--- title: "Wise Money: A Thanksgiving Lesson on Generosity — Quarry Hill Advisors" description: "George Price tried to explain generosity with math, then gave away everything he owned. His extreme life offers a Thanksgiving challenge: decide what you want to give and how much is right for you." --- [Saint Paul, MN Financial Insights - Quarry Hill Advisors](https://quarryhilladvisors.com/blog) # [Wise Money: A Thanksgiving Lesson on Generosity — Quarry Hill Advisors](https://quarryhilladvisors.com/blog/george-price-thanksgiving-giving-lesson) Written by [Bjorn Amundson CFP®](https://quarryhilladvisors.com/blog/author/bjorn-amundson) | 11.6.2026 ## Quote to Ponder *"No one is ever impoverished through the giving of charity."* **— Maimonides**   ## Recommended Links - - - - - [Five Things I Learned in Hiring a Financial Adviser](https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/hiring-financial-advisor-tips-02056b3e?mod=mhp) - Article, *The Wall Street Journal* - [The art and science of happines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Pf2Xb5PdA)s - TEDx Talk, *Arthur Brooks* - [My Wife Says We Can't Afford to Retire](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/my-wife-says-we-cant-afford-to-retire-we-have-4-million-do-i-just-keep-working-f1b6b085) - Article, MarketWatch - [Cognitive Mercantilism](https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/cognitive-mercantilism?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)- Substack Article, Venkatesh Rao - [Don’t Let Politics Poison Your Portfolio](https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/dont-let-politics-poison-your-portfolio-f346b227?mod=djemintinvestor) - Article, *The Wall Street Journal* - [What Exactly Are You Waiting For?](https://www.spilledcoffee.co/p/what-exactly-are-you-waiting-for)- Substack Article, Eric Soda - Spilled Coffee - [Midterm Elections — What Do They Mean For Markets?](https://www.dimensional.com/us-en/insights/midterm-elections-what-do-they-mean-for-markets) - Article, Dimensional - [Good Enough](https://collabfund.com/blog/good-enough/) - Article, Morgan Housel ## A note from Bjorn Amundson, CFP® The introduction to the book *Philanthropy* features what might be the most extraordinary biography I have ever encountered. It was about George Price, one of the most brilliant people of the twentieth century. He’s one of the most extreme people I’ve ever read about, and almost no one has heard of him. He was a genius, and he knew it. He earned a PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago and worked on the Manhattan Project. Then he spent two decades moving between jobs: teaching, medical research, science writing, IBM. He was brilliant at all of them but settled in none. He kept quitting, kept moving, kept waiting for the world to notice his talent. At one point he was writing to four Nobel laureates in four different fields, trying to convince each of them he had made a discovery worthy of their attention. He was a committed atheist. His wife was a devout Catholic. For most couples, that's a difference. For Price, it was a contest, and he had to win. After eight years, the marriage was over. He left her and their two young daughters and rarely saw them again. At 45, he set out to finally get the recognition he was looking for. He picked one of the biggest problems he could find. Darwin's theory had a hole in it. If evolution rewards whatever helps you survive and reproduce, kindness shouldn't exist. The selfish should beat the generous every time. Yet everywhere you look, people and animals help each other, sometimes at great cost. Why? So Price taught himself genetics, and within a year he had an equation that explained, in math, how generosity can spread. Equation in hand, he marched into the Galton Laboratory at University College London and announced, “My name is George Price. Here’s my equation. What do you have to say about this?” Within ninety minutes, he walked out with an honorary fellowship and the keys to his own office. The equation appeared in *Nature* in 1970. Biologists still use it. This is where things got even stranger for George. His own equation began to trouble him. Kindness, the math said, was actually self-interest wearing a disguise. The mother feeding her baby. The neighbor with the casserole. The donor with the checkbook. Underneath it all were genes looking out for other genes. Even charity was selfish. If everything is selfish, no one is truly good. Not even him. So he flipped. The lifelong atheist became a Christian and set out to disprove his own equation with his own life. His equation told him that true selflessness didn’t exist. His faith told him to love his neighbor without limits. He set out to do the latter. He gave away his money. Then his belongings. He opened his flat to homeless men he met on the street, and when it filled up, he gave that away too. By the end, he was sleeping in squats near Euston station. But this didn’t bring him peace. Poor, sick, and depressed, George Price took his own life in January 1975 at age 52. ## Most of us live in the middle Almost nobody lives at the extremes. Most of us aren't ruthlessly selfish. We aren't giving away the house, either. We just don't think about it. So giving waits. Until we have more money. Until we find the perfect charity. Until we retire, or even after that. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Price, for all his faults, examined his life without mercy. Most of us don't examine ours at all. We skip both of his extremes and land on nothing. As a financial planner, I’ve seen that none of us really feel rich. Nearly every person who walks into my office feels like they are pretty frugal. No matter how much we have, we never really feel safe. Look around any American neighborhood, and it's easy to find someone with a bigger house, a nicer car, a better vacation. Comparison is powerful. It can make people who are wealthy by any global standard feel like they're falling behind. However, the global picture tells a different story. A family of four earning $100,000 is richer than nearly nine out of ten people on earth. At $250,000, it’s 97 out of 100. At $500,000, almost no one alive has more. It rarely feels that way. Money matters, but it’s the tool, not the scorecard. And it goes further than you think. Through the right charities, $1,000 can restore sight to 20 people through cataract surgery. About $5,000 can save a child’s life from a preventable disease like malaria. And $10,000 can drill a well that gives an entire village clean water. What feels small on an American balance sheet can change a life somewhere else. ## A Thanksgiving challenge Thanksgiving is the one holiday built entirely around noticing what we've been given. So here's my challenge this year. Before the turkey, take an hour. Think honestly about how fortunate you are to live where you live and have the opportunities you do. Then ask two questions George Price never quite answered. What do I want to give? And how much is right for me? Price showed that it's possible to fail at both ends. The good news is that the middle is wide, and most of us have plenty of room to move within it. Happy Thanksgiving, — Bjorn *This material is intended for educational purposes only. You should always consult a financial, tax, or legal professional familiar with your unique circumstances before making any financial decisions. Nothing contained in the material constitutes a recommendation for purchase or sale of any security, investment advisory services or tax advice. 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