On the other hand, he's greatly limiting his freedom while providing the means for others to increase their freedom:
All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans and advice to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
He sounds like a guy who has figured out what he wants, after a lifetime of saving for an indeterminate future need.
Studies have found that money can make you happy - so long as you spend it on creating great memories that are valuable for you.
If you said he went around a poor part of India and gave all the money away to people that he met there, I would see some merit to that. At least, he'll get the experience of having met all these people and changed their lives. Those memories would stay with him his whole life. Setting up $5m's worth of anonymous micro-loans might make you feel good for a few months, maybe a year or two, but the memory will soon fade. It's too distant.
Even if you decide that your calling in life is to give all your stuff away, there are much more personally fulfilling ways to do it.
I agree. He doesn't even seem to have a good idea of what he's going to do next. If he were retiring to a cabin in the Alps or a shack on the beach I could envy him a little, but living in a tiny studio apartment in Innsbruck? With a bed in the living room so he can't even experience the pleasure of having a friend around to dinner?
And I, too, would like to know what his wife has to say about this. Setting up a charity is fine, but moving from a villa to a bedsit? I'm starting to think there may be some divorce-related spite involved here.
All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans and advice to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
He sounds like a guy who has figured out what he wants, after a lifetime of saving for an indeterminate future need.