Opinion: Here's what $1.6 billion can get you

Nobody was lucky Friday night, so the Mega Millions jackpot is at $1.6 billion for Tuesday night’s drawing.

That’s 1.6 billion, with a B. That’s 1,600 millions. It’s 1.6 million thousands. It would take you 18 days to count that many seconds. I can’t stress how large an amount this is for one person (slightly less obscene if there are multiple winners Tuesday).

Yes, I wrote very recently that gambling is usually a bad idea because the house always wins. But I’m not going to lose my shirt buying a few tickets for a chance at money that isn’t just life-changing, but generation-changing for me and the people I know and love.

I was once talking with a churchgoing friend and mentioned how a lottery winning would lead to quite the tithing at 10 percent. His response: “Why not 90, with that much money?”

Just to prove the point on how much money that is, sure. Let’s imagine everything I could do with the $160 million once my 90 percent charity obligations were met:

• First off, the $1.6 billion assumes an annuity paid out over 26 years. We’ll pretend we’re taking the lump sum of $940 million, and now I have $94 million free.

• Well, it’s not that free yet because taxes. Clearly I’d be in the top tax bracket for federal (39 percent) and state (4.5 percent), so let’s round it up to 50 percent. Goodbye, $47 million.

• I was going to jokingly write down that I could buy my own senator, but even that’s out of my price range. The incumbent senator with the most contributions toward re-election is Claire McCaskill at $28.3 million. Meanwhile, Beto O’Rourke ($60.7 million) is going up against Ted Cruz ($24.7 million) in Texas, and Rick Scott ($54.6 million) is trying to unseat Bill Nelson ($23.4 million). And that’s just one cycle.

• A new Greyhound Arena. The current home to Greyhound basketball and volleyball is a serviceable arena, but everywhere else in the nation stadiums that aren’t really needed are built at taxpayer expense.

Let’s just assume $20 million, a good halfway point between the new Greyhound Stadium ($13 million) and the new Golden Student Success Center on campus. We would be spending a good amount on luxury suites, but I’d dictate they wouldn’t be sold to the highest bidder. One will go to me (dude, I paid for the thing), one will go to a lucky fan via drawing, and we’ll figure out the rest later.

I’m pretty sure with my $27 million remaining, I could buy a modest home, a reliable vehicle and all the Adidas gear I wanted, plus make sure my family (and a few close friends) wouldn’t have to work again. Not bad, considering the first 90 percent went to charities.

Oh, right. There would be one final investment. I don’t know how much it would cost, but I’m quite sure I would want an expert in hypnosis.

“When I snap my fingers, you will forget Kevin won the lottery. He just found all of those Adidas shoes.”

Kevin Wilson is managing editor of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]