I haven't written here in a while. I've thought about it but I've never remembered and it hasn't seemed that important.
One of the things I'd love to have right now is an office. A nice office, on the fifth or seventh floor of a building with all glass walls on the outside, so I could just sit and watch traffic if I wanted to.
I'd like to have a suite of four or so offices so that I could hire a few people and go through all of my crap and write it all down, sort it all out and throw it all away. Things I can't seem to do on my own.
Actually, though, it would just be a place for all of my crap. Right now it's advancing all over the house like kudzu and I know it annoys the owner. I'll need to clear it all before I leave for Christmas next Sunday, so that's going to be a task.
Usually I like to look up things like this: browse through office listings and dream about the one I'd rent but I'm not into it right now. It would be disappointing because the reality isn't there; it's not actually possible (and I could really use it). It's like my friend that didn't want to look at houses because he can't afford to buy one anymore so it might make him unhappy.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
I bought two Powerball tickets last night because the prize is 35 million, which I've decided is my perfect number.
The other day I was depressed because I was fighting with my brother and he had threatened to cut me off (stop talking to me). I have often wished I could do that myself and I wished it then, that I could just leave the country and put a message on my phone that said I was out of the country and not answer any emails from them. When I made that wish, the amount I wanted was sixty thousand dollars a month. Roughly, that was $600k a year, which was 6 million in ten years and 18 million in 30 years. Since taxes will take roughly half, I would have to win 36 million to actually take that home. Well, the prize is 35 and that's pretty damn close.
In other news, there was a story on Yahoo about a guy that's won two scratch-off prizes for a million or more. He says in the article that he had a dream that he was going to receive a bunch of money and he believed it. After he had won his first prize (of $1 million), he still "felt" like he hadn't received all the money he believed was coming to him. Lo and behold, he wins again, this time for $2 million.
What they didn't say in the story was how much the scratch-offs cost and how many or how often he bought them. Most scratch-offs for that much cost between $20-$50 and buying those every week (or multiples therein) would be a serious outlay.
The other day I was depressed because I was fighting with my brother and he had threatened to cut me off (stop talking to me). I have often wished I could do that myself and I wished it then, that I could just leave the country and put a message on my phone that said I was out of the country and not answer any emails from them. When I made that wish, the amount I wanted was sixty thousand dollars a month. Roughly, that was $600k a year, which was 6 million in ten years and 18 million in 30 years. Since taxes will take roughly half, I would have to win 36 million to actually take that home. Well, the prize is 35 and that's pretty damn close.
In other news, there was a story on Yahoo about a guy that's won two scratch-off prizes for a million or more. He says in the article that he had a dream that he was going to receive a bunch of money and he believed it. After he had won his first prize (of $1 million), he still "felt" like he hadn't received all the money he believed was coming to him. Lo and behold, he wins again, this time for $2 million.
What they didn't say in the story was how much the scratch-offs cost and how many or how often he bought them. Most scratch-offs for that much cost between $20-$50 and buying those every week (or multiples therein) would be a serious outlay.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
I have an annuity. A small one, left to me by my father. I was using it to do some figures.
With $100k in an annuity, I was paid $2,000 a year. That means that $1m in an annuity would pay ten times that, or $20,000. Multiply that by 14 and you get $280,000. So it might be a good idea to invest in an annuity if I won some large sum. Even $7m (half of $14m, generally what you get when you take a cash prize rather than their annuity) would be $140k a year for life, which isn't bad.
Anyway, with my $23,000 this month, I would:
Give my little brother $1,000.
Give my friend M $1,000.
Give my friend T $1,000 or send him on some trip abroad (up to $5k).
$5,000 I could use to finance a small film or documentary project. Maybe on Kickstarter.com.
$5,000 I could use to finance my own documentary project (I have at least three in mind).
$5,000 I could use to find an office in the city from which to direct my projects.
$5,000 I would spend on myself - bills, food, travel, random giveaways.
With $100k in an annuity, I was paid $2,000 a year. That means that $1m in an annuity would pay ten times that, or $20,000. Multiply that by 14 and you get $280,000. So it might be a good idea to invest in an annuity if I won some large sum. Even $7m (half of $14m, generally what you get when you take a cash prize rather than their annuity) would be $140k a year for life, which isn't bad.
Anyway, with my $23,000 this month, I would:
Give my little brother $1,000.
Give my friend M $1,000.
Give my friend T $1,000 or send him on some trip abroad (up to $5k).
$5,000 I could use to finance a small film or documentary project. Maybe on Kickstarter.com.
$5,000 I could use to finance my own documentary project (I have at least three in mind).
$5,000 I could use to find an office in the city from which to direct my projects.
$5,000 I would spend on myself - bills, food, travel, random giveaways.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Today's lottery jackpot (according to signs I've seen) is $79 million.
Divided by 30 years, that's 2.6m a year.
Divided by 12 months, that's 219k a month.
Multiplying by .6 for taxes, that's 131666 a month.
I figured out that you could hire 16 people for $8,000 a month with that. Who would I hire?
Well, my first thought was to make a neighborhood program and go around asking all the people in the neighborhood if they owned their houses and what repairs (if any) they wanted to make on them. Then I would write a check for 8 grand to 15 of them (leaving one 8 grand for me). I would do this each month for the next 5 or 6 months until my whole neighborhood was covered.
My next idea was to open an office. I would put an ad on TV or in national papers saying "Do you know someone who needs some help? Call me" and give a 1-800 number. I would hire four people to answer the phone, six people to deal with six segments of the country and four or five more people to work on notes or projects of mine. (Ha! That's 15 people! [I hadn't worked it out in advance.]) I was thinking that not everyone would make 8k a month, since that's an exhorbitant sum. But I would have to rent the office space, so that would cost me something. The phone answerers would be paid 2k a month; the segment people 5 or 6k, the project people 3 or 4k a month.
4 X 2k = 8k
6 X 6k = 36k
4 X 4k = 16k
That still leaves plenty to award some to callers each month and to pay other things like health insurance and retirement for my workers. (Actually, it's 60k, so that leaves 70k to work with.)
===
One thing it would behoove me to do if I won the lottery is hire a cook. Someone to make me good, healthy meals rather than the takeout crap I eat now. I know I should learn for myself but am I really going to do that? Not at the moment. So let's try to make the situation better with the resources we have and work on the "my learning to cook" later.
==
Going on the formula I came up with above, if I'm getting $28k a month, I can pay 5 people $5k each (a month) and keep $3k for myself to pay my bills (possibly supplemented by income from a job, if I should choose to get one).
Divided by 30 years, that's 2.6m a year.
Divided by 12 months, that's 219k a month.
Multiplying by .6 for taxes, that's 131666 a month.
I figured out that you could hire 16 people for $8,000 a month with that. Who would I hire?
Well, my first thought was to make a neighborhood program and go around asking all the people in the neighborhood if they owned their houses and what repairs (if any) they wanted to make on them. Then I would write a check for 8 grand to 15 of them (leaving one 8 grand for me). I would do this each month for the next 5 or 6 months until my whole neighborhood was covered.
My next idea was to open an office. I would put an ad on TV or in national papers saying "Do you know someone who needs some help? Call me" and give a 1-800 number. I would hire four people to answer the phone, six people to deal with six segments of the country and four or five more people to work on notes or projects of mine. (Ha! That's 15 people! [I hadn't worked it out in advance.]) I was thinking that not everyone would make 8k a month, since that's an exhorbitant sum. But I would have to rent the office space, so that would cost me something. The phone answerers would be paid 2k a month; the segment people 5 or 6k, the project people 3 or 4k a month.
4 X 2k = 8k
6 X 6k = 36k
4 X 4k = 16k
That still leaves plenty to award some to callers each month and to pay other things like health insurance and retirement for my workers. (Actually, it's 60k, so that leaves 70k to work with.)
===
One thing it would behoove me to do if I won the lottery is hire a cook. Someone to make me good, healthy meals rather than the takeout crap I eat now. I know I should learn for myself but am I really going to do that? Not at the moment. So let's try to make the situation better with the resources we have and work on the "my learning to cook" later.
==
Going on the formula I came up with above, if I'm getting $28k a month, I can pay 5 people $5k each (a month) and keep $3k for myself to pay my bills (possibly supplemented by income from a job, if I should choose to get one).
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
I've decided I'm going to do a new thing on here. Since just describing what I would do with my payments month after month would only require a month each time, I'm going to talk about the current jackpot and show what it breaks down to in monthly payments. I may start breaking down "my" payments into weeks so that I have something to write about at least every week.
The jackpot currently being drawn for is "estimated" at $62 million. Divided by 30 years, that's 2,066,666. Divided by 12 months, that's 172, 222. Times .6 (for taxes taken out), that's 103,333. Still a chunk of money. The price of a house and more in a lot of the country.
Ok, back to me. I refigured the amount, based on an estimate of taxes being 40% (and they might be more; I don't know). At that rate, I make $23,333 a month; which is $5,833 a week.
This month, I might concentrate more on me. For $10k, I can have a couple of teeth pulled and a couple of implants put in. If I keep the last 3,333 for myself for expenses (rent, health insurance, student loans, etc), that leaves another $10k I can give away. I would give my younger brother a thousand dollars. I would give my artist friend a thousand dollars (or pay him a thousand to paint me something) or I would spend $3k or so to send him on some kind of trip or to a foreign country for a couple months. I would give my friend M $2k, thereby maxing out the amount I could give her for a year.
Once again, this is spending everything at once. Now I have to live for a month on the rest of the money and figure out what I'm going to do. With my current expenses, I would have $1,300 to spend on myself - this would include feeding myself for the month. Perhaps I could spend $300 to take some kind of class for a month or take workshops of some kind. Of course, I could just go to a temp agency and get spot jobs here and there to earn more money or to fill my time, if I wanted. Maybe I would go to the gym more often. (I have to remember I have a car.) I could go up to the next state and stay with my brother and his family for a couple of weeks. (That's something I would do more often if I had a car.)
Maybe I should think about what kinds of projects I would plan and how I would organize them with or without money? I could pay a band to play in a particular area for a day (or a matter of hours). I could recruit people to work on some kind of public exercise with me - something to break up the day of everyone else going to work - to shock them out of their fog or to crack them open with laughter or delight.
Once again I need to look into grants. I found a grant-writing course, now I just need to get a job that will allow me to attend it (time-wise).
Maybe I could advertise myself as an employment helper - helping people find jobs and apply for them. I'd like to help first-time job hunters and lower-income job hunters find good jobs.
The jackpot currently being drawn for is "estimated" at $62 million. Divided by 30 years, that's 2,066,666. Divided by 12 months, that's 172, 222. Times .6 (for taxes taken out), that's 103,333. Still a chunk of money. The price of a house and more in a lot of the country.
Ok, back to me. I refigured the amount, based on an estimate of taxes being 40% (and they might be more; I don't know). At that rate, I make $23,333 a month; which is $5,833 a week.
This month, I might concentrate more on me. For $10k, I can have a couple of teeth pulled and a couple of implants put in. If I keep the last 3,333 for myself for expenses (rent, health insurance, student loans, etc), that leaves another $10k I can give away. I would give my younger brother a thousand dollars. I would give my artist friend a thousand dollars (or pay him a thousand to paint me something) or I would spend $3k or so to send him on some kind of trip or to a foreign country for a couple months. I would give my friend M $2k, thereby maxing out the amount I could give her for a year.
Once again, this is spending everything at once. Now I have to live for a month on the rest of the money and figure out what I'm going to do. With my current expenses, I would have $1,300 to spend on myself - this would include feeding myself for the month. Perhaps I could spend $300 to take some kind of class for a month or take workshops of some kind. Of course, I could just go to a temp agency and get spot jobs here and there to earn more money or to fill my time, if I wanted. Maybe I would go to the gym more often. (I have to remember I have a car.) I could go up to the next state and stay with my brother and his family for a couple of weeks. (That's something I would do more often if I had a car.)
Maybe I should think about what kinds of projects I would plan and how I would organize them with or without money? I could pay a band to play in a particular area for a day (or a matter of hours). I could recruit people to work on some kind of public exercise with me - something to break up the day of everyone else going to work - to shock them out of their fog or to crack them open with laughter or delight.
Once again I need to look into grants. I found a grant-writing course, now I just need to get a job that will allow me to attend it (time-wise).
Maybe I could advertise myself as an employment helper - helping people find jobs and apply for them. I'd like to help first-time job hunters and lower-income job hunters find good jobs.
August 17, 2010
Whenever I am worried about money and the future, I tend to think of a giant amount of cash, like 14 million dollars. I think about winning the lottery all the time, as I'm sure many people do, but this is more of a calming mechanism, like: "Fourteen million dollars are out there somewhere and they are going to come to you someday. Everything will be fine." Or it could just be the endorphins flooding my brain when I think of the pleasure of winning that amount of money, which then calms me down.
One day I thought to myself: "Maybe somewhere inside I believe I am worth 14 million dollars; that something I have or can create is worth that amount of money." Now I keep that thought floating around and every once in a while I try to think about how it is that I'm supposed to "win" that 14 million dollars.
I am an idea person. I have tons of ideas, all the time. A lot of them are public art projects that have a societal value but no real monetary value. In fact, I think of them as MLEs or "Money-Losing Enterprises." If I ever start a business or a non-profit, that's what I'd like to name it. Usually I think: "if I had a million dollars, I could do this" or "if someone gave me the money, I could put together this." Recently I've started to think about writing grants and actually asking for the money myself, in my own name. Because usually the stumbling block I come upon is me - I don't think I'm good enough to lead the project or charismatic enough to lead a group or convince people to do what I want to do.
Today I was thinking to myself "if only I could find someone I was useful to" but the real object should be "if only I could find a way to be useful to myself." How do I use my ideas to create a job or an opportunity for myself that I would like and would want to do?
I'm thinking the first thing I need to do is to learn how to write grants and learn who to write the grants to. At the moment I'm thinking of doing things my way, which is just to write a letter to someone rich suggesting the general idea - a letter to Larry Ellison; a letter to former President George W. Bush; a letter to President Obama. My hope is always that my idea will inspire someone who will then contact me to implement the project. I'm not confident that I could implement the project, either, but at least someone would be acknowledging my idea and trying to make it real, which is what I really want.
Whenever I am worried about money and the future, I tend to think of a giant amount of cash, like 14 million dollars. I think about winning the lottery all the time, as I'm sure many people do, but this is more of a calming mechanism, like: "Fourteen million dollars are out there somewhere and they are going to come to you someday. Everything will be fine." Or it could just be the endorphins flooding my brain when I think of the pleasure of winning that amount of money, which then calms me down.
One day I thought to myself: "Maybe somewhere inside I believe I am worth 14 million dollars; that something I have or can create is worth that amount of money." Now I keep that thought floating around and every once in a while I try to think about how it is that I'm supposed to "win" that 14 million dollars.
I am an idea person. I have tons of ideas, all the time. A lot of them are public art projects that have a societal value but no real monetary value. In fact, I think of them as MLEs or "Money-Losing Enterprises." If I ever start a business or a non-profit, that's what I'd like to name it. Usually I think: "if I had a million dollars, I could do this" or "if someone gave me the money, I could put together this." Recently I've started to think about writing grants and actually asking for the money myself, in my own name. Because usually the stumbling block I come upon is me - I don't think I'm good enough to lead the project or charismatic enough to lead a group or convince people to do what I want to do.
Today I was thinking to myself "if only I could find someone I was useful to" but the real object should be "if only I could find a way to be useful to myself." How do I use my ideas to create a job or an opportunity for myself that I would like and would want to do?
I'm thinking the first thing I need to do is to learn how to write grants and learn who to write the grants to. At the moment I'm thinking of doing things my way, which is just to write a letter to someone rich suggesting the general idea - a letter to Larry Ellison; a letter to former President George W. Bush; a letter to President Obama. My hope is always that my idea will inspire someone who will then contact me to implement the project. I'm not confident that I could implement the project, either, but at least someone would be acknowledging my idea and trying to make it real, which is what I really want.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
First month - $38,000
I would probably take 10 and buy myself a car. I would like to have a BMW 7 Series, regardless of year, but I would also buy a used xb, a Dodge Nitro, a Honda Element, or some sort of VW (Passat, GTI, whatever). I would spend 8 or less for the car and use the last 2 for title and insurance.
Ten thousand I would give to my friend M for whatever she wanted. She's a good friend and I believe in her and her ideas. I think she deserves more and if I am in a position to give it to her, I will.
Ten thousand I would give to my friend E to pay off his credit cards. I don't know if this would be the best course of action because he needs to learn to reign in his spending but I know he wants to build his own house and I would help him with that if I could. Part of that is paying on his current loan to a certain amount so he can get a new loan. I would have to think about this one.
The last eight thousand I would keep for expenses of my own and a few thousand-dollar payments, to my brother R and my friend T. I might give a thousand dollars to a few charities.
I would probably take 10 and buy myself a car. I would like to have a BMW 7 Series, regardless of year, but I would also buy a used xb, a Dodge Nitro, a Honda Element, or some sort of VW (Passat, GTI, whatever). I would spend 8 or less for the car and use the last 2 for title and insurance.
Ten thousand I would give to my friend M for whatever she wanted. She's a good friend and I believe in her and her ideas. I think she deserves more and if I am in a position to give it to her, I will.
Ten thousand I would give to my friend E to pay off his credit cards. I don't know if this would be the best course of action because he needs to learn to reign in his spending but I know he wants to build his own house and I would help him with that if I could. Part of that is paying on his current loan to a certain amount so he can get a new loan. I would have to think about this one.
The last eight thousand I would keep for expenses of my own and a few thousand-dollar payments, to my brother R and my friend T. I might give a thousand dollars to a few charities.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
The Breakdown
Lottery payouts are generally over 30 years. So 14 million divided by 10 is 1.4m and 1.4m divided by 3 is 466,666. 466,666 divided by 12 is 38,888. So generally it's $38,888 a month. Usually they pay you a yearly amount but I would try to set it up so that I had a trust account that shifted the monthly amount into my bank.
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