Riches to Rags Stories
Since we are talking about savings and cost of living, I thought it would be interesting to share "hero to zero" stories that you have seen. I'd imagine anyone working in finance has seen at least a few cases of some dude overextending himself financially and blowing up after a wrong turn in their careers. I'll start, since I've seen a fair number of personal blow ups during the GFC.
I met this guy, let's call him Vladimir, in 2010 when someone asked me to put his CV to a firm I was working for at the time. He was in his early 40s, with a wife and 2 grade-school age kids. I don’t recall his education, but I think it was a top-10 MBA.
In the early 2000s he got into agency MBS trading at some mid-grade dealer. Obviously, at the time, everything linked to real estate was red-hot. At some point, he moved to a fixed income hedge fund running a “hedged mortgage carry” strategy and taking home somewhere from 750 to 1.25. All of that came to a halt in 2008 when mortgage rates decoupled from the treasury rates and he blew up. Having run a very similar strategy myself, I can speak at length about the merits and drawbacks of the strategy (if people want), but that’s outside the scope here.
To be honest, there would be nothing special about that story if not for his personal spending habits that lead to a proper death spiral. While his wife was also in finance, she was some sort of a risk analyst and he was the bread winner of the family. He sent his kids to LF at the cost of 60k/a, rented a 3,000 sqf apartment on the Upper East Side. He had two cars, an Aston Martin convertible for fun and a Lexus SUV for the family outings. All parked in Manhattan - the garage costs alone were probably enough to support a small African country.
It does not end there - in the mid-2000s he bought a huge coop in Brooklyn (sic, or was it Queens - I don't recall) that he started renovating. That’s where things turned south - somehow, he got into a conflict with the coop board and the renovation was halted. All that while paying a 2 million dollar mortgage and common charges plus the legal fees for fighting the coop boards. He felt he could afford it. After all, he was a hot-shot PM trading the hottest instruments, it was a drop in the ocean.
In 2008 the fund let him go. Whatever savings they had set aside went very quickly - between the 8k per month on rent, 10k for the kids school tuition, 2k for the garage the bleed was real. Add to it a mortgage on his coop that he could not even sell since it was gutted. He eventually got a job as a sub-PM at another fund, but the managers felt that the guy is too leveraged to make good decisions and he was let get after 6 months. A few months later he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Last I heard, he was living in Washington DC working as a litigation consultant for some law firm.
LOL
Saw a dude at the hot dog stand who was 20 cents short. Times seemed tough and so I gave him the change. Things worked out in the end after that for him as he got the hot dog.
You felt like a big man with those two dimes didn't you.
I keep dimes around me as well. Although, a different kind.
I did. I really did.
Hotdog / not hotdog?
Special occasion
Nice of you to allow him to get his sandwich
A hot dog is NOT A SANDWICH!
Next thing you'll be telling me pineapple belongs on pizza.
I'll give you 20 cents to suck my hot dog ;)
no homo
Sure thing - no homo dawg
I heard Lloyd Blankfein ran a hotdog stand when he was at Harvard -- not even joking.
Karma has rewardered you yet?
I’ve seen a few and this is my least favorite one:
Guy is mid-50’s on an extremely expensive and much younger second wife. Has most of his money in company stock. Assume he makes $1-1.5MM pre-crisis. Gets fired somewhere around the financial crisis. Gets another job after ~2 years of searching for something like $125k + commissions for some shitty fund. Goes completely broke as all company stock essentially hit zero, home is underwater, and wife does not reduce spending. Kills himself.
PS. I don’t think I’ve heard any suicides in my circle
.
My uncle is a successful financial advisor.
He says the worst people to work with are the people in finance and doctors. Namely because they come to him for retirement planning, but have no money to retire or nowhere near enough to continue living their lifestyle.
The big thing to remember it's not about how much you make, it's about how much it cost you to live.
Dr's sucking at finances doesn't surprise me... they seem to lack common sense but are book smart as hell. I know of an orthodontist making between $300-400k a year living paycheck to paycheck... single, no kids. The stupidity is real
Finance people being shitty at managing personal finances surprised me - when I first got into the industry, I was dumb founded at some of the financial choices people make. I just don't get it.
My uncle is a doctor. This is an actual conversation I had with him:
Him: "Hey, you're a finance guy. what are some good investments I should get into?"
Me: "well what investments are you in right now?"
Him: "I don't have any right now. I put some in the stock market in 2011 and I lost a good amount and I took it out and have been just saving cash since then."
Me: "what stock positions were you in?"
Him: "I had $500k in something called SPY"
Me: "...You know SPY has doubled since 2011 right?"
Him: "Son of a bitch"
interesting. my uncle, a doctor too, is actually quite financially savvy and bought a ton of shit at the bottom of the recession and his stocks have been doing phenomenally as expected
As an older gentleman once said, “Having money isn’t spending money.”
I’ll throw in another story. There was a senior guy at Bear who was getting a divorce in November 07. His wife offered him to keep the stock, but give her the apartment on UES and the house in LI. He took the deal.
she had one of the best lawyers in the nation!!!
Navnoor Kang - he was a temp at GS briefly, while I was there. Looks like he made some bad choices:
https://nypost.com/2017/11/08/pension-official-pleads-guilty-to-sex-and…
Sage Kelly.
Wouldn't call that rags when he's head of a division right now..
I really don't understand why schadenfreude doesn't get more play in mainstream society. I thought during the GFC it would have been great to have a version of Jeopardy where 3 morons in foreclosure with negative amortizing loans competed in a test of knowledge. The winner would get 12 months of payments to shore things up for a while. With all of the outcry of 'Greedy Bankers' I really think there should have been a way to show just how dumb some of the people on the other side of the table were /are....
Have you heard of repo games? Was bedridden after catching a terrible illness so had nothing to other than watch crappy tv all day (this was pre-nflx and Hulu)
Premise: giant bouncer-looking guy with a clipboard, film crew, and tow truck show up at someone’s house and alert them that they are behind on their car payments and are here to tow their car... the owner freaks the fuck out until the bouncer guy say WAIT, this is your lucky day, if you can answer 3 of the next 5 questions, we’ll pay your loan off”
The questions are ridiculously easy and there is no time limit. The contestants usually get them wrong.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2m7xLRcsWU
Hahahahahaha
My boss was research director of a new HF that took off after a successful $500MM+ raise. After two years of great returns he got married and built his dream home. Gutted an entire floor of a top building and turned it into a palace with 19 bathrooms, including one with a large group shower (aspirational, LOL).
Just as the buildout finished, the fund tanked, financial markets collapsed, investors bailed, he got laid off (as did I), and the top end real estate market was dead as the proverbial doornail. Foreclosure followed and he had to start over with pretty much nothing but the clothes on his back, along with a wife and kid.
I have another buddy, a Green Beret who got divorced in the Caribbean and everything he managed to keep was on his boat when a hurricane came along and sank it. He quite literally was reduced to rags -- flip flops, cutoff shorts and a Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville T-shirt was all he had left. That's a weather story, not a finance story though.
that large group shower though......
do you have to give details of your personal financials for these type of jobs? or did he simply tell them in casual convo of his situation?
this is the saddest part of my career, but the lessons will stay with you, a couple of true stories and a couple well known ones or ticking time bombs
johnny depp (https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/07/johnny-depp-financial-crisis-m…)
30 for 30 - broke
wealthy heiress. actual client of ours from years ago, married a guy worth $100mm+, got divorced after several years (amicable and profitable), invested with us. great client for years, spent reasonably relative to income, had a daughter in her 40s and son in 30s, daughter was an entitled schoolteacher and son was an on again off again addict. after many years, the client (the heiress) passed away after complications with lung cancer. to our credit, we'd been interacting with the son and daughter for many years, and seeing the path ahead, we encouraged the heiress to name a corporate trustee to oversee the funds, a recommendation she abided by, essentially ensuring that her kids would not squander the money. fast forward a few years, the kids can't seem to spend the money fast enough, a house here, a house there, quitting their jobs, and so on, all against our recommendations which was to use this as a backstop and to fund for future generations' education (what the heiress wanted). long story short, they didn't like being told "no," fired us, and are successfully squandering 8 figures in less than 10 years in the suburbs of a very reasonably priced SE city.
doctor doctor. wildly successful doctor, had his own practice, my senior partners established retirement plans for the whole medical group decades ago, and at retirement, he had many many millions. because he'd been saving so much, we assumed he had reasonable lifestyle needs (after all, we knew how much he made and saved, so we did the math and assumed it'd last forever). not so fast. apparently dr. spendthrift has been banking years of expenses in the back of his mind, and now instead of market updates, every conversation we have with him is "you're going to run out of money," yet he continues to spend in the neighborhood of 8-12% per year of his assets and has at least 10-15 years left to live, closer to 20 if you include his wife's life expectancy. the hypocrisy is the biggest head scratcher. a guy who saves lives and preaches the importance of preventative maintenance is in utter denial about his financial situation and won't take the proverbial "medicine" of living on less. to be sure, it's not like I'm asking him to live like a pauper, just like a prince instead of a king.
company man. this is a generic tale but one we've seen so many times it's worth mention again. you graduate college or b-school and get hired into a management training program at a F500 company, you've got it made in the shade. this company promotes from within, gives good raises off of a good starting salary, offers travel opportunities, shadowing opportunities, and best of all, look at their stock! during the benefits enrollment as a new hire, you overhear an employee about 10y your senior talk about how he's made a killing by putting his 401k into the company stock, so you, being the naive 22 year old wanting to fit it, mimic his decision. for a while, things look great, the company's growing in the high teens per year and along with it, your 401k. no such thing as too much return, right? if it ain't broke, don't fix it! your company stock strategy has beaten the market handily over the past several years, and you watch the stock religiously. one month, you see the stock take a dive when the market has a good month. you think "wtf, my department had a good couple of months, I wonder what's happening," then you learn about earnings reports and find the company missed earnings. suddenly you become curious so you ask your boss what it means to "miss estimates," and you're given some canned answer about how hard it is to impress wall street and to not worry about it. since you don't have the guts or the knowledge to challenge him/her, you go back to your desk, a little uncomfortable, but now a devoted follower of the stock, determined not to sell below the peak price before it started going down. weeks go by, the stock flounders in a trading range, and then you get a pop upwards. vindication! finally, my patience paid off, so you breathe a sigh of relief. this goes on for years while you accumulate more and more shares, until one day, you see some news. perhaps it's a missed sales estimate, the premarket has the stock down 20%. perhaps it's allegations of accounting fraud, perhaps the whole market is crashing and you're just going down with it. regardless, you're fucked. you can't get out in time so you either sell at a loss or ride it down. maybe your stock is microsoft and you recover just fine, but maybe you're at wachovia, maybe cisco, maybe GE. this is a tale as old as time. diversification is boring as hell, but it'll save your ass.
Of course the best stories would come from a Wealth Management professional. SB'ed. Keep 'em coming.
Citi used to be one of our clients for employee financial planning services in 2008, and they really used to push stock in the 401k. those who didn't get axed at least are still solvent for the most part. The share price is back where it was before the crisis, but that 10 for 1 reverse split wiped everybody's savings out. (and their stock is still down ~90% on an adjusted basis)
citi was the worst thing to ever happen to smith barney, I still hate those motherfuckers
It's human nature, but I'm still shocked by the ones who are prudent enough to work with guys like you in the first place and still choose to go off the rails. And screw those kids in #3
the most ironic part in my opinion is it's not specific to intellect, upbringing, or status. just like we've seen rednecks save tons of money and create generational wealth, we've seen ivy league educated people be in complete denial and blow through money like it's going out of style. financial irresponsibility transcends class, race, status, gender, everything. you either are responsible or you're not.
this would be a lot more fun if we could write about success stories. fortunately the ones that end in ruin we rarely oversee, it works out like #3 where we get fired for telling them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
—ESPN Films
Not sure why this is surprising. 60% of people in any professional sports league probably make the league minimum for 3 years and then flame out. Confirmation bias is such that we remember the names that have been around forever and have successful careers, but even guys who get to their first free market contract barely represent a majority, IIRC. People who make it to multiple free agencies are a fairly small minority of players. And for those guys, it isn't crazy to see how they go broke - minimum salary in the NBA is 490k, so your take home pay is probably under 300,000. That's a lot of money, but if you play for 3 years and make a million bucks, it's easy to squander that quickly. And then you're stuck with no skills, no education, and probably a lot of expenses from the high-flying days...
A trader should always live below their means. Too volatile. Applies to bankers to a lesser extent as burnout is possible. It’s a highly leveraged career. Better to save so you have an escape hatch.
I have stories after stories of people spending too much and losing it all in the recession, none are too interesting though, few suicides there too.
The craziest one I've ever heard was from some of my RE friends in PHX. They said some ex-Lehman Brothers trader couldn't afford his mansion down the street from their office and burned it to the ground, and escaped in a scuba suit, only to get charged with attempted murder, since he was in the house, and took cyanide pills in court and died right there in front of the judge.
Supposedly there were a bunch of Picasso paintings that were never found (they were out of the house before it burned down)
Why was he in a scuba suit?
I guess he couldn't breathe in the smoke?
Found an article on this story for anyone else interested this case
http://archive.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/20120717mich…
I would totally buy a book dedicated to stories like this (except the suicides, too messed up)
Sic transit gloria mundi, baby. The stories really worth telling are about the ones who lose it all and then make it back. That's character. The rest is bull.
You mean like Donald J Trump?
Deleted
Less extreme, but a guy I know, early 40s, lost about $20 million in the recession. He was a McMansion developer for the stars out in LA and was making a fortune building spec single family houses. Got absolutely hosed.
He’s a commercial developer in a much less expensive COL city now doing very well for himself - kept his family together and everything - but he says the experience was absolutely life changing. His entire approach to, and relationship with, money changed
Not sure if it's more remarkable that he did it, or that it needed to be said. Good reason to think long and hard about the type of person you marry.
Those kind of guys have an easier recovery period. He’s got a real skill as a developer he can put to work. Losing the fortune sucks but the reason he likely made 20 million was being highly leveraged.
A career like that seems easier to have a second act than someone who was like a mbs trader and blew out.
Guy heads up a floor at a large money manager, pulling in $1M every year for 10 years. Well connected, top business school, the whole nine yards. Started making this kind of money relatively young at age 30, then by age 40 he looks 60 due to excessive drinking.
Now overtaken by alcoholism halfway through his life, right around the world financial crisis, assets plummet and he leaves his job for undisclosed reasons. Drinking gets him in jail on multiple occasions, and being unemployed "retired early" eats up all his savings.
Ultimately, it was the decisions made while drinking which really destroyed him financially. During extensive periods of alcohol-induced irrationality, large amounts of money would abruptly be moved as a result of whimsical generosity or impulsive purchases.
Beware the bottles...and don't pay for models.
The end.
my uncle is in real estate. the man could sell anything back in the day and was pulling in 7 figures a year as he was selling something almost everyday (and not small stuff either). He married a hot wife, had 2-3 cars on rotation (think Aston Martin, BMW, MB) and was going on exotic vacations almost every month. Then he started gambling. Poker. he lost his millions, his wife, his cars, his home and everything in a matter of months. He kept betting big in hoping to recover the losses and he got hustled. Now he lives in a small apartment and can;t stop talking about his glory days while desperately trying to sell in the sub-prime market. he had a big appetite for rewards but not much sense for risk and paid a hefty price. He is the first thing that pops in my head each time i think about getting stupid with money.
If there's one rule in life for a guy it should be to find and marry a chick who loves you before you ever start making real money. After the fact you can never be sure, and if she wasn't there with you on the way up then she won't stay there on the way down.
Crazy
surely this idiot has paid off a lot of his mortgage? surely the best thing to do would be to get rid of that big ass house and buy a smaller one in full?
that women will leave him 10000%
I've seen a bunch, many ending in suicide. The rare diamond is formed in that pressure and the ones who come back stronger than ever are fearless and unbeatable.
Well said. “There comes a time in every mans life when man looks in the abyss and there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.”
One such rare diamond is Ray Dalio
Started listening to his Audio book. What a crazy story.
Love this discussion. Thought I'd add my 2 cents because its a different spin on what's already posted:
A few years back I was a member at a one of the top country clubs in California, really enjoyed that place. They also had a "business club" that I was a part of. Members would take turns presenting each month and talk about their business and issues, etc. One of the guys was a lawyer who specialized in elderly care law/topics/etc. One thing he told me that has stuck with me is, "nothing will break you faster than getting sick in retirement".
He had dozens and dozens of stories of couples that, essentially, did things right with a 401k, asset planning, etc and then one of them has a stroke. When you're older, have health issues, but still have some assets, medical expenses will basically drain everything you have. The saddest ones are where its the husband, he hangs on just long enough to drain all the assets and then dies, leaving the wife completely destitute. You can go from the ideal retirement to being on foodstamps in a shockingly quick amount of time - according to my friend, it happened all the time, much more than most people would even begin to guess.
Jesus that is heartbreaking and hard to hear
It really is, isn't it? His conversation with the group stuck with me more than anyone else's. And if you've met anyone who has had a stroke (or something else serious like that) you can kinda see how it would all come together to just destroy you financially, no matter how much money you started with.
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Americans still have to pay for healthcare? neanderthals
You have to pay for healthcare too. You just pay for other people's. I'd rather pay for my own.
Medical bills are the #1 cause of all US personal bankruptcies. If you ever needed an example of the failure and immorality of our system, this is it. AND, our medical system is the worst value (health per expenditures) in the world. The US Government buys copy paper, planes, bullets, cars all through the auction process - but not medicine. It is a colossal failure, protected from both free markets and regulations.
...
And you couldn't properly read the OP.
And it all went down in flames? Yeah, that sounds disappointing. I think you left out the second paragraph though.
Nope lol I think that's it for OP..
Gotta give him a banana just for the story though
Although it doesn't fit the topic I can't bring myself to MS
Slightly off topic, but a buddy of mine works in Private Banking at a MM Bank.
Background: the husband is a physician at a top 25 hospital in the US, making somewhere around $300k or so a year. His wife owns a successful doctor practice which nets her in total about $900k a year. So all in, they're roughly making $1.2 million per year pre-tax.
The other week, my buddy had a request come through for a small term loan to fund the purchase of a franchised restaurant. He said the valuation was roughly 1x revenue and about 10x adjusted earnings. The purchase price is sub half a million. The business itself could not service the debt (but this is a private banking deal so mainly worried about the actual husband and wife's financial profile).
Anyways.... here's where it gets just cringe worthy: The husband was going to take a 1-2 year hiatus from his job as a PHYSICIAN making $300k+ easy in order to get this BARELY profitable restaurant off the ground. 0 experience in the restaurant industry, mind you.
Why is the husband/wife doing this? Because their financial adviser suggested they "divesify" their wealth... so they go ahead and purchase a money losing restaurant if you do not add back depreciation.
Let me put this in as clear terms as possible: their FINANCIAL ADVISER suggested they buy some shitty restaurant to "DIVERSIFY" their wealth. Which requires FOREGOING $300k-$600k in the husbands physician earnings..... for a restaurant that makes roughly $20-30k a year when you add back depreciation.
I mean first of all, they're doctors so I'm not surprised they're financial illiterates. But their "financial adviser" has to be the dumbest financial planner in the WORLD to suggest what he/she did.
Why not just suggest throwing their money in the SPY and not forego the $300-$600k in lost earnings........ they'll likely never recoup their money from that restaurant investment. In fact, they'll likely lose $100-200K+ on it without even factoring in the foregone salary as a physician.
Icing on the cake? Despite making over a million a year in a LOW COL city my buddy said their assets consisted of $500k in cash in the bank, $1.25MM value listed as the doctor practice the wife owns, and their house, which my buddy said was nice but nothing too extravagant. 1 kid btw. They should have a couple million in the market, easy.
This is why doctors are such great targets for insurance-only "financial advisors." They might as well have all their money locked up in permanent cash value policies to restrict them from making speculative investments in failing business ventures.
If the wife makes $900k a year, then her practice is worth more that $1.25mm. I think he's low-balling their net worth.
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