“A billion here, a billion there…sooner or later it adds up to real money.” — Senator Everett Dirksen
I JUST FINISHED CHECKING our lottery ticket to see if we had suddenly become the Nouveau Riche while sitting in the corner at St. Arbucks.
We didn’t.
My wife, the lovely and ever hopeful, Dawn and I don’t buy lottery tickets very often. We usually wait until the Jackpot gets over $100 million dollars. She figures that if we are going to win it might as well be a really large amount. I can’t argue with that.
The odds of actually having the winning numbers is calculated at being somewhere close to the odds of being struck by lightning twice a day for a full year.
Well – Light me up, Baby!
Personally, I see our chances being roughly 50/50. We either will win the lottery – or we won’t. Nice and neat. No muss, no fuss. Just send us the cash before the end of banking hours tomorrow.
I’ve known two people who have won significant amounts on the lottery. One was a security guard at a place where I used to work. He was about to retire and bought a ticket and won $10,000. A nice going away present – better than a gold watch.
The other lottery winner was a young comedian who took his change at the liquor store in scratch-off tickets. He hit for $100,000. The last time I saw him he was on his way to see a lawyer because he hadn’t filed his tax returns for the previous five years and was afraid that little lapse of judgment might be a problem.
Dawn and I have, on occasion, whiled away an evening fantasizing about what we would do if we hit it big on one of our lottery tickets.
“What would be the first thing you’d do, Krafty?”
“Change my shorts.”
Such a fantasy requires some serious consideration. What would we really do with a Jackpot of, say… $400 million dollars? (There have been a number of winners who’ve gotten more than that.)
With a notepad at hand we started making a list of where the money would go.
First off you have to realize that half of it will disappear in taxes, never to be seen again. After that you had better hire a good attorney because you are going to want to set up trusts to protect and handle what is left.
We decided that a sizeable chunk, in the millions, would go to our church to physically ensure the building’s survival and to keep the lights shining well into the future.
We would establish a trust fund to guarantee the support and care for Alex, our sonny boy, for the rest of his life. The fantasy would include hiring a young man named Joel who worked with Alex for several years while Alex was in school in Wichita. They bonded and Joel was, by far, the best care provider I have ever seen.
“Would you go out and buy a fancy car?”
“Hell, yeah. We could get his-n-hers matching Jaguars.”
“Oh, good. Nothing too fancy.”
I would establish a scholarship at my university alma mater for deserving students. The school took a chance on me and I would like to thank them for that.
“The John Kraft Not Quite Yet Memorial Scholarship.”
A fantasy list like this could go on for pages – ours did.
By the time we were done there was still about $75 million left. Not a bad sum to keep us in Coffee, Pringles, and Dr. Pepper.
What would you do if you won a boatload of money on the lottery?
Let me know your fantasy wish list and I’ll put together a blog posting that will make us all drool.
Go for it!
Down the Hall on Your Left 