Stuff and Nonsense

June 22, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

Divorce among the wealthy can provide us with a tray of financial delicacies that usually aren’t passed around. In today’s Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin gives us a taste of the goodies coming out of the divorce of Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal who says he is now broke. Well, rich-people’s broke – he’s out of cash.

He subsists, according to court filings, on $200,000 a month and still flies his private jet.

But with rich people, it’s not about the money. I know that because I heard Maria Bartiromo a few weeks ago on NPR promoting “her”* book, The 10 Laws of Enduring Success.

Success is a feeling that we get to when we feel content. So I spoke with people like Jack Welch . . . and I asked them all about this so-called stuff in their lives and then I asked them, is that what success is? And so many people told me that purpose, knowing what matters, is so important, because it puts things into perspective for you.

In Jack Welch’s 2002 divorce trial, we learned about the “so-called stuff” – the things that purpose put into perspective for the GE CEO. (Source here.)

In the affidavit, Jane Welch claimed that her husband’s retirement package allowed him unfettered use of corporate jets (a perk valued by an expert as being worth $291,677 a month). He also had a company-owned apartment overlooking Central Park, a limousine, a cook, free flowers, country-club memberships and a charge account at Jean Georges restaurant. He was also entitled to top tickets at the Metropolitan Opera, tennis tournaments such as Wimbledon, and for games played by the Knicks, Yankees and Boston Red Sox. The affidavit revealed that he didn’t even pay for his laundry.

And that’s the retirement package – what he gets after he stops working for GE.

* Written “with” Catherine Whitney. Ms. Whitney’s name is right there on the cover, though in much a smaller font than Bartiromo. Many with-ers wind up on an inside page among the acknowledgments – in the withness protection program.