The Amateur Financier

Congratulations!  If you followed my advice earlier on how to catch yourself a leprechaun, you may have found yourself with a magical wish or three that you need to use up.  Or, perhaps you encountered a genie, jinn, fairy, pixie, sprite or one of the numerous other magical entities in folklore whose sole reason for being is to grant wishes to humans who release them from some ancient prison.  (It seems like half the stories in folklore involve these sorts of being; if they were anywhere near that numerous, every week there would be a new ruler of the world lording over us.)

Of course, if there’s one thing in folklore almost as common as wish granting magical beings: ways in which those wishes go horribly wrong.  Whether it’s because the wish granters are actively malevolent, diabolical tricksters, or simply incompetent, there’s lots of ways that magical wishes can go awry.  Be careless with how you phrase your wish, or get too greedy with what you wish for, and you’ll end up as a cautionary tale told to distract a beheading happy sultan.

If your leprechaun looks like this, maybe you should just let him go...

To help you out should you find yourself being asked to make some wishes, here’s a few financial wishes to AVOID making, with the horrifying consequences if you actually went ahead and made them.  (Note: these are only financial wishes; given the nature of this blog, that’s all the help I can give.  For all other types of wishes, just follow the general advice to be careful with how you phrase your wishes, or you’ll end up the subject of a joke discussing your foot tall piano player.)  To first for a great deal of money, as so many of us would:

1) “I Wish For All the Money In the World” – Good first impulse, but you’re being a bit too ambitious.  Getting ALL the money in the world means that you’re going to bankrupt a lot of (formerly) rich, very powerful people.  I hope one of your previous wishes was to be completely indestructible.

Further problems arise because a particularly diabolical wish-granter will spoil even the fun of having so much money.  For example, if you spend some of the money, you’ll no longer have ALL the money in the world; a tricky wish-granter could thus stop you from using any of the money, leaving you with a fortune you can’t spend.  Plus, there’s no telling what will happen to the world economy if all the wealth is concentrated in your hands; my bet is it won’t be pretty.  Let’s try to be more modest; one million dollars or so should cover you quite well.

2) “I Wish For a Million Bucks” – Points for the more modest angle, but you’ve run into trouble by using slang.  Rather than a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills, this wish is likely to get you a million male deer to wreck havoc on your lawn.  (Or a million late model cars if you pronounce it as ‘Buick’.)  Remember, when in doubt, use the proper terms with magical, wish-granting critters.

3) “I Wish for a Million Dollars” - Getting better, but you run into the problem that many countries around the world use the term ‘dollars’ for their currency.  You’re thinking greenbacks (P.S., don’t use the term ‘greenbacks’ in your wish unless you want a football field worth of frogs), the leprechaun gives you Zimbabwe dollars (one million of which is worth less than a penny).  Let’s try that again.

4) “I Wish for One Million United States Dollars” - Alright, now we’re getting somewhere.  You’ll get a sizable amount of money, but not enough to spoil the economy, and we’ve ensured there won’t be any currency related trickery.  There’s still a problem: you haven’t specified the source of your new funds.  A diabolical wish granter might take the last few crumbs from one thousand poor families, or snatch one million from a rich and vindictive miser.  Either way, your money won’t bring the sort of happiness you’re hoping.  Let’s try again.

5) “I wish for one million United States dollars taken from money that no person would miss.” – Pretty good, pretty good.  Plenty of money with no chance of ruining poor families or being hunted for sport by an eccentric billionaire.  We’re nearly perfect, but there’s still one thing you’ve forgotten: the IRS.  Amazingly, the government doesn’t consider ‘given to me by a wish-granting magical critter’ as a legitimate (and more to the point, tax-free) source of income.  Expect to pay taxes out the wazoo (and trust me, you don’t want to know where on the human body THAT is located), or even to find yourself being investigated by the DEA on suspicion of drug running.  (This is probably why most of these wish-granting stories are set well before the modern day; there were fewer people who’d want to investigate the sudden source of your new wealth in say, Ancient Roman times.)

BONG!

I’m sorry, that sound means that you’ve used up all of your wishes trying to get a sizable amount of wealth.  Better luck the next time you find yourself with a magical wish-granting critter in your grasp.  If you ever find yourself needing a perfect wish for those wish granting entities to ensure that you get your money and can keep it too, try this one on for size: “I wish for one million United States dollars taken from money that no person would miss, obtained in a way that all applicable government agencies consider legitimate and tax-free.” That should get you the money you so desire, without any unneeded complications.  (Unless your magical critter is just a jerk, in which case you may end up in a Turkish prison in your underwear no matter how you phrase your wish.)  Turn in tomorrow for even more practical money advice!

• 1896 Silver Dollar
• A Million Bucks By Thirty Review By Alan Corey
• Going to the Dogs
• Is There a Cure for the Economy? The Spending and Saving Catch-22
• Understanding What Affects Paper Money Price