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I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

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Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#161

Post by motohagiography »

So she's a family office for single people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_office)

The Varian Rule, which is about how the future resembles how the rich live today, the middle and poorer classes will have tomorrow, may apply here. Multi-family offices for middle net worth individuals seem like a plausible future.

I can't seem to convince my lawyer and accountant friends that this is a viable service because (I think) they are basically not entrepreneurial, and big firms don't offer it because they are already fighting and maintaining position in the HNWI market.

A one-stop shop that handles everything from taxes, to parking tickets, legal advice, to investments, insurance, and even medical, could be worth it for a lot of people.

What makes it viable now is that families with the kind of money worth professional management are still actually working for it each day, that is, still making this kind of money on their labor instead of returns on capital, so they have the income (albeit less in assets), but not the time to manage it properly.

I would look forward to using such a service...one day. :)

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#162

Post by savanaly »

beat wrote: post #118
savanaly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support free markets because they tend to distribute scarce resources efficiently, and monopoly disrupts that. A union is, roughly, an attempt to form a monopoly and charge a price above the market price, which our first expectation should lead us to think will cause a deadweight loss and drop in employment, although there will be some rents to the workers that keep their jobs which of course is why they are trying…

Isn't that what corporations are, too?

Corporations can take on a role as a monopolist but it's not inherent to their nature. I would hazard to say that most corporations are in a market where they can't affect the equilibrium market price of the good they're selling by very much, and thus don't resemble a union in that respect.

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#163

Post by Invictus0 »

motohagiography wrote: post #161

So she's a family office for single people. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_office ) The Varian Rule, which is about how the future resembles how the rich live today, the middle and poorer classes will have tomorrow, may apply here. Multi-family offices for middle net worth individuals seem like a plausible future. I can't seem to convince my lawyer and accountant friends that this is a viable service because…

Lots of these services are being created piecemeal. Professional management works for these people because the clients are overwhelmed and don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to budget X million dollars for 4 years.

Most average people think that they do know what they're doing. They have a few hundred in the bank, they're paycheck is the same and comes every 2 weeks, and they know the price and value of the things they need. They don't suffer from the illusion that they can buy jetskis on a whim without bankrupting themselves.

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#164

Post by hyperpape »

motohagiography wrote: post #161

So she's a family office for single people. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_office ) The Varian Rule, which is about how the future resembles how the rich live today, the middle and poorer classes will have tomorrow, may apply here. Multi-family offices for middle net worth individuals seem like a plausible future. I can't seem to convince my lawyer and accountant friends that this is a viable service because…

I shudder to think about how much time it takes to juggle all the different financial things I deal with, and how sub-optimal they are because it's too much of a pain to coordinate.

Lovely example: I have autopay for all my recurring expenses except my water bill. Through some mixture of losing some information and the shittiness of their website, I can't get a login to set up autopay. So each month, I spend a few minutes on the phone to pay--it doesn't require authentication to pay over the phone, but it requires authentication to pay over the web.

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#165

Post by hyperpape »

dalbasal wrote: post #156
hyperpape wrote: post #124

I can't find the story, but several years ago, an NBA player bought a bunch of fast food franchises, and there was collective head-scratching about why he'd do that. Matthew Yglesias pointed out that it was brilliant: the value of the franchises was that they were illiquid, so that he had a backstop against overspending or family members asking for money. About that last point: for those of us who come from middle cl…

On that last point... an analogy When the microfinance exuberance started dying back about 5 years ago, I heard the following interpretation of micro-credit: Poor rural people need credit because they can't save. They can't save because they owe their neighbours a moral debt. Jennifer really needs $50 to pay her kid's dentist bill. She looked after your grandmother, when she was sick and you were away. You owe her (a…

This is a great point, and it also fits with how a lot of "tribal" societies work/worked. You never accumulate wealth, but, for instance, if you have a large yam harvest, you throw a feast for the entire community.

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#166

Post by jorvi »

isostatic wrote: post #151
jorvi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in The Netherlands we pay ~€90~€120 premium to insurers. The €90 package only gives you access to select hospitals per region for non-emergency care, and you aren’t covered for ‘extras’ like physiotherapy. The €120 package is pretty much the ‘all-in’ package. On top of that you have a ~€380 deductible. Everything except medicine costs goes from this deductible first. If you really trust your health (or have the…

It's fairly irellevent who pays, everyone ends up paying in the end. The Netherlands spends $5385 per year per person on healthcare, 80% of that is spent by the government. The UK spends $4192 per year, again 80% is by the government. The UK has trickier cost areas to handle too (healthcare in Scottish islands is far more per person than in Rotterdam) Measuring the objective quality of a health care system is almost…

As far as I know the EHCI (Euro Health Consumer Index) is the one that is considered a very accurate source, and they have ranked The Netherlands as having the best system for 8(!) years in a row so far, with the Swiss hot on our heels[1]. They're also coincidentally Sweden-based, in case you might feel they would be biased.

The problem with comparing worldwide is that the WHO does an annual health report, but this focusses on a different aspect each year, instead of a general outlay. It has been done in 2000, with data from 1993-1997. The Netherlands switched from a completely socialised system ('Ziekenfonds') to the hybrid system in 2006. A lot of our improvements are because of that, and thus aren't in the 2000 WHO ranking.

The only other source I could find is the Legatum Institute prosperity index[2], which puts us 6th behind: Luxembourg, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, Austria, Sweden, Norway. As their healthcare research is only part of a bigger picture (and thus less focused), I tend to give it less weight.

As a sidenote, aside from a small bit of extra pride its not very important where a country sits in the top 15, all these countries their healthcare systems can be regarded as top notch. The only places to attain a higher level of care would be in (usually foreign) private institutions, which come with such high costs that they are only accessible to an elite few.

[1]https://healthpowerhouse.com/media/EHCI-2017/EHCI-2017-repor...

[2]http://www.prosperity.com/rankings

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#167

Post by cpitman »

jpindar wrote: post #113
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s like these stars are not fully functioning human beings Or that the personalities that (a) go into low-probability high-payoff careers like entertainment and (b) do well in entertainment (through further selection or the perso al transformations necessary to succeed in Hollywood or the NFL) are also bad at saying no to competitive luxuries and short-term impulses.

And many of them work with people who make even more money than they do, which can distort their idea of what lifestyle they can afford.

I see this very much. Friends that are surrounded by dual income couples that are lawyers/doctors/etc get convinced that 300k+ household incomes are "not that much". This while being 97+% percentile for household incomes in the US.

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#169

Post by isostatic »

lxglv wrote: post #97
isostatic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article loads just fine without needed any cookies, just curl it (via a US server) and load it. If that works, why do they need to set any cookies? Some sites need session cookies to maintain login details from request to request, that's fine. Some sites may offer the option to use cookies to save your login from one visit to the next, that's also fine, ask if they want that. Most sites don't need to set any coo…

I would suppose, that’s not the essential functionality reuirement, rather an ad tracking one.

Ahh, well in that case at least be honest.

"This site costs money, accept our cookies while we sell your personal information for a fraction of what it's worth or you can't see it. We value your personal data at 6 cents, as that's what the 300 companies we sell it to will pay us."

Re: I Stop Celebrities from Blowing Their Money

#170

Post by siruncledrew »

godot wrote: post #12

Thought this bit was interesting: "... actors, recording artists, producers, writers, and athletes with personal net worths ranging from $1 million to $50 million..." I kind of feel bad for the low end of her clients whose net worth is only $1 million. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of money. But it also doesn't go that far nowadays, especially if you live in SF Bay area (though most of her clients are probably in th…

To us, $1M doesn't sound like a lot in areas like SF/LA, but, generally speaking, most nouveau riche in this demographic typically don't even think COL upfront. In the ESPN "Broke" documentary, it was said something like 50-60% of athletes end up broke (essentially back where many of them started). Young, financially uneducated, popular, and newly rich is a perfect storm for wealth mismanagement.

If a 20-something actor/artist/athlete lands a lot of money, the first thing they go to is immediate lifestyle "improvement". Fancy cars, nice clothes, luxury amenities. "I'm rich now, so I gotta look the part, right?". Scroll through a few Instagrams of rookies who got their first payday, and you'll see them driving in an S-class Benz with an LV handbag. The novelty of saying "I'm a millionaire now" imprints the image that they will be a millionaire forever - and that short-term thinking is what runs the well dry.

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