Rich People (Make Me Sick)

                                                                                                                                Mark Lipczynski for The Wall Street Journal

Consider the plight of Leah Hoffman (shown above), a 60-year-old divorced woman living in Paradise Valley, Arizona. With her kids grown and on their own, and her husband gone for reasons that aren't hard to fathom, she felt it was time to downsize. She just didn't need all that much space living alone, and besides, she was ready to "start a whole new life from scratch." Sounds interesting; just what the heck would she do?

Did she turn her giant mansion into a B & B? Start volunteering at a soup kitchen and rent out her extra rooms to the underprivileged folks she met there? Sell her house, get an RV and drive across America taking pictures for National Geographic? Move to Haiti to help feed the hungry and house the homeless? Adopt three illegal immigrant children? Build a Tiny House? (They are quite popular these days.) Nope, luckily Leah found "exactly what she was looking for" at a cost of only $1.7 million -- a teeny, tiny 3,200-square-foot home with a separate guest house right on the other side of the beautifully landscaped swimming pool.

As Leah told the reporter from The Wall Street Journal, which features her fascinating story in their Mansion section, "I like change." Based on the photo of Leah in her new backyard, I'm guessing her brand new life won't be all that different from her old, used one.