big celebrities with big money problems

 

4) Toni Brax­ton: Between 1996 and 1998, Brax­ton ran up the charts with smashes like “You’re Makin’ Me High” and “Un-break my Heart.” She also ran up mas­sive charges, buy­ing pricey home décor items like china and Faberge eggs. When she ran out of cash, she couldn’t un-break her bank account and, at the height of her fame, Toni declared bank­ruptcy. The singer even­tu­ally got out of dis­tress, but then she got back in it 12 years later. Brax­ton then con­sid­ered pos­ing for Play­boy, but ulti­mately, she took the more dig­ni­fied route and starred in her own real­ity show. Is bar­ing your life on TV more dig­ni­fied than bar­ing your body in a porn mag­a­zine? Let’s call it draw.

3) Mozart: Wolf­gang didn’t just write a bunch of great music, he also wrote a bunch of bad IOUs. Back in the 1700s, musi­cians barely made any money. This didn’t sit well with Mozart—he felt he should live like his wealthy noble patrons. Since he didn’t have iTunes to sell his music dig­i­tally, he didn’t have money, either. So he bor­rowed it. In the last years of his life, Mozart spent less time com­pos­ing music and more time com­pos­ing let­ters to friends and beg­ging them for money. Musi­cal genius? Yes! Finan­cial genius? No-zart.

2) Billy Joel: No celebrity has had big­ger prob­lems than the Piano Man him­self. He has declared bank­ruptcy not once, not twice, but THREE times. On top of that, he filed a $90 mil­lion law­suit against his for­mer man­ager and brother-in-law, Frank Weber, for los­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars. But since that’s not all Billy’s fault, let’s lay the blame on some­one who deserves it.

1)  Michael Jack­son: The King of Pop left behind a mas­sive legacy: 13 number-ones, 28 Top 10 Hits, and more than $500 mil­lion in debt. The pub­lic love his music, but when it comes to his finances, nobody rang up charges more crazily and errat­i­cally than MJ. Here’s a quick list of his great­est finan­cial hits:

• $1 mil­lion: Fee paid to have Mar­lon Brando appear at a 2001 concert
• $15 mil­lion: Pro­duc­tion cost of 35-minute film he co-wrote with Stephen King
• ??? mil­lion: Rented an entire hotel room floor in NYC for a month because he needed a place to store all the antiques he bought on shop­ping sprees

With the excep­tion of Mozart, the story is sim­ple: These celebs found suc­cess, saw money rolling in, and never seemed to believe it would end. So even when times were tight, they spent their sav­ings like the next big pay­check could come float­ing in any day — and that’s com­pletely under­stand­able. It’s also a mis­take many aver­age people make as well. There are other basic rea­sons why pay­checks can end: lay­offs, work injuries, an inabil­ity to find a job in this tight mar­ket. But even with these legit rea­sons, you still have to pay for food, rent, util­i­ties, and more.
If the reces­sion taught us any­thing, it was to save. 
by Andrew Samson