What if I won $10M?
I’ve been delaying writing this blog thinking that something interesting would hit me on this subject. I don’t really think that’s going to happen now (how’s that for encouraging readership?). Anyways, you never know what somebody might like, so here it is.
I’m sure everyone in North America has had the dream of getting a pile of cash because lotteries are so common these days. Of course, I’m no different. No, I don’t buy lottery tickets because the math doesn’t work for me (I don’t go in for astronomically bad odds), but I can still dream.
Not too many years ago, if I would have won $10M, I would have given more than half to charity, most of it to churches. I’m no longer convinced that churches and other charities would really make good use of the money, so I’ve changed.
I’ve now decided that I would simply divide the money between family and friends. The closer the relationship, the greater the percentage of the pot they would get. My wife and I have a single, shared bank account, so our money is considered as one. My kids would get a good pile for when they turned 18 or 21 (probably safer at 21), and so on with the rest of my relatives and close friends. I also have the idea that as I pass the cheques out to people, I would add a note with it showing how I divided the money up. I’m thinking that this would minimize the complaints from people who thought they deserved more money. I’d also love to send out post dated cheques, then, if anyone called me begging for more money, I would just cancel their existing cheque. I’m thinking that if you can’t be happy with a gift of money, no matter how little, you don’t deserve any. Of course, this would be very difficult to do with relatives, but I’m pretty sure I’d go through with it.
With my part of the money (probably half), my wife and I would retire to some place warm like Costa Rica. I wouldn’t buy many expensive toys, so I probably wouldn’t spend much of the money, so I’d probably end up giving more to my kids.
It’s kind of funny that I think I would do exactly what I wrote in my “early retirement” blog, and I don’t even need to be a millionaire to do that. I truly have no desire to own a bunch of expensive stuff.
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