New York Times Article - Harry Saal

The New York Times
June 30, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final

Net Worth Can't Measure Values

I Have often wondered what it would be like to be fantastically wealthy. Not ''lifestyles of the rich and famous'' wealthy. What is it like to be an ordinary person who comes into an extraordinary amount of money?

Harry and Carol Saal don't claim to represent anyone else who has had this experience, but they are willing to talk about what life has been like since they became multimillionaires.

From the day after his company went public in 1989, Mr. Saal said, their new net worth -- about $10 million at the time, although he declined to say what it is now -- was available to anyone reading the business pages. ''So we decided we weren't going to keep it a secret,'' he said. ''We decided to talk about the issues and how becoming wealthy has affected us.''

The Saals, now in their 60s, say they never expected to become rich. Harry Saal was a computer science professor who taught at Stanford University and the State University of New York at Buffalo in the early 1970s. In 1986, he founded Network General, based in Menlo Park, Calif.

Carol Saal worked in the company's marketing department. Their two children were 16 and 19 when the family's wealth suddenly soared.

What were their first splurges? He bought the full-size unabridged edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and an Acura NSX. She remembers a moment in the grocery store, realizing she could afford to buy $5-a-pound strawberries, ''and what would it matter?'' But she decided not to buy them.

''The one thing that doesn't change with money is who you are,'' Mrs. Saal said. ''If you saved paper clips before you had money, you'll still save paper clips.''

It is strange to imagine that even after a vast windfall, someone might feel that tug of war between what they can afford versus what they choose to afford. But this is something the Saals frequently discuss.

In some of their earliest discussions, Mr. Saal recalls, ''We said to ourselves, 'Let's not spoil our lives.' ''

He explained, ''There was a pending possibility of doom if we let the genie out of the bottle, if we didn't think carefully about our lifestyle.''

That's not to say their lives have remained uniformly modest. While the couple remain in the house in Palo Alto, Calif., where they have lived for decades, they also built a Tuscan villa in the California wine country.

But living in Silicon Valley throughout the tech boom, the Saals were also wary of how money could muddle their lives, as well as their relationships, if they were not careful. ''I think privately some people assumed this was the end of our friendship, that we'd want to move on to bigger and better circles,'' Mrs. Saal said.

While they have joined some elite groups, the Saals ''still meet friends for breakfast at the little local joint'' and invite them to stay at their country home, so that ''no one would feel jealous -- or locked out,'' Mrs. Saal said.

Dealing with family members, they both say, has been more difficult. ''It's much harder to balance things out with family than with friends, because the issues are more intense,'' Mr. Saal said. He and his wife say it has been hard to cope with their loved ones' financial expectations, ''not just in daily events, like going to a restaurant,'' but when there was a family trip or a relative became ill.

IT has taken constant thought and effort to stay grounded in their financial and emotional lives, the Saals say, but money did make one thing easier. The two had always leaned toward the philanthropic; now they could give money in such quantities, ''the grants and gifts we make are transformational,'' Mr. Saal said.

Although he was referring to the impact of their donations, some of them in the millions of dollars, there was an intimation of something more personal. The Saals describe an immense sense of satisfaction and joy that comes from giving to the many causes that matter to them, like helping to establish a Center for Clinical Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

It was a 15-year labor of love, partly inspired by their daughter Jessica, who suffered from severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder. Their daughter died of complications from the disease in early 2004, on her 34th birthday. ''Money does not protect you from the vicissitudes of life,'' Mrs. Saal said, and her voice sounded heavy.

Nonetheless, they both maintain that their wealth has been a great and continuing blessing. ''Money inhibits you. It's a worry. It looms large when you don't have enough,'' Mrs. Saal said. ''But when you do, it removes all that, and then you can focus on other things.''