In The Lap of Luxury

[Duchesse]

What would you do if money was no object, no motivater. If you had 40 million dollars what would you do with yourself?

[lgslgs]

I'd build a really nice barn.

Lynda

[Broken Arrow]

Ah yes, it's about time for another round of late night ruminations by the campfire, eh?

I know this is going to sound really insane, but 40 million would not put me in the "money is no object" category. I don't have any grandiose desires or anything, but... there are still some things one can't buy with that amount. Like, Sealand for example.

Anyways, there is something that I have realized about myself: That the more money you have, the more your ambitions tend to ratchet up along with it. At least, I think that's true with me.

For example, I would not be interested in small potatos stuff anymore, like... finding the cheapest boxes of pasta on sale in the grocery store or something.

Instead, I'd be looking at bigger issues like solving our country's energy issue and our dependency on foreign, crude oil. I'm also thinking how nice it'd be to finally transition] the entire country to the metric system. I'd also want to solve a lot of our financial issues with specific types of social and economic incentives. And reduce the national debt as well....

Am I starting to sound like a politician? There's not a political bone in me though. I just want to address these issues the best way I can... which mostly likely would be in the form of non-profit organizations, think tanks, and lobbying groups.

Now that I am think about it, I think that I am already doing things in very small, personal scales of what I am likely to do if I had infinite financial means. It's just a matter of scope. For example, I already recycle now, but if money was no object, I'd looking at ways to promote recycling efforts nationwide.

Well, that'll have to do for today's purposes.

[living_in_oz]

Go on a couple of vacations! Probably build a nicer home. Give some away to family. Give to my church. Give to some charities. Honestly, I don't "want" for much of anything. I'm pretty satisified with my life. However, I would like to take an occasional vacation

[aurielle]

Buy a reasonable house in one of the two valleys next to us. Hopefully on the river and surrounded by trees. Buy DH and I new reasonable cars. Give to charities that help the homeless, the drug addicted, and women.
Go on a vacation. Thats all I can think of at the moment.

[cschin4]

I would use build a nice home and buy a nice car. But, I really don't need that much "stuff". I would give alot to church and probably pursue things that really interest me (hobbies and such).

[LuxLiving]

Buy that houseboat and give some major $$'s to a food-bank or establish one in some small towns around.

[Daylily]

Live in Europe.

[Gruntina]

I am sure my thinking would be different if this was reality but since it is not, this is what I come up with…

I would like to quit my job and do more missionary or community help and volunteer works. I would like to do more research on how to help education in our community as I really feel we are becoming vulnerable with our education being taught from other countries.

fight for more deaf rights. Set up more retirement homes for the deaf senior citizen so all nurse aids would know sign language so they are not isolated in the quiet hearing world all alone., Have an home set up for forsaken deaf babies near the schools for the Deaf around the states and possibly other countries. And strive to maintain our close captioning service on our televisions, there are always someone wanting to drop it all because its too expensive to do but that would put us in an unequal society.

It would be the time that I need to accomplish all this and that money would allow me to quit my job.

[sarah]

Travel

[disneysteve]

Is there a big lottery drawing somewhere? That's usually when this question arises.

For me, certainly 40 mil would be plenty. I would absolutely stop working. We love to travel. The two things that keep us from doing more of it now are time (have to work) and money. 40 mil would solve both of those problems. I'd love to get a luxury RV and tour the country.

The dream item on my retirement list is Holland America's circumnavigation cruise. It think it is 105 days. I'd be happy to move that up to now, rather than 20 years from now. What an experience that must be.

We would at least buy a 2nd home in the Walt Disney World area and spend a good part of the year there. I'm not sure if we'd move there full time or not.

[PRICEPLUS]

I would not change myh lifestyle too much at all. I'm pretty happy as I am. I have no pretenses or at least I hope I don't. Maybe a new car or something along those lines.

[tabbycat31]

I would pursue my passion of opening a rescue for cats.

[PRICEPLUS]

A rescue for cats is a noble and wonderful thing. Good for you!

[fairy74]

I would buy a modest ranch house with a lot of land and a big deck (we like to throw parties and have barbeques). Buy a reasonable truck for DH and a newer 4 door for me. Fully fund a college fund for baby to be. Pay off my student loans, then I would be able to quit my current job and just do public interest law and pitbull rescue. Fully fund retirement fund, travel a little and the rest to various charities.

[PrincessPerky]

Education center, devoted to teaching any and all who want to learn, and devoted to raising awarness of educational opportunities in the home, car, ect.

so that more people would 'teach as they go' instead of waiting for the schools to do it.

[vishenda]

luxurious vacations!

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Buy the two properties on either side of me. Pay the inner city youth rehab group to update them for rental. Hire one of them to manage the rentals. Hire my brother to design and install for me the best solar electric and wind generators we could work out among the three properties. Also replace that old furnace I've mentioned.

Rehab hundreds of other old homes around the city, doing so as "greenly" as possible.

Get a really quality sofa that always is supportive of my bad back.

Find out whether custom made shoes are as luxuiously comfortable as I imagine they are!

Loan my friend the $$$ to get started in a quilt and sewing business.

Start a micro-grant fund for homeschool families. Could fund things from $10 to $500. Could fund small things such as the purchase of a pack of origami paper, tickets to the natural history museum, tools for building a dog house.

Visit eastern Europe before it changes too much more! Take my friend D'with me!

Buy riverfront properties in Minnesota, northern Iowa. Employ local people to take care of them and oversee their use by selected others when my family is not using them.

Start an apple orchard in Keosauqua, Iowa. (Someone else's dream that is just so romantically down-to-earth, that I got drawn into it.)

Open non-government, non-religious, non-profit community centers where people could get rooms for group use. (I always find it is hard for small groups with little money to find a place to get together.)

Run a campaign to reduce commercial packaging. (Look for ideas such as stores must receive back from customers all packaging they sold to consumers and must prove of safe disposal/recycling. Maybe a deposit on packaging materials so that consumers do bring it back)

Hire a personal chef.

Build my Mom and a couple of her friends a nice, comfortable home together with all the assistance of any kind they could need, but in which they run the show, not their helpers.

Give my neighbor who is a severely burned out middle school teacher a stipend to go back to school and study the field she has always really wanted to work in, but didn't believe she was smart enough for.

Start a trust for the mentally ill in my city, so that monetary resources need not determine what medicines, or therapies, or living situations they wind up with.

Employ anyone willing to help clean up my ugly dirty city and to add lots of decent landscaping which would incorporate plenty of fruit trees. Hire a couple dozen incredibly talented landscape designers to figure out what to do where.

Have a daily, hour long massage. Ahhhh!

Tell the receptionist at my dentist office to slip my phone number in the hand of anyone she suspects will not be getting the dental work they need because of the expense of it.

Provide the $$$ for the public libraries to have longer hours, seven days a week.

Well, I guess I easily ran through a lot more than $40 million just now....

Hmm, maybe I'd finally get cable or satellite TV!

[Ima saver]

Make my husband quit working so much and let him persue his dream of building his own hot rod. Buy a little condo near the beach so we could winter there.

[humandraydel]

Hike the Appalachian Trail. Then the Pacific Crest Trail. Then the Continental Divide Trail. Then kayak down the Snake River and Colorado River. Then I'd find something else to do