I don’t remember any immigrant in the recent history who made money playing lottery. But still It’s always fascinating to see the television coverage of someone winning the lottery. Some guy who was pushing a mop for a living yesterday is suddenly on the news being handed an oversized check for some ungodly amount of money while we all look on and think to ourselves “that could be me.”
Guess what? It’s not going to be you. Statistically speaking, anyway. We’ve all heard that a person has a better chance of being struck by lightning than he does of picking those six winning numbers, and it’s true. Yet people buy lottery tickets every week, sometimes by the hundreds.
I had a conversation with my neighbor, Phil the plumber about it just last week. I was watering my lawn when I saw him come bustling out of his house and heading for his SUV.
“Where ya headed, Phil?” I asked, not really caring much but being friendly.
“Gotta get my lottery tickets,” he called back, “It’s up to fifty-five million tonight. Want me to pick some up for you?”
“I don’t play the lottery, Phil.” I don’t. I’d love to have someone hand me a check with a lot of zeros at the end of a big number as much as anyone would, but I don’t like to throw my money away.
“You can’t win if you don’t play,” Phil retorted as he got into his monstrous, gas guzzling vehicle.
He was right, of course. I’ll never win the lottery. I’ll also never lose anything on it. Phil buys about fifty dollars in lottery tickets every week. Fifty bucks! It wouldn’t bother me so much if we weren’t talking about the same guy who told me that he wouldn’t buy stocks because the stock market is “too risky.” I’d find that funny if it weren’t such a sad reflection on the American public in general. If you ask the average person what they know about the stock market, they’ll probably tell you that they know you can make money there, but that it’s very risky. And they’ll tell you that while waiting in line to buy lottery tickets.
You want to know how to win the lottery? Don’t play it. Take every dollar that you would spend on lottery tickets and put it in a jar. At the end of the year, count the money in the jar. You are now closer to the fifty million dollar jackpot than the tickets would have ever brought you. Now go and invest it.
This post is some what inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s plight to get a proper haircuts as an immigrant in South Africa.
People have a bizarre love affair going on with their hair. They love to style it, comb it, brush it lovingly, and baby it with all sorts of creams, herbal shampoos, and special conditioners. If just one gets loose and turns up in the potato salad, they tend to freak out, but generally people love their hair. This has got to be why they spend so much money on it.
In those long gone by days of the seventies an interesting phenomenon took place. Barber shops started to die. One by one they slowly disappeared, as if they were the last of the dinosaurs fighting against the radioactive effects of the giant meteorite that did their species in. In their places sprung thousands of unisex salons. The replacement of barber shops by salons ushered in a new era of hair styling and a new era of overpriced hair care. Before long, people thought nothing of spending thirty and forty dollars for a haircut that once cost four or five.
Fortunately it’s easier to save money today on this form of personal grooming. Discount haircutters are everywhere, offering haircuts for about ten dollars. They also offer lower costs on styling, coloring, perms, and other such services.
More money can be saved on hair styling by simply doing it at home. While it may not be a good idea to cut your own hair, if you wear you hair in a short military style cut, a family member can do it with a set of clippers. These can be purchased for about thirty dollars. Buy them once and you’ll never pay for another haircut.
Hair color treatments can also be performed at home for a lot less than it costs in the salon. Buying an over the counter hair dye and doing the job yourself will cost you about ten dollars. Having it done in a salon can cost as much as a hundred. Obviously that’s a serious difference.
With a little careful shopping for a salon, a bit of willingness to do it yourself when you can, and the understanding that it’s just hair (whatever happens to it, it will grow back – ya big sissy), you can save money on your hair care and let the follicular love affair continue unabated. Also, should worse come to worse, there’s always Hilda’s House of Human Hair Wigs.
Lukaz Zbylut wasBorn in Poland and moved to the United States when he was 13 years old.
During the first six months in New York, he taught himself English and went to a public school in Brooklyn. At 18, he graduating as the valedictorian from Utrecht High School next week.
In high school, he was part of Model UN, and created and headed the debate team. He was also part of a soccer team in his community.
He applied to 21 universities, including 7 Ivy League schools. Out of the 21, Lukasz withdrew from 2, and was only denied by 1, MIT.
Lukasz was accepted to: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Cornell, Columbia, Georgetown, NYU, Middlebury, Amherst, Occidental, Richmond, Ohio Wesleyan, DePauw, Carnegie Mellon and CUNY HunterH.
He does not use social networking sites, instant messaging or watch entertainment television. He considers all of it a waste of time.
He does, though, watch network news channels. While he was in high school he took 12 Advance Placement courses and received perfect scores on all his final A.P. tests.
This gave him full credit towards college and a final count of 45 college credits at the end of it all. BUT according to Harvard rules, they are only accepting 6 of those 45 credits. (30 credits=1 year of college).
Lukasz plans on going to Harvard Law after his undergrad and pursuing a career in politics from there.
He is the only student from his graduating class to be accepted to an Ivy League school. (575 students graduating next week)
Zbylut is graduating from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn with a 4.7 GPA.
Thanks To CivilizedJerk for posting this video. Please visit him at http://www.youtube.com/user/CivilizedJerk and subscribe to his youtube Channel
Nido Qubein came to the United States as a teenager with no knowledge of English, no contacts and only $50 in his pocket. Today he is a successful businessman and award-winning motivational speaker. How did he do it? Learn from Nido how to achieve success and significance in business and life by: Creating meaningful change that moves you to a deeper, more satisfying level; Distinguishing among tasks, goals and purpose; Developing strategies for going beyond communicating, selling and training; Discovering how the 21st century rewards extraordinary people