Rags to riches to rags again

Many of us dream of getting lucky enough to hit the lottery; Cliff and I invest one dollar a week playing Powerball. We know the odds are impossible, but we do a lot of dreaming with that dollar. Cliff, of course, would quit work, build a larger shop, and buy a whole fleet of classic tractors. I jokingly say I'd buy me a brand new trailer house, although really what I'd do is have a simple house built, a little farther back on our property. We'd buy a couple of neighbors places for twice what they're worth, just so we could clean up the scenery around here.

Of course we'd see that our kids' homes were paid for.

Oh yes, it's fun to dream. But one of my mom's favorite sayings was "Poor people have poor ways."

I read a story online about a man who won five million bucks in 1981; he collected it in yearly installments of $219,000 ($130,000 after taxes). He's broke now, living on $250 a week from Social Security (Social Security pays monthly, but that's how the article stated it) and a small pension.

As nearly as I can tell, ex-wives and a gambling habit are responsible for his financial decline. He says he's happy, and wouldn't change a thing.

Poor people do have poor ways, indeed. My Uncle Leo told me something many years ago that he'd heard elsewhere; it went like this: If you took all the money in the world and redistributed it so that every single living person had an equal amount, it wouldn't take long before the money will be right back in the hands of the same people who had it to start with.

There's a lot of truth to that story.

I hope I have all my settings saved now, so everyone can comment. Somebody kick me if I decide to stop comments again; I didn't know it would be such a pain to get everything back to normal.