Tuesday’s Mega Millions jackpot stands at a record $1.6 billion dollars. Billion. Despite agreeing with Ambrose Bierce’s contention that lotteries are “a tax on people who are bad at math,” even I’m tempted to buy a ticket or two when I see those nine zeroes.
Not because I think I’m going to win—sadly, given my work as a test prep instructor, I know math—but because I think buying a lottery ticket is a pretty cheap way to check in on my financial goals and priorities. In my financial education classes, before I cover investments, before budgets, before even taxes, I talk about goals, priorities, and, dare I say it, dreams.
I would be the LAST person to tell you to buy a lottery ticket, and you can surely think about winning the lottery without playing the lottery, but …
Getting your personal finances in order and on track is not always going to be fun (it’s going to be awesome). You probably have a lot of better things to do (they cost money). It’s going to be even less fun if you don’t know what you’re doing it for.
Imagine going on a journey and trying to put together an itinerary or a packing list without knowing your destination. Or building a house. Before you even break ground, you know where every wall and window are going to go. Your finances are no different. Unless you’re Hetty Green and you’re literally just all about the Benjamins, your money and finances are only tools … the means to the ends.
The picture on my blog is everything you need to start living beneath your means. A pencil, paper, a (basic) calculator, and a whole lotto (ha) blank space. That’s where you dream. You know what helps with dreaming? A lottery ticket. Terrible financial return, but a solid and useful 15 minutes of entertainment (cheaper than cable!). Who doesn’t fantasize, ticket in hand, “What would I do if I won?”
Quit my job. Umm, CHECK 😆.
My list—go to the gym, pay off the mortgage on my rental property, fully fund my kids’ college educations, buy my dream car (license plate: LBYM), and take a year off to travel around the world. Not sure about the remaining $1.5987 billion.
Guess what’s on my real-life priorities list? Go to the gym, slowly fund my kids’ college educations, and take a year off to travel around the world.
Go to the gym, Grace? It’s an expensive gym.
Pay attention to the first four or five things that come to mind—what would you do if you had a little extra cash? Write them down. Not everything on the lotto dreams list will or should make your real-life list of priorities. Things will get added and shuffled as you read and learn (“Ahh, I should first fund a Roth IRA … then buy the beachfront cottage in Costa Rica”).
But keep a crazy (to everyone but you) one or two items on the real-life list. When you’re checking your household budget and celebrating another month of LBYM, take a peek now and then at your goals and think, I’m just that much closer … to going to the gym.
Oh, and if you win? Take the lump sum.