When are rich people ever satisfied with what they have?

[dottypotter]

One of the Dragons (Dragons Den) was asked to open something at a school and they wanted 7 thousand pounds to do it. The school obvs declined.
Why does having money just make you greedier and greedier?
Are people ever satisfied?
AIBU to think they could have done it to help the school out or done it for alot less than that?
Schools don't have much money!!

May I ask why you think this?

YANBU for hoping people will want to do nice things for free (and there is no saying they haven’t done another 10 charity events or school opening for free that month) but YABVU for assuming that a rich person asking for a fee is necessarily greedy. They might, but as someone who work for people with a lot of money, I can honestly say that there is a lot more to it.

I have yet to know billionaires who genuinely don’t give anything to charity. All the ones I know definitely donate a lot more than what 90%+ of people will ever donate in their lifetime both in terms of financial donations as well as other more practical donations, including their time.

One need to understand that the more money they make, usually the more outgoing expenses they have, both personal and business wise, making always more money then become important because 1- they likely want to maintain their lifestyle and 2- also need to maintain their business and pay their thousands of employees, manufacturers, household staffs etc...who are also dependent on them making enough money. If they spent their life donating the money they make and their time for free every time someone asked it wouldn’t be sustainable.

Also lots of billionaires end up giving millions in donation on top of doing/sponsoring loads of charity events and that’s never enough because people will always compare to the 14 million donation to the 1 billion and think someone is being stingy when most people don’t donate anything at all, and when most people would find asking free work out people to be cheeky fuckery if the person being asked wasn’t rich.

Not saying rich people are always generous or couldn’t be more generous, one can always be more generous (rich or poor) but I will say as someone who work directly with a lot of them that the ones I have worked with have usually been the opposite of greedy and I have usually seen them go more than the extra mile for staff (both financially and in practical help). Ultimately I am sure a lot of them treat business one way (which a public appearance would fall under) differently to personal matters but one need to do business at times if one wants to be able to be generous at other times I would say, so things are a bit more grey than black and white I feel when it comes to rich vs greed.

Where did you see that about Tony Blair?

One of the Fellows of the College who wrote to him and received the reply told me. It's possible it was just someone in his office making a mistake and he never saw the letter. But it does suggest it is the standard response!

I know (not well) a fairly famous comedian - he gets asked to do loads of free fundraising stuff for schools etc. Honestly, if he said yes to all of them he'd spend all his time doing stuff for free. It's probably the same for many celebs. And if you only say yes to some requests, how do you choose which ones? Or maybe this Dragon does say yes to some of them, but your school wasn't one of the "yes" answers.

Maybe not free, but not 7 grand - if you're thinking of £100 or less (I can't imagine the school wanting to pay more than that) then that effectively is free from the Dragon's point of view.

Unless this Dragon has a personal link to the school, YABU.

The very small number of wealthy people I know, so not a definitive example, seem to have one thing in common - trying to hold onto as much of their money as possible. By finding ways to avoid paying full amount of taxes particularly inheritance tax, not paying full amount for things they buy (looking for discounts and bargains) and being very frugal (to the point of tight) with gifts. Then perhaps that how they got wealthy in the first place.

Schools shouldn’t be expecting unconnected celebrities to give up their time for free in the first place. They don’t expect any other enriching things to come for free and there are hundreds of thousands of schools. Are all celebrities obliged to give up their time for free or just ones chosen by random schools?

Why so judgemental?

How do you know that the man wasn’t buying snacks for his team of employees out of his own pocket, or that the woman wasn’t being financially abused by her high earning husband? Maybe she’s selling things to donate the money to her chose charity rather than just getting rid of stuff at the closest charity shop.

Even if the situations were as you immediately judged them to be, what’s wrong with reducing waste?

Nothing you described indicates the people involved are tight.

If I was rich I wouldn't take a day off from my businesses or my family or doing whatever I enjoyed doing in my free time, unless it was an amount of money that made it worth my while.

I might make an exception for something I cared about - a local school, my old school - but not a random school somewhere.

If it's entitled to ask for £7k ,it's also entitled to expect someone to give up a day for free.

What happens when word gets out that you'll do this for free and everyone starts asking.

You don’t get rich sponging off others or being ungenerous. How would that actively generate a high income. Some of the wealthiest people I know work in finance and are very active members of charities personally donating many thousands of pounds and their time every year.

That's what their time costs. What else they could be doing with that time is either going to make more than 7k or be worth more than 7k. "Opportunity costs"

I don't think successful business people ought to be beholden to open schools to be honest. Where do you draw the line? They'll get pestered to death for this sort of thing.

If you think buying cheap sandwiches or selling something second hand on eBay makes you rich then you don’t really understand how wealth is generated! 😂 You can’t pay off a multi million pound house by getting discounted sandwiches or else most of us would be living in mansions!

To make a significant amount of wealth you usually have to have a skill or talent that other people don’t have. Through work I have contact with many high net worth individuals and many of them are very generous and actively involved in charities.

That's been "true" all over Manchester for years! Everyone's uncle's mate's brother's boss booked that event at the Midland!

It costs a lot more to heat a mansion and put fuel in a Bentley than it does to live in a 2 bed semi and run a Skoda!

Why aren't Meghan and Harry satisfied with what they've got? More money than most of us can dream of but they still want to sell their souls in the US for cash. And him saying his father had cut him off financially!? What man of 40 (or close to) expects his family to throw money his way for evermore?

Most celebs have agents who deal with their public appearances and who set the fees accordingly (and take their percentage of course!). It’s just the way things work.

It would be if it was true.

They probably get asked to do something for free - and for all sorts of deserving causes -every day of the week. I doubt it would be feasible for them to visit every school that asks them; they'd have no time for anything else.

It would be if it was true.

The Tony Blair story? It is true. But I realise you have no particular reason to believe me and I'm not keen to identify myself!

I mean, there may have been a slight exaggeration in the telling e.g., maybe they asked for more than one line. But I'm absolutely sure the essence is true.

Don’t know but I saw a bloke in the Tesco car park on a late Friday afternoon walking to his Q8 (and those things are 80k plus) carrying a threadbare bunch of £3 roses.. and I judged…and I know they were £3 cause my dd and I had just looked at them to get ds girlfriend a bunch as a good luck token and dismissed as terrible quality…I basically snipped some wild bits and lavender from the garden to give her