Essay:

https://therationalmale.com/2018/09/16/the-golden-ticket/

Excerpt:

Imagine, if you will, that you buy a lottery ticket and you win. After taxes the payoff is $2 million. Not an exorbitant amount by today’s standards, but still quite a lot of money for the average paycheck to paycheck person. For some it may be what could be described as Fuck You Money, easily enough for most people to retire on very comfortably.

How would this newfound fortune change your life? How would it change your family and your friend’s dealing with you? Would they be happy for you? Maybe jealous? Would you be able to manage the changes in your daily routine? If you were accustomed to one lifestyle and then switched to a more affluent lifestyle would it be a good change? Or would you become someone else?

Now lets say you could possibly win $100 million if you made an almost certain bet. There were still some risks involved, but nothing that would threaten your life in the short term. How would winning this kind of money reflect on your daily routine? Would it be different than your winning $2 million? Money would cease to be an object for you for the rest of your life and likely the lives of your children, maybe even grandchildren and all you really had to do was make a smart bet that you believed would pay off.

What if you only won $1 million or $500,000, but you were only making $36,000 a year and scraping by the best you could? Again, all you have to do is look for the best opportunity to make a short term sacrifice and the money would be yours. Would you compromise your ‘principles’ (assuming you have any) temporarily to change your life in the long term more significantly?

Imagine you had a Golden Ticket that had a potential to win you $70,000 per year or if you played things right it had the potential to earn you $10 million per year if you were wise enough to capitalize on it. How would that change your outlook on life?

What rationales would that prompt you to in order to reconcile that other people might not have the same potential for cashing in –without really earning it – that you do?