What would change your life?
This summer I made a goal to ride my bike at least 25 miles a week. I’ve been averaging a bit more than that, part because I’m rediscovering my old college town and part because there are endless bike routes around Santa Barbara that suck you in with their beauty.
One of my favorites takes you through Montecito, along Butterfly Beach, and past some of the most stunning views on the California coast. At one end, the road splits from the bike path, wrapping around multi-acre properties and cliffs on one side until the rider reaches the iconic hilltop cemetery.
Where the bike path rejoins the road is the entrance to one of these enormous properties. I thought it was a retreat like the Self-Realization Fellowship in my hometown. Turns out it’s the $100 million home of the notoriously private founder of Beanie Babies, Ty Warner. Among many other things, Warner also owns several hotels and golf courses around Santa Barbara.
I’m not at risk of becoming a plush toy billionaire, but thinking about it is a useful thought experiment. A few months ago I started asking my friends what would change if they suddenly had, say, $50 million. The answers are usually revealing.
Money (like power) turns us into who we really are. It reveals our priorities and insecurities.
It can make us ostentatious and show off with luxurious vacations, exotic cars, and hilltop houses.
It can force us to buy and do things that cover up what we really want but can’t quite articulate, like Orson Welles’ character in Citizen Kane.
It can compel us to donate to institutions that take our support in exchange for our name in big bold letters on their buildings.
But it doesn’t have to, and that’s the point of my question. It can make you want to dedicate your life to providing opportunity for your community, like it did for Nipsey Hussle.
It’s been cool to see how for a lot of my friends, money really has diminishing returns. They know that a bigger house or newer car won’t make them feel any better beyond that initial hit.
Don’t get me wrong, we can all think of things we‘d buy if we had endless cash. For me it’s a house big enough to fit all the vintage furniture I’m always drooling on, along with a 1980s 911. The latter is especially impractical for me because I can’t really drive a stick. So it would be a cool art piece.
Thoreau wrote that “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” Letting things alone is much easier when you have clarity on what you want. Similar to how one might approach doing strategy for a brand, knowing what you want to happen is a critical step toward filtering your decisions.
A common thread I’ve seen in these conversations is that we all realize that no financial windfall will get us waves on a crowded day at Rincon, ease the wear and tear we’ve put on our bodies, or make us better friends, partners, or parents. The things we really want take constant work. They’re part of infinite games that money can’t help us win.
And the things we think we need money for (like “time to play more music”), we actually don’t. Or not as much as we think. We’ve just used it as an excuse to avoid something that isn’t really a priority.
I wonder if there’s some personal symbolism for Ty Warner in owning the most expensive property in town that’s only a bike path’s width from a cemetery. Maybe it’s a reminder that this whole things ends at the same place for all of us and that we should think real hard about what we want before we get there.
