Welcome to The Power Hour. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking the first blog anybody posts is always the same bullshit explaining what the blog is going to be about. Well, that's boring, so forget it. I'm not going to bore you with what time I took nap today, or what I ate for breakfast, so get ready.
On my way to work this morning I stopped at the local Hess to grab something to drink and I got stuck behind my least favorite mini-mart shopper, the redneck retirement guy. Since you probably have no idea what I'm talking about I'll explain.
When I go into a mini-mart all I usually want is something to drink. I pay for my gas at the pump and I shop at a real grocery store. So, truth be told, it shouldn't take me more than a few minutes to get in, grab a beverage, and get the fuck out. Unless, of course, redneck retirement is spending their weekly paycheck on lottery tickets. That's right, when I get stuck behind these people they are always spending $50 on lottery tickets. They always have specific numbers like Timmy's birthday, their street address, the last four digits of their phone number, social security number, checking account number, birthday, anniversary, the final score of the Bear's game, the speed limit on their street, their height, their weight, and they have to play them all. Then there's the scratch offs. You get the fucking point.
It always takes an hour and I got stuck behind that guy this morning. The reason I call this redneck retirement is because this is how rednecks plan for retirement. They just go buy $50 worth of lottery tickets each week and hope they hit it big. If you do the math, that's $200 a month these people spend on lottery tickets. They do this for 35 years and end up living off of social security and spending that on lottery tickets, too. Meanwhile, had they invested all that money they spent chasing a pipe dream of hitting it big on the lottery and invested in something sensible like an IRA, they would be living on easy street right now.
Let's see, $200 a month x 12 months a year x 35 years = $84,000. Now, when you figure in what their return on investment in an IRA would be it seems absurd that they would waste all that money on a game of chance.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go see if I hit the $230 million dollar Powerball!