[Cody Dawg]

Read the story behind the link then comment.

You could make a comment like, "A fool and his money are soon parted," but we're talking about a 9/11 family, here.

Unbelievable: 9/11 Widow Spends $5 million+ dollars awarded to her already.

[Eug Wanker]

You could make a comment like, "A fool and his money are soon parted," but we're talking about a 9/11 family, here

Huh? She's a fool.

[Zimphire]

When posting a link that REQUIRES you to register, please either provide a password, or post the whole link.

[Cody Dawg]

Sorry, Zimph.

Here you go:

9/11 widow Kathy Trant holds the designer shoes and handbags she bought with her victim's benefits.

June 12, 2005 -- Sept. 11 widow Kathy Trant has turned her Long Island home into a $2 million showcase, traveled from the Vatican to Las Vegas, blown $500,000 on shoes, and bought breast jobs for pals and even strangers.

In the 31/2 years since her husband, Dan, died in the World Trade Center attacks, she has burned through nearly all the more than $5 million she received in compensation and donations. She says she treated the millions "like Monopoly money."

The mother of three has become a self-described "shopoholic" - and her compulsive buying has left her with intense guilt, shame and sadness.

After the plane hit the north tower on Sept. 11, Dan called Kathy from the 104th floor, where the 40-year-old worked as a bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald. He said the smoke was unbearable. "I love you, and I love the kids," were his last words. His remains were never found.

Following the funeral, Kathy's weight zigzagged from 90 pounds to 170 pounds and down again. She numbed herself with booze and antidepressants.

Then she began spending.

With a seemingly bottomless bank account, she threw herself into expanding and renovating her 1,800-square-foot Northport, L.I., home, a project she and Dan, her "soul mate" of 15 years, had discussed doing together.

She didn't stop until she nearly tripled the square footage, and spared no expense in decorating and furnishing her dream house.

"That's what kept me alive," she said. "Staying up late ordering chandeliers from catalogs."

She spent $350,000 installing a full basketball court, also equipped for volleyball, tennis and Rollerblading, and a heated pool and hot tub in the back yard.

The kitchen has white marble countertops lined with gleaming appliances she rarely uses. The floors are rich Brazilian walnut.

A red-white-and-blue den, which includes a shrine of Dan's mementos, features four Peter Max paintings of the Statue of Liberty, which ran her $15,000. There are seven flat-screen TVs around the house. In the finished basement stands a $20,000 cherry-wood pool table.

The walls are decorated with sports memorabilia, including a Boston Celtics ball autographed by players on the team that once drafted her husband, who played professionally in Ireland.

In her master bedroom, she added a glass-enclosed fireplace that also serves the bathroom, with its claw-foot tub.

With the house makeover done, she really started to splurge.

Opening her walk-in closet, Trant said, "This is my addiction."

A floor-to-ceiling shoe rack is filled with $400 to $1,200 pairs: Prada, Marc Jacobs, Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Emilio Pucci, Vera Wang. Handbags include Fendi and Judith Leiber, designs priced at $5,000 each. The gowns have labels like Versace, Christian Dior and Roberto Cavalli - each costing her thousands.

"It's disgusting. I'm ashamed of it," she said, adding she hopes that telling her story will help others with the same problem.

"This is my misery. This does not make me happy. When I come home with it, I have guilt, horrible guilt. You know how many starving people I could feed with all these shoes?"

She wears 10 percent of the clothes, she said, and gives armloads away to friends. But she keeps buying more.

"I feel if I look pretty, I'm going to find someone like Danny," she said. "I want him to come home."

Trant's pet Yorkie, Mollie, cost $3,500; her daughter has three others. She paid $60,000 cash for a Chevy Tahoe SUV, and also bought a BMW.

She has traveled to Italy, Jamaica, Asia and Europe; taken friends and relatives on four Caribbean cruises for $50,000; taken 20 to the Bahamas for $30,000; 10 to Las Vegas for $15,000; and six to the Super Bowl for $70,000. The last couple of summers, she's paid $13,000 to rent a 10-room North Carolina beach house for a week for her kids and all their pals.

Trant has showered those around her with obsessive generosity.

She gave one friend $20,000 to pay her bills. She gave her former housecleaner $15,000 to buy a home in El Salvador. She's sent $1,000 checks to a friendly clerk at Bergdorf Goodman, and treated salesgirls at Saks to shoes.

After getting a facial in Las Vegas, she gave the beautician, a single mom, $4,000 for breast implants. She gave a friend $7,000 for a boob job because, Trant said, the woman "hated her breasts and didn't want to spend her son's college tuition money."

She buys wrinkle-reducing Botox injections for girlfriends. A plastic surgeon gives her a discount - $600 for three at a time. Trant tattooed an American flag and "9/11" on her back and got a permanent black stripe of "eyeliner" tattooed around her eyes, which never runs when she cries.

She gave one friend a $3,000 watch. "She didn't take it, and I just threw it at her," Trant said.

"My friends say, 'Stop, Kathy, you've got to stop.'"

Soon after her husband was killed, Trant said, some $3 million in donations flowed in from his admirers and fund-raisers. Dan was beloved as an athlete and coach of youth soccer and basketball teams.

Then, in 2003, the federal Victim Compensation Fund awarded the Trants more than $4.2 million.

The sum was based, in part, on Dan's future earning potential. Before 9/11, the family had lived modestly, but his career at Cantor was skyrocketing. He earned about $130,000 his last year, plus tens of thousands in bonuses.

Kathy, who got half the government payout as her share, gave $100,000 to her mother-in-law, who wasn't legally entitled to any money. The other half was split among her three kids - each gets $800,000 when they reach age 18.

The money has opened some family rifts. While never close to her father, who left Kathy's mother when she was 6, their relationship worsened. She believes he overcharged her for doing some brickwork and installing sprinklers in her yard after she lent him $100,000 to buy a house in the Hamptons.

Also, Kathy lavishes possessions on her sons, Daniel, 16, and Alex, 14, and hosts parties for their friends, trying to compensate for the fact that they've lost their father.

But the money seems to have the same effect on them. Her daughter Jessica was 19 when Dan died and immediately got her $800,000 share. She's already spent most of it on clothes, vacations and friends, she said.

Spending problems are "not uncommon" among 9/11 families who received big cash payments, said psychologist Paula Madrid, director of Columbia University's disaster-related Resiliency Program, which serves many 9/11 families and victims.

"I've seen it very often," Madrid said. "Some spend the money right away on luxuries like cars and furs. They also give it away, out of survivor's guilt and a desire to help others in need."

The compulsion to shop, she believes, stems from anxiety. Spending is a pleasurable "distraction" from unresolved grief, she said.

"People are trying to fill a void which will never be filled by money," Madrid said.

A stay-at-home mom for the past 20 years, Trant is down to her last $500,000 and worried about her future. She has partnered with her best friend, a laser technician, to open a hair-removal and cosmetic tattoo shop in East Norwich, The Dutchess of Dermis.

She agrees she needs counseling.

"I really don't have the will to live," she said.

[Randman]

She's an idiot and will still be poor and husbandless.

[Zimphire]

She is depressed.

Some people when depressed eat. Some people sleep.

Some people self medicate.

She buys stuff.

So when she gets depressed, she buys.

[Randman]

How depressed is she going to be when she's broke?

[Cadaver]

Sad. Too bad none of her "friends" or family were able to put a stop to this. The money could have kept her and her children comfortable and cared-for for life. Now, who knows.

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by Randman

How depressed is she going to be when she's broke?

This is why depression is a downward spiral.

[f1000]

Sounds like a brainless trophy wife.

In any case, she still has $500k in the bank and a $2 million house. Each of her three kids has $800k coming to them when they're 18. She can always sell some of her bling-bling if she needs quick money.

It doesn't sound like she's broke to me.

[TheJoshu]

Originally Posted by Zimphire

When posting a link that REQUIRES you to register, please either provide a password, or post the whole link.

I thought bugmenot.com was sort of universal knowledge by now. (But you're right.)

[Cody Dawg]

I think she should sell everything she owns and all of the people who took money from her (or things) should give it all back to her so that she can sell it on eBay or otherwise.

[nforcer]

Originally Posted by TheJoshu

I thought bugmenot.com was sort of universal knowledge by now. (But you're right.)

I've found bugmenot has a lot of invalid registrations as of late. For something I wanted to see on IMDB, I went through 5 logins before I gave up. Yes, I marked "This did not work" (or whatever the exact term is) for the logins that failed, but they were still listed as working last I checked. While it's nice when it works, some sites appear to have caught on and are blocking existing logins.

Rather than having a database of user submitted codes, I think a better idea would be to create a bot that actually goes to a site and makes a new login periodically (hourly? daily?). Until the sites start blocking common web email addresses (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc.) it should not be much of a problem. Even if sites add captcha things to deter bots, they could be defeated.

Of course with the bot thing, sites could easily change their login pages to break parsing. They could also build their own bots to periodically refresh bot-bugmenot and block whatever new logins are listed. So I think posting articles inline (with links back to the source) or linking to sites that do not require a login should be the standard when discussing such articles.

[TailsToo]

Geez, what a waste. I feel bad for the people that donated money to help her, and she's wasting it on such trash. I know people who don't have much money themselves that were donating to help the families. I hope their money made it to someone more deserving.

[Millennium]

It's said that most people who suddenly come into large sums of money -whether through contests and lotteries, inheritances, insurance, or similar situations- wind up in debt within three years, all the money gone because no one bothers teaching them how to manage it. Although this woman is probably an extreme case, it is a sad fact that many if not most of the 9/11 families are in situations not unlike her own. It wouldn't be inaccurate to place blame on the families for overspending this impressively, but truth be told the distribution could have been handled better.

If that much money was being distributed to families then it should have gone into low-risk investments to set up trust funds for them. $5 million invested in T-bonds will net some $250,000/year on interest alone with basically zero risk (the government could collapse or default, but if that happens then you have bigger problems to worry about, and the money would be worthless no matter what you had done with it). Almost any family would be financially set for life with that kind of setup. Furthermore, although this would have an effect on the national debt, it would all be domestic debt, which is not nearly as problematic as foreign debt tends to be. It's a solution which ensures that the victims of things like this are taken care of, still gives them basically total freedom on what to spend their money on, but works at a rate which should remind most people that while their resources are great they are not unlimited. Of course, you cannot stop everyone from committing such wild excesses as this woman -not without putting restrictions on their freedom, at any rate- but you can minimize the trouble.