the Finances of Death

Here's a true story.  Once upon a time there lived a guy who was instrumental in getting Charles Schwab up and running.  See, Charles Schwab did not have any money of his own - he used his wife's inheritance to get his company up and running.  When the Charles Schwab Company was in its infancy it was teetering on collapse and almost imploded on itself.

At a pow-wow in a house boat on Lake Shasta in the late 1970's - early 1980's sat a council of stoned, drunk, and ego laden guys high on cocaine who were going to rescue Chuck and try to make the company succeed.

They did.  Not long after the company grew into a the first large-scale discount brokerage house in nation.  The guys in the background of Chuck's successful corporate turn-around then took their show on the road to rescue other brokerage firms with problems.

One of the guys, Mr. Rescue, had a wife.  Mr. Rescue was on the road constantly saving brokerage houses of their internal operational woes.  Mr. Rescue never shared any of their personal financial information with Wife-ey-Poo.  All Wife-ey-Poo knew was going to play tennis at the Marin Country Club and arranging flowers for her to photograph and paint.  She lived in ignorant, kept, sheltered bliss.  She thought they were "all that" and life was glorious.  yes...the key word was thought.

Sadly, Mr. Rescue died in a hotel room on the road trying to save yet another brokerage house.  Wife-ey-Poo was devastated.  She did not even know how to balance a checkbook.  Certainly there were life insurance policies in place and the houses and stocks he *claimed* he owned were worth something, right? 

Much to Wife-ey-Poo's surprise they had NO assets to speak of once the debts were figured out.  It was a typical house of cards.  Mr. Rescue was FLAT broke.  All Mr. Rescue did was shuffle personal debt around from one credit source to another...and he made a so-called career of "helping" brokerage firms get their operations in order.  

Clueless, naive Wife-ey-Poo is still painting and photographing flowers...too bad it's on the freeway off ramp next to the Mexican kid hustling strawberries as she can no longer afford the membership dues at the Marin Country Club.