If You Had Money?

2014-02-19

If you had money what would you do?

Seriously think about it for a moment. If you had say $10 million what would you do? I'm guessing lots of you would buy or pay off your house or sell it and get a new one. Would you quit your job? Would you start a new job? Would you move? Would you retire? Is $10 million enough to retire? Would you teach? Or run a flower shop? Open a bar or a cafe or a club? Would you invest? In what? Buy a sports car? Blow it in Monte Carlo?

What if you had $1 million. What would change in your life? $1 million, at least in the USA is clearly not enough to retire unless maybe you're already at retirement age. It's not enough to buy a house in most of the Bay Area though it is enough money to buy a house in plenty of other places. If you had a $1 million would you buy a house in the Bay Area (if you lived there.) Would you move somewhere cheaper? Would you quit your job?

Think about it, if you make $100k a year at your present job you probably only take home $70k. So if you had $1 million you could live your present lifestyle, without working, for a little over 14 years. Would you do it? Maybe go back to school? Or volunteer every day? Start your own charity and run it for a few years?

What would you do? Would you start your own company? Would you invest it? In what? Would you give some of it away? You could probably start a restaurant. I know some people that want to do that. Seriously, how would you spend your time?

What if you had $100k? Is that enough to make you do something you don't do every day? Maybe you'd buy a new car. Assume you have no other debt (no need to pay off your current car or student loans). What would $100k enable? You could go back to college and learn something new. Live abroad for a couple of years and learn a new language. I don't know how much money most students live off of but I do know when I went to Japanese school 13 years ago it was only $6k a year. The apartment I was in was $12k a year so I suspect my expenses were under $30k a year. In other words, $100k is enough to be a student for at least 2 years, maybe 3.

I'm sure there are other things you could do with $100k. Buy a few houses in Detroit. Travel the world snowboarding for a couple of years.

I'm really curious about your answers.

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