Last Wednesday might as well have been National Big Dreams Day. As I'm sure you all know, the Powerball lottery jackpot rose to a record 1.5 BILLION dollars. That meant that a single winner, after federal taxes, would take home over $900 MILLION. It seemed everyone was talking about it, people were lining up to buy tickets all over the country, even though the odds of winning were something like 1 in 292 million. That's about the same odds of being hit by a meteor while having sex with Angelina Jolie. Or Channing Tatum for you ladies. Pretty unlikely.
Still, many of us were daydreaming of that insane amount of money all day long, deciding how to spend it. I never play the lottery, but I threw my change into a Coinstar and used it to buy a single ticket. I mean, SOMEONE has to win, right? Like so many others, I wondered just what I would do with that kind of money. My first thought was to pay off bills for myself and my mom. But that's a drop in the bucket of $900 million. Then I wanted to buy a nice house. The strange thing is, I realized I don't really want a McMansion. Just a nice house, back in Huntington Beach, California. OK. that leaves more than $899 million left. I'd build an INSANE bike and skate park, and work to get my fat butt in shape so I could ride and skate again. $897 MILLION left. Dang. That's a lot of money.
I'd like to travel some. But I don't really have the urge to sail around the world or anything. I'd visit some old friends in Europe and roadtrip all over the U.S. and Canada. 897 3/4 MILLION left. Holy crap!
Sure, I'd invest some. But the stock market is a really lousy place to put money right now. Real estate isn't the greatest right now. Maybe it's better in California. Even if I dumped $10 million into good rental properties, that would leave $887.75 million. Now what?
The only real answer I could come up with was to do as much good as I could with the money. As someone who was homeless for years, that would be my primary focus. Yes, there are plenty of losers out there, but NO ONE really deserves to live on the streets. It's a horrible thing.
As I went down the list of things I'd try to spend $900 million on, I realized something. If I actually DID win that huge prize, everyone would say I got lucky and got bailed out of my financial situation by the lottery. I could never say that I EARNED my way back to success after being homeless. Suddenly, I didn't want to win. Seriously. It was a big eye opener for me.
I have a confession to make. I DID win the Powerball Lottery last Wednesday. Really. I won $4. I doubled my money. What did I do with my winnings? I went to McDonald's, bought a Diet Coke and a caramel sundae, and wrote down what I really want to do with my life for the next few years. The next day I started a Go Fund Me campaign to raise the money to start doing it. I realized I don't need the lottery to follow my dreams. I can say I won the Powerball on the biggest day ever. More importantly, I can still EARN my way to success in this world. I like the way that turned out.
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