Easy Money

All of Morgantown seems to be abuzz about the eight women in the Monongalia County tax office who won last weekend's big Powerball jackpot. The advertised value was $276 million and the lump sum was $138 million. That is truly a lot of bread. (Story)

The receptionist in my office used to work in that tax office. She was the one who organized the Powerball pools when she was there, so of course she was (jokingly) kicking herself and talking about it all day. Five bucks says she's talking about it right now.

I spent a summer in college working temp jobs in Lexington, Kentucky, and every one of them was on an assembly line. This is where I learned to love coffee and Led Zeppelin, and it's also where I started forming my opinion of the lottery and thinking more seriously about my future. Any time there was a big jackpot to be won, it was the center of conversation during every lunch break. Assembly line lifers would talk about the money, what they would do with it, how much they would give their co-workers, friends, and family, how many tickets they were going to buy, etc. It was always clear to me that the chance at easy money was a form of escapism (with perhaps a little real hope mixed in) for people who had been working their asses off for their entire lives, with little chance of moving on to greener professional pastures. I didn't blame them, though. I probably even joined in on the discussions from time to time. But I remember thinking a lot about the reality of getting up and going to work gluing rubber rings on the ends of rubber tubes, for eight hours, the day after losing the jackpot once again. "Yeah, but nobody won. It's a push! It'll definitely get over $200 mil by Saturday!" That's how it was, and it was definitely not for me.

That's when I promised myself I was going to find a career that I loved, something that I'd want to do no matter what, and that's how I'd make my way through life. I was never going to let the practically imaginary lure of instant, "unlimited" wealth cloud what was really possible in life with hard work and a strong belief in myself. Conor Oberst of Rob Zero's favorite band Bright Eyes wrote, "I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery." He was using it as an analogy for love, but the literal meaning rings true for me. I'm happy to say that I found the career I was looking for.

Of course, some people do win the lottery. It just happened in my town, and a dude named Jack Whittaker from a small town in WV won even more money a number of years ago. Here's where it gets crazy, though -- Whittaker's life is in shambles. He's constantly been in legal trouble, his granddaughter died of a drug overdose at 17, which was surely facilitated by her ridiculous allowance ... I saw him on TV once saying that he wished he'd never won the money. It just brought trouble. It turns out that all of that easy money wasn't so easy after all.

Maybe Whittaker is just an idiot, and if you or I all of the sudden came into $300 million, we'd be responsible with it, and it would make us happier. But maybe not. Once you get past the most obvious benefit of having that kind of money -- security for your children's financial future -- I think it gets a bit cloudier.

Friends, for example. What happens there? I have some of the best friends a guy could ask for, and I'd want to help them out in a big way with some of that cash dropping out of my pockets. But here's where you have to start making weird decisions about just how close your friends are. Maybe you have one lifelong buddy who you don't hang out with much, but you've always been close and you still talk to occasionally, and you decide to hook his kids up with a $10,000 college fund. Pretty cool, right? Sure, until the next time you see your buddy and he's wearing a "My best friend won $300 million and all he got me was a lousy $10G" T-shirt. I certainly think really deep friendships could withstand the pressures that this sort of thing places on a relationship, hopefully, but I bet these same pressures wreak havoc on less established friendships.

I think I'd feel like a target if I won the lottery. Making that kind of money honestly is one thing, but I bet winning it just makes you an immediate bull's eye. People would drive by your house, knock on the door asking for help (uh oh, gotta live in a gated community now), every relative and person you sorta knew at one point would contact you, hundreds of charities and random strangers ... and watch out for those pesky lawsuits.

Some people like to say they wouldn't change if they won the lottery. I think that's highly unlikely. So you think you'd still be driving your Jetta if your bank account is bulging at the seems? Yeah, right. To a large degree money is power, and I bet $300 mil seems pretty limitless. Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." I totally believe this. (And so did J.R.R. Tolkien; just ask Gollum.) Oh, you'll change alright, and who's to say the change is necessarily for the better?

Who knows what it would really be like? I guess if somebody walked up to me and handed me a check for that kind of bread, I'd take it and hope for the best. But in the meantime, I'm going to focus on the life that I do have and try to enjoy as many moments of contentment as possible. Good family? Check. Good job? Check. Good friends? Check. Who needs the lottery?