kas

finance x ai | builder | creator

[kas @kasnq2]

@Tolot0caw When a parent sends his own son a bill to let him go, it stopped being a family a long time ago.

[kas @kasnq2]

Corey Feldman was 15 when he took his parents to court. The kid from The Goonies had earned over $1 million. They left him $40,000.

The man in the clip is Corey Feldman.

He started working at three. To prove a toddler could perform, his parents locked him in a room with a record player and told him not to come out until he knew the song “backwards and forwards.”

It worked.

By the mid-80s, he was one of the most famous kids in America. The Goonies. Stand by Me. The Lost Boys.

By 1987, he had earned a little more than $1 million.

Then he looked at the money.

About $40,000.

In his memoir, he wrote that his dad traded in his old car for a Mercedes. His mom bought herself a Cadillac. They hired a full-time maid.

So he asked a judge to free him from his parents. The judge agreed. According to Feldman, his father asked for about $40,000 to sign.

“I was 15 years old, and—just like that—completely on my own, not to mention flat broke.”

Keep this part.
A kid can earn the money and never own it. Whoever holds the account owns it. Fame made Corey rich. His family made him broke.
In the clip, he uses two words for what he was in that house: “a slave child.”

Should parents ever touch the money their kids earn, or should every dollar be locked away until they turn 18?

Follow me for more stories of famous names who lost everything to the people closest to them.

[kas @kasnq2]

@quantum_xxx1 If this could happen to one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history, it can happen to anyone’s grandparents.

[quantum @quantum_xxx1]

Mickey Rooney married eight times. The son of his eighth wife is the one who took control of his money.

The man in the clip is Mickey Rooney.

He started acting as a toddler. By 1939, he was the No. 1 box office star in America, ahead of Clark Gable. He made hundreds of films over nine decades and received two honorary Oscars. Younger viewers know him as the old guard in Night at the Museum.

Then came the last chapter.

In 2011, Rooney went to court against his stepson. The filing said he had “taken control of Mickey’s personal and financial affairs.”

He said they took his ID so he couldn’t travel.

He said they even took his Oscar and his Emmy.

The stepson denied it all.

Weeks later, Rooney sat in front of the U.S. Senate, wiping away tears.

In 2013, the stepson and his wife were hit with a $2.8 million judgment.

When Rooney died in 2014, his estate was worth about $18,000.

Keep this part.
Money doesn’t protect you from the people you let closest. It only gives them more to take.
In the clip, a 90-year-old Hollywood legend says the one thing he needed people to believe: “Everything you heard me say today was real.”

Would you have spoken up as he did, or kept quiet to protect your family?

Follow me for more stories of famous names who lost everything to the people closest to them.

[kas @kasnq2]

@quantum_xxx1 Right. Only in 2000 did California start requiring 15% of a child actor’s earnings to go into a blocked account.

[kas @kasnq2]

Corey Feldman was 15 when he took his parents to court. The kid from The Goonies had earned over $1 million. They left him $40,000.

The man in the clip is Corey Feldman.

He started working at three. To prove a toddler could perform, his parents locked him in a room with a record player and told him not to come out until he knew the song “backwards and forwards.”

It worked.

By the mid-80s, he was one of the most famous kids in America. The Goonies. Stand by Me. The Lost Boys.

By 1987, he had earned a little more than $1 million.

Then he looked at the money.

About $40,000.

In his memoir, he wrote that his dad traded in his old car for a Mercedes. His mom bought herself a Cadillac. They hired a full-time maid.

So he asked a judge to free him from his parents. The judge agreed. According to Feldman, his father asked for about $40,000 to sign.

“I was 15 years old, and—just like that—completely on my own, not to mention flat broke.”

Keep this part.
A kid can earn the money and never own it. Whoever holds the account owns it. Fame made Corey rich. His family made him broke.
In the clip, he uses two words for what he was in that house: “a slave child.”

Should parents ever touch the money their kids earn, or should every dollar be locked away until they turn 18?

Follow me for more stories of famous names who lost everything to the people closest to them.

[kas @kasnq2]

@2LynnQuillasxnv Page’s point about companies being worthy of your money is actually underrated.

[Lynix @2LynnQuillasxnv]

Larry Page planned to leave his billions to Elon Musk. Then 1 argument about AI ended their friendship.

Page once said he'd rather give his fortune to Musk than to charity. At TED, Charlie Rose asked him about it on stage.

Page didn't back down. Musk wants to go to Mars to back up humanity. Page called that a worthy goal, a company and a philanthropic goal at the same time.

His point: people spend most of their time and energy at companies. So why isn't the company you work for worthy of your money too?

At the time they were close friends. Musk used to crash at Page's house.

Then came AI.

Page wanted digital superintelligence as fast as possible. Musk worried it could wipe out humanity. Page called him a "speciesist."

Musk later said they stopped talking after he helped pull one of Google's top AI scientists over to OpenAI.

The man Page wanted to leave his fortune to became the friend he stopped speaking to.

Who would you leave your money to?

Follow me for more stories like this.

[kas @kasnq2]

@vandalbv Moving to Singapore right before the IPO was the smartest move he ever made.

[vandaX @vandalbv]

Eduardo Saverin co-founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg. 7 years later they had been to court, and he left America with $3.8 billion.

They met at Harvard. Mark wrote the code. Eduardo, the business guy from Brazil, put up the first money, about $15,000.

In the beginning he owned roughly a third of the company.

In 2004 Mark moved to California to build it. Eduardo stayed on the East Coast, chasing advertisers.

Then the company was restructured. New shares were issued, and Eduardo’s stake fell from about a third to under 10%.

His best friend had cut him down to a fraction of what he started with.

Eduardo sued.

In 2009 they settled. The terms were never made public, but he got his co-founder title back and kept a stake.

In September 2011, eight months before Facebook went public, he gave up his US citizenship and moved to Singapore. Singapore has no capital gains tax.

When Facebook listed in May 2012, Bloomberg estimated his roughly 4% at about $3.8 billion.

Hollywood turned the fight into The Social Network. He became the friend who got screwed.

In real life, he never stopped being rich. He built a venture fund and has lived in Singapore ever since.

In the clip he’s in Singapore, talking about Facebook like it happened to someone else. He calls it incredibly humbling. On day one, he says, they couldn’t have imagined what it would become.

Mark built the company. Eduardo paid for the first step and got pushed aside. Both ended up billionaires.

[kas @kasnq2]

@quantum_xxx1 Culkin has never changed his story. Not in 2004, not under oath in 2005, not even after Jackson died.

[quantum @quantum_xxx1]

Michael Jackson paid $15.3 million to make one accusation disappear. The boy who actually slept in his bedroom went on CNN and defended him.

In the video below, Macaulay Culkin explains the friendship nobody could understand.

It started after Home Alone. The phone rang out of nowhere. “Hi, it’s Michael.”

Culkin says it worked because he wasn’t a fan.

“I talked to him like he was a normal human being.”

He slept over. Everyone asked about the bedroom.

“Michael Jackson’s bedroom is two stories, like three bathrooms,” he told Larry King in 2004. “Nothing happened.”

Then King asked about 1993, when Jackson settled with an accuser’s family out of court.

“If someone had done something like that to my kid, I wouldn’t just settle for some money.”

Three weeks later, the settlement leaked. A $15.3 million trust for the boy. $1.5 million to each parent. Jackson denied any wrongdoing.

In May 2005, Culkin testified at Jackson’s trial. Asked if Jackson had ever abused him, he said: “Not at all.”

A month later, Jackson was acquitted on all counts.

One boy got a phone call. Another family got $15.3 million.

Was Culkin the one person who saw the real Michael, or was he too close to see anything at all?

[kas @kasnq2]

@quantum_xxx1 He said it himself: “I think she saw it coming.”

[kas @kasnq2]

Before Prince Harry left the royal family, someone warned him about the British press: “They will destroy you.” Then his family cut him off, and he paid his way out with his mother’s money.

The man in the clip is Prince Harry, telling Oprah Winfrey in 2021 who gave him that warning and what he thinks it meant.

Princess Diana died in 1997. Harry was 12. Most of her £13 million fortune went to her two sons.

In January 2020 Harry and Meghan stepped back as senior royals.

In the first months of that year, Harry says, his family “literally cut me off financially.”

“I had three conversations with my grandmother and two conversations with my father, before he stopped taking my calls.”

All he wanted, he said, was enough money to pay for security to keep his family safe.

So he used his mother’s. “I’ve got what my mum left me. And without that, we would not have been able to do this.” He added: “I think she saw it coming.”

His father’s office later told a different story. The royal accounts showed Charles had kept paying for Harry and Meghan until the summer of 2020.

Keep this part.

Money can’t keep a family together. Sometimes it is the last thing a parent can still give you. Diana spent her last years hunted by the same press her son talks about in this clip, and 23 years later, her money paid for his way out.

[kas @kasnq2]

Before Prince Harry left the royal family, someone warned him about the British press: “They will destroy you.” Then his family cut him off, and he paid his way out with his mother’s money.

The man in the clip is Prince Harry, telling Oprah Winfrey in 2021 who gave him that warning and what he thinks it meant.

Princess Diana died in 1997. Harry was 12. Most of her £13 million fortune went to her two sons.

In January 2020 Harry and Meghan stepped back as senior royals.

In the first months of that year, Harry says, his family “literally cut me off financially.”

“I had three conversations with my grandmother and two conversations with my father, before he stopped taking my calls.”

All he wanted, he said, was enough money to pay for security to keep his family safe.

So he used his mother’s. “I’ve got what my mum left me. And without that, we would not have been able to do this.” He added: “I think she saw it coming.”

His father’s office later told a different story. The royal accounts showed Charles had kept paying for Harry and Meghan until the summer of 2020.

Keep this part.

Money can’t keep a family together. Sometimes it is the last thing a parent can still give you. Diana spent her last years hunted by the same press her son talks about in this clip, and 23 years later, her money paid for his way out.

[kas @kasnq2]

@2LynnQuillasxnv Imagine working at your dad’s company for decades and not being allowed to share his last name.

[Lynix @2LynnQuillasxnv]

Enzo Ferrari's son wasn't allowed to use the name Ferrari until he was 32. Today he owns 10% of the company and is worth about $8 billion.

Piero was born in 1945. His mother was not Enzo's wife.

Enzo had a second family. Divorce wasn't an option in Italy, and his wife Laura was still alive. So the boy grew up as Piero Lardi, his mother's surname.

Enzo's only son with his wife, Dino, died at 24. Piero was 11 and had never met his half-brother.

Piero went to work for his father anyway.

Only after Laura died in 1978 could Enzo officially recognize him.

Enzo sold 50% of Ferrari to Fiat in 1969 and another 40% in the late 80s. The last 10% went to the son he couldn't name for 32 years.

In this interview from 1996 Piero says it plainly: "The rest, the 10 percent, belongs to me."

He was also asked if Ferrari would ever build an SUV. He said it wasn't in the plans. Today Ferrari sells a 4-door crossover.

Would you have kept working for a father who couldn't give you his name?

Follow me for more stories like this.

[kas @kasnq2]

@vandalbv Her grandfather picking up trash in his own park is the most Disney thing I’ve ever heard.

[vandaX @vandalbv]

Walt Disney’s grandniece inherited millions from the family company. Now she’s attacking it for paying its CEO $65 million.

Her name is Abigail Disney. Her grandfather Roy started the company with his younger brother Walt.

Roy did the boring part. Copyright, distribution, building the business. He even took his name off it so Walt, the creative one, would get the credit.

In the park, he hated being called Mr. Disney. Everyone called him Roy.

He told his granddaughter never to talk down to anyone who worked there. They work harder than you can imagine, he said, and nobody is better than them.

When he walked into Disneyland, he would look for a piece of trash and pick it up himself. Nobody is too good for that, he told her.

She grew up with the perks. First boat on It’s a Small World next to grandpa. The special box at the parades.

In her twenties she ran from it. When people asked if she was related, sometimes she lied.

Decades later, she stopped hiding the name and started using it.

In 2019 Disney’s CEO Bob Iger took home about $65 million for the year. The Washington Post put it at 1,424 times the company’s median worker.

Abigail called it insane. In public. About the company with her family’s name on the door.

That same year she went to meet Disneyland workers. She said some told her they were digging through garbage for food.

Disney said most of Iger’s pay was tied to performance.

She kept going. She made a documentary about the workers and joined a group of millionaires asking to be taxed more.

Her line on the company today: it will give workers anything but money.

Her grandfather picked up trash so nobody would feel above it. His granddaughter is still trying to make the company remember why.

Would you go public against your own family’s business?

Follow me for more stories like this.

[kas @kasnq2]

Brooke Astor’s grandson went to court against his own father to save her. Three years later, a jury convicted her 85-year-old son of stealing from her.

The man in the clip is Philip Marshall, Brooke Astor’s grandson. He explains what his father told her about her money.

Her husband’s family name is on the Waldorf Astoria. Brooke married Vincent Astor, the last rich man of the Astor family, in 1953. When he died in 1959, she took over his foundation and spent decades giving his money away to New York. She had nearly $200 million.

Her only son, Anthony Marshall, managed her affairs as she grew old.

After she turned 100, her grandson grew worried. Her favorite painting had been sold for $10 million. His father took a $2 million commission. Then, Philip says, his grandmother asked if she could buy a new dress. She was told no. She had been made to believe she was going broke.

In 2006 Philip filed his case. Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller backed him. A judge removed Anthony as guardian the same day the story broke.

Brooke Astor died in 2007. She was 105.

In 2009 the jury found her son guilty on 14 of 16 counts, including grand larceny. One count was a $1 million payment he had given himself from her money. He was sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison.

Keep this part.

Brooke Astor liked to say money is like manure: it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around. She spread hers across a whole city. In the end, the person who took it from her was her own son, and the person who stopped him was his.