What would you do with $1,000,000,000?

[r16]

counted the zeros and decided against to tell you people what ı do with a trillion dollars or two , in any year . Then reading the thread and discovered it was a billion ! Are you kidding me ?

 

[thecrazyscot]

The amount is too big for me to comprehend to be honest.

 

[amadeus]

I was also thinking a retro computing store and repair business. Got a problem with your Apple ][? That would keep me busy. I think I'd like to be a shop owner if I didn't have to care about profits or losses, and just kind of ran it as a hobby.

I like the old computers where you can pop off the chips and sort everything out yourself, and you could consult the service manual to take care of things. Also how software developers really had to push the limits of the hardware. I remember reading somewhere the graphics for Candy Crush were something like over 100 megabytes, all bitmaps. Since the average phone now is 32 gigabytes or more, I feel many developers aren't as conscientious as they used to be.

 

[Socrates99]

Set up my immediate family for life. Dump most of it into investment funds.

Build a brewery in NW Michigan hire staff to run it. Itd primarily be a passion project. I'd get a head brewer with experience to do the main work but build a small 1bbl pilot system to spin out fun stuff myself. When I'm done with it I'd gift it to the employees to run as a cooperative.

Build or buy a new 5br 3bath house on a decent lot with room for a large garage with a wood shop and room for toys. Get a state of the art RV and tool around the country until I'm too old to drive it.

Make sure my sons finish a degree that gives them the skills to handle money. Then set up all three of my boys with small businesses they can run and are interested in.

Then when I croak, spread whatever I have left out across extended family. I'm talking "obscure relative you didn't know you had just left you $50k" type spread.

I wouldn't live like a billionaire, just a really successful surgeon or whatever.

 

[amadeus]

I think I’d also like to have a radio station, or an independent TV station. Howard Hughes did. I’d set the schedule to only stuff I want to watch. Were it a radio station, talk with amadeus! It would be like Larry King’s old series minus the politicians.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I think I’d also like to have a radio station, or an independent TV station. Howard Hughes did. I’d set the schedule to only stuff I want to watch. Were it a radio station, talk with amadeus! It would be like Larry King’s old series minus the politicians.

More ambitious than me. I always used to think I'd like to run a games (pen and paper/boardgames) or book or record shop. It was just the thought of having to stock stuff I don't like that put me off.
With this much money my shop could sell all 3 but only stuff I think is good, plus it could have a bar/café/restaurant attached and I could pay people to do all the actual work and just hang out there.

 

[Synobun]

More seriously, I'd build a commune where I and my friends can live. Independent properties with total privacy, but connected and accessible to one another with a central location built for get-togethers, outdoor activities, mail, etc. Ideally, this commune would be some distance away from "other people," but not too far. 5 to 20 km would be fine. The commune would have adjacent buildings and lots for gardening, swimming, and so on. Maybe I'd end up living here entirely alone (I probably would end up living entirely alone), but the other homes would be there, just in case. I'd also pay to have a gigabit line to the commune.

This would be extravagant, but I doubt it'd take up more than 5% of my wealth.

I'd pour the rest into investments so that I could continuously fund initiatives without fear of running out.

 

[Narz]

Retire. Travel. Slowly spend the money on political attack ads.

Wouldn't it be better to fund a candidate you support?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Spend it on stuff, I guess.

 

[warpus]

1. Hire a full time accountant/financial advisor. This person will tell me how to invest most of this money.

2. Pay off all of my debts and the debts of my immediate family, as well as any relatives I know of who need financial help. $1B is definitely enough to pay off all of these debts and still have most of that $1B left.. If this were $1M, I would not be able to do this, as a $200k debt eats 20% of all my money! But with $1B it's just spare change

3. I would purchase a fancy party chamber @ BMO Field in Toronto. There's probably a waiting list for those, but it's basically a luxurious box at the stadium where the club I support plays, with enough room to host a bunch of friends and/or family, and a sweet view of the action. I am currently a season ticket holder and get my own seat, but it'd be nice to have a box. And if I'm a billionaire, I'm totally getting one. I also wouldn't mind a season ticket @ Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea FC play. But realistically I would not be able to attend most of those matches, so that might not make sense either.

4. I would buy some fancy house in Toronto that makes it easy for me to get to BMO Field. That would be my primary residence. I like Toronto because of all the restaurants (so much ethnic diversity = so many exciting culinary options!), I would be close to Canada's busiest airport (so good for travel), and it would be easy for me to get to TFC games.

5. I would take my immediate family on a dream vacation to wherever they want to go. We would go as a family somewhere and just have a blast for a couple weeks or whatever.

6. I would set up a trust fund for my parents and put a million in there or something, let them use that money for whatever they want. They are really good with money so I don't have to worry about them spending it all on blow and hookers and asking for more the next weekend.

7. Trust fund for all my young relatives so they have university paid for.

8. My new home in Toronto needs to have a music studio room type thing, so I can fully dive into my hobby of creating music.

9. I would buy a nice laptop and fly to some random places and rent out a beach hut or something. Then I'd just chill there for a while, draw textmode art, try to write that novel I've always wanted to write, or I guess probably start with a short story. Once bored with the beach hut, I would just backpack around like I do on my trips. With so much financial freedom, you can pretty much do whatever you want, so I'd let my nose lead me.

10. I would hire somebody to find me one person a week I can help. Somebody down on their luck who could use a $20k wipe off their debts or what have you. Maybe pay for their university education.. Or a new drum kit. Or whatever. With so much money, and me being a minimalist, there's no way I'd ever spend even 5% of it. So might as well help out others with it as well.

 

[Synobun]

Oh, that's a good one. Same as @warpus, I'd make sure everyone I like gets something good and long lasting. Most people I know have student loans, so I'd pay those off. I'd probably do one long-term thing and one immediate thing, like student loans plus a new car or a vacation or something.

Unless they ask. Then they get nothing. (Well, maybe. Depending on how it's asked.) Anyone coming out of the woodwork also get nothing.

I'd set up a trust fund for my niece as well. Maybe my nephew; I don't have contact with him and was only around for the first year or two of his life, but he's disabled and his mother is neglecting his care. I'm not sure how I'd help him in a way that she couldn't abuse that wouldn't require my constant micromanagement.

 

[warpus]

Oh, that's a good one. Same as @warpus, I'd make sure everyone I like gets something good and long lasting. Most people I know have student loans, so I'd pay those off. I'd probably do one long-term thing and one immediate thing, like student loans plus a new car or a vacation or something.

Unless they ask. Then they get nothing. (Well, maybe. Depending on how it's asked.) Anyone coming out of the woodwork also get nothing.

I'd set up a trust fund for my niece as well. Maybe my nephew; I don't have contact with him and was only around for the first year or two of his life, but he's disabled and his mother is neglecting his care. I'm not sure how I'd help him in a way that she couldn't abuse that wouldn't require my constant micromanagement.

I think it's possible to set up a trust fund that's locked down in a way that would prevent someone from taking advantage of it. If not, you could just hire a PI to keep tabs on the situation or something. With $1B there seem to be plenty of options that would cost relatively little.

 

[Zelig]

Buy all the billboard real estate in my city, replace all the billboards with insults against city council for allowing billboards.

I'd like to dismantle the global advertising industry, but would need about three orders of magnitude more wealth than $1B.

Then, I'm going full meta. I'm going to start an organization focused on figuring out counterintuitive or otherwise clever ways to improve things. The first thing the organization will do once established is probably to solicit ideas from the public, and "winning" ideas earn winners $1K. Bill Gates already does high-resource good. Elon Musk already does clever-engineering good. I want to initiate think-way-outside-the-box good.

Bezos has been trying that, it's not easy.

Jeff Bezos Wants Ideas for Philanthropy, So He Asked Twitter

 

[Birdjaguar]

I think it's possible to set up a trust fund that's locked down in a way that would prevent someone from taking advantage of it. If not, you could just hire a PI to keep tabs on the situation or something. With $1B there seem to be plenty of options that would cost relatively little.

Yes it is possible. Trusts can be constructed such that they are very, very hard to break and the money is locked into very specific uses and distributions.

 

[Synobun]

The issue would be having the money actually get used. I could make it so the money can only be used for approved things, but then his mother would simply not do those things and the money would sit there, useless. An easy way would be to incentivize, but then that'd need supervision. (e.g. you get money if you put your son in therapy, but then that therapy needs to be verified and consistently applied, and the only way to prove that is with supervision.)

 

[El_Machinae]

I'd set up a trust fund for my niece as well. Maybe my nephew; I don't have contact with him and was only around for the first year or two of his life, but he's disabled and his mother is neglecting his care. I'm not sure how I'd help him in a way that she couldn't abuse that wouldn't require my constant micromanagement.

It's completely non-intuitive as to how much a billion dollars is.

With $10 million, you can set up an income stream that is both upper-class AND grows at an annual rate faster than the median income. $10 million allows you to permanently hire a top professional in a field, in perpetuity.

This means that you could hire a top professional whose only job was to think of ways to help your nephew that wouldn't be abused and then administer the trust fund using micromanagment so fine that it's worth every penny. Next to this upper-tier salary, the actual trust fund is a rounding error.

3% of a billion dollars is $30 million, so you could do set up a new version of this 3 times per year for a new person and end the year richer than you started.

By the time you decide on a new project and hire someone, interest has collected in your account to permanently fund it. Not 'for the lifetime of the person' fund it - permanently fund it. The employment would be for the administrator to find a new project and to hire a replacement when the previous project died of old age.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I would take some of the money for myself and maybe buy a house and some video games too. And I guess invest some of it so I don't run out of money. And buy nice presents for friends.

I'd send some of money to Parkinson's Disease research so they can try to find a cure in case the mouse thing doesn't work for humans.

I'd also put some of it to other good causes too but I'd have to figure those out.

 

[civvver]

Assuming you hire all the lawyers, accountants/advisors, and pay all the taxes and all the kinda mandatory stuff, and obviously quitting my day job:

1. I'd probably adopt a couple kids. I have two girls but if I had unlimited time and money now I would like more. I don't think working I could find enough time for 4-5 kids or enough money to give them the lifestyle I want. I think I'd want two baby boys so they could grow up together, I don't care what race or anything like that but I'd like babies so we could become the first parents they remember. Then I think I'd probably want to foster a tween/teenager or two. Might be hard, but that's why...

2. Hire me and my wife personal assistants. They'd live on site in a guest house or something and basically do whatever the heck we told them (within reason of course). Like yes, not working I'd like to bathe my children, play and read with them, feed them and do all the daddy stuff, but some days I can imagine needing help for sure with the extra kids. And laundry, who wants to do that ever? I love cooking but some days I just want dinner already made for me. I also like grocery shopping but not all the time. So my assistant would do all that crap for me. And baby sit on date nights. So come to think of it, we might just need a full time maid/cook who cleans and does all the laundry and shopping and cooking when we need it in addition to our assistants. And I'd pay them well over market rates, plus tons of benefits. I'd probably need to incorporate and hire them as employees.

3. Get a big house on a lake somewhere in northern USA for summers and a big vacation house on a beach somewhere in southern USA for winters.

4. Buy a bunch of franchises like QDobas or McDonalds or something and hire smart, trustworthy people to run them.

5. Visit all those places I talked about in the other thread!

 

[Synobun]

2. Hire me and my wife personal assistants. They'd live on site in a guest house or something and basically do whatever the heck we told them (within reason of course). Like yes, not working I'd like to bathe my children, play and read with them, feed them and do all the daddy stuff, but some days I can imagine needing help for sure with the extra kids. And laundry, who wants to do that ever? I love cooking but some days I just want dinner already made for me. I also like grocery shopping but not all the time. So my assistant would do all that crap for me. And baby sit on date nights. So come to think of it, we might just need a full time maid/cook who cleans and does all the laundry and shopping and cooking when we need it in addition to our assistants. And I'd pay them well over market rates, plus tons of benefits. I'd probably need to incorporate and hire them as employees.

I'd have a personal chef too. Not needing to worry about feeding myself while still getting quality food would be a huge stress reliever.

I've seen some personal assistants who do stuff like that. I could never trust anyone in my space to that extent, but I can see the appeal.

 

[caketastydelish]

hookers and cocaine