This NYT article was posted in another thread (http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/how-to-look-rich-60867.html#post1181555) but I think it deserves its own thread on hedonic adjustment.
Living Like a Billionaire, if Only for a Day - NYTimes.com
Well, screw it. If that's what it's like, plus the burden of "fiscal stewardship", then maybe I don't need to be a billionaire after all.
Tomorrow I'm going to load my own longboard into my own car and drive myself to the beach, where I'll have to lug it all the way down to the shorebreak by myself. Then I'll have to paddle it all the way out to the break to surf with a bunch of other non-billionaires. At least I think they're non-billionaires. Apparently it's hard to tell.
I haven't really appreciated before that financial independence means you can have the privilege of being left alone to enjoy your own privacy. At some point beyond that it's all too easy to start accumulating a staff and more obligations.
Thanks for posting this article last week, Omni, I enjoyed it!
Living Like a Billionaire, if Only for a Day - NYTimes.com
Like most of the wealthy people I’ve met while covering Wall Street, he plays down the effects of money. “I don’t think it changes you that much,” he said. “The happy guy who makes tons of money is still happy. If somebody’s a jerk before, he’s a jerk when he’s got a billion dollars.”
A raft of studies, including one in 2010 by Princeton researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, has underscored the fact that the rich are no happier than the merely comfortable, and are often burdened by the same problems: health and work issues, family concerns and worries about making ends meet.
One thing I’ve noticed so far is that when you’re a billionaire, you’re never alone. All day, your life is supervised by a coterie of handlers and attendants catering to your whims. In the locker room alone after my workout, I feel unsettled. Where’s my bodyguard? Where’s my chauffeur? Why is nobody offering me an amuse-bouche while I shampoo my hair?
I asked Dr. Grubman, the psychologist to the wealthy, if a billionaire’s lack of privacy eventually becomes second nature. “For these people, being able to be alone and relaxed with those people who are around you is rare,” he said.
I feel bad admitting it, but my billionaire day has been stressful. Without an assistant, just keeping up with the hundreds of moving parts — the driver, the security detail, the minute-by-minute scheduling — has been a full-time job and then some.
When my night ends well after midnight, after a performance of Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera and a raucous trip to a burlesque-themed nightclub called the Box, something funny happens. I realize that I’m experiencing the sensation that psychologists call “sudden wealth syndrome.”
The feeling is one of cognitive dissonance, a quick oscillation between repulsion and attraction. I’m drawn on one level to the billionaire lifestyle and the privilege that comes with it. But the lifestyle is so cartoonish, so over-the-top flamboyant, that I’m not sure I could ever get used to it.
Dr. Grubman assured me that if I were an actual billionaire, I would resolve the dissonance in time. Luckily, I don’t have to. When I wake up the next morning, my Timex watch, bought on sale a couple of years ago, goes back on my wrist. I put on my unshined shoes and slip on my blue jacket, the one with a hole in the pocket.
Well, screw it. If that's what it's like, plus the burden of "fiscal stewardship", then maybe I don't need to be a billionaire after all.
Tomorrow I'm going to load my own longboard into my own car and drive myself to the beach, where I'll have to lug it all the way down to the shorebreak by myself. Then I'll have to paddle it all the way out to the break to surf with a bunch of other non-billionaires. At least I think they're non-billionaires. Apparently it's hard to tell.
I haven't really appreciated before that financial independence means you can have the privilege of being left alone to enjoy your own privacy. At some point beyond that it's all too easy to start accumulating a staff and more obligations.
Thanks for posting this article last week, Omni, I enjoyed it!