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If you came into a lot of money, what would be the indulgent thing you would buy?
The definition of a lot of money and what would qualify as indulgent is an exercise left to the reader, but assume you're otherwise in good financial shape and you got whatever investments, donations, and balances out of the way.
A private chef and personal trainer. I love cooking, and generally don't enjoy strenuous exercise, so it feels like kind of an odd selection even as I'm typing this, but when you pay for those two things you're essentially buying a healthier you. It's theoretically possible to duplicate the effects of both, but in practice it's hard to be consistent with diet and exercise while also living your life and taking care of shit. Having pros do both optimizes those things for you and saves your spoons for other tasks.
Derelict sports cars, a decent action camera, and a garage somewhere to work on them so I create an unintentionally comedic YouTube channel solely about trying to restore cars with no professional mechanical knowledge.
You can get started with mechanical watches for less than $50 :D
I came here to talk about that specifically.
Wristwatch Revival in a nutshell. Though it helps to do formal training.
You have to act like you know what you're talking about though.
as a strong aging wheels fan I imagine I'd be an early subscriber to your channel haha
Yeah, I aspire to someday have the space to do what he and M539 Restorations do. If I just had a place to let something sit dead then I'd totally get a gopro and start, but HOAs suck, so.
A huge library with big wooden desks and rolling ladders and so many shelves and comfy chairs and cushions, etc.
I'd want to recreate the library from the Casper movie
That's a good model.
maybe $500 of LEGOs and a bigger house to store them in
I don’t think you’ll need a bigger house for 500 dollars worth of Lego. An additional shelf, perhaps.
I was just thinking that. $500 worth of LEGO these days is, what, half a LEGO Millennium Falcon after tax? :v
I think the bigger house is the main indulgence.
Lego holds value quite well. My best friend once bought several hundreds dollars worth of bulk Lego from Craigslist. He played with them and then resold the lot for more than he paid for. Maybe try it, if your local area listings are quite active.
Establish a land trust, and buy as much undeveloped forest land as possible.
Establish a second trust that buys defunct commercial properties, converts them to low-cost housing, with a phase-out plan to transition ownership to tenants.
I've been looking into the second option a lot recently (and it was my first instinct in answering the question, although I don't know if it counts as an indulgence!)
I think the best way to go for affordable housing is mostly the housing coop model, i.e. renting (no transfer of ownership), but where the tenants own the coop itself (and so can broadly set their own rents based on maintenance costs) and pay some proportion of those maintenance costs back into a centralised bank, which is then charged with continually buying/building more housing.
The problem with a simple phase-out plan is the same problem with the council house buy-back scheme in the UK - basically tenants in council-provided houses were allowed to buy the houses at favourable rates if they had lived there long enough. Theoretically that's great - people who need it get stable housing and a chance to get onto the property ladder - but councils didn't (I think couldn't?) use the money earned to buy/build more houses, which massively reduced the amount of available, affordable housing. Any scheme like this needs to be able to consistently maintain - or ideally expand - its housing stock, otherwise it becomes a one-time transfer of wealth with no way to keep it up.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Right now it's one of those pipe dreams that seems only limited by access to funds.
But anyhow, I was thinking along the lines of: Seed org owns building, tenants paid rent and start aquiring shares of ownership. After any incurred debts are paid, tenants start gaining voting rights, capped at a collective 49% until cost of building + 50% has been recouped. After that, full ownership is transfered, with a clause that the seed org has right of first refusal to purchase the building back.
That could work, especially if the seed org can always potentially buy back the building if it would otherwise be sold back on to the market. I can imagine there's some complexity for multiple occupancy buildings, if an individual tenant wants to move out for whatever reason, but then ends up bound to the collective agreement from all tenants. Do you know of any organisations exploring this concept?
Here in Germany, I've been looking into Mietshäuser Syndikat (roughly "rental property syndicate" - unfortunately, only available in German) which is an organisation that provides money to groups looking to buy properties, with various conditions. They've had some success in the city I live in - I think here they're involved in six different projects - but the difficulty in starting a new project is finding the people to do it with and the location to start with.
But thanks for encouraging me to look into this stuff again. I've had this in the back of my mind for a while now, but I've not invested so much time in properly looking into it. But it could genuinely be feasible, and if it is feasible, it feels like one of the better things I can do with my money right now.
I've thought about this a lot (what I'd do if I magically became a billionaire) and this is the conclusion I've come to as well: start a housing non-profit that runs buildings at-cost + 10-20% (20% if the amenities make it a "luxury" building) to fund expansion, through both building and buying.
Even better would be if the parent organization did more than just housing, so that profits from the other lines of business could be fed into furthering the goal of decommodifying housing. With enough capital, you could reduce operational expenses through self-insuring, self-financing, etc. and exert downward pressure on rent prices.
Basically, a conglomerate whose sole goal is building more affordable housing rather than paying out dividends.
There may already be one suitable to you -- https://landtrustalliance.org/
What's your reasoning for the first one?
To prevent the continual destruction of vast quantities of land which is giving us air to breathe to build a slightly larger CVS 1 mile down the road from the other CVS. While there's a dozen other commercial properties in between with space for rent.
Or the perpetual building of multi-million-dollar mcmansion cul-de-sacs.
Actually, that's what a good chunk of my assets will go to on my death, and I recommend that others consider having a land trust or conservancy beneficiary. There's a serious, well-managed conservancy in our neck of the woods that I expect will be capable of using the funds effectively for generations to come.
Meanwhile, stepping outside of the fantasy of self-indulgence, I'm going to continue hoarding resources in the fading hope of eventual retirement without being drained to poverty by medical costs.
And if we're talking about abundance, there's always RIP Medical Debt, a U.S. charity that buys and retires others' medical debt which has been sent to collections.
If we're talking indulgence... I assume most people will buy Things. Certainly, there's a lot of Nice Things to buy... but I'd prefer to be indulgent about experiences.
I would book an all-expenses-included five-star resort and hotel, in a city I've never been to and a private tour guide. I would want to eat at all the best places. Then I would go on a month-long cruise probably in the Gulf of Mexico.
Cruise would probably be my choice as well, especially to somewhere where I just couldn't go normally - touring the Arctic circle, or island hopping in some of the more beautiful Caribbean spots.
And then presumably the other half of the money would go to planting enough trees to cover the environmental damages! 😅 Probably worth it still?
What would you do with a big turnip, and how big are we talking here.
Baldrick: "I'd get a great big turnip in the country."
You'd have to be as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University to sneak a Blackadder reference into this thread. 🙂
! Haha that was great :D I didn't know about this show
Oh harps are so cool. I would probably buy a harp too if I had a ton of money! I don't currently have a harp, cause I'd be scared of how bad I'd be at it if I bought it considering how expensive it is (I also don't really have room for it), I instead have a bad very cheap Chinese made 16-string lyre, which is still a very fun instrument, but most likely not anywhere close to how cool a harp would be.
And of course I'd also hire a really good teacher that would actually force me to properly learn it. Actually I might hire a teacher for guitar too, I am fully self learned so I am sure that I could learn a lot if I had someone who'd teach me properly. For example, it would be nice to finally learn to read music notation (for harp it would probably be necessary).
Man, the first thing I would buy for sure would be financial security - specifically the ability to not need to work - but that's not really in the spirit of the question.
I don't need extravagant things, but there are things that I want. I would buy a slightly nicer house, but to be honest the biggest motivation would be as an excuse to get rid of the clutter. In the past I would have wanted a bigger place because I would have liked to have my sister living with me, but I'm not really sure if she really needs it as much now.
I'd also like a workshop to hold big expensive machines like CNC mills and woodworking equipment. The biggest reason why I haven't gone further into making stuff is that I was never able to make the investment into the stuff I would need for it.
Buying my way into retirement is definitely my answer. I want to own my time and not have to sell it for food and shelter.
💯this. I like my baubles and my experiences but I love not being a pawn in capitalism even more.
This alone opens up a world of opportunity: to live according to my curiosity and my conscience.
I don't understand people who can't stand retirement. There are a million things to do.
There are a million things to do, and it's trivial to procrastinate on all of them. In fact, you don't even have to leave the house. Never need to meet new people either.
Assuming that paying off other people's debts and buying them nice things is outside the scope and the spirit of the question, I would really like to have my own private indoor Endless Pool. I've been fascinated with them since I was a kid and not having to go to the swim club or the rec center to get laps in would be something of a luxury, especially if I could sneak some in before or after work. Also would love to get the rich person experience with a chef or a personal trainer or housekeeping or insurance that could afford regular therapy, but if I had to point to one thing that I would spend a bunch of money on just to have it, it would be the pool treadmill.
The endless pool has long been my answer to this question. I like riding my bike to swim laps at the local pool well enough but I’m really an open water swimmer who just wants 30 minutes each day to keep in swim shape.
I imagine I wouldn’t even turn the lights on in the garage. Just swim in the dark…
Do those things get old after awhile? I imagine actually swimming laps in a pool is more enjoyable than just swimming in one place. It's the difference between going for a run and running on a treadmill.
Steering wheel controller.
I don't even like racing sims, and barely use my HOTAS, but for some reason I want a steering wheel controller
My G27 has a prized spot (in the garage, gathering dust). I love (thinking about the effort it would take to set it all up and) playing Assetto Corsa especially with my (currently also in a box in the garage) VR headset.
Same here, except I use my Quest VR pretty regularly. I should give the wheel another shot soon.
First priority would be to simply move into a nicer place. The money only has to last for maybe 2-3 years of rent, after that I should be able to increase my workload enough to be able to afford it from my salary again. Of course if the amount of money is genuinely ridiculous I could just buy something instead.
After that, there’s a few things I’d put money into. Turning the apartment into one suitable for a pair of indoor cats with plenty of enrichment. A nice coffee setup, also generally nice kitchenware. A gaming setup. And perhaps the most indulgent thing on my wants list: paying someone to regularly have my apartment cleaned for me.
Your second paragraph sums up my wishes nicely, aside from the coffee (mental health & diet issues). So perhaps a tea setup. Id also want someone to cook for me since I don't, and maybe even drive me sometimes since I get driving anxiety when idk where I'm going.
I also want a PC instead of a Mac and a nice, remote home away from other people. But not too far, in case I need someone's emergency help.
But realistically I'd end up paying off my student debt, paying off the house, my parents' and brothers' and SIL's cars and homes, my grandparents and aunts/cousins' stuff, etc.
In terms of buying responsible things, I need clothing, food, a person to fix my water heater, healthcare, a new prescription for my glasses, etc.
But also, you know how you'll sometimes see things online that you want to support or help out with, but you can't? Like my favorite twitch streamers and content creators, the tildes minecraft server, doing the good things that MrBeast does, paying peoples' pet bills, childcare bills, funding research, and all that stuff.
A team of programmers to write an open-source reimplementation of Bethesda’s Creation Engine (specifically for Fallout 4) similar to the OpenMW or Daggerfall Unity projects.
I recently started a playthrough of heavily modded Fallout 4 and the game has been pretty stable but it’s pathetic how many community mods and patches are required just to fix and stabilize the base game. The engine also has some severe limitations that make the game perform poorly in areas like downtown Boston and you can’t fix it with better computer hardware. Saves get corrupted even after you patch out the FPS-to-physics clamp to run the game at a higher framerate than 60, a problem that should never have existed in the first place. There is just a never ending list of technical jank and limitations. It’s amazing that the modding community has been able to accomplish what it has, but holy shit Bethesda you absolutely could have afforded to keep at least one dedicated, talented developer around to at least officially implement fixes for the thousands of bugs the community has identified and fixed over the years.
Bethesda games are alpha-tier minimum viable products that get updates for a year or two after release and then it’s left up to a community of modders to unfuck the game. At least until Bethesda is ready to re-release the game for the eleventh time to rake in cash. Compared to the engineering quality of a game like Factorio, Fallout 4 is just pathetic.
I know there’s going to be a “next-gen” update for Fallout 4 released “soon” but I have zero faith that it will meaningfully improve the state of game or the underlying engine. I do however expect it to utterly fuck the modding scene and require everything to basically be rewritten from scratch just to address the same old problems Bethesda isn’t going to fix. (This is probably an overly pessimistic take but I’d rather be surprised than disappointed.)
So yeah, I’d hire a team of developers to do it right. Support for the base game, vastly expanded settings options, bug fixes, performance and rendering improvements, no more triangle of death, increased settlement build limit. Support for existing mods. A brand new avenue for writing mods using a real programming language like Lua instead of Papyrus.
My first thought was a house... On second thought a house definitely shouldn't be an indulgence but with housing being as it is it might as well be.
But probably some PC components, some tools, some things that make life easier. I'm fairly modest in my wants, as long as most of my needs are without inconvenience I'm generally happy so I'll gladly pay for that. So that's probably also why I first thought of a house. It's the one "need" that hasn't been fulfilled yet.
Edit: I thought of something. Wyrmwood scandal aside, they make damn fine tabletop tables that cost a couple grand. That would be an indulgence I could find myself going deep for.
You and I are very similar! My first thought was a house, and then the Wyrmwood desk!
It's less buying the house that's the indulgence, but having housing eliminated as an expense you have to pay for. Considering that's almost everyone's main expense, you could live a very luxurious lifestyle having housing sorted.
If we're talking pure indulgence? Shoes.
So. Many. Louboutins. And Jimmy Choos. And Louis Viton and Burberry and Gucci and Chanel.
We're saving for a house and for an emigration currently, and I know it wouldn't be a good way to spend a chunk of cash I got from my work recently... Nor practical, nor, nor, nor...
But a girl can dream...
And yes I have indeed seen that famous Shoes song :p
Citizenship to another country with a robust social safety net
A big motorized equatorial tracking telescope. Idunno how much "a lot" of money is, but I'm still using a 20 year old 4.5" dob, so I could get a relatively big scope for anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. After that, a decent DSLR and a cheap laptop to control it
I misread that as an equestrian tracking telescope and was wondering why you would spend a lot of money to look at horses from a distance.
An A. Lange & Söhne Grand Lange 1 Moon Phase in platinum, but only because this is an imaginary money I'm fantasizing about spending. I don't think I'd bring myself to actually spend that money on something that's essentially jewelry.
That's a beautiful watch. Would you wear it every day? I wish to have the kind of money where I could afford to not only buy one, but also the money to be able to afford wearing it every day AND fly over to get it serviced and repaired if something happened to it. Otherwise it's essentially jewelry that brings worry and anxiety and we wouldn't want that :)
If I have the kind of money to be able to afford to wear it every day, with no anxiety, I think I'd have other watches in my collection for different occasions. So I don't think I'd wear it every day, regardless of what side of the wealth spectrum I'm on. I agree with the kind of issues having a watch as expensive as AL&S one would cause for someone poor like us mere mortals. 😊
If I actually had the money, I'd just get a Grand Seiko I can wear every day (like a spring drive if I really want to keep the service cost low), and invest the rest of the money in some other way.
Ooooh a grand Seiko!! It's my dream to see them become a world class prestige brand one day. I don't think they're any less good than Swiss watches, on a technical level, but as a fan of regular seikos I might be biased.
fyi The seiko level above grand seiko is https://www.credor.com/
Huh today I learned. 45 million yen watch
What do enthusiasts think about them?
Being a luxury brand takes more than craftsmanship, unfortunately. Grand Seiko watches have incredible craftsmanship that rivals the likes of Rolex, but they lack the marketing. History is also important, of course. Seiko is a long standing brand with a great history but their entry into the luxury market is new, relatively speaking. I hope they keep their standing where it is though, because I'd like to get one myself one day. It's certainly achievable now but there are more important things that take priority than to spend $5-10k on a watch, as marvelous as they are.
Until then, I'll keep wearing my only mechanical watch that happens to be a Seiko. 😊
What a beautiful watch :)
I love the placement of the calendar and the elegant colour and slope of the dial.
Ooh, there’s a “hobby” I haven’t fantasized about in quite a few years!
I was originally going to comment about some car, but if we’re talking watches…
I have to say, that Lange & Söhne is wonderful. One that will probably never leave my mind is the van der Klaauw Planetarium.
It’s a full, accurate model of the solar system’s planets, complete with small globes, all in a mechanical watch. I have been in absolute awe ever since I first stumbled upon this thing. Of course it’s unobtainium so except for an image saved to my “cool stuff” folder I don’t really get to see it often…
Edit: I completely forgot they had a slider to “fast forward” on the website, just visited for the first time in quite some while. It showcases how the planets actually move in the watch and it’s the best thing ever. :D
That looks great. Even the logo fits right into the dial, as it resembles a sun. I can't imagine how intricate that movement must be. That being said, I found it curious that the website has no side view of the watch so I searched for it and found out why. It's certainly thick!
Haha yep, I imagine it’d be tremendously hard to make it any thinner with all those gears.
Not sure if it’s a great daily driver, but it’s certainly stunning to marvel at daily!
Like other commenters, Im going to exclude housing from my answer even though it's the number one life improvement I'd immediately sink money into.
I'd likely pay for professionals to take care of, or at least help with, adult chores:
-tax ccountant
-Regular house cleaning
-Help with gardening/landscaping
-Maybe even occassional private chef to prepare freezable meals to my dietary needs for lazy days
In terms of stuff, I'd love:
-a high-quality, ultralight canoe
-some steep upgrades to camping gear, especially winter
-a couple of wildernessy courses (rescue, paddling, etc) I've had my eye on to help fill out my hodgepodge of casually accrued skills
Pay off the house, buy an industrial garage somewhere, buy a 2003 Ford Focus, 2004 Dodge Neon... Well, basically every early 2000s compact I can find and have my fleet of cars.
Oh, and maybe buy a bigger house as well with enough room for me to have a game/VR room.
I mean you could probably get a lot of these cars for free right now.
Well, yeah but the neighbors aren't gonna be happy to have them parked all up on the lawn!
If you don’t mind, what is that done for?
(My first time I’m hearing this phrase)
I'd hire a team to build a VR experience showing that crazy big Ferris Wheel from the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893.
If I answered this question 5 or more years ago, it would have been Magic the Gathering cards. Like, a playset of every single card ever printed (maybe minus reprints). Maybe extras of certain cards for decks.
But nowadays, I just proxy everything, because I'm not really a fan of how Hasbr-WoTC has been treating the player base as a financial mine. Cutting things we enjoyed (GPs, Pro Tour) and shoving things we don't like down our throat (Secret Lairs, Arena: Alchemy, endless new product, Modern Horizons). I made a super power cube with all of the essentially most expensive cards ever, but it only cost me like, $40-50 lol
Current me would like to indulge in a project car, like a R32 or an old 2 door Subaru, like the 22b
I would put a million in an spending account for medical bills and go to every single type of doctor I need. I have gone well into my 30's and can never afford to see one and the issues are stacking up. It would feel insanely indulgent.
I'd build myself a workshop, where I could do a little of anything. Woodworking, metal, 3d printing, pottery, drawing/painting, so on and so forth. Id just keep implementing small setups for doing hobbyist-level work of different kinds. So I could just go and never stop, learning and making. Id have a separate little building where folks can buy what gets made, or if money is really no object, folks can just have things if they like them. Id just lose myself making art and seeing what folks thought of it. Rework and redevelop things to see how folks' reactions change. Maybe through that id find some stuff I'm looking for, or see things I couldn't before. The money is for the experience, more than the specific things, if that makes sense.
A Montblanc fountain pen from the company. Then again, there are plenty of used and affordable Montblancs that can be found on eBay, with the proper research, of course.
For these I always think of the things that bring me the most anxiety in life. So I am thinking I'd like a net zero home in the middle of 50 acres of land. Satisfies my environmental anxiety and it will essentially run itself, just need to pay taxes and for food. I mean if I had all the money, I could do a submerged greenhouse so I can do my own large garden all year round.
A stream/pond like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNAgK63VN2k&list=PLWcGSYiimOLwQixUi3dRx6O0xh78Bwx7V&index=15
I think he said that it cost him ~$200k Canadian to install, so it's nothing I'll ever be able to afford. But assuming I won the lottery and won enough to cover all necessities for the rest of my life and had that much extra, this would be amazing to have. Flowing and standing water are a huge boon to an ecosystem and simply a beautiful thing to add to a home.
Once my debts are taken care of (house, car, etc.) I want to spend some money and go see the world. I've left the US exactly once, but I want to see Europe, Asia, and Australia.
A nice house somewhere: a terrace or a house on a mews in London somewhere- Angel, or Hampstead or similar, I’d put in a nice library room, with my books, get a dog, a nice chair, and some more ski holidays. I’ve been massively into skiing recently, so if I got ✨money✨I’d finally line up some snow holidays in Japan, Whistler, South America, Switzerland.
The rest would go to charitable causes and lobbying and funding for environmental and social causes, because there’s more than enough work to be done on that front and enough barriers as-is.
A luxury expedition RV like the Armadillo: https://www.thervgeeks.com/luxury-off-road-rv/
Then I could sell my house and live in it while travelling hither and yon and explore all over the world while sleeping in my own bed every night and pooping in my own toilet (hotels really aren't fun for long term travel). And I'd need that significant amount of money for fuel since its over $1000 to fill the tank.
A Lexus LFA, a plane/cargo ticket to japan and a prepaid visa exclusively for gasoline.
I have heard an lfa exactly once in my life, and the sound of that car is so deeply engrained in my psyche that it's completely reversed my opinion of paris hilton because she bought one.
Tech gadgets! I like to believe I am a minimalist... except when it comes to tech. I adore new, well-designed, carefully crafted pieces of hardware that are supposed to make our lives easy. A new iPhone, a MacBook, a Pixel, fitness watch etc. are all my weak points. I do not buy anything immediately (FWIW, I don't own an iPhone at all, have never bought it, but I stalk it like it is my bank account). If I had infinite money, I would definitely buy any tech that comes. I know I am not being mindful of environmental percussions, pollution and so on, but I would not be careless. i.e. would not buy and leave it but take care to trade-in things I won't use anymore or make sure to properly recycle and so on.
However, all said, I still use the tech I buy for atleast 3-4 years before I begin to think of replacing. And money is the deciding factor almost always.
A house boat. Maybe just a boat in general
Buy some land not-too-far outside the city I currently live in (far enough to have space to myself, close enough for broadband and reasonable grocery drive-time) and have a house built. With an insulated pole-barn.
Then I'd outfit the pole-barn into my dream makerspace. Vehicle lift, woodworking section, metalworking section, electronics lab, a rack of Prusa printers (and maybe some resin printers), air management system (dust / fume vacuum system, low-sound-signature negative air pressure enclosure for the printer rack with HEPA filtration), a well-stocked parts and component management system based on the tracked mobile shelving system I've seen some libraries use.
Then I'd buy a new van as my next project (unsure if I'd go with a Promaster, Transit, or a larger step-van style) and outfit it as my weird dream combination vehicle that's the ugly crossover halfway between a vehicle tiny-home and a well-outfitted contractor van.
There. My indulgence is complete and I have something to occupy myself for the next year or four.
Commission Malletech to make their Love Vibe available in an extended range model. Go down at least to C and top off the upper octave to C. Give it a marimba-like range.
Ah, a fellow percussionist! Your idea sounds amazing. I didn’t think of getting something custom-designed. I’d just want a shed-turned-Wenger practice room in my backyard with a Marimba One in it. Though if we’re talking pure fantasy, I might as well make the big enough to also fit vibes and a drum set in it too.
I'd also want a marimba. Perhaps two of each instrument for playing duets with friends.
If you truly want to blow the budget, invest in a set of 5 tympani. A set of those is only 25% cheaper than a grand piano.
Caterham (older one would do) would be great to have. Also Mazda MX-5 (second gen). I'd love to have one of those cars and do some under-the-hood tuning to get good sound out of the engine and a bit more rpm and power/torque. And a garage to park it in.
Lego, as already mentioned, would be great too! Saod Millenium Falcon and many many more. And also aplace to havr them in.
I'd also buy some electronics equipment and build me a lab. Not high-end things, but some basic stuff.
Wood and metal workshop would be great!
Sonit basically all comes down to one fact - I don't have place for any of that. First thing I would need is buolding for all the stuff.
Stupid crazy audiophile kit. Maybe not the insanely expensive Sennheiser HE-1 headphones, but I could see dropping $10k on good wired cans, a decent DAC/amplifier/CD player and better quality recordings.
I did rabbit hole a bit because my Sony WF-1000XM4's have the horrible battery slow death issue for which Sony has a double-secret factory refund program, even past warranty. I'm putting the funds toward these mildly ridiculous Denon PerL Pro buds, with the intent of returning them if they aren't magic. We'll see if I'm pursuing a nonexistent phantasm of aural perfection.
Damn it, I didn't realize I wanted this until you mentioned it. Now I'm upset with you. :P
One of the Denon reviewers mentioned that the adaptive audio on these buds confirmed the hearing loss he'd been suspecting, and it was the first time in years that he was listening to music the way he remembered it. I'm kind of hoping that I won't make the same discovery, since most of the wireless audio I've tried over the years sounds like tin cans on a string. [TBH, cheap Linsoul IEMs sounded better than the top-end Sony wireless buds.] If so, I'm wondering if I can put this down as a medical expense...
Meanwhile, I'll revel in your envy 😃, and post a review.
Definitely a property with a nice house and a view. Id also like to equipment myself with HE-1 Headphones
I would buy the flat adjacent to my bedroom. This way I could get rid of noisy neighbours that live there, and also use the new space for an art studio and a plant growing room.
Like if I got a billion? I would buy a neighborhood and pick 20-50 or so families that I liked and let them live there for free.
If we're talking pure fantasy, I would start every day with a massage. Personal assistant to delegate boring stuff to. Big shop for a maker space with metal- and wood- working tools, electronics fabbing tools, 3d printers, laser cutters, etc.
If we're talking practicality, I'd consider building an "end of the world" off grid house with enough tools and supplies to sustain itself for a generation and the equipment needed to repair things and make replacements as things broke down.
"A lot of money" includes a billion dollars, which doesn't even get you to the top 1000 richest.
Hiring someone full-time at $100k/year for 100 years only costs $10M total. Assuming no employment overhead past the $100k (e.g. taxes, office space etc), that is - it might cost more like $20M.
I think your numbers are right, but I meant pure fantasy in the sense of "if I was making a purely selfish request". If we were talking real money that I was actually spending, then there would be other ways to spend that money, so I'd have to consider those competing priorities and needs.
First thing I would buy is a house for my partner and myself. It shouldn't be considered an indulgence, but that's not the reality we live in.
Just a small and simple house, as low-maintenance as possible. Maybe a couple of bedrooms, and a garage with room for two cars and a few motorcycles. On a small property a bit out of town, away from neighbours. We like our quiet.
I'd plant native trees around the perimeter of the property, and let the grass overgrow. Get some native bees. Let the wildlife roam around.
The second indulgence I'd buy is more motorcycles.
A house.
Some sort of sports car. Either some sort of AWD Porsche that I would absolutely drive all winter or an 80's Toyota MR2 with an EV conversion because I think that would be an awesome car as an electric.
But if it was a LOT of money... a few people mentioned a personal chef/cleaner. Even if they weren't that good at cooking. Just someone to do the mental labour of choosing dinner and getting it done and to spend an hour a day dealing with a few chores.
A Club 33 membership and then take all my friends as often as they wanted. I've always wanted to see the inside of Club 33, and it's no secret that I'm a huge Disney Parks fan.
If I didn't come into that much money, I would probably opt for throwing money at all the creators I love to help support them. I wish I could do that for even a fraction of the creators I enjoy, let alone all of them.
A house would be my reasonable purchase (I'm so tired of apartment living) but after that I would love to get a new, super nice alto saxophone and soprano saxophone. My alto is pushing 50 years old and while it still plays great, my hands would appreciate the ergonomics of a modern horn. I don't have much use for a soprano but they are fun and hey, why not? I'm satisfied with the tenor and bari I already have but I'd also splash some cash to give them both a nice overhaul
If it doesn't have to be a product, the first indulgent thing I'd spend money on would be a personal manager/assistant to deal with all the time sucks in life. Paperwork, researching contractors, advisors, travel, etc. Coordinating things, dealing with customer service. Things that enable me to do the things that matter most to me and my family.
Depends on how much "a lot" is. If we're talking like 10 mil I'd probably refit my home and get a nearby industrial garage as others have said. I'm fairly handy, I just lack the tools and space to go nuts with proper fabrication.
If we're talking 100 mil+ I'd probably give up doing any kind of manual labor, cooking, cleaning etc and focus on building a social work foundation I've been thinking about for years now.
A lot of other stuff I’d want has been covered here; I’ll add:
A manual BMW Z4. While there are more expensive cars, I really like the aesthetics and engineering.
I want a prototype heavy ion fusion power plant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_ion_fusion
which costs a lot more than a mega yacht but probably less than Twitter. Or maybe I want to hire Boeing to make a stratospheric seeding aircraft like
https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/files/tkg/files/smith_et_al-2018-earth_and_space_science.pdf
since they are never going to start on a 737 replacement.