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IN THE WORLD of personal finance, some topics are serious—and others less so. Since it’s the holiday season, it seems appropriate to look back at some of the year’s less weighty stories.
Early delivery. The year started off on a positive note for an Alabama couple. Sha’Nya Bennett was in labor and on her way to the hospital when a snow squall rolled in, forcing her to pull over. The expecting mom ended up delivering in her car, in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme donut shop.
Thrilled that Krispy Kreme will be cited, for the first time, as the place of birth on a birth certificate, the company announced that it would offer the family free donuts for a year and will host a party for the newborn on his birthday each year going forward. “We’ll be thrilled to celebrate with the family every January 22,” said Krispy Kreme spokesman Dave Skena. “We’re in the business of sharing joy and sweetness…”
Expensive loss. Back in 2013, a UK man named James Howells threw away an old laptop. Only later did he realize he’d made a terrible mistake: The decryption key to his bitcoin holdings were on the computer’s hard drive. In all, Howells held 8,000 bitcoin, which, at the time, were worth about $800,000. In an effort to retrieve his fortune, Howells has been battling the town council in Newport, Wales to allow him to excavate the local landfill. Officials, though, have been steadfast in their refusal, citing environmental concerns.
Howells has even offered 10% of his bitcoin to the town if they help him unearth his laptop. It would turn the area into “the Las Vegas of South Wales,” he said. But town officials have been unmoved.
What’s next for Howells? With the appreciation in bitcoin over the years, his holdings would now be worth some $700 million, so he isn’t giving up. Among the options: to buy the landfill outright.
Expensive taste. Moviemaking is known to be a hit-or-miss business, but some losses are more preventable than others. Back in 2018, Netflix contracted with writer and director Carl Erik Rinsch to produce a new sci-fi series and paid him $55 million to get started. A year and a half later, with nothing yet to show, Rinsch went back to Netflix, asking for a further $11 million, which it paid him.
The production never saw the light of day, though. According to prosecutors, Rinsch transferred all the funds to his personal account. He invested, and lost, millions on call options on a biotech stock. As for the rest, he allegedly spent $2.4 million on five Rolls Royces along with a Ferrari. Most surprisingly, he spent $638,000 on two mattresses. But most galling to Netflix is that he’s spent over $1 million of the funds on attorneys’ fees to continue battling the company.
Good timing. Decades of research have found that market-timing is not an effective strategy. But one lucky—and anonymous—investor benefitted from extraordinary timing this year. At 1:01pm on April 9, this individual bought $2.5 million of call options on the S&P 500. Less than a half-hour later, at 1:30, the White House announced that it would be putting a pause on tariff policies that had been weighing on the market. Stocks jumped nearly 10%, handing this investor an instant profit of $70 million.
The fine print. One of the Ten Commandments is, of course, the admonition not to steal. But that didn’t stop thieves in the town of Little Steeping in the UK, who made off with a painting of the commandments from a local church.
Longtime churchwarden Basil Harwood took it in good humor. “They clearly didn’t read it when they stole it.”
Favorable odds. A little while back, a London bookmaker named Bernard Marantelli came up with an idea: Looking at the Texas state lottery, he realized that the cost to purchase virtually every possible number combination would be less than the value of the jackpot. But to purchase every ticket would be expensive. So he enlisted the help of Tasmanian gambler Zeljko Ranogajec, nicknamed “the Joker” for his well-earned reputation pulling off similar stunts around the world.
Sure enough, the team won, earning tens of millions. Texas officials were outraged. Lieutenant governor Dan Patrick called it “the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas.” Governor Greg Abbott asked the Texas Rangers to investigate. Frustrating as it was, though, it appears that Marantelli and his colleagues did follow the rules and can keep their winnings.
Unfavorable odds. Pavel Durov is the founder of messaging app Telegram, so his children might have assumed they were well positioned for an inheritance. After all, Durov is worth an estimated $14 billion. According to recent reports, though, Durov has more than 100 children and, in his words, sees it as his “civic duty” to have many more.
Shaky appraisal. Most charitable donations are straightforward, but philanthropist Oscar Tang learned this year that when the numbers are large enough—and the donation unusual enough—the IRS is likely to take another look. At issue was Tang’s donation of an 850-year-old painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tang had had it appraised and thought he was following the rules when he claimed a deduction of $26 million.
But the IRS invoked a little-known provision to challenge the appraisal: If the organization providing the appraisal isn’t regularly engaged in appraising, then the IRS can disqualify the entire deduction. Such was the case here. The appraiser was a large auction house, but it didn’t provide appraisals on a regular enough basis to satisfy the IRS.
The tax court didn’t throw out the deduction entirely, but it did reduce it by more than half, leaving Tang with a bill for millions in back taxes and penalties.
Problem-solving. Online marketplace Etsy is seeing a brisk trade in spells—as in witch’s spells. Consider Taylor Hamm, 35, who bought a $25 spell earlier this year. Initially a skeptic, Hamm became a believer when she received a tax refund, and she met a new boyfriend. “It’s definitely the witch,” she said. “The timing is too suspect.”
Helping hand. At the BMW Championship tournament in August, English golfer Tommy Fleetwood found himself in a frustrating situation: His putt stopped just short of the cup. But after several seconds, a fly landed on his ball and seemingly caused it to roll in. This lifted Fleetwood into fifth place, ultimately bringing him more than $2 million in additional earnings.
The two-step. Most people aren’t entertained by taxes. But there are exceptions. Earlier this year, at a town meeting in Cranford, New Jersey, a fellow named Will Thilly made his way to the podium while performing a silent robot dance. He then did some break-dancing on the floor before making his statement about recent tax increases. As Thilly moonwalked back to his seat, Cranford’s mayor was cordial. “Thank you, Mr. Thilly. I like the interpretive dance.”
Adam M. Grossman is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. Sign up for Adam’s Daily Ideas email, follow him on X @AdamMGrossman and check out his earlier articles.
Then there are the, “untold because they are unknown” stories, of who knows how many times our butts were spared, perhaps by mere seconds, but never realized it. Kind of goes along with the theme of the song, “Thank God For Unanswered Prayers”.
Great articles Adam. Those outliers are fun to read about, and of course no one should expect them to happen regularly. Thanks for sharing.
The trouble with buying every number in the lottery is if you have to split the jackpot. It seems more likely someone will buy your same numbers when the jackpot gets high and more people play.
I suspect that the tale of the anonymous investor who enjoyed a $70 million dollar profit from S&P 500 call options will lead a number of people to conclude that buying call options on the S&P 500 is the path to riches.
But that investor was extraordinarily lucky. Consider what the media is not offering: stories about the much larger number of people who invested in S&P 500 call options and lost money. No one is interested in those stories. As Nassim Taleb warned us: don’t be “Fooled by Randomness.”
Also, we know that correlation does not imply causation. Yet, Taylor Hamm seems convinced that paying $25 for a spell was responsible for her good fortune. I’ll guess that she’ll be buying many more spells in the future.
I wonder if the S&P 500 gambler (not investor) has been making timely estimated tax payments on his short-term profit.
$2 mil for coming in FIFTH?! I should have encouraged my husband to play a lot more golf!
Good Timing? Not exactly how I’d describe a likely massive fraud/theft. I’d imagine Adam was being gentle here.