EXCLUSIVE: Brian O’Kelley says he’s capped his wealth to $100 million. The tech founder tells Fortune, billionaires are wasteful, out of touch, and “othered” from real life.
O’Kelley’s [sic] says billionaires represent “such an incredibly ludicrous waste of money in a world where there’s so many people who don’t have that,” but he says actually being one is also “othering”—separating you from the limits and consequences that define normal life. “There’s something about keeping connected to normalcy that is really, really important,” the entrepreneur explains. “I don’t want a yacht and I don’t ever want to be able to be without consequences. I think that’s the biggest risk, is, how can we be accountable when we have so much money we can buy anything?”
He gets it. Past a certain point, wealth erodes your humanity. I think I’d have picked $100M too - at a safe 4% return that’s $4M per year, plenty for anybody to live on but not megayacht money.
I’ve always said If I could have enough where I could purchase in cash a cottage in a small cottage town here in Canada with a top of the line internet connection and I’d never have to work or worry about money for the rest of my life I’d be happy. what would I do? nothing. I’d pursue my hobby projects, more FOSS development, gaming, painting, build model kits, drink beer, eat whatever I wanted, and socialize with as few people as possible.
That’s all i want. I just want enough money right now to achieve that.
Plenty for a normal yacht, the kind you can sail by yourself or with a partner. Megayachts are basically private cruise ships that need a full staff to sail. Even if I had the money I wouldn’t want that!
Sure, but choosing to live on $160k/yr would be a bit much when you’re starting with $1.6B. I can’t fault him for still wanting to enjoy being wealthy instead of upper-middle-class and definitely don’t think it’s reasonable to complain that giving away 95% of his wealth is somehow not enough.
Even if it still feels a bit wrong, I can somehow reason with there being wealthy people and the motivation of potential lavish life, since some seem to really need it to make any effort in society. It’s somewhat understandable at least. Talking about tens of millions, with a bit of stretch hundreds - okay, I can stomach it even if it still seems extremely excess.
But billions… that’s already ten times more than that. How anyone can stomach that, I don’t get.
While my heart disagrees, my brain can get, with some effort, behind what this guy says. It kind of makes sense at least. Retaining your humanity and giving up such an inconceivable amount of money for that, really sounds pretty good in this world we’ve been living in lately. Sounds fucking weird to feel good about someone still having such excess in comparison to all the people struggling with next to nothing, but at least there’s some amount of backbone and clear thought involved.
Not sure what to think still. Like someone else commented, better reserve outright okaying this until we know how the money was given away.
But if it turns out to be sensible and humane, I can honestly say I’m fine with the kind of millionaire this one is. It’s not ideal, but it’s tolerable and in some niche sense, justifiable. If it’s all good, I even wish all the millionaires were like this… if we have to have them, as a compromise with the part of people who need all that, the “dream” to strive for, for whatever reason, at least let them be sensible and moral in some way, such as this…
I don’t think the premise that you can “make it” is wrong, and being somewhat wealthy is definitely motivation for many great things. If you’re running a tech start-up you’re probably putting in 60-80 hours a week and have to cope with a great level of stress. Of course being passionate about your product is a very important factor but without the allure of living very well afterwards I think it’d deter a lot of innovation, sports talents, musicians and whatnot.
I don’t blame this dude for still wanting to live his life while being quite ethical; hate the game, not the player (in this case at least). This is about how fiscally conservative I can be. Billionaires shouldn’t exist - and especially these insanely wealthy individuals taking over the world with tech, but I don’t think you can take it away completely. In an ideal world there wouldn’t even be millionaires but people are gonna be people and sociopaths and narcissists are always gonna exist and trying to rig the system.
You’d think that, but hcol is hcol. Then add kids. Now those kids can drive, go to college and need a lot of shoes (seriously, I feel like I should get a part time job at a shoe store). Gotta put some up for retirement too.
It goes faster than you’d think, and that’s with buying used cars, no luxury vacations, little travel, bargain shopping and doing a lot of my own home/car repairs.
You’re doing great! But I’m guessing that’s double income no kids, or at least no kids. I think we can allow this anti-billionaire ex-billionaire to reproduce and give his kids the luxury of graduating without debt.
I have to disagree with this unfortunately. Myself and many of my friends all make $160k or more each, but when it comes to life’s debts and surprises, family, medical bills, etc. - $160k is not enough. And that’s with me renting a room from family and not even really saving for retirement yet.
Yup, we make in that neighborhood. We live comfortably and frugally, and we still can’t just do what we want. We don’t sweat small purchases as much, and are upgrading things quicker than when we made less than half of that. But we still need to be smart about what we spend, especially with inflation the last few years.
The fuck are doing with your money? Ive never made more than £35k a year. And debt free at 47 with a fully paid off 3 bedroom detached house and fancy as fuck german car.
See that euro symbol in front of your currency those of us with dollars do not have good public transportation, we have to pay extreme amounts for health care and health insurance, we dont have public college for free or low cost, our housing is predatory, car centric infrastructure design necessitates car ownership with another high cost insurance, the car market has become predatory and ridiculously priced to the point its even inflated the used car market to match the prices of what new cars should be. There are numerous reasons the US salaries look better on paper than they do in reality. Should $160k a year be a great salary that leaves you with surplus, it really should and i wish that were the case. Even if you were to be able to secure a salary like that in a low cost of living area in the US it would go a decent distance but the problem being the places where that is the case usually have bad health care, shitty public schooling, lack of access to quality food, etc. which means most of those areas arent ideal for those with families unless they want to pay exorbitant amounts for private school, transportation costs to get to a location with quality health care access in the event they need it etc. Its not as straightforward as you think. We need major help across the pond here, and most people have become so brainwashed and dumbed down from our shitty education systems that they are willingly voting against their own interests because they believe the propaganda that one day they might be a billionaire.
What’s the net income? $160k after paltry long-term capital gains tax is going to go a lot further than a single person being taxed fully.
Federal Income tax of $160,000/year from long term capital gains: $24,000
Federal Income tax of $160,000/year from ordinary income (without FICA and Medicare): $ 27,938.50
So in this case its only a $3938.50 cent difference between federal taxation on ordinary income vs capital gains income.
State and local taxes are all over the place for capital gains. My State, as an example, treats any capital gains income as ordinary income at the full tax rate.
FICA and Medicare count. But then so does health insurance premiums.
I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world where you can’t get by on $160k. There are plenty of places where it can be tight, especially if the comparison is just a number of your choice.
“can’t get by on $160k” is changing the original premise. The original claim by that poster was: “My point is that $160k is enough for anybody. That much per person would give any household a very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area.”
“get by” ≠ “very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area”
So looking at the cheapest of the 3 listed here, the small 1 br 1 bath place in the East Village will set you back about $3200/month. Of our $8,800, we now have just $5,600/month for every other living necessities including food, transportation, clothing, and the big budget killer we haven’t talked about yet…health insurance/healthcare.
All of this also assumes a person would be single. If they have children a 1br apartment isn’t going to cut it, and the costs for raising children are also a large increase in monthly money burn. People still have to save for retirement too.
$160k/year is way low for: “That much per person would give any household a very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area.”
First, thank you for pointing out I made a mistake. I didn’t see the calculator broke it into twice a month paychecks.
Take home for one month for $160k/year would be: $8,784
I’ll correct my post, but $160k/year is still way too low to meet your “That much per person would give any household a very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area.”
Actually it’s not. I used to live in a moderately HCOL area (Denver metro, Colorado). Not even the highest. On a low six figure salary I was worried about rising rents and couldn’t afford to buy a home anywhere around there, they were all like $400-$650k.
Mind you, this is just me and my wife, no kids, and few debts, the costs were just extreme. Looking at the costs I was looking at a mortgage of $2500 to $3200, and that was when the interest rates were only a bit over 3%, they’re much higher now.
I’ve moved to the boonies and had a cheap home built for around $200k, and I’m on track to pay it off while also saving for retirement since I’m in my 40s and can’t do this shit forever. Thankfully, my job is fully remote and I’ve built my skills to be able to be fully remote, but not everyone can do that.
Sadly, not necessarily true. In the US, all it takes is one family member with a severe chronic illness tovery quickly erode that to the point that you are back at work. I think $10MM is the magic number but $100MM is a really good number to ensure that you and.your loved ones are taken care of.
To add to this, this also probably goes to something that seems to have been largely lost between the Baby Boomers and the next generations: the concept of passing on generational wealth. I know my parents have flat out said that they’re planning on using all the money they saved working.
Keeping enough money not just to ensure that your family is taken care of today but in the future for possibly generations to come is the kind of thing I can only wish to do.
To add to this, this also probably goes to something that seems to have been largely lost between the Baby Boomers and the next generations: the concept of passing on generational wealth.
As a young gen-Xer, I remember seeing a book title (aimed squarely at boomers, much like nearly everything was marketed my entire life. Well, until the culture essentially skipped to marketing aiming nearly everything at Gen Y, lol.) that was about saving for and spending all of your money and leaving your offspring essentially nothing.
I remember being kind of taken aback by the brazen “me generation” pitch - enough to pick it up and read the back and a bit of the intro to see if it was really what the book was about…I wish I could remember what book it was.
That’s a good point, I’m currently leaning on corporate sponsorship to support my wife’s severe chronic illness. It’ll be a lot easier once Medicare kicks in.
Yeah, I was thinking about fluctuating interest rates alone. If we are assuming 4% return on 4M and that’s where 160K/year comes from…that’s essentially a fixed income, risking all kinds of problems in the future, including very low interest rates and doesn’t even begin to get into problems like inflation spiking again or unexpected healthcare bills…
Not even close - megayachts are 9 figures and that doesn’t include the absurd crewing and other operational costs. There’s no way he could own let alone operate one on a $4M income.
I mean, I could probably retire right now with 4 million and live comfortably. But hey, I’m not gonna fault this dude for doing the right thing here and still being wealthy. Dude put over 90% of the funds back into causes and recirculating instead of hoarding it like some sociopathic dragon.
Uncrewed regular yachts small enough to singlehand are cheaper than a normal middle-class house. Hell, you can get an old one for $1 and some sweat equity.
(That’s a slight exaggeration – fiberglass and resin costs money – but there are definitely people who sail around on boats worth 5 figures and work occasional odd jobs when they need money.)
He gets it. Past a certain point, wealth erodes your humanity. I think I’d have picked $100M too - at a safe 4% return that’s $4M per year, plenty for anybody to live on but not megayacht money.
I’ve always said If I could have enough where I could purchase in cash a cottage in a small cottage town here in Canada with a top of the line internet connection and I’d never have to work or worry about money for the rest of my life I’d be happy. what would I do? nothing. I’d pursue my hobby projects, more FOSS development, gaming, painting, build model kits, drink beer, eat whatever I wanted, and socialize with as few people as possible.
That’s all i want. I just want enough money right now to achieve that.
And you would only pick 100mil because of how fucked up the world is. You can easly burn half a million in US if you have a serious health condition.
Plenty for a normal yacht, the kind you can sail by yourself or with a partner. Megayachts are basically private cruise ships that need a full staff to sail. Even if I had the money I wouldn’t want that!
The only people that should want one are cruise ship operators and you can rent one for a lot less.
Motherfucking $4MM total is enough to live on with a return like that.
Sure, but choosing to live on $160k/yr would be a bit much when you’re starting with $1.6B. I can’t fault him for still wanting to enjoy being wealthy instead of upper-middle-class and definitely don’t think it’s reasonable to complain that giving away 95% of his wealth is somehow not enough.
Even if it still feels a bit wrong, I can somehow reason with there being wealthy people and the motivation of potential lavish life, since some seem to really need it to make any effort in society. It’s somewhat understandable at least. Talking about tens of millions, with a bit of stretch hundreds - okay, I can stomach it even if it still seems extremely excess.
But billions… that’s already ten times more than that. How anyone can stomach that, I don’t get.
While my heart disagrees, my brain can get, with some effort, behind what this guy says. It kind of makes sense at least. Retaining your humanity and giving up such an inconceivable amount of money for that, really sounds pretty good in this world we’ve been living in lately. Sounds fucking weird to feel good about someone still having such excess in comparison to all the people struggling with next to nothing, but at least there’s some amount of backbone and clear thought involved.
Not sure what to think still. Like someone else commented, better reserve outright okaying this until we know how the money was given away.
But if it turns out to be sensible and humane, I can honestly say I’m fine with the kind of millionaire this one is. It’s not ideal, but it’s tolerable and in some niche sense, justifiable. If it’s all good, I even wish all the millionaires were like this… if we have to have them, as a compromise with the part of people who need all that, the “dream” to strive for, for whatever reason, at least let them be sensible and moral in some way, such as this…
I don’t think the premise that you can “make it” is wrong, and being somewhat wealthy is definitely motivation for many great things. If you’re running a tech start-up you’re probably putting in 60-80 hours a week and have to cope with a great level of stress. Of course being passionate about your product is a very important factor but without the allure of living very well afterwards I think it’d deter a lot of innovation, sports talents, musicians and whatnot.
I don’t blame this dude for still wanting to live his life while being quite ethical; hate the game, not the player (in this case at least). This is about how fiscally conservative I can be. Billionaires shouldn’t exist - and especially these insanely wealthy individuals taking over the world with tech, but I don’t think you can take it away completely. In an ideal world there wouldn’t even be millionaires but people are gonna be people and sociopaths and narcissists are always gonna exist and trying to rig the system.
My point is that $160k is enough for anybody. That much per person would give any household a very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area.
You’d think that, but hcol is hcol. Then add kids. Now those kids can drive, go to college and need a lot of shoes (seriously, I feel like I should get a part time job at a shoe store). Gotta put some up for retirement too.
It goes faster than you’d think, and that’s with buying used cars, no luxury vacations, little travel, bargain shopping and doing a lot of my own home/car repairs.
This is why I live in my medium size city in a “fly over” state.
I’m living very comfortably with my partner in a desirable part of Seattle with a mortgage and high medical bills for just over $120k annually.
You’re doing great! But I’m guessing that’s double income no kids, or at least no kids. I think we can allow this anti-billionaire ex-billionaire to reproduce and give his kids the luxury of graduating without debt.
Single income, kids grown up.
I have to disagree with this unfortunately. Myself and many of my friends all make $160k or more each, but when it comes to life’s debts and surprises, family, medical bills, etc. - $160k is not enough. And that’s with me renting a room from family and not even really saving for retirement yet.
Yup, we make in that neighborhood. We live comfortably and frugally, and we still can’t just do what we want. We don’t sweat small purchases as much, and are upgrading things quicker than when we made less than half of that. But we still need to be smart about what we spend, especially with inflation the last few years.
The fuck are doing with your money? Ive never made more than £35k a year. And debt free at 47 with a fully paid off 3 bedroom detached house and fancy as fuck german car.
See that euro symbol in front of your currency those of us with dollars do not have good public transportation, we have to pay extreme amounts for health care and health insurance, we dont have public college for free or low cost, our housing is predatory, car centric infrastructure design necessitates car ownership with another high cost insurance, the car market has become predatory and ridiculously priced to the point its even inflated the used car market to match the prices of what new cars should be. There are numerous reasons the US salaries look better on paper than they do in reality. Should $160k a year be a great salary that leaves you with surplus, it really should and i wish that were the case. Even if you were to be able to secure a salary like that in a low cost of living area in the US it would go a decent distance but the problem being the places where that is the case usually have bad health care, shitty public schooling, lack of access to quality food, etc. which means most of those areas arent ideal for those with families unless they want to pay exorbitant amounts for private school, transportation costs to get to a location with quality health care access in the event they need it etc. Its not as straightforward as you think. We need major help across the pond here, and most people have become so brainwashed and dumbed down from our shitty education systems that they are willingly voting against their own interests because they believe the propaganda that one day they might be a billionaire.
Thats a pound sign, not a euro sign.
We have healthcare, but we pay for it in taxes. Our housing costs are just as fucked as yours.
Stop making excuses for being shit with money.
Doesn’t the UK also have expensive housing? I’m guessing you bought 27 years ago? Wise move.
I bought it three years ago.
I tried to start / invest in 4 businesses prior to COVID and lost everything and then some.
That’s part of it. I’ll be paying for that the rest of my life probably.
But even ignoring most things related to that, $160k wouldn’t be enough and my wife and I don’t even have kids.
What’s the net income? $160k after paltry long-term capital gains tax is going to go a lot further than a single person being taxed fully.
So in this case its only a $3938.50 cent difference between federal taxation on ordinary income vs capital gains income.
State and local taxes are all over the place for capital gains. My State, as an example, treats any capital gains income as ordinary income at the full tax rate.
FICA and Medicare count. But then so does health insurance premiums.
I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world where you can’t get by on $160k. There are plenty of places where it can be tight, especially if the comparison is just a number of your choice.
“can’t get by on $160k” is changing the original premise. The original claim by that poster was: “My point is that $160k is enough for anybody. That much per person would give any household a very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area.”
“get by” ≠ “very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area”
EDIT: corrected post with biweekly to monthly pay
$160k/year is way low to live a “very comfortable lifestyle”, even more so especially in a HCOL area.
Lets use NYC as an example of a HCOL area. Here’s what that looks like for take-home pay:
source
Lets call it $8,800/month to make it easy.
So a person needs to house themselves. Lets look at NYC rents. Here’s median prices:
And here’s some specifics from a few places in the city:
source
So looking at the cheapest of the 3 listed here, the small 1 br 1 bath place in the East Village will set you back about $3200/month. Of our $8,800, we now have just $5,600/month for every other living necessities including food, transportation, clothing, and the big budget killer we haven’t talked about yet…health insurance/healthcare.
All of this also assumes a person would be single. If they have children a 1br apartment isn’t going to cut it, and the costs for raising children are also a large increase in monthly money burn. People still have to save for retirement too.
$160k/year is way low for: “That much per person would give any household a very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area.”
$160k / 12mo. ≈ $13k / mo.
You threw away $100k annually, chum.
First, thank you for pointing out I made a mistake. I didn’t see the calculator broke it into twice a month paychecks.
Take home for one month for $160k/year would be: $8,784
I’ll correct my post, but $160k/year is still way too low to meet your “That much per person would give any household a very comfortable lifestyle even in a HCOL area.”
You’re taking out too much tax. Closer to $9,300.
A household of two adults would have $320k gross annually, so twice that.
Also, I’m comfortably supporting two adults in a HCOL area, with a mortgage and high medical bills, for under $125k annually.
You don’t think that’s moving the goalpost just a bit by doubling the number of earners?
I’d be interested to hear how you’re accomplishing that. At a minimum, can I ask what your housing costs are?
Max out a 401k and IRA and lmk how much is left
(less than 8k/mo)
[Citation needed]
I cited my source for the taxation in my post above as well as the rate. Feel free to cite yours for discussion.
Can you just let this story be a good thing? In a sea of shit there was a nugget if uplifting news. Go be negative in one of the bad things post.
Ha ha ha ha no. Lemmykins hate people with money almost as much as they hate cops.
He could have given it all away and they would bitch about who he gave it to.
Probably. I’ll take the W. So shines a good deed in a weary world.
Actually it’s not. I used to live in a moderately HCOL area (Denver metro, Colorado). Not even the highest. On a low six figure salary I was worried about rising rents and couldn’t afford to buy a home anywhere around there, they were all like $400-$650k.
Mind you, this is just me and my wife, no kids, and few debts, the costs were just extreme. Looking at the costs I was looking at a mortgage of $2500 to $3200, and that was when the interest rates were only a bit over 3%, they’re much higher now.
I’ve moved to the boonies and had a cheap home built for around $200k, and I’m on track to pay it off while also saving for retirement since I’m in my 40s and can’t do this shit forever. Thankfully, my job is fully remote and I’ve built my skills to be able to be fully remote, but not everyone can do that.
Sadly, not necessarily true. In the US, all it takes is one family member with a severe chronic illness tovery quickly erode that to the point that you are back at work. I think $10MM is the magic number but $100MM is a really good number to ensure that you and.your loved ones are taken care of.
To add to this, this also probably goes to something that seems to have been largely lost between the Baby Boomers and the next generations: the concept of passing on generational wealth. I know my parents have flat out said that they’re planning on using all the money they saved working.
Keeping enough money not just to ensure that your family is taken care of today but in the future for possibly generations to come is the kind of thing I can only wish to do.
As a young gen-Xer, I remember seeing a book title (aimed squarely at boomers, much like nearly everything was marketed my entire life. Well, until the culture essentially skipped to marketing aiming nearly everything at Gen Y, lol.) that was about saving for and spending all of your money and leaving your offspring essentially nothing.
I remember being kind of taken aback by the brazen “me generation” pitch - enough to pick it up and read the back and a bit of the intro to see if it was really what the book was about…I wish I could remember what book it was.
That’s a good point, I’m currently leaning on corporate sponsorship to support my wife’s severe chronic illness. It’ll be a lot easier once Medicare kicks in.
Wishing the best buddy
It doesn’t make any sense to keep just enough, because then you may have to worry about weathering any economic storms in the future.
I think the amount he kept is reasonable, especially when they are pretty much one of a kind for doing this.
Yeah, I was thinking about fluctuating interest rates alone. If we are assuming 4% return on 4M and that’s where 160K/year comes from…that’s essentially a fixed income, risking all kinds of problems in the future, including very low interest rates and doesn’t even begin to get into problems like inflation spiking again or unexpected healthcare bills…
Joe Rogan’s punk ass couldn’t handle $100M
$4 million a year is absolutely mega yacht territory.
Not even close - megayachts are 9 figures and that doesn’t include the absurd crewing and other operational costs. There’s no way he could own let alone operate one on a $4M income.
I definitely underestimated the cost of mega yachts. But $4mil/yr is still and insane amount of money.
I mean, I could probably retire right now with 4 million and live comfortably. But hey, I’m not gonna fault this dude for doing the right thing here and still being wealthy. Dude put over 90% of the funds back into causes and recirculating instead of hoarding it like some sociopathic dragon.
Oh I don’t want anything I’ve said to come off as a criticism of what he’s done. I think it’s amazing.
Nah, just regular yacht
Yeah, and uncrewed, one where you can operate everything solo or as a couple. Big crewed ones can easily be 20k per day to run.
Uncrewed regular yachts small enough to singlehand are cheaper than a normal middle-class house. Hell, you can get an old one for $1 and some sweat equity.
(That’s a slight exaggeration – fiberglass and resin costs money – but there are definitely people who sail around on boats worth 5 figures and work occasional odd jobs when they need money.)
To buy, sure, but how much is fuel and dock fees? (I’m asking, I have no idea)
Well, they have sails and an anchor, so $0 and $0 if you’re hardcore about it.
It’s definitely really nice yacht territory but can’t afford the floating 100+ room compounds all the billionaires are buying.