Personal Finance News

A newlywed accused of soliciting her firefighter husband’s killing to collect $100,000 in insurance money has been convicted of aggravated murder in a scheme that was flawed from the start: His ex-wife was still the beneficiary of his policy.

Uloma Curry-Walker, 45, could receive life in prison without parole for the November 2013 slaying of William Walker, whom she had married just four months earlier. Jurors deliberated for less than two hours before coming back with the verdict Friday, Cleveland.com reported.

Prosecutors said Curry-Walker was nearing financial ruin after running up tens of thousands of dollars in debt when she asked her then-17-year-old daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend to find someone to kill her husband so she could collect the insurance money.

But a police investigation found that Curry-Walker’s plan had a glaring problem from the outset. Her husband had not yet changed the beneficiary on the insurance policy from his ex-wife’s name to Curry-Walker’s when he was killed, so it was the ex-wife who received the money.

Testimony showed that Curry-Walker gave the boyfriend, Chad Padgett, a $1,000 down payment to carry out the slaying. Padgett contacted his cousin Chris Hein, who initially failed in his attempt to kill Walker. Hein then turned to Ryan Dorty to carry out the killing.

Prosecutors said Dorty ambushed Walker and shot him four times as he returned home from getting fast food Curry-Walker had requested. She and her husband were packing the night he was killed for a move to a house they had purchased outside Cleveland.

The daughter, Padgett, Hein and Dorty testified against Curry-Walker at trial as part of plea deal for their roles in the murder conspiracy. Hein agreed to a sentence of 18 years to life; Padgett 28 years to life; and Dorty 23 years to life. Prosecutors agreed not to seek adult charges against Curry-Walker’s daughter. She will instead spend a month in a juvenile detention center.

The daughter testified at trial that her mother told her: “No one would believe I would hire a bunch of kids to kill someone when I know people that could.”

Curry-Walker wrote a confession the day she surrendered to police that said she killed her husband because he was abusive. Her attorneys did not call any witnesses to testify that Walker was violent toward his wife.

Cleveland.com reported that one of Curry-Walker’s attorneys pointed to discrepancies in witness testimony during closing arguments and suggested the daughter had devised the murder scheme.

Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 8.

Neither of her attorneys returned telephone messages seeking comment on Friday.

Friday would have been the couple’s fourth wedding anniversary.

Our family traveled this month to Southeast Asia for a two-month summer vacation. We have planned this trip for well over a year. I stayed with them for the first three weeks then I headed back the States to work for three weeks. After that I will reunite with the family before bringing them back home to Florida in August.

We have designated a separate fund for travel expenses, and we also prepaid all the flight tickets earlier this year. So the net worth for June 2017 is not negatively affected by the cost of our family’s international trip. So far we really have a fabulous time there.

As the cash reserve keeps building up, I have increased the contribution rate to 50% for my pre-tax and after-tax 401(k) accounts. I have fully contributed to two Roth IRA’s for me and my wife earlier this year. For Health Saving Account, I have scheduled to max out the family HSA contribution limit of $6,750 by the end of the year.

Next month I should be able to max out the pre-tax 401(k) contribution with $18,000 limit. After that I will shift the money into the after-tax 401(k) account. We will see how far we can reach the overall 401(k) contribution limit of $54,000.

Here’s the breakdown for June:

Here is the picture of our net worth for June 2017 on Personal Capital. I have been using Personal Capital to see all my accounts together. Personal Capital also updates all my bank accounts, investment accounts and credit cards. That way I can quickly update my Net Worth spreadsheet.

Saving Goals for 2017

Saving Goals	Limit	Status	Progress
Roth IRA	$5,500	$5,500	100%
Spousal Roth IRA	$5,500	$5,500	100%
4-Year Prepaid University Plan	$29,025	$29,025	100%
Health Saving Account	$6,750	$3,875	57%
Pre-tax 401(k)	$18,000	$17,381	97%
Overall 401(k)	$54,000	$23,471	43%
Total	$100,775	$67,371	67%

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Net Worth:	$2.9 Billion
Age:	71
Born:	June 14, 1946
Source of Wealth:	Real estate, Television
Known For:	President of the United States
Last Updated:	2017

Introduction

Donald John Trump is the 45th and current President of the United States. Trump was born and raised in Queens, New York City, and earned an economics degree from the Wharton School.

Well before he entered politics, Trump was a businessman and television personality. He built a real-estate empire through The Trump Organization that manages office towers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. Trump also produced and hosted The Apprentice, a reality television series on NBC, from 2004 to 2015. His current net worth is $2.9 billion as of 2017, making him one of the richest person in the world.

Trump’s Net Worth

President Donald Trump’s net worth has fallen to $2.9 billion according to a Bloomberg analysis. The slumping in net worth is due to the underperformance of his New York properties. Bloomberg estimated that Trump Tower and two other major properties in New York decline by $380 million over the course of the past year.

Trump’s portfolio of liquid assets have jumped to $230 million due to the sale of condo sales and other property holdings. His debt burden also shrunk to $550 million. In the past, Trump has disputed Bloomberg’s calculations. In 2015, he said that he’s worth “much more than $10 billion.”

With the purchase of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, Amazon is on collision course with Wal-Mart. Consumers will see more cost savings as the two giants battles for the market shares in the grocery sector. Reuters reported:

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc bought online retailer Jet.com for $3 billion last year, it marked a crucial moment – the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer, after years of ceding e-commerce leadership to arch rival Amazon, intended to compete.

On Friday, Amazon.com Inc countered. With its $14 billion purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc, the largest e-commerce company announced its intention to take on Wal-Mart in the brick-and-mortar world.

The two deals make it clear that the lines that divided traditional retail from e-commerce are disappearing and sector dominance will no longer be bound by e-commerce or brick-and-mortar, but by who is better at both.

The stakes are highest for Wal-Mart. Amazon’s move aims at the heart of the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant’s business – groceries, which account for 56 percent of Wal-Mart’s $486 billion in revenue for the year ending Jan. 31. With the deal, Whole Foods’ more than 460 stores become a test bed with which Amazon can learn how to compete with Wal-Mart’s 4,700 stores with a large grocery offering that are also within 10 miles (16 km) of 90 percent of the U.S. population.