If I Had 10 Million Dollars

Two months ago, Wifey’s colleagues did the impossible. They won the lottery. Four of them. They split one of the biggest jackpots in Canadian history.

We told the kids and began imagining what we would do if we were to win $10 million. We’d get a bigger house, pay off my mother’s mortgage, pay for Wifey’s sister’s schooling, take a huge month-long vacation, set up a trust fund for my brother, buy a Playstation and have some fun.

I’d also quit my job and finally achieve my life long career ambition to be a philanthropist. Can you imagine anything better than finding great charities to fund and making their work happen?

The flipside to all this imagining is that our kids started to have a new ambition. They wanted to win the lottery. Since it was so easy for Wifey’s colleagues to work at winning the lottery, and they did win, the kids insisted that we should be equally successful at winning. Missing from this equation was the element of chance.

Bubaloo suggested that we spend all our money on lottery tickets, while Bella extolled on the sins of gambling.

We opted to set up a little family experiment. For the next year, every week we’re each going to invest a dollar.

Bella and I will combine our dollars and place them in a savings jar. We’re 10 weeks into the experiment and our jar has $20 in it.

Wifey and Bubaloo have joined forces to win the lottery. Each week they spend their $2 on a lottery ticket. Any winnings they receive must be placed into a jar.

So far they don’t have a jar. They haven’t even won any cash to put into the non-existent jar. The only thing they’ve won with their $20 is a free ticket. One single lonely free ticket. Even with two tickets in one week, we still haven’t won the 649 or Super 7. Just imagine.

The idea is at the end of one year we’ll compare the contents of both jars and make a family decision on how to spend it.

Well we’ve already decided that it will be spent on a ‘fancy dinner.’ We just haven’t quite come to agreement on what constitutes ‘fancy.’ I do believe that the kids have nominated McDonalds, Swiss Chalet and the Lone Star as their options.