Book Review: The Psychology of Wealth by Dr. Charles Richards
Dr. Charles Richards seeks to answer the question: What is our personal yardstick for wealth, and how did we come by it?
He does this by exploring several areas of psychology associated with money, such as how your self-esteem influences your wealth.
Dr. Richards’ style of writing is professional without being too dry. It feels as if you’re getting several therapy sessions without having to spend time sharing your history with money and the baggage that comes with it.
As you begin exploring how your mindset impacts your view of money, be sure to add this one to your “to-read” list!
Wealthy people don’t just have better toys; they have better nutrition and better medical care, more free time and more meaningful labor—more of just about every ingredient in the recipe for a happy life. And yet, they aren’t that much happier than those who have less. If money can buy happiness, then why doesn’t it?
Source: spring.org.uk
The First Trillionaire
Annie Lowrey:
If the United States averages 3 percent annual inflation, and the richest American’s fortunes keep up with Gates’, America would have a trillionaire in 98 years. But now let’s assume that the richest American’s fortune not only matches the rate of inflation, but outpaces it by, say, an additional 3 percent a year. At that rate, we should have a trillionaire in 50 years.
But, as Slate points out, it probably won’t be the United States that has the first trillionaire. We haven’t even had the richest person for some time — that’s now Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu.
Also interesting:
The richest-ever American, John D. Rockefeller, had a personal fortune of about $320 billion in today’s dollars, earned during the robber-baron days. And even the Rothschilds, the European bankers whose fortune ran into the hundreds of billions and whose name is a synonym for wealth, likely did not make it to a trillion.
According to recent studies, that person will be no happier than someone who earns $75,000 per year.
Source: parislemon
“How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts?”
World’s wealthiest people now richer than before the credit crunch, says study | The Guardian
That sounds about right.
Source: Guardian
Daily chart: which countries have the most millionaires? Switzerland has the world’s highest concentration of rich people; America has the most in absolute terms
Interesting chart. I wonder if the amount of holidays taken each year matches up…
(via ilovecharts)
Source: economist.com
Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
-Ernest Hemingway, the original “Most Interesting Man in the World”
The following is an excerpt from a WSJ.com article entitled, Don’t Envy the Super-Rich, They Are Miserable:
120 people with a net worth of $25 million or more–were asked to write responses to certain questions. Here are some of their responses.
ON ENVYING WEALTH. “If we can get people just a little bit more informed, so they know that getting the $20 million or $200 million won’t necessarily bring them all that they’d hoped for, then maybe they’d concentrate instead on things that would make the world a better place and could help to make them truly happy.”
“I feel extremely lucky, but it’s hard to get other, nonwealthy people to believe it’s not more significant than that. … The novelty of money has worn off.”
ON WHY THE POOR SHOULD BE HAPPY: “Nobody has the excuse of ‘lack of money’ for not being at peace and living in integrity,” writes one survey respondent of his family, with a touch of bitterness. “If they choose to live otherwise, that’s their business.”
ON LOVE: One mom writes that the men in her daughters’ lives could feel “powerless,” and that “their role as provider has been usurped.”
ON CHILDREN: Money “runs the danger of giving them a perverted view of the world.” Adds another: “Money could mess them up—give them a sense of entitlement, prevent them from developing a strong sense of empathy and compassion.”
“We try to get our kids to do chores,” one survey respondent complains, but it’s hard to get them to mow the lawn when “we have an almost full-time gardener.”
ON MEAN, RICH DADS: “I have grown up with a father who never wanted to give up control of his business but kept taunting me with the opportunity to step into his shoes.” His wife adds, “It has been difficult to feel financially independent when [my] spouse’s parents hold tight control over [our] children’s inheritance.”
WHY THE RICH AREN’T SMARTER: Other people “glorify wealth and think that it means that the wealthy are smarter, wiser, more ‘blessed’ or some other such crock.”
ON INHERITING: “Financial freedom can produce anxiety and hesitancy. In my own life, I have been intimidated about my abilities because I inherited money.”
ON LUCK: “I just happened to hit the jackpot by choosing to work for the right company at the right time. I have never thought that I in any way earned this amount of wealth. I’m just now feeling like I’m getting the hang of it.”
ON FRIENDS: “Wealth can be a barrier to connecting with other people,” writes the spouse of a tech wizard who cashed in to the tune of $80 million. “Not feeling you should share some of the stressors in your life (‘Yeah, wouldn’t I like to have your problems’), awkwardness re: who should pay at a restaurant.”
ON HATING THE HOLIDAYS: Robert A. Kenny, one of the study’s authors and partner at North Bridge Advisory Group, says the wealthy dread holidays “because they were always expected to give really good presents.”
Source: ilovecharts
The richest 1% of adults control 43% of the world’s assets; the richest 10% have 83%; the bottom 50% have only 2%.
Source: theeconomist
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
Socrates
