A Simple Plan, Starring Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton and Some Other Guy Who Was Pretty Good, Too

Simple:  Uncomplicated; taken by itself, with nothing added.

So while SuperK is visiting family in Idaho I got an old movie from Netflix called "A Simple Plan." The premise is that three guys - including two brothers - stumble across the wreckage of a small plane in the woods, right in the middle of a northern Minnesota winter.  Inside is a dead pilot and a bag with four and a half million dollars.  Their initial impulse is to call the authorities - what they do is grab the money and decide to wait until spring, see if anyone claims it.  The money - not spring.  Spring is unclaimable.

What happens to their simple plan, of course, is that it becomes more and more complicated.  People get hurt, people get killed, the situation deteriorates into a spectacular unmanageability.  At the end of the movie only one of the three is alive - he still has the money - and it looks like he's going to get away with it.  Then . . . he finds out from the cops that they had recorded the serial numbers of the cash before they handed it over as a ransom.

The look on the going-to-get-away-with-it guy is priceless.  He's sitting in the shambles of his ruined life - it was portrayed as a good but unspectacular existence in the opening scenes - aware that he'll never be able to spend any of the ill-gotten money.

I reflect on my own relationship with money.  As I've stayed sober - like most of us - I've been able to save a little.  It's amazing how expensive drugs and bars and lawyers can get - my little nest egg got bigger when I quit shoveling shovelfuls of it into those black holes.  In one of the many great (and cruel?) ironies of my existence I find that I value money less and less.  It seemed so important and now that I have more of it I see it isn't as important that I thought it was.  Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful that I have a cushion and that I can pamper myself from time to time. Not all of us get to that point and there's nothing worse than a guy getting out of a Porsche and counseling prudence in money matters (Ed. Note: I DO have a Porsche, too - it's jet black, has a cool fin and wicked tires and fits in the palm of my hand. I also have a similarly sized Ferrari).

It was a good film to watch as I battle my out-sized instincts with the investment guy.  Unspectacular but simple.