Suppose a slightly less favorable offer is made. It’s not a free offer of receiving a choice of two things. It’s an offer of a trade. You’re offered a million dollars for a year of your natural lifespan. And you can sell as many years as you want for a million dollars apiece.
The fine print:
It’s only your natural lifespan that’s reduced. Only deaths that are due to natural causes get moved up. If you were going to die of an accident or murder or something like that it won’t be affected. So you don’t have to worry that you’ll get the money and drop over dead a second later unless you were going to die of natural causes in the upcoming year anyway.
There’s a non-disclosure clause. You don’t find out before or after the deal what age you’ll die at.
The process doesn’t not accelerate your aging process. If you were going to die at the age of 75 and you sell off ten years of your life, then you’ll die at 65. But your health up to the age of 65 will be the same as it would have been anyway.
Would you take the offer? How many years would you sell? If the offer was open to negotiation for better terms would that change your mind?
A year? I’ll go with a year. A cool million could set me up for life–buy a house/decent car/etc, pay off the student loans, and still have more than half to invest and put away for retirement. My husband and I would still work for a living, but we’d be almost disaster-proof.
Absolutely worth it for one year, I say. Especially the last one. Most of my relatives who died in their older ages (80s, 90s) had a crappy final year, with hospital stays, cascading illnesses, multiple complications putting them back in the hospital, spending the last few months in a nursing home, etc. It’s almost worth giving up the extra year, even without the money, just to die peacefully in my sleep rather than having a painful, expensive, heart-wrenching decline.
Three million dollars in the bank would set me up to retire tomorrow (@ 26). I think not being around for the final three years would be worth the years of freedom. But I think I would try to negotiate for knowing when I would die because the deal isn’t worth it if I die in my mid 60s or later.
Sure, I’d sell a few years. With $3M for 3 years sold, I would never have to work again, so I would now be free to spend about 2,000 hours per year dong something besides work for 20 years. That’s 40,000 young awake hours gained by selling about 26,280 old man hours, and a third of those old man hours will be sleeping, so more like selling 17,000.
PROS
Gain $3M
Gain 40,000 awake young hours by freedom from work
CONS
Lose 17,000 awake old man hours by 3 years “early” death
Haven’t seen the episode, but definitely thought of the show. This offer could only end with ‘Unfortunately, you were due to die of cancer in 366 days. A perfectly natural cause… muhahaaaa!’
Thudlow makes an excellent point. This is pretty much what plenty of people are already doing – building nest eggs at jobs they despise, sacrificing hours of their lives for the all ighty ollar. Missing time with loved ones, family, doing things they enjoy, in hopes of having all the time in the wolrd at some point. Assuming they live that long. Or that their pensions aren’t yanked out from under them, forcing them to spend their golden years as store greeters.
Weirdly enough given my answers in the other thread (I would pick 10 years of life rather than 1 billion dollars), I would sell one year. 1 million would significantly improve my life and cover my needs. Plus, as many pointed out, since it would be the last (and probably the crappiest) year of my life I would lose, it’s probably not worth much anyway. You might convince me to sell it for less (say, $ 300 000), or you might convince me to sell a second year for another million so that I’ll live pleasantly. But I would take your deal as it is.
Basically, I see a huge gain in either getting 10 years of life or one million dollar, while money above a couple millions seems completely superfluous and won’t get you anything from me, and the last year of my life appears mostly valueless.
So, in both cases, I’m selling something I doesn’t value (the 99 other millions, or the year between, say, 90 and 91) for something that in my perception would very significantly improve my existence.
It would become a dilemma only if you or the OP of the other thread were offering less or wanting more, hence wanting something I begin to value against something I don’t value that much (for instance you sell/buy 3 years for $ 500,000)
I’ll buck the trend here and say no. It’s so easy to say “a year for a million, sure”, but really, a million dollars wouldn’t be super life changing, while a year certainly is.
Like the song “Seasons of Love” from “Rent” goes: 525,600 minutes… How do you measure, measure a year?
I’m 38 and the phrase “middle age”, as in “I’m likely halfway done with my natural life span”, weighs on me sometimes. I have three children who are already not-so-small. I’d like to meet my grandchildren, and see them grow up as much as possible. While the economy does have me nervous, I’m doing fairly well career-wise and am (hopefully) in a stable position. It’s a deal I could come to sorely regret. For what? To pay my mortgage off 12 years earlier? To drive a nicer car for a few years? In exchange for up to 525,600 fewer smiles, laughs, hugs, even fights with my loved ones?
Ironically, while I didn’t choose to reply in that other thread, I would also not choose to live 100 years longer… It would be too painful, and unnatural, to choose to see my children die before I do, and their children’s children. But the money would be great for my natural lifespan.
Count me in for 2-3 years. As others have pointed out, given the proportion of my life that I would expect to be working jobs that I would rather not, I would actually consider myself to be gaining time rather than losing it. Three million would be the point where, properly invested, I would never have to worry about money again.
Of course, getting hit by massive inflation would sure make me feel stupid about the sacrifice.
I have no moral problem with suicide. And this is rather similar to one of the scenarios where I’d commit suicide; to avoid a degenerative disease. It’s not like you’re giving up one or two good years.
No way. I would rather have the extra time. Especially because most of my family members haven’t had very long lives. Like robardin pointed out, I wouldn’t want to miss out on some precious memories with my family. As long as I was making enough to have a middle class standard of living, I don’t think extra money would add much to my happiness anyway.
Like robardin pointed out, I wouldn’t want to miss out on some precious memories with my family. As long as I was making enough to have a middle class standard of living, I don’t think extra money would add much to my happiness anyway.