It’s hard to imagine spending $1 million in 30 days, but I can’t think of any other way I’d rather do it than by traveling around the world in high class. Oh and I’d probably take my boyfriend with me since the rules state to spend it on one other person. Of course we’d fly first class all the way. We’d begin our journey in southern Europe visiting Italy, Romania and Greece and we’d go all out in terms of the nicest hotels, finest foods and wines. While in Italy, we’d rent a Lamborghini and I bet they won’t laugh at us this time when we have money to burn. Then we’d make our way to Egypt to explore the ruins and then fly to Dubai for a few days and stay at this 7-star sailboat hotel. Oh and how can I forget an African safari or a climb to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro? Depending on how much time and money we spend in the places above, I’d like to take the rest of the time to relax somewhere in the Pacific, maybe Tahiti or a small island in Micronesia like Palau.
So yeah, that’s what I’d do in 30 days, travel and see as much as I possibly can without having to worry about the money. Damn, there are too many places to go and I’m stuck here at work.
Based on the rules given, it can obviously be spent only on food and entertainment. I could sure use it with regard to French wine and true Champagne. The collapsing dollar is killing me here.
I don’t think I could eat five-star meals three times a day, for an entire month, only because I couldn’t keep up that level of eating for all that time. I want to have a good time, but I don’t want to supersize myself. Instead, I’d probably opt to spend a good portion on concerts, operas, and perhaps some live theatre.
For some reason, I assumed it was like the “Brewster’s Millions” padadox, where by spending it all I then get MORE money. Apparantly that’s not the case here, I just get the million and getto have fun.
In that case, pretty much what everyone else has said. Get a friend, and just party for a month straight. I’d make it a point to do it in the summer and catch every Red Sox game that month, or at least most of them.
Travel Europe with my fiance, having sex, doing drugs, and going to rock shows the whole time through. Eat fine food, etc. Do whatever I want along the way.
I’d do the standard “travel the world and live the high life” thing… but I thought of an additional wrinkle: I’d buy expensive collector coins and banknotes… and use them at their face value.
“That’ll be $24.95, sir.”
“Great! Here’s a $25 note.”
Annie, are you proposing continuous first class air travel as a strategy for disposing of the money, or are you saying that you really enjoy sitting in airplanes? I’d think that even Beyond The First Class Curtain it would get dull pretty quickly.
In any event, I’m not sure you could spend the money fast enough that way. On checking Virgin Atlantic’s walk-in first class fare, Los Angeles to London one way, I find that it’s $10,700 for two, let’s say $21,000 RT. If you could do such a trip on each of the 30 days of the month, you’d still only be spending $630K. And you wouldn’t have time to go anywhere else to spend the rest of the money.
What you’re doing, though, is intentionally inflating the price of everything you pay for, and I’m not sure that should be allowed though it’s probably up to the OP to say. Hmmm…let’s say I spend the entire amount on U.S. Gold Eagles; each coin is an ounce and is legal tender for $50, so…let’s say gold is $400/oz, then that’s 2500 coins with face value $125,000. It could work, but as I say it doesn’t seem cricket.
I’m fairly sure you could spend the remainder by drinking in the airports between flights and spending the entirety of the flights on the airphone chatting with different friends around the world.
Well, first I’d pay off my debt (mortgage, etc.). Then I’d go live the high life – travel, mainly. And take cooking lessons, as many as I could cram into a month of traveling.
(Yeah, it’s bending the rules a little, but it doesn’t quite break them, does it?)
Not if you charter the plane! (Which is how I would spend it.)
Check out these prices.
And that’s the discount specials, “excludes taxes and catering. (Tax is additional 7 ½ %).”
This one really does seem ridiculously easy - is there any reason why you cannot just use the rockstar “rent the entire movie theater for yourself,” “why fly first class when you can rent your own Learjet,” “buy and drink multiple $20,000 bottles of wine per day” type of behavior?
Is this a “How would you spend it all and get the most enjoyment out of it” thread, or a “Could you possibly spend it all under the rules given” thread? I think the latter is pretty simple.
I’m one of them. I didn’t notice the “one other person” rule which invalidates my partying with a couple dozen friends.
With that rule now being known, I really don’t know what the hell I would do as I would hate to have to choose between my friends and family.
I guess I’d just pick someone at random (out of a hat, maybe) and then (s)he and I can go on a whirlwind tour of Europe together. That would be pretty fun.
It’s actually astoundingly easy to spend a million: just hire one of those mega-yahgts for the month. I was looking into hiring a rather more modest one for the eclipse of 2006 and took a look at the top end and it was near $250K/week. I guess hiring Necker or exclusive access to one of the larger African safari parks would do the job too.
I’d put my life on fast-forward during that 30 days, spend all of it on my wedding (though paying for my own pictures, wedding bands, and dress, so i could keep them ) and then going on a kick-ass honeymoon trip around europe. visit ireland, italy, germany, spain, france, sleeping in beautiful hotels and eating and drinking the best the continent has to offer… sigh oh to dream
Is there a reason to do this? Are we blowing a million so we’ll get more later (like the movie plot)? Or is this just to imagine a month of wild hedonism? Is there a penalty if we don’t spend it all?
Nobody but one other person could benefit? So you couldn’t, say, buy a week’s worth of tickets for a Broadway show and give them to schoolkids?
Along those lines, a Broadway hit can take in more than half a million dollars a week for eight shows. Call it $65,000 per show. If you arrange private performances of 10 Broadway hits–you buy out the house and take one guest–you’ve spent 650 grand right there. If you see five of the shows twice that’s just about the million. Or you could charter a private plane to London, stay in the most luxurious penthouse suite you could find, and buy out half a dozen shows there.
In my part of the world, a rich doctor hired N’Sync to perform a 1-hour show at his daugher’s bat mitzvah. The tab: one million dollars. They wouldn’t be to my taste, but I could imagine paying Springsteen a million dollars for a private show in a small hall–if I had it to spend and I had to spend it. Or how 'bout guitar lessons from Eric Clapton? Violin lessons from Itzhak Perlman?
Instead of buying stuff, if you paid for private entertainment you could get through the million in a matter of hours.
If you are organizing a public trip could you post a link? Quite a large number of trips are being planned for the 2006 eclipse, one of the longer ones of our lifetimes. People are going to places ranging from Turkey across the Mediterranean to Egypt and into the Libyan desert, and I hope to sign up for one of them. Right now I’m just trying to gather information. (If you’re chartering a boat for yourself, have a great time! My own travel is more at the budget end of the spectrum.) Thanks!
Of course we’d fly first class all the way. We’d begin our journey in southern Europe visiting Italy, Romania and Greece and we’d go all out in terms of the nicest hotels, finest foods and wines. While in Italy, we’d rent a Lamborghini and I bet they won’t laugh at us this time when we have money to burn. Then we’d make our way to Egypt to explore the ruins and then fly to Dubai for a few days and stay at this 7-star sailboat hotel. Oh and how can I forget an African safari or a climb to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro? Depending on how much time and money we spend in the places above, I’d like to take the rest of the time to relax somewhere in the Pacific, maybe Tahiti or a small island in Micronesia like Palau.
) and then going on a kick-ass honeymoon trip around europe. visit ireland, italy, germany, spain, france, sleeping in beautiful hotels and eating and drinking the best the continent has to offer… sigh oh to dream