September 21, 2012 (Friday)
Walter Samasko, Jr. died in May. He was 69 years old. He had been dead for a month before being found in his Nevada home. He had no will and no known relatives. Checking the list of people who had attended his mother’s funeral 20 years ago, a cousin was found. She is Arlene Magdanz, a substitute teacher living in California. She was told that her cousin had only $200 in the bank when he died. However, the folks cleaning his garage found many gold coins, I mean a lot of them. So many, in fact, that their value is at least $7,000,000, perhaps much more. He had not worked for 44 years, but had lived off stock accounts. Evidently he invested his dividends in gold coins, many of them collectibles. His mother had begun collecting the coins and he continued to do so after her death.
The California relative had not spoken with her cousin in over a year. She has probably mentioned his name several times since learning of her inheritance. Read the story here.
I loved those Smith Barney T.V. commercials from the 1980s that showed John Houseman seriously saying, “At Smith Barney, they make their money the old-fashioned way. They earn it.” But I loved the Batman parody even more: “Bruce Wayne made his money the old-fashioned way; he inherited it!”
Cheer up. You may have a distant cousin somewhere with lots of money and no will. If you are fortunate, he won’t leave his fortune to his cats.
As for me, I’ll just continue to live by that grand old proverb, “Every tub shall sit upon its own bottom.” Not everyone can handle sudden wealth as well as the Beverly Hillbillies did. I do remember, however, Zig Ziglar’s saying, “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich, and rich is better.” Maybe. Maybe not.