Aug 24, 2009 03:55 AM
15,710
Enter your username and password.
New York, 11:11 PM
Tue Feb 9
55 posts in the last 24 hours
Callie Rogers was once the world's luckiest teenager. You see, at the tender age of 16, Ms. Rogers won £1.9million lottery. That was, at the time, about $3 million. Now it's all gone. That's good and bad. But mostly bad.
Like most teenagers, Rogers simply pissed away the money on homes, vacations and, we're sure, no small amount of baubles. To be fair, though, she did spend a hefty amount on relatives and friends. Sadly for Rogers and her fortune, that brought nothing but ruin, stress and general angst. Said Rogers, who's now 22:
My life is a shambles and hopefully now it has all gone I can find some happiness. It's brought me nothing but unhappiness. It's ruined my life. I've just wanted to make people happy by spending money on them. But it hasn't made me happy. It just made me anxious that people are only after me for my money.
And that's likely the case. Now that she's broke, however, Rogers says she's trying getting her life back on track and has put her dark past — including two suicide attempts — behind her. She's picking up the pieces and works as a cleaning woman to keep herself afloat. Thus, she learned a valuable lesson about money and its many discontents. That's a good thing.
The bad thing? Well, she's in debt, which is obviously the opposite of good. But that's hardly the worst part: while she was flying high on that lottery dough, Rogers got involved with a criminally-inclined man and bore him two children. Money makes people do crazy things!
Of course, children aren't bad — not always, at least — but a 22-year old who's in debt and trying to raise two children? That's definitely bad and provides a cautionary tale for all of us: if you win the lottery, don't piss away the earnings, especially if you have children. One would think such advice would be common sense, but apparently that's not the case. Rogers says it herself:
Until you win such a large amount of money at such a young age, you don't realize the pressures that come with it. I did it because winning the lottery has ruined my life.
Not to mention that it all fits into China's grand plans. Be warned.
Send an email to Andrew Belonsky, the author of this post, at andrew.belonsky@gmail.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Start a new discussion