The soul of wealth

The wealthiest man in the city once promised to donate gold equal to the weight of a cow at a charity event. The organisers, being business-minded, asked for some time, not to think but to fatten the cow, and immediately started feeding it biryani to make it heavier. That is the logic of long-term investing: the more you feed it, the bigger the return. But if the cow gets too fat and collapses, as often happens during Qurbani Eid, the deal collapses too. Investments behave in much the same way, always subject to market risks.

This brings us to the real psychology of money in our own backyard. Here, wealth is not just about patience and compounding; it is about politics, connections, and sometimes a very creative relationship with the banking system. Morgan Housel's reminder that "wealth is what you do not see" often collides with our culture of showing off everything: the towers with neon logos, the convoys of black SUVs, and the endless sponsorships splashed across cricket tournaments. In Bangladesh, invisible wealth will not get you on the evening news or talk shows, but a shiny Land Cruiser with a police siren will.

Then comes the tricky part: getting rich is one thing, staying rich is another. Here, fortunes are made overnight through one government tender, one inflated import deal, or one "special arrangement" with the banks. But survival is dull, and dull does not sell. That is why empires rise like flyovers in record time and collapse just as fast, sometimes before the pillars are even dry.

No matter how much you plan, you are not in control. A sudden change in regulations, a currency slide, or simply the wrong cousin becoming a minister can turn today's millionaire into tomorrow's cautionary tale. Add to that the invisible dice of luck and risk. Some people are celebrated as business geniuses for being in the right place at the right time, while others do everything right and still end up crushed by a policy change. In our country, some build wealth through sweat and strategy, while others simply loot the banks, rebrand themselves as "borrowers under stress," and carry on building marble palaces. That kind of luck does not usually get covered in finance books, but here it is practically a national curriculum, though it is not taught in universities.

The irony is that behaviour still outweighs intelligence. Those who quietly reinvest, keep their heads down and know when to stop are the ones who last. The rest spend their lives chasing comparisons, one more house, one more car, one more foreign degree for the children, never realising that the treadmill has no finish line. "Enough" is a word rarer in our vocabulary.

While the West celebrates Warren Buffett or Bill Gates for their frugal habits and philanthropy, we often assume wealth must scream in neon. Yet a few of our top conglomerates quietly prove otherwise. Behind the steel, tea and cement empires are families who live modestly, avoid unnecessary pomp and quietly support causes. Their restraint contrasts sharply with the billboard culture, showing that humility is not an import but a homegrown asset too.

The tragedy is that our media glorifies the rogues and hardly spares a headline for the good ones. Bad news sells, they say, while stories of integrity gather dust. By ignoring our own Warren Buffetts, we waste the chance to inspire thousands more. Instead, we remain trapped in a short-term obsession with scandal, forgetting that real progress comes from celebrating humility, resilience and long-term vision.

In the end, the psychology of money in Bangladesh is not about how much gold you can weigh or how many SUVs you can parade. It is about building wealth that lasts, behaving with humility and resisting the temptation to loot in the name of "business." Until we learn to celebrate the quiet builders instead of the noisy thieves, our economy will remain rich in spectacle but poor in substance.

The writer is president of the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh and founder of BuildCon Consultancies Ltd