... on money:
- You probably don't actually want to buy the thing. You just want the knowledge that you could buy it if you wanted to. This is why new purchases lose their luster immediately after credit card swipe. Freedom of choice is much more appealing than even the most desirable window candy. This lesson has saved me untold amounts of money.
- The mega-rich have an extremely difficult time finding items to buy whose quality is commensurate with the price they are willing and able to pay. The richest people on the planet may be able to buy a bigger house than you, because this is a commodity that can be scaled up arbitrarily high in size (e.g. the "Palazzo di Amore" in Beverly Hills has 12 bedrooms, 23 bathrooms, a vineyard, and parking for two dozen cars and was selling for a cool $195M a few months ago). But it is likely that they cannot find a pair of shoes that is 100x more comfortable than the ones you own simply by offering 100x the money you could. Companies that make extreme high quality goods generally don't exist for many everyday items. Barring bigger ticket items like houses and cars, you can probably wear the same shirt and use the same kitchen utensils a billionaire does. So if you're the type of person who doesn't care to own the latest designer sportscar or be counted among the Most Expensive Listings on Zillow, you can likely enjoy the same quality goods as someone whose net worth is many times your own.
... on love and connection:
- Don't assume that people with a high Intellectual Quotient, or "IQ", have an equally high Emotional Quotient, or "EQ". In fact, these two metrics are often inversely proportional, as discussed recently by Walter O'Brien on the Tim Ferriss podcast (skip to 15:05), a man who tips the IQ scale at 197 (and that was at age 9). Folks with high IQ often enjoy high income-earning potential, which may appear to be a happy side-benefit for those of us who pursue partners primarily on the basis of intellectual capability and camaraderie. But caveat emptor: you may find that the person who can give you anything money can buy is completely and maddeningly bereft of the ability to give you anything that money cannot buy.
- If the wealthy person is many years your senior (true in my case), the following applies: it is 10x more difficult to communicate with a person who grew up with a completely different set of TV shows, books, movies, hit radio songs, memories of important historical events, and general pop culture references than you. Far from being merely circumstantial details, we tend to anchor our understanding of the world and ourselves through metaphors constructed from allusions and references to familiar things from our past. Like a good work of art that effectively portrays an emotional sum in a single image, a literary or movie character can encapsulate a life experience or observation and afford us the opportunity to express some aspect of ourselves concisely in ways it is difficult to appreciate until this benefit is removed. When the source of these metaphors is unknown or misunderstood, it complicates our ability to relate to each other on a deep level, which threatens the relationship in unexpectedly profound ways.
