I’ll pass. Even before reaching my advanced years (I’m 59), I have been too fond of cleanliness and comfort. I don’t believe in camping. I hate snow. I like flush toilets. I don’t WANT to smell nasty things, especially emanating from my own body.
With my advanced years, I have accumulated aches and woes and infirmities. Although you are guaranteeing my prescriptions, I have a tendency to need those prescriptions adjusted regularly.
I also like my bed too much. Even when I was a kid, I couldn’t sleep on the floor because it would kill my back.
Don’t get me wrong, ten mill is BEYOND “nice.” But with the stipulations, I simply wouldn’t make it. The ten million is simply unobtainable, either with or without the challenge.
I wouldn’t do anything that would require me to spend a year away from my wife unless doing so were the only way to save my life, hers, or one of the people on my list of 17 I give a crap about. I’d have jumped at it when I was single, though, unless I ended up in a northern city during the winter.
How would you go about arranging this? Come in from the street and somehow convince her you’re legit? Arrange it beforehand? Because that would seem to run afoul of “good friend in city X” rule.
And there isn’t a [HUD-funded] shelter out there that would admit someone coming from that situation - in HUD’s eyes that would be a non-homeless living situation.
While I agree that HUD shelters would be at the very least hesitant to take in the billionaire’s lab rat, how are they to know? Jophiel’s presented a convincing (to me) argument that hte minder should not be allowed to squeal on the lab rat.
Munch, I also would interpret the “No good friend in City X” rule to mean that you can’t have known the person before starting the challenge. If TruCelt could make friends with the little old lady after being dumped off in the strange city and persude her to take her in, she’d be golden.
I’d be in a much better situation than anyone else willing to work for room and board. There’s no background check I can’t pass. I’ve got ID, I speak English. . . etc.
The best way I think would be to start going to a large church, and put the word out. Someone would refer me pretty quick I’ll wager.
I think this challenge would be better phrased as a “spirit of the rules” than a “letter of the rules” thing. Nitpicking the minder’s role, etc, is interesting, but I think the terms would be better expressed as something like “would you live homeless for a year for £x million, if you have to actually live homeless, and not rely on existing friends and relatives, and for whatever reason aren’t able to maintain a steady job”.
Assuming we both play fair, I’d do it. The experience would be pretty miserable, but I feel I’d have a lot more empathy for going through it, and one year out isn’t too much of an investment for £10,000,000, with which I could do an awful lot.
George Orwell did nearly that, just to write a novel about it.
You wouldn’t be able to pass a check on your current employment, because you don’t have any. Your ID is invalid, because that’s not your address. You don’t have a bank account because you don’t have any income - so you also can’t pass a credit check. You also don’t have insurance, which is going to be a gigantic roadblock. And you aren’t in “a much better situation” - you’re in the SAME situation for those willing to work for room and board.
I really don’t think so, IMO. Being homeless is a HUGE obstacle for people trying to gain employment, even harder for those who are required to be homeless. And being a sober, willing to work individual will help you, but it’s still about 90% of the homeless population out there - and they all have much more believable stories than you do.
I could do it for $5 Million. I’m in good health, have no family obligations, and don’t think I’d have a problem living on $100 / month (in terms of getting enough food to survive). I’d spend a crap load of time in the library - sleeping in the stacks isn’t really that hard (I did it every time we had a fire drill). Also, I’ve slept on the tram at airports before, and no one seems to notice or care (no one’s in there at night). Slept in the baggage floor of an airport too with no problem. The key would be to find a way to keep yourself clean - it would keep people from treating you like a homeless person.
I’d do it - the only sticking point would be finding people to care for my dogs and cats in my absence. But they are nice, adaptable animals and I have enough friends that I could arrange that pretty quickly.
Oh, and figuring out how to keep my home. Mind you ten million dollars would buy me a much, much nicer home than I presently have with mega-money left over so I can live with that.
I could pull it off. I was homeless for a while in the mid 1980s and did OK, although I was able to work and pay for a by-the-week motel so I wasn’t living on the streets.
You live from day to day. Spend days in the library sleeping, and nights walking around town. I’d do it in NYC, which has tons of 24/7 places that don’t mind your hanging out.
When I was homeless, I would walk the streets looking for change. When I had 50 cents, I would go into a cafeteria, use their bathroom to wash up, get a cup of coffee and take any leftovers that someone left on a table. No, it wasn’t a great way to live, but it kept me alive.
I think there’s a basic misunderstanding here. When Skald says “Your handler gives you a hundred bucks and a month’s worth of your current scrips each month.” I’m interpreting that to mean that he’ll give us the actual medication, not just a prescription for it.
Ok, now that I understand the prescriptions issue, I’m ready to sign up. Not sure how this 66-year-old diabetic is gonna survive winter, but for that kind of money I’ll chance it.
Actually, I’d do it for $1,000,000. My suburban life has become too comfortable; I would welcome the discomfort.
No – not for any amount of money. I love my job and see my career as more of a vocation and it would be nearly impossible (if not impossible) to continue if I were to accept the terms listed in the OP. Even if I decided to “take a year off” from work to do it, the hassle of being relicensed (I’m assuming no money for CME or to keep my license active) would be significant as well as explaining to the medical board, malpractice carrier, and facilities where I have privilege why I didn’t practice for a year (generally, any gaps in practice longer than 4 weeks have to be reported, explained, and even have documentation that the physician was engaged in alternative activity – when I took a month off between fellowship and starting practice I even had to get letters from my parents – whom I was visiting – to verify that I was on vacation during that time and not engaged in something the medical board would not approve of!).
I’d offer to split the 10 million with the handler if he’d let me crash on his couch for the year. Billionaires are notoriously bad paymasters - that’s how they got to be billionaires in the first place.