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Comment by grepular | Hacker News Reader

I know this is primarily a forum for American capitalists, but am I the only person here who would feel utterly ashamed of myself for spending 70 million dollars on a house? I'd feel outright embarrassed to admit it to any of my friends. The good you could do with that sort of money... And then to just blow it on a house.

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I think it is difficult to imagine what it would actually be like to have that kind of money, the Minecraft success is such a ridiculous outlier. He pretty much went from being an average swede with little savings to having more money than everyone. At this point, he can give away millions of dollars every month and still end up having more money than he started with.

In theory I agree with you in your sentiment, but I have a hard time truly imagining my life with that kind of money.

I agree but there is a cut off point maybe? I'm also not from the US and I could buy a house 100x more expensive (and thus bigger) than I have now but I (nor my wife) have never felt the urge to do that. Then again, I also don't understand, if you don't have to work, why you would want to spend your money or live in a populated area. I live deep in the mountains and would not want to live in/close to a city ever again even if you'd pay me. So maybe i'm just weird.

I'd be careful if I were him. His income is gone as far as I know. Unless he does some smart investing with the current cash reserve he could be broke in ~10 years.

Just an interesting observation; Minecraft was sold for 2.5B $, let's assume Notch got 1.5B $ out of it. Buying that house alone cost him 5% of his entire wealth.

>Unless he does some smart investing

This is an investment. He didn't throw a $70 million party, he bought an asset he can sell in the future and which he presumably thinks will increase in value over time.

And anybody who just became a billionaire is not going to stick that money into a savings account, they will get hooked up with a very good financial advisor who will help them to grow their wealth. Say he has $1 billion, a decent but not great return on that would be 8% a year. That's $80 million! He could buy one of these every year, spend $5 million and still have $5 million left over. And that's exactly how he should and presumably will manage his wealth. You don't spend your wealth, you grow it and spend some of the income it produces. Which is precisely what any rookie financial advisor would teach him on day 1.

The house is an asset. It's a relatively expensive asset to hold (because of risk and maintenance), but it's not all that likely to depreciate by $10 million any time soon, never mind the full value.

> he could be broke in ~10 years

He could be broke in 10 minutes, if he turned all his money into $100 bills and burned them, or invested it all in some company that immediately went bankrupt.

But obviously he wouldn't do those things, because they would be stupid. And if he doesn't do stupid things, how is he going to be broke even in 10 years? If his current net wealth is $1B then he'd need to spend $100M every year even assuming zero investment gains. Again, it's not like spending $100M in a year is difficult if you are actively trying to go from being rich to being poor, but it's not the sort of thing that happens by accident.

He can always get a regular programming job again, I doubt he'd have a hard time finding work if he needed it. But yes, once the money starts rolling, they can probably roll pretty fast... just ask MC Hammer. :)

That's not how houses work. He is house wealthy now. Did you read the part where the previous owner paid 12m for it a few years back?

For me that is what makes such uses of wealth so shocking. Doesn't notch have a better idea just how much 70m is and what it could do for other people.

Bah, that kind of money should be spent. Would you rather he sit on it or bought stocks and T-bills? Before you say he should spend it charitably, I honestly don't think it is easy to donate tens, or hundreds, of millions of dollars in a way where you could be sure it would be put to proper use, unless, or even if, you made it your full time job.

Besides, I'm fairly sure Notch will put part of those billions towards worthy causes.

Would you feel ashamed of having $70million worth of stock in a company? Because it is the same thing, except you can't put a sofa in them.

I think it's pretty much a tragedy. But it's not necessarily a bad decision from an economic perspective.

So you think someone is going to pay significantly more than $70 million for that house in the future?

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