Depends on how stressed you are.
This.
20,000 would get me through 10 years.
I think I am the poorest person I know.
In the early 80’s I drove from the Bay Area to San Diego in a beater car with exactly enough money in my bank account for first and last month’s rent for an apartment.
Sounds like the start of a life-changing story, doesn’t it? But…
I was a newly minted PhD, had accepted a job with a top aerospace firm (which put me up in an Embassy Suites for my first month), and my initial salary was ~$1,000 a week. So my life did change, but more in a natural progression (starving student to young professional) than “life changing”.
Now, eyeing retirement, I’ve reflected that life changing money for me would be more in the range of $100M, which would prompt me to invest in a startup (perhaps quantum computing or quantum computing adjacent) rather than sail off into retirement. Lesser amounts might ease my life a bit or lower stress with respect to end-of-life care but wouldn’t be “lifechanging”.
I agree that enough money to stop living in your car or get medical treatment is life changing - but I disagree that $1000 would really change a significant number of people’s lives. That amount might help someone who can afford the monthly rent on a apartment but comes up $1000 short on first and last month’s rent and security deposit and deposits for the utilities etc - I’m sure those people do exist but IME there are an awful lot more who can’t afford the rent and $1000 won’t change their life at all.
Probably not. Because it would get you knocked off all those forms of assistance.
I think it also depends on what we’re considering “change”.
I mean, in the strictest sense, any windfall changes your life just a little bit. To me, “life-changing money” implies some sort of fundamental change in someone’s financial circumstances. This could range from enough to let people get their heads above water by paying off some onerous debts, or it could be all the way from “getting enough such that you can live off the investment proceeds”.
That’s fairly easy to gauge, but where it gets much more murky is when things like the confidence that’s engendered by a large savings account is considered. I mean, right out of school I had some crazy bonuses (internet boom of the late 90s/early 2000s) that were worth 50% of my annual salary in one check. Didn’t really change my financial circumstances that much- I had more spending money and a much larger savings account, but I didn’t move, buy a car, or live large. What it did do is allow me to move to a different city without lining up a job first, and having the confidence that I could attempt that. But it’s hard to quantify how much was necessary for me to have felt confident doing that.
But now? I don’t really know if similar windfalls would really be life changing. I mean, they’d probably mostly go into my retirement investments, pay off some debts, and into savings. But none of that would be conventionally life changing, in that all three are in good shape already. It would have to be somewhere in the mid six figures, so that I’d have enough investment income to account for market fluctuations and reinvestment, and still make more than I make with a job. That would be what would be life changing for me.
I’m not sure if there is any amount that would be life-changing for me. It wouldn’t help me retire earlier, as I am already retired and the mortgage has been paid off. It might mean I go on a couple of additional vacations a year, but I don’t really consider that to be life-changing. I’d probably give some to my kids and if the windfall was big enough, it might change their lives but probably not mine.
Not if it were in cash.
Are you saying you wouldn’t report it as an asset?
If you get caught: that’s welfare fraud. Significant penalties – including loss of assistance, probably continuing long after the money runs out – plus your name in the paper.
Sounds like a whole bunch of immigrants I know who talk about how they came here with nothing in 1995.
Nothing except admission and funding in a PhD program in Computer Science.
Nothing except a job as a pharmaceutical research scientist at Eli Lilly.
Nothing except a fellowship at Bell Labs.
Nothing except acceptance into a residency in Hematology at Stony Brook Medical Center.
My wife and I are a few years from retirement, with good savings in place and lots of travel plans, a low mortgage, and no other debts. A sum of money on the order of our wages for the next 3-4 years would make us retire now, so it would accelerate our retirement but not really alter the path.
A sum on the order of millions of dollars would truly change what we do with our lives. We might move overseas, or at least change where and how we live. I don’t know that we’d delay retirement or take on a second career, but we might find a way to do good with the money rather than just spend it on ourselves.
And we’d stop flying economy.
I like that formulation a lot. To which I’d add, or maybe emphasize a bit more than you did, the idea that the change is lasting, not just a temporary fling. Even if the fling lasts a couple-few years, it’s still a fling that will end.
Maybe. $50K will get you those things for a few months to a couple years. Then what? If you fall right back in the same hole your life was certainly different and better for awhile. But was it changed?
A windfall of whatever specific size can be be a temporary respite from your current reality or it can be a springboard to a new and long-lasting different reality.
Heck, I would be ecstatic to pay off my mortgage and have enough to send my classic car to the pros for a full restoration. I would save years of work, have my baby to cruise around in and a lot more spending money each month plus not having to worry about my survivors being able to keep the house . $100,000 would do me just fine.
If we’re talking about the McDonalds clerk who might get a $50,000 reward, they’re already employed. And looking at the cost of houses in Altoona, it might allow them to put a down payment down on a house of their own. I think that might be life changing.
As I read this thread, I am reminded of Roy Truesdale…
He hung up. And pondered. Two thousand a year, for life. And it was real. It was hardly a
living, but it would make a nice addition to his salary. Already he had thought of half a dozen
ways to use the first few checks. He might try a different job…
Two thousand a year. It was an exorbitant price to pay for four months of labor. Most kinds of
labor. What had he done with those four months?
And how had Vandervecken known it would be enough?
I probably told him myself, Truesdale thought bitterly. Self-betrayal. At least he hadn’t lied.
Five hundred every three months, to put a touch of luxury in his life… and he would wonder for
the rest of his life. But he would not go to the police.