For about a million, I could buy a small apartment in NYC and move there. At my age–and my wife’s–we feel we have to move close to one of our children.
My worst problem that keeps me up at night is mental illness. I don’t know how much money it would take to fix that because it looks like even very wealthy people are cursed with it. It MIGHT be helpful if I had the money for real therapy instead of a pill mill clinic where my therapist barely speaks English. Or maybe not. At least on therapy day I get a good laugh, even if it’s dark, dark humor.
So just give me the millions and I could at least have fun sharing the wealth.
I’ve heard it said that the two most important things in life are love, health and money – any two of them will offset a shortfall in the other. It’s unreasonable to expect all three. Your husband has love, but not health – money is the variable that would make the difference.
My parents-in-law barely made it to retirement before their health went totally south. MIL’s on dialysis, and FIL’s a cancer survivor with a bunch of other things wrong with him - going in for more tests today, actually. Some retirement. And MIL’s mom is still alive, but she’s in a nursing home with her mind gone with Alzheimer’s.
A ton of money would pay for Cadillac-quality medical care for them, but I don’t know how much of a difference it would make.
Unlike a lot of other posters on here apparently, I’m a firm believer in the “money can solve all problems” playbook, which is why I’m basically unable to ever feel sympathy for rich people.
In my case, I’d love it if I had the money to cover all of my college expenses (tuition, books, gas money, etc.) so that I could devote myself full-time to school as opposed to full-time at school AND an outside job just so that I can cover my bills. Hell, if I’d had the money in HS, I would’ve gone off straight away to uni rather than spending two years in the JC.
And, needless to say, in the US you’d damn sure better have enough money (or strong coverage) in the event of a health crisis. Being independently wealthy certainly alleviates the concern of sky-high medical bills.
Inasmuch as my biggest problem is that I’m broke, I had to think about how I was going to answer this.
I figure with around ~100k I could buy literally everything I want: the house we’ve fallen in love with, a decent used car for both of us, pay off some bills, new carpet & furniture, yada yada yada.
Not enough to quit working, or live in luxury, but it would dramatically turn everything around for me and Mrs. Homie.
I’d need to funnel an ungodly amount of money into research to reduce my disability to something within a mild impact.
I do believe science will reach that stage at some point, however, and money would accelerate the process. So my major problem can be solved with enough money, but it would take a lot.
Money is completely irrelevant in my case (and assuming that I then call my situation a “problem”…).
My biggest problems are not amenable to solution regardless of money. Money won’t buy me a new genetically identical pancreas or cure my daughter’s autism. But down one level from that is debt, so I based my answer on that.
I think my biggest problem doesn’t exist now but it exists in the future.
I would like however much money a 35-year-old should have in retirement funds in order to have a comfortable retirement. Right now I have less than zero, because all of my savings doesn’t even cover what I should have for a “disaster fund.”
Money can’t really fix anything else about me right now, but it will definitely be a huge factor in 25 years or so.
I picked the “up to a million” option. I could probably manage okay on less, but it wouldn’t last, as I’ve been there before. I need financial security, and the job market these days doesn’t offer that anymore. A million dollars, though not an amazing amount of money, with careful management would keep me solvent for most of, if not all of, the rest of my life.
Between $100,000 and $999,999.99.
The pays off my mortgage and pays for the Kiddo’s college. At the moment, those are my serious “problems” and they’re not that bad.
Money would not fix any of the problems I have, unfortunately.
My issues are not the kind that can be solved by money. In fact, my money situation is one thing that I’m OK with, in that I have not had to worry about it for over 15 years.
Oh, yeah. Right now, lack of money is my most serious problem.
About $150K (after taxes, or tax-free) would change my life.
I don’t really have any problems that I can solve with money…other than the problem that I want a lot more of it.
I have some nagging concerns about being able to retire “on schedule” years from now which mostly relates to Bay Area housing costs. Something like 50k would be nice but probably wouldn’t make a huge difference in my plans. But starting around 100k I’d definitely start felling a little more at ease, 200k even more so. Given my particular circumstances 300k in hand now I think would largely eliminate my concerns. So there you go - I’d really like another 300k in liquid assets, more would be fine :).
Yes. Our most pressing problem is my in-laws. They have nothing, and there is state assistance, and I’m hopeful that we can do OK and muddle through, with luck. If we put the work in we can get them the help they are going to need, and there are siblings helping, and it could be so much worse. But if we were rich, we could put MIL into the lovely group home especially for people with her long-term condition, which is around the corner from our house, and know she would be cared for well, right under our eyes. It costs about $4K per month, so it won’t happen. But oh, life would be better.
Plus a retirement deal for us would be good.
It depends on how I define my worst problem. I have two that are fairly equal and money can resolve one of them.
The problem money can resolve is that I have a home that is not sellable in the shape it is in and is getting less livable each year but about $40-50,000 would resolve that. Just knowing that the house is sellable and that I would be able to get a price above the loan value would be a big load off my mind. For now, it’s cheaper to remain here than to go for a short-sale.
The other problem is my health, mainly depression and weight, but throwing money at it would probably help, I am not foolish enough to believe the depression would go away permanently but financially affording the time and membership at a gym and a therapist to help keep me grounded would go a long way towards lessening the problem.
Beer and pastry? Eeeew. A good coffee and pastry, or beer and something savory - I could really go for wings right now. You know the kind - fresh out of the fry-well, so the skin is good and crispy, then shaken with just barely enough sauce to flavor them so they don’t go all soggy by the time they are cool enough to eat.
And I was browsing online. A solar facility with 4000 arrays [but the podcast didn’t specify the size of array - 1 panel, 4 panel or 8 panel] cranks out enough energy in 1 hour to power 1000 homes. It makes roughly $3.5 million a year income. I think it would be kicking to own a facility that size, so call it $5 mil - buy a chunk of desert down near the Salton Sea, build the facility with a 4 unit apartment and office/workshop. Hire a manager and budget for 3 base employees to run the place, make arrangements to haul in appropriate water in case a well is out of the question. Sit back and enjoy the income. Do some medical tourism, kick money into medical research - there is some interesting work being done in in stem cells and organ growing/printing. Start a small business researching vat protein lobster, shrimp, crab and scallops [I think I have an idea on how I could manage it.] Travel.
I am just tired of the rat race. I would love to do something positive [solar power, and funding some research] and get out of the rat race. sigh
Though coffee and pastry sounds good. As long as it isn’t poptarts or those horrible little fried fruit pies, the filling has gone to shit in them.