Financially speaking, this has been a difficult year for many people around the world. Some of us keep hearing recovery is imminent–and things may be looking up for our friends–but our ship is still anchored in the distance, a long way from shore.

Although we understand the world’s economic woes have nothing to do with us, we can’t help feeling like we’ve screwed up somehow. If we’d only had the good sense to turn left instead of right, we wouldn’t be struggling so much. But we need to accept that, even when we make reasonable decisions, circumstances may conspire put mountains in our path. It’s a lesson Andre-Francois Raffray learned all too well.

Good deal

Raffray was a 47-year-old French attorney, and in 1965 he was serving as a notary public for Jeanne Calment. She was 90, a widow who’d outlived her heirs and had no one to leave her most valuable asset: a large apartment in the port city of Arles, where Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin once painted.

The lawyer understood the property’s value, so he offered the widow a proposition: He asked if she’d be willing to set up an “en viager” (“for life”) purchase–something similar to a reverse mortgage. He would pay her 2,500 francs (about $500) a month until she died, then the property would be his. It was a common practice, and given her age and the property’s value, how could he lose?

Gone bad

On Christmas Day, 1995, Andre-Francois Raffray died at the age of 77 … having paid Jeanne Calment $184,000 for an apartment worth half that price. The 120-year-old widow enjoyed her holiday dinner of foie gras, cheese, and chocolate cake secure in the knowledge that Raffray’s widow was legally obliged to continue the payments. When reporters asked about what had by then become a famous, if cautionary, business arrangement, she said simply, “In life, one sometimes makes bad deals.” And some outcomes are difficult to predict.

Raffray’s widow was released from her husband’s debt two years later when Calment, then the world’s oldest living person, finally passed from this world at 122. And if we hang in, sooner or later our financial difficulties will pass, too.