janitor leaves library and hospital $6m

mgarl10024

Gadfium wrote: »

There's a salient lesson in there. Many people go to extraordinary lengths to scrimp and save (just look at some of the examples in the Stingy thread), but also seem to fail to realise that life is for living and you don't get a second chance.
So this guy went around dressed in old clothes and left a fortune. Why bother amassing all that money and not use it during your one shot on this planet?

IronWolf wrote: »

Why does 'living life' have to equate to spending lots of money?

Spot on IronWolf. I think Gadfium is confusing wealth and happiness.

atush

jimjames wrote: »

Good story.

Also highlights the benefits of investing!

Shame this type of outcome isn't highlighted more when people say investment is too risky.

That is what I took from this story. I have heard many similar when the little old lady everyone thought was 'poor' died and left a 100K built up over a lifetime of scrimping.

Instead this man invested it. Doing good in both in his lifetime, and after his death.

A great lesson, in spending within/lower than your means, and investing should be part of everyone's finances.

Sometimes too many here think that only cash and property are the way to go.

ChesterDog

Hear hear.

Spending money, buying 'stuff' you don't need might be a way to happiness for some, but not me.

kidmugsy

mgarl10024 wrote: »

...I think Gadfium is confusing wealth and happiness.

I think he's confusing splurging wealth with happiness. Whereas this old chap may have gained happiness from the security of having wealth.

JohnRo

I watched Jon Richardson grows up, the other night, a C4 program about multi millionaire Brian Burnie and him selling everything for a cancer charity after his wife survived cancer.

She divorced him..

Gadfium

kidmugsy wrote: »

I think he's confusing splurging wealth with happiness. Whereas this old chap may have gained happiness from the security of having wealth.

I'm doing neither.
What is the point of investing and growing that money if its not to be used? He could have done a world of things during his life- there's a whole world to see out there. Why spend 17 years working as a janitor as a way of preventing boredom? I see it as a total failure of imagination when there is so much good that he could have done in his life with the money.

Maybe he was as happy as a pig in the proverbial? None of us knows. But he sure could have gotten a lot more happiness from seeing his moeny doing good in his life compared to just watching the zereos building up. If he was that altruistic why didn't he make donations to his good causes during his life and then he would have seen the happiness that his donations bought to others?
I might be slightly biased as I knew a family that my family was close to. There was two old brothers that went around like tramps, too miserable to heat their own house and living like hobos. Yet they had hundreds of thousands in the bank.

I see no point in amassing a fortune and then wandering about in rags like Mr Read did.

Glen_Clark

If American Hospitals and Libraries are anything like ours, with their battalions of overpaid bureaucrats, private finance initiatives, unworkable computer systems that cost more than the channel tunnel etc etc, they won't be as frugal with his money as he was

atush

No they aren't anything like ours.

Mainly because they actually make money- they have to as a commercial entity.

Paul_1977

I guess he did what made him happy, which what we all should do but most do not thorough fear of other peoples thoughts, hardly valuable on your death bed.

JohnRo

atush wrote: »

No they aren't anything like ours.

Mainly because they actually make money- they have to as a commercial entity.

That's not an accurate assessment, for profit is a minority and offer selective services, part of the reason US healthcare is in just as much of a mess as ours if not more, unless you're wealthy of course.