Water Cooler Lottery Dreams

With an estimated jackpot of approximately $370 million for tonight’s drawing, one of my co-workers made the rounds today asking if people wanted to take a chance for the Mega Millions jackpot.

Waste of Money.
While I am completely aware that playing the lottery is about the same as crumpling up your money and throwing it on the floor, it does provide an opportunity for some interesting water cooler discussions in the office.

In the time that I have worked at my current employer, I would estimate that we play as a group maybe once or twice each year and that is usually determined by the size of the jackpot. One would think that a group of educated professionals would know better than to throw away their money…

But What If…
The best part of playing with the people at work is sharing our thoughts and dreams about how we would use the money. To be honest, it is rather interesting because you often can get a little bit of insight into how other people manage their money. Some people cannot stop rattling off all of the things that they would do and buy whereas others are thinking about which savings vehicles can be used to stash the money and live off of the interest.

I’ve read numerous articles about how much office time is wasted during the upcoming NCAA March Madness tournament but I have to imagine that discussions about winning the lottery is up there as well. Whenever I would see someone that had thrown in a few bucks, we would share that look and make a quick comment in passing about how nice it would be to win.

So What Would I Do?
This may be easier to say while I do not have millions of dollars waiting for me but I honestly don’t think that we would make any drastic changes in our lifestyle. We live in an outstanding area right now and really enjoy our neighbors so I would not be planning a move any time soon. Instead, I would pay off the mortgage and expedite a handful of home improvements that are currently planned, such as finishing the basement and repainting the entire interior.

Even though I enjoy the work that I do right now, it is not what I am truly passionate about so I imagine that I would look for something else to occupy my time. Similar to my motivation behind starting this website, I would like to do something with a non-profit to help educate people on how to manage their finances and eliminate debt. In my opinion, that would be a very satisfying job if I didn’t have to worry about the bills.

To satisfy my wife, we would be taking a nice vacation to Turtle Island as that has been a dream of hers for some time now. After seeing pictures of Turtle Island, I cannot say that I would be too disappointed to fulfill that dream.

Since we have become accustomed to living below our means, we don’t have any desire to be in a McMansion or have the top-end vehicles. I’m sure there have been other lottery winners that have said similar things but I truly believe that we would be the same old average people.

If you don’t believe me, ask me in a couple of days when I am a new millionaire!

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6 Responses

  1. People once told me, ” Playing in lottery gives you hope, and a ticket of chance. Not playing at all means a big FAT zero of hope.”

    Even more simple-minded people would say, it is a 50-50 win. Either you win, or you don’t. I for one believes that if one takes the number of times multiplied by the cost of each ticket that you buy in your life time, you would have been able to do more useful things than that.

    Although, the winners of these lottery would definitely think ‘differently’.

    • mnc says:

      You’re absolutely correct. The people that buy tickets regularly could retire a millionaire if they took that same money and invested it wisely every week.

      As I said in the post, I know that I am basically throwing away my $10 but it came out of my regular spending money so I am not too concerned about.

      But this reminds me, I need to go check the numbers. 🙂

      • That saying, still it is a game, and it should not stop you totally from throwing in once in a while. 🙂 Whatever the case, just make sure that it is not money required for your next meal, or the baby’s milk!

  1. March 7, 2007

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