Lessons from Tiger Woods: Cheating is expensive

If the Tiger Woods saga has taught us anything it’s that infidelity is expensive. Let’s leave for a minute the millions of dollars he’ll have to pay his wife if she divorces him, and discuss the millions of dollars he’s reportedly offered his mistresses to keep quiet. (Which, clearly, didn’t work.) The Huffington Post reports that the golf legend was willing to part with a $1 million if woman number one, Rachel Uchitel, remained mum. Then there’s the $200,000 he allegedly paid a witness to stay quiet. It’s also alleged that he paid anywhere between $15,000 and $40,000 to party with various women in Vegas hotels. Luckily, he’s got money to spare, and if his model wife Elin Nordegren splits, he’ll need it. US Weekly reports that he’ll have to pay her $300 million, not to mention ongoing child support. Whatever happens to Tiger, he’ll always be one of the most talented atheletes around. So, when he returns to golf he’ll continue making millions of dollars to fund his family and his extra curricular activites. But not so with us regular Joes. Just think about the monetary costs of carrying on an affair — you’ll need to spend cash on hotels, trips if he or she lives out of town, gifts, cell phone bills, and if your spouse does catch wind of the affair and kicks you to the curb there’s pricey lawyer fees, support payments, you may have to cover the entire mortgage if you get to keep the house and the list goes on. One affair could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So what’s the moral of the story? Only cheat if you can really afford it.