Prologue: A dream_____ Epilogue: A nightmare

I first had a dream. It was then followed by a nightmare.

But 1st - the dream.

I was a run of the mill person. I use to daily go about my life in a manner which was more or less living within a budget and within my means.

Then one day, I received a call from a Bank, which put an end to my daily chores and misery. The caller from the bank asked me to meet the manager of the bank regarding some considerable fortune left to me as a sole heir by some distant relative. I was to reach the Bank and sign some documents and receive the necessary authorization to dispose of my newly found fortune in any way that I saw fit.

Obviously, I hastily reached the bank to take possession of my wealth.

The wealth ran into millions of dollars. From this point, going forward, this was to have a formidable impact on my life. It opened up new worlds to me, now enabling me to afford to buy the things that I never could dream buying before. I can now afford to buy a new home, a villa perhaps. I can now afford to buy a whole new wardrobe, travel across the world, quit my current job that I have and I do not like. I could now live the life of a gypsy, living anywhere on this planet as I please, with nary a thought about the future.

I could get on to a business or invest and speculate in the stock and real estate markets. I would no longer be terrified of losing a few million dollars and still be very rich.

This would be my boom period of my life. My life would be easy, simple, trouble free, uncomplicated. I can do anything that I want to do and my prospects would be inexhaustible. For the rest of my life I would fondly and enthusiastically look back to this period and call it “The Good Times”.

Now the nightmare_

A second letter appeared which put an end to my life of ease and plenty. The letter said that it was proved that my distant relative got this fortune through some criminal means. This meant that the fortune did not belong to my relative and thus could not be passed on to me or to anyone else.

Consequently I was compelled to return the wealth. In view of that, the bank had to freeze the account and a court order was issued restraining me from spending any more of what I thought was an inheritance. The court also demanded that I return whatever fortune was left unspent.

I now find myself covered in a mountain of debt that I cannot repay. I must now sell my home and my dream villa in distress and at a price that was almost half of what I paid for. I had to get rid at a dirt price, the clothes and the many other goods that I had bought. My travels across the world were an overall loss. Also at a great loss were all the expenses that I incurred buying those luxury items. Given my deficiency of past financial success, I also could not make any profits out of my investment in stocks and real estate markets.

All this gusto of receiving my inheritance had turned out to be a financial disaster. With a lot of certainty and by erroneously leading me to understand that I owned a massive fortune, I made substantial purchases. The fact was that I did not own any fortune. But it led me to live a life far beyond my means. I squandered most of the little wealth that I had prior to my inheriting my inheritance.

That was the period of my life when I went bust.

So during my sleep, I went through a boom period and a bust period of my life.