Everybody Loves Your Money

The first thing I thought about when I read this story is, “That million isn’t going to last long”.  This woman found a $10 bill on the ground and then used it to buy lottery tickets.  She’s glad she did because she won a $1 million dollar jackpot.  The article says that she has 9 maxed out credit cards and $8500 in debt from an associates degree.  Apparently that associates degree hasn’t really paid off yet because she is working as a cashier in a gas station.

The woman’s one saving grace may be that she took the annual payments instead of the lump sum because she knew that she would have blown the lump sum very quickly.  While the lump sum probably isn’t the best financial decision you could make, for someone like her, who recognizes her inability to manage money, it’s just what the doctor ordered.  The payout is only going to be about $34,500 after taxes but it’s most likely more than she was making as a cashier.  It seems like the best thing that she can do is to use that money to supplement her income and continue working.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/21/national

I just noticed there is a new “millionaire in the making” that I hadn’t seen.  Jeanette Courts is a divorced 38 year old mom who works for the Pentagon making 94,000 per year.  Here is a summary of her net worth:

Government Thrift Savings Plan: $107,000
Roth IRA: $6,000
Savings Bonds: $2,000
Online savings account: $10,000
Brokerage account: $1,000
Other savings: $4,000
Home equity: $190,000

Jeanette is looking good.  I’d say she is doing an outstanding job of living below her means and is on track to be a millionaire by the time she retires.  I found a lot of similiarities with her habits and our family’s habits.  Buy the products you use a lot in bulk (think Costco), take our lunches to work and buy clothes in the offseason whenever we can.  We don’t use our flexible spending account, mostly due to the exceptional benefits I get from my employer already.

After reading a story like this I can’t help but compare it to our situation.  We are about 3 years younger than Jeanette and are significantly farther along than she is.  I’m sure that her divorce set her back a ways, but I think she seems to have bounced back from that really well.  While this certainly isn’t a contest, I think it’s human nature to think about how we all shape up.  I mean, be honest.  It’s really not all that different from comparing yourself to the Jones’, but I would argue it’s a much healthier exercise because you are comparing yourself to someone that is doing the right things.

So anyway, after seeing Jeanette featured in a “millionaire in the making” story and then seeing where we are at, I have to walk away feeling pretty darned good.  We are still enjoying life, but are also experiencing the peace of mind and security that comes with having money put away for the future and having more and more money working for us, instead of us working for it.

On a side note, I notice that CNNMoney seems to be changing their format a bit.  You’ll notice that the URL to the story has the word “blog” in it.  I wonder if that might indicate they’ll have more featured people for this millionaires series.  It seems to me that they would be smart to crank one of these millionaires stories out at least once a week.  They seem to be very popular.