Why in the world would I hand out this kind of dough? Because…

• My accountant just notified me that in order to get in a lower tax bracket, I need to spend 500 bucks before my tax year-end.
• I’m lonely and need to purchase a friend. $500 is all I can afford.
• I need a tax deduction to offset my runaway book sales.
• I like making things happen, especially when I have $500 rattling around in my back pocket.
• I like making people happy, even if it costs $500.
• I think my wife is cutest when her face turns purple. Today it turned a lighter shade of purple when I told her about my cash giveaway. I think the full-blown deep purple coloration will arrive on July 15.
• I’m an idiot. To confirm, read my book or at least the reviews.

All important aspects of this “sweepstakes” are in bold letters.

One Winner. Qualified drawing.

To be eligible for this cash bonanza, you must do two easy things and one really hard thing:

Easy part:

1. Sign up to follow this blog in the upper right hand corner of this blog.
2. Share on Facebook the Facebook post announcing this madman’s giveaway.

Hard part:

3. Be a friend of mine on Facebook or you won’t be included in the random number generated drawing. You and I must have at least one Facebook friend in common for you to be accepted as my friend. 

If you aren’t my Facebook friend and we don’t share a common friend, comment on this blog post as to which Recovering Idiot Amazon review you liked the most and at least one word as to why.  “Because” will suffice. If you want to go into more detail, feel free.

This Comment rule is intended to separate bogus Friend requests that I receive from people who genuinely want to be my friend and in my cash giveaway contest. I’ll then accept your Facebook friend request. Friend requests not meeting this criteria will receive no response.

The winning friend will be selected in the numerical order of my Facebook friends as listed on my Facebook page.

Just to be clear: Following me on Facebook is not what counts in the giveaway. Being a RecoveringIdiot.com blog Follower is one of the needed components. Sharing a RecoveringIdiot.com blog post on Facebook is the other. My Facebook friends will all be in the numbered drawing each week until an eligible name shows up.

Here is the random number generator we will be using:  Random Number Generator

I know this random number generator tool is not quite as professional-looking as the Powerball tools they use to give away hundreds of millions of dollars.  However, my budget is a bit less than the Lotto promoters and my “winner” probably won’t have his or her life ruined like the Lotto winners often do.

However, if you think the extra 500 bucks IS going to ruin your life, please shred the check as soon as you get it. Unfortunately, if you have to do this you’re never going to know if my check was going to bounce or not.

So you may ask “Why is being your friend the hard part? Being your friend doesn’t sound all that difficult.”

You must not know me, eh?

In a nutshell, over the years I’ve heard from so many people how hard it is to be my friend.

The first anniversary card I got from my wife was a do-it-yourself Turkey kit. The caption read “Ben, you need a friend.” If you’re still not convinced, I guess you’ll just have to find out the hard way.

If the pre-qualified winner is picked from among my Facebook friends but hasn’t completed both of the first two requirements, I’ll announce their name and give condolences. If we don’t have an eligible winner, the same process will be repeated the next Saturday and every Saturday thereafter until a qualified winner is drawn.

Most sweepstakes exclude relatives or employees of the awarding company. This one doesn’t since I have many relatives who are part of the mix of my Facebook friends.

If my wife wins, I should probably leave the country.

However, I have to say I’m hopeful the winner is not related to me or I’ll never hear the end of it.

This drawing is going to make someone $500 worth of happy or possibly a few people $500 worth of sad if we don’t pick a winner right off.

Similar to the gamut of emtions we’ll each have when we reach the pearly gates.

Here is the originating seed that spawned this senseless giveaway…

Mark Maxfield won a measly $50 by simply being a Recovering Idiot Follower which automatically registered him in that drawing. You can read about his good fortune in this blog a couple of weeks ago. I got such a kick out of writing him a check I decided to up the ante by five times the amount of what Mark got. Thus, the $500 figure.

To insure this promotion is on the up and up, I’m going to hire Price, Waterhouse and Cooper to audit the proceedings.

Whoops! After an online search, I just found out PWC will charge me $50,000 just to watch me pick a FB friend. In addition, they want 40% of the winnings.

Ain’t going to happen.

Who needs accountants when you’ve got a mind as good with numbers as I do?

But, I probably better hire an accountant just to keep everybody happy. Therefore, I will hire a former PWC CPA’d person to do the observation. That person will be…drumroll please…Margaret Payne from Phoenix AZ.

Margaret was the only female bean-counter on a 5-person bean-team from BYU that won a national collegiate accounting contest. This is the only reason I have chosen her.

BYU Students Take Top Prize at National xTAX Competition

 

This happened back when she was still packing around my last name and before she married Jake who is a real Payne and has always been one.

To be candid, there’s one other small little reason she was acquired. When I said I was going to hire an accountant, I was mistaken. Please omit the word “hire”.

She won’t cost me a dime since she’s my middle daughter and still owes me from back in the day when I changed a few of her really yucky diapers. Her observation will have to take place on Facetime since now I can’t afford the 500 dollar airplane ticket for her to be here in person. . Thanks, Meggie!

Meg will be judge and overseer of the giveaway.

We are doing all we can to insure that the Russians don’t hack into this process.

Disclaimer: In the very unlikely event this little promotion goes viral, contrary to what most of my fans think, I can only do so much in accepting friend requests.

Late-coming entrants will be accomodated in chronological order of application. Those unable to be accepted will have to wait in line until I can get around to accepting their friend request, whether it be in this lifetime or in the world to come, I know not.

Also, in the very likely event that I go bankrupt between now and July 15, I’ll still cough up the 500 bucks. Just don’t tell the bankruptcy trustee or my purple-hued wife.

If you have any questions, make a comment at the bottom and I’ll answer you as soon as we get back from the dermatologist.

Michele’s skin conditon has flared up again.

Good luck. May the best Follower win!

Concerning my book. I’m already thinking about having another $500 contest concerning a Recovering Idiot book owner/reader. This is down the road a bit but if you don’t have the book, you might think about getting it and studying up. The contest will require knowledge of some aspect or content from the book.

 

   A quote from the book… 

I was two years old at the time and toddled around the place in freezing weather while the folks built the house. I probably wasn’t much help. Dad mixed concrete for the foundation by hand and shovel. They illuminated the primitive worksite with the car headlights….

…My future with the capitals “BT” for “Big Trouble” was foretold one cold winter night when I stuck my tongue on the business end of a frozen hammer. The folks got a little concerned when they saw me walking around with a claw hammer hanging out of my mouth.

How to thaw and separate? There was no electricity, heat, or running water. I was screaming and time was of the essence. The only warm substance available was mom’s spit so she started hocking loogies toward my connection point with this foreign object until we finally separated…

 

Read the reviews.  Paperback or Hard Cover.

Kindle Book One      Kindle Book Two