I admit it--I play the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes every day. I am well aware that I have a better chance of being struck twice by lightning than winning any jackpot prize. However, recently I've been thinking about how my life could have been very different (financially speaking), as there was a time when I was so close to winning but I didn't know it. Let me explain....

From May to August of 2009 I was in Alaska. My sister, who is in the Air Force, was getting ready to deploy to Iraq, and she needed someone to help my brother in law with their 3 kids. One day I was playing around on my sister's laptop, and just for fun I went to the Publisher's Clearing House website (www.pch.com). There was a game on there where you had to click on some cards to turn them over, and if a card had a prize you would win that prize. The big prize for this particular game was $1000 per week for life. I had x amount of chances to try for a prize. For some odd reason my eyes were drawn to this one particular card, but I kept ignoring it. It turned out that all the cards I had clicked were duds, no prize. I had used up all of my chances to win a prize, so I clicked on the card I had ignored, and there it was--$1000 per week for life.

Ah, regrets, don't you just love them? If I had followed my gut instinct I would have won that big prize. I wouldn't have lost everything and been "couch homeless" from 2008-2013. I could have kept my condo, my car, literally everything, and been able to stay in Colorado.

I still play the sweepstakes, mainly just for fun, but also to see what would happen if I did enter every day. If I win, that would be nice, but (more likely) if I don't, well then that's nothing to worry about.