If I Won the Lottery

What would YOU do if you won the big one? I think about this often because I believe in the power of thoughts manifesting themselves into reality (even before The Secret came out). I truly believe that what we think and focus our energies on is what we get.

Anyway, if I won the lottery, this is what I would do:

1. Pay off all of my and my husband's student loans and our house and other miscellaneous bills we have.

2. Take a REALLY long vacation to somewhere fabulous.

3. Pay off my parent's, brother's and husband's ex's home loans and set up some type of deal where they rent the houses from us for the cost of the property tax and house maintenance or something to that effect so that they would no longer have to worry about making huge house payments. (why not just give it to them? Because I think that it's important to take ownership of things and feel a responsibility toward something. I think that just being given something can be a bad thing - it can lead to feelings of entitlement and makes a person ungrateful.)

4. Set up trust funds/college funds for my husband's kids, my nieces and nephews and for my cousin's kids.

5. Buy my grandma's farm from my dad and uncle, thereby giving them their retirement funds.

6. Pay for my grandma's apartment, meals, home healthcare, etc for the rest of her life.

7. Prior to receiving the money, I would want us to meet with lawyers and have them draw all of this up and set up monthly stipends for me and my husband, a house fund account, a bill paying account, etc. so that we only had access to so much money per month to help prevent us from spending all of our money at once.

8. Build a house on my grandma's farm.

9. Retire from my job as a physical therapist and do soapmaking fulltime.

10. Possibly buy a home somewhere warmer so that we could winter in a milder climate than MN.

11. Take a fun vacation every year.

12. Spend time travelling and seeing the world.

13. My husband and I have always talked about having some type of dog rescue program that would be a no-kill shelter, training facility to make the dogs more adoptable and provide money to people who can't afford to have their dogs spayed and neutered.

14. Build a soap workshop on the farm and have a little soap shop.

15. Become a mentor and have the time to help young women realize their dreams.

16. Buy a few fun toys that my husband wants!

(As I re-read this list, it strikes me that I really can do a lot of this right now, even without millions of dollars. Something to ponder and get to work on.)

But for other parts of my dream, I really do need those millions. I'll let you know how it goes when we win!