Person Facts About Money

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Just one in three consumers pays off his or her credit card bill every month.

Money can buy happiness, but researchers have found that its emotional well-being benefits max out at a salary of about 75K a year.

The key to happiness is spending your money on experiences rather than possessions, according to studies.

Offering people money for doing well on IQ tests causes them to score significantly higher. A meta-analysis found that financial incentives can boost scores by up to 10 points on average, with some studies showing even larger gains. This suggests IQ tests measure motivation and effort, not just raw intelligence.

FedEx was days from collapse. $5,000 left in the bank. Founder Fred Smith flew to Las Vegas and bet it all at blackjack. By morning he had $32,000. Just enough to keep the planes flying one more week. In that week, he closed an $11 million deal. FedEx now makes over $90 billion a year.

In 1975, advertising executive Gary Dahl invented the Pet Rock. Each one was a smooth stone from Rosarito Beach, Mexico, packaged in a cardboard box with air holes and a 32-page instruction manual. He sold 1.5 million of them at $3.95 each and became a millionaire within six months.

Nancy and Robert Houchens (71 and 68) of Charlottesville, Virginia, sold their 3,000 sq ft home and now live full-time on Carnival cruise ships for around $4,000/month - covering food, lodging, gym, and entertainment. Virginia assisted living runs $5,250/person/month, or $10,000+ for a couple. Robert put it plainly: "It's much cheaper than a nursing home."

Ronald Read worked as a gas station attendant and then a janitor in Brattleboro, Vermont. He held his coat together with safety pins. Someone once offered to pay for his meal, assuming he couldn't afford it. He died at 92 with nearly $8 million - from decades of quietly buying stocks. He left $4.8 million to the local hospital.

In 2009, Brian Acton applied to work at Facebook and was rejected. He also applied to Twitter and was turned down. He tweeted about both rejections. Then he co-founded WhatsApp with Jan Koum. In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for approximately $19 billion — making Acton a billionaire and turning his rejection into one of the most expensive hiring mistakes in corporate history.

A 22-year-old Londoner did the math and realised flying to Morocco for a haircut was cheaper than his local barber - £39 total (flight, hostel, taxi and trim) vs £41 at home. He saved £2 and got a free holiday.

Sylvia Bloom worked as a legal secretary on Wall Street for 67 years. Every time her boss bought a stock, she quietly bought the same one. Nobody - not her husband, not the lawyers she worked for - knew. When she died at 96, her estate was worth $9 million. She left $8.2 million for college scholarships.

A secretary in Dallas kept making typing errors, so she started painting over them with white tempera paint. She offered the idea to IBM - they said no. She built Liquid Paper into a company doing $38 million a year. Gillette bought it for $47.5 million. Her son was in The Monkees.

Jeff Bezos has one of the tallest residential fences in America at his Beverly Hills estate. It violates local height ordinances. Instead of taking it down, he pays roughly $1,000 in fines every month. The fine is pocket change for a man worth over $200 billion - so the fence stays.

Sophia Celentano, 21, flew from Charleston to Newark once a week for her internship because the math was somehow better than renting near the office - and she says the hack saved about $2,000 in 10 weeks.

Maurice Hastings spent 38 years in California prison for a 1983 murder he did not commit. He asked for DNA testing in 2000 and was denied. When prosecutors finally tested the evidence two decades later, it matched another man entirely - someone arrested weeks after the original case carrying the victim's jewelry. Hastings was declared factually innocent in 2023. California is now paying him $25 million.

A California couple were walking their dog in February 2013 when the woman spotted a rusty tin can sticking out of the soil on their property. They dug it out - and found it packed with 19th-century gold coins. Eight canisters total, containing 1,427 Gold Rush-era coins dated 1847-1894. Face value: $27,980. Market value: $10 million.

At his 2019 Morehouse College commencement address, billionaire Robert F. Smith announced his family would pay off the student loan debt of the entire graduating class. The gift covered all 396 seniors and ultimately totalled $34 million - including Parent PLUS loans. He told them: 'I know my class will pay this forward.'

Jessica Vincent paid $3.99 for a swirled glass vase at a Goodwill in Hanover County, Virginia. She recognized the "Venini" signature on the bottom and posted it to an Italian glass collecting Facebook group - experts identified it as a rare Carlo Scarpa Pennellate vase from 1942, one of only two known in that color. It sold at Wright auction in Chicago for $107,100.

A 20-year-old lottery winner was offered $1,000,000 in cash or $1,000 a week for life - and turned down the million. Did she make the right call?