Mad money

If you won $20 million in the lottery, what would you spend it on? You have to spend it on yourself and cannot invest the money; you have to spend it in a year.

In approximate order of priority:

• buy a house & pay to have other people move my stuff
• buy a new car
• buy a piano
• get a personal chef to cook my meals during the week
• hire a cleaning service
• significantly improve my wardrobe size and quality

At this point I start to run out of ideas on how to spend the money on myself. Notice that so far none of things have drastically changed by life, my job or my volunteer activities. I wish I thought this meant that I was so content with my life that I would not change any of it. But I think what it shows is that I'm so focused on the mundane details of day-to-day life that I don't even fantasize about changing them.

If I assume that I would take a year off work to spend this $20 million, I guess I would travel. Where?

• to see friends in Chicago, St. Louis, and California--just to start
• I would follow Abraham Lincoln's life and tour some Civil War sites
• I used to want to live in Europe--maybe I'd try that for a while
• fly friends and family to join me in exotic locales
• spend some time in the Rockies
• buy a private jet so I could do all of this on my own schedule

Sadly I seem to have lost touch with my passions because none of those get me really excited. The idea of spending $20 million without any restrictions makes me more happy:

• pay for my sister and brother's college
• have my parents' kitchen and storage/laundry rooms remodeled
• endow scholarships

Still looking for my passion...