Benjamin Franklin said a penny saved is a penny earned, and it’s a good motto to live
by! But I’ll bet that you’d agree with me here when I say there are exceptions to
that rule, especially in dire situations!
I’m sure you know the big billionaire names like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill
Gates. But what about J. Paul Getty? Well, in case that was before your time, Getty was
the richest man on Earth back in the 1960s. With about $1.2 billion then, that’d be
like having almost $10 billion today! Not bad for 50-some years ago! But the oil tycoon
wasn’t only famous for his wealth but also for his extreme penny-pinching.
And the incident that sealed his position as a legendary miser was a dark one. That
was the kidnapping of his 16-year-old grandson, John Paul Getty III, in 1973…
At the time of the incident, the free-spirited teen was living in Rome with his father. But
an heir to the world’s richest man living among them did not go unnoticed, and the local
media was well aware of who he was. Due to his bohemian lifestyle, he was dubbed “the
Golden Hippie” by the press, and was made into a celebrity just because of his surname.
On one fateful day, the boy was out buying a comic book at a newsstand. It was then when
the kidnappers grabbed him. The men drove him to a cave in the southern part of the
country. With the kidnapping having gone smoothly, they issued a ransom note demanding $17 million
for the young man’s safe return. (That would be $100 million in today’s dollars.)
When the boy’s father asked his own father for the money, he was refused. The miserly
grandfather thought it was just a ploy to extract money from him. And perhaps he was
right? Unfortunately, these sorts of things do happen… Even the boy’s girlfriend said
that he’d toyed with the idea of faking his own kidnapping in order to get money from
his grandpa. But those were the days when the young couple was struggling to make ends
meet. After they started getting modeling gigs, good sense prevailed and they dropped
the idea.
Well, all doubts of the kidnapping being a hoax were laid to rest when the kidnappers
started making (and carrying out!) very real threats to bring harm to the young man. I’ll
spare you the horrific details, but in the end, Friends, Romans, Countrymen -- everybody
understood that this whole ordeal was very real. But Getty, despite being a multi-billionaire,
still refused to pay the ransom!
Left with no other option, Paul’s mother Gail decided to raise funds herself to secure
the release of her son. She even talked to one of the kidnappers on the phone, who just
could not believe that this family wasn’t delivering the money! How could this old man
leave his own flesh and blood in the plight that her poor son was now in? They say the
abductors even started sympathizing with their captive! Or maybe they thought that their
prized hostage was proving worthless to them, and their efforts had been in vain? Well,
I guess we’ll never know…
What we do know is that after five months, the old man finally relented but only after
he’d negotiated with the abductors and brought the ransom down to $3 million (17 mil today).
Getty agreed to actually hand over no more than $2.2 million, since that was the maximum
amount he could write off on his taxes. He lent the remaining $800,000 to his son (the
boy’s father)…at 4% interest.
Boy! Move over Ebenezer, there’s a new miser in town!
The teen was finally released after the ransom was paid. Once he was back home, at his mother's
suggestion, he tried to call his grandfather to thank him for paying the ransom, but J.
Paul Getty refused to come to the phone. He later told the media that he didn’t believe
in paying kidnappers. “I have 14 other grandchildren, and if I pay one penny now, then I’ll have
14 kidnapped grandchildren,” is the way he put it.
Anyway, it might come as no surprise to you that a man who would negotiate with a kidnapper
to get his grandson’s ransom down was pretty notorious throughout his life for bargaining
on almost everything.
Be it luxury suites or buying artwork and real estate, he wouldn’t purchase anything
without lowering the price first. So when he started looking to buy the gorgeous English
manor “Sutton Place” in Surrey County, UK all for himself, he was determined to get
the best deal out of it. And that’s exactly what he got! He managed to buy the 72-room
mansion for about half the price that the owner had paid 40 years earlier when he purchased
it.
At this point, you can probably imagine why he decided to move from the big city to a
small provincial county – it was purely financial! The cost of living in Surrey was
a lot cheaper than in London. He even told one American columnist that it cost 10 cents
for a rum and coke in Surrey, whereas at the Ritz London, it was more than a dollar! Well,
yeah, I’m sure he saved a lot of money living the country life!
There are tons of other anecdotal stories about Getty's reputed stinginess. They might
seem comical, ridiculous, and sometimes even stranger than fiction, but that doesn’t
mean they’re not true!
His secretary claimed that Getty would wash his clothes by hand because he didn't want
to pay for them to be laundered. When his shirts became frayed at the cuffs, he’d
trim the frayed part instead of purchasing new ones.
And on those rare occasions that he did get himself some clothes, he was miserly about
that too. For example, he never bought a pair of socks that cost more than $1.
Re-using stationery was another obsession of his. He carefully saved and re-used manila
envelopes, rubber bands, and other office supplies.
To save money on central heating, he placed a few electrical heaters in his sitting room.
Hey, why heat a whole mansion if you’re the only one living there? I can see where
he was coming from on this one. Then again, why buy a whole mansion just for yourself…
When Getty took a group of friends to a dog show in London, he made them walk around the
block for 10 minutes until the tickets became half-price at 5 p.m.
Oh, but that’s not all his friends and close ones had to endure (the whole kidnapping thing
aside, of course). His guests would sometimes use his home phones to make international
calls to Australia or the US, and those weren’t cheap. (Remember, this is before Skype or
FaceTime were ever a thing!) So, Getty decided to install a pay-phone in his home for his
guests. That’s right, to make a call, they had to pay! Also, he placed dial-locks on
all the regular phones in the mansion so that only authorized people could use them.
Ok, I think you really get it by now: this guy was Scrooge despite his billions. But
why is that? Author John Pearson attributed part of Getty's extreme penny-pinching to
his strict upbringing, which emphasized modest living and personal economy. He’d never
purchase anything unless he was convinced that its value would increase with time. Getty
claimed that his frugality towards others was a response to people trying to take advantage
of him and not paying their fair share. Well, if you can try to see it from his point of
view, I guess people using you for your money would become a growing problem the bigger
your fortune gets... Still though, I mean, come on!
But above all, Getty’s story shows us that money can’t always bring happiness. Maybe
it sometimes can, but certainly not always. Despite all his wealth and fame, J. Paul Getty
lived a solitary life. He was married and divorced five times. And despite having five
sons and many grandchildren, he almost always lived alone.
But it’s worth mentioning that Getty’s story isn’t just about his brutal thrift.
There’s no denying that he was a hard-worker and a capable businessman. At the age of 74,
when most people are retiring and taking it easy, Getty was still working about 16 to
18 hours every single day overseeing his operations around the world.
In his last interview, which he gave a few weeks before his passing, when asked the question,
“What else do you, the richest man in the world, want in life?” he said, “I’d
want to do business further.” And, well, I guess that sums it all up!
Why do you think Getty was reluctant to pay the ransom – out of genuine concern for
his other grandkids, his upbringing, or just pure greed? Let me know your theories down
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