Do you have any modern day "riches to rags" stories you would like share?

I haven’t seen the recent video, @chyna. Do you have a link?

I’m sorry, @chyna. It is too late to edit my request for a link. I’ve been busy with my granddaughter and I missed the entire story. I just saw it online.

@chyna I think Romney is too rich to have this happen, unless something catastrophic happened to the US, maybe it would have to happen to the entire earth. Even if his money was all in savings earning only 1% he probably would not spend all the interest it throws off probably.

I have a family member by marriage who was what some might call rich, I wouldn’t, but I think a lot of people would. He had close to a million dollars in savings, and this was 30 years ago, so it was worth more than now, and two houses paid in cash worth about $200k each, which was a very nice house at the time. At one point he sold a the businesses he owned and moved to a new place. Things had become unsafe where he lived. He built a small strip mall for retailers to put their businesses in, and he opened a restaurant in that mall, and both did not do well. He poured thousands of dollars into it every month until he basically had lost all his money. He sold his second home and took a mortgage on his first to buy back some of the old businesses he had sold a couple years before. He did ok, but rarely saved, because he maintained his higher lifestyle without the previous income he had. After about 20 years those business started to fail and he lost everything in the end. Everything. His house, the businesses, everything. He did start over, and now makes a living, but it is nothing like his hay day. I think his biggest mistake was not planning for his financial future, having very little focus on savings.