Let me back up and tell you who I actually am, because the man my son thinks he knows is only half the story.
My name is Thomas Warren, though everyone’s called me Tom for sixty-two years now. For the past three of those years I’ve lived in a modest apartment furnished mostly with IKEA pieces and a television I picked up at Costco on a Tuesday afternoon sale. I drive a 2008 Honda Civic with a small dent in the rear bumper that I’ve never bothered fixing. My weekly routine includes clipping coupons, shopping at the discount grocery store two blocks over, and eating dinner most Thursdays at the same diner that gives seniors a break on the check.
Here’s what my son doesn’t know. I have roughly nine million dollars in liquid assets, generating something close to a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a month in passive income from investments I built up over thirty-five years running a hedge fund and, later, a private equity firm that bears my name.
