Posts Tagged ‘Money’

So you think you have a lot of patience?

February 23rd, 2010

This 97 year old man just won the lottery

A poverty-stricken 97-year-old man in Vietnam almost $400,000 in a lottery, a report said on Tuesday, sparking a frenzy among relatives eager to get a piece of his newfound wealth. Thanh Nien newspaper said that one of his neighbors in southern Ho Chi Minh City, together with local officials, had to step in to stop the elderly man from giving away the windfall to people who had swarmed to his home. What was left of the money has gone into a bank account, the newspaper reported.

Lucky money

Nguyen Van Het bagged the prize after spending 100,000 dong on lottery tickets from “lucky money” he received ahead of the Lunar New Year, Thanh Nien said. Small packets of “lucky money” are a traditional Tet gift.

Massive prize

Thanh Nien reported Het’s winnings at 7.6-billion dong, or $400,000, a massive sum in a country where the annual per capita income is about $1,000. “We only know he won billions of dong,” an official from the Fatherland Front, which implements government social programs, told AFP. The official, who declined to be named, said local authorities had to intervene and restore order around the man’s home because so many relatives or people claiming to be relatives had turned up asking for money.

Before the win

Het and his sick wife had been receiving special financial support from authorities because they lived below the poverty line, the Fatherland Front official said. “We will wait for a few more weeks so that he can calm down before asking him what he wants to do with the money,” he said.

The trouble with the lottery

The main problem with the lottery is that it is expensive to buy a ticket. And then having done so, you only get one chance at a win. In addition, the odds are enormous. In a 6/40 Lotto, meaning that you have to correctly choose 6 numbers out of 49, your chance of winning is 1 in about 14 million, very, very slim. That’s the bad news. The good news is that someone wins, so why shouldn’t it be you? Everyone has the same chance. Of course, if you have 20 lines of numbers you have 20 times the chance of winning over the guy who has only 1 line.

We used to buy

Over the years we bought tickets regularly. Then we slowly weaned ourselves off the addiction and these days we buy when there is a little extra money, or on an occasion such as a birthday.

What you get

I discovered that what we were actually buying every week was a little dream. We would walk back from the Lotto kiosk and say things like, “how much should we give each of the children?” or “What about the grandchildren? We have to give then something?” or “What about the neighbors? Them too?” It was nice to dream but very expensive.

Tags: Lottery, Lotto, Lucky money, Money, Winning
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Want to make a fortune? Write a best-seller!

January 31st, 2010

How to become a novelist

Here’s a great money-making idea. It’s easy, you can do it in your own time and the rewards will stagger you. You will become famous, you will get to meet famous people and be invited to luncheons, you will be invited to deliver after-dinner speeches and best of all, you will be rich. Ask Geoffrey Archer and you will understand that it is all possible.

Archer

The British writer Geoffrey Archer was scammed out of his fortune and having no useful training, decided to write a book and make money. Today, he is one of the world’s most-read authors and has never looked back on his decision to write. Of course, he is one of the world’s great story-tellers too. That helped!

What you need to get started

You need to be self-disciplined, motivated and imaginative. You need to read extensively in your chosen genre, current affairs, history, and biography. You must watch films, go to the theatre and observe people, events, fashion and furnishings. If you wish to portray life you will need to become a student of life. You will have to write every day, whether it is a journal, dreams, short stories or poetry and if you have the opportunity, try to attend a creative writing course.

More needs

Read author interviews, and never miss an opportunity to hear authors talk. The Paris Review interviews are indispensable windows into the creative minds of renowned authors. Fascinating author interviews are available on the internet. Read book reviews and join a book club.

Listen

To write dialogue well, you need to listen when people speak. You will learn a lot by going to the sorts of places your characters frequent. Don’t indulge writer’s block and don’t believe the work will write itself.

Qualifications needed

You don’t need formal qualifications – the best school is the real world. Invest in a computer if that’s the way you are going to write or, if like Geoffrey Archer you prefer to write by hand, buy a stack of exercise books and a few boxes of pencils. A good dictionary will come in useful. If you decide that you need formal training, most universities and colleges offer creative writing programs.

The money

It’s impossible to even guess a figure because one book may do better than another. Generally, you are paid a cash advance and if your book does well there will be royalties. Like everything else, it’s all about money. An agent won’t touch your manuscript if he or she thinks they cannot make money out of it. The publisher is like the agent, only about 100 times worse.

I tried it

My book was a thriller, the assassination of a world public figure. The agent liked it, but could I make some changes? I was deep in my fifth round of changes when George W. Bush beat me to it and killed my character. I told you it was easy!

Payday Advance

Tags: Book, Geoffrey Archer, Money, Novel, Writing
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