What would you do with ten million dollars?

[Ciddy]

Pay off all my debts and debts of my friends/family members (close friends and family members, not like friends of friends or really distant cousins). Anyone who has car payments, house payments, etc, would get taken care of. I have a pretty small circle of people I consider close friends. One of them is currently working at a job he hates because of debt. I'd take care of that, then I'd accompany him just for teh lulz when he goes to tell his employer exactly what to stick and where to stick it.

I have no kids of my own but do have a niece and nephew, and I'd set up a trust fund or something to cover their college expenses.

Get a CPA/financial advisor of some sort (I actually know a few I can trust) to help me manage the rest and get the most out of it.

Live comfortably for a very long time (if not the rest of my life). That's a shitload of money, and I'm pretty sure I'd be able to stretch it for a good while as long as I'm not blowing it on stupid "I have way too much money and want to throw it around" shit like Ferrari collections. I like to think I'd continue living the same way I am now, but I'd have all my debts paid off and no longer need to worry about money when unexpected costs like car repairs, medical expenses, etc, come up. So there'd be no financial stress, which would be cool.

Oh: and build the most badass gaming rig that money can buy.

[Blayze]

I'd buy a house, pay it off, quit my job and look into any potential expensive private surgery for my body's medical issues. Then I'd wake up late every day, spend a few hours in the gym, eat out for tea so I wouldn't have to do any washing up, then go home for a few hours gaming on a kickass PC before bed.

Because it's amazing how much personal development you can cram into a single day when you don't have to spend most of your time at work trying to pay the bills.

Not sure what I'd do with the rest of it, beyond buying my mum a bungalow for her old age and getting it all done up with security and OAP help features like panic buttons and the like.

That wouldn't even be a fraction of the ten million, though. I'd probably split most of it between family and friends and disappear to do all the above in peace and quiet.

[Archon14]

I think that's enough to achieve this in my lifetime:

1. Establish a decent life.
2. Many prototypes and scientific discoveries have been made in the last year for things I always wanted to have, wait for them to develop.
3. Obtain those things when they are finished.
4. Try to visit/learn/see everything I've wanted to in my lifetime. (no private islands, expensive cars and other crap)
5. Spend most of the money on a space trip.
6. Freeze myself in one of those cryo-things for 250 years.

[Damajin]

I think you'd need another zero for that.

Nah, private island being the most expensive part can still be had relatively cheap all things considered, probably 20-25% of my cash right there, sometimes cheaper than normal plots of land depending on where and how big the island is. Homes built with natural earth building techniques are more or less handmade, so rather than lounge around all day doing nothing it'd be me, family and friends working together to build the places we'd live in over a period of weeks or a few months. Solar array for 4-6 homes would be expensive but with 10 million you'd have more than enough.

[May90]

Leave $500,000 or so to myself, send $500,000 to my family and donate everything else. Cannot imagine what I myself could do with all this money anyway.

[Mirishka]

Buy a moderately priced home. Pay off debt. Enjoy seeing interest and dividends from the rest.

No point spending it all and going broke.

I'd donate the majority (75-80%) to a Children's hospital in my state that doesn't charge parents for care, even if the condition is serious/expensive. The rest I'd put in an account and live off the interest, willing it to my family when I die.

I wouldn't live any differently than I do now. I don't need a nicer car or an extravagant home. The only thing I'd probably 'splurge' on would be a ridiculous, state-of-the-art desktop PC... but even that would only cost a few thousand dollars.

[Rukh]

Live off it and do art full-time.

[Deleted]

Did I already post in this? I'm not sure. I'd probably open several holding companies, all with murky connections so nobody sees who owns what, then buy a bunch of cheap apartment blocks. Construe the entire thing that all the income from the rents are "used up" in aquiring further real estate, repairs or running costs. Basically if you're earning 10k per rents, but have another house on which you pay a 10k mortage, you effectively have no income per rents, you can also count running costs, repairs and others against your income.

It's really hard to explain in English, you can basically do a lot of shenaningans where you effectively have to pay hardly any taxes as all of the money is just "flowing through" and such doesn't count against the cap above which you have to start paying actual taxes, using the income to pay of further real estate.

"But why doesn't everyone do it then?" "Because most people don't have the initial investment of 600k to 1 million to start buying the first apartment block! With rapidly increasing rents and housing shortages right now while the real estate itself is pretty damn cheap it would be a great idea to start. Going for "government paid" is actually the way to go, those people usually have little to no demands, don't care about anything while the government is reliable and pays punctually. The more you can cram into those houses the better.

[Deleted]

So basically become a slum lord. That's the summary of your plan.

Hey it's mad money and not THAAAT bad. It's still proper albeit pretty nglected apartments, paid for by the government for unemployed/alcoholics etc. If you want to be really scummy you can take it a step further and rent out by room as "emergency shelters", hire some university student or something to occasionally have a look at it and you can actually sell it off as "with caretakers".

If you have the initial money to get it rolling, you can make a hell of a lot of money this way. All completely legal. Also we don't have "slums" around here. :S

[Deleted]

Buy 10 million worth of Disney shares.

[Mentia]

1 million to my church
4.5 million split evenly amongst my family
4.5 million in investments geared toward providing my children the best opportunities I could afford and my retirement.

10 million is a lot but it isn't something I could instantly retire on.

[ranzino]

1 million to my church
4.5 million split evenly amongst my family
4.5 million in investments geared toward providing my children the best opportunities I could afford and my retirement.

10 million is a lot but it isn't something I could instantly retire on.

You could. But you would not with all that splits mentioned.

[upslash]

1. Hire financial expert
2. Buy a big house - probably more than I need ($500k or so)
3. Buy vacation home on the beach for my family ($1 Mil)
3. Buy a new Corvette
4. Put the rest of it in the bank and let it sit
5. Live off the interest
6. Setup special conditions for giving away the rest of it after I die (to kids if I ever have them)

[Televators]

1. Spread the majority to high interest accounts.
2. Buy small, high end electronic gadgets.
3. Travel endlessly until death.

I'm 39, so I'd use a 40 year plan. That's $250,000 a year ($685 a day) that could be spent disregarding any money earned from interest. There's no reason that money shouldn't easily last you the rest of your life if you don't spend it building walls of useless material bullshit around yourself.

[Deleted]

1. A home.
2. Pay off debts for family.
3. Invest
4. Help people who actually need it.
5. Bank some for obvious interest.

[Raldazzar]

Obligatory 'Two chicks and the same time' unless it's been done already :P

I would round out this school year for my daughter, then be on the next flight to Canada. to move into the house that I oversaw the building of whilst the wife/kid were at home. looking to spend around... 2.5-3.5 mil on it, not too big and flashy, but standard pool for the family, hot tub, plenty of land to fish/hunt on etc. then stick another 2/3 million into savings to cover bills/taxes for the rest of my life on it. and then invest the rest. and let all the profits of that go to my daughter when she decides what to do with her life.