What would you do with a million dollars? Save? Spend? Squander? |
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Maybe you already have a million or more dollars, maybe not, but the question is what would you do if someone gave you a million bones? Would you save it? Invest it? Spend it? Squander it? I doubt many people would admit to the latter.
I find the answer people give to this question intriguing. These days a million dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, unfortunately, but you can still do a lot. I read an article from one of the finance sites awhile back (sorry, didn’t bookmark the link, but would be happy to put in place if anybody else locates) that suggested a good target retirement principal sum these days is 5-10 million dollars. Naturally, that number depends on your family’s standard of living and what you feel like you’ll need, keeping inflation in mind, when you reach retirement age.
Though the video is a joke, the topic isn’t.
I’d probably end up gambling it away in the market, but if you put $1,000,000 into 30 year tax free bonds at %5, it would give you $50,000 a year without touching the principal. It wouldn’t be indexed for inflation, but $50K tax free is like getting a $75K salary each year for not working. I’d rather go that route, than to just spend it all on some wild lifestyle for a years.
Comment by Davis Freeberg — August 23, 2007 @ 5:09 pm PST
The market is seductive, isn’t it Davis? And it’s been lousy the last couple months. In my competition with my wife, her portfolio is thoroughly kicking my portfolio’s ass.
Comment by TDavid — August 23, 2007 @ 5:26 pm PST
She will lure you in and then bite your head off. It’s hard to think about the risk until after you’ve lost your money. People will play and play until they run out of chips. You just can’t walk away from poker when you are winning, you walk away because you max out your ATM. If you really want to pass your wife, you should forget about the stocks and start buying options on her positions. Just ghost her portfolio, only with leverage. If they go down, well you’ll lose everything, but you probably would have lost the contest anyway. If her stocks go up though, there is no way that she could replicate your leverage. In last years stock pick em’ contest, I put all of my money into 4x leverage on the emerging markets. I was down 60% for most of the year, but finished in the top five by the end of it all. Of course gambling with fake marketwatch dollars is a different animal than real money.
Comment by Davis Freeberg — August 23, 2007 @ 6:05 pm PST
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Pingback by Tux spotted on Jack in the Box monitor » Make You Go Hmm — August 27, 2007 @ 6:00 pm PST
i already have such a 1 mio $ bill. friends gave it to me on my 30 birthday. but what would i do with real 1 mio $ ??? i would invest them and just live from the money that investment will bring me. and of course i wouldn`t go to work anymore.
Comment by Hoto — August 28, 2007 @ 12:40 pm PST
As you’ve rightly mentioned, million $ wouldn’t amount to anything - you are better of using it what you’ve been longing to do all your life! I would quit my job and use it to achieve my life’s ambition - climb mt everst. What happens when I exhaust the money? well, back to square 1. Spending it on gambling is tempting though!
Comment by Kishore — September 6, 2007 @ 11:03 am PST