Two-bedroom apartment, 2015 Ford Focus and substantial donations: what life is like for the heir of Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft | World

Having money is certainly one of people’s greatest desires. In the case of the comedian Pete Ballmer, he never needed to think about it. The 29-year-old was born wealthy: he is the son of Steve Ballmerformer CEO of Microsoft, sixth richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with an estimated fortune of US$144 billion (approximately R$724 billion).

In an interview with Business Insider, he talked about growing up with so much wealth and assured that, despite all the privileges, he never spent it wasted. “Until the end of elementary school, my understanding was that my family was wealthy, but I didn’t know that we were globally and historically wealthy. I knew my dad was a big guy at Microsoft and I remember a kid asking me how many bathrooms my house had. Another kid randomly asked me, ‘Does your mom drive a Mercedes?’ And I thought, ‘No, she drives a Ford Fusion,’” he recalled.

As a child, he added, he and his siblings received no more expensive Christmas presents than most other upper-middle-class children they knew. For example, one year he received a Game Boy (a portable console developed by Nintendo in the late 1980s) and, in another, a set of weights.

Pete emphasized that his parents hated their children making “stupid or unnecessary purchases.” “Their approach to money, broadly speaking, was: if it’s something you really need, we can buy it for you. The unspoken rule was not to waste; be smart about how you spend your money.”

“I’m sure I asked my parents for some money here and there, but it was never, ‘Just ask us and we’ll give you the money.’ I mean, I didn’t really care what I was wearing, and my brothers and I were fine with driving our dad’s old ’98 Lincoln. We had an Xbox and I ate Chipotle a lot with my friends,” he added.

Ballmer’s heir said he saw signs of wealth, such as the trips he took with his family, but that his parents didn’t talk much about it. “For both my mother and father, having a lot of money was a relatively new experience, as was raising children. They raised us the way their parents raised them, and because they didn’t grow up talking about wealth, they didn’t talk about it to us either.”

According to him, it was good to just be a child and not think about it too much, however, as he grew up, he began to feel uncomfortable about belonging to a wealthier clan than all his peers.

“I didn’t like people making assumptions about what I was like purely based on that. My parents had a ‘rich kids are awesome and we don’t like that’ attitude, which was somewhat detrimental since I was a rich kid,” she related. “But I started to feel proud of the fact that I wasn’t as spoiled as I could be, that I didn’t have a lot of money thrown at me.”

Beginning of professional life

In elementary school, Pete received an allowance of US$10 (R$50 in current exchange rates) per week. And, at that time, he started wanting more expensive things, like a Palm Pre phone. His parents agreed to pay for the plan, but he would have to buy the device. To get the money, he worked as a caddy at a golf course.

Some time later, he opened a landscaping company with some friends and, during high school and college, he did internships at software engineering companies. These jobs, he emphasized, were achieved without anyone’s help – that is, without his father’s help.

“My parents paid all my tuition and board at college, which is a lot of money. I used what I saved from my internships to spend on things like meals in restaurants, drinks in bars, occasional new clothes and shows”, he pointed out.

At age 25, after college, Pete received an inheritance from his grandfather. “When I first heard about it, I was in my third year of college. My initial reaction was to refuse—I was still quite uncomfortable with my family’s wealth and figured I could get a high-paying job in tech and not need their money,” he commented. “But then I turned 25 and I didn’t turn down the money; In hindsight, that would have been a very foolish decision.”

Ballmer’s son worked for four years as a product manager and at the same time dedicated himself to stand-up comedy, until this became his main activity. Today, he does about five shows a week and produces the program Don’t Tell Comedy.

The earnings from your work plus the investments you have guarantee you a comfortable life. But he also revealed that he is measured in his spending. “I don’t make many big purchases. I don’t make many purchases over a few hundred dollars. I don’t buy first class plane tickets, for example, and I don’t buy new or expensive clothes very often. I recently bought a new jacket that cost $120 or something like that.”

Pete shares a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with his girlfriend, which he says is perfect for his purposes; he orders food on Uber Eats quite frequently, but he also cooks; He drives a 2015 Ford Focus that belonged to his younger brother and pays a high price for a parking space. Health and travel expenses and the “substantial donations” he usually makes also come out of his pocket.

He pointed out that he never asked his parents for notable amounts of money, just like his brothers. “Personally—and without criticizing anyone—that would be kind of disgusting and pathetic,” he said.

But as everyone got older, their family started talking more proactively and intentionally about money. “We talked about what our wills might consist of, what happens to the Clippers – which are owned by my father – after my parents pass away, how having the money affects what we choose to do career-wise, how the money has changed or it didn’t ‘corrupt’ us and the caution we all have regarding the general ability of money to do this to people”, he narrated.

“Obviously, money can do a lot for a person. Growing up with a comfortable life (and being around people who had comfortable lives), I have experienced for myself and observed in others the fact that you can still be unhappy despite having a lot of money. I know I could have some things better, but I try to be aware of hedonic adaptation – I know I would eventually adapt to these lifestyle choices and possibly go down a slippery slope to a more opulent life, which ultimately leads to none,” he added.

Want to check out exclusive content from Época BUSINESS? Get access to the digital version.