I wouldn’t want to uproot the kids from their social circles and schools, but I’m also pretty tired of only having one bathroom. I think I’d want to move to the slightly more affluent neighborhood next to ours, where we could get a bit more house but the kids could still go to the same schools. I love the idea of renovating an older home - especially with a virtually unlimited budget.
However, our summer vacations would be most excellent.
I came to say exactly that, although I’d keep a place here where I live now because, frankly, I like it here. But I’d definitely buy a refurbed silo for those occasions when I simply needed to get away from everybody and everything, and perhaps needed some security besides. Which, according to lottery winner history, is most of the time.
I’d want to summer in Minneapolis and winter anywhere but Minneapolis. Maybe that would change every year. Who knows. But I would maintain a home where I am now.
I live in this area and it is pretty ideal. I can be at the beach in 2 hours or I can be at the mountains in 3 (depending on the beach or the mountains it might take a little longer), there is tons to do here, the weather is nice most of the time, but very humid in the summer.
That said, I’d have to visit everywhere else first to make sure I made my main residence in the right place. I can see buying a $200K RV and hitting the road for a few years (including Canada and Mexico). Then I’d need to visit Australia, Europe, most of Asia and a few spots in Africa before choosing where to build the Big House and what my satellite locations would be. We have no children and after our parents pass on, there won’t be anything holding us here if we want to leave.
I always thought it would be fun to buy out a whole city block or couple of blocks, fully furnished, and then just live in the different houses I owned as it suited my whims. I’d also pay a bunch of live-in help for most/all of the houses to keep them up, secure, etc.
How about a nice big yacht with crew? When I tire of an area just set sail for elsewhere. Oh, and a helicopter, of course. An awful lot of everything I ever wanted to see is within a helicopter flight of a coastline.
I’ve sailed out in the ocean quiet a few times; for sailing those death defying moments are what makes you get hooked but then not the moments when you encounter Uzis… and I hate having guns around but you need them if you are out on the high seas. With all that money, “safety first” would take higher priority for me and less of dare devil acts… I would think. But I guess that all depends on how much win we are taking about here as boats and crews are not cheap.
There’s no rush for me, because first I would build something nice for myself with room for visiting family and space to store all our stuff. I would pay off my mother’s house, finish needed repairs and new carpet, add a security system and let her decide if she wants to keep it or sell.
Then I’d take my partner and wander the world for awhile. I don’t know where my second home would be yet…
Back to NYC. I lived there for 25 years, and miss it a lot. New York is a great place to live, if you’re young or rich. I lived there young, now I want to live there rich.
A downtown loft would be nice, or an entire brownstone.
There’s a lot to like about that place, but I really couldn’t stand all that yellow wood. Blech! And they seriously couldn’t find any way to make the water slide look nicer? I mean, great idea, wonderful fun, but white industrial fiber glass with open seaming? Really?