Man/family loses 10 million in a little over a decade

From Yahoo.com

It is a far cry from the life that Mr. Martin and his family enjoyed until recently at their Adirondacks waterfront camp at Tupper Lake, N.Y. Their garage held three stylish cars, including a yellow Aston Martin; they owned three horses, one that cost $173,000; and Mr. Martin treated his wife, Kate, to a birthday weekend at the Waldorf-Astoria, with dinner at the "21" Club and a $7,000 mink coat.

That luxurious world was fueled by a check Mr. Martin received in 1998 for $14 million, his share of the $600 million sale of Martin Media, an outdoor advertising business begun by his father in California in the 1950s. After taxes, he kept about $10 million.

But as so often happens to those lucky enough to realize the American dream of sudden riches, the money slipped through the Martins' fingers faster than they ever imagined.

They faced temptations to indulge, with the complexities and pressures of new wealth. And a pounding recession pummeled the value of their real estate and new financial investments, rendering their properties unaffordable.

The fortune evaporated in little more than a decade.

The full story is on Yahoo via the link provided. At first I thought that this was going into a human tragedy direction where they lost all their money in some reasonable way. I, at first, felt sorry for them. Oh boy was I wrong. They basically blew 10 million dollars over the span of 10 years, 1 million a year on average!!! I feel no remorse for them or their situation.

So, I ask all you of ATS: Your feelings on this story? What would you do with 10mil to guarentee not ending up like these people?

I think they deserved to lose it all purely for getting the yellow Aston!
I mean, YELLOW for christs sake!

Well i for my part always said, that in case i would ever be that lucky, then i wouldnt change to much in my lifestyle. Buy a nice apartement which i fully own then (no more rent to pay) and have 1 or 2 nice but not insane
holidays in a year. Otherwise no big changes. I rather have the certainty of a safe life (which you def would have with that amount of money) than going out and spend it an all you want etc and find yourself in a situation like this story.

but that is what i say now, you never know what you would do, and as we all know, sadly money changes people very quickly usually.....

I'd build a house on the biggest acreage I could find...have an amazing edible garden, some chickens. hmmm...maybe a cow for clean, healthy milk...build a HUGE snippin stone wall around the whole snippin thing...what else....greenhouse for out of zone goodies...

Maybe make my own line of soups

I'd get a few luxuries- the best gaming/media computer I could build, a library of games xD.

I'd be fine, for sure. I don't need anything grandiose.

Squandered it.

should've had money making on the mind and flipped 10 into 20, bonafide hustla makin-a name.

Indeed money does change people, it was only 10 million though! These people went out acting like they had Bill Gates money and such! I ever get 10 mil, 5 goes into the highest interest account I can get first thing, maybe more depending. Then you have 5 more to play with however you want and draw interest off the other 5. It's really sad the lack of common sense we have these days......yellow astin martin

reply to post by Basel77


Yeah same here, i barely spend on anything. If I had $10 million, I would probably just get myself an apartment near a university, maybe buy a car as we don't have one, something useful not flashy and pointless like a done-up race car (really what is the point?). It would probably take me ten years to spend the $1 million. And that's IF i become a bit more "luxurious".

I've been wearing the same jacket every day for the past three years. I prefer spending my money on food and perhaps a new appliance on OCCASION and only if it is needed (I bought an LCD monitor to replace my CRT, only because i didn't have enough room to write on my desk, hahaha) I walk everywhere.

I never understood the luxury crap.