Wealth vs. Youth

In a random conversation one time, the theory of age and wealth came up.

Here is the question at hand: Assuming that you are a wealthy person, at what age would you be willing to give up your wealth and go back to being twenty years old and starting all over again? Before you answer, there is one small catch. You can never ever again have a net worth over 50k. That’s as good as it gets. No chance of breaking through. In return, you get your youth, your experience, all of your knowledge, and YOUR BRAIN. You just can’t make any insane money.

It’s clear to me that at a certain age – no matter how wealthy you are – going back to twenty is the right move. If you are seventy years old and worth a billion I think it’s a NO BRAINER. No amount of money in the world is worth fifty years of LIFE. How about being fifty years old and worth a billion? I personally think that I would go back for sure at fifty. How about forty? If you were worth a billion dollars at forty but could give that up for twenty extra years of LIFE, would you? I think that at forty you’d really have to think about it. I think my line is thirty-seven. At thirty-seven I keep my billion and continue to age. At thirty-eight I give up the billski and go back to twenty and NEVER again have more than fifty thousand to my name.

I’m really curious to see what opinions other people have on this. I’ve asked a few people the last couple of years and have been blown away with the responses. One I will never forget is from my dear friend Marko. (Marko owns the Bay 101 Casino.) I cannot say exactly how old he is, but I will say he is up there!! (You know I love you, Uncle Marko… I’m so dead!!)).

I asked him the same question and his reply shocked me. The mere thought of living the rest of his life in near poverty (when I say poverty you have to understand that to Marko, from HIS point of view, never having more than 50k IS poverty). His answer shocked me. I could understand if he said no if he were in his thirties or forties; MAYBE even his early fifties! But that’s not the case!!! His answer was no and his explanation made sense. He picked up a picture of his thirty-eight or so grandkids (some obscene number) and said to me, “I could never give this up.” I explained to him he could do it all over again and his comeback was rather funny. “Kid, how do you expect me to have all these kids if I never had more than 50k? Don’t you know how much it costs to have kids?!?”

My favorite answer to date came from my friend Reagan Silbers. We were having dinner at the FIX at Bellagio with our good friend Michael Landau. This exact question came up and I will NEVER forget Reagan’s answer (for those of you who don’t know Reagan Silbers, he is a very successful businessman). And so I asked… Reagan, if you could go back to being twenty and never be worth more than fifty, would you? (And that is exactly how I phrased it… I said FIFTY not FIFTY THOUSAND.) He looked over at me and said, “Fifty MILLION?” Michael and I almost fell out of our chairs we were laughing so hard. Can you imagine your mindset is that when someone asks you if you could go back to twenty and never be worth more than fifty that your ACTUAL thought is fifty  MILLION?!?! Must be nice…

Phil and I seem to be on similar thought processes on this one. We both feel that NOTHING and no amount of money can buy youth and time on Earth… however… we both do realize there is a certain age where it becomes correct to keep the wealth. Our scale is lower than most, I think. Then again… if we ever actually had a SIGNIFICANT amount of dough… maybe our decision would be different – who knows. If I had a BILLION I’m sure my thought process would evolve.