Meet The Billionaire Who Donated All His Fortune

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

At 85, billionaire Charles “Chuck” Feeney is an expert at making money and sharing it with others. For decades, the successful businessman from New Jersey made multi-million dollar donations to different causes anonymously, earning himself - when discovered years later - the James Bond nickname of philanthropy.

Today, while others would choose to live in palaces or mansions with the amount of silver that he manages, Feeney prefers to lead a quiet life in the city of San Francisco, CA, where he does not even own the apartment in which he lives. In fact, you rent it!

How detached has it been? In October 2016, Forbes magazine chose him as the most generous philanthropist in the world, calculating that since he began distributing his assets in 1982, he has donated some to cover his housing and food expenses.

In 1960 Feeney launched the idea that led him in part to amass his enormous fortune: creating Duty Free Shoppers, airport shops with duty-free products. Of course, it also helped that he wisely invested his earnings in different business opportunities and both he and his wife Helga have chosen a modest way of life. In fact, until their 75th birthday, they only traveled in economy class and avoided luxury restaurants preferring to eat hamburgers at a restaurant in their neighborhood.

Living under slogans like "You have to give while you live" and "You can only wear one pair of pants at a time", Feeney has differentiated himself from other tycoons in the world who are more concerned with how to maintain or increase his fortune, while he has sought how to share it.