I've been considering new ways to plan for the future recently, but I haven't gotten very far. So far, I think I've got everything planned out at least through next week. Or was that tomorrow?

Sufficient unto the day are the worries therein, I recall. That's just complete truth right there, but we humans like to try and control everything, including the impossible. What person can control the future? Most of us, myself included, can barely manage the present.

But I have a friend who came up with a surefire plan to take care of all his future needs. He's buying $100 worth of $20 lottery ‘raffle' tickets each week until he wins.

Yes, our two neighboring state lotteries are now offering raffle tickets that are billed as giving the average fellow a better chance to win a cool million.

Even so, the chances are somewhere around one in 110,000 to one in 115,000 per ticket. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you what the odds are with five tickets, you'll have to find yourself a mathematical person. If you need someone to write about numbers, I can do that.

But if you need someone to actually compute ratios, algorithms, probability or any other higher mathematical problem, call someone else. I'll stick to my ciphering—add, subtract, multiply and divide. Anyway, according to lottery sources in Virginia, the chances to win $1 million with a scratch-off ticket is somewhere around one in 734,000. Well now, what kind of odds are those?

It would seem that the average fellow would have a better chance of just trying to keep his cash in pocket. In fact, if a body only bought one ticket a week at $20 each, that would add up to $1,040 per year in savings. Buying 5? Then that means you'll be spending an extra $5,200. I sort of see that as people lining up to pay extra taxes. Want a sure bet? Try taxes. Now there's a sure thing.

But the idea of being an instant millionaire remains very alluring, for some reason. Alluring enough to cause people to believe they are the "one" in the seemingly impossible phrase "one in 734,000" or "one in 110,000." Even the smaller of the two would be the equivalent of being selected at random from a crowd containing more than 10 times the entire population of Alleghany County. Can you imagine how many people that is? The seating capacity of Lowe's Motor Speedway is about 165,000. Try to walk in there and find one person, even if you know that person, with all that sea of faces.

But everyone thinks they're the one. It must be part of the 'it's all about me' mentality that a friend recently talked about in church.

But, just for the heck of it, let's just say you win. The big ticket hits and you're the lucky one. It would seem that having a cool million dropped into one's hands would surely take care of all of life's little problems. But that's not necessarily the case.

I recently heard the story about a man in West Virginia who won some incredible amount of money (more than $100 million) and then watched his life fall apart. He's been robbed, lost his wife, developed a drinking problem and is beset on all sides by people begging him for help (in the form of cash, of course) for one reason or another.

A photo showing him sitting on the curb after having more than $200,000 stolen out of his car at a bar one evening said it all. His head was hung low; he looked like a pitiful old man with more problems than most.

That's when I realized that the lottery win most likely won't improve anyone's life long term. Instead, it's more likely to cause more problems that it solves. Those who carefully manage money and do as they should typically prosper on their own, at least to a reasonable degree. Of course, nothing is always true.

However, those who can't be responsible with a $200 paycheck probably are only going to get worse if someone hands them a check for $1 million.

I used to fantasize about what I might do if I won after buying tickets and getting back home with them, usually while waiting for the numbers to appear on television. Sometimes I would do it with friends, all of whom seemed to already have their plans made.

"I'd call my job and tell them to go fly a kite, then I'd get me a new Corvette and drive off into the sunset," one fellow said.

"They can read about me winning in the paper," the other fellow said. "No one would ever see me again."

Usual answers are that folks would pay off debts, buy things for loved ones and live a star-studded life. Has anyone seen Ms. Spears lately? It's not all that. Fantasies are normal, a way of escaping the sometimes harsh realities of life, at least briefly. Hope of a better future is what keeps people purchasing tickets. Maybe I'll stop off on the way home for my winning ticket, or perhaps the tooth fairy will leave it under my pillow. Now all I need is a little tooth to go with all these lies.

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