SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Well, I want to work, but no one will pay me. So, I'd pretty much keep doing what I've already been doing for free, only minus a day job, and then go for all the things I want to do but have been assuming I'll never have enough money to do. I'd keep writing. I'd start my own magazine. I'd open my own bookstore. I'd produce the movies and TV shows all of my friends have been wanting to make (including the ones I've written), or whatever other artistic endeavors my similarly struggling friends have been trying to do, and get all of them jobs. I'd put a bunch of money into the women's shelter I interned with in Boston, probably open one in New York too.

I'd buy a townhouse in Brooklyn. I'd buy a little house in Costa Rica for the winter. I'd buy my dad a Jaguar - which he's been making me promise to do if I ever make it big every since I was little - and whatever else he wants. I'd buy better clothes. I'd travel all the time.

Sounds about right.

 

I'd probably buy the penthouse apartment upstairs, mostly because I hate the cunt and by buying his place, I'd be rid of him. It's a decently sized place and I certainly wouldn't need more room than that. I'd probably get 3 cars (a van/pick-up for moving large items around, sedan of some form, and a Ford GT40 replica since one company makes them in Port Elizabeth.). the rest of the money I'd likely invest to pay for... travels - sports holidays! I'd go and see Arsenal at least five times per season (mostly home games but away would be fine too). Maybe check out some museums too.

I'd probably also get a new TV, playstation, new appliances, but I think most people here would do that. Definitely upgrade my internet, too.

Yep, that'd do for me.

 

If I instantly became immensely wealthy I'd take care of all my family members debts (immediate family), fly my dad to Europe and let him do whatever the fuck he wants and travel wherever he wants because he's dam well earned it and I owe him a lot of money to begin with. I'd travel with him and my twin brother and we'd have a hell of a time. When that went it's route I'd fly back here and by nice properties and jump city to city as I see fit. I'd invest all the money I couldn't spend in bonds and spread some wealth to my nieces/nephews, and fuck me, maybe my own progeny.

Mostly though, I'd want my dad to spend it and enjoy himself. He's worked hard, he's supported me in many ways, and I want him to go out and see the world like he wants to. For me, I'd get the most enjoyment out of my cash that way.

Apparently I and Audrey have similar ideas. Spend money on our pops and travel. Sounds like a nice life.

 

These questions are always fun. I also get a kick out of people who say "it would mean nothing, nothing would change. Maybe I would take a nice vacation." Give me a break. I'm not saying you're going to buy a tricked out Ferrari, but claiming it wouldn't impact your life or you wouldn't spend it really is nonsensical. "People who say that money can't buy happiness, usually don't have any." That being said...

Fortunately for me, I'm pretty self-sufficient, doing fairly well financially, and can say the same for my close friends and family, so I don't feel an overwhelming need to remedy any circumstances. But I can think of a few buckets where the money would go.

Investment/Interest earning: Right away I would take $50 million and put it in a diversified array of investments aiming for a 5%-10% return annually. Both for capital preservation and accumulation. Done correctly, you not protect your nest egg, but also provide a VERY substantial annual income moving forward.

Travel: I'd likely spend the next few months travelling with anyone who wanted or could make the trip. Back to Europe (specifically Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Western Europe), Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Bora Bora, and Hong Kong and Singapore. Sparing no expense and really taking it all in. Lets go apeshit and call it $250K.

Real Estate: I wouldn't feel the need to move, I love Chicago and, even with the money, its a great home base. I'd absolutely upgrade my residence. $8mm could buy me just about any penthouse in the city, and getting crazy, I can see myself combining existing apartments into a new, custom residence for. Huge windows, lots of light, very modern with multiple staircases and an built-in1000 gallon aquarium bisecting the living room/entryway. One day a big estate in the burbs will be nice, but I'm 28, I have no need to move out there yet. However, expanding on the travel, I really like the idea of apartments in some of my favorite places which would give me the ability to spend months there at a time and immerse myself in the location, less as a tourist. So I'd say $2mm apartments in London, Barcelona, Vancouver, Sydney, and Hong Kong. London is my favorite city, so its a no brainer, and the others are places to give me a base for exploration of respective regions. Total: $20MM

Toys: I've wanted a Ferrari ever since I learned to drive stick and took a spin in my friend's dad's F430. I'd prefer an SUV for any drives I would end up doing that require any sort of space and since I give no fucks about maintenance costs, a Range Rover would do nicely as its like driving a massive cloud. But a daily city driver would like be the Tesla S, cause they are sexy as fuck. And until I get tired of the ridiculous maintenance costs and hassle, I'd love a boat on Lake Michigan. Total: $750K

I'd give each of my sisters $1mm because even though they will be successful on their own, it will be a nice boost for whatever they are doing at the time. And another $1mm to my maternal grandma. She's always lived simply and been generous even when she had little. This would also trickle down to my Uncle who took the brunt of some of the issues with that side of the family and moved back to help my Grandma when she had double hip replacements. Their comfort would just make everything a bit simpler. Total: $1MM

The last $25M would be dedicated to business ventures. The idea of not having a 9 to 5 is fantastic, but I would quickly grow bored sitting around in my ridiculous apartment and banging celebrity escorts. Unlike idiot NBA stars who invest foolishly in whatever cockamamie schemes and businesses their associates pitch them, this $25M will allow me to enter into a variety of fields that interest me. I'd like to invest in a nightlife group (not an individual bar or club, but rather a conglomerate who has shown diversification and success), a craft distillery, and some sort of music delivery platform. Gone are the days of starting a record label cause you have some free cash, but the revenue streams from music are more diverse and unique than ever, and being able to combine a love of music and my new found capital would be fantastic.

TL;DR....bunch of ridiculous apartments, a few cars and a boat, fat investment portfolio, and some sort of interesting business ventures to occupy my time.

 

I'll preface this with a bit of a downer story about winning the lottery. There was a guy in Toronto who owned a butcher shop who won some lottery a few years ago. He won a lot - like $25M or something. His wife had died years ago and he had two sons who were in their twenties. This guy took his money and did a good thing. He offered free 10lb bags of chicken to anyone who walked into his store one day. He moved thousands of pounds of chicken that day and made a lot of people happy, and said he wanted to give back. He also went out and bought his boys two brand new cars. Nothing too flashy, but brand new and fully loaded. I think he got them Escalades or something. Then he said he was going to travel, go back to his native Greece which he hadn't seen since emigrating way back in the day. He was happy, he had money, he was going to enjoy the rest of his life.

A year later, they interviewed the guy and asked how he was. He was miserable. No one who came into the store wanted to pay for product because he "didn't need the money" anymore and when he charged them anyway (because it wasn't really his responsibility to use his winnings to pay for the lives of all his employees and his distributors), he lost all his business and closed the store he had built from the ground up. His boys were pissed that he hadn't bought them fancier cars and houses, and neither had spoken to him in a year. When he went back to Greece, because everyone knew he had won a ton of money, every Tom Dick and Spiro came out of the woodwork to pitch him their latest schemes and he realized that his family and friends back home were nothing more than leeches and sponges. In short, in a year, he lost everything and everyone that were close to him. He had all the money in the world, but he was miserable as hell.

Now, with that in mind, if I won a huge lottery - enough that I'd never have to work again - I'd take the following actions in the following order:
1. Hire a really solid financial advisor. A new one.
2. Disappear. For awhile. At least a year until the fuss died down.
3. Park half the money in investments.
4. Park half of the remaining money in equal trusts for my siblings and nephew(s).
5. Take the remaining 25% and buy my parents a second home in China, and my in-laws a second home in New Brunswick. Maybe upgrade their cars.
6. Reno my house and sell it. Buy a place with a ton of land out in the country and quit my science job. If the boyfriend wanted to keep doing his gig (which he might, because he loves it), power to him. If not, that's cool too.
7. Open a music studio somewhere, teach some lessons, maybe open a tutoring company on the side. Something to keep me busy, but nothing where I'd need to pull a solid income to survive.
8. Two vacations a year. One to the islands where the boyfriend likes to travel, one anywhere else in the world because there are some pretty fucking fantastic places in the world that I'd like to see.

That's honestly it. That'd be all I'd want.

 

I'd buy a few more guns and some fishing equipment, then invest/bank the rest so the annual returns I got were more than enough to live well (e.g. better than my current life) from.

Then, I'd demote myself at work to a job with lower stress and less responsibility (I have one in mind). I'd just like to spend more time with my family and less time working to provide for them. And also spend time enjoying the new guns and fishing stuff.

 

I'd be dead within two years.

 

I've always wanted to be a Bond villain. Here's my chance. Maybe an underwater lair manned by buxom women in spandex uniforms. My logo would be an oak branch crossed with an erect cock ejaculating. Maybe a falcon with a huge pair of testicles. Also ejaculating. Something displaying virility, class, and dignity. What would I do exactly? Who cares when you have an underwater lair? But if my enemies ever came calling, I'd buy them off with a delicatessen in stainless steel.

There was this fantastic story a few years ago. Can't find the damn link now. This rimjob of a human being won a $20-ish million lottery. He did the things typical white trash think rich people do and decked out his million dollar home with crap so it looked like a Real Housewives of Jersey yard sale. Blew threw everything, tried to break his daughter's trust fund, then went to jail for selling meth. The Aristocrats!

I'm with Juicy on this. I'd tell no one. Ever. In fact I'd probably make all my donations anonymously. Send people, organizations, whomever a canvas bag marked "$."

My lifestyle would change little. Upgrade my car to something sensible, efficient, something that doesn't sound like a dying lawnmower. Fix my father's house quicker. Start picking up several speculation properties in the area. I'd finally get health insurance so I could see my fucking chiropractor again. Take the European tour. Six months at least. Fly some friends out or something. Whatever sounds good at the time.

This got me thinking. Would I start a brewery or a distillery? Would I want a winery estate? I'm not sure I'd want the hassle just because I could finance such an endeavor; even though I'm madly in love with the *idea*. I'm such a neurotic jerk I'd embroil myself in the thing so much I'd forget to enjoy it. Maybe I'd just like to drink a nice wine from a nice chateau while sitting on a nice porch, soaking in a Provencal sunset. Maybe I just want to live my life with as little impact as possible. Really, I just never want to have a boss again. The rest is just gravy.

 

The very first thing I'd do is immediately cut off my phone service and then leave town. I'd make myself very difficult to contact. Like Juice, I'd claim my reward anonymously then get a team of advisors to help me safeguard my money.

I'd first donate 15-20 million to enable my organization to build a new clinic, since our current facilities are old and ill-designed for healthcare. I'd then pay some miscreants to douse one of our facilities in gasoline and burn it to the ground, because fuck that building.

I'd pledge 50 million to the University of Minnesota, make sure everything went along, then rescind my offer at the last second to spite them, because fuck the U of M. I'd make sure the process proceeded in a fashion such that I couldn't be held liable for any damages.

I'd give each of my parents 5 million or so so that my mom could retire and they could both live comfortably for the rest of their lives. I'd also buy my dad a '59 corvette, his favorite car in the world.

I'd move - don't know to where - and my new house would have a big enough game room for me to buy this bad boy:

Spoiler

I'd then live comfortably for the rest of my life and pursuing whatever passion caught my fancy.

 

Buy a couple hundred acres in Georgia and build a compound complete with guard towers on the outskirts. Have a fully stocked arsenal at my disposal with everything from grenades to a tank.


Host an organic farm supplying directly to my restaurant in town, portraits of me and my weaponry adorn the walls.



Setup grants for Diabetes and Cancer research and create a venture capital firm for fun. Manipulate the market to fuck over the worst public corporations.

 

I'd buy an island and pull a Keyser Söze. Well, probably without all of the family killing.

Mostly the "you'll never hear from him again" part.

On second thought, it would probably end up like this: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s05e06-cartmanland

 

I'd be boring with it, much like IWantSomeJuice, and invest the vast, vast majority (around 95 Mil or so) and live off the interest. I'd also do so anonymously, to avoid headaches of everyone and their mother coming to me and begging for money. That said, with that kind of income, I'd have a few things.

First, I sure as shit wouldn't work. I know some people love their jobs, and I know my wife would still want to work one or two days a week, but I wouldn't. I'd stay home and take care of my kid.

Second, I would pay down all of our debt. Pay off the house, cars, and what is left of my student loans. I would then take around $150,000 to $200,000 per kid (two nieces, two nephews, my daughter, so far) and put it in a trust fund that they can spend only on college or put towards a house payment. That way, they don't start their adult lives up to their eyeballs in debt.

Third, I wouldn't move, but I would absolutely upgrade the house we live in. I'd finish the basement, put a sports bar with a full wet bar on one side, with a fireplace and a big-screen TV above it on the other side. The bar area would have a smaller TV in the corner, and be stocked fully with every kind of liqueur we could buy, along with a keg so we'd have beer on tap. Every Sunday in the fall I'd have family and friends over to watch football in my basement. New fence, hire a landscaper, fix up our home-gym/work out room, lots of other stuff like that.

Next, we'd put in a pool. A nice in-ground pool with a hard, retractable cover, so we don't have to worry about kids falling in it.

I would turn our storage room into a media room. Run the wires to the TV in the basement above the fireplace, but it would have our media library (all our DVDs, Blu-Rays, video games, Video Game systems, cable box, etc) all wired to the TV through the walls so it wouldn't be seen. Then a nice surround sound system in that basement. I'd probably buy way more movies, games, and TV series than I do now.

Finally, vacations. Every four months or so, we'd go on some kind of vacation. With the kind of money we'd have, all our debt paid off, we could go pretty much anyplace we wanted any time we wanted. Most vacations we bring the kid, some we bring our families, but some it would be just the wife and I. Either way, I can't imagine us ever going more than a few months without traveling someplace.

I now feel I've put far too much thought into this, but the truth is, a lot of this is stuff we plan to do anyway (i.e. the basement, the pool) once we pay off our cars, which should happen within the next year or so. The vacations and trust funds would be the biggest change, plus I'd get to quit my job.

 

Other than all the responsible boring shit like investing, financial advisers, setting my immediate family up for life etc, I'd hire the best mma coaches, nutritionists, and personal chefs money could buy, and I'd spend a year or two trying to make it in the local mma scene. Not the UFC, because I'm too old and don't have that sort of work ethic, but the local scene is eminently crackable.

After a year of hard training (and hopefully learning some of the discipline I'd require to survive the next phase of my life), I'd be burnt out on the requirements of leading a healthy lifestyle. So, I'd buy a nice little compound in Brazil or Mexico or somewhere else where the rules are a little flexible for those in the right income bracket. Sure, money will let you win a trial here in the West, but why go through all that hassle when you can quietly buy off the prosecutor? Then I'd invest whatever it cost to upgrade the lives of those in the slums around me to 'approaching first world', making a significant contribution to the world and incidentally making myself into something of a local hero. Then it's fucking party time for me and all my friends. Think gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel, except the gingerbread is mdma and coke. I'd also pay some trained medical staff to step in and tell me when enough is enough, and make sure I'm doing enough healthy things to maintain some level of health.

During this time, I'd also purchase a number of forests in danger of being logged and build a few treehouses for my own private use. Nothing disruptive to the nature that lives there, just places I could chill when the fast life got too much. I'd do what I could to preserve the few remaining wild places in the earth; the Amazon, etc.

Then I think I'd spend a couple of years travelling the world scuba diving. Just bouncing from Egypt to South Africa to Asia to South America, diving and seeing what the world has to offer.

Man. This thread is making it really hard to keep searching for a new job instead of taking my redundancy payout and going exploring.

 

You might want to spend some of that money on some genealogical research to figure out how both of your sisters and your maternal grandmother are the same person.

You know. That or counting classes.


I would probably try to avoid telling people, and use the money to invest in projects that I thought were worthwhile. It might be nice to start a business where it doesn't much matter whether I make money.

 

I agree with Juice, tell no one. Also I wouldn't give a dime to family or friends except my parents. Not because I don't want to, but it just never ends well (see Angel's post).

Then I would pick someone I don't like, I don't really have enemies so maybe the next person that cut me off in traffic. I would silently by the business that person works at, promote them near the top with a huge raise and let them sit pretty for a year or so.

Then I'd have the wheels start coming off the wagon for them, by this time they'll have already gotten use to a luxurious lifestyle so even middle class would seem like hell. I'd first let them go then send out scathing letters with bribes to other companies to make sure they don't hire them.

At this point I'll do the best I can to monitor them as their life spirals into misery and laugh maniacally as they keep wondering what went wrong.

Once that's done I'd probably try to climb as many mountains, drink as much wine and skydive at as many drop zones around the world as I can.

Also, unlike most people I'd want as little possessions as possible, home ownership is the prison of the middle class. When you're that rich "it makes sense financially" isn't really a reason to own shit.

 

I'd quit my job, get a small house in the countryside somewhere with a huge shop/studio where I could do build furniture and do miniature work in comfort. Probably learn to fly a variety of civil aircraft. I'd definitely be the proud owner of a classic muscle car, and maybe a late model Morgan.

I'd pay off the mortgages for my immediate family and fly my mother to Alaska for a cruise. When she gets back she'll find her driveway paved.

The big cat sanctuary I used to volunteer at would get $1 million. That will cover their monthly expenses for the next 50 years.

And the rest would sit in the Bean travel fund.

 

My rugby team would get enough to build a stadium and my family would get enough to be comfortable.

After that, I'd buy 1,000 acres or so in northern Minnesota and live in peace and solitude. I'd hunt and fish for my meat, tend 2 acre garden for my veggies, and say "fuck off" to technology. When we're not there, we'd be spending time on a small Belizean island, drinking Belikin and watching the world go by.