Iverson’s FAIL? How NOT To be a Millionaire…

Not following rule #2 of the rich:

2. Control Thy Expenditures

~The Richest Man in Babylon

Iverson did great with rule #1 & #7:

1. Start thy purse to fattening

7.  Increase thy ability to earn

Anyone can do #1 and #7, but dropping the ball on rules #2 through #6?  You’re just another person with a paycheck.  Even if the paycheck’s millions and millions of dollars, you’re not rich and you’re not wealthy.

Bill Lyon, former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist,

watched the Iverson years unfold in Philadelphia and wrote about Iverson’s days of excessthat included enormous entourages. “Their numbers varied day to day, week to week, most of them from the old neighborhood in Virginia,” Lyon wrote. “There might be as many as 50 for tickets to a home game. There was a hair stylist who traveled, did his corn rows two to three times a week.”

Iverson had his reasons for remaining loyal to the crowd, telling Lyon “they made me.”

He meant they had protected him from all of the casual violence, especially in the early days, allowing him to get where he was. Literally, they kept him alive.

And he owed them.

One night, during the playoffs, in a hotel suite darker than a coal mine at midnight, you saw the depth of his debt: There were bodies everywhere in that suite, all the furniture occupied, the floor, too, the snoring rivaling a 747 takeoff. It was the Posse and assorted hangers-on and remoras and this thought struck you:

It may take a village to raise a child, but in A.I.’s case it has been the other way around.

David Buffalo, a.k.a. The Buffalo Trader, summed it up on Facebook about Iverson:

Yes, even the so-called “1%” can’t save their money. Yet I know some folks who have never made much more than $30K a year who are truly financially set. The choice is yours. The government only wants to hold you back, not help you out. Even at zero percent interest rates, you can still save money. Allen Iverson didn’t.

By the way, most fortunes in the world (not just in the USA) are lost within 2 generations (about 35 years). Financial mobility goes in both directions and that direction is determined by what YOU do.