Here are a half-dozen individuals who have found that the highest and best use of their wealth is in helping others.
Who wouldn't want to be rich? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Here’s a brief look at millionaires who, rather than live rich, gave their money away.
The $7 million secret
Grace Groner, a "friendly" and "unassuming" woman from Lake Forest, Ill., made news after she passed away in January at the age of 100. The publicity shone a light on her modest lifestyle as well as what she left behind: $7 million donated to her alma mater, Lake Forest College. Rather than live large, Groner preferred living in a plainly furnished one-bedroom house and buying her clothes at rummage sales.Groner's fortune came from shares she owned of Abbott Laboratories, where she worked for 43 years and became the president's secretary. In 1935, Groner bought three shares of Abbott costing $60 each. She held on to them as they split many times and paid dividends, which she reinvested.
By the time Groner passed away, the initial investment had allowed her to make the largest gift in her alma mater's history. Groner set up a foundation for the college that will be used for scholarships, especially for students interested in studying abroad.
From alpine villa to mountain hut?
Austrian businessman Karl Rabeder has all the trappings of wealth: luxury cars, beautiful homes, three-week vacations in Hawaii. But he doesn't care for any of it.Household wealth rises
So Rabeder decided to raffle off his luxury villa in the Austrian Alps, worth an estimated $2 million, and sell many of his other possessions. Proceeds will go into the microcredit charity he set up to make loans to the needy in Central and South America.
Once everything is gone, Rabeder says, he may move into a modest hut in the Austrian mountains or to an apartment building in Innsbruck.
An entrepreneur's grass-roots movement
Millard Fuller became a millionaire before he was 30 by forming a direct-marketing company that sold cookbooks and candy to high school chapters of the Future Homemakers of America. But rather than kick back and enjoy the fruits of his labor, Fuller and his wife, Linda, gave it all away and set out on a life of Christian service that led to the building of homes for more than 1 million people. The Fullers founded two organizations -- Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Center for Housing -- that inspire donors to give money, material and labor to build homes for low-income families.
A duty to the vulnerable
New Jersey-born Charles "Chuck" F. Feeney made much of his fortune by co-creating Duty Free Shoppers Group, the airport gift shop chain that began in 1960 with outlets in Hong Kong and Honolulu and grew into the world's largest travel retailer. Feeney is famously frugal and goes to great lengths to conceal his wealth -- and his enormous philanthropic donations -- from the public.Feeney sold Duty Free Shoppers in 1997 to luxury retailer LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Despite his wealth, Feeney doesn't own a home or a car, according to a 2008 profile by Citywire, a U.K. financial publication, which characterized Feeney as "anything but the image of a wealthy businessman."
Feeney created a charitable organization in 1982 to spread his wealth. That organization evolved into The Atlantic Philanthropies, an international foundation focused on helping disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals through four program areas: aging; children and youth; health; and reconciliation and human rights.
Since its founding, The Atlantic Philanthropies has given away about $5 billion. Today, it has an endowment of about $4 billion, and Feeney wants to see it empty its coffers by 2016 -- this would require spending $400 million a year on charitable causes.
Down-to-earth
Have you ever heard of Priscilla Bullitt Collins? The Seattle philanthropist passed away in 2003 at the age of 82 after having given away more than $100 million on behalf of such causes as the environment, education and the arts -- on the condition that not one iota of this largesse bear her name, ever. Collins came to her fortune through the sale of King Broadcasting, a pioneering media empire in Seattle built by her mother, Dorothy Stimson Bullitt. Described by a Seattle newspaper as a woman who "looked like a cashier at a church bake sale," Priscilla Bullitt Collins lived in a one-bedroom apartment and drove a beat-up yellow Datsun.- Calculator: Save $1 million
Proceeds from the sale of King Broadcasting were funneled into the Bullitt Foundation, dedicated to protecting the air, land and waters of the Pacific Northwest.
Omaha's altruistic oracle
No list of frugal philanthropists is complete without the inclusion of Warren Buffett. The renowned investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway was ranked as the richest person in the world by Forbes magazine in 2008 with a net worth of $62 billion. He dropped to the second-richest in the world in 2009 and third-richest in 2010 after he began moving money to charity.
But don't assume Buffett is living the high life. The famously frugal investor still lives in the same Omaha, Neb., house he bought in 1958 and indulges in such simple pleasures as eating junk food and watching sports on TV.
