Teenager Lindsay Binegar Buys House with 4-H Prize Pig Savings

After saving up more than $40,000, Lindsay Binegar from Greenfield, Ohio was able to buy a house at age 18.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on May 17 2010

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Lindsay Binegar of Greenfield, Ohio made her first $100 at the age of four, when she won a prize for showing a pig from her family’s farm to the local 4-H Club.

Most kids would be thrilled to spend that money on a shopping spree at Toys ‘R Us. But not Lindsay.

“I didn’t get the money; it went to the bank,” she told The Columbus Dispatch.

Over the years, Lindsay kept on raising and showing pigs, and kept on winning prizes. Some were $100 for small wins; champion prizes from the county fair paid in the thousands. Before long, she had raked up an impressive amount of cash—but, aside from a purse when she was 14, Lindsay had never spent a dime of her savings. By the time she was 18, she had amassed more than $40,000, which she planned to put towards her college education at nearby Ohio University.

But her parents proposed another alternative: if she continued living at home while attending school, they wouldn’t have to pay for her dorm housing, and would be willing to cover the entire cost of her education.

It sounded like a good deal to Lindsay. But what should she do with her savings?

Her father had an idea: buy a house, just as he’d done when he was younger. He used the house’s sale to help him purchase the family farm where Lindsay had grown up and raised all those lucrative hogs.

Lindsay was able to afford a modest fixer-upper in Greenfield, paying for the entire purchase in cash. She did a bit of painting and added new carpets, and then rented it out to some relatives for $450 a month.

After finishing college, Lindsay plans to marry her fiancé, Heath McNeal, and use the income from her house to help them buy a block of land and build a new house. But she’ll never move too far from home.

“I would never move out of Greenfield,” she said. “I just love everybody here.”

At her current rate, she’ll probably be the town’s biggest real estate tycoon by 25.

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