(Friend story, but still worthy of posting here.)
My friend M is an Exxon engineer. Her brother is a recently retired engineer (PhD.), who is married to a PhD. M told me the PhD wife has done some "business ventures" and lost $500,000. This over the course of the last four years.
M's 53 yr old younger sister, who has never been able to work because she's not mentally "all there", is living off a trust fund put together by their very hard working (now deceased) German parents, over a lifetime. Trust fund is being managed and administered by M's recently retired brother. M told me the balance had been at $450,000, then $400,000, now at $350,000 (I forget the timeline but it was shockingly short). When M recently looked at the paperwork, the trust has been only averaging 1% per year over the last 10 years.
Brother is apparently extremely frugal with his money, so I'm at a total loss.
There's another brother, 60, bad health, who was a dentist, then an engineer, now recently fired, very little savings, who wants to remodel his bathroom with all marble to the tune of $12,000 (never mind he's a hoarder and doesn't have an operable kitchen), but that's another story for another day.