What Are You Going to Do With All That Money??!!

With the Kentucky mega million lotteries reaching its all-time high in the last month it has made me start thinking a lot about this country’s priorities.   While I am sure that we all know someone who is wasting money on some frivolous object that we can’t understand, I have seen what the consequence of frivolous money spending can be.
At some point in my career, I cared for a patient who had lost a lot of money.  The patient had a lot of exciting stories of their life and the many things they were able to do.  However, when they came to the hospital, they had nothing.  There was not a home, car, and only one pair of clothes to this patient’s name.  As I was talking to this patient, I learned all about the things you can do with millions of dollars.  You can buy a multi-million dollar house in a gated community.  However if you don’t pay your dues to that community you may lose that house…all because you didn’t pay $150,000 of dues (this may seem like a lot of money to us, but for this patient it was just pocket change at the time).  You may also buy all the fast sports cars you want.  I do believe that at one time this patient had 10 different sport cars…now please tell me why you need 10 when last time I checked you can still only drive one at a time.
 Oh but the most important thing you can do with that money…is of course buy DRUGS!!!!  And have a great time at all the crazy wild parties you want. 
Eventually it was the drugs, which claimed all the money of this patient and left the patient with nothing.  This patient went from a normal everyday life, to one day waking up and having everything they could possibly think of.  I can’t even imagine what that would be like…although believe me it would be a great thing to figure out what it would be like.   I felt bad for this patient because they had their whole life settled and made for them and then all because of a few bad choices they were even worse off than they had been before they won the money.  But then at the same time…I felt a little like… “Man…you had it made…what in the world were you thinking!”