I've been with my credit union since 1983, and my wife started banking with me when we got married 15 years ago. The credit union holds a monthly drawing for our [Save to Win] account, and my wife would go into the branch whenever they did the drawing and be all disappointed that we didn't win.

When they called to tell us we won the [annual] grand prize, my wife dropped the phone on the living room floor -- she just stood there in shock. I had no clue what was going on, I thought someone had died. When she told me, I didn't process it at all, and we went to bed that night going, 'Wow, tell us this again when we wake up in the morning to make sure we're not dreaming.'

The money was a tremendous help. We were working on the Dave Ramsey program of saving to make payments on our mortgage, so we put the largest chunk of the money into our house and have almost paid off our mortgage. Then we saved some for taxes.

We're still adding to our account, but we told the woman at the credit union, 'If you draw our name again next year, just pretend you didn't see it and draw again.' It's somebody else's turn.