WWHD

Everyone loves to daydream about what they would do if they won the lottery. Every time I drive by a Powerball billboard, I start mapping out how I’d live the high life. Oh, trust me; I have a great plan in place. They say money doesn’t buy happiness, let me win the lottery. I’ll prove ‘em wrong. Or it’ll be one extravagant depression. It might help if I would actually purchase a ticket. I’m not a statistician, but I’m pretty sure that would greatly improve my odds. Instead, some friends and I (one of whom actually is a statistician) have decided we would put our brains together and we applied to audition for the World Series of Pop Culture.

Well, we were accepted and we’re going to Austin in February to audition. This is where the day dreaming about a big pay day comes into play. The grand prize is $250,000, a might handsome prize I might add. And so I’ve begun to daydream about “what if.” I’ve learned $250,000 is a great big number, but split three ways after taxes it isn’t nearly as much as you think. We’re talking about $60,000 or so each. And don’t get me wrong, I can always use an extra 60 grand, but it isn’t an amount that you can go crazy with.

In fact it’s the perfect amount to be a huge help. It could be a nice down payment on an impressive but not lavish condo, some investments and enough to erase my debts leaving me with roughly $15,000 to really enjoy. You can have a lot of fun with $15,000; you just have to be real careful about it. One trip to Vegas could easily wipe you out. It’s not going to buy you a fancy sports car, and it’s not like you could just take a month off work to travel.

So, imagine you had no real debt any more, and you’re handed 15k, how do you spend it? If you have kids, it probably all goes to their college funds. If you don’t have kids, you might go party and get drunk enough that you’ll have some little ones in oh, about nine months. And then you’re right back where you started, up to your ears in debt daydreaming about a big payday.