The tycoon who gave away his fortune to 20 people

Telegraph

7 hours ago

As an engine failed on Carl Barney's flight out of Nevada, the aircraft floated upward – then plummeted.
'A stunning silence followed, a sense of futility and fate,' remembers the 84-year-old multimillionaire, who was born into a threadbare existence in wartime Britain and went on to make his entrepreneurial fortune in the USA.
As the plane nosedived from 12,000 feet on that clear evening in January 2014, he remembered the meeting he would miss and then thought: 'I'm going to die.'
'I wasn't scared. My life didn't flash before my eyes,' he recalls. Instead, he thought of his recently updated will and the 20 family, friends and former employees who would receive large sums of money.
It made him happy to imagine their reactions but he also considered: 'What a shame, I won't be there to see their faces.' Barney braced for the crash – but it never came. As the plane made a sharp curve and levelled out, it dawned on him that he would survive.
In the years that followed, Barney drew up a plan. Instead of waiting until he died, he would give away his fortune now, carving out 20 sums of six figures or more for each of those people in his will. He would do it with a condition: they were to spend it within the next five years and solely on their own happiness.
Barney was born in Maidenhead, in 1941, in the post-war rationing years. 'I remember licking my plate clean, we all did,' he says, speaking today over Zoom from his light-filled Pacific coast home in California.
He left Britain at 17 and hitchhiked to Australia with £86 and three shillings in his pocket. Three years later, with a taste for seeing the world, he arrived in America, this time carrying $100. For the next two decades, he worked various jobs and made money in real estate before entering education management at 39, building a multimillion-dollar network of private colleges. He was in his 60s when he came to a realisation: 'I was wealthy. I thought 'now what?''
The picture of a prosperous life, tanned with thick white hair and in the kind of shape that belies his age, Barney is precise and considered when he speaks, gracious but pragmatic. He explains: 'My wealth became a problem. A lot of people would like that kind of problem. I'm not a big shot. I don't like planes and yachts and a big lifestyle. I didn't want to just throw it around.'
With no children, he had given little thought to what would happen to his vast fortune beyond contributing to causes he cared about. 'In the last 10 or 20 years, I've spent more money on charities than myself,' he says.
So he wrote a will. 'A lot of people say, 'I'll leave it to the hospital or church or some big charity.' I think that's a mistake because none of us get successful and wealthy without a lot of help. I made a list of people who, in one way or another, had contributed to my life, and allocated a certain amount of money that I thought would be impactful in their life.' To overlook them, he says, would have been an 'injustice'.
The will rested in the far reaches of his mind until that 2014 flight. In the months that followed, he asked his financial
advisor and executive coach what they thought about bringing bequests forward and turning them into pre-quests: gifts that expressed gratitude while he was still alive. 'My coach kept saying, 'This is ridiculous, you can't do this to people, how are they gonna react?''
But Barney kept returning to it: 'It was a personal, emotional and mental struggle. It's just not done. Was it authentic? Would it alter the friendship? And how can I give away this money while I'm still alive? Maybe I would need it.'
He thought about what was motivating him: he wanted to give his friends the gift of happiness, as he writes about in The Happiness Experiment: A Revolutionary Way to Increase Happiness, his book about what happened next. And so, one at a time, he began inviting them to his home for dinner to share some news.
Collin*, 54, an employee and friend of 20 years, and his wife Rachel*, 47, arrived to an intimately set table, with a chef-prepared meal of beef filet and red wine, on 27 December 2020.
'The invite came at least a month beforehand,' remembers Collin. 'It was intentionally vague. I thought he was either going to tell us he was dying or getting married.'
Barney had flown them from their home in Oregon and, while they ate, he turned the conversation to happiness. 'When we finished, he eased in. He told me how much I meant to him and that I was in his will. I remember being choked up. I thought for sure he was dying.'
Rachel, who had just been made redundant from her corporate job; was overwhelmed when Barney revealed a six-figure gift: 'Collin and I stared at each other. I had tears in my eyes. I just kept saying thank you.'
Just as he would for all his beneficiaries, Barney explained that this money was not to be spent on paying off debts or bills but to invest, now, purely in things that bring them joy. To assist, he would give them a financial advisor and happiness coach to identify what they derive their happiness from and plan their spending accordingly. Barney didn't need to approve the plan but once it was ready, he would send the money.
It was a lot to take in. 'He was pretty particular from the get-go about how he would do this,' remembers Collin. 'I don't think anyone's ever given me a thousand bucks, much less this. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't start thinking of all the things I could buy.' He had reservations too: 'I had not done anything to deserve this money. If he had died and left it in his will, that's easy. [But] I was still working for Carl; it was no strings attached but I worried there'd be a huge imbalance.'
Barney later tells me that he had contemplated this reaction: 'I said to the people: 'This must not impact our relationship in any way; you don't even have to remain friends with me. You can think of me as dead if you like. You don't have to write to me and tell me what you're doing with the money, you don't have to send me photographs of your fabulous vacations.''
Collin and Rachel went to bed whispering about their plans. Ready to accept, they worked on their happiness plan in the following weeks. They renovated their small lakeside cabin, installed a hot tub and bought an off-road vehicle so they could share their windfall, including with Collin's three grown-up children, while staying true to Barney's request that it be spent on themselves. They joined a gym, paid for a weekly trainer and took a cruise to Japan and Korea. They didn't tell anyone.
'To this day my mom barely knows how much was involved,' says Rachel. Collin adds: 'It wasn't the kind of money that would change our lives for generations. We spent it mostly at the cabin. We were humble, we didn't brag.'
Rachel remembers: 'We're usually cost conscious. Spending that much money in that amount of time felt uneasy. Watching the amount go down felt indulgent.'
Five years on, it is spent. 'The most fun part was actually taking a really long look at our shared values,' remembers Collin. 'Not a week goes by where we don't talk about it.' Did it make them happy? Their smiles answer. 'It made me feel special, to know he cared about us that much. It made us closer to Carl. If he had died and left the money, a lot would have been left unsaid.'
The pursuit of happiness
Each of Barney's dinners followed the same script – a conversation about happiness until dessert signalled the reveal. Recipients included his executive assistant and his housekeeper of 25 years. The beneficiaries were not wealthy, although many were 'comfortable'; only one was in financial difficulty. One former employee with cancer used it to gain treatment: 'I told her use the money purely to save your life.'
He doesn't reveal the percentage of total wealth he gave away, rather he calculated how much he was spending, adjusted for inflation, put money aside for eventualities like medical treatment and 'came to a point where I would have enough for myself and the rest I could use for other things'.
For each friend, he determined a different amount: 'I did not want to overwhelm them more than they were going to be overwhelmed; I wanted to be sure it was going to have an impact.
'I wanted to do it right. It's a lot of money, more than they'd had before. It was also fairly sudden.' And he told each, specifically, why he was grateful. 'If I'd have just tossed the money at them, they wouldn't have been comfortable. I knew I should explain – do you remember the time you did this or when you stepped forward? – that I would not be here today and successful if they hadn't given me that help. Typically the reaction was, 'Oh, no, that's nothing', that they didn't do anything worth this amount of money. In economic terms that was true. But this was not economic.'
For Barney's long-standing friends Asher*, 60, and Catherine*, 59, accepting didn't come easy. On a Friday evening four years earlier, the couple had been guests at his home when they received a call that their pregnant daughter, already mother to their two-year-old granddaughter, had been killed by a drunk driver. Their lives were shattered. 'We were emotionally paralysed,' remembers Asher of their mental state when Barney invited them back there four years later.
'I know Carl and could see he was building to something,' says Asher. When he revealed his plan and a sum 'many multiples' of six figures, Catherine remembers: 'I was gobsmacked.'
Asher was instantly reluctant: 'My first thought was that this was neither earned nor deserved. It was not part of our relationship; I was worried it would change. I declined and could see Carl was disappointed.'
He suggested they think about it. Over the following weeks, they did.
'As we thought more, I told Asher that if someone gave you $50 on your birthday you would accept,' remembers Catherine. 'This was no different – a gift just with many more zeros because Carl had many more zeros.' Asher began to come around: 'I thought if Carl had died, I would have accepted money in his will. Why would I not accept it when he was alive and could enjoy seeing us grow from it?'
After four months, he wrote his friend a letter, accepting. 'After losing our daughter, monetary comforts had become meaningless,' remembers a tear-brimmed Catherine. 'We could never be truly happy again.' They decided that the money could help them live again and wrote a plan to spend it on health and fitness, time efficiencies, their home, indulgences and future happiness.
'Financially we were comfortable. We could buy a car or go on holiday,' says Asher. It became 'boost' money. 'We bought a better car, flew first class, stayed in luxurious resorts.' Beyond the car, they did it 'incognito', although they used a little money to help a loved one in need. They hiked up Kilimanjaro and spent money on thorough health checks. Asher's only constructive criticism to Barney: 'He asked us to spend the money too fast.' Some still remains.
Their greatest gift, the couple agree, was a life coach who they saw for 18 months, something they had never previously invested in: 'It gave us hope and purpose. It's through that that we learnt to live again.'
'The whole experience showed us that there are clouds that will never go away, but it is possible to flourish,' Asher reflects.
​'It was unbelievable that someone would be this generous.'
Barney's focus on a flourishing life was not accidental. His website carries the slogan 'love of the good for being good', from Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism – a defence of self-interest and denouncement of altruism that attracts fierce controversy for promoting individualism and free markets. Many of the millions that Barney's Prometheus Foundation has given away are to endeavours that further this philosophy. Were his gifts acts of selflessness or self-interest, for them or for him?
'Both, but not in the same proportion,' he says. 'I knew that the whole idea of my friends flourishing, pursuing happiness, succeeding and doing wonderful things would make me smile, in the same way it does when people watch their children.
'They were acting in the movie of their life and I was able to watch.'
He has lived by Rand's teachings and Aristotle's, who philosophised that happiness was the ultimate human goal, all his life, long before he read around them: 'When I left England at 17 it was in pursuit of the good life, adventure, discovery. I've done that ever since.'
That pursuit of happiness, he says, sits at the heart of the American dream 'despite all its problems'. 'I love the idea that life is to be enjoyed. We have the right to pursue our own happiness.'
Last year, Barney appeared among the Los Angeles Times' list of California's 100 biggest donors to the White House race, following a $924,600 contribution toward Trump's campaign. But he is keen to avoid politics today: 'I want to stay positive. If I started getting into politics over the last 50, 100 years in America there's a lot to complain about.'
Does he think negativity and strain have stolen people's attention? 'I think this is exactly what's been happening. People have lost sight of what's really meaningful, what it means to have a good life.' What it means, and whether it is possible, to pursue your dreams.
Mike*, 63, and Kate*, 37, had worked, for years, at keeping their own business going. When Barney invited them for dinner in spring 2020, they were struggling to make ends meet. The three had been friends for 17 years and would often dine in each other's homes. This time, Barney asked the chef to make sea bass – Kate's favourite – and began talking. Mike describes 'utter disbelief' at news of their windfall. 'We were both speechless,' says Kate.
'It was a lot of money and we were in debt,' remembers Mike. 'It was unbelievable to us that someone would be this generous.'
They accepted without hesitation and worked on their plan for two months. Despite their struggles, the couple loved their life and were already 'quite oriented to thinking about happiness'. But Mike says, 'Thinking about happiness when you don't have a lot of money to put towards it is a very different exercise to thinking about it when you do. Now we had the means to do things we could not previously.'
They flew to Crete and Croatia for their 20th wedding anniversary, and took weekend breaks in Santa Barbara. Mike took their teenage daughter climbing in Yosemite and skiing. They made their home 'like new' and installed patios to work, stargaze and exercise from. They also shared some of their gift, helping an orphaned friend of their daughter. 'We were able to pay for some niceties, like driving lessons,' says Kate. 'Sharing was one of the big joys for us.'
Mike describes Barney's benevolence as 'contagious'. 'When someone does something like this for you, if you had a trace of cynicism in your soul it evaporates. We probably paid it forward in many ways you couldn't calculate because we were just happier people.'
For Kate, the great unexpected gift was how it eased the burden of worry she was used to. 'In the past when we spent money to repair something or wanted to go on vacation there was a push and pull; can we afford it, should we spend it on something else? It can dampen the enjoyment. Having Carl say here's this money with the instructions that it was for our happiness made it so richly enjoyable in a way I hadn't experienced before.'
Is money necessary for the pursuit of happiness, I ask Barney later. 'Yes and no,' he smiles. 'It's [about] enough money. If you want a lavish, Trumpian or billionaire's lifestyle you're going to need a lot of money. It depends upon what your dreams are.
'I made more money than I could have expected or even wanted to. I only ever wanted enough to be economically free,' he says.
His pre-quest concept proved to him that cash was only the start. 'It was the thinking and the commitment to happiness, and then what happened afterwards – what they did with that, that made the difference.' Indeed, alongside stories of his life and beneficiaries, he includes tips and planning templates for others to do the same in his book.
Barney's Happiness Experiment showed him that giving doesn't have to wait. 'It should be done now,' he says. And not only money – property, possessions, time and mentoring too: 'You can give up so many things to people while you're still alive.'
Five years on, with most of the money spent, Barney still hears from his beneficiaries. They are all still his friends – and many did send him photos from the holidays they bought with his money. 'If it's not one friend one day, it's another. It happens in a steady stream. They write and share the dreams that they've accomplished and I still get that warmth and love back from them.' For if he has learnt one thing it is this: 'Happiness is not just something that happens to you.'