If I Were a Rich Man

The jackpot for Mega Millions has reached one billion and six hundred million dollars. That has people talking because, let’s be real, if you were to win a forty five million dollar lottery windfall you’d probably blow through it in a matter of months and then find yourself working at Applebee’s. 

There’s no shame in working at Applebee’s, of course, but it’s going to be very awkward when you’re working a hostess shift at the popular food chain and you see some of your high school buddies come in and they ask you about winning the lottery and you have to concede that you blew through your millions on Hummel figurines alone, and now have to earn a living through honest labor like the rest of us. 

But one and a half BILLION dollars? That’s some serious fuck you money right there. That’s some serious walking around money as well. So much walking around money, in fact, that you'd probably need a special wallet just so to carry 1.6 billion dollars in cash on you at all times. 

1.6 billion dollars could change your life. You could finally pay off that mortgage or take a vacation or even splurge on home improvements. 

I do not play the lottery, though I did play the stock market in my twenties. The way I invested my money was like a cross between playing the lottery and having a debilitating gambling addiction. 

But I have fantasized about what I would do if I won the lottery. I think the biggest, most satisfying aspect of suddenly becoming extraordinarily rich would be the security of knowing that a whole bunch of horrible things could happen, personally, professionally, medically or otherwise, and I would not have to worry about paying my bills or meeting my mortgage every month or being able to provide for my growing family’s ever-increasing needs. To go to bed every night and wake up every morning feeling like there was a huge buffer between me and poverty and desperation and homelessness would feel amazing, I would imagine. Will I ever experience that feeling? Probably not!

The first thing I’d do if I won the lottery would be to pay off my credit cards so that I could finally get to a place of zero on all of my debts, including my mortgage. And I’d like to think that I would go on a family vacation, something we haven’t been able to do in quite a while for any number of reasons, mostly involving not having money, or time, or time and money. 

I’d finally have the money to do all of the silly, ephemeral things I would love to do. I would go to a fuck-ton more Phish shows, for example. I would finally experience the majesty of a Halloween or New Year’s Eve run. On a similar note, I would be able to experience the Gathering of the Juggalos on a level never even imagined before. 

Clad in a tuxedo with thousand dollar Italian shoes, I would take a stretch limousine to the Gathering fully stocked with expensive champagne and the finest flavors of Faygo. Because if there’s one thing Juggalo culture is all about it’s conspicuous consumption and empty materialism. 

I’d also fly my friend and Postal book co-author Brock to Canada so that we could get stinking drunk at one of Uwe Boll’s restaurants and try all of the appetizers he tweets about so tantalizingly.

I’d also be a lot more aggressive in supporting other Patreon accounts. If I have a message, it’s that people should be kind and empathetic and open-minded, and try to find and embrace our commonalities and our weirdness instead of running from them. My other message would be that you should pledge money to my Patreon account because I need that money to live and my  industry is crumbling around me to the point where I’m not even sure if I can really even call it my industry anymore. 

If I were a billionaire I’d still make Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place my living and my life but I might cut back a little so that it’s not so impossibly, prohibitively work and labor-intensive. I might publish eight to ten articles per week instead of ten to thirteen and I’d finally be able to afford the luxury of not caring about Patreon, of seeing it as a nice bonus, a sort of tip jar as it were, instead of the essential financial and economic cornerstone of my career, the way it is now.

I’d be able to give my family everything they want financially. That would feel good, and I’d like to think I’d give away 1.5 billion dollars of my fortune just so that I could prove that it was, in fact, possible for one man to live on a mere one hundred million dollars if he budgeted correctly. 

What would you do if you won the big Mega Millions jackpot? 

I make my modest living through Patreon so if you would be kind enough to consider pledging as little as a dollar a month over at http://patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace