“I consider myself not a poor person, and not a rich one.
Can I now buy any house that I like? No. So I'm not rich.
The criterion is buying a house. Here you are flying in a helicopter and you see a house by the sea, lonely, standing on the outskirts, and if you cannot immediately make a transfer, you are not rich. You are only on your way to it.
But I'm not poor.
I had a huge interview for the BBC for five days. And for five days we were asked questions, moreover, they were prepared. And the coolest question... Cool answer... My cool answer is they cut it out.
This is the start of 2019.
The question was: how much money do you need to be happy?
I say you don't need money to be happy.
How much money is enough? So that from your credit card, without replenishing, without supplementing it, you could cure a person, send him to Israel, America or Germany to be treated for cancer. And so that for any close or liked person you could organize treatment of any complexity at any time. At the same time, your business does not break. And if you don’t need to borrow money somewhere and report something, but you can just do it from your limit on the card, then you have generally succeeded.
This is what money is for.
I tried, unsuccessfully, to cure three people in my life of cancer in Germany, so I gave this example.
And, well, yes, 40,000 with a probability, in one case it was 20%, in the other 5%, probably, if not less. Can you pay that amount without blinking and use that 5%? If you can, then you've made it. Not wealthy, but accomplished, just as a person, probably, and just as an adult.
…I love money. My cardiogram is better when there is good revenue.
I think when I'm old I'll be at risk of erectile dysfunction, but if there's still good earnings, I think I'll last longer than the statistics say."
The entire fragment of the interview with Yevgeny Chichvarkin can be viewed here.