With fame and fortune come financial challenges
By GENE MEYER
Safeguarding sudden wealth is essential, experts say
You know David Cook’s story. You may even want to live it someday.
But there’s a catch.
Coping with the sudden wealth and fame of an “American Idol” victory may be tougher than you ever dream of, experts say. Handling lightning-strike good fortune often is financially harder than scraping by and daydreaming. Even more common windfalls — a big career leap upward, a sizable inheritance or a gob of lottery winnings — can cause trouble for even the most solidly grounded among us.
When you suddenly have more money than you ever imagined, “living on less than you can, and in this case a lot less, can become very difficult,” said Kevin Taylor, a certified financial planner and investment executive with Oppenheimer & Co. in Kansas City.
There is a solution, though not often the first one that comes to mind in the euphoria of achieving a dream or becoming a pop culture icon.
“Be prepared to put a third of your money or more into something very, very boring,” Taylor said. “You don’t know if you are going to be Carrie Underwood or Taylor Hicks.”
Underwood, winner of the “American Idol” fourth-season competition, went on to become a multiplatinum country recording artist, multiple Grammy winner and, earlier this year, the youngest member of the Grand Ole Opry.
Hicks, who won the following year, released one hit single after that victory, but was released from post-“Idol” recording contracts after sales of his “American Idol” album were disappointing.
Cook’s meteoric rise
No one is predicting how Cook, 25, might handle his suddenly changed circumstances.
The Texas-born, Blue Springs-raised performer has been involved with music from at least age 2.
He formed a band, Axium, in high school, ditched classes in college to perform, and spent much of his senior year trying to launch a solo career.
“I’d never learned so much about myself as a musician as I did that year,” Cook told Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year.
“I was struggling to book shows, struggling to get people to come to the shows, but I loved every second of it,” he said.
Two years ago, he moved to Tulsa after graduating college, joined another group called the Midwest Kings and began scraping by, tending bar and painting apartments while he honed his skills. He resisted pleas from loved ones to come home and get a real job. He said his music “wasn’t something I was ready to give up on.”
Then, one morning last August, Cook, his mother and younger brother, Andy, stood in the rain outside Omaha’s Qwest Center waiting for Andy’s turn to audition for a shot at the “American Idol” television show.
“I was along for moral support,” David Cook has often told interviewers since.
But with the cameras rolling and with Andy’s encouragement, David Cook also auditioned and began a nine-month journey to the pinnacle of “Idol” glory, winning 56 percent of 97.5 million votes cast 13 weeks ago.
Now he’s returning to Kansas City, with 10 other top “Idol” contestants, for two concerts this Friday and Saturday at the downtown Sprint Center. He’s got a recording contract with 19 Entertainment, parent company of the program’s producers, and RCA. There’s also a global endorsement deal with Skechers USA, a footwear chain, and a new SUV and other prizes, all tied to his win.
www.kansascity.com | 08/23/2008 | With fame and fortune come financial challenges
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