Morgan Housel

Life is fragile and brutal.

And the idea that you have unemployment and you need to drastically reduce your lifestyle...

That would be the norm for people.

I think we're fortunate to live in an era where there's an expectation that ordinary people are going to have some semblance of protection and safety.

In their life, right?

To me, the most interesting family of all the mega-rich families that existed, of all the robber baron families, the mega-rich, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, and the J.P.

Morgans did everything.

pretty good job managing their money.

They lived good lives themselves.

They left it to beneficial causes.

Not perfect, but they did a pretty good job.

The Vanderbilts, I think, by far did the worst.

And it's such a fascinating example to dig into, the Vanderbilt family.

When Cornelius Vanderbilt died, adjusted for inflation, depending on metrics used, he had something like $300 to $500 billion adjusted for inflation.

And within several generations, three generations, not that long of a period, there's virtually nothing left.

And not a tremendous amount went to charity either.

Vanderbilt University was kind of their big project, which didn't even cost that much money to fund it.

But most of it was spent on three generations of Vanderbilt heirs who were just in a generational pissing contest to see who could spend it the fastest.

And if you dig into their biographies, there have been several biographies written about them.

It's telling, and it's kind of sad.