Personal Finance

My dad is worth $10 million but is still so cheap that he won't buy an air conditioner for the summer - why is he like this?

Aaron Webber

Published: January 3, 2025 8:30 am

You cannot budget yourself into wealth. No matter how much you cut out of your life, how many of life’s joys you go without, how many times you don’t eat avocado toast or forgo the occasional coffee, you won’t be rich. It simply doesn’t add up. Mathematics doesn’t work that way.  

Despite the stories rich people like to tell about how they scrimped and saved until they got rich, the truth is that all of them had some kind of help, assistance, or boost to get where they are today. You simply have to find it. Saving and starving helps people survive poverty, not escape it. But one person was wondering how their father managed to do it, and now their frugalness is annoying them. They took their concerns and questions to the people in r/fatFIRE, an online community for people obsessed with early retirement with huge amounts of money. Here is what they said.

The Question

The author of the post says that their father has a net worth of “at least” $10 million (though they didn’t say how they knew this). They said most of the value is in real estate, and he works an “average” job and lives in a small condo in a middle-class neighborhood.

Their issue is that their father refused to buy an air conditioner this summer during the author’s visit because “it will be over soon”. However, they didn’t say it was because of budgeting or finances.

The author made it clear this was annoying and frustrating, and asked the community if they knew anyone like this and if you have to be “like this” in order to get rich with a middle-class job.

Please remember that these are all opinions, please do not take any of the comments here as legal financial advice.

The Community Response

It was clear from the original post and the responses that the author not only has a misunderstanding of wealth, money, and budgeting but also has a perception of wealth and life in general that is utterly divorced from reality.

The first clue to the father’s success is that most of his wealth is in real estate. If he managed to buy a number of properties just a few years ago, or even a couple of decades ago, that investment could have easily multiplied into $10 million due to the skyrocketing increase in home prices.

Also, there is probably a huge amount of debt tied up in the mortgage on those homes that the father owns, which brings the net worth down to more believable levels.

However, many of the clear-eyed commenters pointed out that it is near-impossible for anyone to meet the goals of early retirement with at least $10 million on a middle-class income. Those who manage to do it are able to in spite of their earnings, not because of it. This is due to some extenuating circumstances and no small amount of luck with investing in timely stocks.

In the end, the author is using their own life and goals and worldview to dictate how their father lives their life, even though they are objectively successful, and have much more money than most people in the world.