Forget the Lottery, Give Me A CEO Job

How many times have you heard someone say, “If only I could win the lottery.” I’ve often found myself dreaming about how great it would be to hit a massive lottery jackpot. Countless times with friends and family we’ve played out the scenario of who gets money and what we’d buy. Recently all of the exposure in the news about corporate CEO’s and their compensation packages has got me second guessing my desire to win the lottery. Today I’d much rather win a job as CEO of a major US corporation.

Clearly the biggest benefit of winning the lottery is the massive lump of cash dropped into your lap. There is no doubt that a 50 million dollar cash option would be great, but what if you were to get paid 10 million a year over the next 5 years instead as CEO. Even better you could make a whopping $354 million; over the last 5 years Richard Fuld Jr. the CEO of troubled financial firm Lehman Brothers did according to this Forbes list of top paid CEO’s. In both cases you’re getting a truck load of money and the tax implications are probably less getting w2′d that money rather then winning it in the lottery. Once you have that pile of dough sitting in a bank account what would you do with it? I’d venture to guess most people would choose to go buy a new car. As a lottery winner you could buy the finest luxury car; then again you could be Jay Fishman CEO of Travelers and been given a $164k allowance in 2007 for not only a car but also a driver according to this insurancejournal.com article! Of course the next thing to buy is that millionaire home. If you win the lottery you’ve gotta plop down at least a cool $5 million for a new home or you could become the CEO of Qwest who was paid more then $8 million for his house according to this Fool.com article. Finally wouldn’t it be nice to have a lack of responsibility and be more care free without the burden of knowing where the next paycheck will come from; of course winning the lottery could help with that. The same could be said for the CEO’s of recently government bailed out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Per a recent Yahoo News story they stand to get a combined $24 million worth of compensation after the take over of the failing companies.

Keep on dreaming of winning the Powerball lottery in hopes of striking it rich; myself personally I’d rather dream of hitting the lucky numbers of being named top dog at a Fortune 500 company. Which sounds better to you, becoming a Top CEO or Hitting the Lottery?

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