Easy money come, easy money go.

The other day I read about an unfortunate man who thought he had found the way to easy money when he struck a lottery which rewarded him with seven hundred and fifty thousand ringgit. Most ordinary guys would know how to value such an amount of money, perhaps putting that sum in fixed deposit or learn how to invest wisely. If he had put that much money in fixed deposit, even at the current low interest, he could have been given a minimum thousand ringgit to enjoy himself with especially when as a farmer, a little more than that was what he got.

When he struck the jackpot, he not only did not take good care of the money but stopped work on his farm totally to enjoy himself, buying a new house and going on vacations. Buying a new house and going on vacations cannot be considered bad ideas as a good house to live in is essential to happiness and we all need vacations every now and then, don’t we? But what was wrong was hoping to strike it rich again and so never have to work ever again. You know what he did? He spent 1,800 ringgit on a single bet for the next five years! For anybody to win that huge sum of money in a lottery is a kind of luck many do not have the chance to experience. He should have realised that and had managed his money well.

Well, can we actually blame him? You see, he was not ready for the money as he did not actually work for it. He could not appreciate the actual value of the money. He did not realise that money can be finished easily if we do not know how to use it correctly. Getting it was too easy. So the person does not know how to value it.
Study the sad stories of people who had money given on a platter with no need for effort to secure it such as enormous sums of money through lottery, robbery, cheating or inheritance and we see that such money usually, unless someone is at hand to give good advice and such advice is followed, is lost easily through careless handling or mismanagement. (I hasten to add that not every inheritance can be considered easy money as some of the children or benefactors do help in the affairs of the one who has bequeathed them the fortune. Even robbers, if they feel that they have put in a lot of effort to secure the loot, they would also take good care of it.) So, because a sum of money is a gift from thin air, it disappears just as easily into thin air.

And when that happened to this man, with his money gone, his good life no longer possible, he resorted to an easy way out. According to the news, he dug a hole at the back of his house, went into it, splashed petrol over his body, lighted it and made a flaming farewell to life.

This is the second time I have come across such a sad story of lottery winners. The first guy was from Kodiang when I was teaching there. It has been written in an earlier posting. The first guy’s fortune disappeared even faster, within a year as he had a wife to help him spend it. Not that I blame his wife for it seemed that it was she who brought him the fortune in the first place.