I always viewed lotteries as a tax on those who aren't very good in math. I have bought tickets before, but that was almost always when a group of people at work bought a bunch of tickets. I wanted to avoid being the one person left in the office if by some chance the group hit the jackpot and quit on the same day. My purchase was much more an insurance policy than it was a lottery ticket.
I also generally avoid thinking about what I would do with all the money because that is a bad path for me to traverse. There is literally nothing good that can come of thinking that way. I am sure some people can think about what to do with large sums of money they will never have without going somewhere negative that they shouldn't, but I am not "some people."
With this background I am always intrigued when other people say what they would do if they somehow came into a large sum of money, either through a lottery or an inheritance or something of that nature. I think that when a lot of people hear about a dollar amount greater than one million dollars they think this is an unlimited amount of money. It does not take complicated math to determine this is not the case. You can't give away or spend the same money multiple times.
I think that if I ever came into money and others found out about it, it might be more of a curse than a blessing. I want to help others out, but there are so many horribly greedy people who want something for nothing, I would not fork it over so easily. People would probably always hate me for not giving them what they think I should. I would also wonder if people were only friends to me because of what I had.
In a story that feeds my cynical side, this sort of thing has happened in the last few years. A guy who won over $300 million in the Powerball in 2002 has come to believe that victory was actually a curse. He lost his friends, he became cynical about mankind, and he believes it directly caused his granddaughter's death. Reading his story makes me wonder if people who wish for a windfall of money really understand what they are asking for.
Some people can't win for losing.
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4 comments:
Yeah, I think people can tie their happiness to money or a windfall and miss out on real life as it happens. Those stories of people who spend it all or have some big emotional devastation are fascinating and horrifying all at the same time.
I would have a difficult time giving money away in a public setting for reasons like what happened with this man. People will take for grant it that they deserve what they don't deserve. I'd love to win the lottery, but I have yet to play it! It's probably a good thing that the process of purchasing the ticket intimidates me.
Yeah, didn't that man believe those numbers to be cursed and he eventually survived a plan crash on a mysterious island that is filled with monsters and polar bears and secret hatches and groups of others and no sense of rescue?
I think I heard about him.
I have an aunt who won 6 million in the Florida lottery. In some ways it answered their prays because they were barely getting by before. My dad watches out for their finiancial interset since they are not very educated and have been taken advantage of before.
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