Riches to Rags Stories---Having it all then losing it

[Fiddler]

I am watching the Canadian comedy Schitt's Creek on Netflix and I love the humour. It is filmed her in Ontario. A rich family loses everything and is reduced to living in a motel..their ownly asset is the town of Schitt's Creek. It is funny, but real life situations are not so funny.

My college roomate married well and moved overseas. When they returned to Canada they bought a huge 5 bedroom 5 bath home..4,500 square feet. The marriage ended and instead of moving to a small mortgage free home...she "downsized" to an 4 bed 4 bath home and held a mortgage and moved with her two kids. I visited one time and she had a couple cleaning the home. She was working and did not have the time to keep up with the housework of the large place. I asked her why she did not buy a modest home so she could live mortgage free...She told me she had to get a large place to "fit her funiture". Fast forward ten years...she exhuasted the equity in her home with second mortgages..attempted to downsize too late..and was left with nothing. She had to sell all her lovely furniture at fire sale prices....she now rents a basement apartment. Good thing the kids are grown and gone from home.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

It's quite the entertaining show. Amazon's way of selecting what shows will be produced is very cutting edge and seems to do well to bring us good, entertaining shows.

Sent via mobile device. Please excuse any grammatical errors.

 

[rayinpenn]

I'm a sucker for Frank Capra-esk movies ...learning what is really important in life. It seems there are just so many really bad movies out there...


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forumh

 

[Fiddler]

Here is another story of having it all and losing it all. A true story. ‘Breakfast at Sally’s’ author needs help to help the homeless

 

[DrRoy]

It takes discipline and effort to LBYM. Many do not have that discipline and cannot put off until tomorrow what they can temporarily have today. I also know that there are many who do not have sufficient means (income), but when you do, it is a shame to squander it.

 

[athena53]

My Ex was a riches-to-rags story. He was raised in a wealthy family (father an entrepreneur). He was a brilliant inorganic chemist but didn't do well in Corporate America because he said what he thought. His sister also became an entrepreneur and she and her husband had everything my Ex wanted: a house on the shore, a floor-through in a pre-war building in Manhattan, and a boat that could get out to the gulfstream for deep-sea fishing.

When I met him he'd maxed out his credit cards but lived splendidly anyway. He and his first wife, also an inorganic chemist, would rent a house on the Jersey Shore in Mantoloking for the summer, at tens of thousands of $$ per month. When we met he had no savings. I was stupid and my bio clock was ticking; I took on a loan for a Camaro he bought because his credit was in the toilet (he signed a paper agreeing to put it up as security since he owned it). I paid for numerous fishing charters at $1,000-plus a pop back in the early 1980s. Things were OK for awhile when he inherited $300K after his mother died; we put $100K down on a house and he pretty much spent the rest, including a $6,000 sound system, a $7,000 Jager-le-Coultre watch and a new Camaro. The money really started to fly out the door when he became unemployed in 1992. We divorced in 1997- combination of money issues plus his alcoholism and verbal abuse. He got 60% of the equity in the house and I got 40%. After a lot of bills came out of his share (his credit cards which almost never went towards family expenses, overdue bills from local businesses including $2,000 for a platinum coin necklace he gave to a woman he met in AA), he and I each ended up with $100K tax-free.

So, I put mine into a down payment on a house and went about working and raising DS. My Ex's sister paid twice to send her brother to rehab but it didn't work. He stayed in FL after the second attempt, occasionally keeping in touch with family and usually telling lies. (He claimed to have a 30-year old GF who had her own plane, and to have his own boat. I suggested he might be in a position to help with DS' private school tuition. That was the end of that exchange.)

Six years after the divorce, I sold the house I'd bought and got $200K of equity out of it. Current DH and I moved to a LCOL area for my job, where we needed only a small amount of that for a down payment on a new house. I invested the rest, as well as the $100K proceeds when DH's house (before the marriage) sold.

The Ex ended up living off various charity and welfare programs, and died of multiple organ failure in 2010. His ashes were scattered in the Atlantic. What a waste of a brilliant mind.

 

[rayinpenn]

Wow tuff story to read...those of us who are happy with the simple life are truly blessed...


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forumh

 

[athena53]

Wow tuff story to read...those of us who are happy with the simple life are truly blessed...


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forumh

I'd say the issue was more of coveting what others had, to the extent of resenting them because they had them and he didn't. I wouldn't say I live the simple life (in some aspects I do, in some I don't) but I could admire his sister's lovely clothes and worthy-of-Princess-Diana jewelry and be happy with the splurges I had. He couldn't.

 

[rayinpenn]

Nothing wrong with a splurge once and a while... If it makes you happy.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forumh

 

[omni550]

Nothing wrong with a splurge once and a while... If it makes you happy.

....and if you can afford it.

My ex-SO thought a splurge was a $50K 'collectible' car while he still had a loan on his daily driver. (This while he was making well south of $100K and had very little in savings.) It was definitely the beginning of the end. A year later we broke up and he moved out. Within a month, he had to take the collectible car and $6K to the dealer to get the dealer to take the now not-so-collectible (but now definitely unaffordable) car off his hands.

omni

 

[rayinpenn]

I was thinking a $200 fishing rod but I'm a small timer.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum