July 2, 2009
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The $10 Million Question
Today I’m giving you $10,000,000.00. Net, straight cash, homey. What’s the catch? The catch is that you can never work again. Well, you can work, but you can never work a paying job. You can volunteer your time, you can guest lecture, you can do Excel spreadsheets, but no one can pay you for your time. No more work as you know it, no more filing of W-2′s. No opening your own business.
Can you make that $10 million last for the rest of your life? You can invest it. You can buy property and rent it out (some would argue that’s a business, but for simplicity reasons, we’ll say it’s not). You can buy stocks, bonds, art, fund start ups, or send milk to Worldvision and their starving children. You can travel the world. You can go to cooking school, or art school, or movie school. I don’t care if you waste it on drugs, gambling, women, men, wine, or food. You can get that $8 million dollar villa on the coast. You can do anything you want but work a job where someone else pays you.
We all want security and freedom and most of us well never see $10 million dollars in our lifetime. Can… I make that money last. Am I selling myself short? Does taking the money tell the world that my life is worth no more than $10 mil? Would I be setting myself up for an undisciplined lifestyle of excess and abuse? If you made me the offer today, I’d take it. But what if it was $5 million instead? Hmmmm…
Would you take the $10 million? Why or why not?
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Comments (5)
Hell yes I would take it. Most people would not be able to make 10 million dollars (more like 20 million because of taxes) in their entire life.
And then I would go travel the world! Woo hoo.
for sure i’d take 5 or 10, day trade a little and volunteer part time that’d be awesome
It depends if you live to make money or make money to live. Working for free can have a drastic impact on your outlook in life. Society as a whole only started to advance in technologies and innovations as a result of competition in the marketplace. If people don’t get paid for their work and or ideas then where is the motivation to advance going to come from? The feudal pre-Marx was one where products were made and traded and it wasn’t until products became commodities (see Marx-alienation of man) that were sold at the end of guilds and master craftsman era and the beginning of the industrial revolution where societal advances through competition emerged. Long story short, we can’t advance as a civilization unless we get paid to do what we’re passionate about. There are exceptions but it’s only when we’ve made it in the world and then we that’s when we become philanthropists (ie bill gates).
I would take the 10 mill if it’s the end of my life. More efficient that way.