Chapter Four

TRUTH SERUM

In the fall of 1994, over three years after David and I met at Microsoft, I arrived at his apartment and rang the bell, looking forward to taking him out for dinner to celebrate the success of a presentation he’d given at work.

“You’re here,” he said, finally opening the door, looking uncharacteristically ready to go.

David’s face was clean-shaven, his white shirt pressed, and he was wearing the brown and black houndstooth sports jacket we’d dubbed “the professor” for its tweedy, intellectual quality. It could have had suede patches on the elbows, but thankfully did not.

“Are you ready?” I asked. “Everything okay?”

“Yes. Fine. Let’s go,” he said, but seemed in a daze.

As we drove to the restaurant, I detected Racquet Club cologne, a scent David’s grandmother had given him for his twelfth birthday, which he used sparingly for special occasions. He’d clearly gotten dressed up.

When we were close to the restaurant, I circled the block, scanning for parking, and seeing a flash of taillights, a free spot just a block away, I knew it was our lucky night. We entered the restaurant, and right away, the host led us through the peach-colored dining room, directly to a table near the window. After sitting down, we studied our menus, the aroma of herbs and red wine drifting over from the open kitchen where a wood burning oven blazed. Everything sounded delicious. There was duck breast with port and cherries, wild mushroom risotto, a pan-seared salmon with huckleberry sauce. Mulling over the choices, I was surprised when the host appeared at our table with a bottle of champagne. How did he know we were celebrating? I smiled and nodded, watching him remove the foil at the top of the bottle. He gave the wire a few quick twists, slowly loosened the cork, and with a festive pop and a skillful pour, two tall flutes stood before us.

“Congratulations,” I said, lifting my glass. “Tell me how it went. What questions did people ask?”

David took a long sip of champagne. Returning his glass to the table, he wiped his mouth with his twisted napkin and glanced around the room.

“I actually have . . .” he said, leaning over the table, attempting to find something in his jacket pocket. “I have something I want to ask you.”

He pushed back his chair and, holding a small blue velvet box in one hand and opening it with the other, he lowered himself to one knee.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

For a moment, I just stared, the room becoming a peachy blur. It was the question I’d wanted to hear, but I was surprised.

“Yes. Yes,” I said, tugging at David’s sleeve to get him to stand.

Standing myself, I threw my arms around his neck in a clumsy embrace, giving him a quick kiss, and then another and another, telling him how much I loved him.

As we sat down, I looked at the ring in its box.

“I’m so surprised . . . and so happy. When did you do this?”

“This afternoon,” David said. “Wait. Did you say yes?”

“Yes! Of course, I said yes.”

Song filled the room. The restaurant’s owner was walking in our direction, serenading us with opera, his voice booming, his arms outstretched. All the other diners had stopped talking. They were looking at us, smiling. Some began to clap.

When the song ended and people returned to their meals, David leaned over our table, grabbed my hands, and pulled me toward him.

“I’m so glad you said yes,” he whispered. “I was so nervous. Can you feel that? My hands are shaking.”

“Did you think I’d say no?”

“I knew you’d say yes, but—I didn’t. I haven’t done this before.”

Earlier that afternoon, David had called my parents to ask for my hand in marriage, earning himself big points with my mother and father. Having secured their blessing, he raced downtown to a jeweler’s, arriving fifteen minutes before the store closed to choose a ring. On the way home, he’d stopped at the restaurant to reserve our special spot by the window.

“So that’s why he brought champagne. You did a lot in a couple of hours. That was a quick ring purchase.”

“This doesn’t have to be the ring you keep,” David informed me. “Do you like it?”

I took the ring from the box, placed it on my finger and held out my hand, examining the diamond at arm’s length as David watched. The setting was just what I would have chosen myself: simple and classic with a round gem floating in a white-gold band—but was the diamond a bit too small?

I hadn’t been aware of a desire to marry Prince Charming, but getting engaged was like being in a fairytale. The man I loved had asked me to marry him. I was thrilled to think of David as my husband, me his wife. For weeks, nothing bothered me. I smiled while waiting in line, shrugged when late, and regaled co-workers at Microsoft with the story of the proposal. I also called old friends from high school and college and spent hours on the phone with my mother, sharing my excitement. She was my best listener, pleased David would be her son-in-law, and happier still to know her thirty-year-old daughter would finally be getting married.

But while I smiled through each day, happy to be engaged, I was increasingly plagued by an unpleasant, shameful desire. I wanted a bigger diamond—and was horrified to care. Until David held that blue velvet box before me, I hadn’t given engagement rings a moment of thought. Expensive baubles and jewels had never been my daydreams. Then again, I’d loved the strand of pink-white pearls my parents had given me for my twenty-first birthday. I’d worn that necklace with pride during my senior year of college, believing it made me part of the in-crowd. All the East Coast girls had pearls. But what was going on now? Was I looking for the right ring to replace my coed necklace, hoping to fit in? Had I grown up at all? Was I so insecure? Was I that shallow and materialistic?

For days, I wrestled with myself, uncomfortable about my wish for a larger gem and unsure why I cared—and my diamond took on a sinister life of its own. I did my best to scold it into submission with a firm “down boy” and wag of a finger, telling it size didn’t matter. But my little diamond was so demanding. It wouldn’t leave me alone. Worse still, other diamonds joined in, ganging up against me, showing off as bigger, bolder, and brighter than my own, glistening from the fingers of strangers in the street, and beckoning from offices at work.

“Can I see your ring?” I asked a woman at Microsoft. “It’s so pretty.”

I held her fingers and looked for as long as was polite.

“Thank you,” she cooed. “I’m happy. He did a good job.”

I wanted to grab her hand and pull it close to my face, to get a long, hard look at exactly how her diamond compared. Why was it so much bigger than mine?

I knew, intellectually, that the heft of my diamond didn’t add to my value and had nothing to do with the depth of David’s love. The size was not a reflection of the importance he placed on our relationship either. He didn’t care about diamonds. Was his money to blame? He had so much of it, more than I could fathom, more than was comfortable to contemplate. If the possibility of a bigger diamond hadn’t existed, if those stock options hadn’t seemed to be demanding something big, I probably wouldn’t have been dreaming of more sparkle. Not me. I wasn’t that girl. And yet, with the stock price soaring, with David having been promoted—twice—he could afford a diamond of any size. If the stock price continued climbing, in the next couple of years, he would have nearly ten million dollars. Ten million dollars! It was an astronomical amount. Ten million dollars demanded a bigger diamond.

But, ashamed to be thinking about David’s stock options, and even more mortified by my craving for bling, I didn’t say anything. How could I tell him I was thinking about money and worried my diamond was too small? I couldn’t possibly make such a horrifying confession. Luckily, David brought up the subject of my ring himself, telling me that before asking for my hand in marriage, he had called Matt for advice on buying a ring. Then, after learning Donna’s diamond was “about a carat,” he’d visited a jeweler and purchased a .93-carat diamond for $3,500.

“Let’s go back to the jeweler and look around,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Dashing to the car, I told myself it only made sense to do a little shopping. I’d be wearing my ring every day for the rest of my life. Neither of us knew anything about diamonds. We needed to educate ourselves.

Before entering the jeweler’s, I pulled David to a stop in front of the store window and pointed to a yellow diamond pendant the size and shape of an almond. Pronouncing it rare, I turned, almost bumping into the guard by the door. For a moment, I was afraid he might reach out and stop me. Could he tell I was an imposter, attempting to access a world about which I knew nothing? Was he aware of me being an unlikable character, dissatisfied with my ring, and hoping my fiancé would buy me something bigger? But he barely glanced in my direction as we stepped inside.

We made our way toward the back and my attention was drawn to a case filled with jewels. Mesmerized, I leaned over the glass to get a better look at a pair of emerald earrings, glad David couldn’t see me visualizing myself as their owner. All the gems in the case were so beautiful, so dazzling. My eyes slid to the right, landing on a diamond bracelet before catching sight of a saleswoman who was shifting in our direction.

“You took your time,” she said to David. “But I knew you’d be back.”

The saleswoman was only a few years older than me, but her smile was as practiced as someone twice my age.

“He was here just a couple minutes and paid full price,” she informed me.

I forced a smile as David told her we were interested in seeing a few more diamonds.

“Perfect,” she purred.

She paraded us to the back of the store where we exited through a door into a startlingly bright room.

“Please, have a seat,” she said, pointing to two chairs in front of a large wooden desk. “May I see your ring?”

She lifted a grey velvet cloth out of a drawer and smoothed it flat with the palm of a manicured hand. Then, holding my ring between her thumb and index finger, with a monocle to her eye, she disappeared behind a waterfall of blonde hair.

“Our clients bring in their old pieces when they are ready to upgrade,” her voice declared. “You can make exchanges any time. When it comes to engagement rings, everyone buys the biggest diamond they can afford.”

She set the ring down and looked directly at David, who seemed completely immune to her salesmanship. She then turned her smile on me.

“When he gets promoted and you want a bigger diamond, you can always come back. What you get today is not what you’ll want ten years from now.”

I was both intrigued and disgusted, ashamed of my greed and newfound interest in sparkle. Her statement was distasteful. Yet, I was wishing for a bigger diamond that very same day. The saleswomen pulled a black box out of a drawer and opened the lid. Using long silver tweezers, she removed several icy gems and placed them gently on the velvet. She then handed me my ring along with a loupe and explained the meaning of cut, color, and clarity. What a shock! Size wasn’t the only problem. There were defects everywhere. Hundreds of scratches, squiggles, and blemishes snaked through the diamond in my ring.

Staring helplessly at the flaws, as they jeered back at me, I sat silently in my shame, unable to admit the truth to myself let alone to my fiancé. How could I confess to craving a bigger, flawless, colorless, perfectly-cut stone?

“What do you think?” I heard him ask. “Do you like any of these?”

To David, the attributes of a diamond were as meaningless as the dictate to spend two month’s salary on a ring. He knew it was all a ploy orchestrated by De Beers. Logically, I knew it too. But De Beers had seduced me—and many others. In 1940, before De Beers launched a campaign linking diamonds to engagement, only ten percent of brides-to-be wore a ring with a diamond. Then, after De Beers began generating demand, asserting that two months’ salary was a small price to pay, capitalizing on a woman’s interest in romance, and promising a diamond was forever, by 1990, eighty percent of all new brides had diamonds in their engagement rings.

But De Beers wasn’t the only reason for my interest in more sparkle. Our wealth was egging me on too. Just as De Beers had added diamonds to the American collective unconscious as the symbol of forever, for years, Hollywood had been showing me how the rich were supposed to live. Whether flashy or elegant, garish or sophisticated, rich people needed to look the part, and my look was sorely lacking.

“Just ask,” Wealth scoffed. “You don’t know how to live. What a waste. You aren’t cultured or savvy enough to have money. You’ll never fit in or have the appropriate style.”

Although she had no idea how much money we had, in my head, my mother chimed in too, calling down from above.

“Where is this shallow interest coming from?” she asked. “What have I done wrong? Do you really want something showy and ostentatious? You’ve always cared too much about material things.”

She was right, of course. Huge diamonds were for spoiled princesses and my mother’s worst nightmare. Her ring was tasteful, a band with a subtle row of five tiny diamonds. She wasn’t one of those people flaunting a rock.

“Do you like this one?” David asked.

I shifted in my chair as the room began to spin and the gems danced on their velvet bed.

“Any of these are good,” I said.

“Good? What do you mean ‘good’?”

David sounded annoyed, but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t look in his direction. I wanted my fiancé to choose a bigger diamond, hop in the Jeep, and save me from my shame. But diamonds weren’t David’s toys, and since he didn’t think to play the knight, we ended up leaving the store with the same ring we had brought in.

During the months that followed, I was too busy at work to think much about my ring. Our team was preparing to launch Utopia and expectations were high. Upper management believed the product would be a huge success, giving home users a whole new way of interacting with their computers to accomplish tasks. We’d hired an outside agency to come up with the name Microsoft Bob. We’d also convinced Bill Gates to unveil Bob at the 1995 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. But the unique name and fanfare only turned our product into a more spectacular flop. The animated characters meant to help people write letters, track finances, and organize their schedules didn’t revolutionize home computing. Focusing on the user interface, we’d failed to recognize the product we had: software that only appealed to new users and required hardware way beyond the capacity of most home machines. Luckily, at Microsoft and within the tech industry in general, risks and failures were viewed as opportunities to learn.

As I was doing a lot of learning from Microsoft Bob, I was also planning our wedding—designing invitations with Donna, selecting flowers with my mother, and doing most everything else with David. The two of us toured potential venues for the reception. We also listened to bands and tasted cakes. Our goal was to create a festive atmosphere with delicious food and lots of dancing. The wedding ceremony was important too. Since David had grown up Episcopalian, we attended classes and went through premarital counseling, which brought us closer.

When our wedding preparations were complete and my frenzied days at work had grown calmer, I gathered my courage.

“I feel bad about this,” I said, standing in front of the mirror in David’s bedroom. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a while but couldn’t admit it to myself.”

His face appeared in the mirror behind me.

“What is it?” he asked.

Seeing the worry in his eyes, I turned quickly and wrapped my arms around him, holding tight.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said into his shoulder.

After a few moments, David pulled away and stared at me, again asking what was wrong.

“It’s just . . . my ring,” I said. “I’d like to get a platinum band. The white gold doesn’t show off the diamond.”

He laughed. “Is that all?”

I nodded, pulled him close, and hid my face in his chest.

Over Labor Day weekend, on September 2, 1995, wearing my mother’s raw silk wedding dress, my father walking me down the aisle, I met David at the altar. Surrounded by family and friends, we became husband and wife. After the ceremony, we were chauffeured in an antique Rolls Royce to the Seattle Art Museum where we celebrated in the open front lobby, David looking handsome in his tuxedo, and me deeply content. The smart, funny man by my side, who made me feel seen and understood, was my forever partner. Together, we cut into a two-tiered white cake decorated with blue delphiniums and waltzed to Anne Murray’s “Could I Have This Dance.”

Although my father and I never spoke directly about the costs, he underwrote our big day, happy to do so. He was probably also relieved David and I covered extra expenses, happy to do so as well. We were lucky we could contribute and not worry about prices. Just as De Beers influenced my desire for a diamond, I’d been convinced that no expense should be spared for a couple’s once-in-a-lifetime special day. Big-ticket items like venue, catering, and band seemed like necessary expenses, out of my control. But when it came to smaller costs, I wasn’t carefree.

After saving my pennies and working for $3.25 an hour in the summers during high school, I understood the value of a dollar. So, when my father generously gave us cases of wine made from the grapes he’d grown and the caterer wanted to charge us $5 per bottle for corkage, I was outraged. Five dollars was way too much to pay to drink our own wine. But instead of wasting energy in anger, I played a trick in my mind, telling myself that I was paying a flat $300 fee to have my father’s wine poured all evening long for our guests.

In years to come, both David and I would continue to find spending small more psychologically difficult than spending big. It was relatively easy to pay an exorbitant amount on a hotel room than to buy anything from the minibar. To David, minibar pricing was illogical. To me, it was a rip-off. Even when spending thousands on accommodations, neither of us could bring ourselves to pay $6 for a small bottle of water.

For our honeymoon, David and I flew to Portugal, spent several days exploring Lisbon, then continued south to the island of Madeira where we checked into a gorgeous hilltop hotel overlooking a lush valley and the Mediterranean Sea. The setting was idyllic. But standing on our balcony, the second evening of our stay, watching the hotel staff set up for dinner in the garden below, I wanted to cry. When I’d suggested we eat outside at the hotel, David had groaned. He wasn’t in the mood. He didn’t want yet another elaborate meal. He wanted to order room service—and despite the tranquility and appearance of perfection, I felt a rising panic.

Over the previous days, David had been right about everything. He knew how to read a map and which museums to visit. He’d taken to criticizing me too, suggesting various improvements I needed to make, like spending less time getting ready in the evenings and being less particular about where we ate. Now, because of my interest in dining in the garden, I wasn’t giving us enough downtime. Obviously, he said, we should eat something simple in the room. We’d been out every night. It was time to stay in.

Looking over at my husband as he lay on the bed reading, I couldn’t stop the tears. Caught up in the wedding, choosing a band, selecting a menu, hoping to make the evening perfect, I’d lost track of our relationship. Did David see and accept me? Did I accept him?

“Have we made a mistake?” I finally asked.

In many ways, I’d set myself up. My expectations around honeymoons had me imagining nothing but romantic nights full of candlelit dinners, the two of us gazing into one another’s eyes after long glorious days of togetherness, walks on long sandy beaches, holding hands, deep in meaningful conversation, me beautiful and smiling, David handsome and adoring. The fact that we were honeymooning in Europe, staying in beautiful hotels, made it seem even more critical to feel nothing but perfectly content. How could I not? And yet, no matter what our circumstances, no matter where we were, even though we were married, we were still ourselves—two separate people with messy emotions and thoughts of our own.

That night, David and I spent time listening to one another. As we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable, we again felt the love that existed between us. While I’d felt criticized and inadequate, David had been feeling unacknowledged and unheard. He’d taken my slowness in the evenings and my focus on food as a sign of me not caring about him or his feelings.

Decades later, we would discuss that evening again, and to my complete surprise, David would admit he’d been worried about money. He had upgraded us to a nicer room overlooking the garden, then, unbeknownst to me, he’d begun to think about how much we were spending.

“We paid a lot for the wedding. The honeymoon was expensive. When we upgraded to that room, I felt as though we were out of control,” he told me. “I didn’t want to pay more for that dinner.”

“I had no idea! Spending has never been an issue for you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was a new husband,” he said. “I wasn’t going to admit being worried about finances to my new wife.”

“But I was in tears,” I said. “I thought there was some big problem between us. You should have said something. I had no idea.”

I’d hoped for the perfect honeymoon, a special wedding, and the right diamond for my engagement ring. Clearly, David had had expectations too. He’d wanted to be in charge, to have everything go smoothly, and to be on top of our finances, making our honeymoon special. Even with me crying and upset, fearing we’d made a mistake, he’d kept his financial concerns to himself.

“It probably would have been healthier if I’d said something,” David admitted.

“I think it would have brought us closer,” I said. “As it was, I was worried about our relationship. Plus, you were holding that burden. I didn’t even have the opportunity to share it with you.”

Over the years, David and I have become better communicators. We’ve learned to talk through tough times and hard emotions and have been keeping the conversation going. While money has made our life easier, talking about finances and being in sync with our values and goals has been important too. The amount we have hasn’t been as instrumental to our happiness as agreeing on when, where, and how much to spend and to save—and talking when we don’t.

Like the call I’d gotten from Donna five years earlier letting me know about an opening at Microsoft, in 1996 David got a call that would lead to a pivotal decision. A guy named Jeff Bezos was conducting a reference-check for a VP of Marketing candidate who was a friend of David’s. After forty-five minutes, they were still talking. A few weeks after that, David and I found ourselves having dinner with Jeff and his wife, MacKenzie.

The four of us sat around a small table, sampled fried sage leaves, and shared courtship stories. We also discussed the business Jeff was running out of his garage. At the end of the evening, David and I were looking forward to seeing Jeff and MacKenzie again. But our attention turned first to life’s next big step. I hadn’t grown up dreaming of motherhood, but at thirty-one years old, married to David, I was excited about starting a family. David wanted to have children too, and it wasn’t long before we were counting weeks and consulting What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

In November, we went out with Jeff and MacKenzie again. This time, as we chatted over pasta, Jeff told us more about his company, Amazon.com. He also mentioned his search for a new marketing VP. And as David and I made our way to the car, I wondered aloud if he might be interested in the job.

In 1996, no one was leaving Microsoft. A few employees had begun complaining about the “golden handcuffs” of their unvested stock options, their future fortunes keeping them tied to the company. Others were talking of “resting and vesting,” coasting along until they could cash in their options. But David was still fully engaged—and curious about Jeff’s company.

David had long been a reader. As a young boy, he was often staring at a book, walking to school, lost in a story, prompting neighbors to call his mother, worried about him crossing the street. In high school, his love for technology led him to spend hours in RadioShack writing programs on the demonstration TRS-80 with his best friend. And, as an adult, curious about the bookstore Jeff was building on the internet, David wanted to learn more. After talking with Jeff, then going through a series of interviews, he had a decision to make.

“Jeff doesn’t want to hire me for marketing,” David told me, pacing the kitchen. “But he created a vice president of product development position and offered me the job.”

“Amazon is just getting started,” I said. “It’s a great time to join. You could have a huge impact.”

David agreed. But when he tried to give notice at Microsoft, a commotion ensued. Upper management did everything possible to convince him to stay, presenting him with opportunities, benefits, and money. Not only did Microsoft offer him one hundred thousand stock options, Steve Ballmer, Bill Gate’s second-in-command, called David into his office, apoplectic at the thought of his departure.

“He’d just gotten off a plane from Japan and must have been exhausted,” David told me. “But he was manic. For an hour, he yelled at me as he bounced a basketball on the floor of his office.”

David met with Bill Gates too.

“Bill told me leaving Microsoft would be the stupidest decision I’d ever make,” David said.

“Maybe he has a point,” I said.

Microsoft was highly successful and David’s career was on a fast track. After working as a summer intern on Access and being hired into the group full-time, he’d advanced quickly. He had over one hundred people working for him and had recently been chosen to create and manage a new finance product. With Bill applying pressure to get him to stay, was leaving the company a good decision? Jeff might be ambitious, with plans to build a billion-dollar business, but startups were a lot of work. We were about to have a baby. Was a new job in a bookstore, playing with technology a good idea when Microsoft was doing so well and we were going to be parents?

“I’m not sure about the timing,” I said. “You’ll want to be with the baby.”

“I’ll get plenty of paternity leave and vacation time,” David said. “But I agree. Most people are telling me to stay at Microsoft, telling me to ‘have one baby at a time’.”

“What about all those Microsoft options?” I said. “Did they really offer you one hundred thousand options? That could be worth twenty or thirty million dollars—or more.”

In just a couple of years, David would have ten million dollars, an amount beyond anything I’d ever imagined. And yet, strangely, after several months of living with the idea, ten million dollars no longer sounded outrageous. In fact, as I thought about the twenty or thirty million dollars David had been offered, ten million dollars didn’t sound like that much. Amounts were surprisingly relative, their value dependent upon what came before, what came after, and the figures nearby. One hundred was a lot compared to ten, but not much compared to a thousand. Even with many additional zeros, the same held true.

“Don’t worry,” David said. “We already have way more than we need.”

David had never spent much time thinking about money. When he was considering his original offer from Microsoft six years earlier and the president of the company called him, trying to convince him to join, he hadn’t taken the opportunity to request a signing bonus. He didn’t think to ask about more stock, either. Money hadn’t been on his mind. He’d been trying to figure out if he liked the company and wasn’t sure how he felt about moving across the country—and had ended up asking Microsoft’s president for a few more days to think.

“My stock options make it easy to take a risk on Jeff’s company,” he said. “Do you realize my vested options are worth three million dollars?”

My stomach dropped.

“Three million dollars?” I said. “Is that all?”

After thinking we had ten million, with seven million dollars suddenly gone, and so many options being dangled in front of David, I wondered if my mother was right. Was I too interested in money? I’d never imagined craving bling or viewing three million dollars as nothing—but I did. Was money itself to blame? My reaction seemed so typical of the rich, evidence of greed.

But money wasn’t corrupting me. Wealth hadn’t clouded my thinking. I wasn’t any more or less greedy than I’d been in the past. In fact, money wasn’t changing me as much as I might have expected. It wasn’t even changing me as much as I might have hoped. Like a truth serum, wealth seemed to be revealing more of who I was, exposing my desire for more sparkle and more options—and would eventually uncover my capacity for gratitude and generosity too.

Logically, and with some distance, I knew three million dollars was a fortune. But thinking about David leaving Microsoft, I wasn’t considering the rest of the world or absolute sums. I was thinking about all the money he’d be leaving behind. I was also thinking about our coming baby, about the work required at a startup, and about our friends Donna, Matt, Lynn, and Adam who would still be at Microsoft, continuing to vest. I was thinking about David too, and wanted him to be happy. Following dreams was more important than financial reward. He could afford to take a risk. He loved the idea of playing with books and technology. He also wanted a new challenge. So, even though it was hard to let go of that much money, even as co-workers, friends, and Microsoft executives counseled him to stay, I encouraged David to follow his heart and take the Amazon job.

Contemplation & Conversation

•Jennifer’s wish for a bigger diamond is driven, in part, by her desire to live up to the way the rich supposedly look and behave. Do you act or try to look as though you have more—or less—money than you actually do? Why?

•How did it make you feel to know Jennifer thought ten million dollars didn’t sound like that much?

•Jennifer claims money hasn’t changed her as much as she expected, or even as much as she might have hoped. Do you think wealth changes people or reveals who they are?