Thought experiment: What if you had a billion dollars?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Being a poor PhD student (destitute, not a bad student), I was thinking, as perhaps some of us occasionally do, about how nice it would be to have a little more money. Then…how about adding enough to pay my debts? OK, how about add a bit more to fix up the house and our old cars? Heck, how about even more, so I can do any kind of work–or not–after graduation?

The thought inevitably led to, what if I had a billion dollars?

I wrote down a lot of thoughts, about things that are important to me and my life, and what having a billion dollars would do for each of them. Bottom line, much of your life would be spent worrying about and/or managing this money. Your life wouldn’t be the same anymore. The things you’d like to do would all be distorted appreciably and wouldn’t be quite what you had wished for.

So I then flipped things around, and asked myself, for each of the items I wrote down that are important to my life, how many of them can I do affordably or for free?

Surprisingly, almost all of them. So…it became an exercise of finding what you want to do in life, and realizing you can probably afford each of them. You just have to get started accomplishing them.

I didn’t expect this outcome. Turned out, I only “need” a much smaller figure, way less than a million, to make me comfortable and accomplish all these goals. My next several years of working ought to take care of that.

So…if you had a billion dollars, what would you do…and does that really require a billion dollars to accomplish?

2

You pay people to do that for you.

A billion dollars is sufficient money that, short of me trying to buy islands and gold unicorns, it would probably be difficult to mismanage myself into poverty. I’d be more worried if I was trying to live on a couple million since you can blow through that without really trying to.

3

The main difference for me between 100 million and 1 billion would be the amount I give away.

(but even at $100 million I could give a lot away)

I could spend $50 million pretty easily (a big boat, houses in cool places, and a nest egg). After that, I don’t know what I’d do with more other than charitable contributions.

4

Yes…then you need to check up on them so you’re not being ripped off or continuously lied to, like Pierre in War and Peace.

As for giving away all that money…yes, putting it into a self-sustaining non-profit to fix selected problems in the world, like the Gates Foundation, seems a great idea.

Then…you’re back to having only a smaller amount of money to deal with, pretty much where I figured you’d end up, right?

5

Yep, the first thing I’d if I won a huge lottery jackpot or something would be to go talk to a professional financial advisor.

Then I’d pay off my mortgage and probably do some remodeling, nothing too crazy though.

This does bring up an interesting thought. Since I’d no longer need to work there would really be no need to stay in that particular house or even this city. I could go live anywhere I wanted. I’m not really the type to blow a big chunk of it on a mansion in Malibu or something like that, although a more modest house on an isolated California beach does have its appeal.

6

Before or after taxes?

7

I don’t need a billion but I’d need a lot more than a million to maximize my happiness since I do feel a lot better when I am not working and I enjoy vacations and I live in a country without UHC so I don’t want to worry about unexpected medical expenses. $4 million would probably be sufficient.

8

I have a list of people that I would “take care of” should I suddenly become a millionaire. That means I pay off all of their debt, make sure that their kids go to college debt free, and fix their cars up. Most of my friends really like their car, just want the damn thing to work. If they rented a house, I would buy it from their land lord if they wanted to stay there. After that, I would fix up my cars, like, totally restore them. I have a 1992 Cutlass that would be brand new, and my 68 veedub would be finally finished. I would also build a brand new 1979 Chevrolet Bonanza Heavy Half truck with the inline 6 292 engine and mate it to a T5 5 speed transmission. My band would go on tour with Heart, Live, The B52s, Beck and Pearl Jam and my wife and I would probably adopt some kids. I would retire to a large organic farm and throw the party of a lifetime, and all of you bastards are invited.

I would probably buy the Chicago Reader or whoever manages the SDMB and make it advertisement free again and pay all of the moderators a good “don’t worry about the bills again” wage.

I would make sure that by the time I was dead, I had given most of the money I got away.

9

I would start a chain of businesses in all different sectors, all designed to operate at a slight loss, offering the sorts of services and products that a combination of Tragedy Of The Commons and Race To The Bottom have driven out of existence.

10

A billion bucks - you either hire a (or a couple) of good investors to invest it diversely. Then you hire a couple of independent accountants to audit them. Go with large established firms, instead of your drinking buddy’s cousin who “knows all about investments.” Or you just toss it in a couple of Vanguard money markets and some combination of T-bills and munis.

At 3%, you generate $30 million income per year. That alone would allow you to hire sufficient advice/protection of your investments, leaving plenty to spend/gift as you wish.

You’d probably have to get used to saying “No” to a lot of people. Of course, you’d have the resources to allow you to be extremely generous and say “Yes” in a whole bunch of ways.

I just went to a music camp, and enjoy live music. Mostly acoustic, old-timey. Tons of incredibly accomplished folk working really hard to make very little money. It would be so incredible to be able to just gift such people $10k here or there. It would be entirely life-changing for them, but would mean nothing to you. You could find such things in just about any endeavor. Or dropping $100 tips without a second thought.

I don’t see the problems suggested in the OP.

11

I’ve long thought up various fantasies about what I’d do if I won $10 million in the lottery, or $100 million, or $1 billion. I have different plans all scaled-up or scaled-down all ready to go for each.

With $1 billion, I’d simply execute the $1 billion blueprint. So I’d direct movies, give to a variety of churches and causes, start businesses, have family financially set for generations to come - but either way, every penny would be accounted for, just as if I’d only won a million. It would not be a sum of money “too big for me to know what to do with.” All planned out :smiley:

12

If I had a billion dollars I’d buy you a house, some furniture for your house, and a K-car.

I can think of lots of things to do with the money. The hard part is winnowing that list down to something actually workable.

13

I’d give my son and daughter each $50 million for ther birthday that year. Next I’d put $50 million in an account of some sort as a safety net. The rest I’d attempt to spend. I’d keep fifty Benjamins in my wallet to use for tips, and my goal would be to run out of hundreds by the end of each day.

14

Hmm… I could actually do something with that much money. Start an intellectual foundation, founded on some premise that’s important to me, blow 250 million on publicizing its existence, drawing in some talking heads to discuss it, etc, enough to see if, once a critical mass of people* is exposed, the ideas have some legs under them.

  • “critical mass of people” = a large percent of the population will not give anything you say much serious attention until they believe a lot of other people are paying attention – negative OR positive – to what you say. doesn’t mean they’ll embrace your views once you do attain critical mass, but they’ll consider them in a different light, realizing you’ve got an audience.
15

Once every year/couple years, hire a third party to check the books and audit the first guy. Unless the first guy is ripping you off for $500mil a year, you’re probably fine. In any event, the amount of time I’m saving by not having to earn a living is going to far offset the time I spend monitoring my finance guy.

I mean, I’m certainly not qualified to manage a billion dollars by myself so I can either reasonably trust in professionals like I do for numerous other things or just go live in a cave.

16

I agree…the extra $996 million needs to be dealt with, and that’s a burden…

I think I would get tired of the instant celebrity this would bring, trying to manually, out in the public, blow through $850 million using $100 dollar bills. The first time a much younger woman makes an outrageous attention-getting move (like showing up nude at my door, etc.) it would be flattering, but I would soon tire of it. And I would not want to have to build a multilayer means of screening myself from the world; that’s the part I was saying I would not like. The money is just yelling for attention…so I’d have to give most of it away for my own sanity.

17

I owe less than 100K on my house, and could probably do every thing I want to this house for less than 200K, probably less than 100K. Another 700K invested would probably pay for bills, property tax and the people I have already to do house & yard work. Let’s add another million in investments to be able to buy anything I want, and possibly hire someone to cook for me*

And I still have $999 million to play with.

Another minuscule percentage would buy the house my Mom is renting, or something similar & suitable. And I could afford to hire someone to take care of her house, maintenance and yard work.

Next up would be gifting money to a couple of my favorite authors and artists. Maybe not enough to set them up for life, but enough to take the worst of the worry off.

And setting up some funds for a few friends of mine who need a break.

And I still have a stupid amount of money.

So next would be hiring someone to investigate the politicians who I will consider supporting, and making donations to their campaigns.

Finally, a foundation. I would like to make a charitable organization that both provides social services to people who need help because they’re disabled or because they have ADHD or similar problems, and the organization would hire people at better than market rates to improve economic outlook for the community at large.

Or maybe I’d make an organization that would hire people who had good and creative answers to the question “What would you do for $25 an hour to make life better for people around you?”

*Note, I have no idea right now how much I would have to invest to get a certain amount of income, but hey, I got a billion to play with, right?

18

I find these kinds of hypotheticals interesting to think about. I’ve also seen it happen to people.

This is the kind of money that would warp the world around you. What you think you would do and what it would actually be like are very unlikely to be related.

For those of you that play games, how interesting is a game that you cheat at? Like how fun is poker with unlimited money? How fun is any game when the stakes go away? Having a billion dollars is like playing life on god mode. Material things will quickly bore you when you can literally have anything you want. At best your collection of Ferrari’s might provide you some minor amusement. Having a yacht is great but you’ll quickly get used to it and to having the best of everything. Sure nice stuff is nice but the reality is that you can own 10 yachts, 10 homes and endless junk but you can only use so much of it at a time.

Now think about how the rest of the world is going to view you if you are openly a billionaire. Many people would just hate you for being rich outright, but they will still great you with a smile because they might get some of that moola. People will constantly be trying to sell you things because they know you have big money (tons of investments for example will “come your way”). Eventually this means you will start putting up barriers to people contacting you. You’ll now have “people” who do things for you and arrange your schedule etc. As a side effect of your time being so valuable (since time is the only thing you have once you have unlimited money) you will become harder and harder to actually spend time with.

In other words the gravity of the money will warp life around you.

Now can you avoid this fate? Yes, you can make a conscious choice to keep it real and on the down low as much as possible. Some really wealthy people live pretty anonymously and there are places you can do that (like Monaco) since everyone there is rich.

source: I know a lot of rich people including several billionaires who have made their money since I’ve known them.

19

Yeah righ…[checks neutro’s location]…ah. OK. They’re why I had to leave that neck of the woods. Clustered rich people make everything so damned expensive.

20

This is an understatement. Everyone here talking about going on public spending sprees and handing relatives and friends lumps of cash should probably read this reddit thread about what to do when you win the lottery, particularly the part about Jack Whittaker (was already a successful businessman when he won $315 million, the result of which ruined his life and drove him to bankruptcy).

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/whats_the_happiest_5word_sentence_you_could_hear/chb38xf/