Lucy Kellaway:A few weeks ago, I was taken out for a drink by a Wall Street banker. The date didn't start well. The swanky bar had no record of his booking, and he was barely able to contain his rage. He fumed and fidgeted and jabbed angrily at his BlackBerry, trying vainly to raise his PA. Five minutes passed slowly.
A table was found, and over our first glass of champagne, he told me how rich he was. He had just bought a big apartment in Mayfair, bringing his total number of properties to four. He had started buying art and had become a regular at Christie's.
Over the second glass of champagne, he told me how poor he was. As a mere senior banker reaching the end of a spectacularly successful career, he was filled with envy of his contemporaries who had become hedge fund managers. These men kept ringing up and inviting him to support their charitable causes. They would declare that they were putting in a couple of million dollars and could they count on his support? He said how humiliating it was to explain each time that he was only in for $100,000 (€72,550).
I thought about this banker last week when I was sent a proof of a book called The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class by Keith Cameron Smith, entrepreneur and "spiritual millionaire".
The first distinction is that millionaires are masters at managing their own emotions. Doubtless some are, though this didn't remind me of my date, who that night wasn't doing so well with his PA or the barman.
The second is that millionaires are interested in ideas, while the middle classes are interested in things and other people. This may be true for some, but not for my friend. Instead, his interest in things was prodigious and trumped only by his interest in himself.
A third distinction is that millionaires are generous, while the middle classes can't afford to be.
Cameron Smith supports the claim with a personal story. One evening, he was driving along and stopped to pick up a prostitute who was standing by the road looking nippy. Flashing his wedding ring at her, he turned down her advances and took her to the grocery store instead. He bought some milk for her kids, and then gave her $100. "Are you an angel?" the prostitute's mum asked as her daughter was delivered back to the trailer park. "Well, maybe," he replied.
This isn't generosity. A really generous person doesn't feel so good about themselves after buying a prostitute a pint of milk that they write a book about it.
There are two tests to mark out the genuinely generous gift. The first is that it must hurt a bit - to give something you wouldn't miss doesn't count. The second is that you mustn't make a song and dance about it, or else it isn't generosity either: it's publicity.
Many hedge fund gifts fail on both scores. This doesn't matter from the point of view of the charity; indeed, if people give money more through peer pressure than big heartedness, they are likely to dig deeper and more often, which is a good thing. But from the point of view of understanding what Cameron Smith calls "the millionaire's mindset", it matters quite a bit.
If I think of my entire millionaire acquaintance, some are generous and some aren't. Some brim with ideas, others don't. In fact, there's one distinction between the rich and you and me, and that is the one so famously made by Hemingway - they have more money.
Last Monday, I had breakfast with the global chairman of Deloitte to discuss the unpleasant things I had been writing about his company's communication style.
I had not planned to report on the event as I covered it exhaustively in advance, but so many readers have asked solicitously how it went that I've changed my mind.
In fact, it went very well indeed. John Connelly, who is one of the richest accountants in the world, fits the millionaire mindset much more than my banker friend.
First, he showed admirable control of his emotions. He might inwardly have been grinding his teeth, but he bared them into a reasonably convincing smile. He was also generous - he had assembled a spread of cold toast triangles and mahogany pastries that he barely touched, allowing his guest to gorge as much as she liked.
Above all, he was interested in ideas, or in one idea in particular. "What do we have to do to make you write something nice about us?" he kept asking. Hopefully, he pushed some e-mails towards me that he had written himself. I looked at them, and said they looked fine, but tried to explain that "global chief of Deloitte sends perfectly okay e-mail" wasn't the makings for a particularly compelling column. One thing caught my eye about the e-mails. And that was the slogan "building eminence" written across the top of each. "I don't like that," I said. "I do," he replied.
As I returned to the cramped FT offices, it occurred to me that there was something nice I could say about Deloitte after all. The chairman has a gorgeous office. With a huge desk, a generous seating area with large sofas, and a vast shiny meeting table and a great sweep of window on two sides, his office is better than nice. It is eminent. - (Financial Times service)
