I won $100k on America’s Next Top Model but it ended up completely ruining my life
'I seriously regret it'
India Gants won cycle 23 of America’s Next Top Model when she was just 19, but has since admitted that she she hugely regrets how she spent her whopping $100k prize.
Taking to TikTok, India revealed that after winning the season she received “a check with one hundred thousand dollars literally written on it. No tax taken out.”
Her parents at the time told her to put aside a chunk of the money that would get taxed, but she admitted that “by the time that rolled around, I had already spent all the money.” Yikes.
@indiagants Would I spend it differently now, as a 29 year old…? 100% yes. But lesson learned. #antm #americasnexttopmodel #realitytv
As for what she used most of her money for? India revealed: “I paid for a year up front in a beautiful New York City apartment that my roommate was gonna pay me every month to rent out. That was like over just over sixty thousand dollars. Plus, I used a broker.”
India Gants explained that she’d thought that after winning America’s Next Top Model the “$100,000 checks were gonna be coming this way and that.”
She continued: “I just thought like, I have to pay to maintain this lifestyle of somebody who just won America’s Next Top Model. I wanna have a nice apartment in New York.
“I want to dress nicely, go to nice restaurants, like get my hair done, look presentable. I wanted to behave like the winner of America’s Next Top Model. And I wanted to invest in myself after I had won.”
She decided to move to LA and bought a car with the remaining prize money and she then realised that she’d “ended up spending the $100,000 before I had paid taxes on it.”
As such she was “paying off the taxes from that prize money for a very, very long time,” and even had to enroll in a payment plan so she could actually afford to repay the amount.
Ten years on, she says if she did it all again she’d more likely invest the money and admitted that she does “regret” how she spent her money, but there’s a silver lining behind it all.
She added: “Do I regret it? Actually, probably yes. But the way I like to learn lessons is through making mistakes. So I definitely learned some good lessons and learned a lot about finance and financial planning.”
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