Race Horses Crush a Nest Egg

By Matthew Heimer

There’s not much to feel good about in the ongoing story of 66-year-old Henry Wolfson of Skokie, Ill. To sum up: On Labor Day weekend, the local newspaper runs a heart-tugging story about Wolfson, a much-liked substitute teacher (unmarried, no kids) whose low pay and struggles with medical bills have forced him to live in a homeless shelter. The much-liked teacher’s former students launch fundraising drives to help him out. A few weeks later, the local newspaper reports something it had neglected to dig into earlier, which is that the much-liked teacher had lost about $180,000 in a little over a year gambling in off-track betting parlors, squandering most of a 2007 inheritance.

Wolfson is now offering refunds to anyone who donated to his cause, and the local paper is offering a mea culpa for having failed to do a basic background check that might have unearthed details about his inheritance. But the saga is mostly playing out in the media as a who-suckered-who story, ignoring what seems to me to be the more salient point: this much-liked 60-something gentleman blew $180,000 on the ponies—in barely a year!

Gambling opponents have been up in arms for decades the way the gaming industry woos seniors. Psychologists generally agree that some common problems that plague older people – loneliness, boredom and mild cognitive impairment – can make a night at the casino or the OTB sound like both a relief from sorrow and a “sure thing” financial proposition.

The most prominent study I could find that tried to hang a number on the senior-gambling issue (admittedly not very recent, as it’s from 2005) surveyed a group of Philadelphia seniors and found that 70% had gambled in the past year, while about 11% exhibited signs of having a gambling problem – betting more than they could afford to lose, for example. What’s 11% multiplied by 78 million baby boomers? An enormous financial headache waiting to happen.