From the SMH:
Tycoon trades high life for bedsit
PARIS: An Austrian tycoon is giving away every penny of his £3 million ($5.3 million) fortune, having realised that his riches made him unhappy.
Karl Rabeder, 47, a businessman from Telfs, near Innsbruck, is selling his villa with lake, sauna and spectacular mountain views over the Alps, valued at £1.4 million.
Also for sale is his old stone farmhouse in Provence, on the market for £613,000. Already gone is his collection of six gliders valued at £350,000.
Mr Rabeder has also sold the interior furnishings and accessories business - from vases to artificial flowers - that made his fortune.
''My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Money is counter-productive - it prevents happiness.''
Very brave of him to do that.
ReplyDeleteInteresting isn't it that someone who "had it all" recognises that it isn't enough
ReplyDeleteI think we all go through times in our lives when we "collect". For many girls, it's clothes, for boys, it's often sports. Then we grow out of that and into other stuff, houses, cars, etc. Then finally we reach the realization that we don't really need this stuff, it's just more to take care of and we try to downsize in order to focus on other things that arer more important to us. It's a kind of maturing, I think. But in any case, it does take a lot of bravery to go from one lifestyle to another that represents such a drastic change. He must strongly believe in what he is doing.
ReplyDelete