8 ms·

The Mystery of the Millionaire Hermit

92 points by 80mph 7y ago

jaden 7y ago
> Brown didn’t have a bed, just a foam bedroll tucked into the corner of one bedroom and a military duffel containing an old uniform and medals. I understand being frugal and admire it, but this level of frugality is harder to understand. I would hope he was at least comfortable on his bedroll. Based on what I could gather from the article, he seemed like a wonderful man.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  FWIW, I have serious health issues and simply feel better sleeping on a wood floor with a couple of blankets than in a bed. I'm actually given a very hard time by a lot of people for being willing to talk about such choices. So I think it is understandable that most frugal people don't bother to try to justify it. Most of the world isn't interested in understanding. They are only interested in treating people who aren't "like" them as freaks so as to protect their right to live "normally."
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    I slept on the floor like this too. I read about why we invented beds and it was to lift ourselves up away from insects on the ground. Then we invented floors. Then carpet and only poor people had wood floors. Now rich people have wood floors and carpet is cheaper so "less high class." Point is: A lot of our style/design choices are made with the explicit intention of costing more money as a way to separate the financial classes. Thus, it's not just to protect their right to live normally, but to protect their status in society.
    - JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
      I think your overall point makes sense, but most people I talk with prefer wooden flooring due to carpet's links with allergies, respiratory conditions, dust/mould/bacteria etc. I'm sure some people link it with a rustic, wealthy style or so, but I would hazard a guess to say most people are choosing it due to health reasons. I certainly always have been.
      - p1necone 7y ago
        Another datapoint checking in for choosing wood floors for the health and easy cleaning. I find polished/varnished concrete floors really nice too but with those I'd be worried about hitting my head if I fell over - even wood is relatively softer.
      - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
        I wouldn't be too sure about that. Maybe that's your reason for preferring wooden flooring, but I know me and most of my circle prefer it because it's seen as higher quality and more sophisticated than carpet. It's like the exposed brick of suburbia. I've also got no allergies.
      - basch 7y ago
        you have nearly all the benefits of wood, without the costs, from lvp/lvt. wood is still about status.
      - frosted-flakes 7y ago
        With hard floors, you need to sweep/vacuum pretty much every day, otherwise settled dust just gets re-circulated back into the air. Meanwhile, carpet holds the dust in place, and it stays there until it's sucked up with a vacuum cleaner.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    No health issues here, but have been sleeping on the floor since my teens and now whenever I sleep on a bed or anything similarly compliant I wake up with back pains. The only time it's an issue is when it comes to dating, since practically noone here (CA) wants to sleep on the floor and I have no interest in sleeping on someone's bed. The other benefit to using the floor is it preserves one's ability to get up and down from the floor into old age. The Japanese got this right, and it's actually had me considering learning Japanese and relocating there multiple times. I presume the aforementioned dating issues would be far less of a problem there.
    - wiml 7y ago
      Well, Japan differs from the ex-British Empire areas in many other ways in addition to sleeping habits. Some might appeal to you but some might not. :) I also like a really firm sleeping surface — I don't have any particular health problems, I just feel stiff and sore if my bed is too soft — and right now I sleep on a typical raised bed but with a very firm futon. It satisfies me, and if my date doesn't especially like it, she at least perceives it as an odd preference, rather than as a sign of poverty or despair.
    - hkmurakami 7y ago
      Tatami is quite a nice surface to take a nap on. Cool and breathable.
- trentmb 7y ago
  I'm not even old, but a mat on the floor has given me the soundest sleep. YMMV if you're not an on-the-back sleeper.
- segmondy 7y ago
  He experienced the Great Depression. That's why, if you read about the Great Depression, you will be hard pressed to spend a dollar.
  - fjsolwmv 7y ago
    Most people in USA have read about the Great Depressed and are not hard pressed to spend a dollar.
    - NeoBasilisk 7y ago
      Reading about something and experiencing it firsthand are not really the same. But I think it is safe to say that he probably had more going on that just that.
    - mwfunk 7y ago
      The difference is in living through it vs just reading about it in the past tense. For example, my grandmother grew up in it and had all sorts of money-related neuroses for the rest of her life. Maybe that was just her, but many Americans of her generation and background lived their lives as if it was going to happen again any day now, apropos of nothing. Just raw fear from terrible memories. Most people in the US today have no recollection or even second-hand awareness of it. If anything, people today seem far too willing to take on debt for non-necessities that they couldn’t afford otherwise, and far too unaware of how interest accumulates.
  - jumbopapa 7y ago
    I think there's something more to it than that. I would think that knowing he had assets in excess of $1MM that he could rationalize that a mattress was affordable to him. Old habits die hard though.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I think there is honestly very little difference between a bedroll and a bed. As soon as you have any kind of separation between you and the floor you’re pretty much good.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  >>> I would hope he was at least comfortable on his bedroll. Most humans on this planet don't sleep in the big fluffy beds that are the norm in the USA. Many, myself included, find them too hot and generally too soft to be comfortable. An inch or two of dense foam over a hard floor is fine for me.
- tawaynobody 7y ago
  Probably just what he was comfy with.
gwern 7y ago
> The neighborhood mail carrier was the one who’d called the police. Every day, Brown would wait for her in a chair by his door, and the two would exchange pleasantries. But for the past five days, there’d been no sign of him. Police did a welfare check and discovered his body in a pool of dried blood by the toilet. Members of the coroner’s office who were dispatched to the house determined that he died of a stroke, but not before breaking his nose in a nasty fall. Another example of how elder falling is responsible for an astounding amount of morbidity & mortality.
- BrandonMarc 7y ago
  Is it certain the stroke came before the fall? It may have caused the fall.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    That’s how I read it. He had a stroke, fell, broke his nose, and then died of the stroke. The nose just sucks, but if you’re already having a stroke...
  - gwern 7y ago
    I don't think there's any way to know for certain post-mortem; but at least in all the descriptions I've read of strokes, causing a sudden fall within a split-second seems unusually abrupt, while falling is an extremely common and ordinary event in the elderly and having a stroke after hitting your head so hard as to break your nose doesn't seem like too surprising a thing.
Twirrim 7y ago
There was a homeless person who was well known in my home town (not a town that you'd typically find homeless people living in. In fact I think in the couple of decades I lived there, he was the only one I ever saw). He never seemed to beg, always politely refused any aid. He was so well known, people had offered him beds for the night, but no. He liked being outside in the fresh air. Eventually he passed, and of course it was mentioned in the local newspaper, along with the revelation that he was, in fact, wealthy. He just chose to live that way.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Someone I know IRL told me a similar anecdote about a guy sleeping in the bushes in front of a building. People periodically called the cops on him but to no avail because he owned the building.
  - rocky1138 7y ago
    I really envy someone with the creativity and self confidence to live life how they want it, no matter how the rest of the world views it. Your story is how a lot of playing characters end up in elder scrolls games.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    I sleep outside on my property all the time, it's the bestest.
    - henvic 7y ago
      but do you shower and make sure you enjoy life, right? I ask this out of curiosity and to try to understand your motives. If you just happen to like to be in the open for a while, I totally understand.
      - newnewpdro 7y ago
        Sleeping outdoors someplace where the climate makes it perfectly comfortable and the environment perfectly safe is a luxury, it's the ideal IMHO. Sleeping indoors is a compromise made because it's too unsafe and/or uncomfortable (or socially unacceptable) to do it without shelter. Think about it. People generally love the seasons when they can sleep comfortably indoors with the windows open all night; fresh air, no blankets or at most a clean linen sheet. Well, given the right environment and season, doing it outside is a notch better than indoors with the windows open. My property is in the rural Mojave desert. There are no Mosquitoes and rarely > 30% humidity, and much of the year the night climate is so perfect you can sleep outside with no blankets or anything, even clothing optional. I prefer a mesh tent to keep scorpions and snakes out when on the ground, optional on the deck. All this with a sky so clear and free of light pollution I can watch the Milky Way until passing out. With regards to showering and enjoying life... I don't think those are really relevant to my comment and don't know how to answer them other than the obvious "yes, I bathe when necessary. Yes, I enjoy life."
jumbopapa 7y ago
A bit upsetting that the Catholic Charities never got that money. Surely, they could have done better with it than "a Cadillac and three or four motorcycles."
canada_dry 7y ago
What infuriates me is the sleeze ball firms like Brandenburger & Davis who aren't even satisified with extorting 30% of an estate from relatives, but then also resort to illegal collusion. Yah, let's keep reducing regulations so that these kind of scum bags can keep doing their thing.
- javert 7y ago
  A regulation is what entitles them to take the 30%. And seriously, what do you think the percent should be? It's not that simple.
  - yitchelle 7y ago
    > It's not that simple. The combination of money and family never make things simple. Not sure if you watch the movie "Million dollar baby", the back story of the inheritance/power of attorney in this movie really make me sad for our human race and our behavior.
bayareanative 7y ago
I know this once homeless, childless, single, middle-aged guy who works as a manager at a storage facility who has quite a portfolio but has all-but retreated from society.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
I met someone like this once, he used to hang out under the overpass near the Sunnyvale Caltrain station. He liked to joke that he had "Very strong opinions about very unimportant things." He was often reading a book and I talked with him about some of them. He lived the way he did because he felt that the human body was made to be nomadic rather than sedentary. If you asked if he was homeless he would say, "Nope, I live right here on this planet."

92 points by 80mph 7y ago

> Brown didn’t have a bed, just a foam bedroll tucked into the corner of one bedroom and a military duffel containing an old uniform and medals. I understand being frugal and admire it, but this level of frugality is harder to understand. I would hope he was at least comfortable on his bedroll. Based on what I could gather from the article, he seemed like a wonderful man.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
FWIW, I have serious health issues and simply feel better sleeping on a wood floor with a couple of blankets than in a bed. I'm actually given a very hard time by a lot of people for being willing to talk about such choices. So I think it is understandable that most frugal people don't bother to try to justify it. Most of the world isn't interested in understanding. They are only interested in treating people who aren't "like" them as freaks so as to protect their right to live "normally."
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  I slept on the floor like this too. I read about why we invented beds and it was to lift ourselves up away from insects on the ground. Then we invented floors. Then carpet and only poor people had wood floors. Now rich people have wood floors and carpet is cheaper so "less high class." Point is: A lot of our style/design choices are made with the explicit intention of costing more money as a way to separate the financial classes. Thus, it's not just to protect their right to live normally, but to protect their status in society.
  - JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
    I think your overall point makes sense, but most people I talk with prefer wooden flooring due to carpet's links with allergies, respiratory conditions, dust/mould/bacteria etc. I'm sure some people link it with a rustic, wealthy style or so, but I would hazard a guess to say most people are choosing it due to health reasons. I certainly always have been.
    - p1necone 7y ago
      Another datapoint checking in for choosing wood floors for the health and easy cleaning. I find polished/varnished concrete floors really nice too but with those I'd be worried about hitting my head if I fell over - even wood is relatively softer.
    - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
      I wouldn't be too sure about that. Maybe that's your reason for preferring wooden flooring, but I know me and most of my circle prefer it because it's seen as higher quality and more sophisticated than carpet. It's like the exposed brick of suburbia. I've also got no allergies.
    - basch 7y ago
      you have nearly all the benefits of wood, without the costs, from lvp/lvt. wood is still about status.
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      With hard floors, you need to sweep/vacuum pretty much every day, otherwise settled dust just gets re-circulated back into the air. Meanwhile, carpet holds the dust in place, and it stays there until it's sucked up with a vacuum cleaner.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  No health issues here, but have been sleeping on the floor since my teens and now whenever I sleep on a bed or anything similarly compliant I wake up with back pains. The only time it's an issue is when it comes to dating, since practically noone here (CA) wants to sleep on the floor and I have no interest in sleeping on someone's bed. The other benefit to using the floor is it preserves one's ability to get up and down from the floor into old age. The Japanese got this right, and it's actually had me considering learning Japanese and relocating there multiple times. I presume the aforementioned dating issues would be far less of a problem there.
  - wiml 7y ago
    Well, Japan differs from the ex-British Empire areas in many other ways in addition to sleeping habits. Some might appeal to you but some might not. :) I also like a really firm sleeping surface — I don't have any particular health problems, I just feel stiff and sore if my bed is too soft — and right now I sleep on a typical raised bed but with a very firm futon. It satisfies me, and if my date doesn't especially like it, she at least perceives it as an odd preference, rather than as a sign of poverty or despair.
  - hkmurakami 7y ago
    Tatami is quite a nice surface to take a nap on. Cool and breathable.
trentmb 7y ago
I'm not even old, but a mat on the floor has given me the soundest sleep. YMMV if you're not an on-the-back sleeper.
segmondy 7y ago
He experienced the Great Depression. That's why, if you read about the Great Depression, you will be hard pressed to spend a dollar.
- fjsolwmv 7y ago
  Most people in USA have read about the Great Depressed and are not hard pressed to spend a dollar.
  - NeoBasilisk 7y ago
    Reading about something and experiencing it firsthand are not really the same. But I think it is safe to say that he probably had more going on that just that.
  - mwfunk 7y ago
    The difference is in living through it vs just reading about it in the past tense. For example, my grandmother grew up in it and had all sorts of money-related neuroses for the rest of her life. Maybe that was just her, but many Americans of her generation and background lived their lives as if it was going to happen again any day now, apropos of nothing. Just raw fear from terrible memories. Most people in the US today have no recollection or even second-hand awareness of it. If anything, people today seem far too willing to take on debt for non-necessities that they couldn’t afford otherwise, and far too unaware of how interest accumulates.
- jumbopapa 7y ago
  I think there's something more to it than that. I would think that knowing he had assets in excess of $1MM that he could rationalize that a mattress was affordable to him. Old habits die hard though.
Aeolun 7y ago
I think there is honestly very little difference between a bedroll and a bed. As soon as you have any kind of separation between you and the floor you’re pretty much good.
sandworm101 7y ago
>>> I would hope he was at least comfortable on his bedroll. Most humans on this planet don't sleep in the big fluffy beds that are the norm in the USA. Many, myself included, find them too hot and generally too soft to be comfortable. An inch or two of dense foam over a hard floor is fine for me.
tawaynobody 7y ago
Probably just what he was comfy with.

gwern 7y ago

> The neighborhood mail carrier was the one who’d called the police. Every day, Brown would wait for her in a chair by his door, and the two would exchange pleasantries. But for the past five days, there’d been no sign of him. Police did a welfare check and discovered his body in a pool of dried blood by the toilet. Members of the coroner’s office who were dispatched to the house determined that he died of a stroke, but not before breaking his nose in a nasty fall. Another example of how elder falling is responsible for an astounding amount of morbidity & mortality.

BrandonMarc 7y ago
Is it certain the stroke came before the fall? It may have caused the fall.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  That’s how I read it. He had a stroke, fell, broke his nose, and then died of the stroke. The nose just sucks, but if you’re already having a stroke...
- gwern 7y ago
  I don't think there's any way to know for certain post-mortem; but at least in all the descriptions I've read of strokes, causing a sudden fall within a split-second seems unusually abrupt, while falling is an extremely common and ordinary event in the elderly and having a stroke after hitting your head so hard as to break your nose doesn't seem like too surprising a thing.

Twirrim 7y ago

There was a homeless person who was well known in my home town (not a town that you'd typically find homeless people living in. In fact I think in the couple of decades I lived there, he was the only one I ever saw). He never seemed to beg, always politely refused any aid. He was so well known, people had offered him beds for the night, but no. He liked being outside in the fresh air. Eventually he passed, and of course it was mentioned in the local newspaper, along with the revelation that he was, in fact, wealthy. He just chose to live that way.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
Someone I know IRL told me a similar anecdote about a guy sleeping in the bushes in front of a building. People periodically called the cops on him but to no avail because he owned the building.
- rocky1138 7y ago
  I really envy someone with the creativity and self confidence to live life how they want it, no matter how the rest of the world views it. Your story is how a lot of playing characters end up in elder scrolls games.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  I sleep outside on my property all the time, it's the bestest.
  - henvic 7y ago
    but do you shower and make sure you enjoy life, right? I ask this out of curiosity and to try to understand your motives. If you just happen to like to be in the open for a while, I totally understand.
    - newnewpdro 7y ago
      Sleeping outdoors someplace where the climate makes it perfectly comfortable and the environment perfectly safe is a luxury, it's the ideal IMHO. Sleeping indoors is a compromise made because it's too unsafe and/or uncomfortable (or socially unacceptable) to do it without shelter. Think about it. People generally love the seasons when they can sleep comfortably indoors with the windows open all night; fresh air, no blankets or at most a clean linen sheet. Well, given the right environment and season, doing it outside is a notch better than indoors with the windows open. My property is in the rural Mojave desert. There are no Mosquitoes and rarely > 30% humidity, and much of the year the night climate is so perfect you can sleep outside with no blankets or anything, even clothing optional. I prefer a mesh tent to keep scorpions and snakes out when on the ground, optional on the deck. All this with a sky so clear and free of light pollution I can watch the Milky Way until passing out. With regards to showering and enjoying life... I don't think those are really relevant to my comment and don't know how to answer them other than the obvious "yes, I bathe when necessary. Yes, I enjoy life."

jumbopapa 7y ago

A bit upsetting that the Catholic Charities never got that money. Surely, they could have done better with it than "a Cadillac and three or four motorcycles."

canada_dry 7y ago

What infuriates me is the sleeze ball firms like Brandenburger & Davis who aren't even satisified with extorting 30% of an estate from relatives, but then also resort to illegal collusion. Yah, let's keep reducing regulations so that these kind of scum bags can keep doing their thing.

javert 7y ago
A regulation is what entitles them to take the 30%. And seriously, what do you think the percent should be? It's not that simple.
- yitchelle 7y ago
  > It's not that simple. The combination of money and family never make things simple. Not sure if you watch the movie "Million dollar baby", the back story of the inheritance/power of attorney in this movie really make me sad for our human race and our behavior.

bayareanative 7y ago

I know this once homeless, childless, single, middle-aged guy who works as a manager at a storage facility who has quite a portfolio but has all-but retreated from society.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

I met someone like this once, he used to hang out under the overpass near the Sunnyvale Caltrain station. He liked to joke that he had "Very strong opinions about very unimportant things." He was often reading a book and I talked with him about some of them. He lived the way he did because he felt that the human body was made to be nomadic rather than sedentary. If you asked if he was homeless he would say, "Nope, I live right here on this planet."