Why This Billionaire Donated His Entire Fortune ($8 Billion) And Started Living in a Rented Apartment
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett consider him their role model and hero.
What’s wrong with this man?
From 1982 to 2020, this Irish-American Businessman donated more than $8 billion of his own money (anonymously until he was forced to reveal his identity) to support higher education, public health, human rights, and scientific research in Ireland and other countries, including Australia, South Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, and the USA.
After giving away all his fortune, he started living like an average man in a rented apartment in San Fransisco with his wife.
Who is this incredibly mysterious man? Doesn’t he love money as much as we all do?
Making of a secret billionaire
Born in 1931 to a struggling Irish-American family in New Jersey during the great depression, Chuck Feeney had a humble beginning. His mother was a nurse who voluntarily worked for Redcross at night, while his father was an insurance underwriter.
In 1950, after graduating from St. Mary of the Assumption High School, Chuck joined the Air Force. As the Korean War broke out in the same year, he was stationed in Japan as a radio operator.
There he found a fantastic idea to make money.
Chuck noticed that the US Sixth fleet had around thirty thousand servicemen in fifty ships floating in the Mediterranean who were entitled to buy duty-free liquors.
Desperate to earn money, he grabbed this opportunity with open hands. Soon, he along with his friend Robert Warren Miller) started selling duty-free liquor to those American servicemen.
Thus the journey of a secret billionaire began.
In Chuck’s biography, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t, Conor O’Clery wrote, “In April 1958, they went to the World’s Fair in Brussels and got ideas for expanding their inventory, adding such items as perfumes, cameras, toy trains, transistor radios — the latest thing in technology — and German beer mugs.”
This idea hit the bull’s eye. They started selling luxury duty-free items to both the Navy personnel and the tourists.
Then, in 1960, Chuck co-founded the Duty-Free Shoppers (DFS) Group with Miller headquartered in Hong Kong.
Over the next few years, they expanded their business to Europe and other countries. And by the early 70s, profits started coming in abundance as DFS became the world’s largest duty-free retailer.
Before the end of that decade, they had around six thousand employees worldwide with an estimated value of approximately $3 billion a year.
The billionaire who flies economy class
The duty-free business made Chuck and his other partners (including Miller) a tremendous amount of money. Eventually, all of them got used to multi-million-dollar lifestyles — except Chuck.
“He consciously cultivated a frugal lifestyle, wearing a cheap Timex watch and buying a secondhand Volvo,” Conor O’Clery wrote in Chuck’s biography. “He insisted that he and his family fly economy class, even on long transoceanic flights, as it was better value for money.”
In the early 1980s, he also began to doubt his right to possess so much money. At that time, his wealth was more than $1 billion. But unlike other billionaires, he didn’t want to be consumed by money.
He realized that he should use his assets to improve the lives of other fellow humans. Otherwise, this wealth would become a burden for himself and his family.
“I have always empathized with people who have it tough in life. And the world is full of people who don’t get enough to eat,” Chuck explained. “I don’t need another million-dollar.”
So he decided to donate everything while living and then die broke.
I didn’t see the need for blowing a horn
In 1984, Chuck secretly transferred his entire fortune (38.75 percent of DFS) to the charitable foundation he founded two years earlier named The Atlantic Philanthropies (AP). It is to note that he set aside around two million dollars for his retirement and family expenses.
From then on, all his multi-million-dollar profits from the duty-free business were paid directly to that foundation.
You might be thinking — at this point in life, all Chuck Feeney wanted is fame as he already had the money. So why not donate something and get famous as a great philanthropist.
I am sorry to say that you are damn wrong!
He never wanted to be in the limelight for his charitable work as he was incredibly serious about his donation’s secrecy right from the beginning.
“No one in the world of philanthropy in the United States or elsewhere was aware that a major new player had come on the scene,” Conor explained in the book.
“No solicitations would be entertained. Gifts would be made anonymously, and those who received them would not be told where they came from. The recipients, too, would have to sign confidentiality agreements. If they found out anything about the Atlantic Foundation or Chuck Feeney and made it public, the money would stop.”
Chuck managed to donate his money anonymously for the first fifteen years. But in 1997, due to a business dispute, he was forced to disclose the funding for Atlantic Philanthropies.
The billionaire who always wanted to remain hidden from the glare of media finally came into the broad daylight. And the contributions he made to different projects in different countries surprised everyone in the world and shocked other billionaires.
When asked about his anonymity, this is what he said — “I just felt I didn’t see the need for blowing a horn.”
To die rich is to die disgraced
Chuck always believed that it’s a lot more fun to give while you’re alive than to give while you’re dead.
“I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living — to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition,” he said. “More importantly, today’s needs are so great and varied that intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater.”
He donated nearly $1 billion to Ireland’s third-level education and funded different big projects, such as building the research facilities at the University of Limerick and Dublin City University. His contributions literally changed the landscape of higher education in Ireland.
Some of Chuck’s significant contributions include —
- $132 Million to Queens University Belfast of Northern Ireland for different causes, including the development of its Institute of Health Sciences Centre for Experimental Medicine.
- $27 million to Health Care for America Now (HCAN)
- $350 million to Cornell University
- $AUD500 million for 20 research facilities in Australia
- $381.5 million for health and educational causes in Vietnam, and many more.
After successfully giving away all his money, Chuck officially dissolved his foundation in September 2020. But his contributions continue to bring lasting improvements to people’s lives.
No one is a better example of that than Chuck
Now, this 91-year-old James Bond of Philanthropy lives in a rented two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco with his wife, Helga. He said one thing never changed in his life. And that is — you should use your wealth to help people.
Unsurprisingly, his extraordinary life inspired other billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to donate more and work for the betterment of humanity. They consider Chuck as their role model.
“I remember meeting him before starting the Giving Pledge. He told me we should encourage people not to give just 50%, but as much as possible during their lifetime,” Bill Gates mentioned.
“No one is a better example of that than Chuck. Many people talk to me about how he inspired them. It is truly amazing.”
For ordinary people like us, it’s a very tough story to digest. Because we live to consume — and cry for more, more, and more. When we encounter someone like Chuck Feeney — who gives it all away only to help people — we feel tiny as an ant.
We feel guilty.
At the same time, we bow our heads with deep respect and love.
Sources: The New York Times, Forbes, BBC, Atlantic Philanthropies, Wikipedia, The Guardian, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing by Conor O’Clery.
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