Here's another way to Control Your Cash: use hackneyed, royalty-free, low-res images instead of paying for them or making your own

In lieu of original research, we’re letting the New York Times carry our load this week. With a story about Nick Martin, a community college teacher (What do you call the instructors at community colleges? Teachers? Professors? Babysitters?) in Kansas.

In 1998, Nick inherited $10 million when the family billboard company found a buyer. Today, he makes $51,000 teaching winemaking to kids who weren’t smart enough to get into Kansas State. Not because he needs to occupy his time, but because he needs to pay bills.

Oh my God! If he can’t make ends meet on 8 digits, I have no hope. This recession will surely kill us all.

Look, times are fantastic for very few of us. Even the Control Your Cash authors wouldn’t mind turning the clock back to 2007. But Martin and his family did the surest things possible to guarantee economic meltdown. They bought liabilities, and they sold (or at least, failed to buy) assets.

$10 million is enough to allow you to live comfortably for the rest of your life, but only if you use it intelligently. $10 million is not enough to allow you to live comfortably if you’re going to spend profusely. There’s rich, and then there’s rich. Larry Ellison gets to squander $10 million. Nick Martin doesn’t.

The Martins owned an Aston Martin and 2 other “stylish” cars; a $173,000 horse and 2 others; and Nick “treated his wife, Kate, to a birthday weekend at the Waldorf-Astoria, with dinner at the ‘21’ Club and a $7,000 mink coat.”

This is the game plan of someone who prefers being rich to staying rich.

First, people still wear fur in the 21^st century? To what end? Not to endorse PETA’s oeuvre of ketchup-throwing and nude street performance art, but come on. If keeping warm is that important to Kate, how about this?

The creature modeling this was last seen on the cover of Black Sabbath's Mob Rules album

We just found one on eBay for $226. It works in negative temperatures. It’s good enough for Ed Viesturs to endorse and climb Everest in (he’s the only North American to reach the summit of every 8000-meter peak in the world.) So, it’s probably good enough for Mrs. Martin’s delicate constitution. Nor does the Mountain Hardwear jacket require minks to get skinned, although some geese did lose their feathers. Oh, and it costs 97% less than a mink coat, but, as we’re sure Nick would attest, it’s only money.

We take it back. Being fashionable is crucial, even if it means self-impoverishment.

The Martins’ cash flow was either negative or nonexistent. He jetted to England to pen a novel (an utterly douchey phrase that, God willing, will never describe this writer), one unavailable on Amazon and whose only Google mentions were in reference to Nick Martin’s inability to sell a single copy.

As to the $173,000 horse – and we’re guessing the other two weren’t old gray mares, either – why would you own a horse?

-breeding
-racing
-companionship
-labor.

On LiveryStable.net, horses range from $200 to $12,000. The average Arabian will set you back about $2000. If you want a challenge, you can adopt an authentic Great Basin mustang for $125. In claiming races – those thoroughbred stakes contests where anyone can buy the participants – $20,000 is standard. That’s for a trained, functional, healthy horse with a marketable skill. Bob Baffert can justify paying $173,000 for a horse, and would presumably know which aren’t worth that much. An equine amateur, especially a 59-year old legacy kid like Nick, presumably doesn’t.

What’s the return on investment with an Aston Martin? The story doesn’t say which model Nick bought, but the carmaker’s cheapest, the V8 Vantage, goes for around $120,000. Is it presumptuous to guess that he might have gone one step up and bought the Rapide (it means “fast”), which retails for $200,000? Or is Aston Martin-shopping the one facet of Nick’s life in which he exercises restraint?

The 3 highest current bids for Aston Martins on eBay Motors:

-$99,000
-$85,000
-$61,255.

Those bids tell us a little, but not everything. For more details, we should look at the highest bids that meet the seller’s reserve price (i.e. the price a seller can set at which he has the right to refuse any lower offer.) One problem: there aren’t any. Every single Aston Martin on the world’s largest used car site is definitively overpriced. Which, if you’re Nick Martin, clearly means you need to raise your bid.

In his own words: “We spent too much. I have a 4^th grader, an 8^th grader and a girl who just finished high school. I should have kept working and put the money in bonds.”

Well, if you wanted to. But you also could have, hmm, well, let’s see…not spent recklessly? Most people amass wealth, or attempt to, so they won’t have to work. It’s unclear what Nick did for a living, but he did work for his father’s winery – not to be confused with the billboard company, which Nick only sat on the board of.

Nick says some angel with a checking account took the Aston Martin off his hands for $395,000, an improbable claim the New York Times reporter accepted. That’s $125,000 more than the most expensive used Aston Martin available on the company’s own website. The priciest new Aston Martin at Control Your Cash’s nearest dealership costs $306,165.

Maybe Nick’s just atrocious at math and didn’t actually buy a quarter-million dollar plot in the Adirondacks and build a $5.3 million estate on it, wiping out most of his principal. No, wait, he did.

Someone recently offered Nick ¼ of that, which would have covered the $1.2 million mortgage. He refused, for reasons you’d have to ask him. Nick also owns, or finances, a home in Vermont where his wife and kid temporarily live. The wife makes $12,000 a year there and plans to join Nick in Kansas later this month.

Yet he blames bankers, lenders, and market conditions for some of his misfortune. All of which will certainly bring his spent millions back.