Yeah, tell us about that, Pinch.
Posted on 12/05/2005 8:45:52 AM PST by kiriath_jearim
Instant Millions Can't Halt Winners' Grim Slide
By JAMES DAO Published: December 5, 2005
CORBIN, Ky., Nov. 30 - For Mack W. Metcalf and his estranged second wife, Virginia G. Merida, sharing a $34 million lottery jackpot in 2000 meant escaping poverty at breakneck speed.
Years of blue-collar struggle and ramshackle apartment life gave way almost overnight to limitless leisure, big houses and lavish toys. Mr. Metcalf bought a Mount Vernon-like estate in southern Kentucky, stocking it with horses and vintage cars. Ms. Merida bought a Mercedes-Benz and a modernistic mansion overlooking the Ohio River, surrounding herself with stray cats.
But trouble came almost as fast. And though there have been many stories of lottery winners turning to drugs or alcohol, and of lottery fortunes turning to dust, the tale of Mr. Metcalf and Ms. Merida stands out as a striking example of good luck - the kind most people only dream about - rapidly turning fatally bad.
Mr. Metcalf's first wife sued him for $31,000 in unpaid child support, a former girlfriend wheedled $500,000 out of him while he was drunk, and alcoholism increasingly paralyzed him. Ms. Merida's boyfriend died of a drug overdose in her hilltop house, a brother began harassing her, she said, and neighbors came to believe her once welcoming home had turned into a drug den.
Though they were divorced by 2001, it was as if their lives as rich people had taken on an eerie symmetry. So did their deaths.
In 2003, just three years after cashing in his winning ticket, Mr. Metcalf died of complications relating to alcoholism at the age of 45. Then on the day before Thanksgiving, Ms. Merida's partly decomposed body was found in her bed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Everone in the United States?
$500,000 isn't wealthy.
It might buy you a nice house and a nice buffer to live on for luxuries. . . . but is by no means great wealth. . .not even mediocre wealth
MAN WINS LOTTERY, BUYS EVERY STRIP CLUB IN THE COUNTRY
That's what would happen. Admit it. ;)
"Evidence that poverty has a moral dimension as well as an economic one."
Very insightful comment.
I would add that managing money well is a skill
that the rich either teach their children or hire
others to do for their children. This couple, on
the other hand, had no clue.
Here's an old clip just Googled from the Orlando Weekly, dated 10/12/2000. It wasn't just the money that did him in:
The money didn't change him
According to news reports in July and August, the dismal life of Mack W. Metcalf, 42, of Florence, Ky., has included frequent drinking binges, charges of DUI and other traffic violations, drug selling, eviction for failure to pay rent, and a debt of $31,000 in back child support. In July, Metcalf won a $34 million lump-sum jackpot in the Kentucky Lottery. Shortly after he was paid, he handed a woman $500,000 as a gift, only to later realize that he had been drunk when he offered the charity. Metcalf has sued to get the money back.
Money is power: the ability to get things done.
What "things" get done are entirely up to the person with money. If that person is an idiot, or irresponsible, the things that get done are foolish stupidity.
You hit the nail right on the head.
Obligatory Ayn Rand quote.. :P
Excerpt of Francisco's Money Speech, from Atlas Shrugged
----
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality—the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth—the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
If you ever win, you can give that ticket to me.
Actually, if anyone wants to give me a winning ticket, I'll take it. I am helpful like that.....
Yeah, tell us about that, Pinch.
Unfortunately, this is how life often unfolds for people who instantly find themselves with lot of money. Just look at Rodney King (the "real" one, not the Freeper who goes by that name, LOL) and see how the money he got from those lawsuits never changed anything. You could give him a million, a billion, or even trillion dollars today . . . and he'd be broke within 90 days.
I'm 39 now. I was thinking how my life would have been different if I had won the lottery at age 22 just before I started my professional career.
The truth was that the first few years working in an office forced me to grow up. I gradually learned to take responsibility for my life. I shifted from being a Marxist to being a conservative.
If I had won the lottery and never had to work, my maturity would probably have been stuck at age 22. I would have had a far less happy life.
It's not so much that a fool and his money are soon parted, but that they were lucky enough to have ever gotten together in the first place.
True. It's been said that poverty is relative. A homeless perosn, for example who wins $1 million will continue doing what he has always done, except, of course, he'll have more money to spend booze.
Good point. I've often said that an ideal lottery prize would be somewhere in the range of $200,000 to $500,000. Enough money to pay your mortgage, get your kids through school, and buy some things that you otherwise couldn't afford . . . but not enough to change your lifestyle so dramatically that you fall apart.
By your reckoning, Teresa Heinz Kerry (and her ugly husband) deserve their millions, as would several other crime families, such as the Clintons. No, money is no indication of common sense, morals, or anything else--except the bottom line.
Not to sound like a bleeding heart liberal,but that's not always true.There are people everywhere (even here,but not nearly as many as Algore would have us believe) who have a truly tough time making it.People with brain diseases/injuries,people with other serious disabilities,people born with a low IQs (IQ is at least partially "inherited")......
This is the real root of the matter, IMO.
A sudden windfall, for people with issues, is not a blessing. It's a death sentence, unless they use it to get their lives together.
Addiction is a horrible thing. Feeding it, in a case like this, only allows it to kill you faster.
As a recovering gambler, I have no doubt where a win like that would send me. I'd burn through it in no time, end up on the street, or dead, like these folks.
"I'd love to prove myself the exception."
Will do that, with pleasure. Is your paypal account the same as your FReepmail?
/ ;^)
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