Last week’s Super 5 lottery was high enough for the peer pressure to get to me. Although the chances of winning were 1 in over 850,000, with the stake up at 1 million Euro I just had to take a chance at hitting the jackpot. So, against my better judgement, I pooled out 10 Euro for a joint ticket with a few of my colleagues.
Except for those tickets that are quite literally shoved down my throat by door-knocking scouts, biscuit-bearing girl guides, and over-enthusiastic local parish festa committees, this was only the third or perhaps the fourth time that I ever voluntarily bought a lottery ticket.
It’s not that I’m different, or indifferent, in fact just like everyone else, I too dream of winning the lottery, quitting my job and sailing into the sunset. Like everyone else I’ve rehearsed a variety of impolite farewell gestures with my colleagues, I’ve toyed with various styles of farewell notes, and I’ve also made mental lists of things that I would do with a million Euro.
But the truth is that I am just too grounded to even remotely believe that it would ever happen to me. Of course this could be slightly related to the fact that I do not gamble at all and can’t be bothered to go down to the lottery boot to buy a ticket. Possibly it is also related to the fact that I am even less bothered with choosing the ‘winning’ numbers, and always leave it up to the teller to randomly select them for me.
Lately I read the story of Brad Duke, the American who a few years ago, won 85 million dollars. Before winning, Duke was a gym manager and spinning instructor. He had spent years messing about (pronounced experimenting) with number probability schemes. He had tried his hand at different lotteries, and when he won the big prize he said that he knew he was going to win that time. He said that he was so sure that he had written it in his journal.
Duke had it all planned out. He was going to win and become a billionaire within ten years of winning. So instead of going crazy, he spent the first month undercover. He didn’t tell anyone about his winnings and consulted a team of financial advisors to help him make a billion. This is what he did with it:
- $45 million: Safe, low-risk investments
- $35 million: Aggressive investments like oil and gas and real estate
- $1.3 million: A family foundation
- $63,000: A trip to Tahiti with 17 friends
- $125,000: Mortgage retired on his 1,400-square-foot house
- $18,000: Student-loan repayment
- $65,000: New bicycles, including a $12,000 BMC road bike
- $14,500: A used black VW Jetta (apparently a rare find)
- $12,000: Annual gift to each family member
After reading this, I did some research and asked a few people what they would do had they to win a million Euro. I was most intrigued (for lack of a better term) by a woman who told another journalist of the Times that had she to win the lottery she would most certainly buy her sister a whistling kettle! A friend of mine said that he would change a 1000 Euro to 1 euro cent coins, put them in a sack and leave them behind the door of somebody he really dislikes. An ex-colleague said she would cruise around the Norwegian Fjords and visit Alaska, and a long lost second cousin in Australia said she would buy a beautiful house by the sea and spend Australian winters in Malta. It seems that no one has any loans to pay off, poor families to feed or sick unemployed relatives waiting for an organ!
I can only think of one sure thing that I would do had I to win – I would lobby and pay whatever I need to pay to introduce torture as a punishment against anyone who is remotely cruel to animals. Apart from that however I found it easier to compile a list of things I would not do had I to win the lottery. So here goes:
- I would not tell anyone (in fact for all you know, I’ve won it already).
- I would not pay off my home loan because that would let the cat out of the bag quicker than a hole in the sack.
- I would not quit my job until (at least) a year later. Not having to work for the money makes going to work a whole different ball game. In fact I would keep on rehearsing the farewell hand gestures with my colleagues.
- I would not invest money in anything that could possibly abuse more children, kill more animals, and exploit more women.
- I would not leave this beautiful country but I will not stop grumbling and criticizing either.
What would you do or not do?