The richest person you have personally known

[Scrapr]

Define rich please ?

If I had yours I'd throw mine away

Being in construction you can see ebbs & flows. I knew of at least 6 developers commit suicide during that thing that happened 10 years ago. Now, one or two I know are probably +$100mm. They lost $20mm on a horse deal that was mostly scam. One of the sons just got a big pro sports contract. Several 10's of millions. Ohhh, one more that sold the largest Real Estate company in town pre GR. Then invested in property during the low point. No idea how much he's got. His boys are running his RE company now. Probably a few more that are in the same range


I never had the cajones to leverage up like they did. But I'm happy for them...they still feed us a lot of work too!

 

[skipro33]

A high school chum of mine. He developed video games back in the 70's. I didn't realize it until I saw his name on the Activision game box in 1979. He's instrumental in real-time cloud-based collaboration systems, living in the San Francisco/Bay area. We sometimes get together when he's in town.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Cartwright

 

[gretah]

I know a lovely couple who inherited buckets of money.

They didn't have kids so they created non-profits in which they helped teen girls in third world countries get a basic education then go for the equivalent of RN nursing training away from home. The girls would get the training and then return to their home villages and become the medicos for the area.

The wife of this couple used to send me some of the the "thank you" letters from the nursing students. It was marvelous to read them!

 

[Helena]

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The richest person I've personally known was my cousin, Harvey Jones, who [many decades ago] created JTL [Jones Truck Lines] and became a multi-millionaire. He was famous in his small Arkansas hometown for continuing to wear his overalls to his office.

.

 

[gerntz]

My stewardess cousin married a guy who owned an airliner parts & repair company in the LA area. Worth $200M+ per her mother 20 years ago. Has home in Newport Coast. Kobe Bryant used to live across the street.

 

[Ally]

I went to Trinity University and many of the students were from incredibly wealthy families. In my dorm suite area, and across the hall, I had heirs of the King Ranch, the Tampax company (now with P&G), and the Maytag Company. There were many more in my class. All these kids were wealthy and if you asked them what they planned to do after graduation, they would say they had a trust fund or were independently wealthy and they weren’t going to work. I’m not sure who was the richest.

 

[rodi]

Several of my beach acquaintances are in 100M to a few billion range... but you'd probably not know it.... they're just folks who walk their dogs on the beach at the same time as me. I only know because I looked them up on forbes... Not close friends though - just 'hey - hows the pooch' kind of friends.

Of people I know a little better - a friend I went to hs with wrote a series of well known best sellers - he's probably the wealthiest of my hs graduating class. Another friend has done very well with real estate investing.

 

[SecondCor521]

Remembered another one, although it was just a passing conversation. My son and I went to the Goodwood event held in southern England - he's a car nut. Anyway, they do this thing where they get all of the supercars together and drive them up "the hill" which is really just a 1/2 mile long driveway that goes uphill about 40 feet. Anyway, they have professionals driving the Ferraris and Lamborghinis and such, but they're usually two seaters and so they'll invite special VIPs to ride along.

We were in the supercar paddock when they were getting ready and started chatting up a young lady who was going to be one of these special VIPs in the Aston Martin. We curiously asked how she got so lucky. She said her boyfriend's family is an Aston Martin VIP because they own like 20 of them. She then further explained that his family was well off because they had the patent on the little winglets on the end of modern jet airplane wings. Apparently licensing that patent to Boeing and Airbus and so forth is pretty lucrative.

She was quite nice and friendly and chatted with us for probably a good 10 minutes before she had to go.

I'm actually kind of amazed, either at how many really wealthy people there are, or at how well connected we are collectively on this board. I would have thought billionaires and hundred-millionaires would be rarer.

 

[BoodaGazelle]

I worked in high tech in greater Boston from 1980 to 2017. I knew many guys that made millions... some probably 10's of millions. While some worked hard, and were in fact that smartest guys I ever met, others just got lucky.

 

[TwoByFour]

I have a couple of friends in the $50-100M category. See them socially, go out to dinner with them. Both are self made, entrepreneurs.

I have a not close friend who is in the 10's of billions category. He is also self-made and a name you would recognize. His parents were very good friends with my sister's family. I would see this person over there at parties when he was a little kid. Now he is an all grown up gazillionaire.

 

[Jeb-NY]

As many of us here probably do, I know many people that have millions (1-10+) from just working good jobs, not spending everything we made and making good investments starting early.

The one really rich guy I kind of knew, I worked for two Summers as a gopher at his company, while I was in high school, my Father worked for him and got me the job. Went to his house for the once a year company picnic and all. He drove an old beat up Ford station wagon every time I saw him coming and going from work. As a teenage car crazy guy I had to snoop a bit when we were at his house to see if he owned anything interesting, and found a couple Mercedes tucked away in one garage with the doors open. One sign of someone that doesn't worry about money was from one years picnic to the next he moved an in ground swimming pool over about 30 feet because he didn't like it right in front of his patio.

I was told he was a self made millionaire (back in the 60s when that was a lot), his grandfather gave each of his grandchildren a million dollars when they turned 21 and he ran it up in to a small fortune.

 

[USGrant1962]

$3.2B per Forbes. He is just a regular guy when you meet him.

 

[socca]

A couple of family members married into wealthy families over the last 15 years, so I've been able to see how the 0.01% live (one guy was probably worth around $500M after his expensive divorce; after the stock market boom he's probably back to $1B).

I've seen firsthand the lifestyles of the rich and degenerate, and it's not for me. The poor folks probably don't believe it, but the oft-repeated claim is true - there are much more important things in life than money. Physical, emotional, and intellectual good health are as important as financial good health.

 

[Bamaman]

My boss' best friend was the president of a mid size bank in Arkansas. But his real job was to be a fishing and hunting guide, and "best friend" to Sam Walton. Mr. Walton drove a 1979 Ford F150 truck, and he was a wonderful, normal man.

There are rich men, and then there are really rich men. So many of the really rich people of today are trust fund babies and just play around. But Sam Walton started out running a Ben Franklin 5&10 store in Newport, Arkansas. And he worked hard to make Walmart what it is.

Many of the original Walmart manufacturers reps lived in Eastern Arkansas and Memphis--and very wealthy people. Sam called them into Bentonville one day and told them Walmart was at the point that they were going to purchase everything direct from manufacturers and bypass reps like themselves. He was telling them he wasn't going to be around long, and they better not count on Walmart in the future. Get out and find other customers. Many, many people in the Mid South purchased Walmart stock in the beginning, and many are fabulously wealthy.

 

[SecondCor521]

^I've had occasion to work with Walmart directly - I developed a product that went into all of their DCs and went out to the DCs to install, service, and update that product.

It's a really well run company.

 

[Breedlove]

He was probably the most hated man in Houston Texas bless his heart . He used to joke he bought an NFL football team for 125 k and built it to 1.1 billion . He is gone now but he had several businesses . He always told me at one time he owned almost all filling stations in Houston . He owned a ranch near our ONLY one but he had several .
He would have a picnic every fall invite friends and wow what a nice party and really a neat guy . We once won a big screen TV there . Got to meet a few retired and current NFL players through him

 

[braumeister]

I don't know anyone really rich, but I have a good friend who used to do fund raising for nonprofits. As a result, he met a lot of really rich folks. And today he is still good friends with a couple of them who are each worth well north of $500 million. What's interesting is that both of those megamillionaires keep such incredibly low profiles it's like they don't even exist except to their friends.

 

[catii]

I used to play table tennis with Bill Gates, but that was before he was rich...& couldn't even afford deodorant!

 

[NW-Bound]

Were you in this 1978 photo?

If you were, you are filthy rich now.

 

[Kroeran]

Once took a polo lesson in Texas in the 80s and an older very friendly fellow joined in who invited me for coffee after. I asked him what he did and he said he owned a bank. I asked how do you end up owning a bank. He said he was a cleaning products salesman and noticed all the public restroom soap dispensers were clogged and were labor intensive to clean. He got the patent for soap dispensers where the bag of soap had an integrated plastic nozzle that was thrown away with the bag. Built the company up to the point P&G I think it was bought him out for .5B. Then his Wall Street financial guy got lucky and doubled it. The thing is, Lost his marriage in the process, and after some wild years, later became religious and spent a decade trying to win his wife back, and did.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Once took a polo lesson in Texas in the 80s and an older very friendly fellow joined in who invited me for coffee after. I asked him what he did and he said he owned a bank. I asked how do you end up owning a bank. He said he was a cleaning products salesman and noticed all the public restroom soap dispensers were clogged and were labor intensive to clean. He got the patent for soap dispensers where the bag of soap had an integrated plastic nozzle that was thrown away with the bag. Built the company up to the point P&G I think it was bought him out for .5B. Then his Wall Street financial guy got lucky and doubled it. The thing is, Lost his marriage in the process, and after some wild years, later became religious and spent a decade trying to win his wife back, and did.

Did he buy the bank, before or after he became religious?

 

[Kroeran]

Did he buy the bank, before or after he became religious?

Don’t know if he formed the bank or bought it. Don’t know the timing you ask.

Guessing why you are asking, my life experience suggests banking that enables people’s wholesome dreams of owning a car, house or business, would not be incompatible with religiosity or scripture.

Based on other things he told me I assume widows and orphans got special treatment at that bank.

Lending between family, friends, neighbours, workmates, rarely ends well unless it is actually a gift with little expectation of repayment.

 

[jollystomper]

DW and I went to an Ivy League school, so we have a lot of classmates who are in the very high net worth category. Probably a half-dozen of them are good friends of ours who we have stayed in touch with over the years. The net worth of these friends probably starts at around $400M; we know for sure 2 of them are over a billion in net worth.

Three of them came from "money", the other three came from middle class/lower middle class backgrounds like DW and myself but had the skills, talent, and drive at the right time and right place. The similarities (and reasons we are still good friends): they are low key, confident and goal oriented but do not want the spotlight, and base friendship on character content and not material possessions. In school together these friends cracked the books just like everyone else, were relatively frugal, and those who came from money wanted to show they were not living off of their family name.

DW and I have been contacted by news/magazine organizations several times over the years about some of these friends, as folks have found out through various means our contact and wanted to get info on them... we have always declined, even when offered money, and those friends have appreciated that.

 

[gcgang]

The people I knew who had the most money never let on that they had a lot of money, so I don't know who had the most money.

 

[Rianne]

I only know what my good friends dad donated to a hospital. I have no idea of their total wealth, but the donation was $20M for a new BC wing.