You can’t help but talk about the lottery with a jackpot sitting at about $1.5 billion dollars. One of my colleagues, Teig Stanley, was talking to me about a recent conversation he had with our colleague, Doug. Here is what he said: Continue reading “How To Become A Millionaire In Just 15 Minutes”
As I type this, the Powerball lottery jackpot stands at $1.1 billion. Yes…that’s BILLION with a B: 1,000,000,000 – nine zeroes. As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER(TM) professional, I can attest to the fact that that’s a whole bunch of money! It’s fun to listen to the radio and hear what people would do with that kind of windfall. As with almost everything, there is both good and bad to what could be viewed by most people as an all good scenario. Continue reading “What If You Won the Powerball Lottery?”
I heard about a story from a friend and I didn’t believe it.So I went to a more reliable source than my friend’s text message, and I found this article about Illinois lottery winners receiving IOU’s rather than money. The lottery agency is a state run entity and the state has not passed a budget so winners of $25,000 or more are not getting paid right now. Continue reading “When Winning The Lottery Isn’t Really Winning”
In a story that may or may not eventually turn out to be true, two men claim to have found a train that allegedly vanished at the end of the Nazi regime and it was (in theory) loaded with valuables. They are offering to share that location with authorities if they are given 10% of the value. There are all kinds of legal, ethical and moral questions that would surround a found former Nazi treasure trove should this train actually exist and should they be given a nice finder’s fee. That could, if it’s a whole train filled with valuables, be quite the fortune! What are they going to do with it? Continue reading “What If Money Fell Into Your Lap?”
As I write this, there is a lottery jackpot in excess of $200 million that has people lined up to buy tickets. Someone (or maybe a few people) will walk away with way more money than they ever dreamed of having. Sometimes, that can be great. Sometimes, not so much. Continue reading “Found Money Can Be a Blessing or a Curse”
Recently, my 10-year old son Ethan asked me what I would do if I ever won the lottery. What a great question. How we answer this question says a lot about how we feel about money and what we value most. After pondering the question for a moment, here is what I would do. Continue reading “If I Won the Lottery”
Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money but certainly not enough to make you independently wealthy. I remember watching the California lottery television show when I lived in Sacramento. The lottery ticket scratcher winners were chosen randomly to be on the show. Then a few lucky people were pulled from the audience and got a chance to spin a wheel so a ping pong ball would determine whether they won a million dollars all the way down to a minimum $10,000. Most people actually won $10,000 but every single one of them had high hopes of winning the million. Continue reading “What to Do With a Windfall of $10,000”
My son reminded me that if you don’t buy a ticket, the odds of winning the Powerball lottery were zero. He also said, “Someone has to win you know.” He does have a point and that line of thinking is shared by many people who are in a frenzy buying lottery tickets even though the odds of winning a mega-jackpot are 175.7 million to one. I didn’t play the Powerball but I have to admit that I did buy into the California lottery pool with a bunch of my co-workers only because if they DID win, I wouldn’t want to be left behind. Continue reading “Powerball: How to Cash in When You Don’t Win”
