Former Rich People Shared How they lose their Millions r/AskReddit Reddit Stories | Top Posts

ex millionaires of reddit what made you lose all your money my dad lost everything but his tools and clothes in the divorce over the next 30 years built up enough wealth to own two local properties and a family cabin with 100 acres of land 500k of investments and a pension worth about 600k between the pension and his social security his wife at the time of his death would make about 70 k year without touching anything she sold one of his properties and i had no f king clue what happened to the cabin that has been on my family for 70 years i got nothing my kids got nothing but when she dies all her kids will get to split that money i don't fault her she's a very sweet person and my dad never wanted to face reality of death so never made the appropriate arrangements despite saying he would for years he never got around to it so it all by default went to his spouse my dad also kept each side of his family separate so we were never really in contact with each other my dad is an ex-millionaire he's a rf king wizard at starting successful businesses his problem is he can't let them go he's the boss owner who never hires a manager that's not family because he just doesn't trust anyone else to run it he drove three million dollar companies into the ground because he couldn't keep up with his own success and refused to hire people to do it for him hypothetical millionaire i bought 100 worth of bitcoin when they were about one dollar each i sold them when they were about two dollars fifty each and was so happy i made money from internet coins as of the moment i am typing this those coins would be worth one dollar eight hundred and fifty five zero zero zero a common template for wealth loss is underestimating the role of luck in the initial wealth accumulation and as a result taking irresponsible risks on new ventures and or maintaining lifestyles that overestimate future earning potential i have seen this with some folks who made money in finance in the 80s and 90s while extremely smart and hard-working their path to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars were also pretty lucky edit at 330 up votes and a bunch of replies this comment is kind of a metaphor for what i am referring to when the topic of wealth comes up on reddit the subsequent discussion about the role of luck almost always happens in this case i just happen to be the guide to make the obvious comment about luck on a thread that happened to get some attention appreciating that it took some basic effort to write it out and hit submit my upvotes and replies have nothing to do with me personally i watched a guy at a casino somehow get to loan against his house about 200k and lose it he looked suicidal apparently he was already in almost 50k and thought he could win it back i got hired there and i would leave on friday and return monday and see the same people in the same clothes who pissed and sht themselves and were still sitting at the blackjack table gambling responsibly is near impossible for some people and it's rough to see go to set your limits and stick to them if you have 400 dollars you can afford to spend then take out 400 and don't even look at your card again also just personal preference but i won't drink a drop when i'm at a casino gambling addiction is seriously one of the worst i go to the casino a couple times a year when i feel like checking out new slots and drinking some fantastic cocktails last time i was there walking through the parking lot some guy is having a ref king full-on argument shamafest with himself kicking his truck that was already dented to [ __ ] throwing stuff around the bed close to a meltdown i caught a few snippets of what he said but it was apparent just how deep in the hole he was when i heard 30 000 f king dollars uf king idiot double quote suddenly my 500 loss over seven hours didn't feel too bad you know how to end up with one million dollars after a year of day trading start with two million dollars my alarm clock that woke me up if this isn't a pop culture reference you're definitely talking about the ferrari with the broken exhaust silencer that your son with ocd drives to his tradesman job divorce i was a millionaire got divorced which nearly sent me to insolvency buckled down and worked my butt off and embrace millionaire guys don't underestimate the pernicious impact on net worth a bad divorce can have no prenuptial agreement in place i owe 9 rental properties all single family we have it in writing that she gets one out of every three of them in the event i purchased a new one and did not update the agreement as to which specific ones none of my cars expect her daily driver seemed fair to us crypto millionaire still worth a lot with my accounts about 850 000 today i have a lot of x rp but in 2017 i was worth about three five million before the crash lowest was three hundred dollars zero zero zero i'm a hodler so i don't day trade usually my biggest regret is i bought about 200 000 ripple in 2013. but i got bored and put them for sale at zero zero one c ripple as a pipe dream they were worth like zero zero zero one c at the time i should have just left it i could have banked some cash on it if i just left it and sold kt at the peak gambling and spouse terminal illness somewhere here there's a billionaire laughing because they're an ex-millionaire too i was a multi-millionaire for two weeks then the vacation was over and we exchanged our dongs for euros not me but an acquaintance he got caught not paying taxes and dealing in stolen goods he spent time in federal prison and lost everything including his wife crime does not always pay we were close then the great recession hit lost 60 in three years just updated the balance sheet today we're almost back who knows what will happen in the next 24 to 36 months though i'd guess divorce maybe fraud does well trust me if you ever win the lotto every person you have ever met seems like will show up with their handout if you want to test that post on your social media that you won a lottery and see what happens then let everyone know you won five dollars and then drop everyone who asked for money i built a business worth three million had a house worth one four million investments worth more than two million four nice cars divorce laid me low an ex-wife a lawyer and a judge stripped me of at least three stroke four of that left me with a miata race car a bit of money and 51 percent of my company still had to pay elemony i gave up i negotiated my way out of alumni by giving up more of the company liquidated everything else bought a boat and f head off 26 months later i sailed back into my life and started over i've earned enough to live a modest retirement and that's where i am today don't get married boys it ain't worth it i've done it twice the first time was a disaster the second time was an annoyance just my opinion and experience i'm way too drunk and shouldn't have posted anyway there it is i got pretty close by selling my company to a bigger competitor reinvested most of it since i had not much to use for the money but then got scammed for about half a million on buying some real estate they smelled a newly rich kid from miles away i still like to think i was worth a million at some brief point in time edit since people are asking basically i bought a fantastic holiday destination facility from someone who did not own said fantastic holiday destination facility and with bought i mean a substantial down payments to keep other interested parties at bay classic technically not me but rather my family my great-grandfather was born to a long line of vicars who had land properties and farms they were loaded he was the rebel only son and swore that he would break tradition so he joined the army and come world war ii he was shipped off to fight for britain while overseas he was captured and spent a few years in a pow camp where he subsequently found jesus after the war he returned joined the clergy and his father having died gave every single penny to the goddamn church land property entitles all and lived of his vicar's salary obviously it was never mine to lose but the knowledge that i could have been a lord with a horse and an affordable coke addiction really stings first husband was making a million a year he was enjoying life spending frivolously but bringing in enough that it didn't matter we divorced but amicably no alimony no child support he just paid for whatever the kids needed then he got leukemia he fought like hell for three years the last two years were very expensive it was worth it money won't make you happy but the lack of it can destroy you the kids and i can take comfort in knowing that truly there was nothing else possible his millions bought his kids two more years of dad and i'm glad for him that he enjoyed his life while he could covered built a business that was given a valuation of a few million back in january but the industry is now down 80 percent and i'm doing all i can to avoid bankruptcy a lot of people who win the lottery will blow their money on big purchases like a house or a yacht then they have no money left to pay the yearly costs of those items and they lose everything invest all your money in safe stocks get a mortgage on a house and chill the fck out if you win the lottery i work in finance and my team and i work with all very affluent clients i've seen so many millionaires lose it all not from investing in the markets but from taxes lifestyle and poor business decisions once had a client who was making 50k a month but was spending 60k a month and perpetually dipping into his investments there were months where payments bounced because he was living a lifestyle and always wanted more my favorite investment advice same car same house same spouse not me but a close friend's parents worked at a well-renowned american company in houston in the early 2000s they were really high up in the management chain and enjoyed a lot of the perks that came with their position after sticking through thick and thin especially during the dot-com bubble said friend's parents were also very good in managing their money living very frugally and investing for their future nest egg unfortunately therein lied the rub all that investment 401ks extra cash etc comma was on a single pot i believed with all their allocation back in 2000 or so they have had invested close to 5.6 m and was due to pull it out so they could finally retire and x 200b but a company scandal brought all that to a collapse and x200b the company enron and x200b all their money evaporated i donated my wealth to orbit all dropper and highly recommend any millionaire reading this do the same oxy and crack 1 500 a day habit got me high for a few years then the other half was when the dealers infiltrated and took me for tens of thousands at a clip oh and a sibling stealing 400k was a dent as well it's truly a miracle i'm alive nine years removed and finally dug myself out and back on top kind of lol my great-grandparents were farmers and lived in north dakota in their prime their team and then were absolutely great farmers this along with some other factors made them super rich for an example they owned multiple planes and even had a hangar built to store them they also had a really nice house not a mansion but a really nice and large one well it turns out they were really great at farming but not so much at paying taxes my mom's second husband was a millionaire our family and his first family treated everything as one big family when he got cancer he set a very intricate and fair system then he appointed three people to oversee any emergency changes to his estate my mom his first wife and her second husband as soon as he died they voted against my mother to throw away his whole plan and just give them themselves the money 50-50. covered my parents have tons of money in stocks and lost their millionaire status due to the crash that happened i'm talking tens of thousands in a day at one point thankfully with the drug trials being successful they're starting to make back their money though it's still not where it was before due to the industry they have stock in being hit hard by the shutdowns make matters worse my father is at one stroke to pay since he works hospitality gave most of it away in the divorce took what i thought would be enough to pull the leaving las vegas but ben sanderson had a big head start on me on the liver damage so i outlived the money started over from zero 16 years ago half way back 12 years ago i was making 95k as a software engineer i was in an accident suffered a brain injury lost everything and haven't worked as a programmer since then my injury easily cost me a million dollars my family lost tons of money with a failed business and bad investments and ended up with tons of debt and a bad financial situation they weren't millionaires or anything though i was a flight attendant and once had a passenger in fc out of vegas who looked distraught handed me a 20 and said please keep the bourbon coming in flight he just drank looking down i asked how he was doing he said he was trying to figure out how to tell his wife he had lost their home gambling that was the moment i decided i would never participate in a town that made its money that way i'd like to add something because it's so ridiculous my uncle and aunt inherited a lot of money they paid to get a speedway fire truck restored that went straight to a storage unit wasn't even theirs lol they took multiple trips to monster truck races wwe events and the casino the funniest thing of all was they needed a new car badly but decided against it they blew through all their money in less than a year and are now making car payments however king stupid a family member of mine has been a millionaire several times over but he loses it on ex-wives fiances and girlfriends young enough to be his grandchildren they appear to require a lot of financial maintenance not sure if it really counts not a million and not really lost but over the course of several months i gave away what would now be a bit under you acute two hundred zero zero zero in bitcoin while demoing cryptocurrency to various groups at the time bitcoin was worth essentially nothing and i saw it as something that might be useful rather than a store of wealth comma so i'd help people set up a wallet and we'd do some transferring of coins within the group and i'd give away some paper wallets with some nominal amount in them it's mildly painful to think that if i'd have just picked up more initially or lost one of my wallets i might have a fairly decent sum of cash to play with as it is i have a slew of fragments of various different cryptocurrencies probably worth around you acute 100 in total my ex is mom not me she grew up as a trust fund kid in a tremendously rich jewish family in new york when she turned 18 she decided to see the world so she moved to israel then iraq then france she spent 30 years moving from country to country burning her money away like it was unlimited but as it turns out trust funds are actually finite and one day she found herself with just barely enough left to get back the u.s and buy a tiny house her family had at that point long since disowned her so she had to get a job only what do you do when you have no prior work experience no credentials beyond high school and you're 48 years old answer housekeeping at the local best western apparently until they fire you for rocking the boat too much she proposed a bunch of changes within her first couple of months there most of which being rather expensive and offering no real benefit beyond i think it would look nice comma then you drive a short bus for senior citizens until you turn the wrong way down a one-way street panic at the sight of oncoming traffic and steer straight into fire hydrant then flee the scene abandoning the company vehicle and its several now injured passengers my cousin was a big rapper in the 90s when i say his name you probably know him or heard his music it is still used today in the usa anyway he became a millionaire really fast at 20 something years old after being a dishwasher his manager made him sign bad contracts and almost all of the money after a year or two went to his manager and accountant he is still doing okay producing some music in los angeles but not a millionaire anymore athletes millionaires rich owners billionaires wealthy big difference the average pro sports career lasts less than half a decade four years at 500 k dollars is the same amount of money as 40 years at 50k dollars if they live big as if the money would keep coming in they're setting themselves up for failure covered in divorce we were invested in a small brewery that did not make it through covered we had two rental properties generating income in vacation spots that were shut down due to covered had to sell one offered a huge loss ex-wife then wanted a divorce and raked me over the coals i won the other rental in the divorce and that's about it three guys kidnapped me drugged me and coaxed me into telling my social security number they drove past me in a limo throwing money all over the place later the bank came and took everything i had except for a can of anchovies i ate those anchovies with my friends and i learned a valuable lesson not me but my grandma she started a shoe company it became one of the biggest retails in the south part of the country then as her retiring days got here she passed it on to her kids who ran it to the ground she came out of retirement and within a year she she got out of debt and made it profitable again then went back to retirement they ran it back to the ground and even put a mortgage on her house she let it fall and the company no longer exist she saved her house with her saving and she lived a comfortable retirement from money on properties she owned a family friend of mine had wealthy parents her dad had a terminal illness and the family had to sell their mansions vacation homes etc to pay medical costs and her dad didn't live very long despite putting every cent they owned into trying to help him i think her mom is alive still and taken care of by my family friend sister i used to work at a wealth management firm when i was just out of college we had a client that part of my daily set of tasks as low man on the totem pole was to send this guy a breakdown of his earnings first thing in the morning when i started he had about 10 million and when i left less than two years later he had under 100 grand also by second week of work was when lehman brothers fell and the market crashed not me or anyone i know personally but there is a korean living in our country that used to have his own company that managed a lot of real estate like apartments buildings etc he lost everything he had around six million dollars when he gambled it away at casinos now he's a street vendor selling instant ramen and noodles my dad not me when he was young in the 70s he wrangled other people into investing with him and bought a bunch of duplexes and fourplexes in san francisco renovated them and mostly sold for a profit however he kept some i think my mom estimated at one point this was over a decade ago too that if he had just sat on the properties he owned he'd be taking in about 600 camo in rent instead he invested with his brother in a home gym company and kept selling off property to fund it and then got nailed by the irs for failing to pay taxes when i was a kid he lived on a 30-foot sailboat because he'd lost it all grandfather and great-uncle both went into the u.s air corps as bomber pilots after the war they both were offered prestigious high-paying job flying for some airlines great uncle took the job made a fortune flying and then got in the car business becoming vp for a large american car company died rich in jupiter fl grandpa found jesus during the war declined cushy jobs to go to the seminary preached helen mayhem as a southern baptist minister as you can imagine i'm [ __ ] poor as my distant cousins grimace about two-year-old maseratis being out of style guy i know made a fortune during the housing boom in the 2000s took all the money he made and put it all back into the real estate market then housing crashed he never recovered a cousin of mine he is a dentist that owns two firms as well as several homes made a lot of money but also had a lot frivolous spending with a wife who also had a serious spending problem just an example he had about eight cars for a family of four his wife eventually divorced him and took a serious chunk of his income he lost one home to her and eventually his bad reputation caught up to him and had to sell his homes except one to prop up his failing business pay off all his debts he sold nearly all his cars as well it was definitely a shock to everyone but me because of child support he's essentially living paycheck to paycheck now my ex was wealthy as a child her father owned a shipping company in south korea and they had a very nice life until her mother decided to gamble all of their money on the stock market to the advise of some scummy experts as much as that suck she often talked about how spoiled and ignorant they were being rich and it taught her a lot of valuable lessons being normal people again i miss her but it's for the best we're not together welsh t i almost bought one thousand dollars in bitcoin at one dollar per coin on the assumption that it could go up in price one day i was like 18 or 19 about 10 years ago probably would have cashed out sooner but i really don't know hopefully i win the lottery one dale mayo not me but my grandfather my family was very old money and made a lot of money through various businesses specifically livestock my grandfather was a spoiled kid who knew nothing about business and ran all of the businesses into the ground and left my dad when he was a kid he grew up with a single mom and i grew up very blue collar hundreds of years of familial wealth gone in one generation wild my grandfather spent my trust fund all the grandchildren there's six of us received one million inches trust when we were born then my grandfather lost his medical license trading in sexual favors for prescriptions to make payments on 22 million dollars in properties he turned to drug running gambling and stealing our money he lost everything and was shot in his car by we assume the gang he was smuggling drugs for i didn't know about the trust fund until i was a teen so not a big loss but my grandmother who lived a life of luxury never got over the come down my dad flipped houses housing market crashed in 2008-ish little brother got born and needed to open heart surgeries good olay american healthcare and then my mom and him split my dad he was extremely successful early in his life skipped university and went straight to work had multiple businesses in his mid-twenties became a millionaire before turning 30 my three siblings and i had a very comfortable life we had a very large house chauffeured cars and several house help how did we lose everything gambling a friend of my dad introduced him to gambling and he was instantly hooked within five years we lost everything we're lucky my mom had some savings and got a house of her own so we didn't end up homeless our life are much better now thanks to my mom and all of us avoid gambling of any thought we'd refuse even for a ten dollar bet my parents are doctors back when we lived in abu dhabi they were at a level that they used to treat bollywood celebrities too they became homesick and came back to india as we constructed a huge mansion in line with the money they were earning then after coming to india they were not able to get themselves to do wrongful practices as is required in india and therefore had fights with top-level medical people in the states and therefore have settled on a mediocre pay at an ethical small clinic all the previously earned money was used up on building the house maintaining it my brother made tens of millions over the years in property development but it all went to st last recession as finance companies started going bust and the receivers wanted to claw back the debts immediately followed by his richer friends offering to bail him out with loans but in reality they just wanted to scam him out of what he had left i am asking a real question based on what you stated the feeling of unease often called imposter syndrome i think it is real but i want to know if in other people's experience it is insecurity or is in fact being in over your head whenever i see a question like this the answer is always imposter syndrome and i think that's mostly hype but you an absence of evidence otherwise i am wondering if i am wrong i know my cousin not me he pretty much owned the biggest towing company of his city but there was one problem he loved his wife so much he actually put the business on her name instead of his he was the one that built everything from the ground up not her one year ago they got a divorce and well she was actually a btch about it and even decided to put a restraining order on him to be away from the business he now lost his house he also put that to her name his pet and all his business and now the dude that once was giving me money to go in a shopping spree is now the dude that asked me for five bucks the other day not me but my dad's boss he was a corporate executive in the finance world wealthy affirmed was very well liked until they discovered he was embezzling from the company lost his job went to prison for a long time shortly after the crime was discovered my dad was offered his boss job which he took he was over the top transparent about everything and i grew up hearing the cautionary tale told over and over again my dad retired with a large company stock portfolio worth nearly 2 million dollars sadly he never sold the stock he has other retirement income and today it is worth about 300k dollars i had a wallet with lots of bitcoins i mined before bitcoins were even worth a penny hard drive got formatted and installed in a customer's computer it's gone forever every time i think about it i get depressed my uncle was a commodities trader he was good had about 14 million dollars in the bank he was also had some medical issues which caused him to need a hip replacement he got a titanium him from johnson and johnson which was defective it gave him toxic metal poisoning nickel and cadmium i think anyway it really changed his personality and his judgment on general he ended up losing it all over the course of a few years making really risky trades which was essentially gambling my dad actually this story happened a while ago when he decided to invest in stocks beanie babies were a giant thing back then and he bought tins of limited edition rare ones he wasted tons of money and sooner or later they had lost all value he tried to sell them for some money and later found a potential buyer the buyer was willing to pay 700 0-0 for them just some rich [ __ ] with too much money on his hands they set up a meeting by before they could make the exchange the collection burned down in a house fire moral of the story don't invest in crap trying to do something good after years in the financial markets i built a recycling company and lost a fortune doing better now though different business don't invest money in something you don't understand my uncle lost money by investing in sand or something hoping for big returns offered by a friend he don't even know how this thing works a family member of mine owned a scrap junkyard a large tank full of chlorine gas was not checked first that it was empty and the employees got chlorine gas poisoning and he made them work until the ambulance came he was sued and went bankrupt edit i was told that their business was worth a million dollars not sure what they individually were worth they used to do really well for themselves and after they lost it all they became criminals unfortunately my grandfather he had a successful business and had stocks going crazy it was a great success but his success led to him having tons upon tons of side chicks and when he died his side she exclaimed all his titles and money leaving none to his true family my grandpa was the owner of one of the biggest clothing companies in brazil making millions worth in dollars he then starts to mess with some dirty politions becomes a really bad guy cheats on my grandpa leaves her for some young [ __ ] realizes she wants money and only that signs is able to give everything to her leaving my grandma and her six kids with almost nothing and my grandma now lives with us so she has nothing the bastard then calls my dad then shoots himself in the head in front of him on a bridge good friend of mine worked in film distribution completely broke now you're not rich if you spend everything you make if you make a million a year and spend a mill a year you're broke his career died and he had no savings and a lot of commitments sad to see but luckily he knows some wealthy people who help him out so we had a family friend who owned a pool business in georgia very long story short he turned it into a pretty big business worth millions got into drugs and gambling and ended up stealing people money by quoting them for projects having them put down deposits and then taking that deposit and spending it on hookers blow and gambling really not that interesting of a story my grandfather was a millionaire for a good 20 years he lost it all in a bad land development deal that was stalled by the recession in canada around 1990. he was also a shitty dude who abandoned my grandmother and his four kids started a new family and never paid any kind of child support while being crazy rich had a great time at his funeral though irish wake in a pub my father's family had a plumbing company in dubai my grandpa passed away and my father inherited the company with his two little brothers later he met my mother and moved to finland with her he gave up his third of the company the other two are doing very well with the company now my parents are living in poverty with little to no chance of paying the bills monthly in about 2000 i invested 10 k into google right before they blew up i don't remember the exact number but i know i was in at least six figures of profit but i was only like 12-13 in a middle school economics class so while i didn't actually profit it got me an a on that assignment nasa knew a lady at an am pm that sold a lotto ticket with one number off the customer complained and refused to buy the ticket so she did can't refund lotto she won the jackpot about 10 million dollars take home bought a bunch of landsand in arizona you can't build on started a company burnt it down but had no fire insurance someone got burned really bad bought a bunch of cars and mobile homes now works at walmart my dad is an ex-millionaire he was like a ceo or something of some tech thingy when i was a kid i had all the clueless toys in the coolest everything back then and was the envy of every other kids what made him lose everything he had to leave his job because there was no one to take care of his parents my grandparents my grandma wasn't very considerate about it and he was literally given no option but to quit my dad's other siblings did great in life but my dad had to give up a lucrative job due to the stubbornness of my grandma he never had a big time job after that and had to settle for a low-paying job but he never compromised on me and my sister's education and ensured that we got the best of it a deceitful stock broker who sold my stock without my permission the stock he bought went belly up within a year was my first stock and didn't know that was illegal a short few years later the sec shut down the company blinder robinson my three thousand dollars invested became five dollars one hundred and twenty five zero zero zero twelve years later if i still had it and i would have as i wanted it for newborn sons college costs 17-18 years after birth still bothers me [Music] so [Applause] [Music] you

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Id: GuuUqtff85U

Length: 37min 54sec (2274 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020