How would your life change if you won or inherited $1 million?
Let’s face it, one million dollars doesn’t have the buying power it used to. From months reading the Washington Post real estate section I know it wouldn’t buy me a house in my neighborhood. Most of those go for at least $1.2.
But it’s still no laughing matter. It’s enough to make some significant life improvements, but not so much that you’d get stalked by strangers from middle school asking for a “loan.”
Here’s what I’d do with my million:
1. Share half with my immediate family members.
2. Apply to anthropology or archaeology programs in DC and take a couple years off work to go to school full time.
3. Travel to dig sites around the world and volunteer while waiting to matriculate in a graduate program.
4. Invest in cameras and lenses to document my travels from site to site.
6. Splurge on some first edition leather bound books.
7. I would take flying lessons and get a pilot’s license.
8. Upgrade to a 2-bedroom apt. with den.
9. Save $100,000 for a rainy day.
10. Put $100,000 in a separate account so that I could donate the interest each year to my charity du jour.
What would you do with your windfall?
malaland.net 
24 August 2007 at 2:50 pm
Hmm. Probably something like:
1. Pay off my house and all my debts.
2. Buy a beach house for my sister. ($300K will go really far in Asbury Park, NJ.)
3. Give my husband $100K to establish a home studio.
4. Invest the rest.
I’m such a bore, but all of that would make me incredibly happy.
24 August 2007 at 5:01 pm
1) Have my mother in law invest a hunk of it (investing is her hobby and she’s GOOD at it).
2) I wouldn’t have to worry about selling this house when my husband starts school in another state. I’d buy a house there and let this one sit on the market for a while, so we wouldn’t be living apart.
3) I’d endow the local cat shelter
4) I’d start applying to grad schools without worrying about paying for it.
25 August 2007 at 2:29 pm
Great question…
1) Pay off debt
2) Setup trust account for each parent (no money management skills, hence my #1).
3) Endow scholarship in my grandmother’s name
4) Buy more camera gear (Canon)
5) Setup travel fund
6) Invest the rest
12 May 2008 at 6:24 am
Put it in several different Banks (don’t put all eggs in one basket), and live off the interest.
21 August 2008 at 4:46 pm
buy a monkey, and one of those grind organ things. move to nyc and be happy.