Paintings, houses and a dinosaur: How to spend your billions
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Ken Griffin might be the spendiest man on the planet, regularly setting records for buying the most expensive house, or painting, or other item.
Why it matters: If money is delayed consumption, Griffin has very little interest in delaying his consumption.
Driving the news: Griffin dropped $44.6 million on a dinosaur Wednesday, instantly setting a new record for the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction.
Zoom out: Griffin has also bought, among other things, the most expensive home in London, the most expensive home in Chicago, the most expensive home in Miami, and the most expensive home in New York.
- When he's done building it, his Palm Beach mansion will be the most expensive home in the world.
Follow the money: Griffin set records buying paintings by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Paul Cézanne, Jasper Johns, and many more. The total he's spent just on art is well into ten figures.
- He also bought a copy of the U.S. Constitution for a record $47.4 million.
- He was willing but unable to set a record price for an NFL team, the Miami Dolphins.
Between the lines: Griffin is a relatively rare kind of billionaire in that he has made billions of dollars in cash income.
- He therefore doesn't need to sell shares in his company (and pay capital gains tax) when he buys a new toy — he has effectively unlimited quantities of post-tax income to play with.
The big picture: When you reach Griffin's level of wealth, there's no real upside to saving money, since there's no way you'll ever run out.
- "If you made your money as a savvy investor," wrote Bloomberg's Matt Levine on Thursday, "you will naturally want to buy your toys low and sell them high." But owning the most expensive toys carries its own cachet, and Griffin has no need to ever sell his toys.
- Rather, he tends to make them available to the public: His Constitution is at Crystal Bridges, much of his art is at the Norton Museum, and he has pledged that his stegosaurus will similarly find its way to a museum.
The bottom line: Griffin has enough money that he can splurge on trophies and give billions to charity and leave his family with billions in cash and property.
- That seems like a vastly better outcome than locking up a fortune in a single stock and watching a number go up — which is what venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya seems to think Bill Gates should have done.
