I see others have weighed in on this, but I’ll just reiterate the point that it may be easy to acquire high end stuff when tens of thousands of dollars feel like $20s, but unless you continue to keep that perspective on money, you won’t be able to keep those items. The simple act of ownership will continue to cost you tens, or hundreds, of thousands a dollars a month, and I think this helps explain why someone who is fabulously wealthy can have such high monthly expenditures.
I am also drawing on my brief experience representing wealthy clients in the purchase and sale of private aircraft; the maintenance on those things is unreal! An aircraft requires consistent maintenance, regardless of how it is used. I have heard the same things about luxury sports cars (i.e., if someone owns a Ferrari, they better have an “everyday” car, too, because a Ferrari isn’t designed for street traffic, and you will need to have it tuned regularly). And, just to use a random example, I looked up a condo on Miami’s Fisher Island that is listed for sale at $4.99 million, and the last annual property taxes cost $57,000.00. If you have more than one home, or something even bigger, than you better have six figures of extra cash in your bank account each year unless you want to face the possibility of foreclosure.
And it’s an excellent point that it is not easy to liquidate such high-end assets, since the market of potential buyers is so low.
I doubt that Bill Gates’ net worth is completely in liquid assets that he can invest. Most of his wealth is probably in stock whose value would plummet if he tried to sell it in large quantities.
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I doubt that Bill Gates’ net worth is completely in liquid assets that he can invest. Most of his wealth is probably in stock whose value would plummet if he tried to sell it in large quantities.
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Of course some others have been smart about it, becoming a brand like Dolly Patron, Arnold and Tom Cruise (and in sports David Beckham) which generate income even after your heyday is past.
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Re real estate Your “valuable asset” is a most often very high end real residential estate and that has been highly customized. These properties and their owners often take a HUGE bath on resale especially if it’s a down market or their changes are so pimptastic that the new owners will have to virtually start over again. Many are lucky to get out of it what they put into it and some HAVE to sell quickly which means even more price compression. In some cases we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in losses. Plus in an up and down business like entertainment it’s hard to plan out long term recurrent expenses like taxes. Just the taxes on some high end real estate can be a half million dollars year or more. It all adds up.
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Liberace, surprisingly was very shrewd, he owned several mansions, which he would let out for months to other celebrities, he actually made money off these properties unlike most.
Arnold Schwarzenegger became independently wealthy before he became rich from acting. He parlayed winnings from his bodybuilding career into real estate investments that made him a millionaire by the time he was 25.
While jz78817 is correct insofar as what they do, the reality is that the customers in these situations are typically paying lots of money for the right to sit down at a reserved table, not simply to have their drinks brought to them. Most high end clubs these days don’t have any seating at all for the plebes, although some do have free seating far away from the center of the hustle and bustle. When paying those exorbitant prices for bottles, what you’re paying for is a specific table, each of which has a table minimum (usually in bottle count or dollars spent), usually dependent on table size, location, and sometimes on popularity of the entertainment that evening. The bottle service ladies are simply the waitresses that cater to this subset of the clientele.
I can think of at least a couple of people who made a lot of money in the internet/computer technology business but who also lost a great deal of money. Halsey Minor was the founder of CNET and later made money in Salesforce.com. But he bought an old, historic estate in Virginia and then had expensive disputes with the big auction houses over his ownership of various paintings. John McAfee founded the antivirus company bearing his name but lost a lot of money in the 2008 financial collapse. I think he might have had money invested with Lehman Brothers, which went under at that time.
Regardless of how he lost his money or why he’s cash short, he still has $1.79 mil in assets!
And no one cares if he loses large on the sale, or doesn’t have full equity. He’ll still come out solvent, I’m sure.
He clearly ignored the signs that he needed to downsize his lifestyle, and now he’s faced with selling assets to meet his commitments. Boo hoo, poor sad millionaire!
He needs to suck it up and do what has to be done. And I’m not sure decreasing his alimony should be prioritized ahead of giving up the mansion, (in favour of housing he can actually afford to maintain, no matter how modest.)
Which a 250K/y alimony would go straight though in 6 years, then what. Be it alimony adjustment, debt rescheduling or bankruptcy you really should not wait until you’re flat out ruined to renegotiate, and it IS legitimate to seek to restructure terms of obligations as part of the cutback . But it’s hard to shake the impression that he’s lowballing to try and get the ex to take a bigger haircut than is called for. IF he is having real problems maintaining adequate income let him prove it in court – and show the court what measures is he taking to live within his new means.
Now, the report that Hasselhoff says this prevents him from retiring is just :rolleyes: Yo, David, I’m prevented from retiring because I’m pretty damn sure my pension system is not going to exist by the time I turn 67 and my meager private investments tanked in both the tech crash and the 08 crash. You’ll be able to do a half dozen German infomercials and WashoutsCon appearances to keep you for a year on far better style than I will greeting customers at WalMart. Don’t come crying to me.
The biggest nightmare I’ve ever read when it comes to celebrity alimony is Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall and News Radio. You can google the details, but the jist is that he divorced his first wife when he was on News Radio making $2 million per year and his alimony and child support were set based on that income- something like a quarter of his after taxes income, which was well into six figures.
When the show went off the air his income nosedived and he literally was earning less from all sources than he was being ordered to pay in alimony/child support, yet the courts refused to reduce his alimony. They would not take into account that what had once been a quarter of his income was now about twice his income and that had his wife stayed married to him she would have hit the rapids with him.
To further complicate matters he had divorced a second wife with whom he had a child and was ordered to pay alimony/child support there (a more reasonable amount based on his actual income), and so his alimony/child support. There was simply no way he could make anything but a fraction of his legal obligations, and his first wife- per him a very bitter and vindictive woman- was completely unreasonable and unyielding, and so for a time he could not enter Canada without the risk of jailtime for not having paid money he didn’t have.
John Cleese also had a ridiculous divorce settlement that it took him years to pay off and that cost him most of his career’s earnings. Not sure how that happened considering he was already a superstar when he married the woman.
Bryan Cranston, otoh, says he hasn’t had to work for a living since long before Malcolm in the Middle went off since he lives modestly and hasn’t had an expensive divorce. He says it was important to him to be able to pick his projects based 100% on how much he liked the writing and not the paycheck. (Though he did go overboard on his Super Sweet 60th birthday bash.)
I always understood that certain celebrities charged appearance fees to come and hang out in your club, the thought being that more unknown people would then come and spend money where the Hiltons and Kardasians were partying. You can google “list of celebrity appearance fees”, I would link were I not at work.
Every time I see one of these things I want a new law that says that your period of alimony or Spousal Support cannot exceed the length of the marriage.
I’ve always assumed that the fundamental problem with all these athletes/actors/musicians who go broke is that they’re not investing it, they’re just spending it as it comes in during their heyday. You and I might think that it’s intuitively obvious that if you come into a multi-million dollar windfall, the first thing you do is set up a conservative investment portfolio to provide yourself with a steady income for the rest of your life, and you don’t touch your principal. But we’re not the kind of people who become pro athletes and rock stars.
I’m confused, isn’t there a provision in the law to allow the alimony and even child support to be reduced if the father’s income radically changes?
Because there is where I live! If the father becomes unemployed or disabled, the court takes that into account. They aren’t ever going to let the man get away with laying zero, of course. But I know a couple of different men who successfully returned to court and had their pay,ends reduced in line with their reduced income.
If there isn’t such an accommodation available in the US, what happens if the once millionaire becomes disabled and can’t earn any money? Are they just racking up debt till they die?
After all isn’t the thinking, in the first step, the father is wealthy and the family should have a somewhat comparable lifestyle. But if his fortune’s change, so should theirs, to a certain minimum, of course.
So I’m not understanding why they could go to court to pursue this? Or is it because they don’t want to downsize their lifestyle, or sell their assets, they just want the family to live on less? Maybe they just can’t/ won’t admit they’ve come down in the world?
If they haven’t pushed this then why are they bitching? Seems like the judge would listen, if what they say is the whole story, of course! Not so much if they’ve got numerous big assets and are just getting cash shy!
I don’t know. I can see one spouse essentially arguing opportunity cost.
Let’s say a marriage only lasts five years. But one spouse says “At the time we got married, I was working on an acting career. I had gotten jobs and was getting more offers. But I gave that up when I got married. I probably won’t be able to revive my acting career at this point and I certainly can’t get back the five years I lost. So my spousal support should not only reflect the five years of our marriage but also the career and means of supporting myself I gave up for that marriage.”
When I went through my divorce, my lawyer explained it was based on earning potential, not actual income. Otherwise, all spouses ordered to pay would go get a temporary minimum wage job to get the amount reduced.
When my husband became permanently disabled and was approved for SSDI, he went back to court over child support. His minor child SSDI benefit was directed to his ex-wife to be counted as his child support for his two kids from his first marriage. Apparently this is pretty common, though it may depend on what state the CS case is venued in.
Most of the athletes on that show were football players, and it’s important to remember that NFL contracts are not guaranteed. If a baseball player signs a six year, $100 million contract, he will get every penny. But if a football player signs a six year, $100 million contract, you’ll usually find that MOST of that money is due in the last two seasons. And the team is likely to cut the player before that.
Many of these football players make foolish decisions. But it doesn’t help that they typically DON’T get all the money they expect is coming to them.
Yes there is. From the obliguee’s POV it is a huge pain in the youknowwhat, though, because of course we don’t want people to get off easy by just slacking off. The obliguees are stuck with the original obligation for however long the court review lasts.
Hasselhof is apparently doing such pleading before the court on account of what he alleges to be below expected income and running out of assets. The ex begs to differ, and it is up to him to prove it.
There is such a provision? One can assume for such cases, yes? I’m in agreement it should not be easy, and isn’t where I live, but shouldn’t he be quietly pursuing that with his lawyer? Rather than crying poor in the press? How is that going to help?
Also, if you apply to the court, how is, “my lifestyle/mansions, cars, staff are costly to maintain, I should get a break on my alimony!” gonna fly? Aren’t they likely to instruct him to alter his lifestyle ahead of reducing his alimony and child support?
It sounds like, “I can’t afford to live large ANDsupport my family!”