by Alison Storm | 05/20/10

An Ohio teen may never know what it's like to carry a mortgage. At just 18-years-old Lindsay Binegar already owns a home free and clear. She recently paid cash for a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home using years worth of prize money from showing champion hogs. She won her first $100 when she was just four-years-old. "I didn't get the money; it went to the bank," said Binegar, now a 19-year-old freshman at Ohio University's Chillicothe branch, in an interview with The Columbus Dispatch.

Every year Lindsay raised hogs on her family's farm, show them at competitions and then sock away her prize money or sale proceeds. Lindsay made more than $15,000 showing grand champion hogs at the county fair in recent years. "She's pretty tight," her dad Gary told The Columbus Dispatch. "She's always been big into 4-H, and every penny she made she just banked." That created a $40,000 bank account balance by the time she graduated from high school last year. Lindsay had earmarked the money for college but her parents had another idea. They offered to pay for college if she would continue living at home. But Lindsay wanted to invest her money. "I said, 'You should buy a house,' " Gary Binegar said to The Columbus Dispatch. Despite the concern that it was a lot of money, Lindsay decided to buy a house being auctioned off. The price tag amounted to her total prize winnings-- $40,000.

Lindsay and her dad have fixed up the house and now rent it out to relatives. Her dad isn't so sure how his daughter, a cheerleader and homecoming queen, turned out to be so frugal, but told The Columbus Dispatch, "We tried to lead her in the right direction and make her know the value of a dollar," her father said. So what's Lindsay doing with her rental income? Saving it, of course.