Tuesday, August 11, 2009

How To Make $1,000,000 By Doing Nothing



Still no scanner available here at work, so I can't scan what I need to scan in order to complete the piece I would like to put out here.

(By the time I actually get it posted, you'll already be sick of hearing about it. Poor little post! Hasn't even been given birth yet and it's already facing a comments section filled with flames...)

Since I can't post anything original, here's something non-original. Well, no, actually it used to be original. When I first published it, way back in 2006, it was... no, even then it wasn't all that original. It's the best I can come up with from the archives, however, from among those pieces not already listed in one of my self-aggrandizing 'best of' sections, so it will have to do.

With a build up like that, you're sure to enjoy it!

Without any further ado (except for the piece itself, which is pretty much all ado) here's...

HOW TO MAKE $1,000,000 BY DOING NOTHING


This is NOT a scam. I am really, honestly, truly going to show you how to make $1,000,000 by doing nothing.

(When you make your million, please have the common decency to send me a few bucks. I'll probably be living in a sewer by that time, eating discarded popsicle sticks and using a rat for a pillow. It's the least you could do.)

(Since I won't have what you'd call an "address", you'll have to hand deliver the money. Just yell down every sewer you pass, "Suldog, you down there?" and when you get an answer, it'll be me. Then chuck your money down the sewer. That's pretty much what I did in learning the secret I'm now going to pass on to you, so it will be kind of like poetic justice.)

I absolutely guarantee that, by NOT doing the things I'm going to describe to you now, you will become a millionaire. And the beauty of it is, you don't have to do anything. All you have to do is NOT do what I did.

1 - Do NOT Smoke Cigarettes

That is, of course, generally good advice, but it is also the first step on your road to a cool million.

By not smoking cigarettes, you will be saving $5 a pack at current prices. Let us say your habit would have been similar to mine and you would have smoked a slight bit more than one pack a day. We'll call it 400 packs a year to make the math easy. Well, that's $2,000 a year you can sock away. Smoke for 35 years like I've done so far and that's $70,000 in the bank.

You're well on your way! Ready for step two? Alrighty then; let's go!

2 - Do NOT Become Addicted To Cocaine For Four Years

Again, generally good advice. However, if you don't become addicted to cocaine at age 28 and pretty much spend every dollar you make until the age of 31 on the stuff, you'll have saved a big old wad of cash.

By my estimation? About ANOTHER $70,000! I'm figuring that you'll have a job that pays as little as mine did and you'll make about $340 a week. If you have a better-paying job by the time you're 28, all the better. For goodness' sakes, a particularly energetic paperboy can make that kind of money nowadays, so you have no excuse.

Wowzers, Chumley! Add that to the $70,000 you made by NOT smoking cigarettes and you can easily see where this is headed, but I'm going to continue on anyway because I've got space to fill.

3 - Do NOT Try To Be A Rock And Roll Star

This inaction will net you another $10,000 or so. You won't be buying guitars, strings, keyboards, drums, or sheet music. In addition, you won't be getting poofy haircuts or wearing silly clothes, unless that's the sort of thing you like anyway.

(I could add on another $150,000 or so that you'd make by flipping burgers for ten years instead of thinking you're the second coming of Mel Schacher and Bootsy Collins rolled into one, but this plan is based on doing nothing so I won't. How fair is that?)





4 - Do NOT Try To Become A Professional Bowler


A string of bowling in my day cost about a buck. In this day, it costs at least three times as much. Think of it! You're already three times better off than I would have been at a similar age. And, again, you've done NOTHING!!!

Let's say you aren't going to be a fanatic about it, like I was. You won't bowl 20 strings three times a week at $3 per string, so that's $180 or so times 50 weeks in a year - you're taking two weeks off to make the math easier - and that's another ten years, which makes it $90,000 you've got in your pocket and you did NOTHING!!!

Add up everything you didn't do and you've socked away about $240,000, my friend. A somewhat modest 5% compounded interest for 35 years? Bingo! $1,000,000 big smackeroonies in YOUR VERY OWN POCKET!

And what did you do to get that million? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!

You're welcome.

By the way, it will take you 35 years to become a millionaire. Oh, yeah, some of you are now crying, "Fraud! Swindler! Jackanapes!" Well, fraud and swindler perhaps, but while jackanapes might be true, it is not well used in this context, so there!

And if you're 20 now, by the time you reach my age $1,000,000 will buy you a Snickers bar and it will be about two-thirds the size of a current Snickers bar, if past history is to be trusted.

See you in the sewer! I'll save you a comfy rat to lay your head on.


29 comments:

Shrinky said...

Hmnn - but if I don't smoke, drink or play - WTF would I have left to spend this million bucks on, anyway? (Just saying..)

Buck said...

Coises...foiled again! I was gonna recycle my comment (assuming I made one, and I think I did... as I remember the "rat as a pillow" line) since you recycled a post... but I looked through all of 2006's titles and didn't see "How to Make..." Sneaky, Jim. VERY sneaky.

Ananda girl said...

Hahahaha... yelling down the sewer. When my #2 son was little he believed that those damned Ninja Turtles lived in every pipe, manhole, drain, etc. I was terrified that one day he would crawl in to find them and he could not pass one of those without doing exactly that... yelling out their names into them. It made for slow travel.

So while you are down there, do me a favor and keep a look out will ya?

Susan English Mason said...

Now you've gone and done it. You've disturbed my sleep for the next 35 years. Rat pillow??? Yikes.

Jazz said...

What Shrinky said!

Suldog said...

Shrinky, Jazz - Once you make the million, then you can wreck yourself royally!

lime said...

son of a gun, i've followed this advice and i'm still broke! who can i sue for this bad advice? i'm going to make my money one damn way or another!

Brian Miller said...

it was the rock star dream that did me in...

Anonymous said...

I liked your idea on your sidebar, too...if everyone sends you $$...instead of awards or comments, then you would be an even richer man.
You could loan me money, then.
Take care, my friend.
Hugs and smiles,
Jackie

Chris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris said...

Ah, I made my million by doing even less. All I didn't do was buy a million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills.

Ta da!

Rosaria Williams said...

Precious! Priceless!

crazy4coens said...

By all rights, I should be a millioniare. I am not sure what I did wrong. Wait, maybe it was marrying a guy who wanted to be a rock star. Yeah, that's probably it! It is good for a few laughs, though.

Anonymous said...

Three out of four isn't bad!

Anonymous said...

Buck! He's sneakier than we all think... He's actually used this post TWICE before:

Monday, August 14, 2006
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

So, don't feel guilty for recycling your comments!!!

:::ducking and running:::

Love 'ya, Sully! ;)

Elaine Denning said...

Brilliant!

Reminds me of the guy who ran behind the bus to save himself the busfare. "You silly sod" his friend said. "You should have run behind a taxi and saved three times more."

Jen said...

I would add do not buy a horse. I own two and they are the biggest money pits in the world. They make the coke habit look like a bubble gum fetish.

Grumpy, M.D. said...

That's great. I use the "why you shouldn't smoke" on my patients all the time, though most don't listen.

Jim said...

Oh, Geez, I am a slug!

(*runs and hides in his other blogger identity*)

Chris Stone said...

lol. this was a good post. i think cigarettes are now about 8 bucks here in RI.

Jim said...

Yeah, I could have changed a few things to make the prices even higher. Cigs are ridiculously more expensive here in MA, too (as are bowling, cocaine, and being a rock star, no doubt.)

Michelle H. said...

I'm not buying it. The way life works, with increasing taxes and prices, that million won't buy jack squat nowadays. I need at least 2 million. But by your calculations it will take 70 years. Well, I'm screwed.

crazy4coens said...

Jen's post reminds me of a bumper sticker - Poverty is owning a horse

Unknown said...

Damn, I've always been so bad at math, I had no idea I've smoked and drank away all that money. Thanks Suldog but at age 67, think it may be too late for me now... although I would have totally shared with you!

Desmond Jones said...

Food for thought, fershure. . .

I'm with Lime, tho. . . All these things, I've done since my youth, and I'm still in debt. Heck, I even had a couple paying gigs from my 'Rock Band' fling (which, honestly, cost me darn little; I s'pose you could tote up the cost of piano lessons, but my parents paid for those. . .)

I'm guessing the eight kids had something to do with it. . .

crazy4coens said...

Desmond - not to mention all the clothes and makeup

Anonymous said...

Aw shucks! Should have met you twenty years ago.

Helena said...

I simply will not give up on No.3!- Is my hair poofy?

Unknown said...

Hmmm, if it takes 35 years to make the million, I live to be 85 and never produce swawn I wonder what I will spend it on in 15 years. Aside from tossing a bit down a sewer or two that is. Great advice Jim, thanks for that. See you in the gutter!