The following is a repeat, edited a bit from July, ’15. Not many of you were my readers then. (Prompt from Krista, a Blogging assignment):
You’ve just won $1 billion dollars in the local lottery. You do not have to pay tax on your winnings. How will you spend the money?
Now that would be a miracle for sure! Since I won’t even buy a 25 cent stake in an office pot, or a $1.00 raffle ticket on a beautiful handmade quilt! I have Christian friends who don’t have quite such total aversion to gambling. I think it is funny when they say they are just giving the Lord an opportunity to bless them. So they buy ten lottery tickets. I guess they think God needs to have ten chances just in case he can’t find just one ticket. Okay, now back to the prompt. Pretending big time!
I feel like a Miss American candidate. “First, I would use it to end world hunger and rebuild New Orleans. Then with what I have left, I would buy my poor grandmother a house. And, then I would pay my student loan.” So much for Miss America.
Let’s try out how I would do as a church secretary. “First, I would pay the utility bills and buy groceries for everyone who comes by this week. Of course I would pay my tithes here to my home church. A hundred million dollar facility for our eighty member congregation might get some attention in our local community. We could probably add 20% to our church. That would be about six million dollars per additional person. We would be able to support a few missionaries….” (Watch God shake his head.)
The newspaper just got wind of my landfall, and the powers that be succeeded in voting me in as mayor of our town! We will now have enough money to finish the soccer fields. But the council couldn’t decide where to build them so I resigned as mayor.
I’m going to stay on my little acre for a few months while I get my head together enough to decide whether or not I want to become the person I would become if I had a billion dollars. Right off the top of my head, I rather like me; not too sure whether I want to be what a billion dollars would make me.
But …tomorrow I think I will call the tree trimmers just in case, and maybe I’ll get my nails polished. A billion? Ah, shucks, I guess I could get a pedicure too.
image: Pixabay
Sweet aroma 
Interesting question and I don’t have a good answer since I don’t gamble either. 🙂
Be blessed and enjoy the pedicure.
Smiling. Thanks for your comment. Calmkate below raises an interesting question for me. That is: To what extent is insurance a form of gambling?
That is an interesting question. Hadn’t thought of it that way. Most of the insurance I have is a requirement re car, house, medical.
Be blessed.
lol love the humour in this, I don’t gamble either with lottery tickets or insurance 🙂
Hey ,calmkate. You have raised an interesting question for me. To what extent is insurance a form of gambling? I do not have much insurance except that which is required by law or work force. However, I do believe some motivation for buying insurance might be a form of gambling. Anyone else want to weigh in on this?
Well it’s huge business and here in Australia they push insuring anything and everything. The latest rip of is prepaid funerals … people take out insurance so it wont impact their family but they end up paying far more than it would normally cost. Salesmen play on the idea that you don’t want your family to pick up the tab after your demise.
But think about your house and car insurance … how often do you claim on it? Often your premiums far outweigh the claims you will ever make = gambling. Bought my first new car ages ago, used to drive old bombs, and decided to forgo the insurance gamble. After five years it was stolen from a large busy car park in broad daylight then used in ram raids and trashed by a young couple high on drugs.
Cost me $3,000 to get it road worthy but I would have paid a bit more of that in insurance … so do you pay that money for a possible theft or use it for other things and just pay the actual cost if the worst does happen?
I agree with this rational so we do not have comprehension insurance, but the state demands liability insurance. House insurance is out of this world high and the deductible is so high we never come out on top. But then what else in case of tornado or fire?
they play on that fear …. do we ever OWN the earth … agreed we also have compulsory insurance for third party damage on our cars and fair enough, got to pay others bills if we are at fault.
Yes. Thanks for your input. Enjoyable as always.
appreciate your interest thanks Oneta …. we all have different ideas and that makes the world go round 🙂
My head simply cannot comprehend a billion dollars. The whole idea has an obscene edge. Now a million for example I think I could sit breathe, pray and maybe do something worthwhile. I would have more problem I think with even a ‘lesser’ windfall. Desire to help family and wider community but also not to forget God responsibilities etc. On contemplating this question, I believe any amount of money in excess of someone’s needs would create major life problems unless they were balanced in life and really had ‘faith’. (We have one millionaire ++here in Oz who regularly donates huge amounts to the Salvation Army for their aid work. ) This he will do all his life long to various places doing relief work as well as Salvos. SES Police rescue, etc etc. . He wrote once it saddened him when he saw many of the charities still using their folks for massive fund-raising endeavours instead of using the money he had given to actually get on the ground and help the needy.
It is interesting to see how many lives are wrecked in some manner by a windfall like winning the lottery. A huge amount of money would surely change a person in some way.