That Super Lottery

When the Powerball was at 500 million, I was texting with my brother about it. He said if you won and took the lump sum, it would be $327.4 million. Based on articles of what other people took home after taxes, I deducted 46% and came up with a "take home" amount of $176.796 million.

Then I did what I often do, which is figure out how many jobs I could create at a base rate. I thought to myself: "I wouldn't even have to give over my whole fortune; I could just use half
of it and still make a huge difference."
So I started with $76 million, keeping $100 million for myself. From $76 million, I divided by $25,000 to see how many jobs I could create with that as a base salary. The result was 3,000. I did some more math to see what the take home pay would be for those jobs and it came out to $1500 a month.

The question I ask myself at that point is: is that a good salary? Can you pay rent or a mortgage and feed yourself and one other and pay for gas and utilities? I live in DC and while that's a decent salary, it might be hard to live on it with the way rents are, especially if you had to support other people.

So where might that be a good salary? In the South? Well, the South is too broad; what I need to look into is "ex-urban" areas, places outside a city where housing costs are lower and you can buy more for less money. My mind jumps to places like Mississippi because it's one of the poorest states in the country. It could just as easily be Nebraska or Kansas or Kentucky and Tennessee. Nevada and Wyoming probably have pretty good housing prices, considering a lot of those states are rural or undeveloped. Even parts of coastal states - Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island - have sections that are lower income and lower priced.

So if I can find a location where housing prices are much lower (and a mortgage payment might be something like $400 or $500 month), my dollar will go a lot further.

But then I think to myself: does that mean I could pay an even lower salary? If rent is $300 a month, can they get by on less than $1500 without any real problems?

So I re-calculated using $20,000 as the salary and it came out to 3,800 jobs.

Now we get into the real problem with all of this: that's less than four thousand jobs and that's only one year. What difference is that going to make? How can that make any real change in the economy?

I tried to think about it in different ways. "Well, how big is a small town? How big of a sample size would you need to really make a difference in that town? 500? 200? 100? 50? If 50 people had a good salary and were paying for goods and services, could that perk up the entire town's economy?"

"What if I cut it in half and made it a two-year salary for 1500 or 1900 people? What if those people weren't all in one location but spread out throughout the country?" And then I started thinking about the work that mature foundations do and how they probably think about all these issues and study them and might give a grant to one or two people in a state, as long as the work they were doing were significant. I was thinking about it solely as a means of moving money around, a way of pumping money into a local economy, a way of stimulating the (or an) economy. I wasn't thinking about larger issues of 'what would the work be?' or 'what happens when the grant is over?' Those are important issues because otherwise shots of stimulus can end up being like using illicit drugs for emotional problems: they cover things up for a while, but when they're gone, the problems are still there and might even be compounded.

Even so, I think that I could create a program of meaningful work that employed a number of people in economically struggling areas that would help those areas economically and otherwise.

A Man Walks Into His Brother's House...

I have with me a paper shopping bag. In the paper shopping bag I have three bundles of bills.

It's Thanksgiving, so Brother 3 and Brother 2 are here at Brother 1's house. That's why I have the three bundles, each of which are worth $10,000. I give one to each brother and tell them that - after Thanksgiving - I'll probably be leaving town for a while. I'll still be paying rent on my place in town, but I'll be traveling around the South and possibly going to South America.

I might put ads on Craigslist to see if anyone's interest in going south. I'll look for classes I can take in major metropolitan areas and volunteer jobs I can get to keep me occupied.

I was thinking I'd go to Dallas, where my uncle and aunt live. I can use them as a bit of a support structure while I'm visiting. (Of course, if I keep to my current habits, I'll just sit in whatever place I rent to live in and watch TV non stop.)

One of my other plans would be to rent a house not far from my current one and get a giant TV for that place and a big, comfy couch so when I stay in non-stop, I'm not bothering anyone.

I'd like to fly out to the West Coast and try to work on making some commercials. Public interest commercials, media criticism commercials, call to action commercials - all kinds of commercials to stir up and challenge the public on all kinds of issues.

For instance, just today on Fox's "The Five," they brought up the issue of states that take more from the government than they put in. One of the commentators brought up California - only the reddest Southern states are the main offenders in terms of taking more money from the federal government than they pay in with takes. I'd love to be able to put multiple charts up on the screen to show that it's not just one source that says so and maybe even statistics from the states themselves.

Of course, I'd rather make commercials that encourage people to do good things rather than stir up anger, but some times I get annoyed by partisan politics just like everyone else. (I'd like to run the commercials on Fox itself, which I figure they wouldn't mind, seeing as how it's money in their pockets. Best case scenario, I could get writers or ex-writers from The Daily Show and Colbert to pen the commercials so that they're "undercover" and catch viewers by surprise.)

Of course, I'd like to give major donations to local charities I like, but I'd also like to go to sporting events all around the country, like NFL games in Florida, or Texas, or California, or soccer games in California and Texas (although the MLS is going through its playoffs, so I guess that season is ending).

One of my favorite extravagance daydreams is to follow the ATP tour. I've seen an ad on the boards when watching games for some kind of tour company - it's some guy's name - and I think if I had the funds, I'd check it out. The tennis tour generally follows the weather and plays in some great locations. Although, again, I think the tour is going on vacation right now, and might not be starting up again until January, I'm not sure. Whenever the Australian Open is.

One other thing I'd definitely need to do is buy myself health insurance. It would probably behoove me to get lots of work done on my teeth, as well. That could cost upwards of fifty or eighty thousand dollars. At least that's my impression, based on an estimate I once got.

So let's start over:
+ Cash to my brothers
+ Rent a house, buy a TV and couch
+ Get health insurance and dental work done
+ Travel to the south of the US, maybe taking a class, volunteering and attending professional sports events. (It could also be fun to go to college sporting events.)
+ Travel to South America
+ Follow the ATP tour around the world

I'd also like to buy myself a car, maybe something small and simple like a Scion xb or a Nissan Cube. Or a Beetle.

Payoffs

For one million dollars, I would get $500,000, which would pay $50,000 a year for ten years. Or $30,000 a year for 16 years. Probably a better bet.

For 2 million dollars, I could get $1 million in a lump sum, meaning $50,000 for 20 years, or $25,000 for 40 years.

Maybe I could ramp it up and down; giving myself $30,000 the first year and $25,000 the second year so as to pay off some bills up front and then save that money again.

For instance:
Pay Brother 1 $2,000
Pay Brother 3 $800
Pay Friend 1 $800
Pay Aunt $800
Pay taxes = $3,000

I would start with the tax bill. I pay ~ $3,000 and now I have $27,000 left. (Maybe I add rent to that and go down to $26,000.) After that I pay myself $2,000 a month. In December I pay back my aunt. In January I pay back my friend. In February I make partial payments to both brothers. In March I make partial payments to both brothers, paying off brother 3 and clearing half of Brother 1's bill. In April I pay Brother 1 again, splitting that bill with brother 2, who I forgot I owe $1,000. In May I pay off Brothers 1 & 2.

Of course, there are other bills outside of these I need to be paying on at all times. God, money is a bitch.

I was thinking that if I could win a scratch off for 5 or 6 thousand that I could pay off my aunt and my friend and live on the rest for four months. Of course, I would be trying to get jobs in that four months, but I wouldn't be as worried about all of my debt during that time.

Ugh. This is unhelpful, thinking about free money. I should go back to working on getting real money from real jobs.

Spending Vs. Saving

I thought about winning 10 million the other day and how I might keep myself from spending it all at once. Namely, what kind of account would throw off enough interest that I could live on the interest (or payments) for the rest of my life. An annuity account, I mean.

I had an annuity account once, for $100,000. That account disbursed $2,000 a year, for tax purposes. By that accounting, if I put 3 million into such an account, it would generate $60,000 a year (10% or so of which I suppose I'd have to pay in tax), which would be more than enough for me to live on. Then I could put the other 7 million into a retirement account to sit and grow even larger for a later time.

Of course, upon reflection it seems silly to divide the money like that; what am I going to do then that I wouldn't be better off doing now? (I'm thinking travel and physically demanding things like hikes and biking and jumping off of cliffs into water.) So maybe I should reverse the two and take 7 million now and put 3 million away, where it'll grow into another 7 million (provided I don't touch it for another 20 years).

But like I say, I'd probably be better off doing the 3/7 split with the majority going into lockdown; I'd probably be too tempted to blow all the money on things that I wouldn't be happy with afterwards. Maybe split it five and five and do the annuity thing with the option to pull larger amounts out at any time.

The question is how long can I live on 3 or 5 million? How long will it last if I'm just given free reign? When I have money, I tend to spend it; that's how I am. So maybe it's better having less (but more than I'm used to) so that I feel rich but don't go crazy with the spending. I don't need a new car or anything (although I could afford a monthly payment with $3,000 a month), so I'd be just fine with a small amount each year and the problem to work out what to do with myself (rather than rot on the couch in front of the television).

Perspective

Fourteen million. It's funny how small it seems.

I know; that's funny, right? But when you think about fourteen million dollars in the context of today's multi-millionaires and billionaires (who are always in the news in this election cycle), it seems like a paltry amount. How can I really achieve anything with just ("just") fourteen million dollars?

I, of course, always talk about personal luxury items and giving money away to family and friends. For instance, I always want to help out my brother's family by buying them a truck or a family car of some sort. I think I'd pay for repairs to their house, so it wouldn't flood as much during heavy rains. I'd pay for "experience" type things for their kids - athletics clubs, skiing, school trips, instruments.

But what about everyone else? What about achieving real change in people's lives, in society?

Well, one thing I've always dreamed of doing would be going around my neighborhood and asking people if they wanted to fix up their houses and offering to pay for it. A lot my neighbors are working class (although it's slowly being gentrified) and have probably lived in their houses for ten plus years.

Eh, that one's kind of tricky. Here's another one:

Computer training (and skills training) for all the kids and young adults in the neighborhood. Give them all the opportunity to compete against anyone else for those jobs out there. I could stand to learn Microsoft Access; let's teach all the kids that and make them database experts; seems like everyone's using a database these days. (That reminds me of a housemate I used to have who was 21 and a friend of his had moved to Hawaii and was making 80 grand or so a year doing database work for a company there - with no college degree.)

I'd like to offer people the opportunity of travel: pay for all the kids in the neighborhood to go to the Grand Canyon; send them all to the Great Lakes or the Grand Tetons. Have them experience something that is so different from their day-to-day surroundings that it opens up their eyes to the possibilities they have. (That might even be a great thing for the adults as well.)

Or maybe I could do smaller things: low-cost business loans to start-ups in the area. Artistic grants to city-based artists. (Buying public space to display their art.)(In fact, that would be a cool idea: calling for submissions for art to be displayed on billboards and then buying ten billboards around the city and just having photographs or paintings displayed on them in huge size. That would be cool.)

Buying empty lots in the city to have them converted to public gardens. Paying people to plant and maintain them. Hiring someone to create sports teams at public housing complexes and organize sporting events to boost morale and create structure. Hiring someone to teach cooking classes in public housing complexes - or just to cook healthy meals to let people see that "healthy" can equal "tasty" and "yummy." Paying for kids from public housing to go to special camps that fit their abilities or talents - maybe even out of state, overnight camps, camps like I went to as a kid. Creating a ski club/team for lower-income kids; taking them to mountains and teaching them how to ski and letting them try themselves out in a different environment. Taking kids water-skiing and giving them scuba classes, letting them learn things they might never have experienced otherwise. Giving them entre into another world and letting them see they can be a part of it.

I want people to be different than I am; hopeful instead of pessimistic, reaching instead of shrinking. I want them to do all the things I didn't do because I was afraid and maybe I'll be able to feed off of their courage and energy and do something great myself.

Get Away

Money can make you lonely.

That's the flip side of wanting to have it insulate you and let you get away. It gives you an excuse never to go outside again: you can have food delivered.

I'm not thinking that maturely about money these days. I started this entry planning to write about how I would use millions to leave everyone behind - jet off to the West Coast or somewhere overseas. I could invite my artist friend or another guy I know who lived on the West Coast to show me around. I could pay for his ticket and he could be my guide to a good time.

Although: do I know how to have a good time? This is where the "money can make you lonely" thing comes in. If you're not good at going out and joining things, money gives you the option of abstaining. I had a little money once; I laid on the couch for months at a time. I essentially drove my life into a ditch because I didn't want to do anything and I was ashamed of myself and afraid of people. Not having obligations or responsibilities let me hide out on the couch and watch re-runs of re-runs of re-runs like heroin running through my veins.

If I came into 15 million dollars, I would probably go back into hibernation mode. Buy myself a big TV and use my Netflix subscription to watch movies and TV shows all day.

Of course, I would get restless; it happened over the time I was idle before. Around 3 or 5 pm I'd start to want to go outside and do something. Unfortunately, I didn't have many friends and no one who was up for random events, so I couldn't just call someone up and do something.

Or join something, actually. I'm a follower more than a leader.

Still; to have the money...to be able to pay my bills easily and over and beyond that...

Not to say that problems wouldn't come with it. Being the one with the money is never fun; everyone thinks it's easy because they only see their own ask and not everyone else's ask. The good thing for me is that most of the people in my life don't need a huge influx of money and wouldn't ask me for it. The poorest people I know would probably be happy with $1,000 a month. They'd take it for granted soon after, I'm sure, but it would sate them for a good bit. I could even demand services for that payment.

Ah, lottery dreams. How many people lose hours of their lives thinking about the lottery? I read once that imagining winning the lottery releases a small amount of oxytocin in the brain, so it's a reward like a drug or chocolate. I think that's why I use it. I found in the past eight years or so that I would sometimes just say large dollar amounts out loud when I was stressed. Thinking about huge piles of money gave me some small measure of comfort. Of course, it would have been more useful to brush my teeth or exercise or think about some constructive action I could take in that moment but oh, well.

Math Can Be Lovely

In the bathroom the other night, I figured out what 7 million (14m after 50% taxes) would be over 50 years. One hundred and forty thousand dollars a year. Which is 7,700 dollars a month. Who couldn't live on that? How amazing would that be?

I was thinking that I would create a bell curve of donations, so that I would give away five thousand, then four thousand, then three thousand, then two thousand and then maybe climb back up to five thousand over the twelve months of the year. (Maybe that would be more of a sine wave.)

When I think about money like that, I think about giving it away: to my brother to buy new vehicles or to fix his house; to my other brother to pay off his house; to my other brother to buy a fancy car, if he wants. I dream about taking a paper bag filled with $100k in hundred dollar bills to my brother's house and just handing it over - or better yet, leaving it when he's not there and sending him an email later.

But maybe I should think more about opportunity costs: what could I do to give people a leg up - a trip abroad or across the country; a first house; an education; a car loan or a car? Could I give people transportation to work or school, access to a computer, advisors for their financial needs? Job training? What could I create with the money?

Still: seven thousand, seven hundred dollars a month. I could give 4/5s away and still be happy.

Cars, Cars, Cars

My friend lent me her car to come home from her house today and it made me think of all the cars I want to buy - for other people.

I've talked often about buying my brother or myself a BMW but the purchases I'm talking about today would be a real godsend to the people they would be for.

First is my friend that lent me her car. That car is getting close to dying and she's talking with her partner about buying something cheap to make it through the next few months. I'd like to buy them both a new car that they wouldn't have to worry about.

The other person I'd like to buy a car for - and I've said this before, too, I think, is my brother. He's got four kids and a very old van and who knows when it'll break down. It already makes some suspect noises (as does my friend's car) and I'd like for him to have something I knew was reliable and going to last for the next 5 to 10 years.

Speaking of my brother, he could probably use all kinds of help (although he might be loathe to accept it). I could give him money to pay bills or buy good health insurance for his family or pay for a sitter on a regular basis to give his wife a break. That last one is something I'd really like to do; I know she has a lot of work on her plate and could use a regular break.

I don't know who else might need a car (and some would argue that maybe getting individuals cars isn't helping things in the larger scheme of things) but I would like to be able to provide them. It would be nice to be able to help people expand their possibilities.

I wrote on another blog that I'm surprised that more stem cell research doesn't go on in Mexico and Central America. I know that Mexico in particular is currently a certain security risk, which is an important factor. I also don't know what kinds of resources the less-developed countries (Guatemala, maybe) have in terms of infrastructure to support a modern lab (electricity and water), so maybe that's an issue. I also don't know what costs are like in a more stable, developed country like Costa Rica and whether they're not low enough to set up facilities there.

In any case, the reason I'm writing about this here is because I've thought on and off that if I made some absurd amount in a lottery win (above 100 million), something I'd like to try is setting up a stem cell research facility in Latin America to offer people (Americans, really) some alternatives in terms of devastating illnesses that might be "untreatable" by doctors in the U.S. Experimental treatments, essentially. And now that stem cells can be harvested from bone marrow and many other sources, I think it's plausible to think that more research can be done in more places, more easily.

One reason I most want to do this is because the news about stem cells in this country has been frustrating to me. Ten years ago, there was a study that seemed to indicate that stem cells would eliminate juvenile or Type I diabetes. Then nothing. The most recent thing that I've heard is that cells take from a cadaver can be injected into a diabetes sufferer and get them off insulin. So what's going on with this? Is it working or not? Are they still doing trials with people or not?

Another field I'm interested in - in terms of stem cells - is dentistry. Again, there was talk about it 8 to 10 years ago and since then, nothing (that I know of). Maybe there's a discussion going on within the community but I don't think there's anything coming up in the larger culture. Or maybe I'm missing it. But it's another field where I'd like to sponsor research (if I can) because I think it could make huge difference to so many people.

Always On The Sixes

Six is a number that comes up in my mind all the time when thinking about lottery winnings. Six and four. But today is a six day.

$60,000: I could easily live for two years on $60,000. I could pay all my bills quite easily and coast.

$600,000: With six hundred thousand dollars, I could live for twelve or more years (and that's giving myself $40k a year, which is more than enough). If I bought a cheap house or moved somewhere cheaper than hear, I could make it last even longer. (I could have bought a house a couple of years ago and I looked at some really cheap ones near me.)

$6 million: Of course, six million dollars would be over and beyond what I could ever need. I could give gifts of largesse to my family and friends; create my own projects, travel and give to charity.

When thinking about large amounts like that, I like to break it down into different configurations to show myself just how much it is. For instance:

I could take $1m a year for six years;
or $500,000 a year for twelve years;
or $250,000 a year for 24 years;
or $175,000 a year for 48 years - I could make more than $150,000 a year for almost 50 years! How great is that??

(Well, this is all fantasy, so I suppose all of it is great, right? [sheepish grin])

And $6m is something I would probably get with even the most basic Powerball or Megamillions win, since their base prize is $15m which is $7.5m even if you lose half in taxes.

Recently, while staying at my brother's in Pennsylvania, I was in a grocery store; a proper grocery store. We don't have a "proper" grocery store in my neighborhood; it's what I call a "ghetto grocery:" small, ugly, lit badly and carrying an assortment of odd products (t-shirts on a shelf up front?).

When I am in "real" grocery stores I tend to be intimidated and a little sickened - and perhaps a bit high. The high comes from thinking about all the things I could buy and wanting to have and eat thousands of products in the store. The intimidation and nausea comes from the sheer quantity of products on the shelves and the knowledge that not all of them will be bought and that perfectly edible foods will be discarded or go bad because they weren't bought within the time frames of their legally appointed freshness.

How much new food - from cereal to packaged meat - ends up thrown away in this country because it doesn't get bought? How many people could that feed, both here and abroad? That is the sickening part of the equation. I once heard immigrants describing their first experiences of American grocery stores; a woman from Russian talked about breaking down at the sheer abundance after having come from such a lack (and maybe being aware that said lack still persisted even as this bonanza was happening here).

I think anyone would be nauseous with the cognitive dissonance of awareness of the sickening glut of food on offer here while at the same time so many people struggle for even the basics.

So what does all of this have to do with the lottery? Well, two things:

1. As I stood in the cracker/cookie/bread/cheese/butter/milk aisle of that grocery store, I thought about all those people without and wondered what a joy it would be to just open the store to hungry/needy families and say "Take what you want" and foot the bill yourself.

(As I think about it, the actuality of it might - or probably would - be ugly, with people racing through the store like wild animals and possibly fighting over items. I still like the idea in theory.)

2. A couple of years ago I visited my uncle and aunt in Texas and marveled at the Great Wall of cereal boxes in their local Kroger. At that time I thought about creating a project whereby people bought up all that cereal and then chartered a plane to fly it over to some needy/hungry country in Africa; to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, perhaps; something like that. The cereal would be a good dry food that wouldn't spoil easily and would be tasty and (supposedly) full of nutrition (according to the manufacturers).

(Of course, the food charity community has come up with Plumpy Nut, a nutritional paste that is apparently cheap to produce and provides all the nutrition a child needs. Maybe it's just a case of getting it to the right people.)