$84,900,000

I wish I was greedier than I am.

That would mean that I was more trusting of people and prone to believe that I might be the one at the top of the pyramid. Over the years I have been presented with get rich quick schemes that promised to double, triple or quadruple my money in a short span of time. I have only been taken in by one and that one I was only out $100. The premise was that I buy two tickets for $100 and then sell each of those for $100 which I give to the person that sold me the tickets in the first place. No, that isn’t right. Somehow, a percentage of the money would keep going up the pyramid which would make everyone above me rich. I suppose that I would get rich as well if those people below me kept selling tickets. We could only convince one person to buy a ticket which caused the scheme to break down from us on down. No one ever made any money from our branch of the money tree.

Oh, we also lost what I thought were dear friends because of this. They sold us the tickets and when we couldn’t sell ours they became angry enough not to talk to us again. I suppose that if I thought a good friend caused me to lose millions of dollars because they were lazy, I would be upset too. I never actually believed I would make any money; I was just trying to help out a friend. Oh well…

When I hear about people who have lost their life savings in a scam, I am immediately sad for them. However, when the details come out it is invariably a scheme that was too good to be true. If someone tells you that they can take your money and it will earn you 50% or 100%, they are either misguided or they will soon find themselves in a jail cell. Don’t you think that if there was a possibility of making huge sums of money the banks and financial corporations would be all over it? How would a few hundred people manage to do something the banks couldn’t?

The only way that you can make crazy money like that in this day and age is to come up with some popular app or invention that no one has thought of yet. Perhaps you could get in as an investor, but the way I see it, by the time I have heard of a good investment it is already too late. I guess anything is possible.

I am content to keep what little money I have in RRSP’s, the house and under the mattress. I am happy with my lot in life and seriously doubt that I will ever own a South Pacific isle, a loft on Fifth Avenue or a villa in Spain.

Mind you, I won’t rule out a lotto win. I will be in the US in a few weeks and the Powerball Lottery is at $133,000,000, but I would take the cash payout of $84,900,000 and count myself the luckiest guy in the world.

You never know…