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

For some damn reason, Boston.com decided that my posting yesterday was worth featuring on their front page. As a result, whole bunches of well-meaning innocent people showed up here; were somehow entertained beyond anything that my regular readers would know better than to expect; and are probably going to return with the thought in mind that they'll again find something worth the trip.

I figure it's worthwhile nipping this sort of thing in the bud, before people start expecting more effort from me than I'm willing to give. As a matter of fact, I'd like to immediately dispel any notions people might have concerning my value. Therefore, I'm re-printing a particularly puerile piece of putridity that I foisted upon an unwitting public some 19 months ago. Not only is it a re-print, thus showing my utter lack of regard for the poor souls who have somehow been deluded into thinking I give a rat's ass, it isn't even 1/5 as good as yesterday's piece. I could have searched out a funnier re-print, but I'm such a jerk I won't even go to that little bit of trouble on your behalf.

You can expect more of the same if you keep showing up here. By the way, no matter what it says in the first sentence, it IS a scam.

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 toss a few bucks my way. 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" by then, 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 won't have to do anything. All you'll have to do is NOT do what I did.

1 - Do NOT Smoke Cigarettes

This 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 be making about $340 a week. If you get 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 to belabor the obvious 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 ridiculous day and age, it costs at least three times as much. Think of it! You're already three times better off than I was 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, multiplied by 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!!!

So, let's add up everything you didn't do. 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, sure, 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.