The First Thing I'd Do With Money

You might be aware that another billion-dollar lottery just passed us by. I didn't buy a ticket. Not a fan of lotteries; they distort peoples' thinking. Financial illiteracy is rampant. I'm not sparing myself from that judgment.

It's silly to get excited. Your odds of winning are always the same regardless of the prize, and nobody needs half a billion dollars. Six or seven million dollars, invested, would yield about $20,000 a month for the rest of your life, for doing nothing; isn't that plenty for all but the greediest fantasies?

Green beans, organically grown, picked this
morning, $2, destined for dinner

Know what my daydream is? The first thing I'd do would be if I won the lottery? Two things, actually. One, I'd hire a whole-food plant-based cook, and pay her or him lavishly. Second, I'd build and staff a giant year-round greenhouse so I could have produce like we enjoy here in July and August, only all year round.

Seriously, that's my best daydream. I return to it often in my Brussels-sprout-sized brain. Oh well; at least I get it two months out of the year, just for living here.

That about covers it
By the way, I know you've seen pictures of green beans here before. I admit I'm obsessed. My favorite veggie. They just appeared at all the farm stands about a week ago. That's the starting gun, and now I get to see how many I can eat before season's end. I am awaiting with bated breath Raymond's cantaloupe melons and Eugene's broccoli. I hope to get up my nerve to ask Eugene if I can cut my own broccoli this year. I know he's not going to understand, but maybe he'll let me anyway.

Speaking of living here, someone the other day referred to TOP World HQ as being in "Possum Holler" if I'm recollecting that a'right. Here, for edification, is a picture of the magazine rack at the local Tractor Supply Co. The sign up above, not visible in the picture, proudly heralds "MAGAZINES FOR LIFE OUT HERE." The titles include Fly Fishing Made Easy, Backwoods Survival Guide, Camping, Wildfowl, Guns of the Old West, Truck Round-Up, Gun Dog, Lakes and Beaches, Living Off the Land, Chickens and its striver competitor Backyard Chickens, Farm Starter and Farm Show, The Home Shop Machinist, Game & Fish, Bowhunter, Antique Power (a magazine about old tractors, and that's big hereabouts—I know several people who have more than ten tractors and one who has "around fifty"), and of course Cattle (because everybody needs Cattle magazine). I would say that covers about everything, except they are a bit short on titles about trucks. Just one seems slender pickings.

Oh, except, not a single thing about Harleys. WTF? Maybe whoever owns Tractor Supply is an Indian man. (Although Harley and Indian need to look out—eBikes are to them like smartphones are to big Canons, and mark my words.)

Enough
Getting back to that lottery, a friend told me something nice the other day. To quiet down her mind and tamp down her anxieties, she often says to herself, "I am enough, I have enough, and I do enough." I'm going to try that on myself, when I find my mind wandering off toward thoughts of wanting to be, have, or do more.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

MARILYN NANCE: "There's a very good book—Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them, by Roger Welsch. About collecting tractors. I really wanted one after I read it, although I live right in Chicago. Recommended."

Patrick Perez: "Years ago, when I lived in Los Angeles and worked for a giant asset management company, I had a practice of buying a lottery ticket when the jackpot reached some arbitrary large amount (this is before multi-state lotteries were in California). One day, the lottery jackpot hit my threshold, and, leaving work, I stopped in the mini-mart in the building lobby, waiting to get my ticket. Behind me in line was the company's chief economist (also a professor of economics at a large university). I explained to him why I think buying a ticket actually makes financial sense. If the expected jackpot, multiplied by the odds of winning, are greater than the marginal utility of a single dollar in one's wallet, then it makes sense. Steve replied words to the effect of 'yes! That's exactly what I always tell people!' (he spoke in exclamation points). Anyway, I got to the register and bought my one ticket. Steve got to the register and bought 20. His marginal utility of $20 is the same-ish as $1 to me."

Mike replies: Another commenter claimed an unidentified mathematician said your chances of winning are effectively the same whether you buy a ticket or not. According to game theory (said an article I once read), it makes sense to buy one ticket, because your odds go from zero possibility of winning to a very slight chance of winning—nothing to something—but then, all further tickets improve your chances so slightly that they are not worth spending even one cent on them.

Kye Wood: "I take a lot of 3D photos. Like. A lot. So I know what I'm on about here. Which is? That green bean photo in this post—wow! It's incredibly 3D for a 2D photo. Well done you. P.S. What gear was used to make the photo?"

Mike replies: iPhone 13, with some color and contrast enhancement in Photoshop.

Comments

[Leonard Salem]

Never had a motorbike myself but your mention of the Indian brand reminded me of one of my favourite films "The World's Fastest Indian". Fiction, staring Anthony Hopkins, but based on the story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years rebuilding a 1920 Indian motorcycle, which helped him set the land speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.
You may enjoy it as well, if you can find where to see it.

[Albert Smith]

"...I know you've seen pictures of green beans here before. I admit I'm obsessed. My favorite veggie."

This is precisely why I have rejected the mono-only camera as my only tool. Shade of grey beans just would not induce salivation.

[Bill Bresler]

This has nothing to do with the content of the post, but I have to offer you my congrats and respect. "I am awaiting with bated breath"
Almost EVERY time I see that term it's misspelled as "baited breath". Then I get this mental image of someone snacking on nightcrawlers.
The newspaper I retired from (No more paper involved, all online) is down to 4 staff reporters from a high of over 80 in the early 1990s. Yesterday I noticed a story by a very young reporter. The headline blared "Tool and dye shop to become marijuana business".
Sigh. Someone complained because the headline has been corrected. Copy Editors are soooo 20th century.

[Patrick Perez]

My lottery fantasy, shared with my wife, is that we would pay for medical expenses out of pocket and never deal with a health insurer ever again. We're serious. People outside the US probably think that's weird.

Patrick Perez

[David Dyer-Bennet]

The big difference with the really HUGE Powerball jackpots is that you're much more likely to be splitting the winnings with one or more other people who played the same number. So your hypothetical billion dollars before taxes might be cut town to a mere 300 million or something!

You could live quite nicely on $20k/month, sure. (You do need to make some sort of allowance for inflation, so your "fixed income" is at least not a fixed dollar amount; you may have already done that, your rate of return is fairly low so maybe) Not, however, anywhere near enough to stop flying commercial airlines (own or charter), or play with boats at all seriously, or have a first-rate house, or have nice houses in several places (New York, Palm Beach, London, Paris?). Or have much in the way of staff (and staff buy you time, and time is the one thing you can't buy more of).

I mean, I've never had that much, but my imagination very easily runs to places where that's still a constraint on my life. Nobody "needs" a lot of the things we want or even take for granted, but imagination isn't about needs, either.

[James Weekes]

Ahem. I believe it was Possum Holler by the Lake. Having lived for 11 years in (very) rural Vermont, I miss that life, with wonderful farm stands and nice people everywhere. Just couldn’t take any more winters. Do no read it as an insult please.

[Jez Cunningham]

A famous mathematician says “don’t bother buying a ticket - the odds of winning, to all intents and purposes, are the same whether you buy a ticket or not…”

[darlene]

The green beans sure look yummy! I eat them two ways; when it's hot outside, I like them chilled with olive oil and a dash of salt. If the weather is cold, steaming hot with almonds, cranberries, olive oil, and salt. Win a few million and get that greenhouse. That’d be heaven.

[c.d.embrey]

Health problems have wiped out my retirement savings. A union pension keeps me afloat.

BTW I would stave before I'd eat green beans. Our milage does vary.

[Keith Cartmell]

Lotteries are essentially a tax on stupidity. I understood the math on them back in high school. They make Las Vegas payouts look generous.
Also back in high school was when Ontario started a lottery, and even know I remember the drawing. It was a half hour TV special and the prize was a million dollars. My mom bought a ticket, and we watched the ping pong balls go around and around, and she got none of the numbers. I think that was the last time she bought a ticket. The only time I've bought a ticket is as part of a group at work when it was a big prize, and it was easier to chip in a couple of dollars rather than argue about it.
I remember doing the investment math on what a million dollars would pay in interest, and it seemed like all the money in the world to a high school student. Except I understand now that winning would have been the worst thing to happen to me. Interest rates dropped, and the income from it would have dropped as my expenses went up, and being honest, I probably wouldn't be looking for a job till it was almost gone, which it probably would have been by the mid 90's or so. And there I'd be, no money, no job experience. Almost certainly spoiled and not wanting an entry level job. Things go downhill from there and you can write your own end to that story.

[Greg]

I'm doing better than many people with lotteries. I've lost nothing. 50% payback doesn't excite me. I don't understand why they have these obscenely big ones. But I guess people go for it. Hope your neighbors don't read your blog. At least some of them.

[H Bernstein]

Magazines? What’s a magazine?

[R. Edelman]

You are in New York State. If you lived in the South, you might be reading "Garden and Gun" magazine, which "celebrates the modern South and features the best in Southern food, style, travel, music, art, literature, and sporting culture."
Personally, I would never have made a connection between guns and gardens, but then again, I live on the West Coast.

[Bob Johnston]

No photography magazines? How do you live out there? :-)

[Luke]

Ha! I now own a Harley-Davidson E-bike, a Serial1.

I'm old; my knees are shot from many thousands of miles on a bicycle (I didn't own a car until age 27). Now I can ride again and be able to walk the next day.

But I still have a "big" camera.

[David Stubbs]

If I won money from a lottery, I'd take pictures and print them 'til it was gone.

[Richard Parkin]

People who buy green beans in shops have no idea what they are missing. One has to grow one’s own. I guess yours are nearly as good. There are many very different varieties too, at least in the climbing beans I grow.

[Roger Bradbury]

We have people who like old tractors here too, and they compete in ploughing matches where the depth and straightness of each furrow is closely inspected.

I photographed a match (please click on my name below to see, if that's alright, Mike). I have a liking for the Little Grey Ferguson tractors, having driven and maintained one.

[Robert Roaldi]

Really good novel about lotteries called Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen.

There are always people who hate lotteries, claim that people are throwing their money away. But in a world where an ice cream cone costs $3 to $5, what's the big deal about blowing a buck on a lottery ticket. For a measly dollar, you get to fantasize for a week. A buck used to buy 4 pinball games. Surely fantasizing for a week is as much fun as 4 pinball games.

[Patrick]

Of course I need half a billion dollars. How else am I going to pay for the private jet I lease, the yacht I lease and invite my friends along for cruises in the Greek Islands. And of course I'd have a meat based chef, I could alternate between roast beef and steak each night, mmm. Plus my various homes need a staff to maintain them. And a new camera. Oh, and charitable contributions. All that stuff costs money.

[Marc]

If I'd win in a lottery (rather unlikely, since I rather dump my money elsewhere), I'd buy a velomobile, ship it to Mate Rimac*, put a blanco check on the hood and ask him if he's able to build a highly efficient two seater e-car, that could rival my kitchen table build electric Milan (0.98kWh/100km @ ø61,7km/h).

Probably the only way to get an a small, efficient, high quality electric car. The current offerings are aerodynamic nightmares.

*apart from his electric super cars (that smoke Lambos, Ferraris, etc) he also owns a ebike business

[Peter Wright]

Looking at those magazines on the rack gave me a good laugh. I wouldn’t have believed it but for the picture. Perhaps that could be a print sale!

[Andrew Sheppard]

Regarding lotteries - (1) there is zero chance of winning of you don't buy any tickets at all, but (2) I remember hearing years ago - regarding the UK's lottery with its smaller number of participants - that after buying your one ticket you'd have to buy another 15,000 to double your chances. Apparently the odds of winning our lottery with a single ticket are the same as those of a perfectly healthy twenty-five year old simply dropping dead... But I'll say again, without buying a single ticket you have absolutely zero chance - the mistake would be in thinking too much about winning after you've bought it!

[Stephen S.]

I used to also believe it makes sense to buy one ticket, because your odds go from zero possibility of winning to a very slight chance of winning, until I realized something: I have found cash just lying on the street, so it's not impossible I may someday find a winning lottery ticket lying on the street. My odds are not zero, even if I never buy a ticket!

[Mark Sampson]

Magazines? Maybe one of them needs a part-time editor. But they probably don't pay enough to make it worthwhile.