You may or may not know that I tend to live in a world of reality. I take a pragmatic approach to things. However, nearly everyone has that (however small) flicker of hope that they will someday have a five-or-greater-figure bank balance. Many people get lottery fever when they see the Powerball or Mega Millions get into the high hundreds of millions, or even billions. I am nearly 100% certain that I will never be rich financially. Hell, I struggle from month to month, almost always having too much month at the end of the money. That still doesn’t stop me from wishing I had a couple of million gifted to me.
There are people who say that, if they won a huge jackpot, they’d quit their jobs, travel the world and do all sorts of extravagant things. There are those who won and did exactly that, and would up filing bankruptcy. Here’s what I imagine I’d do if I ever won a large sum of money. I say “imagine” because no one ever knows how they’ll really react to a situation until they experience it.
First of all, I would want to keep my trap shut🤐. A big mistake some people make is announcing they’ve become instantly wealthy. Suddenly, all sorts of people come out of the woodwork, like colonies of roaches. There are all sorts of “friends” that were non-existent up to that point. These false friends can all go procreate with themselves. If I could claim my winnings anonymously, I absolutely would🤫. Otherwise, I’d wait a period of time. Once receiving it, I would firstly pay all my bills. I wouldn’t go buy new cars and a bunch of stuff. I also don’t think I’d stop working altogether. Sure, I’d want to take some time off, but I couldn’t just not work. I’d go absolutely crazy with nothing to do. I would, though, work a schedule I wanted.
If I won a substantial sum of money, after becoming debt-free, as I mentioned, I would take some time off and go visit a few places, like US historical sites, visit a few people I went to school with, and maybe go someplace completely unknown to me. I don’t know if I’d want to travel abroad, but that would definitely have to be seen. I would get rid of my vehicles and get something a little newer. None of this brand-new shit. I don’t want no 2020 or 2021 car that will depreciate ten seconds after purchasing it. Something in the post-2015 range would be fine. Already broken in, but not with all the problems yet. Take, for instance, my 2005 Toyota minivan. It’s needed an O2 sensor for a long time, it’s needing an alignment, and it has damn near 300,000 miles on it (as of this writing, nearing 298000). I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll hit 300000 without anything serious happening to it🤞. Update: since writing this, my van has surpassed 300K, and now is over 302,000, and still going🤯.
I’m thinking I might help my mom out, and replace her house with my windfall. She’s lived in the same manufactured home for 30 years now, and it reminds me of the house in The Money Pit now, as it’s slowly falling apart. Combine that with the fact that she’s 87 years of age, we don’t need her tripping on a hole developing in the floor somewhere. My siblings live there or next door to her, so she is not alone, but she doesn’t need to go be with my dad just yet (he died in 2007, so he never got to meet his namesake grandson).
Should I give some money to some kind of worthy cause? Possibly, but which charitable organization would put said money to the best use? So many of these organizations that claim to be “non-profit” have a paid staff, so a lot of the money goes there. I hate the ones that go on TV and try to guilt people into donating, showing the forlorn animals or some little poor African kids. I’m not saying that helping animals or kids is a bad thing. I just despise the way certain organizations play the guilt trip card for donations. Then there’s the absolute wackos out there. Does the acronym PETA ring a bell? Even many animal-rights activists think PETA is a huge joke and an insult to their own name. That reminds me of their moronic tweet about common phrases should be eliminated. Example, “don’t beat a dead horse”. It’s been around for years. I haven’t heard anyone take issue to it, until these PETA lunatics. What was their rebuttal to the aforementioned phrase? “Don’t feed a fed horse”. Huh? Hey, PETA, y’all are a bunch of morons. No one is going to alter the way they speak just for your sake. By the way, I belong to the other organization with the same acronym: People Eating Tasty Animals. I love me some steak, a burger, chicken, bacon, turkey, fish. All good stuff when cooked right. I would never eat a domesticated pet, like a dog or a cat, but give me my nicely prepared former cow, pig or chicken any day🤤.
You know who I would not give one red cent to, no matter how much money I had? Politicians. It doesn’t matter if their Republican, Libertarian, Democrat or whatever party. I dislike all politicians and would love to see term limits on all of them. Anyone elected prior to 2010 should be booted. Also, no one over the age of 65, please. If you’re older than Disneyland or in office since the Clinton administration or before (one guy has been in office since the Nixon administration), you’re too old to be running the country. Stale, tired blood of the “good ol’ boys”, the Washington Beltway bunch is one of the big factors in the melting down of this once-great, fading Republic. That’s a big fallacy used in the media: they and mainly Democrats keep talking about “our democracy”. This country is not a pure democracy. It’s actually a form of a republic. What does the Pledge of Allegiance clearly state: “…to the Republic, for which it stands”. The United States is a Democratic Republic. It’s too long and drawn out to explain all the intricacies of this nomenclature, and if you have some spare time, you can search the internet about this.
I can say with nearly 100% certainty that this glorious scenario will never happen to me. Hell, I honestly doubt I’ll ever be able to stop living paycheck-to-paycheck. But, it is nice to dream about sometimes. Unfortunately, wishing upon a star is probably futile, since the stars I wish upon are dead by now, just like those dreams😭. Maybe?
At any rate, what would you do if you won a lottery, or some jackpot on the Vegas slots? Send a comment, here or on social media. It’d be interesting to hear the various responses.
Keep your dreams alive, strive for the best every day, help someone out, and, first and foremost, be safe and be well.
Ray’s Rants of the Week 