Kate started it — the Betts-Wilmott family lottery habit. In weeks when the 649 is in the double-digit millions, my daughter Kate takes her $3 and buys a lottery ticket.

The idea, as she explained it to me, is to buy the ticket early in the week. (The draws are on Wednesday and Saturday nights.) Then you have lots of time to contemplate what you would do with the winnings. The $3 is the price of happy thoughts.

I am not much of a gambler. I am one of those people who has always believed you make your own luck through hard work. Besides, I am just not that kind of lucky — I don’t win things. It seems to me the only time I have ever won anything in a game of chance was when I was 12. I won a turkey at the Dresden Legion’s Christmas bingo.

But listening to Kate plan how she would spend her millions was inspiring. First, there was the Maserati. Then there was the sheep and goat farm. (Kate is a dedicated knitter.) And she would give $1 million of her winnings to her sister Rachel and $1 million to me.

So, I felt I had to get in on the game. After all, how can you really plan how you will spend your lottery winnings if you don’t even buy a ticket?

Now, like Kate, when the lottery winnings are substantial enough to require really big dreams, I buy a lottery ticket.

Of course, once I started planning what to do with my millions, I found myself facing some fundamental questions. For starters, if money were no object, what would I do?

I could start a weekly financial newspaper — like the old Financial Post, at which I worked in the 1980s — and I could hire all the great people with whom I have worked during my years in journalism. It would be my own journalistic dream team.

But, wait! Why would I do that at my age? I could escape the tyranny of deadlines altogether and retire. Why, if I had millions, I could become a ski bum, spending the winters following the snow and seeing if there is any such thing as too much skiing.

But that would interfere with my hockey schedule. And what would I do in the summers? I could sit on the back porch and get caught up with my reading. But then what? What would I do on rainy days? In the summer, husband Norm — a freelance photographer — follows the Ontario Dodge rodeo circuit. He has no interest in travelling. He probably wouldn’t be thrilled by the ski bum concept, either.

I just can’t seem to dream big enough.

It has occurred to me during my lottery ticket excesses that I am a financial advisor’s worst nightmare. Here I am, approaching retirement age, not sure I want to retire and, if I do, wondering what I want to do in my retirement. I have a husband who is happy doing what he is doing and never wants to retire. And I am looking for a windfall so I can do all the things I dream about. How do you plan for that? And I would bet there are a whole lot of baby boomers in the same boat.

But as Kate reminded me, paraphrasing Wayne Kemick, a BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. advisor who spoke at the Top Advisor Summit (see page B9) last month, the investment advisor’s job is not about getting clients what they want, but about making sure they have what they need.

Now, Norm, who hates to be left out of anything, is buying lottery tickets as well. My greatest fear is that Norm will win and he’ll buy more stuff. We’ll have to buy a new house because he will have filled the one we have with cameras and gadgets.

But I’ll keep dreaming. This week’s 649 is $32 million. After I give Rachel and Kate each $1 million, I need to plan for $30 million.

TESSA WILMOTT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF