Generous billionaires are not hard to come by, but it is definitely a challenge to find a billionaire who spends all his fortune on charity just to end up broke.
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Feeney, who grew up in a poor neighborhood of New Jersey, is a genius at finding business opportunities. Since childhood, he would take any job to make a few cents for his family—jobs like distributing umbrellas in summer and selling Christmas cards in winter. In his college years at Cornell University, he sold home-made sandwiches to other students and is still remembered there as the Sandwich Man. Then, in the 1960s, Feeney established airport retailer Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), which helped him reach his billionaire status by the 1980s.
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He lived modestly, and often pondered what to do with all the money he made.
Influenced by his upbringing, Feeney decided to give away all his money to those in need in his lifetime. In 1984, the then 53-year-old Feeney signed over everything—his DFS shares and the various businesses and properties he had acquired worldwide—to Atlantic Philanthropies, a charity foundation he established. In the following decades, Feeney donated through the organization more than $8 billion anonymously, to charities, universities, human rights campaigns, and foundations worldwide.
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Pioneering the idea of “Giving while Living,” Feeney is a role model for many famous billionaires today, including Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
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In September 2020, Feeney’s go-for-broke mission was completed, and he now lives happily with his wife on a pension in a modest apartment in San Francisco.