"Some people are cut out for champagne and caviar. I'm more the beer and pretzel type."*

   It is a truth universally acknowledged that things tend to be more awesome when you have money. You can have your own chef, trainer, masseuse or pool. Better yet:  a mega bus that has room for one hundred of your best friends and offers them each a DVD/Xbox 360 console at their seatback. I heard that Snoop Dogg got that for one of his kids, just because. 

   But other things are awesome, too. You can pay all your bills at one time, for instance, instead of pacing them out through the month. Because you have all kinds of money in your bank account(s). You can take a trip whenever you feel like it, even if it’s just a trip to Council Bluffs, Iowa. You can fill up your entire gas tank instead of filling it up 3 gallons at a time. You can buy your underwear somewhere other than the clearance bin at Kmart. Money is kind of awesome. And no, it can’t buy you love (unless by “love” you mean “sex”, because it CAN buy that), but it can buy you pretty much anything else worth having. 

   I don’t, at present, have very much money, but I’ve started a list of things that I’m going to have when I have money, and things that will convince me that I am indeed financially stable. And I intend to be very wealthy one day. I hope that day comes before I’m 85 and don’t give a shit anymore, but that’s a train of thought for another time.

   Here are things that will prove to my future self that I’m finally classy:

1. I will have tissue boxes, and not just toilet paper for blowing my nose. When I’m sick, I treat myself really well by buying a nice, big box of moisturizing facial tissues. BUT AT NO OTHER TIME DO I BUY THESE. The rest of the time I blow my nose with plain old toilet paper. Why? Because facial tissues are an unnecessary luxury that I can’t afford. Whenever I’m at someone’s house and see a box of tissues (especially those fancy name-brand tissues like Puffs or Kleenex), I know I’m at the home of a wealthy person. Especially if they have tissue boxes THROUGHOUT the house/apartment/yacht. And when I see them I act like a yokel at a fancy hotel: I stuff them in my purse. For later.

This drawing represents money coming out of a tissue box, FYI.

2. I will have champagne in the fridge for “just in case.” I saw that in a movie once and it stuck with me. At the moment I’m the kind of person who, if I had champagne in the fridge, would drink it long before “just in case” happened. But I think that has to do with my poorness. I think that if I were rich I wouldn’t worry so much about never having the opportunity to drink champagne (or eat sushi) again and I would definitely save it for when one of my friends came over to tell me they’d just published a novel or landed a starring role in a Broadway play. Those are champagne celebrations, and I will definitely have some on hand for when they happen. 

3. I will have Andes Mints on hand at all times. When my Aunt Mel was rich, she had a mini fridge in the basement of her big, beautiful house on Candlewood Lake in Omaha. The mini fridge was tucked inside a big, wood-paneled bar and there was always a box of Andes Mints in the door. Because that house had walls with paint so expensive I wasn’t allowed to touch them, a pool table in the basement, all-white furniture, an INDOOR balcony and a lake in the backyard, I’ve always associated Andes Mints with wealth. And subterfuge. Because I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be eating those mints. (Side note: Andes Mints are great because they’re way more chocolate than mint.)

4. I will have a den or “library” in my Rich Person home. Books show that you are intelligent. And if you are intelligent, you probably know a lot of things. And if you know a lot of things, you are most likely rich. This library will be like Henry Higgins’ library in My Fair Lady. It will be two stories and feature a spiral staircase and a phrenology skull. It will have tons of really hard-to-read works of nonfiction that I will rifle through just before company arrives in order to make it seem as though I read about String Theory in my spare time. But it will also have a Young Adult Section with a couple of beanbag chairs where I will do my ACTUAL reading.

5. I will always have things to eat in my fridge. Never will there be a day, like so many days in the past 10 years, where I open the fridge and try to figure out what to make out of pickles, cream cheese and hummus. Condiments will be condiments and not dietary staples. 

   I think it’s in everyone’s best interest if I am wealthy because I tend to be very generous, especially when I have been drinking champagne. So if we all do a group prayer, this can be come my reality and the trickle down will make your lives immeasurably classier.

*The quote is from I Love Lucy. I too love beer and pretzels. So much. Seriously. So much.