Brother, Can You Spare $65 Million?
Posted by TestOut Staff on
Once upon a time in 2014, a Gulfstream III private jet, one of 202 built between 1979 and 1986, ran off the runway at a general aviation airport in London. No serious injuries resulted, but when your private jet can't navigate well enough to roll down a runway, well, it's probably time to consider an alternative mode of transportation. The jet's owner did what most of us would do and approached his friends with a business proposition: How about you guys buy me a new jet?
That's about as complex as the planning got. The requested new jet, a state-of-the-art Gulfstream G650, would cost in the neighborhood of $65 million. The nuts-and-bolts of the proposed transaction were a) buy me the jet, and b) I will use it to continue to fly wherever I need to go. The party initiating this entirely reasonable request was Georgia-based televangelist and "prosperity gospel" advocate Creflo Dollar. After all, who among us can just pull $65 million out of a hat?
Creflo Dollar apparently couldn't, hence the wholly understandable appeal to his followers to pony up a modest $300 a person. (If you do the math, Creflo was counting on around 217,000 people to participate.) World Changers Church International got a fair amount of negative publicity over Dollar's request for dollars, but the funny thing is that it worked ... maybe. In June 2015, the church announced plans to go forward with its private jet purchase at an undisclosed future date.
It would be convenient if we could all be megachurch pastors and get the things we need (or perhaps want) in life simply by asking other people to buy them for us. That avenue being open only to a select few, however, the rest of us must fall back on more generally available options such as working at jobs. And though you may not be able to buy a Gulfstream private jet out of your IT salary, IT jobs are comparatively plush gigs that can certainly support an upper middle-class lifestyle.
You may not ever find yourself on the hook for $65 million, but stability in uncertain economic times can be worth a lot. Instead of letting your career languish in a rut, use TestOut Continuing Education's top-caliber training to prepare for and pass an IT certification exam. You'll gain the skills and knowledge needed to forge a prosperous new career path, and you'll be better equipped to handle whatever crises may arise. Just in case you don't have 217,000 friends able to kick in $300 apiece.