Mansion Mistakes

My friend Jeff Audas told me about a couple who spent $100 million to build a house near where he lived in Texas, only to discover it was too much for them and they didn’t like it.

Just today I read about a mansion for sale in Georgia that reportedly cost $40 million, and the mysterious owners have never lived in it.¹ It’s currently on the market for $13 million, and here’s a picture and a link to the story.

These “mansion mistakes” aren’t just the first-world problems of the rich. They’re problems in human nature, related to our inability to forecast what we really want. We think we want something, or that something will make us happy. Then we get it, only to realize it doesn’t deliver. Meanwhile, we’ve lost a lot of time, money, and opportunity in the pursuit of an illusion.

Here are some common forecasting mistakes.

• We spend mansion-size budgets and years of our lives getting educated for a career, only to discover we don’t like it.
• We overstretch our budget to buy a luxury car, but are filled with regret six months later when the new car smell is gone but the big payments remain.
•  We think a divorce would make us happier, but find that we’re lonely, miserable, and wishing we could have worked it out.

So, what do we do about this? There’s nothing we can do about the past, but we can do something about the future. Here are several ways to forecast better and avoid “mansion mistakes.”

1. Believe that mansion mistakes are likely.

When we see how easy it is to make mansion mistakes, we start looking for them. We look before we leap, we question ourselves before making big decisions, we get advice. Instead of going forward without a question, which is what most do, we take a second, and third, and fourth look at our opportunity. We follow the carpenter’s rule: measure twice, cut once.

2. Try before you buy.

Another way to avoid mansion mistakes is to try before you buy.

• Want a home with a swimming pool? Try renting a home with a pool for a year, and see if you really want it. I remember renting a home with a pool and realizing how much work it was to maintain it, and how expensive it was to heat it, and how little we actually used it living in the Pacific Northwest. Now I’ll never have a home with a pool. But years before, I rented a home with a hot tub, and realized how much we used it. So now I know, keep the hot tub, ditch the pool.
• Want to pursue a specific career? Intern and job shadow before you make the leap. My wife told me how she wanted to be a nurse until she became a nursing intern and realized how the job didn’t settle with her penchant for nausea and need for freedom.

3. Ask someone wise who’s already done it.

Ask wise people about how satisfying that new car really is. Don’t ask the guy who just bought one, because he’s looking to justify his decision, so he’s going to make himself believe it’s better than it really is. Ask someone who’s truly wealthy, who’s been around the block a few times, about the big house and the lavish lifestyle. Better yet, find and ask the average millionaire, described by Thomas Stanley in his book, The Millionaire Next Door. They’ll tell you the lavish lifestyle is like a mirage in the desert. It looks satisfying from the distance, but never delivers.

¹David McCormack, “Mysterious owners spend $40m on custom built Georgia mansion featuring five KITCHENS – then put it up for sale for $14m having never even lived in it,” DailyMail, May 26, 2016.