The World's Richest Man Who Refused to Pay for His Own Grandson

[Music] Benjamin Franklin said a penny saved is a penny earned and it's a good motto to live by but I'll bet you'd agree with me here when I say there are exceptions to that role especially in dire situations I'm sure you know the big billionaire names like Jeff Bezos Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates but what about Jay 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 dollars back then that'd be like having almost 10 billion dollars 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 the third 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 seventeen million dollars for the young man 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 it and perhaps he was right unfortunately these sorts of things do happen even the boy's girlfriend said that he had 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 kidnapper 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 Gayle decided to raise funds herself to secure the release of her son she even talked to one of the kidnappers on the phone who could just not believe that this family wasn't delivering the money how could this old man leave his own flesh and blood in the point 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 negotiated with the abductors and brought the ransom down to three million dollars seventeen million today Getty actually agreed to hand over no more than 2.2 million since that was the maximum amount he could write off his taxes he lent the remaining $800,000 to his son the boy's father at 4% interest 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 Jay paul Getty refused to come to the phone he later told the media he didn't believe in paying kidnappers I have 14 other grandchildren and if I pay one penny now then I'll have 14 kidnap grandchildren is the way he put it any way it might come as no surprise to you that who would negotiate with a kidnapper to get his grandsons 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 Surry 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 at Surry was a lot cheaper than in London even told one American columnist that it costs ten cents for a rum and coke in Surry 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 Geddes reputed stin genus they might seem comical ridiculous and sometimes even stranger than fiction but that doesn't mean they're not true his secretary claim 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 new clothes he was miserly about that too for example he never bought a pair of socks that cost more than $1 reusing stationery was another obsession of his he carefully saved and reused 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 now I can see where it was coming from on this one then again why buy a whole mansion just for yourself when Geddy took a group of friends to a dog show in London he made them walk around the block for ten minutes until the tickets became half-price at 5:00 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 was before Skype and FaceTime were ever a thing so giddy 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 okay 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 Geddes extreme penny-pinching to his strict upbringing which emphasised modest living and personal economy he'd never purchased 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 story shows us that money can't always bring happiness maybe it sometimes can but certainly not always despite all his wealth and fame Jay 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 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 of the world want in life he said I want to do business further and well I guess that sums it all up so why do you think Getty was reluctant to pay the ransom out of genuine concern for his other grandkids is upbringing or just pure greed let me know your theories down in the comments hey if you learned something new today then give this video a like and share it with a friend but hey don't go anywhere just yet we have over 2,000 cool videos for you to check out all you have to do is pick the left or right video click on it and enjoy stay on the bright side of life

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 250,314

Rating: 4.8555956 out of 5

Keywords: successful people, what the rich do, how to become a millionaire, how to become a billionaire, will you be rich or poor, personal growth, poor people, rich people, wealthy people, the richest man in the world, Jean Paul Getty, J. Paul Getty, famous billionaires, famous millionaire, money

Id: mPP6Yh4Aaxc

Length: 9min 18sec (558 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019