My Get Rich Quick Scheme

It's easy—win the lottery. For years, people I've worked with would get excited when the Powerball prize would start climbing into the stratosphere—$185 million, $223 million, up and up twice a week, every time there was no jackpot winner. Someone at work would send a note around, and we'd all pony up and get a few hundred tickets all together. The odds against winning the Powerball are something like one in 146 million, so it helps to even the odds out a little.

But I always thought it was funny that people didn't get excited about the guaranteed base prize—a million dollars. That's the least you can win if you win the jackpot at Powerball. For the investment of a dollar, you get the return of a million. That's (let me check my math here) a hundred million percent return on the investment. Most people are happy if they're getting six or seven percent, so there you are. A million dollars isn't what it was in 1907, or anything, but it's still a pretty good chunk of money.

I assume that if people don't much care about winning a million dollars, they're pretty content with their lives. It's like when your birthday is coming up, and you tell everyone that you really don't want anything. Maybe you mean that you really, truly, don't want anything, and I hope it's true. But maybe you mean that you don't want a sweater, and if you do want one you'd kind of rather get it for yourself and know you'll like it. I have a few nice sweaters; I don't need any more. The things I really want cost thousands of dollars. Want, not need. I have everything I need, and more. So I don't buy a lottery ticket twice a week.

But sometimes I get a ticket, just for fun. I'm not entirely sure I understand the reasoning of people who wait until the prize approaches $300 million. I assume they're content with their lives, but if they had that much money they could get the one thing they always wanted but couldn't afford—a Boeing 747 all their own, or something equally pricey. I don't want to be fabulously rich. I think it would be troublesome, and I don't think it would make me happy. I just think it would be nice to have enough money not to have to worry about money for a while. "Money isn't everything," one of the Algonquin Round Table wits once said, "but the lack of money isn't anything."