LogFAQs > #949827892

I'd pay off my and my girlfriend's student loans (~$60k total), my mother's mortgage (~$500k, low-interest enough that the money would be better invested, but that'd be pocket change for me and I think the QoL improvement from being debt-free would mean more to her), and buy my girlfriend's mother a house and move her out here (probably another ~$500k). From there, another $5 million apiece would very comfortably fund both mothers' retirements if invested sensibly, so I'd toss that out as well.

That would bring it down to (assuming half was lost to taxes) $489 million. Invest that at a 3-5% return and it'll make me $15-25 million a year, half of which would disappear to taxes (so $7.5-12.5). 2 x $100,000 of that would go toward funding my two sisters' living expenses (it'd easily cover them, any further luxury is on them to earn for themselves). Another $200,000 would cover myself and my girlfriend very comfortably, and would probably actually be a lot more than we'd need (really, we could get by on $100,000 quite happily). Maybe set aside another $100k for good measure, and that'd leave $7-12 million a year to donate to various local causes (recognizing that donating it would throw off the taxation estimate above, but I can't be bothered to mess with that).

I'd have to look further into that to figure out what causes would be worthwhile and just how far that'd go, but it would single-handedly cover half of the provincial food bank's annual expenses ($16.1 million last year, with $16.3 in revenue), which would be nice. Could probably do a lot for shelter purposes, too, particularly as far as funding a housing-first initiative goes. However, this is all hypothetical, so there's not much point budgeting that out now.

ReggieTheReckless posted...

I guess that's our most direct comparable statistic to exactly what percentage of people are fucking brain dead stupid

Idiots, lol

"HURRR I WON THE LOTTERY IM GONNA BUY EVVVVERYTHING AND LIVE IN A CASTLE MANSION WITH SERVANTS"

Pretty much. More often than not, lottery wins go to people that have very little understanding of how to handle significant amounts of money. They're used to only splurging on stuff when they can afford it, so once they can afford everything, they splurge on everything. It's surprising just how quickly you can burn through even $100 million if you completely disregard trying to hold onto it. It also doesn't help that any significant lottery win results in everyone you've ever known coming out of the woodworks to beg for "just 1 million." Turning that down can be hard, but heeding it adds up faster than many people realize.

There is also the point that being poor tends to result in a fundamental mindset of feeling compelled to spend money on something whenever you have it. That's a simple consequence of always being behind or barely scraping by: the idea of hanging onto money feels foreign and uncomfortable. Obviously, that mentality is inappropriate once you come into a very large amount of money, but it can be really hard to overcome that compulsion.

---

This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.