30 For 30 Broke Reflection
By Nicole Matonis
Bankruptcy seems almost impossible when you’re making millions of dollars. I feel like it all starts when your dreams as a child of being rich finally come true. Some athletes or other celebrities didn’t have good homes as a child and most of their parents were often broke, that’s when you realize you don’t want to live like that. So when you get that first pay check for thousands or millions of dollars you want to live like a king. In the 1990’s salaries started rising from thousands to millions. Which then started the trend “keeping up with the joneses”, this means that when you see someone with something like a Cadillac you decide you need not just one Cadillac but five and not just any Cadillac but a better one. You keep trying to “one up” the other famous people. This leads to bad money management decisions because you don’t start a savings account and spend your money recklessly without thinking about your future. Somethings the average person can learn from these people is that the income you get right now might not be the same a few years from now. So don’t start making huge expenses that you will later on end up in debt for. Like for example a lot of these wealthy people made decisions like having many children with many women which effected them in the future with child support, or investing in unsuccessful businesses. If I were a financial planner, I would make my clients open up saving accounts and take a certain amount of their pay check and put it away for the future. I’ll make sure they know that they don’t need more than two cars at most and only one-two houses (vacation homes). Also that getting women pregnant isn’t a onetime thing it’s a nineteen-year commitment. So when you’re making all this money as it may seem impossible to become broke, don’t forget that anything is possible especially if you make poor decisions.