In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 31 of 1154
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's cool. I'm not saying that people shouldn't gamble and you're totally being smart about it and only gambling with money you can afford to lose. We all have to have our fun.
I've got a little history with addiction though, and my reaction to "winning" was very similar to my one experience on a prescription opioid that somebody had given me after I was injured pretty badly once, which was "This feels WAY too good and I'm never doing it again".
Congrats on your win. :)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Exactly. I know what I can do and that is all I do. I took a friend with me once and all she did was complain. Never did that again. So I go by myself and it is just a couple of hours of harmless fun.
You are also very smart. If you don't feel like you can handle it then it is best you stay away.
Thanks. As I said,I have never won that much in a casino before.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Exactly. I know what I can do and that is all I do. I took a friend with me once and all she did was complain. Never did that again. So I go by myself and it is just a couple of hours of harmless fun.
You are also very smart. If you don't feel like you can handle it then it is best you stay away.
Thanks. As I said,I have never won that much in a casino before.
I've known some drug addicts and alcoholics in my life, but strangely I've never experienced knowing somebody with a crippling gambling addiction. I've only heard stories or seen it happen in movies or TV shows.
The funny thing is that the feeling I got from gambling and being up the entire time for a few hours was just like the few times I had done cocaine in my life. My pleasure centers must have been soaked. I was "in the zone" where all of my senses were heightened.
Who knows what would have happened if there was a quick turn around and I lost all the winnings? I may have just dug a deep hole for myself back when I probably had no business being there in the first place. I actually really made good use out of those winnings because money was really tight back then. I think that's why I was able to snap out of it and quit when I did. I was up over $250 at one point, but once I hit that losing streak I was able to break away and cash out while I was still up.
Some people laugh when they hear stories like when Charles Barkley lost 30 million on gambling and call him an idiot. I just feel sorry for him because I completely understand how something like that could happen.
Gambling is a strange thing indeed. I think a majority of people can just go and have some fun with money they don't need and have a real healthy attitude about it from the start. Then there's people like me who could very easily let it consume them like a drug or alcohol addiction.
I wonder if it's genetic?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Exactly. I know what I can do and that is all I do. I took a friend with me once and all she did was complain. Never did that again. So I go by myself and it is just a couple of hours of harmless fun.
You are also very smart. If you don't feel like you can handle it then it is best you stay away.
Thanks. As I said,I have never won that much in a casino before.
I've known some drug addicts and alcoholics in my life, but strangely I've never experienced knowing somebody with a crippling gambling addiction. I've only heard stories or seen it happen in movies or TV shows.
The funny thing is that the feeling I got from gambling and being up the entire time for a few hours was just like the few times I had done cocaine in my life. My pleasure centers must have been soaked. I was "in the zone" where all of my senses were heightened.
Who knows what would have happened if there was a quick turn around and I lost all the winnings? I may have just dug a deep hole for myself back when I probably had no business being there in the first place. I actually really made good use out of those winnings because money was really tight back then. I think that's why I was able to snap out of it and quit when I did. I was up over $250 at one point, but once I hit that losing streak I was able to break away and cash out while I was still up.
Some people laugh when they hear stories like when Charles Barkley lost 30 million on gambling and call him an idiot. I just feel sorry for him because I completely understand how something like that could happen.
Gambling is a strange thing indeed. I think a majority of people can just go and have some fun with money they don't need and have a real healthy attitude about it from the start. Then there's people like me who could very easily let it consume them like a drug or alcohol addiction.
I wonder if it's genetic?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
I've seen over the years doctors talk about "addictive personalities" and have wondered that myself.
I've too have never seen a gambling addition but to alcohol, I have.
As I've said in a past thread my family has had a running battle with the bottle off and on for years. My mother's family being mostly Irish has lost members to alcoholism. My father's and we all know how well Native Americans react to alcohol. My dad lost a brother to it. My own brother almost fell into the trap.
Friends, I have watched battle with addictions and win which is good.
My parents could have a drink and then leave it. Same thing with gambling.
Me, I've tried wine once. Just a sip numbed my upper palette and I took that as a bad sign and never tried alcohol again.
Well, my feeling is if someone rich gambles a few thousand or millions and expects to win. With that kind of money on the line the odds are usually in the House's favour and you are going to loose. But that is there choice just like winning and not leaving the game. That is as the old saying goes, "Throwing good money after bad".
That is why after I won that $200 on that one slot, I walked away from it. Didn't want to risk loosing my winnings.
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It's raining.
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Well congrats again on the win, and I hope you take your time giving it back to the house. :)
I got really lucky in the stock market. Some of that (I tell myself) was good decision making, but really... how much if any at all? Had you asked me before I made any of the purchases that I did, I would have told you that it was a great idea and told you why.
I doubled the money I had put into Google at one point, and I tripled the money I put into a company that mined Gold that I don't even recall the name anymore. Around the same time, I watched the money I put into GE get cut to about 25% of its initial value.
The only reason I sold any of it was to buy the house. I would have made a lot more on Google had I stayed in longer, but I wouldn't have the house. I haven't followed any other stocks that I used to own, so I couldn't tell you where they'd be.
The biggest win for me though was my 401k that was in the most aggressive fund available and was pulling in yearly returns of 24-29% right before the bottom fell out. Had I stayed in just a little while longer I would have lost about half of what was in there in the following 6 months and I would not be living in my home now. The only reason I was spared from that was because my company had been bought out and all of our 401k funds were moved to a different provider and put in a no-risk fund and frozen for 90 days.
Had that one thing that was completely out of my control not happened, my entire life would be completely different.
I don't gamble anymore. Even in the stock market. I don't worry when people call me foolish for not "investing". Opinions being like assholes and all of that.
Do what makes you happy as long as you're not hurting anybody else. That includes hurting yourself if it becomes something that gets out of your control because somebody else you care about will be hurt by either having to try to help clean up the mess or standing back and watching you destroy yourself.
That's my biggest regret from my past behavior. Just because I pushed everybody away and didn't let anyone help me I was still hurting them by making them watch me do it all to myself.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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6Six, Sounds like you did okay for a while there. And as long as you are happy now that is what matters.
I will take my time giving my money back to the House. 
Don't know when I will go again.
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Nice sunny day here and I was off to BC Housing. I swear if one more person asks if there is just me about anything I am liable to smack them one.
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Yeah... there were some "good times" financially in my past. I'm really only doing alright because I learned my lessons from the first time I had a great job.
I was only 19 when I got a job through a temp agency for 11 bucks/hr and in 2 years I was pulling in around $55k before the place was shuttered. I'd stopped going to college while I was working there. I didn't see the point of it.
Unfortunately, with no references worth anything and no college education, I had to move in my Grandma's basement. I had paid off my car while working that job, but other than that I only had a few thousand bucks to my name. I spent it all partying. I'd get more calls on a Friday night back then that I do in almost an entire year these days.
5 years of working menial jobs for little pay and living in a basement with the 2 of 7 cats my Grandma had that peed everywhere will really make you learn to appreciate money a lot more. I swore that if I ever got into a position like that again I'd be saving it.
I ended up getting a job in customer service over the phone for a financial company and got top raises every year with a large promotion when I went into IBM Mainframe management. I doubled my salary in 5 years. Between saving and getting really lucky in the market (like I posted about last time), I had about $100k in savings when they laid me off. I managed to save about another $15k between my severance and unemployment checks in the next year.
After that, I knew I needed to get into a house. With my track record for finding real work, I knew it would only be a matter of time before most of that disappeared if I was paying apartment rent. Fortunately for me, timing and luck were on my side yet again because this was still when the housing market was at the bottom. There were a lot of great deals to be had out there if you were willing to put in the time and research. I eventually hooked up with an amazing Real Estate agent who didn't bullshit me at all and went above and beyond for her 5% of what ended up to be not much more than about $1,200 in her pocket at signing.
I told her that low Property Taxes were my absolute #1 priority, and she told me we had to stop looking in Illinois and instead look in Indiana. I won't go into the details of it because it's extremely complex (intentionally), but when she was finally able to explain to me how the homeowners exemption worked in Illinois and that every online listing (including by her own company) told you what your estimated tax payments would be based off the previous owners was a lie, it literally blew my mind.
I thought that I had it pretty much figured out, but long story short you could take any assumed property tax number in Illinois and add anywhere between $2000 and $3000 per year to that number once the house was in your name!
Most of my money is gone now, but TBH, I've only worked about half the time since I bought the house and all of that was part time, near minimum wage work. The house has now basically paid for itself because if I had been renting for as long as I'd been living here then I would have paid that value in rent checks every month and had nothing. Since the market has stabalized somewhat and I have done some work to the house, I could easily get back what I bought it for plus around $15-20k if I wanted to sell.
It turns out there are some really nice little houses very close to my brother in downstate Illinois near the section 8 housing that my old man set him up in for his disabilities. I REALLY like the area down there. Property taxes would be about double what I'm paying even though they're smaller homes, but I am considering it. Some of my step-mom's family lives fairly close to there and my Dad is always talking about how he'd like to move down there someday too.
Once I get some of my more pressing financial concerns taken care of, I'm going to start working on the house again bit by bit and get it to a point where I could make a decent b
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Yeah, if you decide to move fixing the house up for a good price is an idea. Being closer to your brother could be good for you.
I don't think we can truly know what the Universe has in mind for us.
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