Is money really the answer to everything as we Nigerians tend to believe? - "Get rich or die trying"

The following men were all successful businessmen who committed suicide. The millions in their bank accounts did nothing to ease their suffering…

So how do we explain that?

Ten Millionires Who Committed Suicide

by Julian Crowley

We live in a society filled with dreams and aspirations of wealth, a society that likes to believe that money will bring with it happiness and success. 
The following men were all successful businessmen who committed suicide. The millions in their bank accounts did nothing to ease their suffering…

10. Jonathan Wraith

Thirty-five-year-old Jonathan Wraith — a young British millionaire by virtue of selling his and his father’s portable cabin business for £30 million ($46 million) — was by all accounts a happy and well-adjusted young man. However, in 2009 he picked up his shotgun and shot himself, leaving no suicide note. No clear reason could be found for Wraith’s action, but there has been some speculation that he was extremely worried about his father David’s recent stroke. It seems that this may have proven too much for the young man to take.

9. Eli M. Black

Eli M. Black, whose death was immortalized on screen in the Coen Brothers comedy The Hudsucker Proxy, was a Jewish-American businessman and millionaire controller of the United Brands Company. An astute and forward thinking capitalist, Black’s career included stints with Lehman Brothers and then the American Seal-Kap Company, which he renamed AMK. The early ’70s saw AMK merge with United Fruit Company. With that, Black’s fate was sealed. His downfall was rooted in the discovery of his $2.5 million bribe offered to the President of Honduras, to reduce export taxes on bananas. Taking matters into his own hands before the scandal broke, Black climbed the 44 floors of his office building and leapt out onto crowded Park Avenue to the horror of onlookers below.

8. Huibert Boumeester

At 49, father-of-two Huibert Boumeester took his own life after becoming seriously depressed in the fallout of the £50 billion ($77 billion) takeover of ABN Amro by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Dutch millionaire banker’s body was discovered in a woodland area several miles away from his home in London. A suicide note to his wife Frederique that was found on his body read that he could not “go on.” The coroner confirmed that Mr. Boumeester had ended his life while depressed, explaining: “He drove to a very isolated location in woodland, sat down and used the shotgun to end his own life.”

7. Christopher Foster

In August 2008, Christopher Foster, a 50-year-old British businessman, murdered his wife and daughter before burning down his house and killing himself. The businessman shot his wife Jillian and daughter Kirstie, prior to succumbing to smoke inhalation. Foster, wealthy by virtue of his company’s work creating oil rig insulation technology, was nevertheless beset by financial concerns. Despite being a millionaire residing in a five-bedroom country mansion, he was living beyond his means, with debts of £4 million ($6.2 million). It seems that, tragically, these financial worries may well have pushed him over the edge.

6. John Lawrenson

John Lawrenson was a successful businessman who lived in a £1.2 million ($1.8 million) mansion (the Old Rectory, above). He was healthy and seemingly happy, and had earned the right to enjoy the profits from a lucrative life in the publishing world. This all would have been fine, except for one thing: his beloved wife Caroline was dying of cancer. The devoted couple, married for 47 years, poisoned themselves with a substance bought via mail order from Mexico. A suicide note found near their bodies confirms the truth: Mr. Lawrenson could not bear the thought of living alone and decided to take the matter into his own hands.

5. Wayne Pai

Wayne Pai was a successful Taiwanese businessman, and founder and chairman of the securities broker the Polaris Group. In the wake of rumors of insider trading, the nevertheless well respected Pai was found dead in July 2008. His wife and members of Polaris’ staff flew to the outlying island of Penghu to assist police with their inquiries. Pai’s suicide came at a time when allegations were being made that a former president of National Chiao Tung University had been receiving regular payments from Polaris. Pai’s body was found floating in waters surrounding the outlying island.

4. Paul Castle

Paul Castle — a self-styled businessman and property tycoon who had met the Queen of England and played polo with Prince Charles — killed himself in 2010. The 54-year-old threw himself in front of a London Underground train, leaving no chance of survival. The businessman, described as a “workaholic,” had seen several property deals go awry over the last year of his life and had also lost capital in a gas and oil surveying company. Castle, who suffered from chronic heart problems and tumors, had been married three times and was due to be wedded for a fourth time, to his girlfriend Natalie Theo.

3. Peter Smedley

Peter Smedley was an enormously successful millionaire hotelier and businessman with a tinned food empire that provided him with a sizable income. He and his wife Christine — who had been married for 33 years — enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle befitting of their riches. However, Mr. Smedley was also an extremely ill man, suffering from motor neurone disease. He ended his life by his own volition, at an assisted dying organization, the Dignitas clinic, in Switzerland. In a further twist to the story, Mr. Smedley’s death was filmed by the BBC, with segments televised as part of documentary about assisted suicides.

2. Howard Worthington

In an alarming case of destructive emotion, self-proclaimed “lord of the manor” millionaire Howard Worthington shot himself with one of his prized shotguns just moments after shooting his lover Julie Rees. The 52-year-old English former businessman, who made his fortune in the steel industry, had been ordered to stay away from his £1.3 million ($2 million) country home after threatening her with a gun a few weeks prior. While Rees recovered, Worthington did not. Verdict: suicide.

1. ReiJane Huai

Long Island resident and computer software high flyer ReiJane Huai killed himself with a single shot in September 2011. The former president and CEO of FalconStor, a data storage company, had resigned suddenly in 2010 following a lawsuit filed against him. The millionaire committed suicide on the front lawn of the $2.5 million home he shared with his wife, ShuWen. The Taiwanese-born Huai — who had traveled to the USA to study in 1984 — had several adult children living in the US and was described as a “visionary and leader” by a FalconStor spokesman.

So sad.. so after chasing all the money and finally getting it... Happiness is still all that matters. One thing I learnt from Dr. Strive Masiyiwa last year, don't forget to do those things that makes you happy and gives meaning to your life.

polimaf:
So sad.. so after chasing all the money and finally getting it... Happiness is still all that matters. One thing I learnt from Dr. Strive Masiyiwa last year, don't forget to do those things that makes you happy and gives meaning to your life.

Luxury is an addictive drug

The frugal blogger Mr. Money Mustache tells us that luxury is weakness. Luxury is an addictive drug. Until we understand this, it has the power to ruin our lives.

I remember driving my brand new luxury sports car and noticing that my identity was becoming tied up with the car. I realized that this super-expensive car would wear out and then I would need to buy another one. To keep my identity, I would need to keep generating a lot of money. It was like having a drug habit. The car didn't make me feel that good, but the idea of not having the car felt lame. So I realized that I would need to keep having that fix to feel normal.

This process of getting the drug to get back to normal is a common experience for drug addicts. Also, tolerance to the drug increases with abuse over time. An amount of the drug that was once satisfying starts to not have the desired effect. We find that we need more and more of the substance or experience to get back to normal.

The problem is that, as the U2 lyric goes, "You can never get enough of what you don't really need." Once you have the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, you start wishing for a Bentley Bentayga. The more luxury you have, the more luxury you need, but luxury never really satisfies the itch that it promises to scratch.

Horacio Villalobos | Getty Images

Bentley Bentayga SUV and Mulsanne Speed

Luxury makes us feel successful, that we are winning at the game of life, that we are not only surviving, but thriving. Like an opioid in our brains, luxury locks into our survival receptors. The irony is that purchasing luxury, and being dependent on it for our sense of self and wellbeing, leads to us depleting the very resources that we actually need for survival.

It turns out that having the discipline to live frugally, to invest rather than spend, to mend and make do, and to be able to live for longer and longer periods of time without having to work, are true measures of wealth. Deeply enjoying whatever it is you're experiencing right now is the ultimate wealth.

The people who are on the nine-to-five treadmill, working to pay for luxury cars to drive for two hours per day to and from work, are really on a luxury treadmill. These people are addicted to luxury.

Rextayne:

Being wealthy is a full-time job

There's a foolish impression that once you have a lot of money, you can kick back and relax. To some degree this is true. You can have more choice, and you can buffer situations in your life to some degree. However, once you have assets you have to manage them, protect them, and maintain them. You need to worry about being sued, so you need insurance. You need to hire people to do stuff for you, and you need to manage them. Delegation is really hard.

If you're not careful, you will make your life more complex, with more things, and more activities. Perhaps you will use spending money and buying things as a cheap way of avoiding self-awareness. Perhaps you will become obsessed with hoarding your money and maximizing its growth.

Some people become very suspicious of other people, not trusting that they really have friends, thinking that others are trying to get at their wealth. Even with the best intentions, others will seek funding and support from you. They want you to invest in their businesses and projects. They want to borrow money. All of this is a massive strain on your ability to be aware of your boundaries, and avoid being co-dependent or enabling.

It's really challenging being wealthy. Approach with caution.

I remember spending all day sitting next to one of the founders of the company. He was a grey-haired, old-timer of Sun Microsystems, yet a trail-blazer in the new realm of synthesizing computer logic in chips. He was the VP of Engineering at this little start-up. He’s now a mega-millionaire, perhaps even a billionaire.

We worked effortlessly, seemingly endlessly, late into the night. I showed him test-cases that my random 3D triangle generator had produced, which broke his graphics engine, making it behave differently from our model. He fixed the bugs, while I watched him code. I learned so much from him about being a principled engineer, about how to create quality code. I was so excited about what we were doing that I couldn’t stop working.

I won’t go into the details here, but I continued to follow this flow of excitement and enthusiasm, and it led me to becoming an employee of that start-up, making a ton of money, and gaining masses of experience.

I didn’t apply this principle in all areas of my life back then, so I only experienced the benefits of it in a small domain: my career. Later on, I also become fearful of losing what I had, and started to make choices that were not in alignment with the path of least resistance. These choices led to much less beneficial outcomes.

I have been learning more each day how to notice when I am experiencing resistance, where the path of least resistance is, and then flowing with that. I am learning to keep on pivoting, no matter how much success I have achieved, into the next path of least resistance.

Some people say, “follow your bliss.” I always found this statement irritating. A statement that resonates much more strongly for me is, “trust your good feelings.” Trust your excitement, your enthusiasm, your happiness, your playfulness, and your curiosity. All of these feelings are associated with flow, with the flow of your energy. When you engage with them, everything in your life will flow more easily.

When you perseverate on the thoughts that lead to unpleasant feelings, and you take actions in an attempt to stop those unpleasant feelings, it generally leads to less adaptive outcomes. Unpleasant feelings include fear, anger, loneliness, and jealousy. Bring yourself back to asking “what would I like?” and then notice where your pleasant, flowing feelings lead you. Trust those feelings.

ameri9ja:


Being wealthy is a full-time job

There's a foolish impression that once you have a lot of money, you can kick back and relax. To some degree this is true. You can have more choice, and you can buffer situations in your life to some degree. However, once you have assets you have to manage them, protect them, and maintain them. You need to worry about being sued, so you need insurance. You need to hire people to do stuff for you, and you need to manage them. Delegation is really hard.

If you're not careful, you will make your life more complex, with more things, and more activities. Perhaps you will use spending money and buying things as a cheap way of avoiding self-awareness. Perhaps you will become obsessed with hoarding your money and maximizing its growth.

Some people become very suspicious of other people, not trusting that they really have friends, thinking that others are trying to get at their wealth. Even with the best intentions, others will seek funding and support from you. They want you to invest in their businesses and projects. They want to borrow money. All of this is a massive strain on your ability to be aware of your boundaries, and avoid being co-dependent or enabling.

It's really challenging being wealthy. Approach with caution.

#Word

Rextayne:
#Word

Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Don't work for money ... you will never be happy'

Apple CEO Tim Cook has some advice for college students obsessed only with pursuing a career for the paycheck: Think different.

"My advice to all of you is, don't work for money — it will wear out fast, or you'll never make enough and you will never be happy, one or the other," Cook says.

"You have to find the intersection of doing something you're passionate about and at the same time something that is in the service of other people," he says.

"I would argue that, if you don't find that intersection, you're not going to be very happy in life."

Rextayne:
#Word

Here's an interesting one I missed.
Makes you wonder, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??!!

German tycoon Adolf Merckle commits suicide

Merckle, who was the world’s 94th-richest person in 2008 according to Forbes magazine, spent his life building a business conglomerate with about 100,000 employees.

The empire was poised to come crashing down after his family made wrong-way bets on skyrocketing Volkswagen shares.

The family has been under pressure to sell some assets or seek bridging loans and has been in talks with banks for weeks.

“The desperate situation of his companies caused by the financial crisis, the uncertainties of the last few weeks and his powerlessness to act, have broken the passionate family entrepreneur and he took his own life,” a family statement said.

The 74-year-old industrialist died when a train struck him late on Monday, said prosecutors in the southern German town of Ulm, near Merckle’s home.

ameri9ja:


Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Don't work for money ... you will never be happy'

Apple CEO Tim Cook has some advice for college students obsessed only with pursuing a career for the paycheck: Think different.

"My advice to all of you is, don't work for money — it will wear out fast, or you'll never make enough and you will never be happy, one or the other," Cook says.

"You have to find the intersection of doing something you're passionate about and at the same time something that is in the service of other people," he says.

"I would argue that, if you don't find that intersection, you're not going to be very happy in life."

Absolutely

ameri9ja:


Here's an interesting one I missed.
Makes you wonder, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??!!

German tycoon Adolf Merckle commits suicide

Merckle, who was the world’s 94th-richest person in 2008 according to Forbes magazine, spent his life building a business conglomerate with about 100,000 employees.

The empire was poised to come crashing down after his family made wrong-way bets on skyrocketing Volkswagen shares.

The family has been under pressure to sell some assets or seek bridging loans and has been in talks with banks for weeks.

“The desperate situation of his companies caused by the financial crisis, the uncertainties of the last few weeks and his powerlessness to act, have broken the passionate family entrepreneur and he took his own life,” a family statement said.

The 74-year-old industrialist died when a train struck him late on Monday, said prosecutors in the southern German town of Ulm, near Merckle’s home.

This is so bad, he must have been very depressed and frustrated about life, sometimes life screw you so badly that you will feel like the earth should swallow you. the truth alone is that money can't bring you happiness forever.

Rextayne:
This is so bad, he must have been very depressed and frustrated about life, sometimes life screw you so badly that you will feel like the earth should swallow you. the truth alone is that money can't bring you happiness forever.

But kill yourself because of money? I DON'T UNDERSTAND THESE PEOPLE!!!

I'll pick the phantom 8 of course

ameri9ja:
Is money really the answer to everything as we Nigerians tend to believe? - "Get rich or die trying"

The following men were all successful businessmen who committed suicide. The millions in their bank accounts did nothing to ease their suffering…

So how do we explain that?

Ten Millionires Who Committed Suicide

by Julian Crowley

We live in a society filled with dreams and aspirations of wealth, a society that likes to believe that money will bring with it happiness and success. 
The following men were all successful businessmen who committed suicide. The millions in their bank accounts did nothing to ease their suffering…

10. Jonathan Wraith

Thirty-five-year-old Jonathan Wraith — a young British millionaire by virtue of selling his and his father’s portable cabin business for £30 million ($46 million) — was by all accounts a happy and well-adjusted young man. However, in 2009 he picked up his shotgun and shot himself, leaving no suicide note. No clear reason could be found for Wraith’s action, but there has been some speculation that he was extremely worried about his father David’s recent stroke. It seems that this may have proven too much for the young man to take.

9. Eli M. Black

Eli M. Black, whose death was immortalized on screen in the Coen Brothers comedy The Hudsucker Proxy, was a Jewish-American businessman and millionaire controller of the United Brands Company. An astute and forward thinking capitalist, Black’s career included stints with Lehman Brothers and then the American Seal-Kap Company, which he renamed AMK. The early ’70s saw AMK merge with United Fruit Company. With that, Black’s fate was sealed. His downfall was rooted in the discovery of his $2.5 million bribe offered to the President of Honduras, to reduce export taxes on bananas. Taking matters into his own hands before the scandal broke, Black climbed the 44 floors of his office building and leapt out onto crowded Park Avenue to the horror of onlookers below.

8. Huibert Boumeester

At 49, father-of-two Huibert Boumeester took his own life after becoming seriously depressed in the fallout of the £50 billion ($77 billion) takeover of ABN Amro by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Dutch millionaire banker’s body was discovered in a woodland area several miles away from his home in London. A suicide note to his wife Frederique that was found on his body read that he could not “go on.” The coroner confirmed that Mr. Boumeester had ended his life while depressed, explaining: “He drove to a very isolated location in woodland, sat down and used the shotgun to end his own life.”

7. Christopher Foster

In August 2008, Christopher Foster, a 50-year-old British businessman, murdered his wife and daughter before burning down his house and killing himself. The businessman shot his wife Jillian and daughter Kirstie, prior to succumbing to smoke inhalation. Foster, wealthy by virtue of his company’s work creating oil rig insulation technology, was nevertheless beset by financial concerns. Despite being a millionaire residing in a five-bedroom country mansion, he was living beyond his means, with debts of £4 million ($6.2 million). It seems that, tragically, these financial worries may well have pushed him over the edge.

6. John Lawrenson

John Lawrenson was a successful businessman who lived in a £1.2 million ($1.8 million) mansion (the Old Rectory, above). He was healthy and seemingly happy, and had earned the right to enjoy the profits from a lucrative life in the publishing world. This all would have been fine, except for one thing: his beloved wife Caroline was dying of cancer. The devoted couple, married for 47 years, poisoned themselves with a substance bought via mail order from Mexico. A suicide note found near their bodies confirms the truth: Mr. Lawrenson could not bear the thought of living alone and decided to take the matter into his own hands.

5. Wayne Pai

Wayne Pai was a successful Taiwanese businessman, and founder and chairman of the securities broker the Polaris Group. In the wake of rumors of insider trading, the nevertheless well respected Pai was found dead in July 2008. His wife and members of Polaris’ staff flew to the outlying island of Penghu to assist police with their inquiries. Pai’s suicide came at a time when allegations were being made that a former president of National Chiao Tung University had been receiving regular payments from Polaris. Pai’s body was found floating in waters surrounding the outlying island.

4. Paul Castle

Paul Castle — a self-styled businessman and property tycoon who had met the Queen of England and played polo with Prince Charles — killed himself in 2010. The 54-year-old threw himself in front of a London Underground train, leaving no chance of survival. The businessman, described as a “workaholic,” had seen several property deals go awry over the last year of his life and had also lost capital in a gas and oil surveying company. Castle, who suffered from chronic heart problems and tumors, had been married three times and was due to be wedded for a fourth time, to his girlfriend Natalie Theo.

3. Peter Smedley

Peter Smedley was an enormously successful millionaire hotelier and businessman with a tinned food empire that provided him with a sizable income. He and his wife Christine — who had been married for 33 years — enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle befitting of their riches. However, Mr. Smedley was also an extremely ill man, suffering from motor neurone disease. He ended his life by his own volition, at an assisted dying organization, the Dignitas clinic, in Switzerland. In a further twist to the story, Mr. Smedley’s death was filmed by the BBC, with segments televised as part of documentary about assisted suicides.

2. Howard Worthington

In an alarming case of destructive emotion, self-proclaimed “lord of the manor” millionaire Howard Worthington shot himself with one of his prized shotguns just moments after shooting his lover Julie Rees. The 52-year-old English former businessman, who made his fortune in the steel industry, had been ordered to stay away from his £1.3 million ($2 million) country home after threatening her with a gun a few weeks prior. While Rees recovered, Worthington did not. Verdict: suicide.

1. ReiJane Huai

Long Island resident and computer software high flyer ReiJane Huai killed himself with a single shot in September 2011. The former president and CEO of FalconStor, a data storage company, had resigned suddenly in 2010 following a lawsuit filed against him. The millionaire committed suicide on the front lawn of the $2.5 million home he shared with his wife, ShuWen. The Taiwanese-born Huai — who had traveled to the USA to study in 1984 — had several adult children living in the US and was described as a “visionary and leader” by a FalconStor spokesman.

Stress levels.