Lisa and I have started watching some episodes of a show called Secret Millionaire on Hulu. The basic idea of the show is that they take extremely well to do people and place them into areas with extreme poverty. They take on aliases and dress down to fit in and everyone is told that these people are just other poor people and that they are doing a documentary on poverty or something related.
With their cover set up, these “Secret Millionaires” get to talk to different people in the area and learn their personal stories. By the end of the show, the secret millionaires have to choose who they will write checks to (from their own personal account) and how much. The lower limit is $100,000 for how much they give away but they can choose to give more. Of the few shows we’ve seen so far, people have given away as much as $300,000.
Here’s where the tool “G” shows up. First sign he’s a tool, he refers to himself as “G”. That’s his brand that he’s given himself. His real name is Gurbaksh Chahal and he has created quite a few internet start ups to make his fortune. Now most of the secret millionaires have given themselves aliases to go by, so that someone doesn’t recognize who they are (even though they traveled a good distance from their home town). Not this failure. First, instead of traveling to some other location he goes to just the poor portion of San Francisco…his home town. Then, instead of using his real name or possibly his Americanized name that he used to start his initial companies, he opts to use his brand name “G”. Next, to add to the ridiculous he walks around these poor communities in designer jeans and a fashionable hoodie. At some points it really just gets comical how insecure this multi-millionaire really is. That is, until the end of the show when he stakes his claim as king in the land of Douche and it becomes more enraging than funny.
Keep in mind, all of these millionaires end up giving away tons of money…because they see the personal stories and have the ability to do so. Also keep in mind that conservative estimates put this guys net worth at somewhere around $100 million. What does he end up giving away? $90,000. The show requires that they give away $100,000. $70,000 of what he gave away was completely tax deductible and you know he pays more than that in taxes each year and in total he gives away $90,000. Supposedly there were more donations that were edited out (which I find hard to believe).
But even so….really? You gave away .1% of your net worth (without taking into account the fact that $70,000 was tax deductible, so it was more like .03%). I hope those fake tears that you shed on camera helped you sleep at night.