janitor leaves library and hospital $6m

atush

I wish I had, I just paid full price for my celery this week lol

A rolex is fine if you want one and can afford one and that is what you want to spend your money on,

The thing is, if i bought one, i'd get one second hand and not gold. And i'd use it forever.

Can't ever remember looking at another persons watch and wishing it was mine. I've had a few good watches, and a few decent ones. and a few cheap ones. Been happy with most of them (apart from the white trendy swatch I got when they first came out and the band discolored but i digress).

I take pleasure in things i own, but they dont always have to be expensive. I just have to like them.

Bravepants

Perhaps he was a regular reader of this...

http://www.becomingminimalist.com/

P

darrensurrey

atush wrote: »

I wish I had, I just paid full price for my celery this week lol

A rolex is fine if you want one and can afford one and that is what you want to spend your money on,

The thing is, if i bought one, i'd get one second hand and not gold. And i'd use it forever.

Can't ever remember looking at another persons watch and wishing it was mine. I've had a few good watches, and a few decent ones. and a few cheap ones. Been happy with most of them (apart from the white trendy swatch I got when they first came out and the band discolored but i digress).

I take pleasure in things i own, but they dont always have to be expensive. I just have to like them.

I'm a bit celeried out now!

The great thing about keeping that Rolex is that you can pass it on to your kids who can either wear it or sell it for even more profit. All my watches are secondhand, many are under £10, many are over. I like watches not in an ego way but in a geek way.

Yesterday, I wore a 1950s wind-up that someone was going to bin. The date wheel had broken and stuck on "13" so it's the only day I can wear that watch.

chucknorris

Gadfium wrote: »

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.

I think people just have different philosophies, you could say much the same about me, as you did in the above post. I am (we are) quite wealthy, yet I wear a timex watch (it tells the time just as good as a rolex and I can see the stop watch without wearing glasses when I run). I drive a cheap car (Zafira, I like the space it provides for our bikes in the back, and the fact that you can slide the rear seat forward so that our dog is very close to us). I don’t spend a lot on clothes, why should I have to wear expensive clothes just to impress others (I really don’t care what they think). I still work because I like my job, although that may change because we may want to start spending winters in Spain and/or Portugal.

The things I like doing just don’t happen to cost much, I don’t do them because they are cheap, I do them because its what I like to do, i.e. walking with my dog and wife, running (usually with my dog and sometimes with my wife cycling alongside), cycling (both faster on the road or slower off road with my wife and dog), chess, bowls, cinema, having friends over to dinner/going to friends for dinner. We don’t really like over the top expensive restaurants, I’ve been a few times and friends have bought a bottle of wine costing over £300 and single shots of spirits costing over £150. I just think that it is a waste, honestly I would much rather have a normally priced drink and give the difference to the dogs trust, we much prefer normally priced restaurants.

vacheron

darrensurrey wrote: »

I'm a bit celeried out now!

The great thing about keeping that Rolex is that you can pass it on to your kids who can either wear it or sell it for even more profit. All my watches are secondhand, many are under £10, many are over. I like watches not in an ego way but in a geek way.

Yesterday, I wore a 1950s wind-up that someone was going to bin. The date wheel had broken and stuck on "13" so it's the only day I can wear that watch.

Yep. Watches were one of my more expensive hobbies!

I haven't bought one for years now, but I still have 10-15 which all get worn regularly, I bought them because I appreciate the craftsmanship and the engineering. I also learned watchmaking as I wanted to understand the function of every wheel, spring and mechanism. It also means I can repair and service my own saving hundreds of pounds.

I've only ever sold one watch (a Chopard LUC 1.96 1860) about 3 years ago. It was an amazing piece, but because of the small size and formality and me being a down to earth guy it wasn't being worn and is was silly leaving it in a safe and ensuring it every year.

As luck would have it, I sold it for a profit, but they were never bought as investments and the cost was mentally written off as soon as I purchased them.

PS, before someone posts saying a Timex is just as accurate, please get your facts straight... a quartz Timex is HUNDREDS of times MORE accurate than a fine handmade mechanical or automatic watch could ever hope to be!!!

chucknorris

vacheron wrote: »

PS, before someone posts saying a Timex is just as accurate, please get your facts straight... a quartz Timex is HUNDREDS of times MORE accurate than a fine handmade mechanical or automatic watch could ever hope to be!!!

I posted that in the post above yours, but to be honest I bought it mainly for the stop watch for when I run. I am very unlikely to need to measure 1/100ths of a second (trust me I'm not that fast to make it important) so it'll do for me. Of course I understand that watches are important to you, but they are not that much of a big deal to me.

darrensurrey

vacheron wrote: »

Yep. Watches were one of my more expensive hobbies!

I haven't bought one for years now, but I still have 10-15 which all get worn regularly, I bought them because I appreciate the craftsmanship and the engineering. I also learned watchmaking as I wanted to understand the function of every wheel, spring and mechanism. It also means I can repair and service my own saving hundreds of pounds.

I've only ever sold one watch (a Chopard LUC 1.96 1860) about 3 years ago. It was an amazing piece, but because of the small size and formality and me being a down to earth guy it wasn't being worn and is was silly leaving it in a safe and ensuring it every year.

As luck would have it, I sold it for a profit, but they were never bought as investments and the cost was mentally written off as soon as I purchased them.

PS, before someone posts saying a Timex is just as accurate, please get your facts straight... a quartz Timex is HUNDREDS of times MORE accurate than a fine handmade mechanical or automatic watch could ever hope to be!!!

I've dabbled with watches (read: destroyed 2 watches). I stick to replacing batteries and watch straps now.