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Melinda Gates

February 4, 2011 3 Comments

I have never really been much of a fan of the Gateses.I have heard of their philanthrophy and it’s done on a truly gargantuan scale.The beneficiaries are in poor countries.The causes are important to countries like India.Obviously urgent problems are getting addressed.Normally this should get me interested.However I have never been able to find a connection with the Gates.I normally avoid reading or watching them in the news.It’s not so much any particular thing they say that is a turnoff as I can’t really relate to where they are coming from.

But while hunting around for the story of how Bill and Melinda met each other , today, I stumbled on an article from Fortune Magazine focussed on Melinda.It filled me in on the details of Melinda’s background and helped me get where she might be coming from.Thought I’d put it up here.

BTW I just figured that the real turn-off comes from her view of the world as a place of finite wealth which needs to be allocated in the best possible manner.I guess I believe that assets are infinite in nature.It just needs imagination and human ingenuity to literally create assets.So sand or silica has been known for just about forever, it’s just when we learnt to use it to make ever smarter computer chips that we humans started creating assets out of materials nobody considered as useful before.Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouths but there is not that much variation in the mental faculties of humans.In fact necessity is the mother of creation and people who grow up facing more constraints are naturally more adept at being creative and seizing opportunity.So I believe it better to get all people to see wealth with their mind’s eye rather than battle to distribute existing wealth.Existing wealth is really puny if you think about it….The richest person in the world has not above US$60 .And there are 6 billion people in the world.So just redistributing the US$60 billion amongst all the people of the world will give each person only US$10……guess that’s not all that much.Don’t you think it’s better to learn how to be wealthy?

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Years before Melinda French met and married Bill Gates, she had a love affair – with an Apple computer. She was growing up in Dallas in a hard-working middle-class family. Ray French, Melinda’s dad, stretched their budget to pay for all four children to go to college. An engineer, he started a family business on the side, operating rental properties. “That meant scrubbing floors and cleaning ovens and mowing the lawns,” Melinda recalls. The whole family pitched in every weekend. When Ray brought home an Apple III computer one day when she was 16, she was captivated. “We would help him run the business and keep the books,” she says. “We saw money coming in and money going out.” Read more of this post

Filed under Philanthropy Tagged with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Bill Gates Melinda Gates, Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett

How to Marry a Billionaire ?

January 27, 2011 4 Comments

Marrying money is an old and time – tested way of becoming wealthy and perhaps securing the future of one’s children.However it is a topic that arouses strong emotions in a lot of people for a lot of reasons.Following is an article from the July 1, 2007 issue of Money Magazine.It is an excellent To-Do List if a person chooses to exercise this option of becoming wealthy.

Wealth is sexy but personally I doubt I would marry a man just for his money.It would be very important for me to have the respect of my spouse .By marrying money I might not be able to get that.Also somewhere in me is a need to accomplish something worthwhile all by myself . I’m not certain I could content myself just by marrying a wealthy spouse.

Do read the article and tell me do you know somebody who married up?How did they get together and how happy are they?What are your own opinions on marrying money?And why you feel the way you do?

At the end of the article,there is a link to a pop quiz :Are You The Right Match for A Billionaire?Take it and have fun.

How to marry a billionaire ?

Sure, the challenge is steep. But this field guide to the mating habits of the ultrarich shows just what it takes to land Mr. or Ms. Big.

Work hard, take risks, maybe build your own business. That’s the traditional route to financial success. Of course, there’s another highly traditional path to acquiring wealth that isn’t talked about quite as much these days: Marry money.

Real money. As in not a mere millionaire (a dime a dozen these days) but an honest-to-goodness billionaire – make that 10 figures after the dollar sign, please.

True, it’s not politically correct to go hunting for a marital meal ticket (or for that matter, to write about it). But just for a moment imagine the life that could be yours if you did.

Forget the fabulous baubles, designer clothing, cutting-edge electronics and palatial mansions that your golden goose – uh, spouse – might heap upon you. Read more of this post