Loose Change

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MY FIRST MILLION

For Diane Hills, a million dollars would mean weeks of walking the narrow streets and open squares in Rome while admiring the majestic palaces and ancient half-crumbled monuments. Rome is Hills’ favorite vacation spot. She’s been four times already. As a public school teacher (kindergarten at Feickert Elementary in Elk Grove), she’s not holding her breath on earning a million dollars, but if she ever stumbled upon that kind of cash, she would go back to the city of seven hills in a heartbeat.  

Hills, 60, has been teaching for 19 years, and notes that she would not splurge with the money. “You can’t do a lot with a million dollars these days,” she says, ever the realist.

Other than the ultimate Roman holiday, what would Hills’ spend her hypothetical million on? “I would help both my sons buy a house,” she says. And since their current residences in Ukiah and San Diego are too far from her Carmichael home, she would, of course, move them closer to her. “I would also start a college fund for my grandkids. I remember what it’s like to work through school — not fun.”

With practical payments out of the way, Hills would return to Rome with her husband for that long vacation. She might stock up on historical novels to read while she travels, and with any extra cash she would spruce up her garden. One imagines it would look like her craft projects-covered classroom since she likes to have colorful flowers blooming all year long. Still, her garden’s missing something she really wants.

“I keep asking my husband for a fountain for my birthday,” she says, but she knows the fountain, along with Rome, will have to wait for “someday.”

WITH THE LIFT OF YOUR FINGER

Are checks and gift cards just too simple? Tired of merely stuffing money in an envelope when giving a gift? Then make that special someone work a little for their money and give them the wooden money maze bank by Serious Puzzles. The bank allows you to drop money through a slot on the top of the bank. To retrieve it, your lucky recipient must solve the puzzle and maneuver the steel ball through the maze. And for those who cannot figure out the puzzle, the solution is included. The money, however, is not.

THE DOLLAR SYMBOL

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