Have you ever seen a vampire who was poor? We, obviously, mean the fictional, dreamy ones and not the real ones. Duh. Vampires as we knew lived in earth-filled coffins and skulked around the dark cellar, drinking human blood. However, you wouldn’t imagine Damon Salvatore or Carlisle Cullen living this way. 

It’s always the new hot guy in the school who turns out to be the Vampire you fall in love with. Then his hot-headed troublemaker brother appears in a mist, and it’s a love triangle. 

But did you ever wonder that the only problems our friendly Vampires had were love problems and not monetary ones? Sure, surviving in today’s climate is a struggle in itself, even if a crowd of angry villagers are not running after you with wooden stakes and fire torches. So what makes the vampires have a life of luxury and extravagance that entices human beings? 

Oh, you want to go to Paris for a date? Let me call my Vampire friend.

Hi Damon, what’s up? 

Got a Ferrari, and endless wealth but love is still a struggle 

Why is money not a problem for vampires? One of the great things about being a vampire is that as long as you avoid things like stakes, garlic, and getting your head chopped off, you’ll pretty much live forever. This means that vampires can take full advantage of the magic of compounding, which Warren Buffett often talks about and which Albert Einstein supposedly referred to as “the most powerful force in the universe.” Compounding does matter, but there’s more to investing than that. 

Sookie Stackhouse raises a good enough question we’re all thinking about. The heroine from “Southern Vampire” novels or the show “True Blood” asks Bill the vampire; 

“Sixty thousand dollars isn’t a lot of money to a vampire, surely,” I observed. “You all seem to have plenty of money.” 

“Vampires rob their victims, of course,” Bill said matter-of-factly. “Early on, we take the money from the corpse. Later, when we’re more experienced, we can exert enough control to persuade a human to give us the money willingly, then forget it’s been done. Some of us hire money managers, some of us go into real estate, some of us live on the interest from our investments.” 

Living forever does miracles to compound interests 

Since we don’t know any Indian vampires (If you do let us know), let’s assume a couple of vampires came over on the Mayflower, got their hands on a single dollar and were very savvy enough to invest it at an average inflation-adjusted interest rate of 6%, that $1 would be worth $6.2 billion today. 

It’s no wonder that time plays a huge role in this. And since we’re not immortals (Ugh, I know right?), we have a limited time to make the most of the interest from the investments. 

Lesson from the Vamps: Be a long-term investor 

One great lesson is to be a long-term investor and be smart to manage the money you’re accumulating. Not all vampires turn out rich you know. 

Glen Witman in his book “Economics of the Undead” explains it with a story; 

“Baron Federov was a minor aristocrat in the court of Alexander I of Russia in the early 1800’s. Known mostly for various bits of scandal related to the wife of a fellow noble, he lived a life of genteel poverty. However, his life radically changed one night when he was visited by Count Vardalok, who drank his blood and left him for dead.

Accidentally, some of the Count’s blood dripped down the Baron’s throat, and so Federov woke that night as a vampire. Now, the Baron was a practical man and understood compound interest. Selling off what possessions he had, he invested in several promising Moscow properties and businesses, making a will that gave his assets to a “future descendant.” He faked his own death as a human and then hid away in a crypt, confidently inheritance and living the rest of his time in prosperity.

In 1917 he awoke to claim his riches. Unfortunately for the Baron, this also happened to be the time of the Russian Revolution, and he awoke not to the riches that compounding promised, but instead to see all his property taken away in the communist revolution. Penniless, he wandered the streets and was staked the next night by a patrolling revolutionary guard planning to return many years hence to claim his inheritance and live the rest of his time in prosperity.” 

It’s said that history is written by winners, and it’s not a lie. Nobody will tell you a story where they lost money in the stock market. But if we knew a poor vampire, they probably wouldn’t be included here. After all, investments only work when you are savvy like the vampires who steal the hearts of many teenage girls. 

Markets this week; 

This week we’ve been; 

Reading 1984 by George Orwell, published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one’s poor attempt to find individually. 

Watching Wednesday by Tim Burton, the gothic satirical masterpiece with a modern twist to the Addams family chaos.