Randy Jones | May 27, 2009

If it’s not about the money, and money can’t buy happiness, then what are RMITs doing it for? As I’ve said before, money is a way to keep track, not of how rich you are, but of how successful. The wealth that comes from success is how they know they’re executing. So at what point do RMITs decide they’ve done what they set out to do, and settle down to play golf or sit on the beach? The short answer is never. RMITs seek accomplishment, and derive their happiness from their achievements. But just because they are happy does not mean they are satisfied.

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Tags: Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, Felix Rohatyn, IDG, New York University Medical Center, Pat McGovern, Rob Reiner, satisfaction

Randy Jones | May 21, 2009

It’s a cliché I heard a lot while I was writing The Richest Man in Town: “Money can’t buy happiness.” I can tell you that there are a lot of miserable rich people out there, and it is certainly true that pursuing money for money’s sake will not lead to a satisfying life. But for RMITs wealth is not only a tool to achieve great things and add value to the community; it’s also the reward for their hard labor, that allows them to pursue their passions and have a full, well-rounded life. Across the board, I found that having money is indeed related to happiness. And science backs me up: In April of last year, University of Pennsylvania economists Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers presented a study at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., on just this subject. According to the New York Times, Stevenson and Wolfers found that 90 percent of the households in America that have incomes of $250,000 or more call themselves “very happy.”

Category: #1: Seek Money for Money's Sake and Ye Shall Not Find, Money and Meaning, The Richest Man in Town book, The Twelve Commandments | No Comments »
Tags: Betsy Stevenson, Brookings Institute, Christel DeHaan, Georgia Lottery, happiness, John McAfee, Justin Wolfers, lottery, Mae West, Northwestern University, stuff, The Richest Man in Town, University of Indianapolis, University of Pennsylvania

Randy Jones | May 13, 2009

As I was conducting the research for what became The Richest Man in Town, I ran into a huge problem: How was I to write a book about the secrets of creating wealth, when in interview after interview, my subjects denied that they had set out to create any wealth at all? Almost invariably, the RMITs gave me some version of the line, “It’s not about the money.” Randal J. (RJ) Kirk, a biotech billionaire and the richest man in Belspring, Virginia, told me, “It’s a Zen thing—if you seek money alone as your ultimate goal, you are almost assured of not receiving any.” My initial reaction to statements like that was skepticism: Well, yeah, that’s easy for you to say as you sit comfortably upon your billion-dollar wallet. I thought this was simply a white lie, one of those things wealthy people say so as not to sound arrogant or greedy. And when I questioned them further, many of my subjects admitted that in youth what they wanted to be when they grew up was—rich. I can tell you, it’s very much about the money.

But after a hundred of those interviews, I can also tell you that for RMITs, money is just a yardstick, an indicator of something deeper.

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Tags: Belspring Virginia, Randal J. Kirk, RJ Kirk, wealth creation