Stories where an unexpected windfall totally changed your life
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Anonymous
| No happy inspirational stuff here- more money just magnifies whatever you already are. |
Anonymous
Sorry, what was the point of your post? Just to crap on what someone else said was meaningful to them? |
Anonymous
If $150k is "nothing" to you, then yes: you are rich. But as for the bolded, if you would like to buy a house in DC, and what you have now + $150k wouldn't add up to a down payment, then you should adjust your goals and buy somewhere else. $150k would be a downpayment on its own, but it seems like you want a 2M house or something. |
Anonymous
| I won a personal injury lawsuit my senior year of college. I can’t remember the exact amount: maybe $80k. I used it to pay for the down payment on my first house (in DC) four years later at age 25. I was an English major making $30k and had student loans so it was life changing. |
Anonymous
| Full scholarship to professional school-hybrid of needs based and merit with four awarded for every incoming class. Changed my entire life. |
Anonymous
| This happened to me a couple decades ago. After college I worked for 2 years and saved enough to pay for one year of law school. I had no clear idea of how I would pay for the second two years. No familial financial support. I will never forget the feeling when I opened the letter from the school toward the end of that first year, informing me I’d been awarded a full scholarship. It changed my life, and felt like I’d won the lottery. |
Anonymous
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Spouse sold a company, made
millions. We have a child with disabilties, the money and security from it will completely change our child’s life. |
Anonymous
| These are nice stories! |
Anonymous
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I have extended family that won the Million dollar scratchers in Virginia.
Nicest people - down to earth - simple things. Their 2 kids went out and purchased a used car to share to make it easier to get to an from community college. |
Anonymous
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When I got married, my husband was a young Navy officer and I was an IT project manager. I made more than double his salary.
A month after our wedding, my MIL gave us stock certificates she had in her possession. We put everything into Schwab and discovered it was appx $700,000 (late 90s, just before Dow broke 10,000). I learned everything I could about investing, personal finance. Today we are debt free (have been for last 18 years). Net worth approaching $10 million. I grew up extremely poor (neither parent graduated from high school). I went to college on scholarships, loans and Pell grants. We still live well below our means and intend to pass down to our children and our alma mater. |
Anonymous
| I was the scholarship kid at a private prep school in California. My best friend was a girl whose mom had won the California lottery and sent her to private. |
Anonymous
Same here. I was the scholarship kid of a single Mom at a Catholic school in my smallish town. I did extremely well academically and the peer group elevated my expectations and motivation. I scraped up money for college, graduated, then moved here where I scraped a lot more and now we're worth millions. When I visit my hometown, I can see the path not taken if I hadn't gotten that scholarship money. I'd probably be a twice-divorced hairdresser completing the loop on a cycle of poverty. |
Anonymous
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When I was college (not in the US) I received government funding that covered tuition and (very frugal) living expenses. The amount differed each year but was never above a certain amount and sometimes took a while to arrive, dependent on complex forms and calculations based on my parents’ income. One day I received the final check for the year and it was nearly $2k more than expected. (At this point i I was living on a little more than $3k a year so this was a considerable sum). I put it in to a high interest bank account and waited for them to ask for it back. They didn’t.
About three years later I used that money to buy my first car, which a few years later I sold and took the proceeds (again about $2k) and that was what funded my move to the US about 25 years ago. I literally had a one way ticket and a as couple of thousand dollars. Now I have a net worth of $3m and a lovely family. Maybe I could have done it without that small nest egg but it was an enormous amount of money at the time and without it I might not have had the confidence to move. |
Anonymous
Not a happy story. Nonetheless, three years ago my father had a falling out with me, DH, and our kids. Our children are the only grandkids. My sister is married and has no kids, nor will she plan to in the future. Basically, we showed an apparent lack of respect. We didn’t offer to pay for the Christmas that my parents insisted on hosting. We didn’t offer to treat my father to first class airfare and hotel upgrades on his recent cruise vacation with my mom. We bought a new BMW and didn’t offer to buy my dad something comparable. In any case, as a result of the above disrespect, we became estranged from my parents. We’ve essentially been written off. No more phone calls, holidays, email, or communication of any kind. Not even between my parents and our kids. We’ve tried repeatedly, but there’s been nothing. I keep a close relationship with my sister, however, and over the same three years she and her husband have been gifted nearly $200K from my parents for home renovations, a new truck for my brother in law, vacations, and new appliances and furniture. I’m happy for my sister, but this is starting to create a strain on our relationship. We’re stretching to put two kids through college and meanwhile my sister is raking in the early inheritance. I’m sure we’ll be fine financially, but this whole move has been so vindictive and hurtful that it’s hard to ignore. |
Anonymous
I’m a new fed. How much are these awards generally? |