{"id":525654,"date":"2010-04-13T07:49:40","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T11:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/green.yahoo.com\/blog\/guest_bloggers\/30\/how-a-can-collector-died-a-secret-millionaire.html"},"modified":"2010-04-13T07:49:40","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T11:49:40","slug":"how-a-can-collector-died-a-secret-millionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/525654","title":{"rendered":"How a can collector died a secret millionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

\"Curt
Photo via Expressen<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Curt Degerman was a man who kept to himself. Around the town in
\nSweden where he lived, he could be seen riding his bike or rummaging
\n through trash bins<\/a>, collecting bottles and cans to be recycled<\/a>,
\n and eating leftover scraps of food. Like some might assume from his
\nhumble lifestyle, Curt never completed school, married, or had a family
\nof his own. So, when he passed away in 2008 at the age of 60, many
\nthought that Curt left little behind — but that couldn’t be further from
\nthe truth.<\/p>\n

\n

According to the BBC
\n Brasil<\/a><\/em>, when it came time to sort through Curt’s estate, it
\nwas discovered that he had amassed a fortune totaling nearly $ 1.4
\nmillion, leaving it all to a cousin who was kind enough to visit him
\noccasionally in the years before his death.<\/p>\n

What no one knew was that, after making the rounds to collect
\nrecyclables from trash throughout the city, Curt spent hours in the
\nlocal library pouring over financial newspapers. Over the years, he
\nbecame an expert on the stock market, investing the modest sum he earned
\n from recycling in stocks and mutual funds, valued at close to a million
\n dollars.<\/p>\n

Despite being more readily associated with glass and aluminum, Curt
\nalso owned 124 bars of gold. That, plus the house he lived in, put the
\nrecycling scavenger’s total worth at nearly one and a half million
\ndollars.<\/p>\n

Sadly, after Curt died of a heart attack and his secret wealth was
\nrevealed, his extended family fought for a piece of it. Although he
\nleft his entire estate to his cousin, his 92-year-old uncle brought the
\nmatter to court claiming the money was rightfully his. Recently the case
\n was settled out of court under unreleased terms.<\/p>\n

Stephen Messenger is a correspondent at TreeHugger<\/a>,
\n where this post originally appeared.<\/em> <\/p>\n

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