MONEY | ADVICE | FAMILY
What I learned about making money from my gambling grandmother
My grandma was a gambler. She worked hard her whole life, but after retiring from the post office (while still running a blueberry farm) she began to find time to have some fun. And for her, fun meant gambling.
I remember when the horse races came on the radio. My grandmother would shush my brother and me, turn up the volume, and slide a page of the newspaper out from under the place mat. She’d cock her ear to the speaker, pencil tip tapping on the newsprint. When the race was over, she’d place a call and speak in hushed tones to who knows who. Then she’d turn the radio down, slide the page back under her place mat, and go about her day.
That was a regular occurrence in spring and summer when the blueberries were bursting on the shrubs of her farm. When picking season was over, her gambling itch couldn’t be scratched so easily, so she’d hop on a bus or a plane down to Reno.
Safely ensconced under the bright lights and chiming machines, she’d pace up and down a row of one-armed bandits, plugging each one with quarters and pulling the handles. (Always play the maximum, she’d tell me.) She would spend hours racing up and down the aisle, pumping the machines, spinning the wheels.
In the morning, exhausted and with a fresh handful of Polaroid pictures of her beaming beside machines that had just paid out jackpots, she’d collapse on the bed in her complimentary room before sleeping for a few hours, waking, enjoying her complimentary breakfast, and getting started all over again.
After her wild weekends, she’d come home and regale us with the tales of her winnings and place the Polaroids in magnetized frames on her fridge. Fridges. She had that many. (Polaroids, not fridges. She only had two fridges. Point is, it was a lot of Polaroids.)
Each story ended with a laugh and a shake of her head and the familiar refrain: “Win some, lose lots.”
Funny thing is, we never knew how much she lost. Her gambling never cost her her house or her livelihood. So it couldn’t have been that bad, right?
Either way, come spring, she had better things to do than gamble. She had a blueberry farm to run, after all. But once my brother and I turned legal age, and casinos started popping up in the Lower Mainland, we started taking her to them. (Or did she take us to them?) Whichever way it went, I quickly learned that luck doesn’t skip a generation. It skips two.
At the opening of the casino in Coquitlam, I watched as she played $20 on a slot machine up to $600. Then she stood and turned the seat over to me. The total dwindled to around $500 before I cashed out.
The idea of losing that kind of money in the blink of an eye made me queasy.
So much for my dreams of being a professional gambler, I thought. Honestly though, I was lucky to learn early that gambling isn’t for me.
Anyway, that story was a round-about way of saying that gambling to make money never made sense to me.
But neither does working to make money.
In a world where time is money, but where we only have one life, why would we trade our valuable seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months, years for … money?
Somewhere along the way, I realized, I had to choose. Would I rather have time or money?
Sure, there’s a balance to be achieved, but most of us get it wrong. We either work too much — and have no time for fun — or work too little (or don’t make enough) and can’t do the things we want to do.
And I know, money doesn’t make you happy. The best things in life truly are free. But there is a direct correlation between money and happiness. That said, you only need a certain amount to be happy. Which means you don’t need to work all the time, or make all the money. (Looking at you, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates).
You just need enough. Enough to afford shelter, food and clothing. Enough to buy the things you need. Enough to enjoy your life.
So how do we avoid working our lives away? How do we make the most of what we have? How do we work less and live more?
Put simply, the best way to make money is to not spend money.
(I’m not saying saving or investing — though that’s a great idea too, once you can afford it. I’ll explore investing in another article.)
So how do we not spend money? By looking at what we spend money on, and deciding if it’s worth it.
My idea of worth is simple. I ask myself: “Is the thing I want to buy worth the time I spent making the money it costs?”
For example, let’s say you work for minimum wage and you want to go see a movie. A ticket at my imaginary theatre costs $12. Minimum wage is $15 per hour. The movie is two hours long. Is working one hour worth two hours of entertainment?
It’s not a precise formula, but you get the idea. And it’s easily transferable to anything else with a price tag.
I’ll share specific money-not-spending ideas in a future article, but until then feel free to add the formula to your pre-purchase routine.
Before you buy, ask yourself:
- Is that Starbucks drink worth half an hour of drudgery?
- Is that new pair of designer shoes worth a shift of body-punishing labour?
- Is that latest smartphone worth a week of punching the clock (and not punching annoying customers)?
It’s a simple way to decide whether what you want to buy is worth it. Because we can’t all be gamblers.
But we can all spend less, and live more.
What are your tips for saving money? Share them in the responses, or tag me in your story.
