Heh. To me, all “retire” means is to cease doing stuff with the primary aim of making money to achieve my goals, and start doing more stuff with the primary aim of achieving my goals directly. 
I graduated into the recession of the late 1980s. The late 1990s were awesome, but that first eight years post graduation SUCKED. I got lucky and had a “real job” within two years of graduation - I was a secretary. I made - in 2016 dollars - about $27k a year - that doubled my pre-real job income as a temp without health insurance or vacation time. Most of my friends worked part time minimum wage jobs - and great ones too - driving a school bus, telemarking. My parents are not wealthy - they did manage to save enough to put me through a public university as long as I paid my own living expenses - plus I had a scholarship for part of it, and when I married my husband, he and his mother were both coming out of bankruptcies (his Dad is barely in the picture).
I know how to change oil and brakes on a car - because when you drive a beater and have no money, you learn these things - when I was lucky enough to have a car. I spent years living on bus lines or riding a bike - you can’t really ride a bike year round in Minnesota. I’ve discovered that you can live off rice, beans, potatoes, eggs, cornmeal and frozen spinach. I’ve discovered that when walking out of a cheap apartment, you need to be careful you don’t step on needles. And that when answering a roommate wanted ad, its best not to move in with a creepy guy (that’s how I ended up living with my ex-husband).
My parents raised me during the recessions of the 1970s. Like my own kids, I had friends who ended up homeless during that time.
$1,000: Barely notice. Pay down some bills.
$10,000: Pay down some more bills, use some as down payment for a badly-needed new car. Nice but not remotely life-changing.
$100,000: Pay down ALL the bills, purchase 2 new cars (keeping one or both older ones for the kids’ use). Not dramatically life-changing but it would allow us to put a bit more aside in the retirement funds.
$1,000,000: Longer-term life-changing. Pay off the mortgage, use the saved money each month to max out the 401(k) and other savings. We would need to keep working for now but it would probably enable us to retire in our early 60s. We’d get a financial planner involved at least for one or two consults.
$10 million: Pretty dramatic life change. We could pay off the mortgage, but would probably continue to work (With maxed-out 401(k) etc.) for another year or so while we figured out just when this would allow us to retire. Almost certainly retire by age 60 (we’re in our mid-50s now). We could NOT retire now on that money - we have family obligations (aging parents, special-needs kids) but would be a MUCH better position overall. We’d definitely need financial planning advice.
You can’t retire now on what would be left of **$10,000,000 **even after those obligations? :dubious:
Have fun [del]storming[/del] visiting the castle!
Lol. Yeah I guess he didn’t. But what isn’t clear is what is meant be a decent standard of living. Personally, I don’t think all ways of life deserve a decent standard of living. I think some personal effort is proper to ensure that one’s own life is how one wishes.
$1,000: ** Throw it in savings.
**$10,000: ** Throw it in savings.
**$100,000: ** Throw it in savings. Talk to someone knowledgeable about additional savings for retirement. Buy a house and a hybrid car.
$1,000,000: Throw it into something where it will generate more money without losing principal. Buy a house and a hybrid car.
**$10 million: ** Throw it into something where it will generate more money without losing principal. Buy a house and a hybrid car. Move to part time. Travel around Europe.
A special-needs kid can be expensive, and the expense generally continues until the kid dies. Assuming that’s well after the parents die, there will need to be some sort of trust fund for the kid to ensure to ensure he/she doesn’t end up in some state-run institution that provides a less-than-ideal quality of life.
My sister-in-law is autistic, and her parents are now in their 70s, so I’m sympathetic; it’s just about certain that my wife and I will need to help foot the bill for long-term assisted living for her. $10M would have us sitting pretty, but if someone’s kids AND parents are going to need 24/7 skilled-nursing care for the next few decades, $10M is probably not insane overabundance.
If you’re in your mid-50s and you want to retire comfortably right now, you’ll need probably $3M to ensure that your nest egg outlasts you.
I wouldn’t spend the WHOLE million bucks on a vacation! But I would hit all 5 of the Scandinavian nations. Maybe I need 5 weeks.
For NYC, flying first class, staying near Times Square and seeing shows every night, $8K lasts about 6 days.
Where do you live that $100k can buy you a house and a car and have money left over?
$1,000= Send it to my GF anonymously. Enjoy watching her light up with giddiness. Also take a mildly perverse pleasure in watching her try to figure out where the fuck it came from.
$10,000= Maybe buy the kiddo a car
$100,000= Invest in a new home. Probably our future retirement home.
$1,000,000= ditto above, invest the rest for retirement
$10,000,000= Quit my job. GF quits her job. Buy some land and start our dream of running a rescue shelter.
Well, there it is. Some folks look at a person and see a person. Others see a “way of life.”
If one of the shows is Hamilton, it’s more like ONE day…
$1,000 - Spend a couple hundred on frivolous stuff, rest for paying off debt. No significant long-term effect.
$10,000 - Spend a thousand or so on frivolous stuff, rest for paying off debt. A nice boost.
$100,000 - A couple thousand for fun money; about $25K to finish off student loans, etc; $20-30K into some sort of readily liquid-ified investment in case of emergency; rest into retirement fund. A big help.
$1,000,000 - Ditto, with more money in the emergency fund, maybe use $300K to buy a modest condo or if I can get a good deal a small house. A REALLY big help.
$10 million - Retire immediately, buy nice house in the middle of nowhere, get 5 dogs and 15,000 more books, and custom-made built-in bookshelves to hold them along with the 15,000 books I already own. Life-changing. 
Yes, I figured as much, I just expected more people to write down what they would do to achieve those goals. Are those thoughts that far away?
$1000 Very little impact on current circumstances, but would be used to help.
$10000. Would definitely solve some immediate issues. My husband had a heart attack, and some other large expenses have occurred in the last two years. (Unpaid month out of work - not due to heart attack, but in addition to time off from that, replace motor in daughter’s car, car damaged in hit and run, unexpected legal costs, a few other things I can’t remember right now. Damn, it has been a rough two years.) This amount would catch up all remaining issues from those expenses and allow us to get back on track. Still working toward it, but would make it immediate.
$100000 Pay off all outstanding debts with 1\2 left over. That would allow my husband to cut back on hours worked from 3-4 days a week to 1-2 days a week
$1000000 Life could change completely, but really not much different than 100000. Kids college fully paid for.
$10000000 Probably would no longer work and would concentrate on travel. Kids college fully paid for.
$1,000 - I need new glasses. The rest goes to groceries & bills.
$10,000 - The above, plus new tires and tune up on the car.
$100,000 - Pay student loans, plus the above.
$1,000,000 - Pay off all debt. Get some really good insurance. Live on the rest.
$10 million - We’re blowing this Popsicle stand and seeing the world!
You could do it where I live in NW Ohio. Small towns can be very affordable, if you avoid debt. That was my mistake, although 27 months unemployed during the recession didn’t help. Should have let the bank have the money pit when I had the chance.
$1,000 would be a Costco run to stock up the pantry, fill the freezer and stash away a few months worth of paper towels and toilet paper.
$10,000 would pay off a lot of credit card debt that we racked up while my husband was disabled.
$100,000 would pay off all the credit card debt and the car. (Wouldn’t actually pay off the car as it’s a 0% loan.)
$1,000,000 would be the beginning of life-changing, allowing me to buy a house either outright or at least being able to make a large down payment on one that’s not in San Francisco.
$10,000,000 would be time to buy a house in San Francisco and set up an endowment for a favorite charity.
I think the question could have benefited from making the ‘really big amount’ of money bigger. A lot of people could, or react offhand before really thinking about it, live independently for the rest of their lives on $10mil but a meaningful % depending how far they have to go, what their earning potential is (and corresponding std of living they might be used to), and what their obligations are besides themselves, might actually not be able to, or it wouldn’t be certain. And if you’re say 30 and it’s not certain and you have a fairly lucrative career, you might not take the chance of junking it to pursue your dreams. But for $20mil maybe you would.
But OTOH I don’t know the actual purpose of the question. Is it to see if everyone agrees $10mil would dwarf their future earning potential, or to see what people say they’d do with an amount virtually everyone agrees fits that bill?