Three lessons about money and happiness from people who got one but not the other.
We often think that our feelings should track with our circumstances. If our life is good, we should be happy, right? But life is more complicated than that. Things that seem good from the outside can end up destroying us.
Just ask Jack Whittaker.
Within a few years of winning $315 million in a West Virginia lottery, he faced hundreds of lawsuits, began drinking heavily, and lost his granddaughter to drugs. He regretted winning, saying, “I wish I’d torn that ticket up.” Or ask Abraham Shakespeare, who won $30 million in a lottery and later told his brother that he would have been better off broke. Shakespeare was later murdered, his body found buried under a slab of concrete.
Whatever it is that lottery winners are searching for, they often go broke before finding it. According to the CFP Board of Standards, nearly one-third of lottery winners eventually declare bankruptcy. How can someone win millions of dollars and lose it all?
… Continue reading at Common Good Magazine
*Photo by Ярослав Алексеенко on Unsplash
Also published on Medium.
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