The prize we all dream of. The payday we all hope will happen, even if we never take the necessary steps to make it occur. The lottery. That is today’s exercise. Exercise number 14 out of this journey is, “what would you do with your lottery winnings?” I have to admit to start off with though, that I am not generally money driven. I just don’t do things for money. And I rarely if ever buy a lottery ticket. I do not bet on things that I don’t already know I can win. I take risks yes, but I don’t gamble.
Let’s suspend all sorts of disbelief though and for the sake of argument we’ll assume that I did win the lottery. There are three basic areas that I would want to cover, and the first starts with giving some of that money away. After that we will cover a few trinkets and experiences I covet, and then will put all the rest away for the future. But first things first..
The first expenditure may sound odd, especially for anyone not from around here, but Charleston in the summer is hot. Heck, the winter is often hot too. One of my favorite places in this world to spend time is in our church. It feels like home. And our church doesn’t have air conditioning. The initial bricks for the building were first put down in 1774. Yes, before the Revolutionary war although the construction was not finished until long after. When you have something that old it’s a little hard to retrofit with the modern convenience of air-conditioning. Hard means expensive. So that is the first thing I would d0 – I would pay to put air conditioning in the church. Tell you what though, if I’m going to air conditioning the church this better be a pretty big lottery. I think the running estimate for air conditioning our church is somewhere around a cool $2 million.
After doing something nice for others (and myself) with the first bit of my winnings, you know I have to do something fun with the next stack of dollars I peel off the wad of bills. To that end I would buy a very nice British sports car. One that didn’t need restoration or at least one I didn’t have to perform the restoration on myself. A Morgan Plus 8 might just fit the bill. Or maybe a classic Aston Martin, that would work pretty well too. Heck, depending on the amount of money I’m gonna get from this suppose lottery windfall of maybe I could buy both of them. And I guess I will need a garage to keep them both in. And a bigger house to go with the garage.
So now that I’ve taking care of giving some money away, and taken possession of some high dollar toys, what else would there be to do other than travel? I would take some more of that money, take my passport in my hand, and board the nearest plane. Or boat. Or train. I kind of like trains you know. So maybe I would start with a train trip around the United States, or as far as you cat get by rail these days. From there I could get on a boat bound for somewhere. Anywhere. As a bonus, one of the better things about traveling would be making attack harder for all the people trying to beg, borrow or steal money. Every place they would come swarming I would have just left and be on to somewhere else. Not you guys and gals who are reading this blog of course. I would always be willing to help you y’all out with a few dollars. I’m talking about those “other people”.
So those are three good goals: give some money away, buy some toys, and travel a bit. After that I think it would just be taking care of business. You know, making sure the kids are provided for and there is enough money for the future. Well, I guess I could buy some more books. And bookcases. And toy trains. That’s more toys I guess. But still, I would put some away for the future. I would invest – I would buy stocks; I would buy bonds; I would buy collectible toys and books and cars. Trust me, those toys books and cars are often much more stable investments than stocks or bonds. Especially with the way Wall Street has been handling itself the last few years..
Come to think of it, the way things have been going with the financial institutions recently, buying a lottery ticket might be a better investment than stocks, bonds and savings accounts.
[Note: Now that I am done writing this, I’m wondering if this entire post sounds odd. Unlike normal, I dictated this instead of typing it out by hand. I wonder if that really affects the tone?]
