The Lotto Game
No, I’m not talking about playing Lotto.
I’m talking about playing the game “what if I won the lotto”. It’d have to be a big one, none of this two million dollar BS. I’m talking about one of those 120 million cash payout lottos.
There are some specific things you think about, of course, not having to get up at 5:00 anymore, not having to worry about the cable bill, not having to worry about any bill.
Most lotto winners tend to white trash the whole deal, many are bankrupt pretty quickly. Most of that comes of dragon chasing; trying to find the next thing to thrill or satisfy the need for adventure.
Well, I don’t want adventure. My wants are pretty simple. I’d like to have that big payoff for a lot of reasons, most of them quite selfish, but some of them selfish for friends of mine, people I love, or people I respect.
I’d like to pay off my best friend Mike’s bills and have a contractor come finish rehabbing his 40’s vintage Dutch colonial home.
I’d like to get my friend Jenny a nice little suburban Georgia bungalow with a carport, and put a car into it. And get her training she needs to get a gig she likes more. And a fistful of flight coupons for NYC, where she can satisfy her desire to be in the Apple.
I’d like to buy Velociman’s half rubber team a whole new set of uniforms so they could look real nice when they play.
I’d like to buy a small publising house and publish all of Francis Porretto’s books.
I’d like to get Kim du Toit the winchester 63 he shot as a child. No, not one like it, the exact model 63. I’d like to see the look in his eyes.
I’d like to sign a blank check and have Connie Du Toit redesign my website so it looked nice. Then I’d probably have to have someone talented write it for me.
I’d like to get Acidman a lawyer good enough to make his ex squirm, and get him his son back. I’d like to see the look in his eyes.
I’d like to get my whole family to Florida for a visit with a dear old friend who now suffers from alzheimers. I’d like to make sure his last years are exquisitely comfortable.
I’d like to drop about 100k on this house, and about 100k each on the next-door neighbor’s houses, to help them get ahead of their home improvement projects.
I’d like to get my local parish a monument to our beloved pastor, now gone three years, a decent and wonderful man, an inspired homilist, and a huge loss. I’d like to bribe my bishop to ship our current miserable popinjay of a pastor off to a parish where he can learn the meaning of the word “humility”, and I’d like our former associate pastor to return, and guide the parish who misses him so severely.
I’d probably make sure all my family and close friends were modestly taken care of, funds established to get kids into halfway decent schools, etc.
I wouldn’t want much beyond that. Decent health and a lot of good hunting and fishing, is about all. Well, and plenty of ammo.
What are your lotto wishes?
Pay off the house, which I’d then deed to my daughter.
Pay off my sons college loans.
Send my parents on a real vacation.
Buy some land and build the house I want.
Give a big contribution to GOA, partly for the good it’ll do and partly to see the GFW’s gnash their teeth over it.
Actually GO the Africa to hunt.
Have to think about the rest.
Most sensible plan. Combination of practical yet also indulgent. If you won big money and did not indulge any of your wants you would explode. If you merely indulge, you end up like a rap artist with an entourage burning up money and yourself burning up money and your money puts you in a new league overnight with no new high finance experience to go with it.
Unfortunately the lottery does not go to deserving people any more than undeserving people.
I suspect, several of the things you would like to do could be done absent a lottery win, changing a pastor can not merely be a mater of money. Making an alzheimers patient comfortable may be beyond the reach of money. I would suspect Mrs. Reagan had more help than almost any family member in a similar situation yet the former President had as difficult a time as any. Disease does not respect much. Acidman does not seem to lack money, but maybe he needs a better lawyer. I worked nine years on Wall Street and I can show you a dozen ways to piss away $300,000 without results. Sometimes, talking to a few other lawyers can open your eyes if number one is not getting results.
Anyway, your post made me think, if I won 360 million, every dollar would go into investments – that means each would become like an employee who never cals in sick, never eats, never needs anything, just chugging out new income for me and mine – then I would do the good deeds that I wanted to fromt he income, and my kids would have the same army of employees earning more for their goals and so on forever.
I would buy all of the people in my inner circle, houses and cars, and pay off all of their bills. I wouldn’t buy outlandishly priced homes and cars, but nice ones never the less. The rest I would squirrel away for a rainy day. I would take every class that interested me in college, and give the instructors hell if they used the classroom for their own political purposes.
I’d buy some land, build a house, pay off my car loan, buy some techie stuff… invest 75% of the rest of it, and beyond that try to forget I had it, while remembering that “Yes, you CAN afford to buy that now.”
I’d retire, buy about 1000 acres of land somewhere and build my own house and 1000 yd range. I’d buy a life membership to GOA, NRA, and the gold level at Front Sight. I’d buy my mom and dad a house, pay off my sister’s house and close friends houses. The rest I’d invest and live off the interest. And I’d donate to every pro 2A gov’t official I could and campaign against the GFWs. Oh, golf is fun for me, so I’d get some lessons too.
Very nice post.
I’d do the same.
Of course, the names would change, and the dreams would be slightly different — but, for all that, the sentiment is the same.
Good on ya.
To easy.
$1 Million trust fund to the following Organizations in my home county, the poorest in Indiana (No paticular order):
– the libararys in each of the three towns.
– Each of the three public museums in the County.
– Each of the three schools for NON-sports related extra-cirricular activities.
– Humain Society.
– Each of the two churches my family regularly attends.
– Trusts at the Military Academy for non-sports related extra-cirricular activities.
– the USMA Library
– The USMA Museum
– The Reserve Officer Association
– The Quartermaster Association & museum
– The AMEDD Association & Museum
– The NRA
– GOA
– The Boy Scouts
– Philmount Scout Ranch
Personal STUFF
– That 40 foot bus chassy RV is first
-$1 Million Dollar trusts for each of us in the family (wife and I , 2 girls, our Parents, my Uncle, Grandma)
– at a minimum of 3,000 acres of land w/trust to pay the taxes in perputuity.
– Build the house the wife and I want
– Start my own Military History Museum complete with operational armor and evry historic military vehicle I could get my hands on [Not to mention firearms].
– A motorcycle museum.
– I know a couple of mechanics that I would pay to keep the vehicles running.
After That, I might have to start thinking.