By Janet Jacobs
Ruth Madoff, wife of infamous Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, is likely to end up with a mere $2.5 million after all the dust settles, according to various news accounts. Bernie will go to prison for 150 years while Ruth is having to go into her own little version of heck called the middle class.
She will be stripped of her estimated $60 million in cash and securities, the $7.5 million apartment in Manhattan, the $3 million oceanfront cottage in Montauk, N.Y., and the $9 million ocean front house in Palm Beach, as well as the “small villa” on the French Riviera. They’ll take away her two Mercedes cars, and the three boats — the 55-foot-long yacht; the 38-foot yacht, and the 25-foot fishing boat, as well as the $29 million private jet.
Her jewelry and furs are valued at about $2.7 million, and the half a million in apartment furniture, and she loses it all. To give you an idea of how nice this apartment was, the floor and window coverings were valued at $382,000, while the linens were valued at $18,000.
I have a thing for nice sheets, so I can almost see spending the equivalent of a small car on sheets and towels, but the only way I could get to $382,000 in window and floor coverings is if the drapes are made from the skins of Dalmatian puppies.
But you get the idea: Ruth is going to have to pare down her life. With some careful management, she can live on $2.5 million for the rest of her natural life with annual proceeds of about $125,000 a year, according to the Wall Street Journal. But how does one go from living the lifestyle of the rich and shameless to living like normal people?
My solution is that she move to Navarro County.
No, no, you scoff, but it’s the perfect solution.
Look, Ruth Madoff has a series of problems: Her downfall in society, a significant financial stumble, her husband is in the poky, the loss of all her so-called friends, and three-quarters of the people on the east coast want her bleach-blonde head dipped in batter and fried on a stick.
Here, none of those problems will be an issue, except that her husband’s in the Big House. With $125,000 a year she’ll have enough to live comfortably, if not extravagantly, and if she changes her name just a squoosh she won’t be a target of investment vigilantes here at all. Seriously, close your eyes. Can you picture her? I didn’t think so. Now, if you met a fairly classy looking older woman named Ruthie Mae Madoff in Caleb’s Diner, would you think it was the wife of a Ponzi schemer from New York? No, you’d think: “Nice haircut for an older lady.”
I think that with a degree of humility and some creativity much of her former life could be replicated on a smaller, Navarro County-kind of scale. If I were advising her, I’d tell her to get a moderate-sized house on the lake and pretend she’s near the ocean. She won’t need her fur coats here, and wearing big old jewels to the Dairy Queen is just plain tacky anyway. She obviously likes the water, and I thought maybe a bass boat would be a good idea, but she’s a gal of luxury, so instead how about a pontoon houseboat? The Corsicana country club doesn’t cost nearly as much as the Palm Beach country club, and the Oak Trail Golf Course is also up and running again, so golf isn’t going to be a problem.
She could replace some of her former social activities with cards and dominoes at the senior activity center, and if she volunteers with the Cook Center docents or the hospital auxiliary she could demonstrate how she’s reformed, plus, those ladies are a hoot. With a little practice, she might learn to laugh at herself.
What it boils down to is that she’s going to have to come to grips with reality, and where better than Navarro County?
Sure, we have our occasional brick street extravagances, but for the most part we’re as real as it gets.
Click here to e-mail Janet Jacobs.
Click here to Soundoff on this story.
