Coin

I collect things.  Some might call it hoarding, but I can stop if I want to and I don't have complete collections on a lot of things that I have collected and I'm good with that.  On one of our early camping trips, we ended up at the campground store in Mesa Verde National Park and I spotted a sew on patch that had a scene of Mesa Verde stitched into it.  I thought it was pretty cool and that collection started.  Every place I go now, I look for patches to add to my collection.

My parents had some old coins, actually, they still have them because I asked to see them again recently, so I could show my kids.  My parents also brought out a couple of the proof sets of coins that they had purchased after our tour of the US Mint in Denver, Colorado, probably on the same trip where I started my patch collection.

After seeing those proof sets, I think my kids finally figured out why I have so many proof sets of coins collected myself.  If you've never really looked at proof sets, you really owe it to yourself.  First off, they are perfect strikes of each American coin, then sealed in plastic.  Think of the shiniest coin you've ever held in your hand.  Quadruple the shininess of that and then you might be getting close to what a proof set looks like.  

What looks like black is actually just pure flatness of the coin shining back whatever it reflects.  There's just something about the luster of them that is hard to describe.  I know a friend of mine once told me when he was young he found a proof set of his dad's and he had to see the coins up close, so he broke the plastic so he could handle them.  That totally ruined the value of the coins.  I felt his dad's pain.

These are three of the quarters from my 2010 proof set that had the commemorative dollar coins dedicated to the presidents as well as the new backs to the quarters, two of which you can see here, commemorating different scenic areas of the United States.  Most people who know me well totally get why I'd have this set, which has both Grand Canyon and Yosemite commemorated.  I doubt I'd ever sell these, mainly because of the subject matter, but they are fun to look at every now and then, and I guess that's really the point of them.

If I had a million dollars

The prompt for the day is an easy one from my standpoint, although I've heard that a million isn't enough and it causes more problems than it's worth.  I think I could do quite well.

First off, we're going to have to assume that the million is tax free, because all this goes out the window if the government gets involved.  So I'm assuming I've won some prize where the government has already gotten its share and I'm left with a million dollars.

The first thing I'd do would be to retire.  I might make it to the end of the year, but I'd retire this year.  The million dollars would be invested.  Now, conservatively, I expect to get a return some where around 10%.  I may be dreaming here, but I think I could get some good financial advice and earn 10% interest on that money.  That means, coupled with my retirement income and my wife's retirement income, because trust me, she's retiring with me, I figure we'd be making somewhere about $70,000 dollars more than we do right now while working.

What this means is we could pursue things that we've always wanted to do.  My wife has talked about going back to school and get a masters.  I've wanted to travel more.  We could do that and live comfortably for the rest of our days without ever touching the million dollars.  The cool thing about this would be that we wouldn't have to worry as much about when we needed to buy a new car.  I'm driving around a 15 year old automobile and it needs to be replaced.  Hey, we need a new car!  Great, go out and get one!

I think the one extravagant thing I'd do would be to go on a Disney trip.  I think I'd like to take the train to Florida and visit Walt DisneyWorld again.  Last time I was there was a long time ago in another life.  EPCOT had just opened, but all of the other stuff there wasn't around.  It would be fun to go back and enjoy two weeks or so of some Disney magic.

Other than that, I think my life would be relatively the same, with the exception being that I wouldn't be working for my money, my money would be working for me.

Misfortune

Every now and then you get one of those blog prompts that you just want to throw back in the pile.  Usually when that happens to me, I end up not using it and not writing that particular day.  But I've promised myself that I'd stick this challenge out, so I need to write about misfortune today.  Hmmm.

My daughter posted a website to me yesterday.  It was a Powerball simulator.  I ran the simulation for 50 years, spent $10,500 and got a return of $924, less than ten percent of what I spent.  Your mileage may vary, but the best I could do was hit three of the white balls ten times.  I got the Powerball right 140 times.  Woo hoo!

But the argument is, no matter how many times someone tells you that the definition of a lottery is a tax on a person who is bad at math, that someone has to win.  And that would be correct, but a lot of people are not.  There was a 16% chance that the Powerball could have rolled over again to this weekend, that's how many numbers had not been drawn yet.  And, someone did finally win.  The Powerball actually had three winners this week, one in Florida, one in Tennessee and one near me, about ten miles away in Chino Hills, CA.  Someone is very wealthy down here in California.  I hope it's an unmarried woman.  Then everyone will be able to call her Miss Fortune.