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Yesterday we drove by Mar-a-Lago. The flag was flying, but nobody was home. I had been there before. Actually, several years ago I had dinner there. The owner wasn’t home then either.
The houses in the neighborhood made me think. How poor am I? Wealth is quite relative for sure. I doubt I could afford the gardening bill let alone the property taxes on those homes.
Never fear, if you can’t afford one of the homes listed for $22,000,000, there is always a condo starting at about $1,200,000.
Many of the homes face the sea. Those on the intercostal waterway have plenty of dock jewelry siting idle. I once asked a crew member of one those yachts how much it took to fill the gas tanks. That was about ten years ago and the answer was $10,000. It’s another world.
The thing is, this is not the wealth of the big names. These are people we never heard of. People who own businesses, who quietly accumulate wealth. One person with a massive yacht owns multiple car dealerships. It does seem the secret to wealth is owning a business or starting one and issuing an IPO. That ship has sailed.
So, is there still hope or should we be content with our own success? I like to drive by those neighborhoods and dream. No envy though, I am more than happy with what we have.
Whenever I look at a beautiful home that’s larger than mine, I think “Lovely, but so much time and expense to maintain. And do the owners actually use all those rooms?” My 93-year old neighbor lives by herself in a charming corner-plot house where she mows the yard herself with a gas push mower. I’ve only been inside the first floor but it’s museum-worthy. Another neighbor said “I think she spends all her time cleaning.” To each their own.
Brings to mind the Morgan Housel reference to an excerpt from Jack Bogle: ” I came across this lovely anecdote from a book by late Vanguard founder John Bogle. This was an exchange Bogle witnessed at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island in New York. The late novelist Kurt Vonnegut informed his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.
Heller responded – “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . enough.” Fittingly, John Bogle titled his book “Enough.” “
Both Heller and Vonnegut had been through WWII. Heller survived 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier, and Vonnegut was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and spent time as a POW. I suppose it’s much easier to get to enough when you’ve survived those experiences.
Be content with what you have. It’s not a matter of envy, it’s a matter of living second-hand through the lens of a comparison of anything you do/have with others. Just be happy and content with your own success.
I, too, saw Mar-A-Lago…through The eyes of a television camera. In the late 1990s the A&E channel had a series called America’s castles. Mar-A- Largo was a featured segment, narrated by Dina Merrill, the beautiful actress, who was the last surviving child of Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post cereal fortune, and original owner, who was the richest woman in the world during her time.
I never forgot the stunningly beautiful mansion,or how