I don’t want to let this post go by without acknowledging - that’s a bad place to be in, and you have my sympathy
Well, I nearly am.
With my family history, I ought to have a good bit more than five years coming; but with my personal medical condition, I might have quite a bit more, or I might not. Or I might have less. And the family history includes a lot of dementia once we get well up into the 80’s. A guarantee of five years, with no need whatsoever to worry about lack of money, would certainly be worth something. Whether it’s worth a guarantee that it wouldn’t be more than five years – that’s another question.
But the people’s lives I could change by giving most of it away – and/or the other creatures’ lives, even habitats I could save – I think I’d have to take it.
I’d take it in a second – wait, is that five years guaranteed to be healthy? Because five years of being paralyzed with some excruciatingly painful cancer would NOT be nice.
But if I can have ordinary good health, then yep. I’m old enough that I’m probably not giving up a lot of time. My husband is unlikely to live that long anyway, and I’ve never had kids, so…
Take the money, do my best to do everything fun I’ve ever not done because of finances, take care of hubby and the relatives I still like, as in paying off college debts/setting up college funds, buying anyone who needs it a decent home, etc. Leave whatever is left to that fund Bill Gates runs – why waste money on setting up yet another fund with overhead and all?
An interesting variation might be if you tweaked the offer to account for older people vs. younger ones. Instead of a flat five years, let people sell you the final years of their lifes with them getting vastly increasing amounts of money as the number of years increases. Say start off at $10,000 for one year, and increase by times 10 for each additional year you sell – you can only make a single deal, so think it over.
Now young people might feel they have soooo many years ahead of them, why not cash in a few of them to make the rest much more fun? While oldies know they’ll be selling sharply limited resource. Can you gain enough from taking the cash to give up what might be a significant hunk of your remaining life?
Suppose you look at your family history and see that the ones dying of old age are mainly kicking off around 85. And you know dementia runs in your family, so very likely those last 2-3 or so years aren’t going to be a lot of fun for you or whoever has to care for you. Hmm. 10k isn’t very much, but you wouldn’t be losing much (probably) so why not? But why not give up the last two years for 100k instead? That’s enough to fund plenty of nice trips and vacations. Or maybe three years, for a million? Four years for 10 million? How much would you really miss if you died at 81 instead of 85?
Choices, choices.
Of course a big catch is that you don’t really know how much longer you’ll live. Yeah, your ‘dying of old age’ date is probably 85, but what if you’re fated to fall into the Grand Canyon while shooting a stupid selfie three months from now? The demon hands you your 10 million (or whatever deal you decide on) and you drop dead instantly before you can even spend a dime. Whoops!
Nope. What I want to do over the next 20-40 years doesn’t require a billion dollars.
If the 5 years include a guarantee of my current state of good health without any further medical or dental procedures, I think I’ll take that billion bucks.
Would it be five HEALTHY years, without the ailments I already have?
It’s 5 years as you are now though you can use the money to address any medical issues you have.
Am I guaranteed not to be in worse health than I am now?
And, if so, does that include that a medical procedure meant to so address an issue will at worst not accomplish much, but in any case not only won’t kill me but also won’t damage me further?
Ask me again when I’m 85. Definitely not doing it at half that age.
What are you looking at without the billion bucks? If you survive, six years from now will you be happy you didn’t take the money?
I’ll take life thanks. 5 years is just getting started with my future plans so I certainly don’t want to be cut short like that.
I’d feel obligated to take the billion, for the philanthropy it would enable.
I suppose the question would be more, five years from now would I be happy that I did take it?
– as far as my health goes, that’s not clear. Depending on a whole batch of factors, I might be better in six years; about the same; significantly worse; or dead anyway. (As, I suppose, might be just about any of us; but these things become clearer when you’re 69 with a couple of specific diagnoses.)
I was just wondering whether, in this particular fantasy, I’d be able to go into the hospital for a procedure that would probably help without worrying that instead it would kill me, screw up my brain from an anaesthesia reaction, do more damage than it fixed, or land me with covid or some other infection.
I’m older than you, but still have a life expectancy of a few decades. And I agree with the rest of your post. I’m doing fine, more money wouldn’t buy me a lot more happiness, and I’m not selfless enough to kill myself to save a lot of strangers. (And it would make me a lot less happy, because I’d have to spend a lot of time and energy in the next 5 years researching which charities to give my money to.)
This is what I think about. I don’t expect my health to improve. It’s not so terribly awful at the moment but I’ve been on a long slow decline and I don’t really like my long term prospects. I guess for me I’m seeing a choice between maybe 10 years before I’d rather be dead anyway and 5 years as a millionaire. But it is taking a risk and there’s going to be a lot of anxiety associated with knowing when I’ll die.
I don’t think that I would. I’ve managed to live a pretty decent life, even in the midst of some pretty impoverished times. I suppose if you had asked me in the middle of the worst of it, I may have gone for it, but even then, I don’t know, 5 years is just not that much time.
I wouldn’t mind having a billion bucks, but that seems too high a price.
What would be a bit interesting is if it were not a one time offer, and just to me, but instead, just an offer on the table, to be taken by anyone at anytime.
I may change my mind in 30-40 years, depending on what my life expectancy looks like at that point.
A billion, and a guarantee of 5 years, a peaceful and instant death? What’s the catch???
Not interested. Life ain’t perfect, but 5 years is way too little of it.
I’m packing my bags as we speak.
You coulda got me for 1 year/$1-million/painful death, but no takesy backsies!
It’s a stupid bet. You couldn’t spend a billion dollars in 5 years. I mean sure, you could give it all to charity, but what would be the point?