Not Even 9.2 Billion Dollars Can Put A Smile On Your Face

07 Jan, 2009 by John Hawkins

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A lot of people scoff at that old saying, “Money can’t buy you happiness.” Granted, poverty won’t buy you any happiness either, but money isn’t a cure all for people’s problems. The difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich just end up with a different set of problems.

Poor Adolf Merckle could have told you all about that,

German billionaire Adolf Merckle, one of the richest men in the world, committed suicide Monday after his business empire got into trouble in the wake of the international financial crisis, Merckle’s family said Tuesday in a statement.

Merckle, 74, was hit by a train in the southwestern town of Ulm, police said.

His family said the economic crisis had “broken” Merckle.

He was number 94 on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people. He had fallen from number 44 on the Forbes 2007 rich list as his fortune declined from $12.8 billion to $9.2 billion in 2008.

Did Merckle really kill himself solely over losing a few billion dollars? Maybe. After all, very few people are going to acquire that sort of money in the first place without being obsessive about fattening their bank account.

However, who knows what kind of health issues, family issues, and relationship issues he had — and the stress involved with dealing with his financial problems may have been the last straw.

All that money, 9.2 billion dollars, and he thought life was so terrible he couldn’t bear to continue living. People may believe that if they had that much money, they’d always have a smile on their face, but it just isn’t so.

It’s certainly better to be rich than poor, but money, in and of itself, isn’t going to really put anyone on “Easy Street.”