If I knew what your definition of “Extremely rich” happens to be, I could better answer your question! However, I will tell you this story from my past that hopefully satisfies your question: Many years ago when I was between 7 and 9 years of age (I am now 73) I would see this old man sitting on a bench between the bank and the hardware store in our little rural town in the mid-west. Most kids my age, on our one or two trips to town per week would avoid the old man because he dressed like a “hobo” or that is what our imagination said was a “bobo”. One afternoon while I was waiting for my Mom and Dad to finish their weekly shopping and chatting with other town folk, I noticed that the old man looked very sad. I overcame my misgivings about the way he was dressed and sat on the bench with him and said that he looked sad and asked what was wrong.

He looked at me for a moment or two and then said I looked like a nice young lad and he would tell me why he was sad! He told me that he had lost his wife of some 60 years a while back and now he had no one to share his life with.

He and his wife had born and raised 2 children but they were too busy with their lives to even talk to him on a daily basis even though he sat on a bench next to where his son worked and his daughter walked past him every day to shop in the grocery store next to the hardware store.

He also said that he was sad because the young people in the town seemed to avoid him and he wasn’t sure why.

After listening to him I began to speak once again (in those days a child did not interrupt and adult while they were speaking) I told him that I was very sorry that his wife had passed away, but she was probably in heaven watching down on him. I then told him that the reason other young people didn’t stop to talk was because we had been told (probably by our peers) that he looked like a hobo.

Then I asked him where his son worked, assuming he was a clerk in the hardware store or something similar. He told me that his Son was the president of the bank he sat next to and that he was the founder and owner of the bank!

Well, needless to say, I found that to be something less than truthful. But then he told me that he had either built or financed the building of most of the stores and businesses in our little town. I was awed but skeptical of that whole story. I didn’t run away and I didn’t show disbelief but at about that time I heard my father signal that we were to return to the car (the signal was from the horn 2 short honks and one longer honk which was also our telephone wring on the party line in the country), so I left and returned home with my parents.

I went back and talked to the old man several times before I worked up the courage to ask my parents who the old man really was. Their answer floored me! I had been having regular chats with one of the richest men in the state! What I found out from my parents was confirmed when the Old Gentleman died a few years later.

Not only did he found and own the bank and most of the business buildings in our town, he owned the same in about 4 towns around. In addition, he owned some 10,000 acres of prime farm land in the county. He was worth about $2.6 Billion in today’s dollars!

So that is the richest guy I ever met but didn’t feel rich because was lonely and had no one to share his life with to enjoy whatever money he had. There is much more to this story but he felt poor, regardless of his monetary wealth!