I totally go with the McMansion thing. If I had a ton of money I’d buy my way into the UK and move into my SO’s place, which is a 500 year old converted chapel. How cool is that?
I wouldn’t buy an SUV. I don’t know if I’d buy a car. I’d use it to fund a public transportation system.
I also wouldn’t stop shopping at Goodwill or buy any gold or diamonds. I have three tiny diamond chips in the first gift my SO ever gave me and those are all I’ll ever have.
On the other hand anu-la, I’d move to Manhattan in a New York minute.
Now, see, I would totally buy gold and jewelry. Maybe it’s just my “girly” streak, but I love pretty, sparkly things. I’m a fool for tanzanite, and it’s becoming more expensive with every year! If I hit the lottery for 60 mil, about $50K would go into tanzanite jewelry!
Prestigious brands? No, not just because they’re “prestige”. I try to teach my kids that there’s a big difference between something that’s more expensive because it’s higher quality, and something that’s more expensive because it’s got some designer’s name slapped on it. I will, however, willingly pay more for something that’s better quality (I’d rather spend $80.00 on a new pair of Rockport shoes every few years than spend $20.00 on crap several times a year at PayLess).
Expensive hotels? Well, it depends on how you define “expensive”. I don’t see how any amount of luxury can justify a $5,000.00 a night price-tag. But once, when I was traveling as someone else’s guest, we stayed at a Westin, in Chicago. I found out later that the room I had typically goes for $400.00 a night. And there was a huge difference between it and $100.00/night Day’s Inn. I can’t see myself going in for the multi-thousands per night stuff, but the several hundred per night? Yeah, if we could afford it without crimping the budget, I’d do it.
/Hijack/
Sometimes you can, thanks to Priceline. It’s not unusual to get high-end chain hotels like Westin for under $100, depending on when and where. Of course, you can also get regular hotels for even less. Check out the Bidding for Travel message boards.
/Hijack/
Even if I could afford it, I would not:
Hire servants, live-in or not. No cooks, cleaners, gardeners, nannies, or drivers, none of them. These are all noble professions, but it’s just anithetical to my personal philosophy.
Buy designer clothes, etc. For the same Quality vs. Price reasons others have said.
Stop shopping at WalMart. I’d love to be able to put that nice imported cheese from Whole Foods on every grilled cheese sandwich I make. But why would I buy a carton of soymilk, a bottle of aspirin, or a pack of batteries anywhere except Wally World?
Fly in a private jet. I’m pretty sure they crash more often.
Buy an unnecessarily large or inefficient vehicle. I can rent a truck in the rare event that I need one.
Work any kind of job where I couldn’t just blow off working whenever I felt like it.
Everyone who is saying they wouldn’t live in a McMansion are instead saying they’d prefer to live in a house just as big, but older and in a better location. In other words, much, much more expensive places.
How does living in a much more expensive house fall under the “things I wouldn’t do even if I were rich” category?
No, I wouldn’t want to live in an oversized house at all. One of the important things I was looking for in a house was that it not have a “parlor” or any other room that wouldn’t be part of the daily life of the house. We eat in the dining room every day, for example.
I’d never get plastic surgery (unless I had a need for the reconstructive kind.) I can’t imagine how you could change your facial features and look at yourself in the mirror and see somebody else - it sounds like a nightmare.
No, not (necessarily) true. I live in western Maryland, way, way up in western Maryland, almost in WV. Let’s say we bought a McMansion in Frederick, about an hour and a half east of here. It would run at least 500K, and that’s with maybe a half-acre of land. In WV, you can easily buy 100 acres with a nice, big, restored old farmhouse on it for 400K or less, around Fairmont (about an hour and a half west of here), or outside of Petersburg.
Whether that’s a “better” location depends entirely on your definition of “better”. Our definition of “better” is this: if we accidentally left something we need in the car, can we safely go out to the car in nothing but our underwear (or nothing at all!) to retrieve it without the neighbors seeing us? If we can, that’s better. Is there room for apple, pear and peach trees? If so, that’s better. Can we watch the deer in our yard every morning while we drink our (pure Kona, home-roasted, now that we’re rich) coffee? If so, that’s better. If we decide to have hot monkey-sex under the old elm tree in the yard? That’s better. Way better.
To us, “better” means much more privacy, no neighborhood associations telling us what colors we can’t paint our house, etc.
The OP seems to be about choices you’d make differently - if you were rich, would you choose an older big house in the city over the faux chataeu in the 'burbs? Would you fly first class, but hold the line at chartering a plane - and can’t imagine taking up flying yourself - even if you could do it? Maybe you can’t imagine traveling Europe, but would be all over an African safari.
I wouldn’t drive a Mercedes - I would drive one of those little Audi coupes though. I wouldn’t maintain a second home - but I would travel and rent homes - I don’t want the bother of upkeep on a second home and want the variety of being able to go somewhere different, but staying in a private home is a really nice way to vacation.
I was thnking - I wouldn’t buy expensive shoes, but I’d build an indoor riding arena that was air conditioned. That would be the height of decadent luxury as far as I’m concerned. Wow - just imagine…
'Round here, a McMansion in the burbs will set you back about $700K, more or less depending on a host of factors I won’t get into here. In the city, you can buy a nice, older home of similar size (say, 3,000 square feet) for about $700K. So that means that if I had $700K to blow on a home, rather than blow it on a McMansion in the burbs, I’d blow it on an actual mansion in the city, and for the same amount of money I’d get some charm and character out of the home.
Edit: Refer to the linked pictures in post #1. That McMansion would go for around $800K or thereabouts. So would that second, Tudor-looking house. The difference is, the second one is in town, in a much more mature neighborhood, and that house actually has some charm and character. So I’d pick it over the McMansion.
I’d never buy a place so big I couldn’t clean it myself (but I’d still have maid, cuz I hate to clean). I really only want a few extra rooms - a library and maybe a movie room. And a room for servant, cuz I’m so having a butler. And maybe a cook.
I’d never buy designer clothes (but the price wouldn’t be the issue - the quality would, naturally)
I’d really have to TRY not to become a hermit. I suppose I could fly out Dopers everyday to visit me.
I wouldn’t care about expensive jewelry, watches, clothing, or vehicles. I might like a big house with nice big rooms, though. I don’t know if I would go the “McMansion” route, however; a well-built older house would be fine!
I would like to have a much-enlarged version of my current “comic-book room”. I would like a “temperature-and-humidity-controlled” vault full of valuable old comics, dating back to the Golden Age of comics.
I would not mind having servants or maids, so that I would not have to worry about cleaning or taking care of the yard. That would be nice!
And not just a bowling alley, but a bowling alley with something besides those god-awful “bowling shoes” the public bowling alleys make you wear, right? And that serves some kind of decent beer, not the Coors Light or Budweiser you get in the alleys around here. And good music, right? Right?
I’m in Springfield, IL, where, yes, housing prices are less than they are elsewhere in the country (and even in our own state).
And wouldn’t that McMansion in the Atlanta burbs cost about the same as that mansion in the city? (I’m not asking rhetorically; I genuinely don’t know.)
