caught him counting the paper clips in a new box he had just opened to make sure he wasn't getting shorted any paper clips.

Ever hear the phrase, "Mind the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves" ?

I think that's how it goes.

It is my observation that there may be some truth to that.

[jefnvk]

I find people that accumulated their wealth over the years take much better care of it than those who win it, or inherit it.

[280plus]

Very true. Most people will blow the inheritance in short time. I watched 2 brothers do it. One spent his on 2 new Mustangs. The other on a '67 Mustang, a Harley and a garage to keep them in.

Mine's still in the bank.

[...has left the building.]

First generation wealthy people know that money is there to save and accumulate. Second generation wealthy generally think it is there to spend.

[garrettwc]

280plus, the book "Millionaire Next Door" is based around the premise you are questioning.

The real millionaires have an older car, a mid priced house in an older neighborhood, and a million bucks in the bank.

The paper millionaires have a new Mercedes, an huge over-priced house in the "in" neighborhood, and owe a million bucks to the bank.

[grampster]

Penurious: 1. Extremely stingy.  I have known folks that the accumulation of wealth is the prime directive.  One old guy I knew owned 2 sets of bib overalls, one pair of shoes and a couple of shirts, lived in a mobile home (not that there's anything wrong with that ) etc.   He drove a Standard Oil bulk truck since about the time oil was discovered and had a lot of Standard Oil stock.  He never spent a penny.  His kids had good time with the money.

For me being comfortable is the prime directive.  I think the Lord made the day 24 hours so that we had 8 to work, 8 to sleep and 8 to play.  Balance.  Work hard to make the money to play hard and 8 hours to regenerate.  Works for me.

[Declaration Day]

My grandfather did a similar thing.  He passed away in 1999, and up to that point we thought he and my grandma were poor.  They lived in a shack of a house, with worn out carpet, a leaky roof and dirt floor basement.  They drove pieces of junk.

All their lives, they bought the cheapest clothes and the cheapest appliances.  Their living room table was a folding card table, the kind you can buy for $20 at Wal Mart.  

When they got to the point where they thought a house was too much to maintain in 1997, they sold it for $30,000 and moved into an apartment.  Their 1987 Tempo finally died, and they replaced it with a 1993 Taurus.

My grandmonther hadn't had a job since she built airplanes at Willow Run airport during WW2.  My grandfather drove a school bus his entire career.  They raised three children.

He died on April 8, 1999, and left $350,000 cash to my grandmother.  He wasn't exactly a millionaire of course, but by the way he lived you'd guess he didn't even have a bank account.

[Paddy]

I once worked for a guy who was a self made multimillionaire.  He drove an old beatup pickup truck and wore bib overalls.  He gave his employees nickel raises.  He was honest and you always knew what he expected and everyone who worked for him respected him.

I had a landlord who was also a self made multimillionaire.  As a young man, he earned a Phd in Psychology and worked at a state hospital for about 6 months before deciding it wasn't for him.  He, too, drove an old beatup pickup that he'd sand and paint whenever it got too rusty.  He sometimes wore a rope tied around his waist instead of a belt.

[The Rabbi]

280plus, the book "Millionaire Next Door" is based around the premise you are questioning.

The real millionaires have an older car, a mid priced house in an older neighborhood, and a million bucks in the bank.

The paper millionaires have a new Mercedes, an huge over-priced house in the "in" neighborhood, and owe a million bucks to the bank.

Thanks for citing the book, which was a huge influence on me.
Most people in America have no idea what being rich means, with the consequence that few of them will ever get there.  If you ask people they will tell you Michael Jackson is rich.  Well, he isnt.

[matis]

280plus, the book "Millionaire Next Door" is based around the premise you are questioning.

The real millionaires have an older car, a mid priced house in an older neighborhood, and a million bucks in the bank.

The paper millionaires have a new Mercedes, an huge over-priced house in the "in" neighborhood, and owe a million bucks to the bank.

Excellent book.  I may have to bribe my daughter (age 17) to read it.  She reads constantly, but I sometimes pay her to read a book that doesn't, at first, interest her.  But then she has to write a book review that will pass MY review.  We home-schooled her and she knows that she must demonstrate a full grasp of the author's thesis.

She is like me, compulsive about doing a good job.  I've found that she cannot write a good review without being influenced by the book.  So you can see, since I too am a cheapskate, that I squeeze out a lot of value for my "bribe".



Funniest line in the book about the paper millionaires: "As they say in Texas, big hat, no cattle."



matis

[garrettwc]

If you ask people they will tell you Michael Jackson is rich.  Well, he isnt.

No but his lawyers sure are

matis, that's a great idea. If you teach it to them while they are young enough they can really use the power of time and compounding to there advantage. If I had known at 18 what I know now about money, I wouldn't be typing this from a cubicle in Dilbert land.

[K Frame]

Remember, too, that this guy remembers the depths of the Depression.

My Grandfather was a mechanical engineer who NEVER threw anything away. He could also use the most amazing, seemingly worthless bits of crap to do incredible repairs on broken devices.

He was in charge of keeping machinery running at a vital war production plant during WW II, and apparently had quite the reputation in the company for keeing stuff going when it should have been a smoking crater in the ground.

[280plus]

Remember, too, that this guy remembers the depths of the Depression.

Good point!

I'll get the book and put it in the pile. Thanks!

I can't even get bribery to work. I have a 22 , 19 and a 14 yo. Theyve all had a standing offer ever since they was big enough to wash any of my vehicles for $20 per vehicle. I have 4, so there's the potential to put $80 in their pockets at any time.  I have YET to hand any of them even one $20 bill to date. I'm holding out on the 14 YO though, maybe she'll give in some day before she grows up and disappears too. At least one of them told me it wasn't enough. I laughed.

[Monkeyleg]

My wife's uncle passed away five years ago. All his life he either walked or took the bus to work.

If he took a vacation, he went Greyhound.

Lived in a tiny, run-down apartment.

After he died at age 75 in an accidental fall, my mother-in-law and her brother were trying to figure out how much it would cost for his funeral. They started going through his things and, by the end, they had found somewhere between $350,000 and $500,000 in cash, money market funds, CD's and other vehicles.

The sad part, aside from his death, is that most of the money went to nieces and nephews who never visited him or invited him to their homes. And they blew the money quickly.

[K Frame]

"Theyve all had a standing offer ever since they was big enough to wash any of my vehicles for $20 per vehicle."

I'll be over the first nice spring day.

And every week after.

[USP45usp]

Mike and Blackburn beat me to it.  I was going to just come over every Saturday, I could use an extra 320 a month .

Wayne

[The Rabbi]

If you ask people they will tell you Michael Jackson is rich.  Well, he isnt.

No but his lawyers sure are

/quote]

I also heard Sammy Davis Jr died millions of dollars in debt.  His widow is scrubbing floors or something.  Marlon Brando, at one time the highest paid actor in Hollywood, died also millions of dollars in debt. It goes on and on.
I think it was Ben Graham, Buffet's teacher, who counseled "your last check should bounce."

[Preacherman]

And then, of course, there's the other way...

From CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/12/22/spain.lottery.ap/index.html):

Spanish town wins big in lottery

$612 million rains down on Catalan community

Thursday, December 22, 2005; Posted: 7:10 p.m. EST (00:10 GMT)

VIC, Spain (AP) -- A lottery known as "El Gordo" -- the Fat One -- sprinkled more than euro2 billion (US$2.4 billion) in Christmas cheer around Spain on Thursday, with this Catalan town known for its churches and convents blessed with a quarter of the windfall.

There are lots of ways to win at least something in Spain's nearly 200-year-old Christmas sweepstakes but the luckiest gamblers this year held the first-prize number 20085.

The lottery features a complex system of shared numbers designed to spread wealth rather than concentrate it in a jackpot. Each five-digit number ranging from 00001 to 85000 appeared on 1,700 tickets costing euro20 (US$24) apiece.

And this year all 1,700 tickets with the number 20085 were sold by one lottery office in Vic, 70 kilometers (40 miles) north of Barcelona. Each was worth euro300,000 (US$360,000). So in one fell swoop, winnings of euro510 million (US$612 million) rained on Vic.

The office regularly offered that number among its tickets every year but it had never struck lucky until now, said Miquel Codina, son of the lottery office manager. "We have been waiting for this for years," he told the news agency Efe.

That lottery office sold tickets both to individuals and to bars and restaurants, which as per Spanish custom then turned around and sold them to customers, either as they were or divvying them up into smaller shares.

Vic restaurant owner Carme Criviller did that, selling 10-euro shares that ended up fetching euro180 million (US$216 million) in winnings for employees and customers.

But two of her 10 employees, a cook and a waitress named Diana and Ana, decided not to gamble "because they are anti-lottery."

"I think we are going to have to do something for them, give them a gift," Criviller told Efe.

With bottles of sparkling wine popping all around her, Criviller -- she and her husband won euro1.2 million (US$1.4 million) -- said she had already turned away three customers Thursday because of the merry mayhem that has engulfed her eatery.

"A group of 40 people were coming today for lunch. I don't know what we are going to do because it is all out of control," she said.

The lottery is a hallowed Spanish tradition that marks the official start of the holiday season. It takes more than three hours because nearly 1,800 of the numbers read out after falling from a large gold tumbler bring some kind of prize. They range from the face value of the ticket to the main prize, known as El Gordo.

This year's version was full of suspense because it took about two-and-a-half hours for the luckiest number to emerge.

The lottery is billed as the world's richest for the total sum of prize money dished out, although other lotteries have bigger individual top prizes.

Keeping with a nearly 200-year-old tradition, children from a school that was once an orphanage sang out the five-digit lottery numbers and corresponding prizes in a pageant broadcast live on virtually every Spanish TV channel.

The idea is for the big money to trickle through Spanish society, where office workers, relatives, sports clubs and other groups often pitch in to buy tickets together.

The total prize money is up from euro1.8 billion last year.

[280plus]

Somehow I KNEW I could drum up some action on that car cleaning thing...



The best one was when my oldest came one day and asked if he could take my P/U to the HS where some club or aniother was washing cars. I almost had a little tear in my eye. He took the truck and the money I gave him for the wash and was gone most of the day. I saw him cruising up and down the street every once in a while. Much later he brings it back, tells me it was too late to get the truck washed so it was still dirty and that he had also spent the $ I gave him on who knows what else so I didn't get that back either. LOL,,,kids...

He hasn't driven the truck since and this was at least 5 years ago now.

[crt360]

If you gave my car a $20 wash it would disappear.

[K Frame]

"Much later he brings it back, tells me it was too late to get the truck washed so it was still dirty and that he had also spent the $ I gave him on who knows what else so I didn't get that back either. LOL,,,kids..."

Had I been the dad, that would have been the end of the world for that kid as he understood it.

[jefnvk]

"Much later he brings it back, tells me it was too late to get the truck washed so it was still dirty and that he had also spent the $ I gave him on who knows what else so I didn't get that back either. LOL,,,kids..."

Wow, light on the kid.

I got my brother's truck stuck one day (couldn't find where I was supposed to drop off the deer bait, which I didn't want to, but was told I was going to do, and took a wrong turn), brought it back covered in mud.  After much arguing about it, Dad mad I went down that trail, and me mad that they couldn't articulate where this perfectly visible bait pile was, I was told it would be washed that night, with the expense coming out of my pocket.

It was damn clean when it got back.

Edit: Anyways, 280 mentioned kids having the offer.  I'll be over when it is convenient for you, since all the other takers are old guys

[280plus]

Had I been the dad, that would have been the end of the world for that kid as he understood it.

You got the part where he still hasn't used my truck since? He doesn't even ask. It's a nice red F-150 XLT with ALL the bells and whistles. Not being able to look cool riding around in it impressing all the friends was punisment enough. I gave him some rope and he hung mimself with it. Besides, I always get a laugh out of kids pulling crap like that. Reminds me of myself...

[brimic]

My Grandfather was a mechanical engineer who NEVER threw anything away. He could also use the most amazing, seemingly worthless bits of crap to do incredible repairs on broken devices.

My father in law is liek that. We built most of a house from the crap he had stored up in his barn- plywood from variety store shelving, lumber scrounged from old barns etc.


When I was about 13 or 14, I had a conversation with my dad. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I said I liked life just the way it was living with mom and dad. He replied no, no, no. At 18 you're on your own,  when you make your first million you can move back in.
I have a pretty good start already, I hope to call that one in in about 20 more years.

[Brad Johnson]

My paternal grandparents passed away recently (within 6 months of each other after 67 wonderful years together). My grandmother never had what many snot-noses would consider a "real" job, though she outworked many who do.  She was a housewife, mom, and community volunteer. My grandfather was a cowboy all his life. They started out with nothing - zero. Aside from a few personal items, all they had was some furniture and 5 acres of land given to them by my great grandmother as a wedding present.

They lived very simply all their lives. They worked hard and made everything count. They bought what they needed - then maybe a few things they wanted - then plowed every extra cent went into buying more land or into the bank in t-bills, bonds, or CD's. They never hurt for money, even when things were thin. They just made do when they had to.

We had been doing some estate planning before their passing so nothing was much of a surprise. Suffice it to say that they had, through hard work, patience, and careful money management, turned that furniture and five acres into an estate worth well into seven figures.

It just goes to prove that it doesn't take much. Some patience and prudent money-handling habits can work wonders over time.

My Grandfather. This was taking shortly before arthritic hips and a poorly mended broken backed forced him out of the saddle forever. Short of losing my grandmother, not being able to get on a horse was the hardest thing for him to accept in all his 93 years. He spent the remaining few years prowling around in a pickup, but never gave up ranching.

His rope, saddle and spurs are retired now - they did enough work. And he and my grandmother are at rest. They earned it.