David Cassidy had an extremely successful acting and singing career back in the ’70s and ’80s. Catapulted to fame by his role as Keith Partridge in the famous TV show ‘The Partridge Family’, David was already known around the country and used this to start a career in music.
In 1970, his hit song “I Think I Love You” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the teen idol was on top of the world. Unfortunately, as it often happens with these stars, Cassidy went bankrupt in 2015, after being in debt for $10 million. A long history of DUIs, alcohol abuse, and a costly divorce in 2014 forced Cassidy to auction off his mansion. Sadly, he died from liver and kidney failure in 2017.
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye is a legend of soul music. His timeless songs became almost an anthem of the 70s, and people are still listening to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "Let's Get It On", and countless more to this day. Gaye even won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys in 1996.
Sadly, Gaye had to file for bankruptcy in 1976 after failing to pay alimony to his ex-wife, Anna Gordy. After a judge declared he had to pay $600,000 from the royalties of his album "Here, My Dear", Gaye was left in a very bad economic situation. Tragically, Marvin Gaye died in 1984, after he was shot and killed by his own father when he tried to stop a fight between his parents. Gaye still owed almost $300,000 to his ex-wife in alimony.
Gary Coleman
Back in the '80s, "Diff'rent Strokes" was a wildly popular TV show, and its child star Gary Coleman was making $70,000 per episode! Unfortunately, when the show ended in 1986, Coleman realized that his parents and business advisor had terribly mismanaged his money.
After his success on TV, Coleman tried to find other work but wasn't lucky. So, he decided to sue his parents and business advisor, which he won. However, it still wasn't enough money to keep him from going bankrupt in 1999. Coleman had to accept a job as a security guard after a long bill of lawyer fees and several bad investments left him penniless. After facing legal troubles in the 2000s, Coleman passed away in 2010 from a bad fall caused by a seizure.
Isaac Hayes
The soul, funk, disco, and rock 'n' roll legend Isaac Hayes was huge back in the 1960s. Hayes was one of the creative powerhouses behind Stax Records, a famous Southern soul music label. Although he made a killing back in the '60s, this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had to file for bankruptcy in 1976 after a whopping $6 million debt in taxes.
Hayes won three Grammys, one Golden Globe Award for Original Score, and one Academy Award for Best Original Song for the 1971 cult film, 'Shaft'. By 1977, in an interview with Ebony Magazine, Hayes said that his money problems came from mismanaging his record label, insane spending, and just generally placing "too much trust in people". Still, Hayes kept making music, wrote a successful cookbook, and owned two restaurants by the time of his death, in 2008.
T-Pain
American rapper T-Pain saw huge success after his second album, 'Epiphany', reached No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 chart. He saw massive success in the following years, releasing a number of hit singles and even winning two Grammy Awards. The rapper even had his own record label, and everything was going great until a series of terrible spending habits and bad investments nearly left him and his family on the street.
As the rapper himself said in an interview, he went from having $40 million in the bank at the peak of his career, to " having to borrow money to get my kids Burger King." Fortunately, T-Pain seems to have learned his lesson, since he is now doing much better with his finances, releasing new songs, and even won the first season of "The Masked Singer", a reality show on Fox.