Easy. Pay off debts for me and family. Buy new car. Buy house in Seattle. Fill house to the brim with games (rpg, video, board/card). Make myself an arcade. Give friends a few hundred bucks in some fashion. Get a corgi puppy for current corgo to play with.
Take the annuity; with the staggered way that works out to ~10 million the first year. Half or so gets taxed. Give away a million, live on that four million for years.
Established a charitable fund ala the gates foundation, strive to make a better world.
Get a lawyer. Pay off debts for close friends and close family (note 'close'). Donate to a good cause or two or three. Donate to a soup kitchen. Buy a house (nothing ridiculous).
Bury small amounts and geo cache them. Spread the love a little in an interesting way.
Buy a house here in Edinburgh big enough for me and my family and an extra room for gaming. Help out friends and family a bit. Buy a bunch of boardgames and RPGs. And a Switch and Zelda.
Finally relent and let the family get a bloody dog.
Spend the next ten years researching and funding charities I like. I doubt $6million is enough to affect politics in any meaningful way. Maybe I could help swing a Yes vote on Scottish Independance, I doubt it though.
Oops, just saw that the question was for $600 million...
Pay off my student loans. Pay off my girlfriend's student loans. Pay for my son's school. Get a new place to live. Hire someone smart to secure it after all that, and try to be as generous and comfortable as reason allows.
Get a lawyer (always the first step if you win a decent amount in a lotto). Pay for my BFFs medical stuff. Buy a zepplin that's large enough to live in. Take the most leisurely route ever between cons and just kind of travel the world playing games.
Start a nonprofit pharmaceutical company that sells generic drugs that the market fails to provide at affordable prices. Refuse to accept money to delay generic competition as drugs come off-patent. Use spare money to develop cures for conditions that are not profitable to treat and release them in the public domain. Use spare money to bring lawsuits seeking to invalidate vulnerable drug patents.
Actually, using that money simply to fund lawsuits against rich companies could yeild a very good return on investment. Helping little people fight Monsanto and dodgy pharma and energy companies could make quite a difference to the world, and when you win you can claim your costs, so your money would go further.
I have little enough interest in fancy cars, though I'm sure Uber and Lyft both have a version for richer people. I'd fly first class. I could blow a hundred grand a year on travel, easy.
A housekeeping service won't cost much. Have someone show up around 2 o'clock each day to clean. At 4 hours a day and $50/hour, that's less than 80k/year. Heck, might as well hire a butler at 200k, as the difference is irrelevant and the butler can handle all sorts of issues.
Maybe I'd make sure my cons have as much funding as they could possibly want; I doubt it'd take more than a million or two for, say, dexposure events to never need to worry about money again.
Opening a board game bar would take millions, but I don't need to open it -- there is one nearby. Maybe invest so I can ensure there's always the RPGs I want. The weird ones.
Call up the folks at Give Directly and see what it'd cost to fully fund their experiments for ten years. That may be expensive, though it looks like 20 million would fully fund their big experiment. That's less than 4% of the total.
Twenty million set aside from family, ten million set aside for close friends. Now we're talking real money, but even then -- that's 5% of the money.
All told, I've allocated what? 300k/year, and less than 50 million total; I'm up to one twelfth.
Pay for 100 lobbyists to annoy congress until taxes are automatically done, like the rest of the free world. Then fund them to to take on other distributed goods for society, like fully funded pre-k.
William Nichols Property is expensive in Naples, but right outside (say, Bonita Springs or Estero) its not too bad. I could get a multi-house unit going for a few million bucks, small one family homes in a circle around a gaming "longhouse" with a kitchen facility. I would charge a nominal amount of rent ($500 a month?) but the amenities would make up for it. And the end of my long, happy life my family can sell the place or my kids can take over. Yes, there will be a library and game store / /gift shop.
Relocate to Cocoa Beach. Set up an annuity that'll let me live a standard middle-class existence until I drop dead. Use the rest as an anonymous charitable foundation that'd quietly cut checks to people who need the money.
Establish the fiscal backbone for further charitable investment in Africa, specifically giving folks pre-existing targeted ways to crowd-fund donations to (a) leapfrog communities from zero telecom to cheaply available cellular, (b) promote community effort combined with charity-shared capital to lay down serviceable road connecting communities, (c) educate and job-train also on the skills needed to establish and maintain water purification systems.
Offer matching funds to down-ticket challengeable local and state elected positions. Fortunately on that one the backbone's already there.
Pre-register in the Contemporary for one of the early weeks after Disney finishes their build of the new Star Wars LARP they're creating.
Pay off my farm. Get the farmhouse rewired, the floors fixed, and the house in general rehabbed, which we're working on but it's going incredibly slowly. Hire a half dozen people to help work the place. Buy a tractor. By that point, spend the last of the money on a round of beers for everyone involved.
William Nichols have you priced tractors and the DRM they're under lately? Farmers all across the world are downloading software patches from the Ukraine to keep their equipment running.
Yeah... I'm implying that the tractor would finish me off after paying off the property mortgage, fully rehabbing the house, building a new barn, getting all the fencing done, running the electricity and water lines we need, and hiring enough hands to properly run the place. I'm exaggerating, yes, but starting up a farm from a neglected state takes a fortune and several years.
Easy. Pay off debts for me and family. Buy new car. Buy house in Seattle. Fill house to the brim with games (rpg, video, board/card). Make myself an arcade. Give friends a few hundred bucks in some fashion. Get a corgi puppy for current corgo to play with.
ReplyDeleteTake the annuity; with the staggered way that works out to ~10 million the first year. Half or so gets taxed. Give away a million, live on that four million for years.
ReplyDeleteEstablished a charitable fund ala the gates foundation, strive to make a better world.
Get a lawyer. Pay off debts for close friends and close family (note 'close'). Donate to a good cause or two or three. Donate to a soup kitchen. Buy a house (nothing ridiculous).
ReplyDeleteBury small amounts and geo cache them. Spread the love a little in an interesting way.
Invest the rest.
Start a trust and sign the money over to the trust. Choose the annuity. Pay off debts. Haven't gotten further than that.
ReplyDeleteBuy a house here in Edinburgh big enough for me and my family and an extra room for gaming. Help out friends and family a bit. Buy a bunch of boardgames and RPGs. And a Switch and Zelda.
ReplyDeleteFinally relent and let the family get a bloody dog.
Spend the next ten years researching and funding charities I like. I doubt $6million is enough to affect politics in any meaningful way. Maybe I could help swing a Yes vote on Scottish Independance, I doubt it though.
Oops, just saw that the question was for $600 million...
Pay off my student loans. Pay off my girlfriend's student loans. Pay for my son's school. Get a new place to live. Hire someone smart to secure it after all that, and try to be as generous and comfortable as reason allows.
ReplyDeleteIt is a little bit fascinating to me that most of our answers are like Brian Ashford's and take closer to 6 million than 600.
ReplyDeleteMine, too. Mine is essentially punting, and saying that there's no good individual use that I'd have for such wealth.
William Nichols unless you're used to such opulence already, it's hard to imagine actually spending that much money in a lifetime. For anything.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols the problem is that i have no concept of how to achieve the large scale things i would want to do.
ReplyDeleteIs 600 million dollars enough to save some rainforest? How much? For how long?
Is it enough to alleviate one of the many refuge crises going on just now?
Is it enough to make season 2 of Firefly?
I just don't know.
Get a lawyer (always the first step if you win a decent amount in a lotto). Pay for my BFFs medical stuff. Buy a zepplin that's large enough to live in. Take the most leisurely route ever between cons and just kind of travel the world playing games.
ReplyDeleteAlso I don't know if you can use fictitious names for trusts but I would call mine The Butt Touch Trust
ReplyDeleteStart a nonprofit pharmaceutical company that sells generic drugs that the market fails to provide at affordable prices. Refuse to accept money to delay generic competition as drugs come off-patent. Use spare money to develop cures for conditions that are not profitable to treat and release them in the public domain. Use spare money to bring lawsuits seeking to invalidate vulnerable drug patents.
ReplyDeleteActually, using that money simply to fund lawsuits against rich companies could yeild a very good return on investment. Helping little people fight Monsanto and dodgy pharma and energy companies could make quite a difference to the world, and when you win you can claim your costs, so your money would go further.
ReplyDeleteHOLD ON.
ReplyDeleteHow much money does it cost to be Batman?
I don't know either.
ReplyDeleteI have little enough interest in fancy cars, though I'm sure Uber and Lyft both have a version for richer people. I'd fly first class. I could blow a hundred grand a year on travel, easy.
A housekeeping service won't cost much. Have someone show up around 2 o'clock each day to clean. At 4 hours a day and $50/hour, that's less than 80k/year. Heck, might as well hire a butler at 200k, as the difference is irrelevant and the butler can handle all sorts of issues.
Maybe I'd make sure my cons have as much funding as they could possibly want; I doubt it'd take more than a million or two for, say, dexposure events to never need to worry about money again.
Opening a board game bar would take millions, but I don't need to open it -- there is one nearby. Maybe invest so I can ensure there's always the RPGs I want. The weird ones.
Call up the folks at Give Directly and see what it'd cost to fully fund their experiments for ten years. That may be expensive, though it looks like 20 million would fully fund their big experiment. That's less than 4% of the total.
Twenty million set aside from family, ten million set aside for close friends. Now we're talking real money, but even then -- that's 5% of the money.
All told, I've allocated what? 300k/year, and less than 50 million total; I'm up to one twelfth.
Sam Zeitlin, Brian Ashford Now those are areas for how to spend money!
ReplyDeleteTwo words: Gaming Commune
ReplyDeleteWhat's that gonna cost, Chris Carpenter?
ReplyDeleteAaron Griffin This is not the place to poop on other people's ideas. Be generous. :-)
ReplyDeletePay for 100 lobbyists to annoy congress until taxes are automatically done, like the rest of the free world. Then fund them to to take on other distributed goods for society, like fully funded pre-k.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Property is expensive in Naples, but right outside (say, Bonita Springs or Estero) its not too bad. I could get a multi-house unit going for a few million bucks, small one family homes in a circle around a gaming "longhouse" with a kitchen facility. I would charge a nominal amount of rent ($500 a month?) but the amenities would make up for it. And the end of my long, happy life my family can sell the place or my kids can take over. Yes, there will be a library and game store / /gift shop.
ReplyDeleteRelocate to Cocoa Beach. Set up an annuity that'll let me live a standard middle-class existence until I drop dead. Use the rest as an anonymous charitable foundation that'd quietly cut checks to people who need the money.
ReplyDeleteWhy Cocoa Beach, John Hattan?
ReplyDeleteChris Carpenter Huh. That doesn't sound like my utopia, but to each theirs.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Because it's laid back and there are plenty of Tiki bars, and I can watch NASA launches from the beach.
ReplyDeleteDianne Harris Anything for yourself? For your husband?
ReplyDeleteNot doing taxes anymore is a gift to my husband :P Ok +100k a year to live off of.
ReplyDeleteI have it on good authority your husband kind of likes doing the taxes. Because he's insane.
ReplyDeleteEstablish the fiscal backbone for further charitable investment in Africa, specifically giving folks pre-existing targeted ways to crowd-fund donations to (a) leapfrog communities from zero telecom to cheaply available cellular, (b) promote community effort combined with charity-shared capital to lay down serviceable road connecting communities, (c) educate and job-train also on the skills needed to establish and maintain water purification systems.
ReplyDeleteOffer matching funds to down-ticket challengeable local and state elected positions. Fortunately on that one the backbone's already there.
Pre-register in the Contemporary for one of the early weeks after Disney finishes their build of the new Star Wars LARP they're creating.
Pay off my farm. Get the farmhouse rewired, the floors fixed, and the house in general rehabbed, which we're working on but it's going incredibly slowly. Hire a half dozen people to help work the place. Buy a tractor. By that point, spend the last of the money on a round of beers for everyone involved.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch I do wonder what effect say, a hundred million dollars would have on American politics. I'm not sure at all.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Ragland That'd take 600 million? First blush, it seems closer to six than six hundred...
I do like that just about all of the personal ideas would be fine with one hundredth of the powerball winnings. Now, affecting american politics ...
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols have you priced tractors and the DRM they're under lately? Farmers all across the world are downloading software patches from the Ukraine to keep their equipment running.
ReplyDeleteErr... looks like the list price of a John Deere is < 350k?
ReplyDeleteconfigure.deere.com - configure.deere.com/cbyo/#/en_us/configure/19597390
So ... I'm not sure how that adds up to 600 million. It still sounds like a few million solves these problems. Am I missing something?
And absolutely, John Deere is being a bag of dicks by telling farms they can't do their own repairs. Its totally bogus.
Yeah... I'm implying that the tractor would finish me off after paying off the property mortgage, fully rehabbing the house, building a new barn, getting all the fencing done, running the electricity and water lines we need, and hiring enough hands to properly run the place. I'm exaggerating, yes, but starting up a farm from a neglected state takes a fortune and several years.
ReplyDeleteYou know more about farming than I do, so while I still think we're off by an order of magnitude or two, you may well be right!
ReplyDeleteWhen I get to Cocoa Beach, Imma plant pineapples in my yard. I probably don't need a John Deere for that.
ReplyDeleteNo, but Dole might sue you.
ReplyDelete