Money can kill
If there is a more painful story in the life of a man I have not read it! I am talking about the story of Jack Whittaker
Jack was in the frenzied crowd in 2002 buying lottery tickets. It is one of the worst things to do to get rich, but remember lottery tickets sell like hot cakes all over the world.
Like all extremely lucky people Jack won the lottery and took home a staggering US $ 314 Million. After taxes he took home a lesser amount for sure.
So because of the title you know that this story does not have a happy ending I presume!
The funny part is that Jack was not a typical lottery buyer. Not the pizza flipping, colored man hoping to make it big in the White man’s world. Jack was already a millionaire – he had a net worth of US $ 17 million. In 2002 this was a big sum of money. Even today this amount is more than enough to settle down in any part of the world. In fact you could spend the rest of your life in cruises.
Well within 2 years of Jack winning this pot of gold his grand daughter was arrested for drug use and abuse. His wife of many years had left him. He was seen gambling in casino after casino and was warned for soliciting random women.
Jack is not alone in this club of destroyed millionaires. We have seen a few Indian incompetent heirs of big wealth, have we not? I do not need to name or mention them do I? Why attract the defamation lawyers?
The problem with money is that NOBODY knows how the human mind reacts to money. Some people who have seen money since a long time are able to attend to money in a simple way. However even people who have been with money all their life are sometimes unable to handle it. Let me happily give you American names – Jessy Livermore, Mark Twain, Issac Newton,…there is a long list. The reason is simple. Cocaine, Heroin, Sugar and Capital Gains have the same impact on the brain. If you think you can handle a big gain (Whittaker) or big loss (Yudhishtar) you are wrong. It is very difficult to handle big money especially when it comes all at a time. A salaried guy gets money on a regular basis. However when a businessman gets a big lump-sum he gets carried away. Suddenly he thinks he has become a banker – and lends it to Friends and Relatives!
Handling big gains – especially what is felt to be “free money” is not easy.
What would I do if I got say Rs. 50 crores? I would put it into liquid fund, ultra short bond fund, and keep it there for 6 months. It takes a long time to get over the “must to something” with that money concept. I will start investing this money after 6 months into equity, real estate, bonds,…etc.
Mohd Nazul
The guy actually gave about 30 Million dollars to charity.
Agreed with the article with 2 points of contention fur me :
1. If there is a more painful story in the life of a man I have not read it
Never understood the need for any tragedy to be most painful to have impact. Are we saying people who are dying in Syria or rohingya people have it better than this lottery winner who spent 60 years of his life in 1st world without any incident? Or the author hasn’t heard of them..
2. As a thought experiment, it is nice to say i will do this or that. But such things are difficult to predict, we have no idea what we will actually do. For every jack, there is an Indian Kaun banega crorepati winner who have handled their wealth much better.
Abhi
Hmm 50 Crores.. I’ll quit my job, no big purchases, stay quite & will keep my head down. Get a good fee based financial planner(read Subra Sir ;)). Create a Tight trust fund for the family.
I’ve seen people worth over 200crores still sitting at their small but very popular hotel/shop counters going about their daily life without any airs!
Shyam Singh
@Abhi: The problem is he won the lottery… so even if he want to be anonymous, he can’t :)… society, relatives, friends, neighbors.. all want to know what you are doing with this money and constantly remind and suggest you… target should be “rich and anonymous”