Tuesday, April 12, 2011

All the riches of the world

can't compete with the taxman.

Seems that Ozzy Osborne might have to sell one of his houses to pay his tax debt. Apparently, they 'forgot' to pay personal income tax the last two years. Surely they'd have accountants working for them? How do you forget?

And, for Christ sake, they only owe $1.5 mill. Surely that's a drop in the bucket? The amount of money Ozzy has made over the years, not to mention the amount of money Sharon seems to keep making; how can this be a problem?

I seem to have noticed this sort of trend in the past few years. I'm sure it's been happening forever, but I've only just latched onto it. How come people, who ostensibly have personal wealth in the millions, still get into debt? Can it be as simple as living beyond your means? Is it just bad housekeeping, insomuch as you've hired the wrong people to look after your finances? I know I'm the last person who should write this but, doesn't anyone save anymore?

I don't know about anyone else but, I still think a million dollars is a lot of money. Not worth as much as when I was a kid but still. I wouldn't knock back a million dollars. Yet, people still can't seem to live on a million dollars. People can't seem to live on SEVERAL million dollars. I'm constantly amazed that some entrepreneur, who only five years ago had a personal wealth of 15 million dollars, is now filing for bankruptcy. And it's not just entrepreneurs. Celebrities, businessmen and women, lottery winners. How can you have so much money one year and nothing the next? As much as I hate money, if I did win five or six million, I'd make damn sure I had taken all necessary steps to keep that money going for the rest of my life. I've said the same things to people before and they look at me like I'm some sort of moron. Surely though, there are investments that are secure, are indexed to grow with inflation and are able to provide you with a source of income over your lifetime.

Can it really be so hard?

6 comments:

VEG said...

Yeah it's amazing isn't it? I always wonder the same thing. If you have $20 million how the HELL do you end up destitute? I guess people go nuts with the idea they can buy anything and buy ten million dollar houses and fancy cars and eat at expensive restaurants and before they know it they've exhausted their supplies because they thought it was never ending and it wasn't. Maybe. I don't know. Crazy. I think some people's mindset is if you have a giant sum of money you never need to budget or control your money and that's probably their biggest mistake.

The Unbearable Banishment said...

Ozzy's wife, Sharon, is to blame. And I'm not kidding about this. She's a raging shop-a-holic. She spends Ozzy's money quicker than he can make it. That's why he's still on the road at 87 years old instead of out fly fishing.

tennysoneehemingway said...

Veg: I think you hit the nail on the proverbial with that.

UB: bloody Sharon. How many D&G bags does one woman need?

rubbish said...

By all accounts you need £7 million in the bank to live like a millionaire now? WTF. I'd be happy with £7k in the bank.

Laura said...

I think it boils down to about 91.2% of the people on this planet are complete and utter morons.

You have enough money to HIRE people to budget FOR YOU. How are they not all doing that? The people they hire can't all be syphoning money away.

It's gotta be the moron factor.

This post is awesome. That is all.

tennysoneehemingway said...

rubbish: God yes, 7k would go down a treat right about now.

Lola: it's the only thing I can think of too. The moron factor. Maybe, if you come into heaps of money, you automatically lose brain power?