The impact that the following sums of money would have on your life

[Tamerlane]

Assuming this is all post-tax:

$1,000 - Nice, but essentially no impact at all.

$10,000 - Nice, but again virtually no impact.

$100,000 - Some, but not a massive impact. Pay off my new car and have a large chunk left over for peace of mind and to maybe help deal with expected move/housing change expenses in a couple of years.

$1,000,000 - Life-changing in a minor way. No early retirement, but guarantees I can retire at the minimum age and continue to live in my very expensive area afterwards. Neither of those are an actual given at this moment in time.

$10 million - Completely life-changing. Maybe ~40% to family/friends/charities ( maybe an 80/15/5 split in that order, something like that anyway ), the rest to a reasonably comfortable early retirement.

[bump]

@Arcite

I agree with these, and that was the point of my initial comment about $50k. Obviously if someone’s 65 years old and retiring, and they’ve made $50/year their whole life, $50k is great as a retirement income. I just would be very surprised if many people in the socioeconomic stratum of the typical SDMB poster (I don’t think we have too many beach bums around here) would really want to permanently quit their jobs at 30 knowing that $50k/year would be their income for the rest of their life, as opposed to continuing to work and live off their employment income, while socking this hypothetical money away in investments and using it to enjoy a more comfortable (but still early) retirement later on.

I actually imagine more people would choose to reinvest some portion of their investment earnings off that 1 million bucks, and supplement their salary/wages with the rest.

It would take a rare person to sit back, look at things and say “I earn about 50k these days, and I make about 50k from investments. Let’s reinvest that 50k every year and live off 50k so I can retire flush.” Most would probably say “I’d rather reinvest 20k each year, and live an 80k lifestyle instead of a 50k lifestyle.” There is a pretty significant jump there in terms of quality of life (pretty much a middle to upper middle jump).

[Colophon]

I’m going to do this in sterling (which isn’t that much different from dollars nowadays).

£1,000: pay off some of my overdraft. Minimal impact.

£10,000: clear my debts. Result: net increase in income each month due to not servicing loans, but no real change to my lifestyle.

£100,000: as above plus pay for an extension or consider moving house (probably the former as I like where we are living), go on a nice holiday or two and put a bit in savings. Again not really “life-changing”.

£1,000,000: now we’re talking. Pay off mortgage and buy a nice house , for cash, for about £500,000. (Round here, that would only be maybe a four-bedroom detached house with a modest-sized garden, nothing palatial.) Think of a career change as I would no longer need such a high income.

£10,000,000: Retire. Now.

[monstro]

I think a lot of people in their 30s or 40s now would choose to retire @ $50K/year. Whether they would be wise to do this is another thing. But most people don’t work at jobs they love. They flip burgers, wipe asses, scoop shit, dig trenches, and get yelled at for a living.

So they’d quit working in a heartbeat.

$1 million wouldn’t be enough for me to retire. But as much as I love my job, I might think about it at $10 million. Tack on another zero, I’d actually feel guilty for taking a paycheck from someone else.