I saw this article over on Yahoo the other day and it got my hackles up.........
Article HERE.
While I am glad that there are generous people in this world, who will give money to a complete stranger this article bothered me on many levels.
Your life, my life, everyone's life is made up of little decisions. String together these decisions and it forms the basis of what becomes your life.
Where you choose to go to school....if you chose to go to school.
Which career path you choose.
What job you take which leads you to live in a particular area.
If you choose to marry or remain single.
If you chose to have kids.
And on and on.
Likewise all your financial decisions also lead, one by one, to where you are with your money today.
This woman made decisions in her life that led her to where she was, up to when this accident befell her.
She chose to get a degree that led to her working in a hospital and earning a pretty good salary from the sound of it(average wage for a child psychiatrist in NY is $160K yr.).
She chose to remain in her parent's rent controlled Manhattan apartment after they died.
She chose to either adopt or have IVF/etc.(both are costly) and have 3 children at an advanced maternal age as a single parent.
She chose to spend her money on nannies for these kids(and I assume they go to private school).
She chose to not get any sort of renter's insurance.(One wonders too if she has life insurance for these kids sake.)
And then her apartment and it's contents was destroyed in this terrible accident.
And she wants others to cough up $200K so she can resume the life she was leading.
I am sorry.
But my wallet won't be opened for this lady.
Who I DO feel sorry for are those kids.
They are the victims in this scenario.
She made lots of bad or at the least questionable money decisions up to this point.
With her large salary she made a conscious decision NOT to get renter's insurance when she KNEW full well if something ever happened to her apartment that she'd have to pay a HUGE amount to replace it with a market rate priced apartment.
Let her move to Jersey or Brooklyn and commute into Manhattan for her job.
These kids are young and it won't do them any harm to change schools and move out of the city.
Or maybe I am just being an old scrooge.....
We need to help our fellow man on one hand.
But on the other hand, our fellow man needs to live with the consequences of the choices they have made.
What do you think?
Would you give someone like this money?
Sluggy
