Millionaire gives away fortune which made him miserable

Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder is giving away every penny of his £3 million fortune after realising his riches were making him unhappy.

Mr Rabeder, 47, a businessman from Telfs is in the process of selling his luxury 3,455 sq ft villa with lake, sauna and spectacular mountain views over the Alps, valued at £1.4 million.

Also for sale is his beautiful old stone farmhouse in Provence with its 17 hectares overlooking the arrière-pays, on the market for £613,000. Already gone is his collection of six gliders valued at £350,000, and a luxury Audi A8, worth around £44,000.

Mr Rabeder has also sold the interior furnishings and accessories business – from vases to artificial flowers – that made his fortune.

"My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come."

Instead, he will move out of his luxury Alpine retreat into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit in Innsbruck.

His entire proceeds are going to charities he set up in Central and Latin America, but he will not even take a salary from these.

"For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness," he said. "I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years," said Mr Rabeder.

But over time, he had another, conflicting feeling.

"More and more I heard the words: 'Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life'," he said. "I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need.

I have the feeling that there are lot of people doing the same thing."

However, for many years he said he was simply not "brave" enough to give up all the trappings of his comfortable existence.

The tipping point came while he was on a three-week holiday with his wife to islands of Hawaii.

"It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five star lifestyle is," he said. "In those three weeks, we spent all the money you could possibly spend. But in all that time, we had the feeling we hadn't met a single real person – that we were all just actors. The staff played the role of being friendly and the guests played the role of being important and nobody was real."

He had similar feelings of guilt while on gliding trips in South America and Africa. "I increasingly got the sensation that there is a connection between our wealth and their poverty," he said.

Suddenly, he realised that "if I don't do it now I won't do it for the rest of my life".

Mr Rabeder decided to raffle his Alpine home, selling 21,999 lottery tickets priced at just £87 each. The Provence house in the village of Cruis is on sale at the local estate agent.

All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans to Latin America and builds development aid strategies to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.

Since selling his belongings, Mr Rabeder said he felt "free, the opposite of heavy".

But he said he did not judge those who chose to keep their wealth. "I do not have the right to give any other person advice. I was just listening to the voice of my heart and soul."

Millionaire gives away fortune which made him miserable

The artcile doesn't say what his wife thought about this. Did she stand by him or leave him?

Good on you, Karl.

The man includes his wife in his sentiments, eg: "we had the feeling we hadn't met a single person." So, what's most likely is she feels the way he does - or else, if she doesn't, she's another "fake" person in this man's life who he is better off without.

I find it interesting how he notes that his poverty, earlier in life, could be to blame for his later striving for material success. It's known that people living in poverty will spend too much of their time in their quest for things, trying to appear materially successful - I'm just impressed that this primitive poverty-induced urge gave him enough momentum to attain a respectable fortune.

That's a really good thing for him to do. I plan to do the same, after I make a fortune first, that is!

I hope, once I finally get a job and have some money to spend, that I won't buy anything at all, besides a little bit of food and essentials. Doom is all the game I need, and everything else worth having in life I know how to get free. (That is, until something comes along that is worth having and costs a bunch of money...)

phi108 said:

...and everything else worth having in life I know how to get free.

BitTorrent. :D

I don't think I'd take it to that extreme. It's nice to have a comfortable life so you can spend your time doing interesting things with interesting people. I wouldn't mind staying in 5-star places all the time as long as I could still be with interesting people and also computers. This is why it's totally worth it to buy beers for good friends all the time, even if they're perpetually poor.

Khorus said:

BitTorrent. :D

Any good tracker for torrenting food, clothing and shelter?

This guy is awesome. But did he died?

Noble act.. sure. Say, if he needs any help getting rid of more money..

It would really suck if he gave away all his money and possessions and still felt like shit.

Jonathan said:

It would really suck if he gave away all his money and possessions and still felt like shit.

Yeah, it'd be cool if there were a follow up story to it.

Audi

Wanker.

If i had millions i'd not just sit around in a mansion doing bugger all, that's the easy way to depression. I'd probably even still do a 9-5, just because having a routine gives you a purpose to your life. Of course i'd just be "comfortable" even on rubbish pay... and if there was anything i paticularly fancied buying (i collect antique comics, so there's usually something cropping up on ebay that i spend too much on/can't afford but know i'll probably never see another) i could have it.

I've always planned to do the same, except in my scenario I wanted my money destroyed. Unfortunately my will won't be legal because you can't request illegal actions in your will to make it official :(

Just cos you're a millionare doesn't mean you have to live like one.

40oz said:

I've always planned to do the same, except in my scenario I wanted my money destroyed. Unfortunately my will won't be legal because you can't request illegal actions in your will to make it official :(

1. Buy an orbital rocket and fuel.
2. Invest all your money into gold.
3. ???
4. Laugh as millions cry out in despair as all that gold is now unsaveable for the next few decades (if some random government doesn't decide to interdict the rocket ...).

That or buy a ton of explosives instead of gold and blow up one of Jupiter's moons and observe the effects.

That's rather egotistic of him.

Instead of investing the money and letting the profits go to charity year after year he decides to close up shop and live the simple life just so he could feel better.

Besides, he's giving the money to his own charity organisation. Looks to me like he's just moving it from one pocket to another.

He obviously had at least some talent for making money if he had started out with nothing. He could've done a lot more good with that money.

Belial said:
Instead of investing the money and letting the profits go to charity year after year he decides to close up shop and live the simple life just so he could feel better.

According to the article, he just saw that the process of making money is another side of the coin of poverty. In that sense, doing what you suggest would cause more harm than good.

Apparently, he already participates in business handing money to charity by providing a space for anyone to contribute while keeping himself clear of the interests and conditionings of profit-making.

Belial said:

That's rather egotistic of him.

Instead of investing the money and letting the profits go to charity year after year he decides to close up shop and live the simple life just so he could feel better.

Besides, he's giving the money to his own charity organisation. Looks to me like he's just moving it from one pocket to another.

He obviously had at least some talent for making money if he had started out with nothing. He could've done a lot more good with that money.

He wants to live a simple life, not become a philanthropist. What you're suggesting is for him to keep being aggravated with monetary concerns by trying to push the organisation forward.

The Ultimate DooMer said:

Just cos you're a millionare doesn't mean you have to live like one.

^this

But hey, it's not like he did a bad thing, anyway. gg Karl.

Coopersville said:
^this

Yeah, form experience, I think you guys are right.

Consumerism and Greed are actually good things IMO, but that doesn't change the amount of respect I have for this man. I couldn't do this If I were that rich. I simply don't have the willpower. Kudos to this guy!

myk said:

Yeah, form experience, I think you guys are right.

from experience? From your own personal experience? You're a millionaire but live simply?

Patrick said:

Consumerism and Greed are actually good things IMO, but that doesn't change the amount of respect I have for this man. I couldn't do this If I were that rich. I simply don't have the willpower. Kudos to this guy!

how are these good things? They're both the result of a fundamentally flawed monetary system.

Patrick said:

Consumerism and Greed are actually good things IMO

There's a difference between productive or pragmatic and good.

Not that I think there is anything wrong with being rich as I am the farthest thing from a communist but I think that if it was not right for him to be rich than I am impressed he did this. Most people just live on there rich miserable lives and trying and buy happiness.

Good for him.

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

Henry David Thoreau