Our Sudden Early Retirement
We have been toiling in the workforce for three decades, more or less, and we had expected to toil for maybe one or two more. But now, it appears, we can hand in our letter of resignation at the firm, and maybe buy one of those hot retirement properties in Panama that NPR has been talking about. How foolish it was, in retrospect, to have worried about that 401k! How foolish, when the world can change so dramatically in just a few short hours!
Today, you see . . . well, it began much like any other Sunday. After sleeping in, we wandered downstairs to make ourselves some coffee and fire up the computer. We checked the news to make sure that HBO hadn't canceled the Sopranos. And then we took a look at our e-mail. That's when we learned the astonishing news. We almost missed the notification. It was actually miscategorized as junk, of all things, due to an apparent glitch in SpamBayes. (For some reason, the site seems to receive a lot of junk e-mail. Can any readers offer some insight on that? Anyway, we do always check to see that the spam filters haven't misrouted a legitimate communication.)
You've probably heard the rest on CNN by now. That international internet lottery? You know the one we mean; it's run out of Amsterdam? It uses e-mail addresses as lottery tickets, to encourage wider use of the fledgling internet? It's sponsored by a group of philanthropist industrialists who want to remain anonymous? Well, the odds were long, and we hadn't really expected to win anything. In fact, we had almost forgotten about it.
But as all the world now knows, the winning numbers (drawn on January 30) were 1-9-74-31. What may still come as news to some of you is that those were the very numbers assigned by computer to the e-mail address webmaster@daubertontheweb.com. We don't know how that works, exactly, but we assume it's probably because we: (a) are one person; (b) have lived in our house for nine years; (c) graduated high school in '74; and (d) were born in a month with 31 days. So those are naturally the numbers we would have picked, if the lottery computers hadn't done it for us.
The upshot? We need only contact Fritz Hartgers (miclottnl909@netscape.net) to claim our winnings of $2.5 million. We know that's less money than it sounds like, if you want to retire on it and plan to live for another thirty or forty years. But here's the really remarkable thing! In another e-mail, delivered almost simultaneously with the first, we've been notified that we've also won another $1.5 million -- in a second, completely different internet lottery! When it rains, we guess it pours. We don't have space to go into the details of this second lottery here, but if you're curious you can write to the certified and accredited claims agent, Patrick Bowman (reportclaim@netscape.net). Better still, ring him up on the phone. His number is +31 615 304 791. We can't find that little "plus" sign on our own phone, but we don't always have the latest technology. If you get his answering machine, just keep calling back. We imagine he's a busy guy, and you may have to pester him.
Anyhow, with $4 million in overnight winnings, we think we have enough of a nest egg to give retirement a go. It's not as though other income won't dribble in. To give you just one example, the good people at IRS were burning the midnight oil last night, when they noticed that our little website has an unclaimed tax refund refund coming, for $63.80 -- unremarkable, really, since the site actually loses money. People complain about the sprawling, unresponsive federal bureaucracy, but the IRS actually took the trouble to send us a copyrighted notification in the wee hours of the morning.
We figure our living expenses should be lower in retirement too. We're not saying how, but we happen to have some fresh leads on places where we can get prescription drugs at a steep discount.
Today, you see . . . well, it began much like any other Sunday. After sleeping in, we wandered downstairs to make ourselves some coffee and fire up the computer. We checked the news to make sure that HBO hadn't canceled the Sopranos. And then we took a look at our e-mail. That's when we learned the astonishing news. We almost missed the notification. It was actually miscategorized as junk, of all things, due to an apparent glitch in SpamBayes. (For some reason, the site seems to receive a lot of junk e-mail. Can any readers offer some insight on that? Anyway, we do always check to see that the spam filters haven't misrouted a legitimate communication.)
You've probably heard the rest on CNN by now. That international internet lottery? You know the one we mean; it's run out of Amsterdam? It uses e-mail addresses as lottery tickets, to encourage wider use of the fledgling internet? It's sponsored by a group of philanthropist industrialists who want to remain anonymous? Well, the odds were long, and we hadn't really expected to win anything. In fact, we had almost forgotten about it.
But as all the world now knows, the winning numbers (drawn on January 30) were 1-9-74-31. What may still come as news to some of you is that those were the very numbers assigned by computer to the e-mail address webmaster@daubertontheweb.com. We don't know how that works, exactly, but we assume it's probably because we: (a) are one person; (b) have lived in our house for nine years; (c) graduated high school in '74; and (d) were born in a month with 31 days. So those are naturally the numbers we would have picked, if the lottery computers hadn't done it for us.
The upshot? We need only contact Fritz Hartgers (miclottnl909@netscape.net) to claim our winnings of $2.5 million. We know that's less money than it sounds like, if you want to retire on it and plan to live for another thirty or forty years. But here's the really remarkable thing! In another e-mail, delivered almost simultaneously with the first, we've been notified that we've also won another $1.5 million -- in a second, completely different internet lottery! When it rains, we guess it pours. We don't have space to go into the details of this second lottery here, but if you're curious you can write to the certified and accredited claims agent, Patrick Bowman (reportclaim@netscape.net). Better still, ring him up on the phone. His number is +31 615 304 791. We can't find that little "plus" sign on our own phone, but we don't always have the latest technology. If you get his answering machine, just keep calling back. We imagine he's a busy guy, and you may have to pester him.
Anyhow, with $4 million in overnight winnings, we think we have enough of a nest egg to give retirement a go. It's not as though other income won't dribble in. To give you just one example, the good people at IRS were burning the midnight oil last night, when they noticed that our little website has an unclaimed tax refund refund coming, for $63.80 -- unremarkable, really, since the site actually loses money. People complain about the sprawling, unresponsive federal bureaucracy, but the IRS actually took the trouble to send us a copyrighted notification in the wee hours of the morning.
We figure our living expenses should be lower in retirement too. We're not saying how, but we happen to have some fresh leads on places where we can get prescription drugs at a steep discount.
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