I gamble for a living. Lots of folks think that is glamorous, easy, and carefree. It is none of those. The only thing that longterm gambling winners have in common is discipline, and discipline is not glamorous, easy, or carefree. This is not a post about gambling, but about lifestyle – an ingredient that is most important in making a career in gambling.
I have been doing this seriously for about 10 years now. Eight years ago – a typical question in the Vanzack household from my wife was “why cant I buy a (insert expensive luxury item here) when you just had 10 grand on a dozen football games”. Most of the time, I didn’t have a good answer, and most of the time, I spent the money.
Fast forward to a much smarter (some might say cheaper) – but definitely more experienced gambler – and things are much different. These days everything is budgeted in my house, even when it doesn’t need to be. I know when the year begins how much money I have to make to break even, and I know what I have to make to save money. There is no extravagant spending – and everyone is much happier.
So I began to introspect about how spending less could make everyone less stressed, and more happy. The answers I came to are simple: when you gamble for a living, it appears easy and fast, and you don’t feel like you truly have EARNED the money – so therefore it is very easy to fall in to a frivolous lifestyle. When you go to work and sit there for 40 hours a week – you know exactly the cost of spending money on a luxury – it is time – more time in front of that computer that you hate. But if money comes to you easily, life becomes much more stressful – because it is almost impossible to make good decisions on spending precisely because of the way you made the money. And unless that easy money train is constant and endless, eventually there is a train wreck.
What I learned is that my early years were unsustainable. If money was to be spent freely because money was being wagered freely – I had to change that equation. So I made myself do work – and a lot of time work I didn’t like – to improve at my craft. So where I used to spend 5 hours a week handicapping, I made myself do 40 – to the point of revulsion. Now when my wife came to me with that question I had an easy answer, and I felt good about it – more spending meant more time. It all boils down to time. So your profitability gets better because you are forcing yourself to spend more time perfecting it, your spending goes down, and everyone is happier.
I kind of understand now how windfall situations like inheritances and lottery winners fuck up their whole life. There is no value to the money because it came easily. And gambling is a very easy way to make short term easy money. I force myself to be on a budget because it makes everyone in my family happier – not because we necessarily have to – but everyone is less stressed – something that is totally counterintuitive. You would think that free and easy spending is happiness – but I found the exact opposite.
Now they know that when I am watching games, or crunching numbers, or line shopping on the computer for hours on end – it is a direct correlation to their budgeted expenditures – if I don’t spend that time – there is no stuff – and that creates a sense of value and happiness. I would have never guessed that the manner of making the money is more important than the actual money made, and unless you set yourself up to earn it, there is no value.
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