Living Rich by Mark Ford

LIVING
RICH
HOW TO LIVE AS WELL
AS A BILLIONAIRE ON A
MIDDLE-CLASS BUDGET
By Mark Morgan Ford

Copyright © 2014 by Cap & Bells Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.

Published by:
Cap & Bells Press
New York, New York
www.capandbellspress.com
This book is based on essays by Mark Morgan Ford that
originally appeared in the Wealth Builders Club. The Wealth
Builders Club is published through The Palm Beach Letter,
a general circulation publication that aims to provide its
subscribers with useful advice about building wealth, living
well, and investing.
For more information about The Palm Beach Letter,

visit www.palmbeachletter.com.
Table of Contents
Introduction.....................................................................i
Part I:
Material Things—Having the Best That Money Can Buy
Chapter 1
Living Rich Is All About Spending Wisely................................3
Chapter 2
The Rich Man’s Home: Finding It..........................................7
Chapter 3
The Rich Man’s Home: Making It Ever Richer and More Perfect.....21
Chapter 4
The Rich Man’s Bed...........................................................27
Chapter 5
The Rich Man’s Car...........................................................43
Chapter 6
The Rich Man’s Meal..........................................................51
Chapter 7
The Rich Man’s Wine Cellar................................................63
Chapter 8
The Rich Man’s Wardrobe...................................................81
Chapter 9
The Rich Man’s Vacation....................................................93
Chapter 10
The High Cost of Buying Prestige...................................... 103
Part II: Developing a Rich Mind
Chapter 11
The Most Important Thing I Ever Learned About Living Rich..... 107
Chapter 12
Buying Happiness........................................................... 113
Chapter 13
Discovering Value and Purpose......................................... 119
Chapter 14
Life’s Trickiest Trade-Off.................................................. 123
Chapter 15
Life-Enriching Choices..................................................... 133
Chapter 16
Richness From Art.......................................................... 143
Chapter 17
Richness From Music....................................................... 153
Chapter 18
Richness From Reading................................................... 159
Chapter 19
Richness From Movies..................................................... 167
In Conclusion.............................................................. 173
Introduction
When you think about the rich—the really rich—you may find
yourself marveling at their… well, their money.
Take Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men. If you think $10
million is a fortune, consider this: He has 5,000 of them. If he put
his money in $1,000 bills, he’d have 50 million of them!
How great could you live if you were as rich as he?
You could have the perfect home, drive luxury cars, enjoy all of
your favorite toys, eat the most delicious meals, and take the most
amazing vacations… and you’d never worry about money!
Sounds good, right?
But do you really need $50 billion to enjoy that kind of lifestyle?
Wouldn’t $50 million do just as well?
Of course it would. So would $25 million.
Hmmm. Something is going on here that we need to think about.

On the one hand, there is no doubt that you need a significant
amount of money to live like a billionaire. On the other hand, it
may be much less than you would expect.
My Aha! Moment
It so happens that I’ve been thinking about this for years. It began
on a vacation in Rome when. I was fifty years old. I should have
simply enjoyed exploring the city with my wife, K. Instead, I
couldn’t stop running business and financial plans through my
head. It made me wonder why I was still caught up in this quest
for more money. “How much do I really need in order to have
everything I could possibly want?” I asked myself.
i
The answer was easy: I already had enough money. More than
enough. Yet I was still chasing wealth. And I wasn’t really enjoying
it. I realized that I couldn’t enjoy it precisely because I was chasing
it. It was an obvious irony that had, until that moment, eluded me.
So as we were passing over a bridge that crossed the Tiber, I

decided that increasing my wealth would no longer be a goal of
mine. From then on, I would focus on getting the most out of every
thing and every experience that I was fortunate enough to have.
And that is exactly what I did. But first, I had to figure out what,
exactly, gave me the greatest pleasure.
As it turns out, this was a two-stage process… beginning with the

material things.
ii
Part I
Material Things—Having the

Best That Money Can Buy
Chapter 1
Living Rich Is All About

Spending Wisely
In this book, I am going to prove to you that—if you are willing to
do some careful thinking and make wise decisions—you can live
just as well as Bill Gates on a fraction of his income.
Let’s start with this: With respect to acquiring material things, what
advantage does great wealth provide?
The most obvious answer is that great wealth allows you to buy
whatever you want. The price of anything is no longer a barrier. With
that barrier removed, you could easily own the finest material things.
That sounds like a significant benefit. But there are two problems
with that thinking.
First, just because you can afford to buy something that is

expensive doesn’t mean you will enjoy it. You might one day, for
example, be able to afford a yacht. But if you get seasick (as I do),
owning a yacht isn’t likely to give you any pleasure.
And even with something that you do enjoy––say, a fine

timepiece––buying the most expensive one doesn’t mean you are
buying the best.
Let me give you a few more examples.
Driving Like a Billionaire
The most expensive sedan in the world (as I write this) is a Maybach
Landaulet. It has a 12-cylinder turbocharged engine that reaches a
top speed of 155 miles per hour. Its price tag: $1.4 million.
Chapter 1 - Living Rich Is All About Spending Wisely 3

I could afford to buy a Landaulet. But I don’t own one. Why?
Because it isn’t––in my opinion––the best sedan in the world.
There are at least a half-dozen that are better than the Landaulet,
and most of them are less than half the price.
My personal choice for “best sedan in the world” is the BMW 760Li.
Like the Landaulet, the BMW 760Li has a 12-cylinder

turbocharged engine that reaches a top speed of 155 miles per hour.
Plus, it is better looking, better designed, more reliable—and it
drives like… well, you’d have to come over and try out my car to
understand.
You can buy a new BMW 760Li for $140,000 or a used one
with 40,000 miles on it (barely broken in) for less than $40,000.
The BMW will run like a top for twenty years and look elegant
throughout its lifetime.
The Landaulet will start to look foolish the moment you drive it
out of the showroom. (Car experts will know that you don’t know
squat about cars.) And it will look sillier every year thereafter
as you plow tens of thousands of dollars into it to keep it going.
Amortizing a $40,000 BMW over twenty years means you are
paying something like $170 per month to own it. That’s the same
price you’d pay for a new Hyundai.
In other words, you could be driving the best sedan in the world for
about $170 per month. So why aren’t you?
This is the sort of dialog I want to have with you in this book.
Sleeping Like a Billionaire
What is the one thing, besides working, that you spend the most
time doing?
If you are like most people, the answer is sleeping. We all know
how important a good night’s sleep is. People who sleep well are
happier, healthier, and even wealthier. (Studies prove it.)
4 Living Rich: How to Live as Well as a Billionaire on a Middle-Class Budget

So what does a billionaire want out of his sleep time? I’d say the
same thing you do: blissful, uninterrupted unconsciousness. And what
will give you that (besides peace of mind, which you can’t buy)?
Answer: a great mattress!
If you were a billionaire, you could buy the most expensive

mattress in the world. But is the most expensive mattress
necessarily the best? You already know the answer to that question.
Dressing Like a Billionaire
What does it cost to dress like the world’s richest people? Not
much—if you can forget about buying brand names at expensive
stores. But to do that, you have to think about what clothes mean to
you and what you want from them.
I’ll explain how to do it and how to make all of your clothes-

buying decisions simple. Your closet will be full of nothing but
clothes that make you feel rich and comfortable. It won’t be
crowded, as it is now, with clothes that make you look and feel…
well… less than rich and comfortable.
The Point Is This…
Contrary to popular opinion, most of the best material things in

life are affordable. They are not always cheap—quality never is—
but they are almost always within the financial reach of middle-
class wage earners. So in the first part of this book, we will be
determining what quality means and identifying the best products
and where and how to acquire them.
If you buy them selectively and use them with care, you can enjoy
a life as materially rich as Bill Gates on an income that wouldn’t
get him through lunch.
Chapter 1 - Living Rich Is All About Spending Wisely 5

Chapter 2
The Rich Man’s Home: Finding It

Bob (not his real name), my nearby neighbor, lives in a
15,000-square-foot house built in 1992. It has seven bedrooms,
nine bathrooms, a two-bedroom guesthouse, and a garage that can
accommodate six cars and a stretch limousine.
On the south lawn stands an immense gazebo—such as you might

expect to find in a town plaza. Beside the tennis court, manmade
grottos and streams feed an Olympic-sized swimming pool
surrounded by limestone goddesses.
The façade of the house has two-story ionic columns supporting a

porch that overlooks the beach. Everything—from the perimeter
walls to the roof tiles to the statuary—is white.
Bob’s house is huge. It is imposing. From the outside, it says, “I

spent millions on this house. More than you will probably earn in
your lifetime. Aren’t you impressed?”
But it is in one important way poor. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Sheila (not her real name), a friend who lives a few blocks away,
has a 1,400-square-foot clapboard-sided bungalow built in 1940. It
has two bedrooms, a vintage kitchen, and a screened-in porch on
the side looking onto an English garden. Even from the outside,
Sheila’s house says, “I’ve spent years making this my own. Would
you like to know me?”
It is small. It is friendly. And it feels rich.
The house you live in has an enormous effect on your quality of

life. It is where you spend most of your time, where you raise your
family, and where you entertain friends.
Chapter 2 - The Rich Man’s Home: Finding It 7

Your house is the haven you return to after working, where you
enjoy family meals, exchange gossip, conjure up dreams, and make
love. It is also a place where you keep your favorite books and
display art and family photographs and travel souvenirs.
Your house is your home––your headquarters, a shelter and a

retreat. It is where you can or should spend most of your best time.
Your house may also be your most expensive single possession.

Whether you own it outright, have a mortgage, or rent it, your
house is a significant part of your budget.
In terms of living rich, then, your house is at or near the top of the list.
Cost of Use: A Wise Way

to Think About Owning Things
Many people believe that owning a house is always

financially better than renting one. They point out that when
you own a house, you get the benefit of price appreciation.
“Why should I fork over several thousand dollars per

month in rent if, at the end of the day, I have nothing to
show for it?” they say.
To arrive at the right answer to this question you must

understand a concept I call “cost of use.” By cost of use I
mean the full cost of any non-consumable good over a period
of time. Cost of use can be applied to cars, boats, planes,
lawn chairs, silverware, writing instruments and, yes, houses.
Right now, for example, I’m shopping for an apartment in

New York City. K and I are looking for a pied-à-terre in
downtown Manhattan so we can be close to two of our sons
who live in Brooklyn. I could afford to buy the apartments
we are looking at. But because I now think in terms of the
cost of use, I’m pretty sure that would be a bad deal.

A bit of arithmetic will demonstrate what I mean.
(In the following example, and in others that follow, I’m

going to use numbers that may be true or may be invented
to simplify the math. Please don’t judge me by them!)
The apartments we are looking at are in the $1.3 million to

$1.7 million range. So let’s assume that I buy one for $1.5
million and hold onto it for ten years. What would be the
cost of use on a yearly basis?
The first step is easy. We take the $1.5 million price and
subtract it from the net price I think I’d be able to sell it for
in ten years. Assuming an annual appreciation of 4 percent,
the apartment would be worth $2,220,000. I would stand to
make a profit (a capital gain) of $660,000.
That’s an argument for ownership.
But now I have to figure in the cost of plunking down $1.5

million in cash––the money I would have made by investing
that same $1.5 million in another investment or group of
investments. Assuming I could get a 4 percent yield on that
$1.5 million, it would be a wash at the end of the ten years.
Okay, so far it’s a tie.
Now let’s look at the other costs of ownership.
When you own real estate, you have property taxes. From
what I’ve seen so far, I’d be paying about 1.5 percent on
the appraised value of the apartment. The appraised value
would very likely be the price I paid for it. So that is a cost
of $22,500 per year.
Then you have association fees. The apartments I’m

looking at average about $35,000 per year.

And then there is insurance and maintenance. I’m
estimating that will run me $22,500 per year.
So the total cost of owning that apartment would be

$80,000 per year.
Now let’s look at renting.
You would think that if the rental market were “efficient,”

rental costs would amount to about the same thing: $80,000
per year. In fact, because of factors we don’t need to
discuss here, it would cost me less than that to rent one of
these apartments. My best guess is that it would cost me
between $4,500 and $5,000 per month, including fees.
Bottom line: It would be about $20,000 per year cheaper to

rent one of these apartments than to buy. Over a ten-year
period, that’s a savings of $200,000.
So, in this case, renting would be the better choice.
You can do the same analysis with cars. Rather than

pretending that the sticker price of that Mustang you want
is the cost of owning it, consider all of the costs, including
insurance, gas, maintenance, and depreciation (i.e., cost
versus resale value). Then make a realistic judgment about
how many years you will keep it. And then you will have
your annual cost of use.
This will make it very easy for you to compare leasing (renting)
versus owning. You won’t make the mistake of thinking that
either the sticker price or the monthly lease rate is your cost.
You will make smarter decisions and have fewer regrets.
Understanding the cost of use has saved me hundreds of

thousands of dollars (if not millions). It was a big, big eye-
opener for me. I hope it does the same for you.

What Makes a Home “Rich”?
About a year after he moved in, Bob invited me to stop by his

immense, white house for a “cook’s tour.” I was delighted to go,
wondering whether the impression I had of him, formed by my
reaction to the exterior of his house, would be validated by the
interior design and furnishings. I was also eager to get to know this
mysterious, rich neighbor.
I wasn’t sure what to expect as he ushered me into the foyer, but I

did expect to see lots of space. There would be more space. Lots
of it. But not in the foyer. Instead, I found myself standing just six
feet away from an oversized rococo-styled elevator.
Bob saw my face and took my expression of shock as one of awe.

“Isn’t it fantastic?” he asked proudly. “I bought it from a hotel in
Florence. Guess how much it cost!”
“Gee, I don’t know, Bob. Thirty grand?”
“No way! It cost me $150,000!”
I studied his face. There was no irony there––just a beguiling,

childlike pride. I felt at once horrified and ashamed of myself. I
brought a smile to my lips.
“A hundred and fifty? That’s amazing. Congratulations!”
The entire tour was like that. Everything was oversized and garish
and stupidly expensive. Nothing was comfortable, clever, or
personal. It was all designer-selected by someone who must have
been not just aesthetically illiterate but emotionally unbalanced. It
was meant to impress. And it did.
But not as Bob had intended. My feeling was, “You poor, dumb
fellow. You’ve been boondoggled and hornswoggled.”
Back to Sheila’s house…

The inside is a model of proportion and taste, just like the outside.
Art and objects of art, carvings and prints––mementos from her
world travels––as well as hundreds of books she’s actually read,
books that helped make her what she is, fill every room.
I remember the first time I saw it. Sheila didn’t say much as she
led me from one room to the next, but I kept stopping her to ask
questions.
“That’s a very cool piano. How old is it?”… “I see you like Haitian
art. Have you been to Haiti?”… “I’m surprised to see all those
books on astronomy. What’s that about?”
During that one brief visit, I learned a great deal about Sheila—
things that made me realize what an interesting person she is. But
my questions only scratched the surface. There were a dozen things
in every room that I wanted to know more about.
My tour of Bob’s house taught me much less about Bob. I learned

that he is a nice person who became very wealthy and then spent
his money foolishly.
Bob spent more than $10 million on a house that tells me he is

“living poor.” Sheila spent a tiny fraction of that on a house that
tells me she is “living rich.”
From a Mud Hut…

I have lived in a three-room mud hut in Africa, an old townhouse
in a bad neighborhood in Washington, D.C., a starter home in West
Boca Raton, Florida, and a four-bedroom custom-built house in a
gated community in East Boca… all before moving to my current
house, a renovated Mediterranean-style compound across from the
ocean in Delray Beach.
I’ve enjoyed all of my homes. But I have never forgotten a thought

I had while sitting on the porch of that three-room mud hut in
N’Djamena. It was late afternoon. A sun-shower was pelting
the trees, rainwater was cascading over our tin roof. On my

cassette player: Mozart’s Adagio in B Minor. Suddenly, a monkey
scampered out of the rain and sat beside me, unperturbed by my
presence, waiting for the rain to stop.
The thought was: “Someday you will have a big, fancy house in
a fancy neighborhood. But you will never live in a better home
than this.”
It wasn’t just the view of our rain-soaked garden or the friendly

intrusion of my primate cousin. It wasn’t just knowing that I lived
in a community of interesting people who cared for one another
and that I could get to work in fifteen minutes on my bike and that
K and I were safe.
It was the fact that this little house with its outdoor kitchen and
cold-water shower met all of our needs. It met them perfectly
because of who we were at that time.
In the thirty years since then, I have thought a good deal about
what makes for a rich life. I have ideas, which I’ll be sharing with
you, but I also have a conclusion that I want to discuss now: Living
rich has little or nothing to do with how much a house costs.
Newer and Bigger: The Habit of

Home Ownership in America
In the “old days” in the U.S., people better understood the idea of
a house as home. (This is true in some countries in Europe today.)
People kept their houses for lifetimes—sometimes for generations.
They updated them as their circumstances changed and improved
them in countless little ways. These homes appreciated in value—
financial and personal––as each year passed.
At the end of World War II, the idea of a house as home changed.
Because of the need to accommodate hundreds of thousands of
returning soldiers and their young families, a new kind of house––
houses that were built quickly and meant to last fewer than fifty
years––was invented. They were small and cheap, and they were
all pretty much the same.

As the economy improved and families grew, the idea of “moving
up” from a “starter house” to a “better” one replaced the old idea of
gradually updating the house you had. A significant raise in salary
was an opportunity to get out of the old house (which was already
showing signs of wear) and into one that was newer and bigger.
The preference for new and big made sense for people in those
post-World War II houses. Within ten years, the typical young
couple had three or four children. The house they “needed” then
had a larger kitchen and more bedrooms. And if it was new, that
meant no need for reroofing and repainting––good reasons to
justify the purchase.
But these second houses were, like the starter houses, pretty much
indistinguishable from one another. A typical development of 300
houses might have four or five “models,” each with an identical
floor plan and all with similar landscaping. And, like the starter
houses, they were not built to last.
When the markets were blazing in the 1980s, the newly rich began
buying oversized million-dollar houses. Once again, most of them
were in developments that offered models in several “classic”
styles: perhaps a French chateau, an Italian villa, and a British
manor house. But these houses were not made of timber and stone
and plaster. Construction crews built them with two-by-fours and
drywall. And, once again, they were meant to fall apart in thirty or
forty years.
The point of this little history is to highlight the fact that most
Americans today don’t think of their homes as intergenerational
habitats. They think of them the way people learned to think about
houses in the 1950s: as temporary structures that would do until
they could afford to buy something bigger and newer.
Bigger and newer. Those are the primary values of U.S. home
buyers. And that is why most of the houses in any upscale suburb
are identical—oversized and largely empty of the personalities of
the human beings who live in them.

How Home Ownership Should Be
Your home should be a place that gives you constant pleasure.

You should love everything about it—from its architecture and
landscaping to its interior spaces and furnishings.
You should enjoy spending time in every part of your garden and
in every room—in the kitchen and living areas, in every bedroom,
and even in the bathrooms and closets!
The maintenance and upkeep of your home should not be, as it

is for many, nothing but an expense and a hassle. It should be a
happy, ongoing project for you—a work of art that you continue to
refine and reshape.
Ideally, your home should be big enough to accommodate the

favorite activities of everyone in your family, adults and children.
When you are starting out, you can’t expect to be able to afford a
house with that kind of space. But if you “move on up,” as people
tend to do, you will one day have a house that at least has the
potential. When that happens, I would urge you to consider making
that your permanent home.
The reason I say that is because the financial value of a house––

and this is true for just about every significant material good that
you have––is greatly affected by how long you use it.
Moving from one house to a “better” one every three or four years
may feel like progress. But I’m going to argue that at some point
you need to step off this escalator of spending and start to enjoy the
benefits of long-term possession.
In other words, to optimize the value of your home, you should

not think of it as temporary. You should keep it as long as you can.
(This, as you will see, is an overarching principle of “living rich.”)

An Argument for “Staying Put”
Keeping a home for a long period of time gives you the best
chance of seeing its monetary value appreciate. The rate at which
its dollar value goes up compounds over time, just as it does with
any other investment. If you’ve ever looked at a compounding
graph, you know what I mean. For the first ten years, the
appreciation is meager. From ten to twenty years, it is interesting.
As you approach forty years, it becomes astronomical.
Another financial benefit of keeping your home for a long time is

that it gives you a chance to save a great deal of money. How?
It comes back to cost of use––because the cost of living in a

particular house is far greater than the cost of the house.
There are utilities, insurance, taxes, etc. that typically increase in

direct proportion to the dollar value of the house. There are also
less obvious costs—call them social costs—such as what sort of
car you drive, what sort of furniture you buy, whether you send
your kids to private school and, if so, what schools you choose.
These costs can be huge, yet most people do not consider them
when thinking about “moving up” as their income rises.
Most people take for granted that a more expensive home will
provide for more dollar appreciation and, therefore, is a better
investment. But when your social costs are tens or hundreds of
thousands of extra dollars per year, that may not be so.
I am not saying that you should be happy with your starter house.
But I am saying that once you are established in a home that you
love, you should keep it as long as you possibly can. When you
get the raise, don’t run out and buy another house that is $100,000
more expensive.
Instead, figure out what you can do to your present home to make
it more enjoyable. Even though the $20,000 you may spend
renovating the kitchen is not money you’d get back later if you

sold, the pleasure it will give you—in terms of a rich life—could
be enormous.
Meanwhile, the extra $100,000 you spend on a bigger house could

easily cost you more than $1 million in social costs over twenty years.
I know this is a difficult concept to grasp. It flies in the face of

conventional wisdom. But the fact is that you will spend less
money in the long run by having the nicest house in your old
neighborhood than you will by buying up and expecting big gains
in property appreciation.
I give myself as an example. I have owned and lived in three

houses in South Florida in the last thirty years. I lived in the first
one for three years, the second for seven, and the current one for
close to twenty years. I could have easily bought a more expensive
home years ago. But I didn’t. My home was both big enough and
small enough (see above) to meet my needs.
I’ve put good money into redoing my home over that time. In fact,
there is almost never a year when I don’t make some improvement.
But the money I spend is nothing compared with the money I’d
have wasted if I had foolishly bought up.
Home Ownership as an Investment
The World War II generation got lucky with their starter homes.
Although they “moved up” once or twice, most of them settled for
at least a dozen years while their children were in school. And they
had the benefit of the enormous price appreciation of property that
took place during the 1960s and 1970s.
When they became empty nesters in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s,
they were able to sell their larger homes for many times what they
originally paid for them. By moving into smaller homes, they were
able to put a good portion of those profits into accounts that funded
their retirements.

As children of that generation, baby boomers mistakenly assumed
that they would be able to do the same thing. It seemed axiomatic
that house prices would always go up––significantly, if you were
willing to give it some time.
This myth was one of the reasons millions of Americans lost

trillions of dollars when the real estate bubble burst in 2007-2008.
Even after property values had escalated beyond reason, people
believed they would continue to rise. So they felt confident taking
second and third mortgages that eventually wiped them out.
We know better now. History tells us that on a long-term,

nationwide basis, property values rise at or just above (1 or 2
percent) the rate of inflation. That is a good thing in that property
can protect the investor against inflation––a terrible wealth
destroyer. But if you are looking at real estate strictly from the
perspective of appreciation, this average return on investment is far
from spectacular.
In terms of quality of life, though––which is what we’re talking

about here––you don’t want to think of your house the same way
you might think of your stocks or bonds. It’s okay if the money
you put into it doesn’t earn you 8 or 12 percent on a yearly basis.
My view is that so long as I can get the money I put into my house
out of it, adjusted for inflation, I’m happy. And you can do that if
you make smart spending decisions.
Shopping for Your Perfect Home
When shopping for a home, think first about location. Try to

pinpoint the type of community that best matches your sense of
living well. Some people would like a quiet suburb. Others would
prefer an urban setting with access to theaters and museums. Still
others would want to live near a beach or in the mountains.
Even if you feel that you are “stuck” working for a company that
is located in a particular place, determining your ideal community

will be a very useful exercise. Because in doing so, you will be
discovering your core values, values that will help you make all of
the important “living rich” decisions you will face in your life.
Also keep in mind that companies are relocating like never before.
And in the Internet Age, telecommuting is becoming more and
more common. So you may not be as “stuck” as you think you are.
Buying a house is a huge decision. You have to get the money part
right. But you also have to get the neighborhood right. For one
thing, you have to consider the social and recreational needs of
your entire family. And that can be complicated. If you have young
children, will they be able to walk to school with their friends? Will
they have easy access to sports programs? Who will your close
neighbors be—and will you have much in common with them?
There are practical considerations as well––zoning laws,

neighborhood covenants, and property taxes, for example.
You have to spend time investigating all of these things before you
start the actual house hunt. Then, once you have found an optimal
neighborhood, you can have the fun of wandering around and
looking at houses.
A house is a complicated thing. Its structure will affect the quality

of your life in a dozen ways. So you should have a good idea of
what you are looking for.
How many bedrooms and bathrooms? How large a kitchen, dining

room, and living room? Will a one-car garage suffice or do you
need three bays? Do you need a writing or sculpture studio? A
basement or attic? What about a vegetable garden?
Does it have to be new (or fairly new), or would you be willing

to deal with the eccentricities of an older house? Even if the
previous owners kept it in good shape, the infrastructure of older
homes tends to need ongoing attention. And you’ll probably need
to budget more for utilities, since the home’s envelope won’t be

as tight as with newer construction and older furnaces, hot water
heaters, and cooling systems aren’t as efficient.
Maybe you will find exactly what you are looking for in the right
neighborhood at the right price. More likely, you will have to make
compromises.
By thinking of your home as a haven (“Someone interesting lives

here!”) and not a status symbol (“Someone rich lives here!”) or
an investment, you can spend a reasonable amount of money on it
each year, making it increasingly “richer.”
Your goal is always to enhance your pleasure, utility, or comfort.

And in my experience, even small things can make a big
difference. Resist the urge to make everything bigger or newer.
Bigger and newer, as you remember, are the values of the poor-
minded person. You are thinking rich.

Chapter 3
The Rich Man’s Home: Making

It Ever Richer and More Perfect
A rich house is one in which every room (and every space within
every room) serves a useful purpose and provides some related
pleasure.
Most homeowners understand this in regard to the kitchen. The

kitchen typically has several important functions: the preparation
and cooking of meals… the storage of food and dishes and cooking
paraphernalia… and sometimes as a place for the family to
congregate. Thus, the kitchen is one of the most important rooms in
the house. The rich kitchen achieves the twin goals of purposefulness
and pleasure neatly. It is, therefore, no larger or more elaborate than
it needs to be. It contains no more fixtures or amenities than the
family needs. The ambiance is friendly and casual. The arrangement
of appliances and surfaces optimizes efficiency. Storage is logical.
The eating space, if there is one, feels comfortable.
This idea of purposefulness and pleasure is difficult for some

people to grasp. They can understand the value of having an
inviting and functional kitchen, but they also see the kitchen as
a symbol of success. Thus we have the gargantuan refrigerators,
“professional” stoves, diner-sized counters, cookbook libraries,
and an overall volume that would be appropriate for a mid-sized
restaurant rather than a mid-sized family.
When K and I redesigned our kitchen, we came very close to

falling into that trap. Many of our neighbors had bought into the
“bigger is better” craziness and, at the time, it seemed like the
thing to do. Fortunately, we came to our senses. We reminded
ourselves of how uncomfortable we felt when we were in those
oversized kitchens, and we certainly didn’t want our guests to feel
Chapter 3 - The Rich Man’s Home: Making It Ever Richer and More Perfect 21
the same way. We looked at each other and rolled our eyes. And we
promised ourselves that it wouldn’t happen in our house… to us or
to our guests.
To make sure that our kitchen would be both purposeful and

pleasurable, we made it large enough to accommodate two cooks
working at the same time and a table for eight, but no larger than
that. And because we wanted it to feel cozy too, we added lots of
indirect and accent lighting to give the room atmosphere when we
ate there.
We installed a central counter around which people could gather,

a gas-burning stove (for K) and a hidden microwave (for me), a
spigot over the range for filling pasta pots with water, and a hidden
blender that pops up when you open one of the cabinet doors. All
of it very purposeful.
Then, to make our kitchen interesting and aesthetically appealing,

we installed display cabinets for some of the glass sculptures that
we collect. And we covered the walls, like all the walls in our
house, with art.
The “purposeful and pleasing” standard applies to every room of

your house. If you have an “entertainment room,” for example, it
should be space that makes it easy for you, your family, and guests
to get together, converse, and have fun. If you have a dining room,
it should be conducive to dining––and not just once or twice a year
but often.
Dens and libraries should be quiet retreats. Bathrooms should be

mini-sanctuaries. Living rooms should be places where living takes
place, not dress-up rooms that nobody ever uses.
And it’s not just every room. It’s every space. Every part of the
kitchen and the living room and the bedroom. And all the spaces in
between. Every space should serve a purpose and provide pleasure.
Nothing should be there for show. Every chair or sofa should want
to be sat upon. Every table sat at. Every appliance used.

If your house does not measure up right now, there is a a lot that you
can do to make it “richer” over time without spending a ton of money.
Home Improvement the “Living Rich” Way
A fresh coat of paint can turn an otherwise dreary room into a

cheery one.
You can make a kitchen look new and bright by replacing

countertops and/or cabinets. There are many surprisingly good
options available at stores like Home Depot. The installation
is not that complicated. You can do it yourself or use someone
recommended by the store or by someone you know.
Furniture can make a big difference, and you don’t have to buy it
new. Browsing secondhand furniture stores and consignment shops
is a great way to spend a rainy Saturday. Piece by piece, you can
refresh and/or reinvent every room on a budget.
An often overlooked element in the feel of a house is light.

Spaces––inside and out––can be miraculously transformed by
adding, subtracting, or altering the light. If you have a sense of
what lighting can do, you will be able to make major changes
by introducing indirect or natural lighting and/or repositioning
fixtures. If you don’t feel like you can do this on your own, hire
a lighting expert to spend a few hours with you. Even at $100 an
hour, you will get your money’s worth.
As with other aspects of living rich, making your house richer

is a matter of spending your dollars wisely. That means buying
expertise when you don’t have it, but it also means learning from
experts so that you can gradually develop skills of your own.
Rather than hiring a designer or decorator to “redo” your entire

house, bring in someone to work with you on a single small
project––maybe a bathroom or bedroom. The process will help you
learn what you like and what options are available so that you can
try to do the next room on your own.
You can also learn a great deal by paging through magazines and
home-improvement books. But keep in mind that you are looking
for ideas that will meet your objectives. Don’t be seduced by
photos of rooms that shout, “Someone rich owns me.” Look for
small things that will enhance your family’s ability to use and
enjoy the home.
And the Internet, of course, is loaded with useful resources.

Pinterest.com and Houzz.com have thousands of images that
you can use for ideas on products, decor, and room renovation.
Members can get their questions answered by the people who
posted the photos, many of whom are professionals. Sherwin-
Williams and Benjamin Moore have online applications that let
you upload photos and “paint” walls, trim, windows, and doors.
I’ve used these online applications, and they are really helpful.
You can see how your house (inside or out) will look with all sorts
of different color combinations. You don’t have to buy quarts of
sample colors and test them on the house the way you had to do
when I was younger.
The Major Renovation
If you are doing a major renovation––a completely new

kitchen, wing, guesthouse, etc.––you are going to have
to hire an architect and a contractor and go through the
permit process.
Architects are there to help you make the big decisions: the
look, the feel, the size, and the purpose of the renovation.
They also create loads of very precise blueprints for your
contractor and subcontractors.
A good architect is a great ally in living rich. A bad

architect or a bad relationship with a good architect will
make you emotionally and financially poorer.

An architect’s fee can be structured as a fixed amount,
an hourly rate, or a percentage of the construction cost
(usually 10 percent). In my experience, a fixed amount is
best because it gives the architect the incentive to keep the
job simple.
To get the best value from an architect, it helps to have a very

good idea of what you want before you begin. If you come
prepared with sample floor plans and photographs, the entire
process will be faster, easier, and less expensive. Plus you
will be assured of getting something you really like.
The right design will start your renovation on the right

path. A competent and experienced contractor will keep it
moving in the desired direction.
Most architects have relationships with contractors and will

recommend one for your project. But a contractor who has
been recommended by a friend or colleague might be even
a better choice. Even if you think you know that you want
a particular contractor, it’s a good idea to check out several
possibilities. Not only to make sure that you’re getting
a good price, but also to guarantee that you’re getting a
contractor who will do a good job for you.
You can learn a lot about how a contractor operates from

how organized his work site is, as well as by how many
hours he is actually there and who manages the work when
he isn’t. Ask how he hires his subs, how long he’s worked
with them, and how he finds backups when someone can’t
make it to the job. Ask how he handles cost overruns and
how he will keep you informed about progress or problems.
And there will be problems. When they arise, you should
expect your contractor to advise you of available options
and guide you toward appropriate choices.
Home Improvement Dollars and Sense
Ignore the advice of the “experts” that tell you to make only those
improvements that will give you back, in sales value, a dollar for
every dollar that you spend. Very few upgrades or remodeling
projects recoup 100 percent of their cost. According to Remodeling
magazine, on average, you can expect to get back $57 for every
$100 you spend.
But that ratio is based on the assumption that you would be selling
the home shortly thereafter. And from a living rich perspective,
that’s not what you’re going to do. You’re going to find a good
house in the right neighborhood at the right price. And you’re
going to plan to keep that house for ten or twenty (or more)
years––making it richer and more perfect every year. So for you,
such ratios are meaningless.
Still, you have to have a way to quantify the expense. And as with
every other decision you’re going to make about spending your
money to live rich, your guiding rule should be cost of use. (See
Chapter 2.) Rather than worry about whether you can get a 50 or
90 percent return on a particular improvement in a single year, you
figure out how much it will be on a cost of use basis.
Let’s look at a rough example. You want to update your kitchen.

The estimate is $10,000. Your guess is that it will increase the
value of your home by $6,000 (a 60 percent return). So you do the
calculation. The additional cost of use will be $4,000 divided by
ten years or $400 a year. That comes to about $33 a month or a
dollar a day.
Then you can ask yourself: Will this remodeling job give me at
least a dollar a day in additional pleasure? Putting it that way
makes the answer obvious.

Chapter 4
The Rich Man’s Bed

Of the many material objects that affect the quality of your life,
there are few more important than the bed you sleep in.
In terms of time spent, it may occupy the first position. After all, if
you are like most people, you spend a third of your life in bed.
Unless you have slept in a really good bed, you may not realize
what a difference it makes. I spent the first forty-something years
of my life sleeping on cheap beds. Back then, I thought that tossing
and turning all night was normal.
About twenty years ago, K and I spent a few nights in The

Benjamin, an expensive midtown Manhattan hotel. The bed we
slept on was distinctly better than ours at home. Slipping into bed
felt luxurious because of the silky linens. Lying in bed felt more
comfortable. No lumps. No hollows. The mattress was soft but
firm. We slept like babies.
I studied the bed in the morning. The frame was nothing special.
But the box spring and the mattress looked considerably more solid
than ours. And the linens were obviously of a high quality.
We asked the concierge if he happened to know what kind of bedding

the hotel used. Not only did he know, he handed me a brochure about
it. Apparently, we weren’t the only guests who’d asked.
This was actually the beginning of a trend in “super beds” that luxury
hotels were getting into at the time. Today, you can buy the mattresses
and linens you sleep on from many hotels all over the world.
For me, it was a revelation. I had never before given a second

thought to bedding. I had never imagined that I was sleeping like a
pauper––that by buying a better bed I could sleep like a billionaire.
Chapter 4 - The Rich Man’s Bed 27

When we got home, K ordered the same mattress and linens we
had fallen in love with at The Benjamin. They were expensive––
much more than we would have considered spending before then.
They arrived several weeks later, and we were not disappointed.
K has replaced the linens periodically, but that mattress (and box
spring) kept us comfortable for nearly twenty years.
About a year ago, the mattress felt like it was losing support at the
sides. It was still relatively comfortable, but it was time to buy a
new one. Before we did, we went online and looked at our options.
And they were overwhelming. In the span of twenty years, the
marketplace for mattresses had expanded more than tenfold.
Since I was already scribbling notes for this book, I asked my

colleagues at The Palm Beach Letter to have their research team
do a serious review of mattresses for me. I asked them to identify
the major types, explain the plusses and minuses of each, and then
analyze the data.
When I looked at their findings (hundreds of pages!), one thing

was clear. With beds, as with other material objects, the old saw
that you get what you pay for is only partially true. In some cases,
quality costs more. In other cases, it doesn’t.
We found, for example, one mattress that sells for $60,000 and half
a dozen in the $15,000 to $25,000 range. We tried several of them
out. They felt great and had impressive stories attached to them.
But were they better than the best $1,000 mattresses?
Read on to find out.
The Search for the Perfect Mattress
Let’s begin, as we should in discussing any thing we will be

discussing in the book, with a definition of quality. When it comes
to mattresses, quality means comfort, support, and durability.
Your mattress has to be comfortable. It must give you that

“I’m in heaven” feeling when you stretch out on it. It also has

to be engineered to give you proper spinal support so that you
wake up feeling like a million dollars. And, finally, it has to be
durable. It must be made to last—without losing its support—
for at least ten years.
Support and durability are things that can be measured and

recorded. But comfort cannot. It is therefore impossible to create
a definitive ranking of mattresses in terms of quality. But we can
explain the features of each kind of mattress, emphasizing the
benefits and drawbacks of each. And we can report the reported
impressions of people in terms of comfort.
The Innerspring—the
Most Popular Mattress
An innerspring mattress is made up of steel coils padded with layers

of padding for insulation and cushioning. The outermost layer––the
one you see––is often quilted and can be made of anything from
damask (the highest quality) to cotton, cotton/poly blend, or vinyl.
And the whole thing sits atop a box spring or platform.
Here’s what you need to know when looking at innerspring

mattresses:
• The Coil Count
The job of the coils is to distribute the weight of the body. The more
coils a mattress has, the firmer it will be. The softest innersprings
have roughly 250 coils. The firmest have as many as 1,000.
• The Gauge of the Steel
The gauge (thickness) of the steel wire in the coils is another

factor. The lower the gauge, the thicker the wire. A mattress with
300 coils of 12-gauge wire will be firmer than a mattress with 300
coils of 14-gauge wire.
How firm should your mattress be?

Consider the mattress you have now. If you can’t roll over easily,
the mattress is probably too soft for you. If you feel excess
pressure on your hips and shoulders, it is probably too firm. Lie
on your back and see if you can slide your hand under the small
of your back. If there is enough of a gap that your hand slides in
easily, you should look for a softer mattress.
• The Arrangement of the Coils
The coils can either interlock or be independent. If they interlock,

they are tied together with wire. If they are independent, each
individual coil is “pocketed” in cloth. Pocketed coil mattresses
require more coils because each one must work on its own to
support you. As a result, they give you better contouring and
reduce the amount of flex in the mattress when your partner moves
during the night.
• The Padding
Over the years, the coils have not really changed. But
manufacturers have added more padding, anywhere from three
to eight layers. You may be surprised to know that it’s worn-out
padding, not broken-down coils, that causes sagging in a mattress.
And the padding determines a large part of the cost of a mattress.
The way manufacturers stitch the padding together is just as

important as the quality of the material in it. In better mattresses,
each layer is stitched in place by hand. This keeps the layers from
shifting and creating lumps.
• The “Pillow Top” Option
A “pillow top” adds a layer of softness to a firm mattress, but it

also adds to the cost. And it can go flat long before the mattress
itself wears out.
If you like the feel of a pillow top, you might be better off
purchasing a separate mattress topper. They are available in

memory foam (probably your best choice in terms of comfort and
durability), sheepskin (which is warm in the winter and cool in the
summer), and as featherbeds (which give you the simple pleasure
of sinking down into something incredibly soft).
• Edge Support
Innerspring mattresses tend to break down around the edges first. A

mattress with heavier-gauge coils and thicker padding around the
edges will help it hold its shape.
Benefits of the Innerspring Mattress
• It’s available in a wide range of prices and with many

optional features.
• Some models can be flipped to prolong the life of the

mattress.
• When you move or turn over, very little of that motion

is transferred to the other side of the bed, which makes
pocket-coil innersprings well-suited for couples.
Drawbacks of the Innerspring Mattress
• It’s difficult to comparison shop.
• The innerspring is less durable than the other mattress

types, so it has to be replaced more frequently.
• Most require the purchase of a box spring, which has to be

replaced whenever you replace the mattress.
Keep in Mind: Over the last ten years, there have been significant
improvements in mattress construction. As long as you stay away
from the low end of the market (less than $800 for a queen mattress),

durability should be consistent across most brands and models. A
top-of-the-line innerspring will have pocketed coils and a top layer
of memory foam. Many manufacturers now offer this option.
To Space and Back:

The Memory Foam Mattress
The origin of the memory foam mattress goes back to the 1970s
when scientists developed a viscoelastic material for NASA. It
was used as cushioning and support for astronauts during liftoff. It
was pressure sensitive and molded quickly to the shape of a body
pressing into it. And because it was temperature sensitive, they
called it “temper foam.”
In the 1980s, the material was perfected to be used in mattresses.

The first memory foam mattresses were produced for hospitals.
But feedback from patients––which included claims of better sleep
and less back pain––led to widespread commercial interest. People
especially liked the pleasant feeling of “melting” into it.
The Tempur-Pedic brand is the gold standard. It uses the original

formula for the foam, but in recent years other companies have
copied it.
Whether you buy Tempur-Pedic or one of the generics, the key things
to consider in a memory foam mattress are thickness and density.
• Thickness
A thicker mattress does not necessarily mean it has more memory

foam. A 13-inch mattress could have anywhere from three to five
inches of memory foam. The rest could be made up of foam that
has less “give.”
• Density
The lower the density of the memory foam, the lower the price. As

the density increases, so does the amount of support it gives you.
Anything less than three pounds per cubic foot is considered low
grade. High-quality foam is at least five pounds per cubic foot. You
need enough density to support your body. But if you get too much
for your body weight, the mattress won’t give you that pleasant
melting feeling.
Benefits of Memory Foam
• It’s antibacterial and allergen and dust mite resistant.
• Like the pocket-coil innerspring, very little motion is

transferred to your partner’s side of the bed when you move
or turn over.
• It conforms to the body in response to heat and pressure

and returns to its original shape.
• It is extremely durable. (Most memory foam mattresses

have a twenty-year warranty.)
Drawbacks of Memory Foam
• Some people say that memory foam makes them feel like
they are sinking into quicksand.
• Others complain that it traps body heat and makes them

uncomfortably hot.
• It tends to be much more expensive than the traditional

innerspring mattress.
• Some memory foam mattresses have an odd chemical smell

that can be irritating to the nose or throat.

Keep in Mind: Some generic memory foam is less resilient and
less durable than the memory foam with the Tempur-Pedic name.
And there is some generic memory foam that eventually starts to
turn into sharp-edged gel beads. But that doesn’t mean you have to
buy the high-priced Tempur-pedic brand. There are manufacturers
of memory foam that is every bit as good… and significantly less
expensive.
Latex Foam—the Latest in Sleep Comfort
Latex foam mattresses can be made of 100 percent natural latex

(collected from rubber trees), 100 percent synthetic latex (a blend
of petrochemicals), or a combination of the two.
Both natural and synthetic latex foam is similar to memory foam

in many important ways. It minimizes pressure on the body,
especially the neck and back. It is antimicrobial and antibacterial.
Dust mites can’t live in it, and it is extremely durable. In fact, pure
latex mattresses are by far the most durable that you can buy. They
are also the most expensive.
• Dunlop vs. Talalay
Both natural and synthetic latex foam can be produced in two

ways: by the Dunlop method or by the Talalay method. The
Dunlop method produces latex with a somewhat firmer, more
buoyant feel. The Talalay method is newer and is used primarily
for synthetic latex. It produces a softer, less firm mattress. Some
latex mattresses have a combination of both Dunlop and Talalay
latex. Neither type is superior. What you choose is a matter of
personal preference.
• Customizing the Layers
A mattress can be manufactured with one, two, three, or four layers

of 3-inch latex foam. And you can customize the firmness of each
layer (soft, medium, or firm). You might, for example, go with
Dunlop latex on the bottom and Talalay on the top. This would

give you a foundation layer with good support and a top layer with
a luxurious feel. You can also choose a different level of firmness
for each side of the mattress.
• The “Hybrid” Mattress
It is not feasible for any mattress under $1,500 to be 100 percent

latex foam. Some manufacturers will label a mattress as 100
percent when, in fact, there are only one or two inches of latex in
the entire thing.
Other manufacturers, in an effort to take advantage of the

marketing cachet of latex foam, have come up with the idea of
the “hybrid” mattress. They might, for example, top the coils of
an innerspring mattress with a layer of latex foam or wrap the
individual coils with it. (They do this with memory foam too.)
This does keep the cost of the mattress down, but know what
you’re getting. If what you want is a latex foam mattress, make
sure it has a latex core.
Benefits of Latex Foam
• It’s breathable and resilient.
• It eliminates motion transfers.
• It’s supportive, conforms to the body, and relieves pressure

points.
• It’s antibacterial and resistant to dust mites, mold, mildew,

and other allergens.
• It’s the longest-lasting mattress type on the market—some

say thirty years.

Drawbacks of Latex Foam
• It’s fairly new on the market, so it’s not widely available.

You may not be able to test it before you buy, and you may
have to buy it online.
• It does not have as many features/options as innerspring or

memory foam.
• Like memory foam, it tends to feel warm––but not as warm.
• It’s very expensive.
Keep in Mind: Organic latex foam is 100 percent natural and

chemical-free. The rubber tree is a renewable resource, so the foam
is eco-friendly and biodegradable. If this is important to you, be
aware that in a mattress labeled “100 percent latex,” some or all
of it may be synthetic. Instead, look for a mattress labeled “100
percent natural latex.”
The Adjustable Airbed—

Putting You in Control
You can get a simple air mattress to put on the floor when
company comes––or a luxurious airbed for yourself, with multiple
air chambers, extensive padding, a sturdy frame, and even remote
controls. With these beds, each person can independently adjust the
level of firmness on their side of the mattress by pumping more or less
air into it.
The “Sleep Number” bed, manufactured by the Select Comfort

company, is the one you’re probably familiar with.
• The Air Chambers
The ideal thickness of an air bladder should be five to seven inches.

This is meaty enough to support larger folks without bottoming
out, especially at softer settings.

• The Pump System
The pump should be accessible, not buried inside the airbed. It

should be able to move a lot of air very quickly––to fill the bed in
less than two minutes, from dead empty. And it should be quiet.
• The Controls
You will have the choice of wired or wireless remote controls to

adjust the firmness of your bed. Wireless is convenient, but the
remotes can get lost easily.
• Edge Support
Stay away from airbeds with air chambers that go all the way to the
edge. Thick, sturdy foam side rails should be part of the airbed design.
Benefits of the Airbed
• The firmness of the bed can be adjusted to suit your specific

preference.
• Each side of the bed can be independently adjusted.
• Quality brands offer many features, including the option of

memory foam comfort layers.
Drawbacks of the Airbed
• It usually comes in pieces (six to ten of them) and has to be

assembled.
• It has a lot of components that can require repair or

replacement. Air chambers wear out over time, and the
source of a leak may be hard to find.
• You probably will not be able to try it out before you buy it.

Keep in Mind: Since you won’t know if you like an airbed until
you sleep on it, a good warranty is a must. Return policies can
vary from retailer to retailer, even on the same model. Study the
warranty before you make a purchase.
Shopping for Sheets
The comfort and durability of sheets depends on the fabric,

thread count, and weave.
• The Fabric
Most high-quality sheets are made of cotton, with Egyptian

cotton considered the most luxurious. Sea Island cotton
has long fibers that make it feel like silk, but it is in short
supply. (It grows only in the West Indies, parts of Georgia,
and the Carolinas.) This makes it a very expensive choice
for bedding. Pima cotton, developed from Egyptian cotton
by farmers in the Southwestern U.S., is known for its
softness and durability. Bamboo-cotton blend sheets are
soft, breathable, and easy to care for. Another plant fiber
that is often blended with cotton is Modal.
• The Thread Count
Thread count is the number of threads per square inch

of fabric. The threads can be single-ply or two-ply (two
strands twisted together). Two-ply threads are stronger, but
they are also stiffer.
A thread count between 300 and 400 is the sweet spot

for comfort and durability. Sheets in that range will be
smooth, soft, absorbent, and breathable. Don’t be fooled
into thinking you need sheets with a super-high thread
count. That’s often just an excuse for manufacturers to
charge more. And, in fact, Consumer Reports found that
some manufacturers claiming 800-1,200 thread counts were

using creative math. When they analyzed 1,200-thread-
count sheets in the lab, many of them turned out to be a
little above 400.
• The Weave
The weave of the fabric affects how the sheet feels. Percale is
closely woven with a fine texture. It feels crisp and luxurious
while also being durable. Sateen has a softer, more luxurious
feel and a glossier look, but is not as durable as percale. It
also has a tendency to snag. Twill is a heavier weave that
stands up well and is less likely to wrinkle.
Shopping for Pillows
The general rule is to replace your pillows every twelve to

eighteen months, and definitely after two years. If you fold
a pillow in half and it does not unfold—at least partially—
on its own, it is time for a new one.
Firm, Medium, or Soft?
If you sleep on your side, you’ll be most comfortable with a

firm pillow that cradles your neck. If you sleep on your back,
a medium to firm pillow will help support the natural curve of
your spine. And if you’re a stomach sleeper, a soft, thin pillow
will ease the strain of your neck being turned to the side.
Natural or Synthetic Fill?
Polyester is inexpensive, hypoallergenic, and machine

washable. A poly-cluster pillow (polyester clusters covered
with silicone) can feel much like down, without the high
cost. Note: Polyester pillows can be especially attractive to
dust mites.

Memory foam and latex foam are hypoallergenic and give
you excellent neck support. They hold their shape longer
than polyester, so you will not have to replace them as
often. The foam pillows do tend to feel warm, though. And
you might notice a slight odor, but it will soon fade.
Natural feather and down pillows are extremely

comfortable. They are more expensive than polyester or
foam, but they also last longer. Though they can trigger
allergies in some people, it is possible to find feather/down
pillows that are hypo-allergenic.
How Much Do You Have to Spend?
You can buy a polyester pillow for as little as $5. The foam,
feather, and down pillows can set you back as much as
$100. But spending more does not necessarily buy you a
better pillow. For example, Consumer Reports found that a
cheaper version of the memory foam pillow scored just as
well as a higher-priced version… and it was $60 cheaper.
As with mattresses, the important thing is how it feels to you.
You’ve Decided on a Mattress…

Now You Have to Buy It
The first thing you see when you walk into a mattress store is row
after row of mattresses. At first, they all look the same. The second
thing you see is the sales associate approaching you.
Here’s where you go from there…
• Don’t waste your time with a trainee.
Make sure you’re talking to someone with lots of experience––

someone familiar with all the mattresses in the store.

• Ask about their return policy.
This might sound like a strange thing to start out with––but if

you don’t like their return policy, there’s no reason to shop there.
Store policies can range from “final sale” to “thirty days” and even
“unlimited returns.”
• Compare apples to apples.
Manufacturers change the names of identical mattresses for

different retailers. One store’s “super plush” could be another
store’s “super soft.” So if you go by name alone, you will think
you are looking at two different mattresses.
It’s just marketing talk. As long as you know the features you want,
you will be able to make an informed decision.
• The fifteen-minute test
When you find a mattress that interests you, test it by lying down
on it in your normal sleep position. To get a good feel for the
mattress, give it a minimum of fifteen minutes.
• Ask about the manufacturer’s warranty.
A warranty can help protect you against defects in workmanship.

But it will not protect you against normal wear and tear. And it is
NOT a guarantee of durability or comfort. Most warrantees are
for ten or twenty years. But do not assume that the length of the
warranty has any connection with how long your mattress will be
comfortable.
• Never pay retail!
You can often get an excellent price on a mattress by buying it online.

If you have already shopped in person… have given several mattresses
the fifteen-minute test… and know exactly what you want… you can
buy a mattress online with a fair degree of confidence.

But you can get a great deal at a brick-and-mortar store too.
Markups on mattresses are enormous. Some of the best-known
brands can be marked up by as much as 500 percent! This gives
you a lot of room for negotiating, and it’s well worth doing. Most
mattress retailers, including some department stores, allow their
salespeople to negotiate. And according to Consumer Reports, 72
percent of those who do a bit of haggling get a lower price.

Chapter 5
The Rich Man’s Car

You think it might be time to buy a new car. The thought begins
tentatively and then sprouts roots. You do some research. You
talk to some friends. The more you think about it, the better you
like the idea. Pretty soon, you are itching to do it… and you find
yourself in a showroom.
A “sales associate” approaches. A friendly guy, he asks what you

are looking for. If you don’t know, he asks about your driving
needs. He may ask where you live, the size of your family, etc.
If he sees that you have a fondness for a particular model, he gets

more animated. But if you change your mind, he doesn’t push you.
He’s ready to sell you the car you want to buy.
There is one car on the floor––the most expensive one there––that

retails for more than $100,000. “That’s a car for billionaires,”
you think. “It’s not for me.” You don’t want to endure the pain of
envy, so you avoid looking at it. Instead, you look at sedans in the
$25,000-$40,000 range.
You settle for a sensible $30,000 sedan—one very much like the
sensible sedan you’ve been driving. You tell the salesman that
this is the car you want, but you can’t pay more than X number of
dollars per month for it. He says, “I don’t know if I can do that, but
I’ll try.”
He disappears into the back office. Five minutes later, he returns

with an offer. It is much higher than what you said you could pay.
You object. You haggle over the trade-in value of your car and he
disappears into the back office and comes back again. The monthly
payment is still $45 too high. You haggle some more and he makes
another trip to the back office “on your behalf.” Coming back with
Chapter 5 - The Rich Man’s Car 43

a smile on his face, he tells you that he thinks he can come really
close to your number if you come up with a slightly higher down
payment. You reluctantly agree.
The final number is still $20 more than what you wanted, but it’s
okay. You can afford it.
Next, he introduces you to a nicely dressed woman who is the

dealer’s finance manager. She asks you many questions and has
you fill out many forms. At the end of the process, you realize that
you are paying an additional $25 more per month because of extra
warranties, treatments, etc. that she makes you feel you should
have known about.
You are committed emotionally to having the car. So you sign the
papers, feeling a little bit had.
The salesman shows you the ropes with your new car—how to adjust
the side reflectors and jack up the radio. It’s pretty exciting. You leave
an hour later, happy, with that new car aroma in your nose.
All is good.
A few weeks later, the new car smell is gone. After a month or two,
there is a little scratch on the passenger door. It is still a nice car,
and you still like it. But it is no longer a new car. It’s a used car.
Four or five years later, you repeat the process. You never stop to
realize that for the same money you have been spending on your
so-so $30,000 sedans, you could have been driving that amazing
$100,000 machine.
A Much Smarter Approach
I own two cars: a 12-cylinder 2007 BMW 760Li and a 1991 Acura
NSX. The BMW is a sedan. The NSX is a high-performance sports
car. Both are exceptional vehicles. They look great. They drive
great. And people perceive them as world-class automobiles.

To buy these two cars new today, you’d have to fork over more
than $250,000. But that would be foolish. You can drive luxury
cars like these for a tiny fraction of what you’d expect.
Most people, when considering the cost of an automobile, think

only in terms of the monthly payment. “I don’t care about the price
of the car,” they say. “All I care about is how much I have to pay
every month.”
This, they think, is smart, bottom-line thinking. But it is exactly

the worst kind of thinking when it comes to buying cars because
it puts the car salesperson in charge of what kind of car you will
ultimately buy. When he hears your number, he will think he will
be able to get you to spend 10 to 15 percent more and he will put
you in a car that will give him the best commission.
In other words, when you tell a car salesman that you can’t pay
more than X number of dollars per month, you are pretty much
saying, “I am a financial dummy. Do unto me as you wish.”
Let’s Talk About My Cars

I bought my NSX when it first came out. At the time, it was the
state-of-the-art high-performance sports car. Honda had invested
hundreds of millions of dollars in its design. There was not another
sports car in the world that could equal it in terms of performance,
quality, and reliability.
I paid $70,000 for it. That’s a lot of money—more money than

you probably believe you can afford. But the fact is my NSX is the
cheapest car I’ve ever owned.
If I were to sell it today, twenty-three years later, I could easily

get $35,000. And because it is a Honda (and not a Ferrari or a
Porsche), the cost of repairs and maintenance has been very low. I
have spent no more than $5,000 on it since I bought it.
That means my “cost of use”––the concept I introduced you to in

Chapter 2––has been about $150 per month.

Here’s the math: initial purchase price ($70,000) plus $5,000 in
repairs and maintenance minus its current resale value ($35,000—
it’s in mint condition) gives me $40,000 divided by 276 months
(23 years): a little less than $145.
Even if I had financed the car instead of paying cash, it would have
been a bargain. What made it a bargain? Not the $70,000 sticker
price. That was, as I said, a ton of money back then. What has
made my purchase a great deal is the fact that I have kept that car
for twenty-three years. I would have had an even better deal had I
been able to buy it a year or so later at a discount. With the NSXs,
this wasn’t possible. But with most luxury cars, it is.
My 12-cylinder 2007 BMW 760Li is an equally wonderful car. It

is big, comfortable, drives like a dream, and has immense power
and all sorts of fancy amenities (including a refrigerator for
champagne).
If you had bought it new in 2007 (with the added features I have),
you would have paid about $120,000. But as a person who knows
how to live rich, you would have bought it in 2009 or 2010 with
20,000 or 30,000 miles on the odometer for $70,000.
That number may surprise you. Is it possible to buy a low-mileage,

two- or three-year-old luxury car for 60 to 70 percent of its new price?
The answer is yes, for two reasons:
• The more expensive the car, the greater the depreciation

rate in its early years.
• Extras such as the low-profile rims and tires I bought

are worth close to nothing on resales, which benefits the
secondhand buyer.
And if you enjoy your 760Li for twenty years (as I expect to enjoy
mine), it will end up costing you a lot less than the five or six
mediocre cars you would otherwise be driving in that time.

The Living Rich Car-Buying
Strategy in a Nutshell
I can’t tell you exactly which car to buy. But I can help you make
the right decision. To make my strategy work for you, there are
four main factors to consider.
• The car you buy
• The price you pay for it
• The price you can sell it for
• How long you will keep it
The Car You Buy
To drive like a billionaire, you must drive an exceptional car. By

exceptional I mean a car that is beautiful, comfortable, functional,
and durable. It should also be a car that makes you feel rich. Often,
this means buying an expensive car. But that, as we’ve learned, is
not the most important factor in the equation.
The Price You Pay for It
The best way to save money on any car is to buy it used.
Here’s the thing…
The instant you drive a new car off the lot, it loses value.
According to research that my colleagues at The Palm Beach
Letter did for me, the market value of a brand-new $20,000 car
instantly drops to only $17,800 when you drive it home from
the dealer. By years three or four, that same car will have lost 50
percent of its value. And after five years, it’s worth about only 37
percent of its original cost.

To me, the “sweet spot” is when the car has depreciated by about
40 to 50 percent but is still in great condition. With most cars, this
means three to five years old and with 50,000 or fewer miles on it.
The second best way to save money on your car is to pay cash for
it. New cars sometimes come with great financing packages. The
cost of the loan is cheap, but you are still paying too much for the
car. And when you buy a used car, the financing can be expensive.
A $25,000 loan financed at 6.9 percent for two years will end up
costing you almost $3,500 in interest charges.
The Price You Can Sell It For
As I said, all cars depreciate a great deal in the first few years. But
what’s nice about luxury cars is that they tend to depreciate less. In
other words, they hold their value better.
This is not true of all luxury cars, but it is true for most of the best
of them. My NSX, for example, lost about half of its value after
four years but then did not depreciate at all after that. Now, more
than twenty years later, I can still sell it for half of what I paid for
it. That’s because not many of these cars were produced, and the
one I have is in near-perfect condition.
How Long You Keep It
It all comes down to “cost of use.” And the most important factor
in determining the cost of use of a car is the number of years you
intend to keep it. The longer you drive it, the more bang you get
for your buck.
And thus we get back to one of the most important rules about
living rich: Buy quality and keep it for a long time.
When it comes to cars, that means buying the best models of the
best brands… buying them when they are two to five years old and
then keeping them for ten to twenty years.

You may be thinking, “Oh, I would never want to own a car that
long. It would soon be out of date.”
But this won’t happen if you are smart and buy the best cars from the
best car manufacturers. Cars that are classically beautiful, designed
for comfort, capable of high performance, and built to last.
The NSX that I bought when it first came out is cooler now than
it was then. The new sports cars may be a bit faster. And they may
have some options that my car doesn’t have. But you can’t drive a
car faster than my NSX legally (except on a racetrack). And those
extra options? The “cool factor” of having a vintage NSX outranks
them by a mile.
The same will be true of my BMW. I chose it because of its classic

styling. It will look great in ten years and in twenty years, just as a
vintage 1980 or 1990 BMW looks great today.
What’s Your Dream Car?
There’s probably a car you’ve always lusted after—the car you tell
yourself you’ll buy as soon as you’re financially able. Well… now
you are.

Chapter 6
The Rich Man’s Meal

Food is undoubtedly one of the great pleasures in life. But it can
also be a significant danger. If you aren’t careful about what you
eat, you can easily become overweight, fatigued, and sick.
Wealthy people, as a group, tend to eat better than their less-wealthy

counterparts. Studies show that they know more about food, are
more discriminating in their purchases, and spend more time
enjoying their meals. And the richest of the rich—billionaires—
have a life expectancy that’s three-and-a-half years longer than that
of the average person, according to Forbes magazine.
Rich people don’t have to think about price. They can buy organic
vegetables, grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, and mercury-free fish.
They can shop at more expensive grocery stores and dine at better
restaurants. They eat higher quality food, but they also spend more
time eating. And they can afford to eat in more tranquil environments,
which is a big but often overlooked factor. The combination of
making healthier choices and eating at a leisurely pace in pleasant
surroundings results in better health and more enjoyment.
In this chapter, I am going to explore the world of eating rich. My

premise, as with everything else I’m covering in this book, is that
you can eat as well as a billionaire on a surprisingly limited budget.
Eating well, in this sense, means eating the best foods in the most
enjoyable ways. It means developing eating habits that nourish
your body and mind. It means looking forward to all of your
meals—whether in or outside of your home.
What are the best foods? There are many ways to answer that
question. But for the purposes of this book, let’s say that the best
foods are those that are not only delicious but also nutritious.
Chapter 6 - The Rich Man’s Meal 51

Delicious is, of course, a tricky qualifier. What is delicious to me
might be disgusting to you. I am not going to attempt to persuade
you to eat foods you don’t enjoy. But I do want to point out that
there is a difference between liking food because you like its taste
and liking it because you have a craving for it.
For many people, chocolate cake is delicious. But if you think

about the feeling you have when eating chocolate cake you may be
able to distinguish between its flavor and the effect that starch and
sugar has on your pleasure receptors.
Again, I’m not trying to persuade you to eliminate such empty

calories from your diet. I’m simply pointing out that if you are
conscious of the difference between food cravings and taste you
may be able to make healthier choices.
Nutrition is a developing science. At one time, most of the

information we received about the quality of food came from
the government, and American industry funded and influenced
its research. Back then, we were given a food pyramid that was
extremely heavy in starches and other low-value carbohydrates.
Nowadays, thanks to independent research, we know that the most
nutritious foods are real foods—foods that Mother Nature intended
for us to eat. These include free-range animals and organic fruits
and vegetables. Such foods are somewhat more expensive. But
as you will see as you read on, you can still include a generous
portion of them in your diet without overspending.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive
Want to enjoy a billion-dollar meal?
Buy a half-bottle of Australian cabernet, a fresh baguette, a quarter-

pound of ham, a wedge of good cheese, and a piece of fruit. Then
go to a park, sit down beneath a tree, and have a peaceful hour-
long lunch.
Or invite a few close friends over for an impromptu barbecue—

steak and/or freshly caught fish grilled over hot coals. Serve it

with a tossed organic salad and a bottle of California merlot or
sauvignon blanc.
Or take a loved one to the best restaurant in town before the crowd
gets there. Order several of your favorite appetizers and savor
them, accompanied by a glass of wine. If you take your time,
you’ll be more than satisfied and will have spent less than half of
what you would have spent on a full three-course dinner.
Eating rich is not about being fancy. And it’s not about cost. It’s
about high-quality food and drink in a relaxing atmosphere with
people you enjoy.
There is no food police watching you shop for groceries. No

one cares if you buy frozen chicken nuggets instead of a farm-
raised roaster. No one cares if you fill your cart with processed
convenience foods instead of fresh fruits and vegetables.
The reason to buy quality food is that it tastes good and the quality
of your life depends on it.
Cheap fuel gunks up cars. Junk food has the same effect on your body.
It may provide some momentary comfort (as all bad habits do). But it
forces your digestive system to work overtime to try to process it. That
makes you tired and grumpy. And it makes you want to eat more junk.
Yesterday, I stopped at the market to pick up a few things. While

I was checking over the organic avocados, a young couple walked
up to the display. The girl picked up one of the avocados and said,
“Oh, these look so good. Let’s get some!”
The fellow, noticing the price, said, “Two for $5! No way!”
The girl put the avocado back, and they walked away.
I have no doubt that they spent at least $5 in the market that day.
But it was probably on dead food that tastes like the box it came
in. Food full of unhealthy fats and carbohydrates, rather than the
healthy fats and vitamins in an avocado.

If you stay away from high-quality food because you think it’s too
expensive, this is a mindset that you need to lose. In the long run,
it is actually cost-effective. For one thing, you eat less of it. More
importantly, the hidden cost of eating poorly is reflected in the
higher cost of health care. And when I say “health care,” I include
treatment for depression and anxiety.
So Where Do You Start?
Your first step is to get real. Literally.
Real Protein
Don’t waste your hard-earned cash on hormone-laden, corn-fed

beef from cattle raised in a feedlot. Grass-fed beef is lower in
overall fat but has a much higher level of omega-3 fatty acids. In
fact, the ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s is better than what you get
from most fish.
The same goes for poultry. Free-range birds taste better and are a
healthier choice. I encourage you to taste-test them yourself. You
won’t believe the difference. When it comes to seafood, look for
wild-caught, coldwater fish. Responsible fish farming is coming on
the scene, too.
Real Fruits and Vegetables
Nutritionally speaking, green and yellow vegetables are

unbeatable—high in fiber and antioxidants. Go easy on potatoes
and eat a minimum amount of corn. From a metabolic perspective,
corn is pretty much the same as candy. It gives you a rush and
it’s addictive. Low-glycemic vegetables, on the other hand, keep
insulin levels steady.
Organic produce is available in just about every grocery store. And

in season, you’ll find a wide variety of fruits and vegetables at your
local farmers’ markets, including tomatoes that really taste like
tomatoes.

When you buy organic, it’s not just about taste. Conventionally
grown produce can be loaded with pesticides. And the risk of
cross-contamination is so great that many grocers do not even store
organics and conventional produce near each other.
Real Nuts and Seeds
Nuts—raw or toasted—are ideal snacks, full of protein, vitamins,

and healthy fats. With only about 100 calories, ten almonds will
tide you over—a cheaper, healthier choice than a candy bar. Nuts
also add a nice crunch to a salad.
Note: You might want to steer clear of peanuts (which are actually
legumes, not nuts). They are very high in calories. They are also
susceptible to a mold that produces a carcinogen (aflatoxin) that
has been linked to liver cancer.
Real Fat
As I mentioned, fat is a vital part of a healthy diet. You want real

fat—from animals, eggs, avocados, and good oils. What you
want to avoid is man-made trans fats, which are produced by
hydrogenating liquid vegetable oils to make them solid. The result
is a product with a very long shelf life. Good for your grocer, not
so good for you.
Rule of thumb: Stay away from anything with the word

“hydrogenated” on the label. That includes most margarines and
processed foods.
The Red Meat Myth
For several decades, “red meat” has been associated with

heart disease. The myth arose when early studies identified
cholesterol as a cardiovascular villain.
In fact, there is nothing unhealthy about cholesterol.

Cholesterol is animal fat. And animal fat is a very good fat
that fuels the body efficiently—as long as you stick with
grass-fed, free-range meat. What you want to avoid is meat
from animals that have been confined and pumped up with
steroids and estrogen in order to fatten them up quickly.
And you don’t have to pay a fortune for the good stuff,
even when you eat out. Restaurants specializing in grass-
fed, free-range meat are springing up everywhere.
Am I trying to talk you into eating beef even if you

don’t like it? No. My point is that there is a great deal
of nutritional misinformation out there. As someone
committed to healthy eating, I urge you to become familiar
with the latest studies so you can make wise decisions
about what to put into your body.
Hone Your Cooking Skills
I don’t cook much and for a very good reason. K enjoys cooking
and prepares delicious, healthy meals. What I’ve learned from
watching her is that it doesn’t take hours and dozens of ingredients
to make a great meal. Nor does it require a lot of fancy equipment.
One good, sharp knife is essential. A set of heavy-gauge pots and
pans is an investment that will last a lifetime.
Roasting or grilling a piece of chicken or fish couldn’t be easier.

While it cooks, put together a salad or stir-fry some colorful
veggies to go with it. A chunk of fresh, crusty bread rounds out the
menu. For dessert? Maybe a perfectly ripe Asian pear.
When you know you’ll be pressed for time, you can put something
in your slow cooker before you leave the house for the day. By the
time you return at suppertime, the aroma will be welcoming you
home. Again, couldn’t be easier.

And if you still have kids at home, get them involved in your
efforts. Helping you with meal planning and preparation can be
part of the quality time every family needs to spend together. At the
very least, the entire family—no matter how busy everyone is—
should sit down at the table three or four nights a week for good
food and conversation. When our boys were still at home, this was
a priority that we all honored and appreciated.
Eating well is much more than food for the body. It brings people
together. It nourishes the soul. It works that way whether the meal
is a picnic or a holiday spread. It works that way whether the wine
costs $9 or $90.
Make it the best and most rewarding part of your day.
5 Tips for Restaurant Meals
I’m a big fan of “eating in.” When done as a family, it can be a big
part of a rich family life. I like eating at restaurants too. And when
I do, I do my best to spend my money wisely.
Here’s what I mean…
• When you want to try a very pricey restaurant, order just a

glass of house wine and an appetizer. You’ll get all of the
ambience and service for a fraction of the money. An appetizer
at a great restaurant is much more enjoyable than a big meal
at some ordinary eatery. It’s better for your soul—and your
health.
• For business lunches, identify the very best place in town and
become a regular customer. Learn the owner’s name and get
friendly with the staff. They’ll always treat you like a VIP, even
if all you ever order is the chopped salad.
• Try new places. It’s easy to get stuck in a restaurant rut. If you
notice a new place going in, even if it’s a bit nondescript, stop
in and check it out. Many ethnic places don’t have the financial

backing of a corporate franchise, and the food might be very
authentic. You won’t know if you don’t give it a try.
• Watch for deals. Many of the restaurants we like have early

bird specials––in some cases, half-price meals if you get there
before 7:30. Others offer half portions, which are usually more
than enough.
• Tip well. You might not spend a fortune in the restaurant, but
you never want to appear cheap. Tip your server at least 15 to
20 percent before any coupons or discounts. Take care of the
servers and they will take care of you.
4 Cuisines to Experiment With
If you were a billionaire, one of the perks you might indulge in

would be to hire a personal chef. Think about it. You could “order”
whatever kind of food you’re in the mood for… host any number
of unexpected guests at the drop of a hat… treat yourself, your
family, and your friends to a superior dining experience every day
of the week.
Nice, yes?
Living rich is all about having that kind of freedom. And it doesn’t
take a lot of money. What it does take is an interest in the food you
eat to fuel your body and a willingness to experiment.
That said, here are four cuisines that are popular with those who
can afford to eat anything they want: French, Italian, Chinese, and
New American.
French: Small Portions of High-Quality Foods
The French have embraced moderation and équilibre (balance) in

their diets. Portion sizes are small—on average, about 25 percent
smaller than American portions. And though the French load their
cuisine with butter, cream, and cheese, they eat more slowly than

we do. As a result, they end up consuming fewer calories overall.
Plus, they burn off a lot of calories with their lifestyle. The French
designed their cities for walking, and they will almost always
choose to take the stairs instead of an elevator.
An appreciation of the social aspects of dining is part of French

culture. Street cafés and mom-and-pop brasseries encourage
camaraderie and conversation. For the French, a meal is meant to
be a shared experience, and it can last for hours.
Chinese: A Menu of Harmony and Balance
Chinese is one of the most popular cuisines in the world. However,

most people are not familiar with its spiritual foundation. Two
great philosophies, Confucianism and Taoism, contributed to
the way the Chinese people prepare and serve food. From these
philosophies came the concepts of harmony and balance—the
importance of combining complementary meats and vegetables…
hot and cold dishes… sweet and sour flavors.
New American Cuisine: Combining Farm-Fresh Ingredients

With Culinary Creativity
New American cuisine has been described as fresh “down home”

ingredients married to a cosmopolitan, upscale sensibility. Using
seasonal ingredients from regional, organic, and sustainable farms,
chefs toy with flavors and techniques. The result can be almost
anything. In other words, New American cuisine is a very broad
category.
You might see dishes like these on a typical menu:
• Cashew-Crusted Cod With Saffron Couscous and Vanilla

Beurre Blanc
• Chili-Cinnamon Glazed Chilean Sea Bass
• Cuban Chicken With Black Bean and Chorizo Cassoulet

• Maple Braised Short Ribs With Horseradish Smashed Potatoes
Italian: A Diverse Culinary Experience
There are twenty distinct regions in Italy, and each has its own
cuisine. Northern Italy, for example, has a colder climate. So its
cuisine—risottos, gnocchi, and polenta—tends to be heavier. Much
of Central Italy is on the seacoast, so it specializes in seafood. In
the south, the cooking is more rustic. (This is where you find the
pasta and pizza.)
The one thing they all have in common: The food is made from the
freshest local ingredients.
So How Do I Eat—and How Should You Eat

for Optimal Health and Energy?
I used to avoid red meat, eggs, butter, and ice cream. I used to eat
whole grains with every meal—as the FDA’s food pyramid told me
I should. That seemed to work when I was young. But when I hit
my forties, my weight ballooned up to 235 pounds.
Years later, I began a working relationship with Dr. Al Sears. When

I started to follow his recommendations, I noticed an improvement
in the way I felt right away.
Dr. Sears provides a complete plan of action in his book The

Doctor’s Heart Cure. Basically, he tells us to eat the way our
cavemen ancestors ate. Here’s the way he puts it in the book:
Remember those four basic food groups from grade

school health class? If you’ve forgotten them, don’t worry
about it, they don’t tell you anything about your natural
diet. They were a nutritionist’s attempt to make sense of
a very contrived artificial diet based on grains and other
processed foods….
You don’t have to count calories or record fat grams

to achieve your ideal weight and maintain optimal
cardiovascular health. All you have to do is to eat the
same ratio and quality of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates
that we have for eons. How are you going to do that? Get
started by remembering these three easy principles:
Principle #1: Eat protein at every meal.
Principle #2: Limit carbohydrate intake.
Principle #3: Eat natural fats.
In simplest terms, this is what it means:
• Make quality protein the centerpiece of every meal. This

should include non-contaminated fish such as wild salmon,
sardines, or young tuna, as well as grass-fed meats, poultry,
eggs, nuts, and beans.
• Eat a wide variety of herbs, leafy greens, and vegetables every

day, as well as a moderate amount of fruit.
• Eat plenty of healthy fats. The best fats are in coldwater fish
and fish oil. Nuts, eggs, and grass-fed beef also have good fats.
Use olive oil and coconut oil.
• Avoid processed carbohydrates. In other words, don’t eat

anything made from grains or potatoes. Period. (If you can’t
imagine life without mashed potatoes, try pureed cauliflower.)
What you eat is a matter of personal choice. But to stay

productive and energetic, try for a similar balance of fats, proteins,
carbohydrates, and fiber.

Chapter 7
The Rich Man’s Wine Cellar

There is a reason that champagne is associated with wealth: For most
of the twentieth century in America, champagne was very expensive.
The same is true of the great red wines. How often in the books
and movies that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s does the hero
demonstrate his sophistication by ordering a vintage bordeaux?
When I was a child, Americans drank very little wine and produced
even less. Then, sometime in my early teens (the 1960s), I began to
see wine commercials on TV. Wine consumption increased steadily
in the 1970s, but our consumption per capita couldn’t compare with
the French or the Italians. Even the English drank more than we did.
Wine’s popularity soared in the 1980s and 1990s as baby boomers

came into their maturity. Today, the U.S. is the largest consumer
and fourth-largest producer in the world.
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, too—aided by sunny

climates—became major producers, consumers, and exporters.
Then Argentina and Chile got into the game. I can’t think of a
country I’ve visited in the past ten years (including India and
Thailand) that doesn’t produce at least some local wine.
As the wine industry grew, so did a subset of the wine-drinking

population who appreciated good wine. In my college years, there
were few books in English about wine and no magazines that
I knew of. Today, there are hundreds of books and more than a
dozen magazines.
Twenty years ago, the “big” American producers (e.g., Gallo)

catered to a relatively unsophisticated palate. Table wines were
the rule and white and rosé wines were more popular than reds.
Chapter 7 - The Rich Man’s Wine Cellar 63

Today, any decent-sized wine store has dozens of good choices in
every category—from American cabernets to Italian Barolos to
Australian merlots.
The market is large and the competition is fierce. And that means
you don’t have to spend a lot of money to have a full and rich
enjoyment of wine.
The secret to drinking wine like a billionaire is to have a good

familiarity with the types of wines available and to know which of
them you like. But keep in mind that enjoying wine––and this is
true of most areas of enjoyment––is a process of continual change.
The wine you most enjoy at the outset of your education is unlikely
to be the wine you enjoy years later.
The goal is not to become a wine connoisseur but to get to the

point where you feel confident buying wine for home consumption
and ordering wine when you dine out.
Price vs. Quality
Our mission here is the same as always: to examine how rich-

minded people enjoy wine and to identify world-class wine that
you can buy on a modest (i.e., intelligent) budget.
The first thing to know about wine is this: The price of a bottle of
wine does not determine its quality.
Blind taste tests have proven this over and over again. In 1976,
for example, Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, organized
a tasting of wines from France and California. Much to the
surprise of the eleven experts on the tasting panel, four relatively
inexpensive cabernets from Napa Valley beat out much costlier
contenders from such illustrious vineyards as Mouton Rothschild
and Haut-Brion.
When the same tasting was repeated a few years later, an

inexpensive cabernet from Napa Valley topped the list once again.
(It’s these two well-publicized events, by the way, that put Napa

Valley on the wine world map.)
More recently, Mouton Rothschild and Haut-Brion were pitted

against American upstarts. This time, the American wines were
from New Jersey. And though the Jersey wines didn’t quite come
out on top, they ran a close second. The cost of those Jersey wines?
On average, about 5 percent of their French counterparts.
If you could be a fly on the wall of a fancy restaurant in Manhattan,

you’d notice three very distinct types of wine drinkers.
1. The baffled and/or intimidated. They don’t know a thing about

wine and they don’t pretend to. The brave ones will call on the
sommelier, tell him how much they wish to pay, and then ask
for recommendations. This is the smart option. The timid ones
will look at the list and pick a bottle based on the name (“This
one sounds kind of classy.”) and the price (I’ll pay ten bucks
more than I want to so the waiter won’t roll his eyes.”).
2. The pretenders. These are people who select wines that are
generally considered to be very good by other pretenders. If
they are looking for a red wine and Opus One is on the menu,
they will order that. If champagne is called for, they will order
Dom Pérignon or Cristal. They are slaves to brand advertising
because they don’t really know what they like and are afraid
to admit it. They are happy to pay more than they should to
impress their friends or colleagues.
3. The honest enthusiasts. They like drinking wine and they

also enjoy learning about wine, but they don’t pretend to
be connoisseurs. They read about wine now and then. They
ask questions when they are at restaurants. They are open to
experimenting. But they never spend more than their budget
allows.
My purpose here is to help you avoid the silly mistakes the

pretenders make and enjoy a life of wine drinking without stressing
your budget. And though I wouldn’t normally quote Donald Trump

on anything to do with living rich, he is right when he says this in
his book Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to
Know About Success: “It’s nice that people think Dom Pérignon
is a good champagne, because it is. But it isn’t the best…. Always
remember that the most famous doesn’t always equal the best. The
best is a quest.”
6 Common Myths About Wine
Myth #1: Good wine is expensive.
Countless blind taste tests have proven the fallacy of this idea. (A
blind taste test is one in which the experts do not know the variety
or brand or vintage of the wines they are tasting.) Every blind test
I’ve read about includes, among the favorites, several bottles of
inexpensive wine (less than $20 per bottle).
Myth #2: Red wine is better than white wine, and white wine is
better than rosé.
I don’t know where this idea came from, but it is silly. When I hear
someone say, “I drink only red wine,” I think, “This guy knows
nothing about wine.” I have the same thought when someone talks
about rosé as if it were somehow illegitimate. The fact is that there
are plenty of great white and rosé wines. And sometimes they are
better suited to a meal than reds.
Myth #3: Ignore the rules about matching wine with food.
Drink what you like.
This is a myth that cropped up among American wine advocates.

It sounds smart and egalitarian. But I can assure you that after you
have tasted many bottles of wine you will come to the conclusion
that the old rules about pairing wine with food make a lot of sense.
Myth #4: It doesn’t matter what sort of glass you drink from.
Here I might be accused of pseudo-sophistication. There have been

a few studies that demonstrated that most wine drinkers cannot

detect any difference between a wine that is sipped from a proper
wine glass and one that is sipped from a mayonnaise jar. It is also
true that the French and Italians—people who have always enjoyed
wine as an essential part of their lives—sometimes use simple
glassware. But when you are drinking a good wine, one you intend
to savor, I recommend a stemmed glass. And not just any stemmed
glass but one that is appropriate to the kind of wine you are drinking.
You want a stemmed glass because you don’t want your fingers to
heat the wine while you drink it. You want the right sort of glass
because you care about how much of the bouquet is available when
you smell it. And you want thin glass because it simply feels better
against your lips. I can’t prove it, but I believe it’s true.
Myth #5: Cork corks are superior.
The traditional wine cork is made from cork. And some

traditionalists argue that cork corks are better. In fact, synthetic
corks are better at preserving wine than cork corks. And bottle
caps—the most undignified of all—are better still.
Myth #6: Good wine is aged wine.
The fact is, only a small percentage of wine varieties get better with
age. French bordeaux and non-French cabernet sauvignons certainly
do. So do French burgundies and non-French pinot noirs. Most rosés
and white wines don’t need aging. The same is true of many red
wines. Any basic wine book will explain all of this very adequately.
Educating Your Palate

There are three major factors that determine the flavor of
wine. One is geography. Different areas have different
climates and different soils. Another is the grape variety. A
cabernet sauvignon grape is different than a merlot grape,
and a merlot grape is different than a pinot noir grape.
The third is the manufacturing process. When and how the
grapes are harvested and how they are fermented and aged
are important.

As you try different wines, you will find that you favor
certain regions, grapes, and manufacturing processes over
others. But don’t be surprised if those initial preferences
change as you try many more.
Broadly speaking, there are two categories of wines:
• Red (made from red grapes)
• White (usually made from white grapes but can be made from
red grapes too)
The Reds
There are hundreds of varieties of red grapes, but only a handful

are used in producing most red wines. Here they are, from the
lightest and least tannic to the boldest and heavier-bodied:
Gamay (France)––Used to produce beaujolais. Dominant flavors:

strawberry, raspberry, and cherry.
Pinot Noir (France)––Used to produce burgundy and champagne.

This is a notoriously hard grape to grow. Its thin skins damage
easily, and the plant reacts wildly to changing weather. Dominant
flavors: black cherry, raspberry, currant, spice.
Tempranillo (Spain)––The traditional wine produced with this

grape is garnet colored and tastes of tea, vanilla, and brown sugar.
The modern version has a darker color and tastes of plums and
tobacco.
Sangiovese (Tuscany, Italy)––Used to produce chianti and

brunello di montalcino. Dominant flavors: cherry, anise, and
tobacco.
Merlot (France)––Usually blended with other grapes. Dominant

flavors: watermelon, cherry, and plum.

Zinfandel (California)––Produces a dry red wine as well as a
medium-sweet rosé (also known as “white zinfandel”). Dominant
flavors: raspberry, black cherry, raisin.
Cabernet Sauvignon (France)––The primary grape in French

bordeaux and an important grape in Napa Valley. Dominant
flavors: currant and black cherry.
Syrah/Shiraz (France/Australia)––It’s syrah in France, shiraz

in Australia. Same grape, though the Australian wines produced
with it are more full-bodied. Dominant flavors: blackberry, plum,
pepper, and clove.
The Whites
Nine out of ten white wines are produced by three varieties of

grapes. From the lightest to the fullest-bodied, they are:
Riesling (Germany)––Wine produced from this grape can be dry,

medium-dry, or downright sweet. (Those with a very high sugar
level are delicious… and very expensive.) Dominant flavors: floral
and citrus.
Sauvignon Blanc (France)––This grape is a chameleon. It has a

combination of fruity (lime, peach) and herbaceous (pepper, grass)
flavors. And depending on how ripe the grape is, one of those
flavors will be dominant.
Chardonnay (France)––Though France (Burgundy) is

chardonnay’s motherland, this very adaptable grape is grown
worldwide and produces many popular (and inexpensive) white
wines. Dominant flavors: oak, apple, pear, citrus, and melon.

Reading the Label
Here’s what to look for:
• Producer––who made the wine. When you find a wine

that you like, you’ll want to look for more from that
same producer.
• Vintage––the year the grapes were harvested. If the

grapes are from more than one year, the designation
is NV (non-vintage). Keep in mind that older is not
necessarily better. Some wines are meant to be drunk
young, while others need to be “cellared” for years.
Still, some vintages are better than others, and the price
of the wine will reflect that.
• Location––which can include region and vineyard.

The more specific the information, the better the wine
(generally speaking). Example: Napa Valley is better
than California.
• Grape Variety or Appellation––Wines from the “Old

World” (France, Italy, and Spain) are identified by
appellation. The label tells you where the grapes were
grown––e.g., burgundy, chianti, rioja. Wines from
the “New World” (the United States, Australia, South
Africa, New Zealand, and Chile) are varietal. The label
tells you the name(s) of the grapes used to make them–
–e.g., chardonnay, merlot, zinfandel.
• “Estate Bottled”––When you see “Estate Bottled” on

the label, this tells you that the growers of 100 percent
of the grapes produced and bottled the wine. A very
good sign. Almost as good: “Produced and Bottled By,”
which tells you that the bottler fermented at least 75
percent of the wine.

Starting Your Wine Collection
I love walking into my cellar and picking out the perfect bottle of
wine to accompany a meal. If you don’t feel the same way, forget
wine and take up a collection of something else that gives you
great pleasure.
Assuming you are open to exploring many different wines, I

recommend aiming for a beginning collection of about 50 bottles.
It might have the following components:
• Red Wines: 20 bottles
• White Wines: 20 bottles
• Rosé Wines: 4-5 bottles
• Fortified Wines: 3 bottles––In particular, I would recommend a

bottle-aged port (which matures wonderfully), and two sherries
(dry and sweet).
• Sparkling Wines: 2-3 bottles (to keep on hand for special

occasions)
Note: Technically, to be labeled “champagne,” a wine

must meet the strict rules and regulations set by the
Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne
(CIVC). And you can spend a huge amount of money
on the real stuff. But if all you want is fizz in your
glass to toast the New Year or a newly engaged
couple, there are some very good—very reasonably
priced—sparkling wines produced in Spain (cava), Italy
(prosecco and asti), and California.

Breaking this down further, you could divide the whites and reds
into three categories each: light, medium, and full-bodied.
• Light Reds: 4 bottles
• Medium Reds: 6 bottles
• Heavy Reds: 10 bottles
• Light Whites: 6 bottles
• Aromatic Whites: 8 bottles
• Heavy Whites: 6 bottles
Now, where are you going to put all that wine?
Storage Options
The important thing is to keep the wine away from light and
as close to 60 degrees as possible. Heat will turn the wine bad.
Humidity is another factor to consider. A higher humidity level
(ideally 65 to 75 percent) helps to keep oxygen from seeping in
through a shrinking cork. Storing the wine on its side will also help
prevent the cork from shrinking and drying up.
Most California wines and wines that cost less than $25 per bottle
are meant to be drunk within two years. A simple storage rack or
countertop wine cooler will let you keep these wines on hand while
you find out if you are interested in a more serious investment.
But as your investment in your collection grows, you’ll want to

start looking at other options. To pick the right one for your needs,
here are some things to consider:
• How many bottles will you want to store? Keep in mind

that your collection will continue to grow. Also keep in mind
that wider bottles or bottles with long necks will cut down the
capacity of the unit.

• What kind of wine will you be storing? Dual-zone units give
you the flexibility to store red and white wines at different
temperatures.
• Door construction. A glass door makes it easier to see the

wine, but a solid door is usually better insulated (and more
expensive). Sunlight can damage wine, so if the unit has a glass
door, it should have a UV-protective tinted finish.
• Interior construction. An aluminum interior is best for

maintaining temperature, but wood is fine too, so long as it is
tightly paneled and unvarnished.
• Shelving. Shelves that roll out and tilt are convenient for
reading labels and removing bottles. Some units have
adjustable shelves to accommodate unusual bottle sizes and
shapes.
• Security. A unit with an integrated lock will help protect your

investment. Some models will sound an alarm when the door is
left open.
• Vibration. Compressors, even those labeled “silent,” tend

to vibrate slightly and make noise—and vibration can wreck
a wine. So you’ll want a unit with coated racks that grip the
bottles and a compressor that’s mounted on rubber blocks.
• Ventilation. Some units need 5 inches or more of space for

ventilation. Make sure you have enough room for this.
For the ultimate long-term storage, a wine “cellar” is ideal. Your

cellar can be as small as half of a coat closet or as large as a
warehouse, depending on your needs and your budget.
You might, for example, convert part of your garage or basement

into a reach-in wine cellar. How much would that cost? Well, a
custom-built 8-by-8-foot space––with a self-contained cooling
unit, room for racking on three walls, tile flooring, and an insulated
door––might run about $15,000.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to cellar wines with short life
spans. You’ll want to stock some choices for everyday pairings
with meals. But if you invest in a cellar, you should start collecting
wines that will age. (Don’t go overboard. Remember, your taste
will change, and you don’t want to be stuck with a lot of wine you
no longer enjoy.)
Reds are more suitable for aging due to their high tannin content.
Over time, the tannins mellow out and become a complex
background for the fruit flavors. Wines that have a track record
for aging include bordeaux, burgundies, rhônes, and vintage
ports. Other good candidates for aging are the Italian chiantis and
Spanish riojas.
However, when you’re just starting out, don’t obsess about storage.
Put a case in a closet or the basement and start building a collection
of wines you really like to drink. As you learn more about wine
and your collection grows, you can invest in some proper storage.
By that time, you will have a better idea of just how many bottles
you want to store. Novices typically underestimate how quickly
the cellar will be filled. So doubling or even tripling the number of
bottles you expect to accumulate is not unreasonable.
Establish Your Personal Preferences
I’m not a fan of systems for “scoring” wine, and there are many.
One of the most popular is Robert Parker’s 100-point system,
which was adopted by Wine Spectator magazine. The problem with
that system is this: Originally, a score of 60 or above was consid-
ered acceptable. Then, over time, a score of 80 became the com-
mercial benchmark. Wines scoring lower than that are now con-
sidered unacceptable. As a result, consumers ignore a lot of good
wines that are excellent buys.
I’m not a fan of wine competitions either, but that is how a lot of
wine gets marketed. Consumers who don’t know what they like
feel good about buying something that’s won an award.

Yes, wine scores can be helpful, but take them with a grain of salt.
You don’t need someone to score your produce or your shoes be-
fore you buy them, so don’t make wine scores more important than
they are.
Taste is a matter of personal preference. You have to do your

homework and find out what types and styles of wine please your
palate.
When you find one you like, buy a few bottles for your cellar. If
you really love it, buy a case.
The Wine Tasting “Ritual”
You don’t need to put on a big act to enjoy wine. You don’t
need to sniff the cork. And you don’t need to decant young
wine (less than, say, seven or eight years old). But there is
something to be said for the traditional wine-tasting protocol.
Learning to taste wine properly will increase the enjoyment
you get from it. It will also educate you on what you like and
don’t like so you can buy or order wine with confidence.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Tasting actually begins with your eyes. You can learn a

good deal about a wine simply by observing its color. So to
begin the ritual, pour a small amount of wine into your glass.
Now hold the glass up to the light to see the color of the
wine. White wines deepen to gold or yellow-brown as they
age. Reds change from purplish or ruby red to brick red or
brown. Deeply colored wines are usually bolder in taste,
while lighter ones are less so.
As a beginner, you simply want to notice whether the wine

you’re about to drink is light or dark… whether the color

is uniform or lighter/darker at the edges. You’ll find that
some wines taste better when they are new, and some taste
better when they are old (assuming they’ve been cellared
properly). A rich, glossy color with subtle gradations
toward the rim is usually a better wine.
2. Put your nose to the glass and sniff the wine. At first,
this may feel sort of ostentatious. But, in fact, much of the
pleasure of wine comes from its “bouquet” (aroma).
3. After that initial sniff, swirl the wine in the glass to

“oxidate” it… and take another sniff. See if the bouquet
has changed at all. Is it more mellow? Maybe. Maybe not.
The point is to be conscious of the change if a change has
occurred.
4. Now you get to taste. Take a sip, but don’t gulp it down.
Hold the wine in your mouth for a moment to warm it up
and release even more aroma into the nasal passages. Then
swallow it, noting how it tastes immediately and in the
seconds that follow.
Was it overly sweet or acidic or tannic? Or was it a nice

balance of each of those things? How long did the taste
linger? One sign of a quality wine is a long, pleasing
aftertaste for up to several minutes.
Ordering Wine in a Restaurant
My first rule when ordering wine in a restaurant is this: In a

restaurant that has a good but expensive wine list, I order the least
expensive bottle of the variety I want. I do that because I know that
any sommelier worth his salt will not allow a bad wine to appear
on his list. In such a restaurant, the cheapest wine is often the best
value. If the wine list is not so good, I order a known brand at the
price point I know it should be.

Here are my other rules:
• Be careful when ordering chardonnay. This is currently

America’s favorite wine, and restaurants charge accordingly.
You’re likely to get a much better price on a riesling or a
sauvignon blanc.
• Never order Santa Margherita pinot grigio. It’s the most

popular imported wine in the country, and restaurants mark up
the price due to its popularity. It is not uncommon to pay triple
the wholesale cost for this wine. Look for a better value on
the wine list. And if you still want the Santa Margherita, buy a
bottle at your local retailer to drink at home.
• Check the vintage of the bottle you receive. If the restaurant

inventory isn’t turning over very quickly, you could end up
with a vintage that hasn’t been stored well… or is just past its
prime, period. If you notice a switch, just tell the waiter you’d
prefer the year you asked for.
• Don’t ignore house wines offered by the bottle or carafe. This

is common practice in Europe, and some American restaurants
are getting on board. Try it if it’s an option.
• If you’re hosting a business dinner, take a few precautionary

steps to look more informed and in control at the restaurant.
Check out the wine list in advance, either online or ask the
restaurant to send you a copy to review. You can research
options at your convenience. Or arrive at the restaurant
fifteen or twenty minutes ahead of your guests and talk to the
sommelier privately.
• One more piece of advice: Sommeliers can be great allies.

Treat them with professional courtesy. Asking for advice
when faced with a varied and lengthy wine list is not a sign
of weakness. However, give your sommelier some specific
guidelines on approximately how much money you want to
spend and any preferences that will help you end up with a
wine you truly like.
• On rare occasions, the wine will taste like vinegar. That means
the wine has gone bad. It is undrinkable, and you should return

it. But you should never return a wine simply because you
don’t love the taste. That is the ultimate sign of an amateur.
The only exception is when the sommelier (or waiter) has
recommended the wine to you and you ask him, before he
opens the bottle, if you can return it if you don’t like it.
A Few Words About Liquor and Beer…
Wine is certainly at the top of my list, but I’ve learned to

appreciate certain other beverages.
Single-malt scotch is one of them. And nowadays, you can add

vodka and bourbon and tequila to that list. And, finally, there is
beer—good, old beer.
Liquor
As with wine, there are many kinds and brands of liquor to choose
from.
Rich but unsophisticated liquor drinkers tend to buy the most

expensive bottles on the shelves because they assume there is a
direct correlation between quality and price. By now, you know
that is not always true. To enjoy liquor, you must do pretty much
what I recommended for wine. Spend some time learning about it.
Then find out what you like by doing a lot of tasting––“neat” or on
the rocks, please. Maybe with a splash of club soda or water.
Taste scotch and whiskey and bourbon and the white liquors. See
how you like the taste, and then see how you feel later. I’ve never
understood why (although I’m sure there is an explanation), but
liquor tends to affect people in different ways. I have found that
dark liquors make me feel cloudy. Rum makes me angry. The light
liquors are sometimes good and sometimes bad for me. The best
one for me is tequila. And there are dozens of very good tequilas to
choose from.
So begin by finding what kind of liquor gives you the best overall
experience. That experience includes the taste, the initial feeling,

and how you feel afterward. Don’t assume that the liquor you
prefer now is the one that is best suited to you. It may be. But you
won’t know until you’ve tested others.
And if it turns out that a fifteen-year-old single-malt scotch really

is your favorite, go ahead and treat yourself. When you consider
that you’ll get sixteen shots out of a bottle, that makes it a luxury
you can afford.
Beer
For most of my life, beer occupied a lower station in my imagination.

But recently I became a partner in a microbrewery in my hometown.
As a result, I have been tasting beer regularly and have been impressed
with how many different sorts of beers there are.
Because I like my beer cold, I tend to prefer beers with distinctive

flavors. (Chilling tends to mute the taste of any beverage.) And
because I seldom drink more than two beers at a sitting, I prefer
beers that have higher alcoholic content.
For these reasons, I’m not a fan of the most popular American
beers, such as Budweiser, Coors, and Miller. I feel unpatriotic for
not liking them, but I don’t. Nor do I like all of the pseudo-exotic
American beers, such as Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada. Most
of them are the same quality beer in different bottles. And when the
taste does differ a bit, it is generally for the worse.
The beers I like are usually imported beers—not the lighter ones, such
as Pilsner Urquell, Heineken, and Stella Artois—but the darker and
stronger ones, such as Negra Modelo, Dos Equis (dark), and Tsingtao.
I’ve also checked out (and enjoyed) many regional microbrews.
As for as drinking beer like a billionaire, I have a few ideas. None

of these are more than prejudices. Accept them for that.
• Beer is not a drink that goes with everything. To drink beer

“richly,” you have to pair it properly—so it enhances rather
than diminishes or competes with the food. It doesn’t go well

with fine Italian, Spanish, or French cuisine. But it does work
with the heavier cuisines you find in Germany and Eastern
Europe. It also goes well with spicy Asian dishes. And, of
course, it is a must with hot dogs and Mexican food.
• The first cold beer is the best beer. The second beer will give
you half the pleasure, and the third will give you half of that.
This is exactly the opposite of good wine, which seems to get
better with each consecutive glass.
• Drink one beer and sometimes two, but never more than two.
• Never drink beer and wine at the same meal. (I have a friend
who actually drinks beer, wine, and Coke at dinner. Horrors!)
And, finally…
• Never, ever get drunk on beer. It is sloppy and low-class.

Chapter 8
The Rich Man’s Wardrobe

The idea of dressing like a billionaire is questionable. How do
billionaires dress?
When I think of billionaires I think of Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs,

and Donald Trump. Buffett dresses like a bewildered college
professor. Steve Jobs dressed as if he could never decide whether
he was a boy or man, a visionary or a geek. And Donald Trump?
He dresses well if you go for that dark-suit, red-tie, I’m-going-to-
be-president-one-day look.
So why should you want to dress like a billionaire? The answer

is that you shouldn’t. Your goal should be to dress well––really
well––as well as you could if money were no object. And (as you
will not be surprised to know) you can do that without spending a
lot of money.
Why Bother?
If you have a billion dollars, you can dress like Warren Buffett and
people will still respect and admire you. But if you have ordinary
wealth (that is to say, not a lot of wealth), dressing well has its
advantages.
First and foremost, dressing well makes you look better. If you are
chubby, it makes you look slimmer. If you are short, it makes you
look taller. If you are tall and thin––hell, if you are tall and thin
(and young), you look good in anything. You can skip the rest of
this chapter. Except that dressing well also makes you feel good.
And that’s a good reason to dress well, don’t you think? So that
you can feel comfortable and even happy with your appearance
when you venture out into the world?
Chapter 8 - The Rich Man’s Wardrobe 81

Understand that the advice you will be getting in this chapter isn’t
coming from me directly. (I have no training in or natural talent
for dressing well.) It’s based on what I’ve learned by following
the advice of people who make a living by dressing wealthy and
successful people.
Still, the general thesis I’m proposing is the same. You can dress rich
by dressing classically, suitably, and avoiding extremes. That doesn’t
necessarily mean conservatively, as I’ll explain. It just means that
you don’t want to dress like Austin Powers or Phyllis Diller.
The Fundamental Rules
Many people equate dressing rich with designer clothing. But there
is nothing more foolish, in my humble opinion, than to spend tons
of money on designer clothing when you are living on a budget.
Another bad idea is “fast fashion”––cheap but trendy outfits that

can be bought at stores that have cropped up to serve the cheap-
but-trend-following consumer. Fast fashion is like fast food. It’s
inexpensive and it gives you a quick fix, but it is not necessarily
good for you.
And yet another bad idea is typically American: favoring quantity

over quality. According to the American Apparel and Footwear
Association, the average person buys 68 garments and 8 pairs of
shoes every year.
There is a better way.
You can dress well and feel very good in your clothes without
spending a lot of money. All you have to do is follow two simple
rules that will improve your wardrobe and save you a fortune spent
on the wrong things.
1. Buy quality clothing, but don’t buy it at full price. Buy when it
is discounted by at least 50 percent or buy it secondhand.

2. Never buy anything––no matter whose name is on the label
or how cheap it is––if it doesn’t make you look and feel good
when you put it on.
Where to Make It Happen
Consignment Shops––especially those that specialize in designer

labels. You can get great buys on high-end, “gently used”
garments.
Thrift Stores––not as easy to score here as with consignment shops

but well worth the time it takes to check out the merchandise.
Outlet Malls––but keep in mind that most designers have a secondary

line that they produce just for the outlets. They usually change the
label slightly, so make sure you know what you’re getting.
Discount Chains––stores like Marshalls and TJ Maxx have made

serious business out of selling designer overstock at significantly
reduced prices.
The only time you should shop at luxury department stores and
boutiques is when they are having a big sale and are selling their
clothes cheaply. And I mean really cheaply. Fifty percent full price,
as I said, is the maximum you should consider paying for designer
clothes. And if you are smart about it, you can pay only half that
much. Sometimes even less.
Whether you’re buying secondhand or brand-new (but on sale), the

trick, of course, is to know what you’re looking for:
• Clothing that will last––garments that are very well made and
classically styled
• Clothing that fits you perfectly (or can be easily tailored)
• Clothing that makes you feel as good as you look when you put
it on

Put Your Wardrobe on a Diet
To dress well, a man does not need more than six or seven types of
shoes. A woman will need a few more––but certainly no more than
a dozen. (Don’t quote me on this. I’m generalizing. But you get the
point.) But according to a poll conducted by Time magazine, men
own an average of 12 pairs of shoes. Women own an average of 27
pairs of shoes and more than 10 handbags.
In this regard, I must confess, my feminine side prevails. I must have

40 pairs of shoes. To me, each one is different. But even my wife
can’t tell the difference between one pair of black penny loafers and
another. (“Can’t you see how much wider that band is?”)
This addiction to shoes doesn’t help me dress better. It is a

hindrance. For one thing, I can’t see all of my choices just by
looking into my closet. The shoes that end up toward the back get
ignored for months or even years at a time. For another thing, the
selection process is stressful. Had I fewer choices, I know I could
make quicker and more confident decisions.
I’m doing better with the other things in my closet. I used to

have more than 60 dress shirts. A third of them didn’t even fit
me. Another third were in colors that made me look half dead.
After seeing those forty losers taking up space for several years, I
finally got rid of them. It was weirdly difficult. I had some strange
emotional attachment to them. But the moment they were gone I
felt better. I could open my closet door and know that every shirt in
front of me would look and fit well.
A few weeks after my shirt purge, I did the same thing with my
pants, taking a collection of about forty pairs down to twenty.
Again, the culling was a little difficult, but the result was positive.
Sometime soon I’m going to do the same thing with my T-shirts,

golf clothes, and belts. (My shoes… I don’t know.)

As James Dion, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting
and Running a Retail Store, suggests, we should all pay attention
to the De Beers’ slogan: “Fewer Better Things.”
Choose Quality Over Quantity
If you have never worn a quality garment, you may doubt that
there is much of a difference. From a distance, a cocktail dress
from H&M might look as good as one from Saks Fifth Avenue. But
up close, the difference is obvious.
Seams and Hems––Stitches should be tight and close together, not

loose or broken. Hems should be generous. If there’s a pattern on
the fabric, it should line up neatly at the seams.
Linings––Skirts, suits, jackets, and trousers that are lined tend to be

higher-quality garments. They glide onto the body easily and hang
better than those that are unlined.
Reinforcements––Buttons, zippers, and pockets should be

reinforced for wear. Pockets should be sewn to the lining. Zippers
should be lined and invisibly set into the garment.
Fabrics––Wool, silk, cotton, and linen are always best. Sometimes

newer garments will have a bit of synthetic mixed in for durability.
Trim––Synthetic lace is a dead giveaway that the piece is not well

made. If the trim is skimpy, so is the cut and fabric. Plastic belts
and base-metal buckles look like what they are.
By stocking your closet with quality clothes, you enjoy several

benefits. You will have the comfort of knowing that they are all
well-made. That, I’ve noticed, actually feels good. You will also
have the economic benefit of endurance. Quality clothes last longer
than inexpensive knockoffs. Sometimes five times as long.

The Cost of Possession
In Chapter 2, I explained the difference between price and cost

of use. Price is the initial expense of purchasing something. But
cost of use is how much you actually pay over the lifetime of
possessing it. The two are almost always radically different.
Here’s the problem. When you shop all the time and buy cheap
clothes, you spend a lot of money on a bunch of stuff that you’re
not going to want to own long-term. So when you do run across
a good buy on a quality item, you’ve already blown your budget.
Basically, you’ve thrown your money away.
Changing your mindset is the first step. Instead of tossing $20 here
and $20 there, save it up. When you put on a garment made of
great fabric and it fits well––it just feels different. It will be a piece
you will want to keep and wear again and again because you will
feel good in it. And it will be cheaper in the long run.
Choose Natural Over Synthetic
Clothing manufacturers have done wonders with synthetic fabrics.

They are easy and inexpensive to work with and can sometimes
resemble natural materials.
But natural fabrics have natural advantages. They have

characteristics that make them distinctive and memorable. And
they last longer without looking shabby.
Polyester is made of oil, just like plastic grocery bags. Elizabeth

Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap
Fashion, says: “It’s ironic that people take their plastic bags back
to the grocery store to be recycled but they fill their closets with
clothing made from the same thing.”
So start thinking of your wardrobe as an investment––not as a

disposable part of your life.

Classics—the Foundation of Your Wardrobe
People known for their taste in clothing have learned what works
for them. They have figured out what to include in their wardrobes.
And, just as importantly, what to leave out. They are suspicious
of fashion trends. They understand that when you follow a trend,
you tell the world that you are a sheep and not an individual. They
favor classical pieces, but they are not afraid to experiment with
bits and pieces that make their particular style of dressing unique.
My feeling is that 80 percent of your wardrobe should be

classics… items that you can keep for ten years without worrying
about them going out of style. The other 20 percent should be
items that define your personal “look.”
What makes the classics so valuable as the foundation of your

wardrobe is their simplicity and elegance. They are timeless for
a reason: You can wear them again and again, making them look
different simply by changing your accessories. And the image that
you present to the world will always be positive.
Do you remember when former San Francisco 49ers’ coach Mike

Nolan fought to be able to wear a business suit during football
games? Why did he do it? Because he wanted everyone to be able
to see him as the man in charge.
That’s what clothes––the right clothes––can do for you.
Wardrobe Essentials for Men
No matter what your lifestyle is, there are several things that every
man should own:
• 1 suit
• 1 blazer or sport jacket
• 3 ties
• 2 pairs of jeans

• 1 pair of dark slacks
• 1 pair of chinos
• 4 dress shirts
• 4 sport shirts
• 1 pair of casual shoes
• 1 pair of dress shoes
• 12 pairs of socks
• 1 trench coat
If you own only one suit, make it a dark color. Black, gray, or navy
in 100 percent wool is the most versatile. The classic style that
always looks modern is a two-button jacket with a narrow lapel.
Your basic dress shirts should be solid white or blue in a cotton

fabric that is easy to launder.
For your dress shoes, choose a pair of black lace-ups. For your
casual shoes, choose a pair of loafers in brown or black.
Good socks are a must. They should cushion your foot, not ride
down or bunch up. (I’m partial to cashmere…)
Dark trousers are fairly formal and can be paired with a classic
navy blazer or sport jacket. Chinos are more casual but dressier
than jeans. As for jeans, go for a dark wash that will look good
with either a dress shirt or a cotton T-shirt. A classic navy blazer
will look sharp with the dress slacks, the chinos, or the jeans.
Michael Haney of GQ magazine says the only jeans he wears are

Levi’s 501. They are thirty bucks a pair and last for years. But he
points out that sometimes “expensive” is actually the better deal:
“I’ve gotten more than a few shirts custom-made at Charvet in
Paris,” he says. “Sure, the initial outlay is big. But consider this:
These are shirts that are cut by hand from exclusive fabrics and
then hand sewn with an insanely high degree of craftsmanship.

These are shirts that will last forever and are unique to me. I’m not
a financier, but all I can say is, ‘Dude, amortize that!’”
Wardrobe Essentials for Women
Women tend to have way too many clothes. And in spite of that,
they often stand in front of the closet in despair, thinking they have
nothing to wear. The answer to this problem is to start with a core
wardrobe of neutral-colored classics and build from there. Your
core wardrobe might include:
• 1 pencil skirt
• 1 “little black dress”
• 2 pairs of jeans
• 2 pairs of dress pants, dark and light
• 4 blouses
• 4 casual tops
• 3 sweaters
• 1 jacket
• 2 pairs of casual shoes
• 1 pair of dress shoes
• 1 trench coat
The idea is to dress to emphasize your assets and cover up your

figure flaws. So, for example, if you have a short neck, you’ll want
to choose v-neck tops to elongate your neckline. If you have great
legs, you’ll want to wear short skirts to show them off.
A pencil skirt is flattering on almost all body types. So are single-

breasted coats and jackets.

When shopping for jeans and casual pants, here are a few
guidelines:
• straight leg––looks good on everyone
• wide leg––good on women with big bottoms and fuller figures
• boot-cut ––good on women with long legs, pear shapes
• narrow leg––good on women with slim legs, petite frames
For your dress shoes, choose a pair of black pumps. For your
casual shoes, choose ballet flats and/or loafers.
For your jacket, choose one that can be paired with the skirt, the
dress pants, and the jeans.
And be careful with the bling. Too much looks gaudy, no matter
how expensive it is. Classic equals understated.
Finally, a few words on the subject of black. Black is figure-

flattering. Black is elegant. Black is timeless… and always a
good choice.
Make It Fit
Even an expensive garment can look cheap if it doesn’t fit well.

And a moderately priced garment can look expensive when it is
tailored to your body.
A skilled tailor is the secret behind many people who consistently

appear on “best dressed” lists. He understands different body types
and knows how to make yours look a little taller and slimmer by
taking a tuck here and a tuck there. He knows exactly how long a
skirt, a pair of trousers, and a sleeve should be. And a good tailor
will tell you when something is not worth the money it would take
for alterations.

Take Care of Your Investment
In 1997, Sotheby’s sold some of the belongings of the Duke and

Duchess of Windsor. The collection included clothing that had
been made for the Duke in the 1920s… that he still wore well into
the 1970s. This speaks not only to the quality of the garments but
also to how well they were taken care of.
Here are a few tips to keep your clothing looking as good as it did
the day you bought it:
• Brush suit coats, dresses, skirts, and trousers after each

wearing. This takes about 30 seconds and will really make a
difference in how long the garment lasts. A clean brush with
stiff bristles will remove dust and dirt before it can settle into
the fabric. Give it a good brushing and let it air out overnight
before putting it back in the closet.
• Make repairs as needed. If you notice a loose button, fix it

before you lose it. If you notice a small tear in a seam, mend it
before it gets any bigger.
• Ditch the wire hangers. About the only use for a wire hanger
that I can think of is to open a car door if you lock your keys
inside. It certainly isn’t something you want to hang a $300
jacket on. Invest in wooden hangers that are least one inch
thick at the shoulders. It’s a small price to pay.
• Have wool garments professionally cleaned. Moths love wool.

And they can eat it to shreds. Never pack wool clothing away
without having it treated for storage. If the chemicals are
objectionable to you, find a cleaner that uses a natural process.
Spend Time, Not Money
Like I said, the foundation of your wardrobe should be classics––

timeless garments that you can wear for years.
It’s not difficult to buy a beautiful, high quality (Armani, say) suit
(or dress) at a consignment shop for $400 and have it tailored to fit

you perfectly for another $100. You’d have something that would
give you pleasure every time you wore it and you could wear it for
thirty years.
Or you could spend the same $500 on an off-brand, trendy suit or

dress that will be passé in a matter of two or three years.
Pay attention to quality and fit. Make sure that you love everything
in your closet. If you put on something that makes you feel less
than great, get rid of it. If you try on something in a store that can’t
be tailored to your body, don’t buy it.
Personalize your look with accessories––high-quality shoes,

scarves, bags, and jewelry that define your personal style.
Every time you get dressed, you should feel like you couldn’t look
any better even if money were no object. Making that happen is a
big part of living rich.

Chapter 9
The Rich Man’s Vacation

Traveling is one of the life’s richest experiences. Few pastimes
can provide such a combination of benefits––escape, adventure,
relaxation, education. Even romance.
As with other topics covered in previous chapters, you don’t need

to spend a lot of money to travel “rich.”
Disclosure: In discussing dressing like a billionaire, I admitted

that I have no intuitive sense of style. In discussing travel, I should
admit that I like to be pampered. I like to fly first class, stay at five-
star hotels, be chauffeured to my destinations, and generally have
my butt kissed. This kind of travel is––to be honest––wonderful
and addictive. But it is also very expensive.
If it were up to me, I’d spend a fortune on travel because––well,

because I can afford it. And if I did, I’d have very little to tell you
about traveling rich on a budget. It so happens, however, that K is
a very thrifty traveler. She refuses to pay rack rate for anything.
When we travel together, we generally spend half of what I do on
my own. And if she had her way, we’d spend even less. She simply
can’t get herself to fork out the big bucks for convenience. Instead,
she spends a fair amount of time on the Internet searching for
bargains. And she finds them.
Let’s Talk About Luxury Travel
Luxury travel evokes images of catered safaris in African

savannas, summer barge trips along European rivers, yacht charters
down the coast of Turkey, or private viewings at art museums in
Buenos Aires when they are closed to the public.
Chapter 9 - The Rich Man’s Vacation 93

I’ve done all of those things. I’ve also hired a plane to fly K to
Key West for an anniversary dinner… invited 15 of my best
friends down to Nicaragua for an all-expense-paid golfing
vacation… taken privately guided tours to amazing places in
China, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, Morocco, and a half-dozen
European countries.
As I said above, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t enjoy the

expensive tours and vacations I’ve taken. Nor am I going to argue
that certain aspects of traveling––flying first class versus coach, for
example––are not simply better.
But if you were to ask me about my trips, I wouldn’t be telling

you, “Oh, the seats on our Virgin flight to London were so roomy!”
Or, “We toured the city in the most comfortable Mercedes Benz.”
My best memories of traveling are of looking at the sunset from

a cliff high above the Irish Sea… rolling up to a pride of lions in
the back of a pickup truck in Chad… sipping espresso in an Italian
café… that sort of thing.
These are the richest experiences of traveling. And they aren’t

necessarily costly. Of the hundreds of meals I’ve eaten while
traveling abroad, one of my favorites consisted of a baguette, a
chunk of paté, and a bottle of vin ordinaire that K and I enjoyed in
a small park on the right bank in Paris.
If I had to guess, I’d say that you could have all the fun and maybe
80 percent of the luxury of a $1,000-a-day trip for a third or even a
quarter of that cost.
Let me give you an example. Right now, on my insistence, K and I are

staying at Le Sirenuse, a five-star hotel in Positano, Italy. It is a very
beautiful hotel, full of antiques and fresh flowers. We have, again at
my insistence, booked a junior suite. The cost is $1,300 a day.
That is a hell of a lot of money.

This morning, to give me a reality check, K walked me into two
adjacent hotels––a four-star hotel where rooms range from $300
to $400 a night and a charming three-star hotel where rooms range
from $150 to $250. She wanted me to see those hotels so I could
understand what she already knew––that the views from their
terraces are every bit as good as the views from Le Sirenuse.
Last week, we were in Rome. There are plenty of famous

restaurants in Rome where you can easily spend $250 per person.
But there are also thousands of amazingly good trattorias where
you can eat just as well for a tenth of the price.
Roman cuisine is actually very simple. And since Romans have an

affinity for fresh foods and natural ingredients, it is very difficult
to have a bad meal anywhere in the city, including the so-called
tourist traps.
The point is that it makes no sense to spend a lot of money on

fancy restaurants in Rome. You won’t get a better meal. You’ll
get only the satisfaction of saying you’ve been there, whatever
that’s worth.
It Pays—Really Pays—to Do Lots of Research
As I said, K is the travel planner in our family. She seems to like

the job because she spends (and I don’t think I’m exaggerating)
about as much time researching and booking our trips as we spend
on them. But the results are terrific. We have first-class experiences
for pennies on the dollar.
She likes boutique hotels with smaller rooms but elegant amenities.
My main requirement is to have a bar and an outside terrace
where I can smoke my cigars. (The latter is becoming increasingly
difficult to find these days, so lately she’s been finding hotels a
block or two from a cigar bar.)
Her selections, I must say, are unerring. And the rates we pay are
no more than a third of what I pay for a room at the Ritz when I do
my business travel.

She often books us into hotels prior to their official openings. This
means reduced prices and a staff that is trying very hard to please
despite some inevitable glitches. By being willing to put up with
these minor hiccups, we have been able to stay at some very chic
hotels that she wouldn’t consider later on because of their high cost.
K does her research on the Internet. But I notice that she also
spends a good deal of time on the phone, interviewing clerks and
concierges about accommodations, amenities, nearby restaurants,
and points of interest. She also is an avid reader of the New
York Times travel section, the Hideaway Report newsletter, and
countless travel websites and books.
When you travel with K, you can be sure that the theater ticket you
are holding has been purchased at half price, that the restaurant you
are eating in has been highly rated, and that you are at least aware
of what is “happening” in town even if you decide to pass. Before
she even arrives at a destination, she has compiled a long list of art
shows, cultural expositions, book readings, etc. that are often free
to the public.
K much prefers subways to taxis and walking to subways. This––

and her habit of reading about wherever we are––gives her an
astonishingly good understanding of new towns and cities in the
shortest possible time.
Invariably, our breakfast is included in the price of the room. And

although I can sometime persuade her to have lunch or dinner at
our hotel, she much prefers to go (i.e., walk) to some interesting
place she has come upon in her research.
Often there is a bottle of wine and a bowl of fruit waiting for us

when we check into a hotel for an extended stay. This, for K, is a
perfect low-cost and healthy meal.
We can afford to do anything we want when we travel. But K has

taught me that “traveling rich” is often a choice between spending
money to do things impulsively and spending time to shop for

value. The trick is to avoid doing the foolish things most wealthy
people do––such as dining in the most famous restaurants––and
find equally good experiences for a fraction of the price.
What About Travel Agents?
Despite the proliferation of online options, there has been resurgence

in the use of travel agents. And, sometimes, it makes sense.
Travel agents have a wide network of connections. They know

the execs at top hotels, cruise lines, and restaurants, and they
have an insider’s view of the way the industry works. If, for
example, the 800 number you call says the hotel you were hoping
to get is booked, chances are a good travel agent can access one
of the rooms that are being held “just in case someone important
needs it.”
But let’s be clear. The value of a travel agent increases in direct

proportion to the cost and specialized components of your trip.
There are travel deals to be had every day. And many excellent
websites keep making it easier to find deals tailored to your
particular needs and budget. As a result, most of the time, you’ll do
even better on your own.
Recently, for example, I found the following deals online:
[bullet] A “European Extravaganza” featuring a 7-night European

Cruise, starting at $589 per person; included up to $400 to spend
on board A 7-night cruise on Royal Caribbean, starting at $749
Four-star Ft. Lauderdale beach hotels for up to 50 percent off
Hawaii––3 nights, including airfare, hotel, and car rental––starting
at $509
Not bad, right? Especially when you consider that this was the first
time I tried to do this.

Value-Based Travel in the 21st Century
For booking a trip, K tells me your best bet is probably the old
standbys: Orbitz, Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, and Kayak. But
on the Internet, there’s always something new… and sometimes
better.
• Hipmunk.com was described by Forbes magazine as smarter,

slicker, and quicker. A Hipmunk search is a “decision-making
engine,” fast and to the point. You get a timetable with colored
bars ranked in descending order of “agony,” a factor that
includes price, length of trip, number of stops, and departure/
arrival times.
• Trippy.com takes advantage of social networking by letting

your globetrotting friends help you plan your vacation.
Through Facebook, for instance, your online network can make
recommendations that are automatically converted into an
itinerary and plotted on a map.
• TripIt.com uses the latest technology to turn your flight, hotel,

and car rental confirmation emails into a master itinerary.
Many useful sites have undoubtedly cropped up since I researched

this. (You’ll have to find them on your own.)
For the Ultimate in Cost-Saving:

Couch Surfing
Couch surfing originally referred to “crashing” on the couch at

friends’ houses while traveling. Now, thanks to the Internet, it has
evolved into an opportunity for everyone to experience another
culture firsthand––not just people with friends in interesting places.
Through CouchSurfing.org and GlobalFreeLoaders.com, you can

choose your location and get connected with people who live there
and would be happy to put you up in their homes (and possibly act
as your tour guide).

A notch above CouchSurfing.org and GlobalFreeLoaders is
Airbnb.com. For a very modest fee, it books everything from city
apartments to country villas in more than 34,000 cities and 190
countries.
To date, Airbnb has booked more than 10,000,000 rooms.

According to a TechCrunch post, “On any given night in New York
there are more people staying in homes via Airbnb than there are
rooms in the biggest hotel in Manhattan.”
10 Quick Money-Saving Tips
1. Flexibility pays off. If you can be flexible on when you travel

(next week or three weeks later) and on which day you leave
and return, you can save money.
2. Generally, it is cheaper to fly Tuesday, Wednesday, or

Saturday.
3. Check a variety of airports. You may have cheaper options

within a reasonable distance.
4. Some people are better than others at finding ways to collect

and use frequent flyer miles. You’ll find unbiased information
on a forum called FlyerTalk.
5. If you subscribe to a frequent flyer program, sign up for

promo codes. Promo codes can lead to savings of 10 to 50
percent.
6. Keep in touch with airlines via social networking. They have

been known to tweet amazing deals.
7. You can bargain with a hotel for your room rate. Sixteen
students at Columbia University did this as part of a research
project––and every one of them got a discount, anywhere
from 5 to 32 percent.

8. Hotel loyalty programs reward patrons with free nights,
discounts, and special privileges. And those rewards can be
used at any of the hotels in the chain. For instance, Hilton has
ten distinct brands, including Waldorf Astoria, Conrad Hotels,
DoubleTree, Embassy Suites, Garden Inn, Hampton Inn, and
Homewood Suites.
9. You can book a room at up to 60 percent off if you are willing

to do it through an opaque site such as Hotwire, Travelocity’s
Top Secret Hotels, or Priceline. The only catch is that you will
not know which hotel you have booked until after you have
paid. Consumer advocates have tried every trick in the book to
match prices from these three sites with no luck.
10. Sign up for as many travel website emails as possible.
Beware of Hidden Hotel Fees
Before you book a hotel, read the fine print. Here are some of the
traps to look out for:
• If a hotel offers golf, tennis, or hiking trails, they may add

between $20 and $50 per day to your bill––whether you use the
amenities or not.
• If you use the mini-bar, you may incur a “restocking” fee of

$2.50 to $6 on top of the excessive cost of the snacks and drinks.
• Extra fees for early check-in and late departure have been
increasing. And if you do arrive early or leave late and need to
store your luggage, be prepared to pay per bag. (Such fees can
often be waived if you’re in the hotel’s loyalty program.)
• Make sure you understand the hotel’s cancellation policy. Some

have increased the time from twenty-four hours to seventy-two.
• Room service may have a mandatory 18 percent tip added, in

addition to the $2.50 to $5 service fee.
• You may have to pay to send a fax or access Wi-Fi.

No Matter How Much You Spend, Stress-
Free Travel Means Planning Ahead
• Do your research. Know everything you can about your

destination. You don’t want to be surprised by unexpected
weather, rules and regulations, exchange rates, or arrival/
departure taxes.
• Prepare a list of emergency information that you can leave with

someone back home. This should include your itinerary, as well as
contact names/numbers for every place where you will be staying.
• Make sure that you have all required immunizations.
• Get your passport and visas organized a few months before

your trip. To avoid potential red tape, check the requirements
for each country you will be visiting.
• Buy a small notebook to take with you. On the first page, list the
addresses of friends you may want to write to while you’re away.
• Make copies of your travel documents, credit cards, and ID.

Plan to tuck those copies away in your luggage… just in case.
• Take the correct currency with you. Traveler’s checks are not
welcome everywhere, and access to banks may be limited.
• If you are going to rent a car, make sure that your driver’s
license will be valid.
• If you are on prescription medication, take enough with you to

cover unexpected travel delays.
• Look into getting travel medical insurance. If you already have

a policy, review the fine print.
• Don’t overpack. Put the clothes you think you will need in a
neat pile––then remove 50 percent of them. This is easy to do

if you keep your wardrobe simple. Just two colors and two or
three pairs of shoes.
• A very good reason to keep your baggage to a minimum (aside

from not having to lug around a lot of unnecessary stuff): Some
airlines will hit you hard for the privilege of taking an extra
piece of luggage.
• Don’t expect American levels of service if you are traveling

off the beaten path. Sometimes adventure and charm is more
important.
• It may seem “touristy,” but consider hiring a guide or booking

a bus tour. It can help you ferret out the hidden gems in a city.

Chapter 10
The High Cost of

Buying Prestige
I know people––doctors and lawyers and businesspeople––who
make a lot of money. And they spend a lot of money.
When they buy a car, they opt for the most expensive one they
can get. When they buy a home, they want the biggest one in the
neighborhood. They wear Gucci shoes and carry Prada bags. All of
their clothes and personal belongings must be recognizable upscale
brands. And many go into serious debt to possess these symbols of
wealth, becoming stressed-out slaves to the idols they worship.
In short, they are prestige junkies. And like all junkies, they are
always looking for the next fix. The thrill of buying a $600 pair of
shoes fades and is replaced by a yearning to buy a $700 pair. There
is always an insatiable hunger for more.
And the irony is that the status they believe they are buying with
brand names and big toys is often not delivered––or, if delivered,
experienced for only a moment or two.
It irks me to see friends and colleagues spending their money this

way. I don’t like dining with them because they invariably prefer
overpriced yet not-all-that-good restaurants simply because they are
“the place to go.” It saddens me to see their McMansions because
they are huge and impersonal. They have been designed and
furnished by professionals. They look and feel like hotels. Taking
a tour of one of them inspires two questions: “How much did that
cost?” And, “Who was your designer?” These are not the sort of
questions you want people asking when they see your home.
Chapter 10 - The High Cost of Buying Prestige 103

I don’t even like being in their cars. Not because expensive cars
aren’t good cars but because these people don’t have the faintest
appreciation of what a quality car should be. They don’t know
engines. They don’t know suspension systems. They don’t know
braking systems. They just don’t know.
But most of all, I don’t enjoy listening to them talk about

their things because, lacking the content of thought, they utter
advertising-driven banalities.
So that is one fervent I hope that I have for this book: that I will
convince you not to be like them.
Living rich is about making choices that improve the quality of

your life––even if you don’t have a ton of money. It’s partly about
understanding your choices and making smart spending decisions.
But there’s more to the experience of living rich than material
things. Which brings me to Part II of this book…

Part II
Developing a Rich Mind

Chapter 11
The Most Important Thing I

Ever Learned About Living Rich
It was about fifteen years ago. Jeff and I were having one of
our long, luxurious lunches at a small Italian restaurant in Palm
Beach. I was talking about one of the books I was writing at the
time. I believe it was the first book I wrote as Michael Masterson:
Automatic Wealth.
I admitted to him that I had been struggling with a definition for

wealth. Jeff listened attentively (as he always did), complimented
me on my thinking (as he always did), and asked, “What do you
think of when you think of wealth?”
Among other things, Jeff was a master of the Socratic dialogue. I

knew this question was just the first step of an intellectual walk I
would be taking with him on the subject. I gamely went along.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“You are struggling to find a useful, abstract definition,” he said.

“An admirable goal. But that’s not my question. I’m asking you
what images arise when you think the word wealth?”
I closed my eyes. “Big houses with swimming pools and fancy

cars,” I said. “The usual symbols of wealth.”
“Very good,” he replied, Socratically. “Now imagine yourself lying

on a lounge chair next to a swimming pool behind a big house with
a fancy sports car parked in front.”
Again, I closed my eyes.
“Do you have yourself in the picture?” Jeff asked.
Chapter 11 - The Most Important Thing I Ever Learned About Living Rich 107
“Yes,” I told him.
“And how do you feel?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Good.”
“Can you be more precise?”
I focused on the feeling. “Tranquil,” I said. “And safe.”
At that point, we were interrupted by the waiter, and the

conversation shifted to other things. But I was intrigued by the
direction it had taken.
The initial images that the word wealth had brought to mind––big
houses and pools and fancy cars––were very different from the
feelings it evoked. Safety and tranquility? Really?
About a month later, Jeff and I had lunch again at the same
restaurant. When I arrived, he was seated at our usual table,
chatting with Giuseppe, the maître d’. He stood to greet me, then
sat down and offered me a glass of Prosecco from the bottle that
was chilling in front of him.
We enjoyed our meal and then carried what was left of the
Prosecco to the patio. As always, every part of the meal with Jeff
was slow, precise, and deliberate. He talked with interest about the
menu. He sipped the wine with attentiveness. Time slowed down.
Our prior discussion about wealth hadn’t come up during the meal,
but I had been thinking about it. So I brought it up.
“I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had last month,

about how I feel when I think about wealth,” I told him. “And I see
a connection between those feelings and the feelings I associated
with poverty when I was a child.”
As Jeff well knew, I grew up in a family of ten living on a teacher’s

income. We were the poorest people on Maple Avenue, which was
one of the least desirable streets in town.

“Tell me about those feelings,” he said.
“It was a combination of anxiety, the fear that my schoolmates

would make fun of me for being poor… and insecurity,
embarrassment because of the clothes I wore, the cheap bologna
sandwiches I brought for lunch. That sort of thing,” I said.
“So what’s the connection between those feelings and your adult
feelings about wealth?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “Seems to me that the safety and tranquility I now

associate with wealth are the obverse of the insecurity and anxiety
I associated with poverty as a child.”
“That’s an interesting observation,” he said.
He paused and took a sip of wine. Then he asked, “How much time
have you spent working to make money to buy the symbols you
associate with wealth?” he asked.
“Lots of time,” I admitted.
“Yet you found that when you had the money and the house and
the cars, you still didn’t have the feeling of being rich?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean by that,” I confessed.
He nodded and said, “Let’s take a walk.”
Digesting the Feeling of Richness
We took a walk along Worth Avenue and stopped at a small

newsstand. “They have a great selection of international
magazines,” Jeff told me.
We spent some time looking through French and Italian and

Chinese magazines that I had never seen before. As with lunch, the
pace was leisurely, almost languid. The magazines I was looking
at gave me ideas for improving some of the magazines I published.
They gave me ideas about art projects I might start. I bought
several that had especially inspired me. The cost was less than $20.
And as we continued our walk, I found myself filled with energy
and optimism.
This, I realized, was what Jeff meant by “feeling rich.” Not the
giddy, ephemeral feeling I got from spending lots of money on
expensive “things,” but this more subtle and enduring sensation.
It got me thinking. Here I was, already wealthy by any ordinary

definition, and I was still spending most of my waking hours pushing
myself forward on the endless path of making more money. I was
doing it because I believed that this megalomaniacal effort would
one day give me the feeling of being rich. But the emotions I was
actually feeling were anxiety, anger, and sometimes depression.
Meanwhile, Jeff was doing something completely different. He

had walked away from a $500,000 income (working with me in a
previous life). He had slowed down and refocused his attention.
And he seemed to be always tranquil and secure. In other words,
he was feeling the emotions I wanted to feel but seldom did.
I don’t want to misrepresent Jeff. He did not eschew the material

things that money can buy. He enjoyed beautiful things and
elegant service as much as I did. But he understood something
that I didn’t (and most people don’t). He understood that it is not
the things themselves that give you the feeling you are looking
for. And by forcing me to slow down and pay close attention
to aspects of the world around me that I would otherwise have
ignored (like the magazines at that newsstand), he was teaching
me what I needed to learn.
Nailing Down the Feeling
You need money––sometimes lots of money––to own the symbols

of wealth. But to get the feeling of being rich, Jeff taught me that
you don’t need to spend much at all. In fact (and this is important),

I have found that owning things often diminishes the enjoyment I
derive from them.
Let me give you an example. K and I used to buy season tickets to

Miami Heat games. For many years, we sat courtside with other
wealthy people, rooting for our team. The tickets came with many
benefits: a VIP entrance, access to the VIP restaurant and players’
lounge, invitations to private events, etc. It made us feel really
special. But before long, I began to dread the hour-long ride to and
from each game. Hiring a driver didn’t help. It was the commitment
of time. We started to give some of our tickets to friends.
Eventually, we were making only a handful of games a season.
One year, because of scheduling issues (mostly related to my crazy

workload) we made it to only three games. The cost of our tickets,
including the playoffs, was something like $30,000. (It is higher
now.) So that year, we were paying, in effect, $10,000 per game.
That’s insane, don’t you think?
I realized that I should focus on the quality of the experience, not

the idiotic snob appeal of being able to say that I was a season
ticket holder. And it was clear that we could have a much better
Miami Heat experience if we cancelled our season tickets and
went to just a small number of really good games, paying for them
ad hoc. We could get front row tickets from a scalper and have a
leisurely overnight stay in a luxury hotel for about $1,500. Since
then, we have a “Heat night” two or three times a year at a cost of
$3,000 to $4,500. Just a fraction of what we were paying before…
for a much better experience.
Another example. I once bought a small fishing boat for about

$50,000––and I don’t especially like fishing. It was an impulse
buy. Not surprisingly, I took that boat out only once. For a fraction
of what I paid for it, I could have rented a much bigger boat and
invited a dozen friends to enjoy a day at sea. I would have saved
a lot of money––and aggravation––and all of us would have had a
memorable time.
It might make sense for a guy who truly loves fishing to buy a
$50,000 boat. He’d use it all the time. For him, the “cost of use”
each time he took the boat out would be minimal. And he would
get a great deal of pleasure from his investment. But for me,
owning a fishing boat was nothing more than owning a symbol of
wealth.
When I make buying decisions now, I make an effort to focus on

the feeling I am looking for––the feeling of richness––not the
prestige I believe the purchase will provide. I remind myself that
the “rush” of spending a lot of money lasts only a few moments,
whereas the feeling of richness can be had in other ways while
spending a great deal less.
For me, that feeling is a combination of three things. Not just

the tranquility and safety I missed as a child, but also a sense of
enrichment.
I get the feeling of tranquility by slowing down…
I get the feeling of safety by spending less than I can afford…
I get the feeling of enrichment by selecting experiences that add

something to my life…
And what I have discovered is that when you focus on the feelings
of wealth, you arrive at the desire for experiences, not things. That
is the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter 12
Buying Happiness
In Part I of this book, we explored many ways to live rich on a
budget. We talked about some big expenses, such as owning a
house and a car. But we also covered other less costly things, such
as clothing, food, drink, and even beds and vacations.
The claim I made over and over again is simple: It is possible

to enjoy the best things in life for a fraction of the money that
multimillionaires and billionaires spend on the same quality
products and services.
This, it seems to me, is an incontestable good. Only a devout

ascetic or a lunatic (there is no difference in my mind) could
disagree.
To live rich in this way, you must understand and embrace two
concepts:
The first concept––“cost of use”––was explained in Chapter 2 and

applied in subsequent chapters. In a nutshell, there are smart and
dumb ways to enjoy the best things in life. By paying only for the
use you are likely to get from any thing or experience (a car, a
house, a vacation), you can have it for a fraction of what it would
cost you otherwise.
The second concept was explained in bits and pieces: When you
buy a luxury good, a large part of what you are buying is the
prestige of owning it. It is sometimes as much as 90 percent of the
cost. And I believe you shouldn’t pay for prestige. Not because
prestige doesn’t matter, but because it cannot be bought. All
you can buy with a brand name is envy, jealousy, and unspoken
resentment––none of which is worth a nickel.
Chapter 12 - Buying Happiness 113

Without understanding and accepting these two concepts, you
can’t live rich. Your experience of luxury will be limited by the
limitations of your wealth and emotional intelligence. (Both, let’s
face it, are always limited.) You will either settle for second-rate
products by buying when you should be renting (cost of use), or
you will pay a fortune for prestige and realize later that you got
nothing for it.
“Things” vs. Experiences: A Lot of Data

Leading to an Interesting Conclusion
All of the topics covered in Part I concerned material things––

houses, cars, mattresses, etc. And when it comes to living rich,
material things do matter. A lot. There’s no denying that they can
make you happy. But there is good reason to believe that they will
not bring you nearly as much happiness as you imagine.
I read a book recently that made this case. It’s called Happy
Money. Its authors, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, compare
spending $200,000 on a house with spending the same amount of
money on a flight into outer space. On the face of it, spending two
hundred grand on a six-minute space flight might seem crazy. And
even more crazy if you aren’t wealthy and could have bought a
house with that money.
But research, they say, suggests this is not necessarily true.

“Remarkably, there is almost no evidence that buying a home––or
a newer, nicer home––increases happiness.” Moreover, they argue
that spending the money on the space trip would provide more
long-term satisfaction.
How can that be?
“Between 1991 and 2007,” Dunn and Norton tell us, “researchers
tracked thousands of people in Germany who moved to a new
house because there was something about their old house they
didn’t like. Immediately after settling into their new abodes these

movers reported being much more satisfied with their new homes
than they’d been with their old ones.”
As time passed, satisfaction with the new house did not diminish
all that much. But what was remarkable was that the purchase of a
new home did nothing at all to increase their satisfaction with their
lives. “Their overall happiness didn’t improve at all.”
In another study, researchers found that a group of Harvard

students that were lucky enough to get rooms in the dorms they
wanted were no happier with their overall school experience than
students who had to settle for lodging they initially didn’t like.
And as recently as 2011, 90 percent of Americans said they

believed home ownership to be a “central component of the
America dream.” Yet in study after study, home ownership does
not seem to correlate to happiness.
To explain what’s going on here, Dunn and Norton cited a study

in which participants were asked to perform the following mental
exercise:
Think of purchases you’ve made with the goal of increasing

your own happiness. Consider one purchase that was a
material thing, a tangible object that you could keep, like
a piece of jewelry or furniture, some clothing or a gadget.
Now think about a purchase you made that gave you a life
experience––perhaps a trip, a concert, or a special meal. If
you are like most people, remembering the experience brings to
mind friends and family, sights and smells.
Fifty-seven percent of the participants said that the experiential

purchase made them happier. And other studies show that even
when people spend only a few dollars, they get more lasting
pleasure from buying an experience as opposed to a thing.
Dunn and Norton’s research also indicates that sometimes even

an unpleasant experience can provide happiness afterwards. They

cited studies where people on a trip reported that they were having
a less than enjoyable time. But when asked about the trip later,
they remembered it as good. And veterans often remember their
wartime experiences nostalgically.
Nostalgia turns out to be a very beneficial emotion, some scientists

say. It allows us to convert difficult times into positive memories.
That helps us cope with tough times ahead. And this makes sense
to me. I have several times competed in national grappling meets.
My nervousness prior to the events and the actual experience of
fighting was anything but fun. But I have drawn enormous pleasure
from remembering and recounting those experiences.
This was also true of the challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

The experience itself was excruciating. Yet I enjoy the memory of
it more with each passing year.
My two years in the Peace Corps was half pleasure and half
pain. But thinking about it has provided me with a great deal of
happiness over the thirty years since then.
It seems, then, that the actual pleasure you get from an experience
is not the most important criteria for determining its ultimate value.
You have to look at it from a long-term perspective.
Relative Values
Dunn and Norton make a convincing case for investing in

expensive experiences instead of expensive things. Are they right?
Since I have no studies from which to draw conclusions, I will

research my memory banks instead.
I remember, for example, that when I was in my thirties and forties

I felt that money spent on vacations was largely wasted because the
experience itself was finite. I thought it made much better sense to
spend $10,000 on a used car or a handful of gold coins than on a
family trip.

My good friend Eddie agreed with me. But his wife Barbra and my
wife had a very different idea. They thought money spent on trips
to Europe were good investments. And so we went. Year after year,
for more than a decade.
Looking back now, I can see that they were right. I value those
trips not just for the good times I remember but also for what
I learned during our travels and (most especially) for how it
deepened our friendship.
Another example. For more than twenty years, K and I have

sponsored a sort of extended family reunion. We call it “Cousin
Camp.” We pick a destination where about forty of us congregate
to have an adventure for several days or a week. These reunions
have become increasingly expensive over the years. Nowadays,
each one costs us considerably more than $100,000. My former
self would have thought that it would have been smarter to invest
that money in some tangible assets and perhaps divvy up those
assets among those same people. But I don’t feel that way. And
neither, I think, do the family members that have been enjoying
this experience.
Now let’s look at the “things” I’ve bought.
On top of the list in terms of costliness is my house and my art

collection and my two vacation residences. Then, much less costly,
cars, jewelry, etc. Oh, and my cigars.
I must say that I enjoy all of these things very much.
Am I saying that Dunn and Norton are wrong? No. Because when
I think about it, I realize that the great pleasure I get from these
things comes from the experience of them.
The cars I most enjoyed, for example, were the old cars I restored
and drove on special occasions. The reason I love my house so
much is because it has been an ongoing project of restoration and
improvements. Likewise, art for me is not just an investment. My

art collection crowds every room I live and work in. I have spent
countless hours enjoying those objects.
So I believe the argument that Dunn and Norton make in Happy

Money is a solid one.
Things themselves, even those we most associate with happiness,

aren’t very good at delivering enduring satisfaction. It’s the
experiences we have that give us the most happiness over the
long run.
What Can We Take From This?
First, that it is a mistake to think, as I did when I was a young

man, that it is not smart to spend money on experiences because
experiences end in a matter of days or weeks. In fact, the pleasure
we derive from experiences can endure for years––even a lifetime.
Second, that even though experiences generally provide more

satisfaction than things, you can get great and long-lasting pleasure
from the things you love by turning them into experiences.

Chapter 13
Discovering Value and Purpose

To have a rich life, you need a rich mind. And the rich mind
recognizes that spending money on things will not automatically
add to its lifetime store of happiness. It prefers to spend money
on meaningful experiences, recognizing that quite often very little
money needs to be spent. But it also recognizes that when money
is spent on a material object, that object can bring happiness if it is
enjoyed over time.
Time is, in fact, a very important factor in living rich. It may be the
one particular non-material aspect of life that matters more than
anything else.
So let’s talk about that now––how to make the time you spend
richer. And let us begin with an activity that will likely consume
the greatest amount of your time: the time you spend working.
Most people have a love/hate relationship with work. I know I did.
From the time I was a kid, it was something I had to do. And I
hated that. At the same time, I loved the feeling of accomplishment
when I did a good job. And, of course, I loved the money.
As the second of eight children, I was working around the house

as soon as I could pick up a broom. At four, I was cleaning up my
room. At six, I was drying the dishes. At nine, I was responsible
for cleaning the bathrooms on Saturdays and washing the walls
along the stairwell where my siblings were always leaving dirty
fingerprints. And as soon as I was legally able to work part-time
(at age 12), I had a paper route five mornings a week and I worked
Saturday afternoons and Sundays at the local car wash.
Chapter 13 - Discovering Value and Purpose 119

I had to work because we were a big family living on a teacher’s
meager salary. Also because my parents believed that work was
good. Now, I am grateful to them for that. But at the time, I didn’t
understand the benefit I was getting from it.
When I dreamed, I dreamed I was a rich kid who had a chauffeur

who drove me to school in a white limousine. I wore a white
tuxedo and sported a diamond-tipped cane. I dreamed of being rich
because I was embarrassed by my family’s relative poverty. We
lived in a small house across from the municipal storage facility
and electric plant. Our playground was the town’s sandpit. We
wore secondhand clothes donated by local charities.
What I didn’t understand was that in many ways we had a very rich
upbringing. My parents were educated and believed we should be
educated too. At supper, my father would read to us from the Bible
or from great works of literature. On Sunday mornings, my mother
supervised us in memorizing poetry.
I paid my way through college by working all sorts of manual

jobs. And I graduated debt free and magna cum laude. I went on to
acquire a master’s degree from the University of Michigan and an
all-but-Ph.D. from Catholic University, funding my tuition with a
pool installation business I started with some friends.
At 25, I was ready to take on the world. But instead of going

into the workforce, I applied to become a Peace Corps volunteer
and got accepted to a program teaching English literature at The
University of Chad in Africa. This turned out to be an invaluably
rich experience, although I was paid only $50 a week.
When I got out of the Peace Corps, I got a job as an editor of a

newsletter in Washington, D.C., called African Business & Trade.
I got the job because of my experience in Africa, which included
writing for the Peace Corps newsletter and authoring a few small
books on the side. I knew nothing about business, but I did the
best I could to learn as much as I could. During that time, I wrote
my first professionally published book, Information Peking, about
doing business in China.

Eventually, I convinced my boss to let me take a stab at running
the business. I have no idea why he allowed me to do it… but he
did. After two years of trying and failing to increase sales, I was
offered a position as editorial director of a fledgling publishing
company in South Florida. A year into that job, I signed up for a
fourteen-week course that I thought would help me become better
at public speaking. (In my new job, I had to run staff meetings and
give a lot of presentations.)
The course wasn’t exactly what I expected. It was based on Dale

Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People, and it
was basically about setting and achieving goals.
The first week, we were given a challenge. We had to identify all

the things we wanted to do with our lives, then narrow them down
to one main goal.
This was hard for me. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be an

author. I wanted to paint. I wanted to be a martial artist and a world
traveler and at least a dozen other things. I also wanted to be rich.
That dream had never left me.
The following week, I was going to have to stand up and announce

the one goal that would be my priority. The rest of the course
would be devoted to taking the first steps toward making it happen.
Driving to class that day, I was in a panic. I had narrowed my goals

to three: to be a teacher, an author, and a millionaire. How could I
choose just one? That would mean giving up the other two!
Minutes before class began, I made my decision. My number one

priority would be getting rich. I figured that if I could do that first, I
would have the time and money to do anything else I wanted to do.
That decision changed my life.
I began to look at every choice I made and every action I took in

terms of this one goal––asking myself whether it would enhance or
take away from my prospects of gaining wealth. This was a radical
change in my thinking and it had immediate and amazing effects.
Chapter 13 - Discovering Value and Purpose 121

Within weeks, I had talked my way into a promotion. In six
months, I had doubled my yearly income. Before my thirty-fourth
birthday, I was both a partner in a growing business and a bona fide
millionaire. I had achieved my number one goal!
I continued working like mad. Over the next five years, my partner
and I grew the business to well over a hundred million dollars.
And then, suddenly, he had a heart attack and decided, almost
overnight, that he wanted to retire.
We sold the business in pieces. I was thirty-nine years old and had
a net worth in excess of $10 million. But I was also exhausted.
So I decided to see what it would be like to live a life of leisure.
I bought a warehouse that I converted into a “man cave,” and I
spent four hours a day there, writing short stories and painting.
Afternoons I spent exercising, learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and
reading by the pool. And on weekends and holidays, I traveled
with my family.
It was an exciting and enjoyable time. But it occurred to me that

although I wasn’t “working” anymore, I was still working. I began
to think about what it was about “work” that I didn’t like and why
the four to six hours a day that I was putting into writing and Jiu
Jitsu was so satisfying.
I realized that what gave me pleasure about writing and practicing

Jiu Jitsu was not that it was fun (it was sometimes very difficult)
and not that I didn’t have to do it (I felt compelled to continue).
But the work itself gave my life purpose. And the products of my
work––the stories I was publishing and the skill I was developing
on the mats––were things I valued.
This was a life-changing revelation. And it is one of the core ideas

behind what we are talking about in this part of the book. It is one
of the fundamental concepts that can help you have the life you
want. It is a guiding principle that will enable you to spend your
time richly.

Chapter 14
Life’s Trickiest Trade-Off

Andy and Jack were best friends growing up in Chagrin Falls,
Ohio. After graduating from high school, they both went to NYU
and graduated with business degrees in 1972. Andy got a job as an
investment analyst on Wall Street. Jack decided to return to Ohio to
help his aging father run the family restaurant.
They agreed to meet up the following summer in Brazil for an

adventure trip boating down the Amazon River. But when summer
rolled around, they were both too busy to do it.
A year later, Jack had the restaurant running smoothly and was
ready to go.
“I’d love to go,” Andy said. “But I’m in the middle of an executive
training program. “Maybe next year.”
The following year, Andy couldn’t go because he had just taken on

a “big” client. The year after that, it was a new boss. Then it was a
promotion. At his wedding, Andy swore to himself that he would
definitely do the Amazon trip “in the next two years.” Fifteen
months later, he and his wife had their first child.
Jack kept in touch and would sometimes tease Andy about the trip.
“It’s going to happen one of these days,” Andy would say. “I

promise.”
At their fortieth high school reunion, Andy and Jack saw each
other for the first time since they had graduated from NYU. Andy
had become a very wealthy man and dressed the part. Jack had
lived a comfortable, middle-class life.
Chapter 14 - Life’s Trickiest Trade-Off 123

That night in the high school parking lot, while their classmates
danced to old music, Jack and Andy sat on a bicycle stand, sipping
beer and looking toward the football stadium.
“So what’s it really like?” Jack asked.
“What is what like?”
“You know––being a rich guy, on a day-to-day basis?”
Andy thought about it. “Well, I have lots of nice things. But the
typical day for me is like this. I wake up early and force myself
to work out because I know the moment I start working I’ll be
working for eleven hours straight. The work is challenging. On
any typical day I am all over the map emotionally. I go from mild
aggravation to moments of feeling very good about myself to bouts
of anger, insult, shame, pride, humiliation, hope…”
“Sounds grueling.”
“It is.”
“But at least you have those nice things and the vacations.”
Andy smiled.
“And how is it for you?”
“You mean what’s it like being a poor guy?”
“You’re not poor.”
“No, I’m not poor. But I’m far from rich. In some ways I think
I have a better life than you do. I get up and read the paper at
breakfast. Then I piddle around in the basement, working on my
little hobbies. At four, I go to the restaurant and stay there till about
ten. Then I go home. I read or watch TV for a while and go to bed.”

“You’re right,” said Andy. “That is a better life. I’m envious.”
“But that’s just part of the equation. We drive around in cheap little
economy cars. We need a new roof but I don’t have the money
for it so I’m paying to have the leaks patched. We pay our bills
but have no savings. We worry about helping our kids with their
college tuition. And retirement? We haven’t saved a penny.”
Time and Money… Money and Time
Time and money. They do seem to be connected: We can spend our

time earning money or we can spend our money enjoying our time.
The obstetrician can afford a four-week vacation in Honolulu but

doesn’t have the time to take it. The high school teacher has more
than four weeks off every summer but can’t afford that kind of trip.
The more time you devote to making money, the more money you
are likely to make. But what good is that money if you have no
time left to enjoy it?
It was Ben Franklin who said that time is money. What he

actually said was: “Remember that time is money. He that can
earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle,
one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his
diversion or idleness… has really spent, or, rather, thrown away,
five shillings besides.”
Franklin was not saying that you should spend no time traveling
or having fun (sitting idle). He was saying only that you should be
aware of the financial cost of your time.
If you are a consultant and make $100 an hour, each day you spend
away from work “costs” you $800. So when calculating the cost of
a vacation, you must include that per-diem “expense.”
Likewise, if you make $100 an hour… does it make sense to mow

your own lawn? From a strictly financial perspective, it is foolish.

You “save” the $20 an hour a gardener would charge you but net
out to a loss of $80 per hour.
Being aware of the monetary value of your time is a necessary part

of making smart decisions about the time-versus-money tradeoff.
But it’s only one part of the equation.
How Bill Spent His Weekends
For about six years, Bill Bonner and I shared the same office space.
We were both busy doing the same work: growing a profitable
international publishing company. On weekends, I would go home
and continue working on the business. Bill would go to his farm
and build walls out of stone.
Building stone walls is difficult and strenuous work. It is also very

poorly paid work. Bill understood that he was working “far under
his pay scale” on Saturdays. But he chose to do it because it gave
him pleasure.
Bill also may have believed that he could do only so much high-
quality brainwork in any given week. He may have believed that
the manual labor he did on Saturday (and the idle time he spent on
Sunday) recharged his business-building batteries somehow.
And he may have been right. The business grew from $8 million to
$100 million in about four years, and then from $100 million to $500
million in the ten years that followed. Except for business travel, Bill
never felt obliged to abandon his work/non-work schedule.
Mein Kampf
Over the years, my own struggle with the money/time quandary

changed but did not abate. I often wondered…
• Why is it that I’m still working sixty hours a week when I don’t
need any more money?

• Why do I find it so difficult to stop thinking about work when
I’m with my friends and family?
• Why is my weekly schedule jam-packed with work and hobby

time? Why can’t I give myself a half-day off without feeling guilty?
I still wonder whether I could have worked half the hours I

worked in the past and made the same amount of money. I wonder
what I could have gained in intimacy had I spent more time with
my children. I wonder if my maniacal drive to become a more
accomplished person affected my health.
What About You?
You may have these same questions. You may have others. All
responsible people must ask themselves: “How much time should
I spend earning money versus relaxing versus self-improvement
versus taking care of family and friends?”
Let’s begin with three simple observations.
Observation #1: We have inherent responsibilities.
When I asked my father why he abandoned his first career as a

dramatist to become a college teacher, he told me that he felt his
“primary moral responsibility” was to support his family. Teaching
was not (and is not now) a well-paid profession. But it was enough
to keep his wife and eight children clothed and fed. I admired him
for that.
My mother was a contrarian thinker. A Catholic by upbringing, she

was critical of the church and had progressive views of right and
wrong. But she did leave her children with one old-fashioned idea
about how to behave. She told us over and over that we should
“leave the world a little bit better” than we found it.
And that is what I believe. Regardless of the circumstances we are

born into, each of us is bound to earn the money needed to support
his family and to leave the world a little better than he found it.

Observation #2: Being rich is better than being poor.
I was poor for thirty-three years. It was a good thirty-three years.

Wouldn’t trade it for anything, as they say. But I have also been
rich for thirty years. And that, too, has been good.
I can’t say that my overall happiness/equanimity/whatever has

been greater in my rich years than it was in my poor years. But I
can say that I am definitely happy that I got rich.
Now I might be happy about my wealth because, growing up poor,

I needed the ego gratification of succeeding at life’s most universal
contest: making money. Had I been heir to a fortune, perhaps I
wouldn’t value wealth. Unless, of course, I lost it.
Observation #3: Work is sometimes fun and sometimes

miserable.
I worked hard to become wealthy. Some of that work was fun. A

lot of it was not.
You might think that the fun work was flying to exotic locations,
meeting powerful people, and counting my money. And that the
un-fun work was slaving away at some project till nine or ten
o’clock at night. Or perhaps you think that the fun work was the
work that resulted in financial windfalls while the un-fun work was
the work that resulted in losses.
None of that was true. The fun I took from traveling and
hobnobbing evaporated rather quickly. And the fun I had in earning
a $5,000 bonus disappeared immediately, only to be recaptured by
a bonus twice that size.
In retrospect, I understand the factors involved in what made work

fun. Working on projects I valued was the most important factor.
Doing good work on a project I valued (work I knew to be good)
was a close second.

From 1982 to 1993, I earned millions of dollars every year and
acquired an eight-figure fortune. But I never truly valued the work
I was doing then, so the amount of “fun” time I had while working
was limited.
Since 1994, the fun I get out of work has been steadily increasing.
That is a direct result of a gradual increase in the time I spend
working on projects I value. I am talking about my charitable
activities (for which I do not make but contribute money). But I am
also talking about the books I write and some of the businesses I
work with.
Two Secrets for Finding Happiness in Work
If you are not born rich, you must work to make money. How
much time you devote to making money depends on whether you
feel, as I do, responsible for the financial welfare of your family
and whether you believe you should leave the world a little better
than you found it.
If you feel that way, you will almost certainly have to work at
least forty hours a week. If your financial ambitions are more than
getting by, you will have to work fifty to sixty hours a week for a
good many years.
But if you can learn to enjoy the time you spend making money,
your life will be that much richer. You won’t have to fill up your
happiness piggybank outside of work. You will be able to get much
or even most of your happiness from the time you spend working.
This leads to my first recommendation: If you possibly can, you

should find a way to make money by doing something you believe
is valuable. And if you don’t have that luxury right now, you
should gradually move your career in that direction.
You should also recognize that having a career that you value is
just one part of a two-part process. You must also do work that is
clearly good. Work that has purpose.

And this leads to my second recommendation: Never work like you
don’t like your work. Work hard. Work carefully. Work like it matters.
Finding the Optimal Balance
This hardly completes our inquiry into time and money. Nor does it
fully answer the question posed by the story about Jack and Andy
that I told you at the beginning of this chapter.
To live a rich life, you must find pleasure in your work. But you
must also find pleasure outside work. With your friends and family
and community and in your personal pursuits and education.
How much time should you devote to those other obligations and
activities?
It might be helpful to think of the time you spend in terms of four

major categories: your wealth, your health, your social time, and
your personal time.
• Your wealth
A typical workweek for a person who is serious about acquiring

wealth is between forty and sixty hours. Let’s settle on fifty hours.
• Your health
There is no question that sleeping and exercise are two of the most
important––and time-consuming––factors in good health. Sleep
experts recommend seven to eight hours a night. Let’s round that
down to fifty hours a week. Some people like to exercise several
hours a day. But the latest studies show that for health purposes
thirty minutes per day of intense exercise is all that is needed. A
half-hour a day is three-and-a-half hours a week. Let’s round that
up to five hours.
So far we have fifty hours a week devoted to your wealth and fifty-
five hours devoted to your health.

We are left with social time and personal time. And we are left
with sixty-three hours (24 hours x 7 days = 168 hours – 105 hours
= 63 hours). That’s nine hours a day.
• Your social time and personal time
The amount of time you spend socially (with family, friends,

and community) versus the time you spend personally (learning,
developing skills, practicing hobbies, relaxing, playing games, etc.)
is a matter of circumstance.
When you have a young family, you will be spending most of

those sixty-three hours socially. (With your kids or escaping them.)
As an empty nester, you’ll be able to spend more of those hours on
personal interests.
All of this suggests that the twenty-four hours each of us has in a

given each day is sufficient to make the money we need, stay fit
and healthy, have a fulfilling social life, and develop our personal
interests.
So the next time you find yourself thinking, “There is never

enough time,” remind yourself that there is enough time. You
have enough hours. But you may not be optimizing them. When
you optimize your time, you will be able to accomplish all you
need to without feeling worn down. On the contrary, you will feel
energized throughout your entire day.

Chapter 15
Life-Enriching Choices
From the perspective of living rich, there are three kinds of
experiences. There are experiences that:
1. Improve you somehow
2. Leave you more or less the same
3. Damage or diminish you in some way
Look at almost any activity and you will see what I’m talking
about.
On your commute to work, for example, you have a fair amount

of “free” time. You can spend that time getting aggravated about
traffic, laughing at idiotic conversations on talk radio, or listening
to an audiotape on some subject you care about––maybe a lesson
on speaking a foreign language.
Getting apoplectic about the dimwit in front of you who’s driving

with his turn signal on will harm you. It will upset you. It will
drain your energy. And that will make you less capable of doing
good work when you arrive at the office.
Listening to talk radio may amuse you. And if it does, time will
pass quickly. That can feel like a benefit if you view your commute
as time to kill. But killing time is never a good idea unless you are
in pain.
Spending your commute listening to and repeating Spanish phrases

might not sound like a lot of fun. But if learning Spanish is a goal
of yours, you will certainly feel better about yourself by the time
you arrive at work.
Chapter 15 - Life-Enriching Choices 133

You see what I mean. When it comes to our free time, we have
choices: spend it wisely, wastefully, or self-destructively. Choose one.
We have these three options every minute of every day––except

perhaps when we are sleeping. That amounts to 960 choices
(sixteen hours times sixty minutes) a day.
Free time, of course, does not present itself in discrete minute-by-

minute blocks. But there are still many, many choices. The average
person spends four to six hours a day watching TV or amusing
himself with video games. Add to that commuting time, time spent
sitting around waiting for something to happen, time spent doing
stupid things you don’t have to do… it adds up quickly. Even four
wasted hours a day equals twenty-eight hours a week or more than
2,000 hours a year. That is enough time to write a book, compose
a symphony, build a cottage, or acquire competency in any two
complex skills (e.g., playing a musical instrument, speaking a
foreign language, becoming a public speaker, learning how to write
advertising copy, etc.).
Time is a limited and very precious commodity. You cannot ignore

it. You cannot pretend it doesn’t matter. You have to accept your
responsibility for every minute of it and decide: Will you kill it?
Use it to kill you? Or invest in it to make your life richer?
I starting thinking (and writing) about this fifteen years ago. Since
then, I’ve tried repeatedly to make good choices. It isn’t easy (for
reasons I’ll explain in a moment). But one thing that has helped me
make decisions was to name my options.
The idea: If I am going to make a bad choice, at least I should have

the courage to call it bad.
The Three Choices
• Self-Destructive Habits
I tell people who don’t know me that I never met a self-destructive

habit I didn’t like. If you aren’t attracted to self-destruction, you
have no idea what I’m talking about. Or maybe you have self-
destructive habits but refuse to recognize them. A self-destructive
habit is anything you do that makes you intellectually, morally,
emotionally, or materially poorer.
Gorging on junk food is a self-destructive pastime. And however

happy I have felt while I was doing it, I always felt that much
worse afterwards. The same goes for drinking rum and getting into
fights and lying and cheating. The criterion isn’t how I feel at the
time but how these things leave me feeling later on.
There are many behaviors that we might all agree are self-
destructive. Some of those I’ve mentioned could be put on the
list. But––legalities aside––the ultimate judgment about what is
self-destructive is a personal one. We are, after all, talking about
your mind. (And by mind, I include your heart.) Only you know
whether a particular behavior makes you feel better or worse,
healthier or sicker, richer or poorer.
• Zombie Behavior
There are many pleasant ways to kill time. Many, many more than
there were when I was a kid. In my teenage years, television was
a boring, black-and-white affair. Other than Saturday mornings,
there was nothing on that little square box that was worthy of my
attention. Nowadays, we all have an infinite number of options
when it comes to amusing ourselves. But many––if not most––of
those options don’t do us any good.
They entertain us. They divert us. They pass the time. But they
don’t make us better in any way. In fact, studies have shown that
extended TV watching puts our brains into a kind of zombie zone
that lasts long after the TV is turned off.
I like my zombie pastimes. I like watching mixed martial arts,

listening to Howard Stern, and playing solitaire. I like drinking
tequila and smoking cigars. I like eating pasta. I like my zombie

experiences especially when I am tired or sad or disappointed.
They seem to beckon me, promising to soothe me. And they do,
for a while. But after an hour (or four) of zombie time, I never feel
better. I feel more or less the same but a little ashamed of myself.
• Enriching Experiences
Our third option is the obvious winner: choosing an activity that

somehow improves you, leaving you feeling (or actually being)
wiser, smarter, more understanding, happier, healthier, stronger, etc.
So why is it that we don’t always choose enriching activities when

deciding how to spend our free time?
The reason has to do with energy. Enriching activities take more of

it. It takes more energy, for example, to practice my French horn
than to play solitaire. I don’t know why that is, but it is.
And if it requires, say, 100 units of mental energy to play the

French horn for fifteen minutes, it takes 1,000 units to will myself
to open up my case, blow the spit out of the valves, and put the
mouthpiece to my lips. Again, I don’t know why that is, but it is a
fact of my life.
Another reason that we don’t always choose enriching activities is

because it is usually––and almost always initially––non-addictive.
I’ve put at least forty hours into studying Italian, and so far have
felt not a single impulse to continue. Each practice session requires
willpower to initiate and energy to push through. I do think I know
why that is. Practicing Italian is stressful for me because it is
difficult. And it is difficult because I am not good at it.
Making the Right Choice:

The Five-Minute Trick
So we have three choices. And a hundred times a day, if we are

conscious, we have the freedom to make wise or wasteful or self-
destructive decisions. It is never a problem to know which of the

options is the right one. The problem is summoning up the energy
to make the right decision.
Driving to work, your energy stores may be low because you

have not yet done anything active. Driving home from work,
your energy stores may be depleted. Still, you are spending some
amount of time in your car and you have a choice. You can listen to
that Spanish language tape, you can listen to Howard Stern, or you
can… I don’t know, keep glancing at your odometer to see if you
can catch it rolling over into the next set of multiple zeroes.
You know you should be doing the Spanish tape, but you just don’t
feel like it. So what do you do?
There are many answers to that question. But here’s what I do

when I find that I’m going to be stuck behind the wheel for a fairly
long period of time. (I don’t drive to work.) I make a deal with
myself. Practice language for five minutes, I tell myself, and then
you can listen to Howard Stern for the rest of the trip.
I have convinced myself that I can do anything for five minutes––

even hold my head under water. (Four minutes and five seconds
is my record.) So I do the five minutes. And most of the time,
something marvelous happens. After about two minutes, my stress
level drops considerably. After another minute or two, I find that
I’m actually enjoying the work.
This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens most of the time.
And so my five minutes of enrichment turns into ten minutes and
then into fifteen minutes. Sometimes it lasts the entire trip.
As I said, I don’t drive to work. So for me (and maybe you?), the

challenge I face every morning is a little different. Still, I have to
force myself to make choices that will get my brain in gear.
After breakfast, I head up to my office above the garage. I’m

tempted to head right to my computer and read email… see what’s
come in overnight. But most email is zombie work. Ninety percent

of it will not enrich you. Ninety percent of it will enrich other
people or no one at all.
Doubtful? You can prove this to yourself objectively by looking

at the last twenty emails you wrote and asking in every case, “Did
this improve me?” Or you can decide subjectively by figuring out
how you feel about email. If it feels easy to do almost to the point
of being addictive, then it’s zombie work.
I want to do email. So how do I overpower the zombie part of

my brain? I make the same sort of deal with myself. I tell myself
that before I do any email, I must first spend five minutes doing
something enriching, like writing. In fact, I have no intention of
spending just five minutes writing. My goal is to spend at least
sixty minutes writing. But I get there by tricking myself with the
five-minute promise, which turns into fifteen minutes and then into
an hour. An hour is easy.
After writing for an hour, I feel pretty good about myself and I am
usually full of energy. I will often keep writing then, sometimes for
another hour, sometimes for two or three. But I have other things
I need to accomplish besides writing. So I use an egg timer to
limit my writing time to an hour. When the egg timer rings, I get
up and do another productive thing, such as stretching or playing
a brain game or practicing my French horn. Since I’m not trying
to become a concert-level French horn player, I limit my practice
to fifteen minutes. When I’m done with that, my energy stores are
even higher. I use that extra energy to practice Italian (or French
or Spanish or German––don’t ask) for another fifteen minutes. By
then I’m brimming with good feelings and still charged to the hilt
and so I’ll take on a challenging business task or go back to my
writing.
This is what I do. And it works for me.
An enriching activity doesn’t have to be practicing a musical

instrument or learning a foreign language or writing poetry. It
can be as simple as reading an inspiring or informative book. An

enriching activity takes energy, as I said, but it gives you back that
energy and more for your time invested. And it makes you feel like
a better version of who you are or who you want to be.
A Cheat Sheet for How to Spend Your Time
Following is a list I jotted down––a list of what are, for me,

enriching ways to spend my time. These correspond to my personal
value system. You may have different ideas for the sort of activities
that are likely to leave you feeling like a better version of yourself.
My enriching activities include:
• Reading inspirational or informative material
• Drawing and/or painting
• Writing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, etc.
• Practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
• Engaging in demanding physical exercise
• Watching educational documentaries
• Listening to uplifting music
• Paying attention to fine art
• Watching a really, really good movie
• Having a good conversation with a thoughtful person
My zombie activities include:
• Reading crime fiction
• Playing solitaire

• Watching TV shows like “Justified” and “Downton Abbey”
• 90 percent of the email I do
• Drinking and socializing (As Ernest Hemingway once said, “I

drink to make other people more interesting.”)
My self-destructive activities include:
• Drinking too much and saying things I regret the next day
• Gossiping
• Fighting (for any reason)
• Watching reality TV
• Other things I’d rather not talk about right now
You may not agree with some of my choices. That’s okay. You can
(and should) make your own list. But in creating that list, consider
the following:
Making enriching choices…
• Teaches you something worth knowing or develops a skill

worth having
• Fosters an understanding of people and situations you had been

previously closed to
• Strengthens you spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally
• Builds confidence and develops your ability to make wise

choices in the future
• Is hard to do––until you get good at it
• Leaves you feeling energized

Making zombie choices…
• Teaches you nothing
• Requires no thought
It is watching TV rather than going to a stage play. It is getting

a massage rather than practicing yoga. It is chugging a brewski
rather than savoring a good wine.
• Tends to be habit-forming
Because it feels good (in a medium-energy sort of way) and is so

easy to do, you find yourself doing it over and over again.
• Is easy and as comfortable as an old pair of slippers
Zombie choices are tried-and-true diversions that pass the time.
• Leaves you with the unpleasant feeling that you’ve wasted

your time
Making self-destructive choices…
• Feels really good at the beginning
• Attracts bad company
Since most smart people don’t approve of what you are doing, you
find yourself doing it with another set of friends. Eventually, you
reject the people who “don’t get it.” They are too straitlaced or
lame to understand, so you figure you don’t need them in your life.
• Disables you intellectually, emotionally, and physically
You become less capable of performing complex skills or dealing

with complex issues. Eventually, you are less capable of peak
performance overall.

• Is more than habit-forming, it is addictive
Self-destructive activities have ever-extending thresholds. What

gets you off in the beginning is never enough to get you off later
on. You mistakenly believe that more is always better.
• Leaves you feeling like a failure
When we are at our best––confident and full of energy––enriching

activities are an easy choice. When we are feeling just okay, we
can usually reject self-destructive pastimes but tend toward zombie
activities. And when we are at our worst––low in energy and full of
doubt––we are most susceptible to self-destructive choices.
But you can make good choices.
Five Steps to Making the Right Choice
1. Identify the experiences that are, for you, enriching, zombie,

and self-destructive. Make a list like the one I made above.
2. Pay attention to time––all the time. Assess the amount of time

you typically spend each day on enriching, zombie, and self-
destructive activities.
3. Make a commitment to change.
4. Accomplish that transformation by making little “deals” with

yourself. Before you engage in a self-destructive or zombie
activity, force yourself to spend at least five minutes doing
something that leaves you richer.
5. Build from there.

Chapter 16
Richness From Art

If you want to live a rich life, you shouldn’t ignore the many
pleasures art can provide.
I’m talking about visual art—painting, drawing, and sculpture.

Also handcrafted, utilitarian objects—pottery, rugs, furniture, and
ceramics.
Like literature, art can make statements and tell stories. Like
music, art can stir up thoughts and feelings without language or
logic. And like dance, art can inspire us and elevate our very notion
of beauty.
I’ve been arguing that having a rich mind is about spending your
leisure time profitably. It’s about getting a high emotional and
intellectual return on your hobbies—without spending a lot of
money doing so.
Many think of art appreciation as a diversion for the rich and the
well-educated. In fact, it is a very democratic pastime.
You don’t need money to appreciate art. You simply need the
ability to look at it. The street sweeper in Florence, Italy, has the
same capacity as the CEO of Ferrari to enjoy Michelangelo’s
famous sculpture, David. The laborer cutting grass on the Florida
millionaire’s estate has the same capacity as the estate owner to
admire the Fernando Botero sculpture sitting in that very garden.
Wealth can actually be a hindrance to the enjoyment of art. I know

more than a handful of wealthy people who buy art and pretend to
enjoy it. They believe it gives them prestige. They fill their homes
with “limited editions” from well-known artists, such as Salvador
Chapter 16 - Richness From Art 143

Dali and Marc Chagall. To that same end, they fill their garages with
Porsches and Lamborghinis. I sometimes wonder if—aside from
showing off their trophies to visitors—they ever even look at them.
Just as you don’t need money to appreciate art, you don’t need a
specialized education. Having a college degree, even a graduate
degree in art history, might help you talk impressively about art.
It might provide you with the vocabulary to describe the technical
aspects of a piece or explain its historical context. But it doesn’t
give you an advantage when it comes to really seeing art or
enjoying it in a personally enriching way.
I have many friends who “know” about art and are happy to talk
about it. They attend the must-see exhibitions. They favor the
fads. And when touring a museum, they’re interested only in the
featured works of the best-known artists.
A true art lover doesn’t act that way. He looks at a lot of art. He
can’t stop himself from looking at art. He has his own ideas and
preferences based on his own personal experience.
How to Deepen Your Experience of Art

I was in grammar school when I first began looking at art with
interest. At that time, I liked painted clowns on black velvet better
than I liked Rembrandt. I like Rembrandt better now, but I don’t
think it’s because I’ve taken a few art classes and read a few dozen
books. I think it’s because I have spent so much time looking.
The pleasure I got from looking at those clown paintings was real
and valid. But it was a simple pleasure—sort of like the pleasure I
got from drinking sweet wines when I first began to drink wine.
As time passed, those clown paintings seemed less interesting to

me. I didn’t want them to. It simply happened. It happened—I
think—because I was seeing so much other art.
There seems to be a natural evolutionary process that takes place when

you expose yourself to any of life’s aesthetic pleasures—art, music,

dance, literature, food, or wine. In the early stages, you tend to like the
simple and obvious. Later on, you prefer the subtle and complex.
I am not saying that there’s anything wrong with the simple

and obvious. I’m saying that if you devote time to any aesthetic
endeavor, you should almost always expect your tastes to mature in
the direction of subtle and complex.
This may sound like an elitist argument. It’s actually quite the
opposite. I don’t believe you should pay any attention to what
art experts consider to be good or bad. But you may find that
eventually much of what you like will be the “good” stuff.
The British Journal of Aesthetics published an interesting study

that supports this idea. The researchers asked participants to
review and rate the landscapes of two artists: the English pre-
Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (considered “good”) and
the contemporary painter Thomas Kinkade (considered “bad”).
What they found was that the more participants were exposed to
Millais’ work, the more they liked it. And the more participants
were exposed to Kinkade’s work, the less they liked it.
John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves

Thomas Kinkade, Cobblestone Bridge
Again, I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with liking
Kinkade. I’m saying only that after you’ve studied a thousand
landscape paintings, it is unlikely that his work will satisfy you.
A true art lover is not a snob. He does not think in terms of what
is “right” or what is “smart.” He’s stimulated by visual imagery.
He can’t stop himself from looking at it. It doesn’t matter whether
it hangs in a museum or in a coffee shop, whether it is framed or
unframed, famous or unknown, bought or found, made by man or
nature. And it certainly doesn’t matter if the critics approve of it.
Having a rich mind is all about the cultivation of aesthetic

pleasure. And there are so many pleasures you can get from art.
Art can describe things…
I love the work of the early Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. I

like the imagery in his murals and triptychs. I particularly like his
grotesque depictions of hell, showing the many ways sinners will
be tortured for eternity.

Hieronymus Bosch, Hell 2
I love looking at 15th, 16th , and 17th century Flemish paintings

of everyday life, as well. Van Eyck… Brueghel… Rubens…
They give me a window into a different time, a world that no
longer exists. I like to see what the people are doing, how they are
dressed, and the tools they work with.
Rogier van der Weyden, Magdalen Reading

(fragment of an altarpiece)

Quentin Matsys, The Moneylender and his Wife
Peter Paul Rubens, Hélène Fourment in a Fur Coat
Art can tell a story…
Do you remember how, when you were very young, you could read
a story over and over again without any decrease in the pleasure it
gave you? That’s how I feel when I look at the work of figurative
painters like Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell.

Andrew Wyeth, Public Sale
Norman Rockwell (title unknown)
Art can make a statement…
Henri Rousseau, Snake Charmer

Art can stir up thoughts or feelings…
Mary Cassatt, The Manicure
Art can inspire…
Edgar Degas, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer
How to Bring Art Into Your Life
As I said, you don’t need to study art history to appreciate art.

You need only to look at it with conscious attention. Let the image
sink in. Be aware of how it makes you feel. Does it stimulate
any random thoughts or memories? You are not looking for

explanations. You are simply paying attention to your experience.
That’s all you have to do. Start with that and keep at it. The
pleasure you get will increase and diversify as you look at more
and more pieces.
Where to look? Anywhere. Everywhere. Not just on museum walls

or in sculpture gardens or in books. In restaurants and shops. In
government offices and private homes. Outside in parks and on
billboards. On benches and on the sidewalk.
If you see something interesting, don’t be afraid to check it out.

Even if it means you have to ask permission to approach it.
And when you do visit museums, avoid the most common

mistakes:
• Don’t try to “do” the whole museum.
Some people feel that they have to see everything. They will spend
three or four hours rushing through the galleries, barely glancing at
the art.
As much as I enjoy art, it takes energy to appreciate it. So when I

visit a museum, no matter how big it is, I plan to spend no more
than 90 minutes there. That means deciding beforehand what I am
going to look at.
You can do that by looking through a museum brochure or

speaking to someone at the information desk. Don’t feel compelled
to see the current exhibition or the best-known pieces. Pick
something that you think you will like.
• Don’t spend more time reading the labels than looking at the art.
I hate people that do this. It tells me that they don’t get it. That they
are posers, wannabes. It pisses me off.
Spend a moment taking in all the paintings within eyeshot. Then

go only to those that attract you. Spend as much time as you want

looking at each one. Think about whether you like it or not. Or
have mixed feelings. Feel the feelings. Think the thoughts. But
don’t try to make too much of them.
Look at the label only after you feel like you have “taken in” the
piece. If you are surprised or intrigued by what you find out (the
artist, when the piece was created, the medium), go back and look
at it again.
• When viewing special exhibits, try not to read the critical

commentary—some “expert’s” explanation of what you are
looking at.
Art criticism is generally biased, pompous, or just plain silly. Art

criticism of modern art is 99 percent pretentious bullshit.
• Finally, as former Met director Thomas Hoving said in an

interview in Attaché magazine: “Don’t feel you have to get it.”
“Modern and contemporary art, in particular, isn’t supposed to be an

intelligence test,” said Hoving. “A Morris Louis is beautiful colors
coming together. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not supposed to.”

Chapter 17
Richness From Music

The Philistine believes that appreciating music requires a multi-
thousand-dollar investment in a state-of-the-art sound system.
The man with the rich mind understands that what determines
his musical enjoyment is not the quality of the equipment but the
quality of the music itself.
By that I mean the subtlety, complexity, and emotional power

of the musical score combined with the technical quality of the
performance.
Everyone has a right to like any sort of music. But that doesn’t
mean all music is equally capable of providing a rich auditory
experience.
I do think that some forms of music are “richer” than others.

The criteria are, as I suggested above, subtlety, complexity, and
emotional power.
If you accept those criteria, it shouldn’t be difficult to agree that

some forms of music (e.g., classical) are generally better than others
(pop). But within any musical genre there are some pieces that are
more complex, subtle, and emotionally powerful than others.
Because rich music is both complex and subtle, it tends to be

an acquired taste. One of my friends recently told me that when
he began to listen to classical music, he found Johann Sebastian
Bach’s to be “boring.” So boring, he said, that he would often fall
asleep while listening to it. But since Bach is generally considered
to be a genius, he made an effort to appreciate his music. He
listened to it almost every day for months, until one day something
changed inside him.
Chapter 17 - Richness From Music 153

The point is: If the music itself is complex, subtle, and emotionally
powerful, you can acquire a taste for it. And once you acquire that
taste, you can enjoy a lifetime of listening to music of many kinds.
Toward that end, I compiled several lists of “top ten” suggestions

for you.
By the way… while going through the process of whittling down

much larger lists of critically recommended favorites, I realized
how insane “top ten” lists are. I could have easily created five top
ten lists for each category. Still, if you are looking to venture into
new musical territory, these will get you started.
Classical
1. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5––the most famous piece of
classical music ever written
2. Mozart’s Piano Concertos 20 and 21
3. Beethoven’s Pathétique and Moonlight piano sonatas
4. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos
5. Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1
6. Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring
7. Schubert’s Death and the Maiden string quartet
8. Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony
9. Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass
10. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2
Opera
1. Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro
2. Bizet’s Carmen
3. Verdi’s Rigoletto

4. Puccini’s Tosca
5. Beethoven’s Fidelio
6. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande
7. Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen
8. Berg’s Wozzeck
9. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
10. Massenet’s Werther
Jazz
1. Duke Ellington’s Take the A Train
2. John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things
3. Miles Davis’ All Blues
4. Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto’s The Girl From Ipanema
5. Benny Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing
6. Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia
7. Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo à la Turk
8. Oliver Nelson’s Stolen Moments
9. Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues
10. Billie Holiday’s God Bless the Child
Rock and Roll

1. Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone
2. The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
3. The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations
4. Chuck Berry’s Maybellene

5. The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand
6. Ray Charles’ What’d I Say
7. The Who’s My Generation
8. Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come
9. Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze
10. Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog
Country
1. Burl Ives’ Cowboy’s Lament (Streets of Laredo)
2. George Jones’ White Lightning
3. Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man
4. Willie Nelson’s Always on My Mind
5. Johnny Cash’s I Walk the Line
6. Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Sixteen Tons
7. Garth Brooks’ The Dance
8. Hank Williams Sr.’s I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
9. Marty Robbins’ El Paso
10. Patsy Cline’s Crazy
Rhythm/Blues
1. The Temptations’ My Girl
2. Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black
3. Otis Redding’s The Dock of the Bay
4. Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On
5. Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come

6. The Commodores’ Just to Be Close to You
7. Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ If You Don’t Know Me
by Now
8. James Brown’s Say It Loud
9. Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman
10. Prince’s Little Red Corvette
Folk
1. Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land
2. Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind
3. Steve Goodman’s City of New Orleans
4. Pete Seeger’s If I Had a Hammer
5. The Kingston Trio’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone
6. Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne
7. Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game
8. Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
9. Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust
10. Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence

Chapter 18
Richness From Reading

I cannot live without books.
— Thomas Jefferson
I grew up in a family of readers. My mother could easily (and often

did) read a book a day. My father was a Shakespearean scholar who
taught speed-reading on the side. If you walked through our house
on any day at any time, you’d find several people reading. Reading,
we all believed, was an essential part of a rich and productive life.
I believe that still. And I will tell you why.
How Reading Can Make You Smarter
Reading makes you smarter. In fact, it makes you smarter in almost

every way you can be smart.
Studies show that people who read on a regular basis have higher
raw intelligence, better analytical skills, stronger perceptive powers,
and perform better when it comes to intellectual challenges.
If that were not enough, reading also improves emotional

intelligence. In one study, participants read excerpts from literary
fiction, popular fiction, or nonfiction. A control group read nothing
at all. They were then given tests that measured their “social
perception”––i.e., their ability to intuit things about people based
on visual and verbal clues. Those who read literary fiction scored
highest. Those who read nonfiction scored second-highest. Those
who read popular fiction scored third-highest. And those who
didn’t read came in last. Two studies conducted by York University
psychologist Raymond Mar, targeting both adults and children,
came to the same conclusion.
Chapter 18 - Richness From Reading 159

Reading also improves memory. More than a dozen studies have
demonstrated that regular readers are better at recalling all sorts of
details––not just in the material they read but in every area of their
lives.
And it improves analytical thinking––the ability to spot patterns in

complex problems and conceive solutions.
It doesn’t surprise me that reading makes you smarter. What

surprises me is that some people think reading is an anachronistic
skill. “I watch lots of biographies on the History Channel,” one
friend tells me. “I don’t need to read books.”
I’ll grant my friend that there are plenty of good programs on TV

these days. And there is no faster way to do quick research than by
using Google. But watching TV or Googling does not activate the
brain as fully and effectively as reading does.
How Reading Can Make You Healthier
Anything that makes you smarter is––as far as I’m concerned––

something that any person interested in a rich and rewarding life
should want to do. But reading offers health benefits too.
For one thing, reading is a very effective way to overcome stress.

In a British study, participants engaged in an anxiety-provoking
activity and then either read for a few minutes, listened to music,
or played video games. The stress levels of those who read
dropped 67 percent––more than any of the other groups. And, in
fact, research conducted at the University of Sussex showed that
reading is better at reducing stress than listening to music, enjoying
a cup of tea or coffee, and even taking a walk.
A second health benefit you’ll get from regular reading is a

youthful brain. A study of 294 participants published in the journal
Neurology found that those who engaged in mentally stimulating
activities (such as reading) experienced slower memory decline.
And according to research published in the journal Proceedings of

the National Academy of Sciences, readers are less likely to have
Alzheimer’s disease.
“The brain is an organ just like every other organ in the body.
It ages in regard to how it is used,” lead author Dr. Robert P.
Friedland told USA Today. “Just as physical activity strengthens
the heart, muscles, and bones, intellectual activity strengthens the
brain against disease.”
Another study, reported in Prevention magazine, found that readers

have a 32 percent slower rate of cognitive decline later in life.
“Brainy pursuits make the brain more efficient by changing

its structure to continue functioning properly in spite of age-
related neuropathologies,” Robert S. Wilson, Ph.D., professor
of neuropsychology at Rush University Medical Center, told the
magazine.
How Reading Can Make You Kinder
Smarter and healthier––surely those are sufficient reasons to

become an avid reader. But in doing my research for this book,
I discovered yet another benefit. According to several studies,
reading can actually make you kinder.
Researchers in the Netherlands, for example, found that people

who were “emotionally transported” by a work of fiction
experienced a boost in empathy.
Another study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that
people who regularly read are much more likely to be engaged
civically and culturally.
And yet another study, published in Creativity Research

Journal, showed that people who have just read a short story have
less need for “cognitive closure” than people who’ve just read
a nonfiction essay. One hundred University of Toronto students
read either one of eight short stories or one of eight essays. Then

each student completed a survey measuring their emotional need
for certainty and stability. Those who had read a short story had
significantly lower scores than those who had read an essay. They
expressed greater comfort with uncertainty and chaos––an attitude
that allows for higher-level thinking and greater creativity.
Making “Rich” Choices
Some novels—think Danielle Steele or John Grisham—are easy

to read and loads of fun (if you like that sort of thing), but provide
no lasting pleasures. You read them quickly, caught up in the plot
or amused by certain well-drawn characters. But then you put the
books down and forget about them. You’ve invested time into them
and you’ve gotten a return on your investment, but the return was
very modest.
Compare that experience to reading Sophie’s Choice or Lolita,

books that are more “difficult.” Such books challenge you on every
level. The authors’ writing styles are more sophisticated. Their
plots are less conventional. Their characters are multifaceted,
like people tend to be in real life. And there are ideas presented
throughout the story—ideas that often test your convictions and
notions and beliefs.
You will get some of the benefits of reading––especially stress

reduction––no matter what kind of books you read. But if you
want a life that is richer in terms of your emotional and intellectual
experience, you have to be selective in your choices. As with music
and art, that means choosing books that have complexity, subtlety,
and emotional power.
I don’t have the space or time to recommend great books for

every aspect of a rich life, so I will limit my suggestions to
five categories: modern fiction, classical fiction, short stories,
nonfiction, and poetry.
My recommendations are in no way meant to be definitive. As

award-winning author Lloyd Alexander said, “We don’t need to

have just one favorite. We keep adding favorites. Our favorite book
is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular
stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites
that give us what we most need at that particular time. But we
never lose the old favorites. They’re always with us. We just sort of
accumulate them.”
My 10 Favorite Modern Novels

1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
3. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
4. True Grit by Charles Portis
5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
6. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
7. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
8. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
10. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My 10 Favorite Classics
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
6. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

8. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
9. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
10. Native Son by Richard Wright
My 10 Favorite Short Story Collections

1. Dubliners by James Joyce
2. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
3. Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash
4. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by
Raymond Carver
5. The Complete Short Stories of O. Henry
6. Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway
7. The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
8. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
9. A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes
10. Pastoralia by George Saunders
My 10 Favorite Nonfiction Books

1. Ten Philosophical Mistakes by Mortimer J. Adler
2. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
3. The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
4. The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe
5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
6. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
7. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

8. The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
9. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
10. The American Language by H.L. Mencken
My 10 Favorite Poetry Books

1. Shakespeare’s Sonnets
2. Selected Poems: Edna St. Vincent Millay
3. The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
4. Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
5. Selected Poems of Ezra Pound
6. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
7. Selected Poems by W. H. Auden
8. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
9. Love Is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski
10. The Collected Works of Robert Penn Warren
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for
reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
— Confucius

Chapter 19
Richness From Movies

There is a Chinese proverb that goes something like this: “Pearls
don’t lie on the seashore. If you want one, you have to dive for it.”
In Part II of this book, I’ve been applying that observation to the

way we choose to spend our time—at work and at play.
I’ve argued that to enjoy a full, rewarding life, you must spend
your work time focusing on projects you value and your leisure
time on activities that somehow challenge you and improve you as
a person.
For lack of a more precise term, we categorize more challenging

books and music and art as “better.” But what makes one book or
symphony or painting better than another?
I’ve said that there are three qualities that are usually present in
“better” literature and music and art: complexity, subtlety, and
emotional power.
Think about that for a moment. Complexity. Subtlety. Emotional

power. Dealing with complexity requires a sharp mind. Dealing
with subtlety requires attentive eyes and ears. Taking in something
that has emotional power requires emotional resilience.
By “complexity,” I don’t mean complicated. I don’t mean, for

example, a book with a plot line that has 17 different threads running
through it. I mean that there is something in the work that goes
deeper than the surface and encompasses more than the obvious.
Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea has a very simple plot
line: A poor fisherman goes out to sea, catches a huge fish, and
Chapter 19 - Richness From Movies 167

is unable to get it back to shore before it is decimated by sharks.
But the story itself is so much more than that. By the time you’ve
finished reading this very slim book, you feel like you understand
in some deep way not only this man but also something more about
poverty and nobility and human grace.
By subtlety, I mean something like the opposite of obvious. I mean

that the subject matter is treated with delicacy and precision. The
artist/writer/composer is not satisfied with presenting the obvious.
He wants to convey the complexity he sees in his subject matter in
an understated way. He does this so the viewer/reader/listener can
discover the complexity on his own.
The third criterion, emotional power, denotes something more than

the capacity to provoke an immediate emotional response (fear/
pity/sympathy). The objective—if you can say that there is an
objective—is to elicit a response that is both deep and enduring. To
leave the viewer/reader/listener a slightly different person than he
was before.
In discussing art, literature, and music, I’ve said that you can make
your mental/emotional life richer by choosing to spend your leisure
time with works that have complexity, subtlety, and emotional power.
The same criteria apply to movies. (I’m going to focus on movies—

but everything I say here will apply equally well to TV shows.)
Most movies—certainly most movies made in Hollywood—are

made to be fast-paced and fun to watch. Whether it’s a thriller
starring Harrison Ford or a comedy starring Adam Sandler, the
producer’s goal is to sell tickets.
This is true even for many movies that win awards. Take the most
obvious relatively recent example: Titanic. It was a major motion
picture that won 11 Academy Awards. You don’t need to be a film
snob to see that Titanic had near-zero complexity, zero subtlety,
and that any emotional power it had was the kind Hallmark cards
are known for.

You may have liked Titanic. But liking a movie is not necessarily a
criterion for judging its ability to enrich you.
Movies, like food, come in many degrees of quality. Some movies

are like junk food—they provide temporary satisfaction. But that
satisfaction sometimes turns to other emotions (regret, guilt, anger)
after you have indulged. And a steady diet of such fare will leave
your mind flabby.
Good movies, like good books, do more than tell stories. They
provoke your thinking, challenging you to go deeper and further
with ideas than you otherwise might. They inflame your aesthetic
sensibility, even if you never thought you had one. And when they
are very good, they can change or deepen your perspective… and,
in doing so, enrich your life.
That said, here are some movies that I strongly recommend. Keep in
mind that these recommendations are based on the movies I’ve seen,
which represents only a fraction of the good movies out there.
My Top 20 Classic Movies

• All About Eve
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
• Casablanca
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Rear Window
• The Third Man
• Vertigo

• Psycho
• Some Like It Hot
• Sunset Boulevard
• Gone With the Wind
• The African Queen
• Double Indemnity
• Rebel Without a Cause
• City Lights
• Frankenstein
• Lawrence of Arabia
My Top 20 Modern Movies

• The Godfather, Part I
• Pulp Fiction
• Apocalypse Now
• The Conversation
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Taxi Driver
• Schindler’s List
• Five Easy Pieces
• The Deer Hunter
• Reservoir Dogs
• Slum Dog Millionaire
• Amadeus

• The French Connection
• The Graduate
• Jaws
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• American Graffiti
• Easy Rider
• Goodfellas
• The Godfather, Part II
My Top 20 Foreign Language Films

• La Dolce Vita (Italian)
• 8½ (Italian)
• Breathless (French)
• M (German)
• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (French)
• The Seven Samurai (Japanese)
• My Night at Maud’s (French)
• The 400 Blows (French)
• Flowers of Shanghai (Chinese)
• The Bicycle Thief (Italian)
• The Hunt (Danish)
• Amour (French)
• The Baader Meinhof Complex (German)
• Departures (Japanese)

• The Lives of Others (German)
• The Sea Inside (Spanish)
• Amélie (French)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Chinese)
• Tsotsi (South African)
• Footnote (Israeli)
You can easily develop your own lists––and I urge you to do it.
Start with mine and get on the Internet to find some others. Don’t
be surprised when you find that most of these lists overlap. There’s
a reason some movies are consistently rated at the top. It is because
they are—compared to the average movie—more complex, subtle,
and emotionally powerful.
Then set some time aside to watch these movies, one after the
other. Don’t feel compelled to like them just because other people
do. And don’t feel compelled to watch any movie all the way
through. Give it at least twenty minutes. If you’re not involved by
then, go on to the next one.
The idea is to be your own judge. And the criteria should not be
how “easy” or “fun” it was to watch a particular movie but how it
affected you afterward. Did it give you a new view on some aspect
of life? Did it teach you something interesting that helps you
understand how things work? Did it stimulate your thinking?
The goal is to build your own list of movies that you can watch
again and again… getting more out of them each and every time
you do.

In Conclusion
A hundred years ago, luxury goods of any kind were out of the
financial reach of 99 percent of the population. But today, thanks
to industrialization, globalization, and information technology, a
middle-class income is enough to enjoy the best that life has to offer.
In Part I of this book, I made the argument that the finest material
things can be part of your experience if you spend your money
wisely. In other words, if you make buying decisions based on
quality and cost of use.
In Part II, I argued that, although luxurious things comprise a part

of living rich, the bigger and more important part is how you spend
your time. We all––billionaires and minimum-wage workers alike––
have the same allotment. We are all given 24 hours a day, 168 hours
a week, and 52 weeks a year. How we fill that time is the most
important factor in determining the richness of our experience.
We sometimes think that we don’t have the luxury of choosing

how we will spend our hours. But I believe we do. And I hope I
have convinced you that this is true for you. I also hope I have
shown you how you can start living each of your 24 daily hours as
richly and as freely as a billionaire.
In Conclusion 173
Featured Books From
Cap & Bells Press
To order these books, visit www.amazon.com
America in Still Life: Barnett Greenberg
By Donald Mahoney, Mark Morgan Ford, and Timothy Sullivan
Barnett George Greenberg was an unknown artist destined to

be forgotten... until Donald Mahoney and Mark Morgan Ford
came upon a cache of his work. Impressed by the quality of what
Greenberg had left behind, they tried to find out more about the man.
What they discovered was a remarkable life.
Back and Out Again
Poems by Mark Morgan Ford
This is Mark Morgan Ford’s first collection of poetry––an

exploration of the possibilities of rhyme, rhythm, and form inspired
by his interest in everything from mythology to politics to the
complexities of human relationships.
Back From the Abyss: The Autobiography of a Low-Bottom Alky
By Kieran Doherty
With a voice reminiscent of Pete Hamill’s in A Drinking Life and a

childhood as tough as Frank McCourt’s in Angela’s Ashes, Kieran
tells his story, full of wit, bravado, and Irish charm.
A Joyous Fatalism
By Timothy Siniscalchi, with photographs by Gwen Gove
Why a book of aphorisms written by a contemporary, unknown

author? Because we believe the aphorism is a valuable literary
species. And without the publication of new aphorisms by new
writers, the species cannot survive. That said, we introduce you to
Timothy Siniscalchi…
Cap & Bells is a boutique publishing company that focuses
on contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art books.
Launched in 2012, it is our mission to be a vehicle for
undiscovered writers and to keep the art of storytelling alive.
Visit www.capandbellspress.com to find out more about our

books and to sign up for our mailing list.

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LIVING

By Mark Morgan Ford

For more information about The Palm Beach Letter,

How great could you live if you were as rich as he?

Sounds good, right?

Of course it would. So would $25 million.

Hmmm. Something is going on here that we need to think about.

So as we were passing over a bridge that crossed the Tiber, I

As it turns out, this was a two-stage process… beginning with the

Material Things—Having the

Living Rich Is All About

First, just because you can afford to buy something that is

And even with something that you do enjoy––say, a fine

Let me give you a few more examples.

Driving Like a Billionaire

Chapter 1 - Living Rich Is All About Spending Wisely 3

Like the Landaulet, the BMW 760Li has a 12-cylinder

Sleeping Like a Billionaire

4 Living Rich: How to Live as Well as a Billionaire on a Middle-Class Budget

Answer: a great mattress!

If you were a billionaire, you could buy the most expensive

Dressing Like a Billionaire

I’ll explain how to do it and how to make all of your clothes-

The Point Is This…

Contrary to popular opinion, most of the best material things in

Chapter 1 - Living Rich Is All About Spending Wisely 5

The Rich Man’s Home: Finding It

On the south lawn stands an immense gazebo—such as you might

The façade of the house has two-story ionic columns supporting a

Bob’s house is huge. It is imposing. From the outside, it says, “I

But it is in one important way poor. I’ll get to that in a bit.

It is small. It is friendly. And it feels rich.

The house you live in has an enormous effect on your quality of

Chapter 2 - The Rich Man’s Home: Finding It 7

Your house is your home––your headquarters, a shelter and a

Your house may also be your most expensive single possession.

Cost of Use: A Wise Way

Many people believe that owning a house is always

“Why should I fork over several thousand dollars per

To arrive at the right answer to this question you must

Right now, for example, I’m shopping for an apartment in

8 Living Rich: How to Live as Well as a Billionaire on a Middle-Class Budget

(In the following example, and in others that follow, I’m

The apartments we are looking at are in the $1.3 million to

That’s an argument for ownership.

But now I have to figure in the cost of plunking down $1.5

Okay, so far it’s a tie.

Now let’s look at the other costs of ownership.

Then you have association fees. The apartments I’m

Chapter 2 - The Rich Man’s Home: Finding It 9

So the total cost of owning that apartment would be

Now let’s look at renting.

You would think that if the rental market were “efficient,”

Bottom line: It would be about $20,000 per year cheaper to

So, in this case, renting would be the better choice.

You can do the same analysis with cars. Rather than

Understanding the cost of use has saved me hundreds of

10 Living Rich: How to Live as Well as a Billionaire on a Middle-Class Budget

About a year after he moved in, Bob invited me to stop by his

I wasn’t sure what to expect as he ushered me into the foyer, but I