Random question for a story I'm working on:
Anyone ever been friends with someone who's very wealthy? What was that like? Any anecdotes you'd like to share?
I'm envisioning a character who's in his '30s and was a trust-fund baby. He's worth maybe 50 million. He's been to college, maybe grad school. (Still gotta figure out what he was doing after college.) He considers himself lucky to have the money, and he tries to be a "regular guy" as much as he can, but I figure being a trust-fund kid has got to make you blind to some things, right?
In my story he's a major character, and is funding something the protagonist is working on, as well as being a friend.
Yeah, but their family was very wealthy (tech money), not them specifically (in other words, lots of parental support and payment of school, but the kids were expected to work and take care of themselves, and have done so). So it was mostly things like being fairly casual about their first edition Faulkners.
I will note that West Coast Tech Money seems to be a lot different than East Coast Money.
I had a college friend who was a trust fund baby (her grandfather was Dubuque Meatpacking). She was really down-to-earth, but definitely had a more refined sense of style and dress, and didn't mind the fact that her art history degree only managed to get her a part-time job at a local gallery afterwards. Her penthouse apartment was right on Prospect Avenue in Milwaukee with a fine view of Lake Michigan from her balcony, and she had a few Milwaukee Bucks players living down the hall.
Yeah, but they were old money. I didn't even realize it until I was asking about one of the paintings in the house and I was told that they were loaning it to a museum in Germany because "[dad] feels very strongly that you should loan your art when asked" Very down to earth people, but they paid cash for her college at Columbia.
I worked with someone like that once, tommy. She worked with me at Lenox Hill Neighborhood Association, which was a sort of Y-type place, in the afterschool program.
We got federal funds to feed them dinner, and most of the kids there were kids of working parents without much money. C. was trust-fund all the way, lived in a floor-through apartment on the Upper East Side (as in, the elevator on her floor went to her apartment, and that was it -- the kitchen alone was bigger than the studio I was living in) and loved the kids a lot, but had a really hard time relating to some of them sometimes. She meant well, but it took her a while to stop taking for granted that all kids had two parents, and had big birthday parties, and hadn't necessarily been to The Metropolitan Museum of Art at age six.
Heh - that reminds me of when my neighbors took their almost-4 year old son to Di Fara, only to have him complain that he wanted "REAL pizza"...
In my story he's a major character, and is funding something the protagonist is working on, as well as being a friend
Tommyrot, there was a totally fascinating essay on the Atlantic website last week, from a psychologist who practice is entirely made up of the wealthy. It was sufficiently daunting to make me happy that I am not, in fact, really rich.
Among other things, the wealthy spend a lot of effort making sure they and their children are not kidnapped. Like, that sort of thing happens a lot. Way more than we hear about in the press.
Also they have a hard time making friends. Which I kind of get.
In'eresting... thanks for the trust-fund baby info.
