will be over . Ask lottery winners and they will tell you that indeed money is not the solution to a financial problem .
According to a 2015 Camelot Group study , the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards says nearly a third of lottery winners declared bankruptcy - meaning they were worse off than before they became rich . No wonder financial planners joke that if you have enemies , give them a lottery ticket .
Sharon Tirabassi was a single mother who was on welfare . She won the lottery and immediately went on a spending spree . She gave $ 1 million to her parents , and $ 1.75 million was divided among her four siblings . She was generous with others , too , buying houses and renting them out at low rates , paying people ’ s rent , offering loans for bail and business ventures . She also spent big on vacations in Cancun , Florida , Las Vegas , California , and the Caribbean , as well as four cars : a Hummer , a Mustang , a Dodge Charger and a custom Cadillac Escalade with an estimated price tag of $ 250,000 . She ended up totally broke and says she wishes she never won . Where did all the money go ?
Michael Carroll ( born 29 March 1983 in Swaffham , Norfolk ) is an English winner of the UK National Lottery . Before winning the lottery he was a waste collector . His winning of £ 9,736,131 at the age of 19 turned him into an instant celebrity . Carroll , like Sharon Tarabissu , was very generous to family and friends and gave his mother , aunt and a sister £ 1 million each .
However , having spent his money on homes , drugs , parties and jewellery he was forced to go back to his old job of garbage collection and back to minimum wage working as a factory hand in a biscuit factory .
David Lee Edwards was an unemployed former drug addict and felon who won a $ 27 million jackpot . As with all the others , he immediately went on a spending spree and acquired toys like a $ 1.6 million house in Palm Beach Gardens , three race horses , a fiber optics company , a Lear Jet , a limo business , a $ 200,000 Lamborghini Diablo and a multitude of other luxuries . He and his wife went back to using drugs and he had several brushes with the law again . He eventually lost everything and ended up living in a storage unit that was unfit for any human being to be in . When he died a few years after living the high life , there was no one - no friends or family around and he was cremated apparently against his wishes because no one was available to pay for his burial costs .
The stories of Sharon Tirabissu , Michael Carrol and David Lee Edwards are just three out of hundreds of people who have fallen victim to the curse of the lottery . The question is , why are they not able to keep all that money ? Their stories go to show that money is not the solution to a financial problem and therefore if we in the spirit of equality give money to people without the right mindset we are simply setting them up for destruction .
It is interesting that even noble acts like giving their loved ones money could not protect them against the consequences of not having the right mentality .
The problem therefore with economic empowerment programs is that they focus on the economics and not on the mentality and that is why we record unbelievable results at the Street University . If the economics is right and the mentality is not right , the economics will not help . If however the economics is right and the mentality is right , the results will be the outstanding unprecedented results that we are experiencing today at the Street University .
Remember that money is not the solution to a financial program because after coming into so much money through the lottery , their lives did not change . The same can be said of people who come into large inheritances . A number of studies have actually shown that a staggering 70 percent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the next generation , with 90 percent losing it the generation after that .
The mentees of wealthy people often end up being more savvy than the heirs . This again proves that being born into wealth does not automatically guarantee a wealthy mindset . In essence if the mindset is not right no amount of money can guarantee sustainable wealth . For this reason , economic development programs must of necessity tackle the mindsets of the beneficiaries .
Governments must decide if they want to create short time excitement or longterm benefits . Just dishing out money to youth groups in the name of youth empowerment is not sustainable . The best form of empowerment is the empowerment of the mind and unfortunately many do not do this and this is why the quality of ideas that come out of some of these so-called empowered people is at best , mediocre .
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