I’ve mentioned before that people who make serious plans for winning huge lotteries annoy me. Why? I mean, after all, I buy lottery tickets myself. But I realize how bad the odds are and I understand that buying a ticket doesn’t make any significant difference in your odds of winning. I mean 0 in 175.2 million and 1 in 175.2 million are very close to the same thing. Unless, of course, you do win.
I use the opportunity to win (minuscule as it is) as a way to amuse myself. Mostly I tease my wife, Saint Karen, (who has to be a saint to put up with me) about how cheap I’d be if we won. At one time we lived in an apartment and our upstairs neighbors were noisy. My plan if I won at that time was to send the neighbors on vacation so we could have a little peace and quiet.
But with Powerball at something like $400 million tonight, and Mega Millions roughly $145 million since nobody won last night, I have just come up with a new way to be silly about plans to win. Yes, I will still jump on the bed because that would be fun and I could afford to replace the bed which would clearly break if I jumped on it. However, here’s the new part: If I win Powerball tonight, I will take a small part of the money and put it in a trust fund to guarantee the payments in perpetuity. Then, I will make the necessary arrangements so that when I pass away, I can be buried in a rented tuxedo. That’s it, dear reader. Now, it’s your turn to come up with a silly plan. If you do, I’d welcome your comments.
Buy a ticket or not, as you please. But if you do buy a ticket, make a silly plan. Buying a ticket is really entertainment, not investment. Now, if either you win or I do, then and only then it’s okay to come up with a serious plan to make sure you don’t run out of money and even to make sure that some of the money does good in the world. Just don’t make those serious plans until you win. And, if you win and still want to jump on the bed, take it outside first. I wouldn’t want a newly minted multimillionaire to hurt or kill himself by hitting his head on the ceiling.