This is a fascinating article on the super rich.

John McAfee, founder of the antivirus software McAfee was worth $100 million but the real estate and stock crash have wiped out $96 million dollars of his fortune.

if i had $100 million dollars I would be conservative, I wouldn’t spend lavishly but then again, I don’t have the mindset that enabled him to take the risks required to make such a massive amount of money.
Those same risks have cost him $96 million dollars.

There is always an element of risk in any financial decisions we make, the trick is to diversify and live within your means. Even if you have a boat load of money next to your name on a ledger.

One thing about people like Mr McAfee, they know how to make money and I’m sure he will accumulate wealth in the future.

The New York Times reports:
Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million dropped 24 percent, according to CapGemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Monthly income from stock dividends, which is concentrated among the affluent, has fallen more than 20 percent since last summer, the biggest such decline since the government began keeping records in 1959.

Bill Gates, Warren E. Buffett, the heirs to the Wal-Mart Stores fortune and the founders of Google each lost billions last year, according to Forbes magazine. In one stark example, John McAfee, an entrepreneur who founded the antivirus software company that bears his name, is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million. Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks.

“I had no clue,” he said, “that there would be this tandem collapse.”

Some of the clearest signs of the reversal of fortunes can be found in data on spending by the wealthy. An index that tracks the price of art, the Mei Moses index, has dropped 32 percent in the last six months. The New York Yankees failed to sell many of the most expensive tickets in their new stadium and had to drop the price. In one ZIP code in Vail, Colo., only five homes sold for more than $2 million in the first half of this year, down from 34 in the first half of 2007, according to MDA Dataquick. In Bronxville, an affluent New York suburb, the decline was to two, from 17, according to Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.