Flight of Fancy
With the huge "Mega Millions" jackpot set to be 1.6 Billion dollars, I broke down and bought one "easy pick" ticket. Usually, I am not a gambler of any sort, but I thought I *could* spend $2 for allowing me an afternoon/evening flight of fancy.
After buying the ticket, I thought about what it is that I would do *if* I won. My thoughts can be summarized as follows:
1. I would pay off my home.
2. I would have my family move into a rented Townhouse for about 3 months while I had the kitchen and the bathrooms remodeled in my home.
3. I would retire from the U.
4. I would purchase a good, full-coverage health care plan for my family.
5. I would rent a small/quaint office space, and use it as my "office" to go to for my "job" which would be to attempt to write a publishable novel.
6. I would set up college tuition/room and board accounts that would pay for family and friend's kids to attend a 4-year school (I imagined in total 10 of these accounts). They would somehow be given anonymously to them.
7. I would look with my wife for a small, but pleasant condo to purchase in either New York City or in Chicago.
8. I would look with my wife for a small, but pleasant condo to purchase somewhere in a fun city in Florida.
9. I would hire a maid service to clean our home three times a week.
10. I would consider finding a class to teach as an adjunct at some college/university that is NOT the U from which I retired.
11. I would have a financial planner help me determine a normal, comfortable income that I could yearly income I could then count on for the rest of my wife and my lives.
12. I would make a financial plan to allow my wife and I to take a trip every three months to a fun, exotic location.
13. I would buy my wife and myself each a new, modest vehicle and sell our old vehicles.
14. With the likelihood that there would still be quite a bit of money left over, I would then set up with some legal help an anonymous foundation of some sort to be able to donate money to a variety of good causes.
The above are my flights of fancy. I have not yet looked to see if my lottery ticket one... but obviously the likelihood is virtually zero. Yet, the two bucks I spent on the ticket did give me the freedom to dream a bit. And, dreams are not all bad.
PipeTobacco
5 Comments:
I like your plan. I should have bought a ticket, but I didn't....and guess what? I just read that the winning ticket was sold here in South Carolina! :/
You really put a lot of thought into it. I buy a lottery ticket on rare occasions.
your list made me smile. :O)
dreaming can be fun!
To answer your questions, at least partly.
My photography is mostly run and gun. For the most part, I have to shoot what I can when I can. So, I mainly look for good compositions. On the computer, I try to craft the image in a way that seems appropriate. It will often mean highlighting some areas such as maybe the centre of the photo. I will often play with the saturation or at least the colour tones. I do try to keep it all in the realm of reality though; I am just nudging photos in the right direction -- to my eyes -- if I can't take the perfect photos in the perfect spot at the perfect time with the perfect equipment. I try to craft in such a way that someone couldn't necessarily tell that it was massaged in post. In other words, I go with what the photo offers, but I try will to help it along if necessary. There are exceptions. I will happily process certain types of images in a freer, less realistic way. If I post some truck finds in the near future, you will see what I mean although even then for the most part I keep my processing fairly realistic. But natural images such as scenes and birds (which I don't do often), I try to keep authentic.
Thanks for the questions.
Hello, I have recently found your blog, and this is my first comment. I used to do the lottery, but I found that avoiding the effort of having my hopes raised and dashed was easier, so I stopped. Your list is a great idea, though, and I occasionally dream about what I'd do if I won the lottery too. Why, when I don't do the lottery, I've no idea!
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