{"id":710,"date":"2009-09-02T17:35:12","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T22:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/?p=710"},"modified":"2009-09-02T17:35:12","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T22:35:12","slug":"john-mcafee-flees-rodeo-for-new-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/02\/john-mcafee-flees-rodeo-for-new-life\/","title":{"rendered":"John McAfee Flees Rodeo for New Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; color: black;\">The question I am most often asked regarding <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">The Richest Man in Town<\/em> is after this last recession, are they still the richest in their town?\u00a0 Most still are, but in one notable instance that is definitely not the case.\u00a0 Anti-virus pioneer, John McAfee in no longer the richest man in Rodeo, New Mexico.\u00a0 He has lost 90% of his\u00a0net worth during this recession.\u00a0In fact, he no longer even lives in the town that he pretty much single handedly built in the post anti-virus stage of his life.\u00a0 This past weekend, \u00a0he auctioned off almost all of his worldly possessions;\u00a0huge home, private air strip, even his prized aero-treking motorized toys\u00a0\u00a0and has headed to Central America to begin a new life and a new company to develop natural medicines. \u00a0And yet, he is thrilled by his loss, or from his perspective, his gain.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>He told me a few months back,<\/span><span style=\"font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';\"> \u201cPeople think that if you have lots of money, then your life is set and for me, that is definitely not true.\u201d\u00a0 One of the absurdities of McAfee\u2019s life with wealth was the acquisition of what he simply calls \u201cstuff.\u201d \u201cFinancial success brings many things to our lives,\u201d\u00a0he says, \u201cit brings freedom, attention\u2014sometimes unwanted attention&#8211;and, yes, it inevitably brings stuff. Stuff that we don\u2019t need, stuff simply to fill some gaping hole within ourselves that can\u2019t be filled with, well, stuff.\u201d \u00a0McAfee is not suggesting that money is evil, that it is something to be avoided. All RMITs agree that money is a good thing, but it must be earned and used well in order to bring any degree of real happiness into your life.\u00a0 McAfee agrees with the late comedian George Carlin, who famously said, \u201cA house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.\u201d McAfee offers, \u201cIf I had my life to do all over again, I would have done it with less stuff and more grace, meaning being less driven by the urge to meet society\u2019s measure of success and more driven by the urge to integrate the world around me through my company in a harmonious way.\u201d\u00a0 On Saturday, he began his new life. ABC&#8217;s Nightline chronicled the story. Bravo John.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; color: green;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">abcnews.go.com\/<strong>Nightline<\/strong>\/story?id=8462247.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anti-virus pioneer, John McAfee in no longer the richest man in Rodeo, New Mexico.  He has lost 90% of his net worth during this recession. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[284,283,287,181,286,285],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":712,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}