I’m not one to hype the lottery and I am certainly not doing it right now, but hey, when there’s a feel-good story, there’s a feel-good story. And it’s not like I’ve never bought a lottery ticket. If there was ever anyone who deserved to win $2 million, it was Geraldine Gimblet.
The Florida Lottery announced Gimblet last week as one of the eight winners of the top prize after she bought a “$2,000,000 Bonus CASHWORD Scratch-Off” ticket the Pipkin Road Beverage Castle in Lakeland.
She really wanted to play that specific game, but when she asked for a ticket, the cashier said he believed they were all sold out. Like something out of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, though, she asked him to double-check and sure enough, there was a single ticket left.
“I like the crossword games,” Gimblet said in a press release. “He found the last one.”
After taxes and taking the cash option rather than an annuity, Gimblet will end up with about a million dollars.
But people win the lottery every day. The heartwarming thing about Geraldine Gimblet is that she spent her savings to help pay for her daughter’s cancer treatment.
“The day before my mom bought this ticket,” her daughter said, “I rang the bell and walked out of the hospital after completing my last treatment for breast cancer. My mom had taken out her life savings to take care of me when I was sick. I’m just so happy for her.”
It is a sad state of affairs in the United States that someone had to spend all of their money to help someone else receive medical treatment, but at least in this case, Geraldine Gimblet was rewarded for her love and generosity.
This is also a cautionary tale, though. While it does not appear that it was the case for Ms. Gimblet, people often see the lottery as a backup for regular income, as a way to quickly win money to pay for expenses. As with any form of gambling, this is a bad idea, as the vast majority of us will never come close to winning the amount that Gimblet did, if we even win at all.
If you want to buy a lottery ticket every now and then, or heck, even a cheap scratch-off every day after work, go for it as long as you have the money to spend. But don’t think you are magically going to win and have all of your financial problems solved. It’s an easy way to create further problems.
