Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams

The Mega Millions jackpot is $355 million.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to win.  Wonderful Husband and I have periodically played the lottery for years.  Not often, not regularly, but off and on. Whenever we buy a ticket, we start planning what to do with the spoils of our victory. These plans have changed little over the years, and always include travel and property. It would do you good to make friends with us now, because once we have all that cash, we might find your motives dubious. 

Image courtesy of Robert S. Donovan via Flickr

You always hear about these poor fools who win the lottery and then two years hence are penniless and working resetting the pins in a local bowling alley.  In fact, this "curse" is so real that E! did a True Hollywood Story on it (twice! so you know it's newsworthy).  What I can never figure out is how someone goes from being a multi-millionaire to broke (this also often happens to professional athletes, but that's for another day) in the blink of an eye.  And the toll it takes on marriages? I don't get it.  From what I understand, the trouble most marriages have is money . . . which I always took to mean debt, not having too much money. 

When we win the lottery tonight, we're going to go to the Carribean (or some other tropical locale) on a private jet with our nearest and dearest for a month.  It's going to be awesome. Upon our return, we'll buy ourselves a nice (but modest) place in the city for us to lay our heads and to hold our stuff while we travel. Then we're going to start some sort of foundation (or become beneficiaries via endowment to some deserving organization--know of any?) because what good is all that money if you can't do some good with it?  I'd really like to be appointed to the board of the foundation so that I'd have something to occupy my days (because, yes, I will be quitting my job once we win -- I'm going to hold off on giving my notice till tomorrow, though, as I really would like to make sure it's a done deal).  You see, we won't be idle rich. We're going to give back.  We'll be generous to our friends and family.  We're going to spend wisely and invest even more wisely.  We will not be working resetting the pins in the bowling alley two years hence. 

Sure, there's a lot of criticism about lotteries (and gambling and the like), but it's easy to criticize when you haven't won $355 million.  Sounds like a case of sour grapes to me.  But let's just say, for argument's sake, that WH and I don't win the lottery tonight.  What have we lost?  Three dollars.  That's the price of a Lean Cuisine (when they're on sale).  But what did we gain?  An evening of fantasy where we can plan what we might do with our winnings.  Idle conversation about fun stuff we might someday be able to afford to do.  Ideas about the happiness of those closest to us when we invite them on lavish vacations and buy them expensive gifts.  I don't know, but that's pretty priceless to me.  And sure, maybe it'll be gone tomorrow . . . but maybe, just maybe, it won't be.