Very interesting post. It’s the first time I read about Hetty Green.
I couldn’t help but think about Warren Buffet, perhaps because the Berkshire Hathaway textile mills were also located in New Bedford, or because he’s now worth 0.5% of US GDP, in the same ballpark as her 0.2%.
Do we know what motivated her to accumulate so much wealth? Reading The Snowball, it seems that Buffet had extremely poor self esteem when he was young, and having more money served as a “scorecard” of both his financial and personal worth.
The second reason Buffet continued investing and buying businesses even after he was wealthy was that he thoroughly enjoyed reading financial documents, talking to his many financial partners, and getting the best deal in all his business dealings. Were there similar motivations in Hetty?
Typo: “Hetty’s financial prowess was largely overshadowed by her Husbands”
Thanks, Tian. I think Hetty Green's life was the result of several things. For one, I think that, like Buffett, she was simply hardwired to obsess over finance. Secondly, raised in unique environment, with a family living by certain strict Quaker tenets, despite being wealthy, her obsession was effectively turbocharged. I think it's easy for us to judge her lack of interest in socializing and her extreme aversion to spending money (outside of additional investments + litigation), but it's quite likely that she enjoyed the majority of her time on earth, following her passion. Buffett has sacrificed a fair bit within his personal life, namely key relationships. He certainly has the resources to change how he spends his time if he were unhappy, but he appears quite content to follow the path he has walked for so many decades.
Very interesting post. It’s the first time I read about Hetty Green.
I couldn’t help but think about Warren Buffet, perhaps because the Berkshire Hathaway textile mills were also located in New Bedford, or because he’s now worth 0.5% of US GDP, in the same ballpark as her 0.2%.
Do we know what motivated her to accumulate so much wealth? Reading The Snowball, it seems that Buffet had extremely poor self esteem when he was young, and having more money served as a “scorecard” of both his financial and personal worth.
The second reason Buffet continued investing and buying businesses even after he was wealthy was that he thoroughly enjoyed reading financial documents, talking to his many financial partners, and getting the best deal in all his business dealings. Were there similar motivations in Hetty?
Typo: “Hetty’s financial prowess was largely overshadowed by her Husbands”
Thanks, Tian. I think Hetty Green's life was the result of several things. For one, I think that, like Buffett, she was simply hardwired to obsess over finance. Secondly, raised in unique environment, with a family living by certain strict Quaker tenets, despite being wealthy, her obsession was effectively turbocharged. I think it's easy for us to judge her lack of interest in socializing and her extreme aversion to spending money (outside of additional investments + litigation), but it's quite likely that she enjoyed the majority of her time on earth, following her passion. Buffett has sacrificed a fair bit within his personal life, namely key relationships. He certainly has the resources to change how he spends his time if he were unhappy, but he appears quite content to follow the path he has walked for so many decades.
This touches on a point I made in a previous piece, Peak Performance:
https://invariant.substack.com/p/peak-performance