Of Mice and Mules

On September 23rd of this year, a New York player won the $104 million dollar Mega Millions jackpot. As always, the same conversation of ‘what would you do with that kind of money?’ rears its head. Would you buy a mansion? A yacht? Ten yachts? Maybe you would invest it and hope to make even more. Maybe you would donate some of it, half of it, all of it. When you hit that level of extreme wealth, the world is suddenly at your fingertips.

And yet, your mountain of green puts a red bullseye on your back. Wherever you turn next, someone will ask for a piece of the pie, and that’s fine, right? Your family will sustain themselves for generations; you’ll be able to help out your closest friends with any financial struggles they might be having; the charities of your choice will flourish with your lending hand, and nothing will put a dent in your seemingly endless stack of cash.

Then, suddenly, friends who haven’t returned your calls in years start to come out of the woodwork. Your ex wants to meet for lunch. Your third grade bully has a change in heart. You finally get an invite you to the neighbors’ Christmas party, the ones that have always hated you. Coincidentally, a lot of people realize what good company you are, and want to hang out.

This is precisely why I would live with my wealth in secret–to avoid the fakers. Sure, I’d get myself a comfortably big house in a nice neighborhood. I’d make sure my family had everything they needed. All of my children, and my children’s children, and their children’s children would be able to afford college. I would donate to various charities, though ask to remain anonymous. I wouldn’t sit on my pile of money and do nothing, but I wouldn’t squander it on material objects either.

 

I wouldn’t build a castle with a hundred rooms and a parking garage full of Bugattis. I wouldn’t pay to have my name on every building in the hemisphere.  I wouldn’t buy a racehorse, and I most certainly wouldn’t buy that $3,000 jacket from Brooks Brothers that they keep in a bulletproof display.

 

That’s $500 per gold button.

These are all unnecessary things that would invite the people that don’t truly care about me to come pretend that they do, and those are the poorest people of all.

With so much money comes the temptation to spend it on useless material things. Maybe my perspective would be different if this weren’t a hypothetical, but at this point in my life I am perfectly comfortable wearing sweats and driving an old Ford. Once you become a walking ATM, you lose the validity of your relationships, which truly are the most important things in your life. If I were filthy rich, my goal would be for you to never know it.

 

 

Ok, so I’m poor. Cool… I’ll deal with it.

 

But how am I gonna slide by making less than minimum wage?

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Alright. Here we go. We all had this thought one way or another. “What would you do if you were rich?” Or, “What would you do if money wasn’t an issue?” Blah blah blah. We always go off on a list of things we would buy starting from a Ferrari to a mansion to a private jet…You know? All the cliche? And then we come back.

To reality. Where we realize and accept the fact that we are just broke college kids trying to invest a lifetime of our savings to get an education.

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It is unfortunate that we all don’t start out our adulthood with a small loan of a million dollars from daddy so that one day, we can run for president. We all learned that you need two things to be a president of the United States. Money and a twitter account.

I mean a president is still better than having this guy lead your country.

Okay, politics aside, let’s talk about what I would do if I were $Rich$.

First of all, I came to peace with the theory that the only way I would become rich would be by winning a lottery. Not poetry. The lottery. My best shot. To become rich. Or if Oprah feels like sharing her wealth with me.

If I were rich first thing I would do is to set my boundary. It is unfortunate how greed comes into play to ruin people’s lives when they suddenly become wealthy.

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I would set aside enough savings for me to have enough money to pay for my parents’ retirement fund and my future kids’ college savings. And a few more bills for myself in case I financially fall apart or have a midlife crisis and suddenly decide I want to audition for American Idol. But just enough so I don’t go bankrupt. What would I do with rest of the money? Okay. Here is the thing.

Back in junior year, I took a winter term (Equivalent of Jan Plan here at Colby) course on philanthropy. During the class, each of the students were representing a non-profit organization. We were required to prepare a presentation to sell a pitch to our donors to win $2000 for the organization we were representing. I was representing The Greater Boston Food Bank. If you don’t know the organization, you just have to know their super powerful slogan: “$1=1Meal” And when I met with the representative of the organization, I promised them that I would win them the $2000. I didn’t. My presentation came in 3rd place out of the 4 people in the class. If I were rich and had the financial stability to share my wealth, I would like to keep my promise to the organization and make a donation. Because the philanthropy class taught me the importance of giving back, because sharing can go a long way like a ripple effect.

And I would probably donate some money to Brooks and Colby so that students can continue to get their education without worrying about the tuition. And I would hopefully be back in Great Pond Road, North Andover MA one day and be teaching. And occasionally writing poetry. But not making enough money out of it. But that’s okay. Because I had that money I set aside. Remember?