Missed opportunities your family had of becoming filthy rich

[miajag]

My parents are Jewish but somehow missed out on the whole global takeover conspiracy.

[DesertCat]

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After the Enron Scanel, the stock for U-Haul company (parent company Amerco Inc) fell to $1.56 from the $20 something range because they were using the same accounting firm.

My dad was a regional VP for U-haul at the time and had to go to an emergency meeting in Phoenix.

They had the CEO and a rep from the accounting firm (I think it was Arthur Anderson)... They went over the company financials, the tangible assets of the company, and got an explanation from the accounting firm that U-Haul was NEVER In the wrong and had done everything correctly.

Things should be back on track within 6 months once the last two years corporate taxes were re-stated and the Enron debacle wasn't in the news every day.

My dad BEGGED my mome to take $75K out of their savings and invest in U-haul Stock. She said no... for good reason. She didn't want a spend a substantial part of their savings on about 50,000 shares.

Sure enough within 18 months Amerco was trading in the $80 range. It hovers in the $60 range now...

I'm guessing my dad would have cashed out incrementally and had an after tax profit around $2.5 Million.

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This isn't exactly true. Amerco has always been a mess. It's filed for bankruptcy twice and restated 8 years of accounting because they were using off balance sheet partnerships (just like enron did) to make their results look better than they really were. The difference appears to be that Amerco didn't have the liquidity problems that Enron had.

And an accounting guy is always going to defend his companies work. It's the SEC and courts that force the accounting firm and company to restate results.

Though it's not insider trading for a Sr. VP to buy more company stock if he thinks it's prospects are good. It's only insider trading if he bought based on material non public information. From the description I don't see anything wrong. Privately stating that your publicly released financials are accurate isn't new information.

But I'm not sure I would have believed that particular CEO or that particular accountant

[EJXD2]

If you don't trust your wife with your money, then your marriage is a sham. If that means that marriage isn't for you, then that's cool because it's not a lifestyle choice for everyone, but to suggest that it's OK to squirrel money away from your spouse is folly.

That said, if you manage the money, then manage the money. What did this guy's wife know about holding on a little longer?

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My dad BEGGED my mome to take $75K out of their savings

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He wanted to sell, his wife wanted to hold on "a little longer."

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Guys,

Learn from this. Make your own financial decisions. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT be a wuss and give in to your wife. WTF? This [censored] will never come up for me, because there's 0% chance I'll get married without a prenup.

But even if you don't have one.. THEIR savings. That means 50% dad, 50% mom. If she doesn't want to risk 75K, fine, it'll be 37,5K and it'll be his. If he loses it and his wife now has all the money, well that blows but it's no worse than losing 75K. Sheesh.

And don't tell me 'wait till you get married'. I don't care. [censored] that, my woman will not mess with the bankroll. It's mine, and mine alone. This is just one thing you absolutely do NOT wuss out on. Pisses me off just to read that.

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[Jdanz]

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What band?

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Flying Blind... they were pretty big in Northern California, but never really got it going on the national scene. They actually had some pretty catchy radio-friendly songs. They just never dedicated themselves in the way that a band has to in order to make it really big.

The song on the American Pie 2 soundtrack is called Smokescreen (She Only Likes Me When I'm High). It didn't even make the movie because the movie used a bunch of top 40 hits that weren't actually on the soundtrack but were popular right around the time the movie was released.

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my friends in high school used to love that song.

edit: New Jersey

[Subfallen]

My great-grandfather loaned Sam Walton the money to start his first 5-and-Dime. Not sure of the details, but I'm pretty sure we passed on some $ somewhere along the line.

[wisehandpoker]

My parents, Canadian Colorado alumni, went back to the school in the seventies for a reunion. When they got to thier hotel, they walked through the lobby to their room and saw a huge crowd gathered around a strange, tall box. They didn't think anything of it.

Through the week, every time they'd hit the lobby, the same sized crowd was hovering the box. Finally, late on the last night of their trip, the lobby was empty and they got a good look at what the big fuss was all about; Pong. It was one of the first Pong video games.

They played for a bit and had a great time, so finally, my dad looked around the box for a contact number and found it. He got home the next day and called to inquire about distribution in Canada; the rights had been sold four days earlier. We could have been the video game distribution kings of Canada.

sigh.

[Yads]

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my cousin was one of the developers of Apache HTTP Server

from wikipedia:

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Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web; as of February 2007 Apache served 58% of all websites

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They released it open source

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You don't think the second statement has anything to do with the first?

[Hawklet]

Lucent Technologies FTL(oss)

[BradleyT]

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My great-grandfather loaned Sam Walton the money to start his first 5-and-Dime. Not sure of the details, but I'm pretty sure we passed on some $ somewhere along the line.

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I call BS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton

It talks about his first stores and all his money came from family and himself.

[xwillience]

my family has pretty much always been hobos, but this one time, we bought a powerball lottery ticket when the jack pot was like 320 million. but we didnt win so that sucked.