Problems that come with Sudden Wealth. And you make get them even if you are not there yet.

I used to like Quora a lot. It is a platform where you can ask a question and people answer it. The thing I appreciate a lot about Quora is the quality of the answer. They are typically a rather knowledgeable crowd, and from start till now, I haven’t encounter much trolls.

A very interesting question was asked and the answer most upvoted was interesting.

The question:

Is it worth leaving the family/community of the many middle class/poor, who have fun with each other with the few resources they have,…..to become…..the few rich who have fun with the material objects they have with the few friends they have?

The top voted answer comes from an anonymous person who by mid 20s made 15 million dollars. For a young person, that puts him in a position that many of us would dream of. The takeaway for wealth builders here is that, perhaps you have not reach his kind of wealth, BUT you are likely to hit his kind of ‘problems’.

From the 15 million 20++ year old here are some of his observations:

1. Life definitely gets better. You don’t have to worry about things that otherwise you would. It is better than not having this amount
2. You tend to fall into the trap of evaluating less
3. You just lost the most popular conversation topic: complain about money. Because you cannot complain about it anymore
4. People want something out of you. It makes you hard to tell who is your sincere friend or wanting a loan.
5. 4 gets infinitely worse if you are not married yet
6. With so much money, you have a fear that if you make the wrong steps, you are going to lose a lot of money
7. Your family and relatives look at you differently. You will have a hard time living up to their expectations when it comes to Christmas Gifts!
8. Satisfaction and Excitement level is the same. It is still a gauge. You get excited about the things you couldn’t buy in the first week, then you don’t feel it anymore. You need to LEVEL UP to feel it
9. Strong people stay grounded and the same. But you do change (even though you don’t think you did), sometimes for the worse

The second upvoted reply was from an entrepreneur who made 10 million in a dot com stock, lost it and left 50k, then made 2mil and then 20 mil later

1. Its horrible to lose that money the first time. It took him 4 years to get over it
2. The 20 mil doesn’t taste as sweet as the first 2 mil, which happiness effect last for 4 years

Someone made a list of a special perception of you as a person when you have this level of wealth, this by his interaction with an exclusive group of wealth people:

• If you don’t pick up the bill, you’re tight.
• If you don’t provide the loan or surety, you’re mean.
• If you’ve succeeded, it’s because you’re greedy, ruthless, workaholic, or mean. Your success is someone else’s loss, and the cause of their resentment.
• If you buy yourself something nice, you’re materialistic.
• All your new “friends” want to help you spend all your money, and con-men wanting to relieve you of it (don’t forget the stalkers and starstruck).
• You don’t know if the girl who likes you is into you, your money, or what you represent.
• If you say no to the sharks gathering (cough/wealth managers/cough), you’re obnoxious and/or foolish.
• Your children don’t value money as they know they won’t have to work for it or worry about it.
• If you can buy anything, nothing has any value anymore, and nobody can buy you a present, because you have everything.
• Few others can empathise with you, including your old friends.

The take away from this is that, as wealth builders this is where we aspire to, and we think that we get there, ALOT of the problems will go away and happiness will be achieved.

Perhaps there is a reason the rich sticks with the rich because they understand each other better, even though the unrich tribe will think they are obnoxious.

Even if i have not reach that stage, the path to building wealth have already resulted in some of these problem. So its not exclusive of being very rich.

And it seems Rich does not always Equal Happiness.

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