(Feb. 14) – If money can’t buy you happiness, what do you do? If you’re Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder, you give it all away, right down to the last penny, or, in his case, euro.
“My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing,” Rabeder, 47, told The Daily Telegraph of London. “Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come.”
On the block, or already sold, is his luxury villa with lake in the Alps, his 42-acre estate in France, his six gliders, and the interior furnishings and accessories business that got him rich in the first place.
telegraph.co.uk
Millionaire Karl Rabede says getting rid of his fortune makes him feel “free.”
Actually, everyone will get the chance to live the Alpine luxury lifestyle, because Rabeder has decided to raffle off his home at $134 a ticket.
When every penny of his estimated $4.7 million fortune is gone, he says, he intends to move into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a studio in Innsbruck.
“For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness,” Rabeder said. “I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years.”
After a while, however, he felt he was working “as a slave for things I did not wish for or need,” adding, “I have the feeling that there are a lot of people out there doing the same thing.”
What brought him to his current conclusion? A three-week vacation with his wife in Hawaii, plus gliding trips to South America and Africa left him with feelings of guilt, he said, and the sense that there was a connection between his wealth and the poverty of the people he saw.
“It was the biggest shock of in my life, when I realized how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five-star lifestyle is,” he was quoted as telling the Telegraph.
Since selling off some of his possessions, with lots more looking for buyers, Rabeder says he has felt “free, the opposite of heavy,” which was the feeling all his wealth gave him.
All his money will go to the non-profit Mymicrocharity, which Rabeder says he has set up to offer small loans to needy people in Central and South America, and to encourage development and self-employment in the region.
