All I Know Is...It Wasn't ME...

Only ONE winning ticket was sold for that huge $314 MILLION dollar Powerball payoff this weekend, and that was in Richmond, Indiana. Now it's not really important whether the ticket was purchased by ONE person or a GROUP of people.
What IS important is the obvious question:
"What are you going to DO with ALL THAT DAMN MOOLAH"?

The first question regarding ANY win that's THIS big is "Do I opt for the yearly CHECK or do I take the LUMP-SUM payout"?
If it were me with THIS much sudden "disposable income", I'd bite the bullet, pay all my "uncles" off, and take the CASH! Sure I'd be taking a hit as to my bottom line, but I wouldn't owe ANYONE after that, even if I "only" received HALF of that $314 MILLION. After all, $157 MILLION is better than nothing...right?

I do have my "wish list" as for some "frivolous" expenditures. For example, one thing I would do straight away would be to buy up all these hovels around here (which wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface of my new-found wealth), and promptly RAZE THEM back into the good earth that spawned them in the first place.
Now THAT, my friends is called URBAN RENEWAL!
Then, I would get my car repaired...a few thousand tossed at it should get it back to showroom new shape! Hell, I might even have some performance work done on it (I'm "socially-secure" now, after all). My wife could get a NEW car...or TWO, if she so desired...her call.

After that, we would get a NICE FIVE ACRE chuck of real estate somewhere that would be far enough A-W-A-Y from Fort Wayne (place to be determined), build us a HOME (not just a house) and get back to something I used to call LIVING once again. And the house would HAVE to have a nice size fireplace, so I could have a place to hang my shotgun, just like they USED to do. My first thought is somewhere in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. Hell, I could even move to GETTYSBURG with that much money, and my wife could even teach there (if she still wanted to deal with other people's kids on a daily basis).

But what about all those houses I tore down on the southeast side of Ft. Wayne? I'd sell the land to some developer, so he can start the whole slum-ghetto process anew (if that's the direction the city truly wants to go), that way I can negate all that nasty property tax crap.
(see, there IS a method to my "madness" afoot here)

One thing I would do would be to get us the FASTEST DAMN COMPUTER I could, and that goes for the server as well. Give me something and someone that can run at a speed OTHER than the snail's pace I currently "enjoy"...please! And I might even get a flat-panel TV for the wall with surround sound. Don't have to break any bank to do that these days anyway. Be nice to embrace the 21st century a lot more, technologically-speaking, even though I don't really like to all that much. Then there'd be some decent gifts for my all too few dear friends (and they KNOW who THEY are already, so no usurpers please).

THEN, after all THIS stuff is out of the way, we'd take a nice large chunk of what's left over and do something not many lottery winners seem to do...namely INVEST IT. I'm sorry, but if I've got some money lying around. I'd much rather have it making me MORE money, than collecting dust, or making some bank richer. It's not greed..it's looking toward the future.
How many lottery winners do we hear about that become more like lottery WHINERS when they're BROKE within a damn YEAR? That's just pathetic, as well as a testament to man's sheer stupidity and lack of foresight. It's all about proper prioritization...plain and simple. You hope for the best, but expect the worst...and thereby are PREPARED for almost ANY eventuality. It'd be amazing what people could discover about themselves if they'd practice THAT a bit more. Hell, it beats having life "blind-side" you when you least expect it.

So..after we've done all THAT, we would surely have SOME money "left over", and what better way to divide it up and spend it accordingly. Some church would definitely get a nice "anonymous" tithe. Ditto some charitable group like a food bank or PAL, or some orphanage (they DO still have those, right?). And THEN, I'd get a few "wants" taken care of (no, I don't mean THAT). I'd buy another gun (or two)...maybe my dream pistol; a Walther P99 in .40 S&W. With those 5 acres, I could even build my OWN gun range for cheap...(invite the cops over..have some fun). That reminds me...if I have FIVE acres, I'm going to need a RIDING MOWER (or a LOT more extension cords for the electric one I own now)....LOL!

But aside from those "things", I don't see my wife or I becoming JADED in the process. Neither of us are given to such flights of fancy that we'd be destitute within any time soon. Hell, we'd probably still shop at local markets, and buy THEIR brands. We might buy a little MORE than we used to, but we don't go in for all the fol-de-rol that comes with wealth. We REMEMBER how we were brought up, me especially with those ketchup sandwiches and soup all week in some rowhouse in Philly, wondering if Dad's plant was going to strike THIS year, and how we'd get by (which we manged to many times).
I'd like to think we'd be doing many of the "right" things while being responsible in the process as far as money-management goes. Hey, we've been doing pretty good with not all that much SO far, even in THIS part of the city, and that is a major accomplishment. We're certainly not "well-off", but we get by OK.
We don't worry that much about whether we have the NEWEST car (we keep the older ones we have LOOKING and running LIKE NEW).
We don't worry about having the fanciest house on the block (we just keep OUR house looking better than everyone else's which is rather EASY when everyone else does NOTHING to improve THEIR property).
We don't go in for all the marketing hype (we live within our means, and if we don't get the center cut of the meat every week, or that big-screen TV...so be it).
We try to be as responsible with what WE have been given (financially), as possible, because we do appreciate the stewardship of what we have been charged with.

So when the day's done, we can look back and think that we "done good". All we have to do is repeat it tomorrow.

And that's not all that bad, considering we never really OWN anything in this world...we just take care of it for a while until we pass it on to our future...our children, hopefully with the same values our parents gave to us.