After the economy tanked last fall, Rob DeSantis' phone began ringing. Suddenly friends, family and neighbors were begging him for financial help. It's not hard to see why. DeSantis is ultrawealthy, having co-founded Ariba, a dot-com-era startup that pioneered online purchasing for large companies.
In one week in October alone, DeSantis says, the requests totaled half a million dollars. In December came an additional $1.5 million in pleas.
The cries for help moved him profoundly. "My first thought when they call is, 'Oh, no, not you, too,' and it makes me want to help," says DeSantis, who is working on a book and looking at deals in green technology. "They want to keep their house, their company, whatever. It pulls on your heartstrings."
DeSantis has plenty of company these days. There's the billionaire whose brother-in-law stopped speaking to him after he refused to increase the man's small-business loan. The two friends who fell out after one asked the other to pay off her mortgage. The 21-year-old trust-funder whose strapped friend was caught shoplifting just before Christmas. He hadn't heard from her for a year, and suddenly she was on the phone asking whether he could bail her out of jail. "This hurt," he says, "because it told me she looked at me as a sort of bank."
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As the government bails out one industry after another, America's affluent are doing the same for their friends and families. And just as the feds' largesse can have unintended consequences, so can the personal bailout. Givers can feel put upon, recipients beholden. Like many in his position, DeSantis sought professional help. He called his wealth therapists: Joan Indursky DiFuria, a commodities executive turned family counselor, and psychologist Stephen Goldbart, who together run San Francisco's Money, Meaning & Choices Institute.
In recent months, DiFuria and Goldbart say they have been rushing from mansion to pied-à-terre, helping the moneyed class figure out how to deal with down-and-out friends and relatives without turning them into welfare cases. DiFuria says clients are plagued with thoughts like: "Should I be helpful? In what way should I be helpful?"
Fixing others' lives
Like many people who start life in humble circumstances, DeSantis says he has struggled with "being good at being rich." When Ariba went public in 1999, DeSantis fleetingly became a paper billionaire at age 38. It was a head trip for a guy who grew up in a 900-square-foot house. That, in part, is why DeSantis' financial adviser introduced him to Goldbart and DiFuria in 2002. At the time, the therapists were helping other extremely rich people handle what Goldbart and DiFuria had dubbed sudden wealth syndrome.DeSantis' first impulse was to shower the people he loved with lucre -- to transform lives with one check. It wasn't long before his largesse began to backfire. One recipient in particular stands out. DeSantis paid off all of the person's debt -- an act of generosity that cost him about half a million dollars.
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"I wanted to give him a get-out-of-jail-free card," recalls DeSantis. When the economy tanked last fall, guess who came knocking? DeSantis' beneficiary was looking for another handout, pleading that without it, he would lose his house and slide into bankruptcy.
DeSantis set up a session with Goldbart and DiFuria in November. He was torn up with anxiety. He felt that if he didn't help the guy, no one would. Over sandwiches and bottled water in DeSantis' home office, Goldbart and DiFuria reminded him of the best practices they had worked on for giving: analyzing each request on a case-by-case basis, outsourcing the negotiation and management of the requests to a third party, and seeing if there were nonfinancial ways to help friends in need.
Continued: 'I've hurt him more than I have helped him'
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