For the first 45 years of the life of Ken Karpman, almost everything was perfect.
Photo: Ken Karpman from $ 750,000 as an institutional sales trader equity a year to deliver pizzas for $ 7.29 an hour.

Ken Karpman, said that his financial fall was a lesson in humility. The family is now in food stamps and a friend is paying for the children ’school fees. He graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree and an MBA, then got a high paying job as an institutional sales trader in equity. He married his dream girl, had two sons and traveled the world on expensive holidays. Within Karpman’s impressive career as a trader of 20 years, he climbed the company ladder to reach a salary of $ 750,000 per year.

“Life was good, were doing a lot of money – and why not continue this?” Karpman said.

Karpman was so confident of their good fortune and the strong economy that left her job in 2005 to start his own hedge fund. To pay for the new company and their standard of living, Karpman quickly burned through $ 500,000 in savings and, like many Americans, took a line of credit against their home. However, the reversal of fortune that followed, Karpman was unable to attract investors and was forced to dissolve his hedge fund. There was no work in a labor market that had collapsed.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7111098&page=1