What is an example of a company, or wealthy person spending so much money they went broke?

Question

I know it's an odd question, but I'm supposed to have examples for an English essay discussing Benjamin Franklin's aphorism, "Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship". Only issue....I can't think of a single example when this occurred.

Answer 1

Born in New York City, Barbara Hutton was the only child of Edna Woolworth (1883-1918) who was the daughter of Frank W. Woolworth, the founder of the successful Woolworth department store chain. Barbara's father was Franklyn Laws Hutton (1877-1940), a wealthy co-founder of the respected E. F. Hutton & Company, a New York Investment banking and stock brokerage conglomerate. She was a niece by marriage of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post who was for a time (1920-1935) married to E.F. Hutton; thus their daughter, actress-heiress Dina Merrill (born Nedenia Hutton), was a first cousin to Barbara Hutton. Dina Merrill related on A&E's Biography of the Woolworths, that for a time Barbara lived with them following the death of her mother and abandonment by her father.

Her mother committed suicide when Barbara was six years old. After her mother's death, she lived with various relatives, and was raised by a governess. She became an introverted child who had limited interaction with other children her own age. Her closest friend and only confidante was her cousin Jimmy Donahue, the son of her mother's sister.

In accordance with New York's high society traditions, Barbara Hutton was given a lavish débutante ball on her 18th birthday, where guests from the Astor and Rockefeller families, amongst other elites, were entertained by stars such as Rudy Vallee and Maurice Chevalier. Three years later, on her 21st birthday, Barbara Hutton inherited close to $50 million from her mother's estate. Her inheritance made her one of the wealthiest women in the world.


[edit] Marriages
Portrayed in the press as the "lucky" young woman who had it all, the public had no idea of the psychological problems she lived with that led to a life of victimization and abuse. Barbara Hutton married seven times:

1933 - Alexis Mdivani, a soi-disant Georgian prince, divorced 1935
1935 - Count Curt Heinrich Eberhard Erdmann Georg von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, divorced 1938
1942 - Cary Grant, divorced 1945
1947 - Igor Troubetzkoy, divorced 1951
1953 - Porfirio Rubirosa, divorced 1954
1955 - Baron Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt von Cramm, divorced 1959
1964 - Prince Pierre Raymond Doan, divorced 1966 (she bought him the title Vinh na Champassak of Laos)

[edit] Mdivani and Reventlow
Her first two husbands used her great wealth to their advantage, especially the extremely abusive Curt Haugwitz-Reventlow with whom she had her only child, a son named Lance.

Reventlow dominated her through verbal and physical abuse which escalated to a savage beating that left her hospitalized and him in jail. He also persuaded her to give up her American citizenship, and to take his native Danish citizenship for tax purposes, which she did in December 1937 in a New York federal court. At this point she lapsed into drug abuse. Hutton then developed anorexia, which would plague her for the rest of her life.

Hutton's divorce from Reventlow gave her custody of their son, and like her father had done to her, she left the raising of Lance to a governess and private boarding schools.


[edit] Cary Grant
With World War II raging in Europe, Hutton gifted her London mansion Winfield House to the United States government and moved to California. Back home, Hutton became active during the war, giving money to assist the Free French Forces and donating her yacht to the U.S. government. Using her high profile image to sell War bonds, she received positive publicity after being derided by the press as a result of her marriage scandals. In Hollywood, she met and married Cary Grant, one of the biggest movie stars of the day. Grant did not need her money nor to benefit from her name, and appeared to genuinely care for her. Nevertheless, this marriage failed as well.


[edit] Igor Troubetzkoy
Hutton left California and moved to Paris, France before acquiring a mansion in Tangier. Hutton then began dating Igor Troubetzkoy, another expatriate Russian prince of very limited means but world renown. In the spring of 1948 in Zurich, Switzerland, she married him. That year, he was the driver of the first Ferrari to ever compete in Grand Prix motor racing when he raced in the Monaco Grand Prix and later won the Targa Florio. He ultimately filed for divorce. Hutton's attempted suicide made headlines around the world. Labeled by the press as the "Poor Little Rich Girl," her life nevertheless made great copy and the media exploited her for consumption by a fascinated public.


[edit] Porfirio Rubirosa
Her next marriage lasted only 53 days. Porfirio Rubirosa, one of the most notorious of international playboys, married the vulnerable woman while continuing his affair with the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor [citation needed].

Hutton then spent time with Americans, James Douglas and Philip Van Rensselaer. However, her lavish spending continued, and although she was already the owner of several mansions around the world, in 1959 she built a luxurious Japanese-style palace on a 30 acre (120,000 m²) estate in Cuernavaca, Mexico.


[edit] Gottfried von Cramm
Her next husband was an old friend, German tennis star Baron Gottfried von Cramm. This marriage also ended in divorce. He died in an automobile crash near Cairo, Egypt in 1976.


[edit] Raymond Doan
In Tangier, she met her seventh husband, Raymond Doan. This marriage, too, was short-lived.

Hutton frequently appeared drunk in public and her spending continued unabated. Over the years, she had acquired a large collection of valuable jewelry, including elaborate historical pieces that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette and Empress Eugénie of France. She began spending time with numerous younger men, total strangers to whom she gave money, diamond bracelets, and other pieces of expensive jewelry.


[edit] Final years
The 1972 death of her son in an aircraft crash sent Hutton into a state of despair. Her fortune had diminished to the point where she began liquidating assets in order to raise funds to live on. Nonetheless, she continued to spend money on strangers willing to pay a little attention to her. She spent her final years living at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she died from a heart attack in May of 1979. At her death, it is said that $3,000 was all that remained of her fortune. She was interred in the Woolworth family mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.


[edit] Biographical information
Over the years, numerous books have been written about Barbara Hutton, the best known of which are:

Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton by C. David Heymann
Million Dollar Baby: An Intimate Portrait of Barbara Hutton by Philip Van Rensselaer
In 1987, a television motion picture titled Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story starred Farrah Fawcett in the role of Barbara Hutton.

Answer 2

theoreticaly if the buisness is making money they will be able to expand and hire more people to do jobs for that buisness and ultimatly more people will become employed and they will have more money to spend on goods, this makes sence if you emiminate many factors but when you add factors in such as people's mindset and what they want then it does not work and this is where problems happen because practice and theory is not aligned, many companies want to expand and some do not that is the owner's nature but you are also forgetting which taxes are you talking about is it state or federal or even county, or city these 4 things tax a buisness and individual and if one lowers their taxes normaly the other one adds taxes to make up the difference, I agree the logic is lacking but that is sadly the way things are unless you are willing to call for change, and call for people to do their job instead of the goverment, to do it for the people.

Answer 3

um, well, he's not broke, but that dumb *** Donald Trump, he baught a casino out here where I live, it used to be called spotlight 29, then Trump 29, but trump sucked at running the place, and had to file bankruptcy and it's now called spotlight 29 again, you may wanna research what he did to have to file chapter 11. I don't know the exact reasons, but there's a little example for you.

Hope this hellped, Merry x-mas and Happy New Year!

Answer 4

Not too notable, but in my lifetime: MC Hammer.


Malcolm Campbell
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Answer 5

Enron

Answer 6

...Enron....what should have been a multi million dollar business went bellie up, corrupt...

...Micheal Jackson, popular and a million at age approx 11years old, now having to sell his mansion to live on, and bought the Beatle collection and held onto it and didn't sell to make money with...now the "patent" is up and anyone and copy the Beatle music.

...OJ, a millionaire who "killed or had killed " to protect his fortune and now cannot even publish a book ...karma...

...America...during the depression.....!

...just a few..
..hope this helps

Answer 7

McHammer

Answer 8

Mark Twain lost all his money on bad investments.

Answer 9

MC Hammer.

Answer 10

all lottery winners fit into this category

Answer 11

ERON ( STOCK TRADING COMPANY)
WILLIE NELSON (COUNTRY SINGER)