So… just in case anyone is having a hard time focusing today (no reason!! no reason at all!!), let’s have a fun discussion: What would you do if you won the $1.9B Powerball? (Or, honestly, ANY huge sum of money?) Some questions to focus the discussion:
- Would you give any money to family or friends (and how much, and when)?
- What would you ADD to your life — vacation? private chef? personal assistant?
- What would you TAKE AWAY from your life, e.g., would you quit your job or redirect your time/energy somewhere else?
- What would be the top 3 things you’d CHANGE about your life, e.g., home, locale, something else?
Another few questions: How often do you buy lottery tickets (if ever)? Do you have a strategy (like a betting pool)? In general, how much do you gamble if you’re in a place like Las Vegas?
For my $.02 — we would give money to family and friends, for sure, but I’m not sure how much. I heard somewhere that 20% of your winnings is a good guideline.
(We’d also give to charities and causes, although I don’t have any quick ideas on how much or to which ones — a lot would depend on the status of the world at that moment.)
Assuming we were able to stay anonymous in collecting the winnings, we probably would not tell anyone but parents and siblings how much we’d actually won. We’d also probably wait a bit after news stories (if any) died down about the winnings.
I think a whirlwind vacation would be the first thing on my list to ADD, certainly for the three months of summer vacation, but maybe we’d take the kids out for longer to travel (with private tutors).
Perhaps we’d get a yacht to make travel easier, and so we could bring family along and have easy travel plans for the gang… but we’ll see.
A private chef and personal assistant would both be really nice, too! OK, and a daily fitness trainer would also be great. (I saw a meme that said “What I really need is for someone to follow me around and slap food out of my hand,” and, yeah, that too.)
What would I take away? In terms of jobs, I think I’d keep the sites running (although hopefully delegating more than I do right now, ha), and I’d probably expand the idea of it in terms of offerings — maybe a line of Corporette clothes or schmancy retreats or conferences.
(This would be more about hiring the right people to basically do everything — I always imagine the Kardashians basically waltz into the room, look over the products people have designed for them — maybe based on a group brainstorm session — and then waltz out, leaving the experts to actually do the heavy lifting. That would be nice!)
I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to organize my home, so I’d want to take that energy investment away — I’d probably add a household manager (who knows where everything goes and organizes it) to the list.
(We actually talked about this a bit on CorporetteMoms, based on one entrepreneur’s description of her $27-an-hour house manager and how she hired her.)
My top three changes would be our home (definitely upgrading) and probably locale, although we’d see in terms of the kids and schools. (We already have our estate stuff set up; if we didn’t that would be a top action item also.)
I’m not sure what my third change would be — maybe buying an apartment or home somewhere else with regular plans to spend time there. It’s probably silly to think I could set up a PAC or think tank to influence politics, but again — you can hire people who know what they’re doing!
In terms of gambling, I am not a big gambler at all — I buy lotto tickets from time to time, but in places like Vegas I’m terribly boring because I give myself $100 to lose. So, I’m done in five minutes! I also can’t stand cigarette smoke, so spending time on the casino floor doesn’t hold a lot of appeal.
(I haven’t been to Vegas in years, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it despite that — good shopping and restaurants, plus nice pools.)
How about you guys — what are your thoughts? If you won the lottery, what would you add, remove, and change about your life?
Stock photo via Stencil.
Kat
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