How to Lose a Fortune

An interesting article which centers around boxer George Forman discusses how wealthy people can “squander often-unimaginable sums of money” and come “perilously close to personal bankruptcy or completely [lose] their shirts.”

Timothy L. O’Brien in Fortune’s Fools: Why the Rich Go Broke, NY Times, Sept. 17, 2006, quoting David W. Latko, explains that there are

five basic ways people become rich: they inherit, marry, steal, win or earn their fortunes. Only those who earn fortunes * * * tend to preserve their wealth.  Inhabitants of the other four categories are more prone to be wastrels.

People in these four categories need solid estate planning advice but even if they get it, it seems that “few of them have heeded that advice.”