Weekly personal essays on wealth, status, and family from someone with generational wealth, writing with transparency.

Why Subscribe

I write to challenge both my thinking and therefore my readers’ thinking about the topics of wealth, status, and family. I give my readers an honest view into what it’s like to live inside the Manhattan bubble.

My Substack is free. If you do choose to pay, I donate all subscription revenues to The Robin Hood Foundation, a leading poverty-fighting organization.

My email: robertsdavidn@gmail.com

Examples of past essays:

On wealth and status

What It’s Like To be Rich In New York

Wealth Derangement Syndrome

Beauty, Class, Wealth

Our Second Gilded Age Goes Supernova

On family

You had me At A Glance

Every Real Couple Fights About Money And We’re No Exception

The Manhattan Nursery School Gods

My Mother the Absurdist

About Me

I had a nearly forty-year career in finance, mainly in investment management. I left finance a few years ago to pursue writing as well as to engage actively in grass-roots, high-impact philanthropy focused on fighting poverty.

In addition to writing this newsletter, I’m writing a novel.

I’m 63 years old and have a large, NYC based family, which means it’s hard to see ourselves ever leaving NYC. My wife Deborah also grew up in NYC. We have been married for 40 years and I write about her often. My readers have come to know her well.

We have a daughter and two sons in their thirties. The two eldest are married so we actually have five children including our son-in-law and daughter-in-law. We have three grandchildren under the age of three.

Plus, like every dog owner, we have the cutest and best dog in the world, our Shih-Tzu Sophie, picture below between my wife Debbie and me.

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Subscribe to Sparks from Culture by David Roberts

Weekly personal essays on wealth, status, and family from someone with generational wealth, writing with transparency.

People

Writer of the Substack Sparks From Culture; zealous fan of my family, my Shih Tzu, all things Substack, NYC (lifelong resident); forty year career in finance, now a writer.