My wife and I had an interesting conversation last night about the $1 billion Powerball jackpot. Basically acknowledging that winning it and it being known that you won it would necessitate giving up the life we currently live for an entirely new life. We actually reluctantly came to the decision at this point in time we weren’t sure we would be excited about doing that given our community and friends.
I thought it was an interesting enough question to pose here. Would you trade your current life for some large bag of money? If so or if not why?
I, for one, would love to have the problem of needing to choose between a bag of money and my current life. Sadly, it looks like there was an error with Powerball last night, and someone else won my billion dollar jackpot.
When my wife and I have fantasized about winning a big mega-jackpot, one of the “ground rules” we assume is that we would take steps to ensure that as few people as possible would know. There are some family members who would know, because we would want to shore up their financial situations, but otherwise…
That’s perhaps easier to do in our case, because I’m a pretty asocial person, and my wife’s disability means most of her social interactions are done online.
Nope. More money wouldn’t make us any happier, and that much more money (which our state IIRC wouldn’t allow us to keep a secret) would not change our lives for the better. It would only turn most of our relationships sour.
I don’t think it’d change that much. I have no need for that much money. I’d keep enough so I didn’t have to worry about working, and to set up trusts so my kids would be ok, and use the rest of it with non-profits working to feed/house homeless people and protect LGBTQ rights.
I wouldn’t change my life enough to drop friends unless they tried to become leeches. I’d quit my job of course, but I already make 2-4x what most of my friends do and they vaguely know it. Most don’t know exactly unless I really trust them to not be weird.
If I won $1B, I’d buy a second house closer to where our family is and bounce between the two, vacation abroad/out of state for about 3 months each year, and get really into gardening, cooking, and volunteering at the soup kitchen and animal shelter. I’d hire people to do tedious chores like lawnwork and cleaning.
95% of our wealth would go to charity upon our joint death. I wouldn’t give people money (except my parents for retirement) but I’d always be down for helping friends how I can.
Our “current lives” are going to change whether or not there’s a big pile of money involved, that’s just life.
A good chunk of that money would go to setting up my mom and kids - and whatever other family members I felt like giving it to. Probably the last thing I would worry about would be people knowing about the money. Mostly because I don’t give a shit about other people’s opinions.
Also the kitties. There would be a large investment in a kitty sanctuary situation.
That was one of my thoughts too. I was like I would almost rather win the $1 million second prize. Pay off our mortgage, pay off our church’s building loan, and split the rest between our 2 children. That’s be easy-peasy and make life significantly easier and more secure for us.
Winning the lottery.
$1m is great: Eases retirement, allows for some small dream projects and gifts.
$10m is ideal: All of the above plus financially secure self and key relatives.
$100m+ is fine: I do not have lifestyle/tastes that would need that money so there is a significant amount of it that I have to manage as investment and charity.