Windfall meme

[resonant]

Windfall Meme, spotted @ gatewaygirl: what I would do if $N dropped into my lap in some legal non-taxable (or post-tax) way?

$10: It would just go into the cash already in my wallet. Unless that's against the rules? Let's say it's against the rules. In that case, some midday when I wasn't working I'd use it for pho and Vietnamese iced coffee.



$100: This would buy a 90-minute massage in Corntown. Those of you who live in big cities may commence envying me now.

$1000: It's not quite enough for a new MacBook Air, but it's not too far off; I'll bet our income-tax refund will be big enough that I'd feel comfortable using it to make up the difference.

$10,000: This would allow me to quit my job in May instead of August, giving me a lot more time to job-hunt in New Town and arrange the move. Or, alternately, I could work right up to August, move to New Town and get our possessions settled and the kidlet well-established in school, and then start job-hunting.

$100,000: This was the hardest one!

If I already had a full-time job that would support the family until the spouse is done with school, then I'd be thinking thoughts of vacations (both the family fun kind and the solitary writing kind), and of luxuries that have always been out of my price range (it's always been a dream of mine, for instance, to have custom-made shoes for my oddly shaped feet). But our situation right now is so uncertain that I don't really think I could spend it on frivolities.

So I think I'd probably do one of the $10,000 job-quitting options above (including paying for our health insurance until we could get it through my work) and sock away most of the rest to pay moving expenses and bills.

I probably would buy the MacBook Air, though. Possibly also the massage and the pho.

$1,000,000: Enough into the kidlet's college fund to pay for whatever bachelor's degree they wanted. A big chunk donated to my poor church and another to Habitat. Beyond that ... wonder if that's enough to build a net-zero house once we figure out where we want to live?

This was extremely interesting -- especially discovering that none of these windfalls are large enough to make me substantially change my vaguely imagined ten-year plan. I continue to think: find a new career for me, get the spouse established in his new career, pay the kidlet through college, and even a million dollars doesn't do much to that plan except take away fear and uncertainty.

Security looms very large in my mind right now. A year from now, if all goes well, I'll be working full-time at a career that's a little more lucrative and interesting than being a church secretary. At that point, I'm willing to bet my answers will be completely different.

Comments

GIP

[jesse_the_k]

see title

Re: GIP

[resonant]

Yes. It will be awesome to be able to daydream about something beyond "one day I will have a real job"!

[malnpudl]

...even a million dollars doesn't do much to that plan except take away fear and uncertainty.

And isn't that a remarkable thing to ponder. Most people I know would say pretty much the same thing.

I think I'm most curious how people would answer this for the next two increments, because with $10M US you can start to do some things that would never have been possible otherwise, and with $100M there's the possibility of doing huge things, whether for oneself or for others (individuals? organizations? causes?) or both. I enjoy my If I Win the Lottery fantasies mostly because I get to think about giving most of it away.

[resonant]

Ooh, good thought! Either of those is big enough that it would be kind of ludicrous to continue in the same lifestyle; you would get to find out what you'd do with your days if you didn't really have to go to work ever again.

The spouse and the Tech Goddess share an anxiety-prone disposition, so I often use her as a sounding board on what could possibly be going on in his head. Once I said to her, "I truly believe that there is no amount of money that would be enough to make him stop worrying about money," and she said, "Oh, yes, there is. Ten million dollars. Ask him. You'll see."

And I asked him, and that was exactly what he said. "Ten million dollars, because you could invest it and live off the interest and never have to touch the money."

(Also once I asked her why he leaves the dental floss on the kitchen counter and the scissors in the medicine cabinet, and she said, "When I do that, I'm thinkin' about ancient Egypt." You can see why I love these people.)

[cluegirl]

At 10M and 100M, I start getting into municipal philanthropy. Our town is full of grand, Victorian age buildings that are in MUCH need of love, and I'd be thrilled to have the flow to fix them, regardless of profitability, and then rent/sell them to the kind of people and businesses that don't usually get a crack at elegant properties like that.

Also? Patron of the arts leik whoa! I'd be building and refurbing theatres, funding concerts and plays and recording sessions, and generally getting my Apollo on with that kind of cash in hand.

[resonant]

Funny how you see people's priorities better when you get to larger amounts of money. There's a Paul Simon song where he addresses one of his children thus: "You don't need to waste your time/Worrying about the marketplace." It's a lovely dream.

[isis]

Ooh, interesting addendum. Because - well, I don't talk about it much, but I'm pretty well off. So none of these really make a difference. Even a million dollars - okay, that would almost double our wealth, but practically it wouldn't really change things. But $10M or $100M, yeah, I would start giving a LOT more money to my favorite causes, and I'd fly first-class whenever I went somewhere, and our next boat would be a really high-end catamaran.

[resonant]

Hell, if I had millions of dollars, I'd travel the way people do in Regency romances, with a staff of servants going ahead of me to make sure that wherever I was going already felt like home when I got there.

[isis]

I think that takes more than mere millions!

[sara]

Yeah, for me it wouldn't make much of a practical difference until we got up to "paying off my mortgage" money.

[resonant]

I've noticed that theme in people's answers to the meme -- the mortgages, the student loans. In a sense that money would be buying freedom.

[ellen_fremedon]

There is a level between $1M and $10M where the interest on investing it would be just enough to pay for housing and health insurance. If I had a windfall of that amount, I would feel pretty secure stopping there and picking up freelance or part-time work for my groceries and incidentals-- I know I can economize a lot on groceries and incidentals and not feel particularly straitened.

[resonant]

When it actually looked like nationalized healthcare was a real possibility, it occurred to me that if it happened, about a third of the people I knew would immediately quit their jobs. So many people are working the jobs they're working (or the hours they're working) just to protect themselves from the danger of being uninsured.

There's a big industrial employer here, and a generation ago, it used to be common for guys to finish (or drop out of) high school, go to work at union jobs, and have enough years to retire by the time they were in their late 40s. One result of this is that there are a LOT of small family businesses around here doing things like floor refinishing, tree-trimming, etc. Turns out that when a guy with blue-collar skills can retire in good health with a pension and health insurance, a lot of the time what he does with his time is help other people with their property upkeep.

Which is a longwinded way of saying that I'd love to see what people would do if their work choices didn't have to be motivated by fear.