Question of the Day — If you won $20 million in the lottery, would you:
A. Quit work and retire, travel, read, raise children, pay video games, or do volunteer work
B. Work part-time at your current job
C. Work for pay in another field
D. Stay at your current job
E. Other
Apt. 11d 
C. Unless raising a mercenary army and becoming president for life of Belize is closer to E.
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“C. Unless raising a mercenary army and becoming president for life of Belize is closer to E.”
hey, 20M probably isn’t enough to do that, but you could become a significant political contributor, and appointed as ambassador to Belize. That’s almost as good, no?
I know too many people who have found themselves roughly in this position (not a lottery, but sold their startup for 20 M or 10 M, . . .). They haven’t quit their jobs (well, sometimes the acquisition requires that they don’t quit their job), right away. But, eventually, they realize they want more flexibility (i.e the kid’s soccer game they had to miss because of the job) and they quit for a while. Then, they get bored, and start doing something again (venture capitol, start a new start up, work as a consultant), . . . .
You picked 20M. My number is 10M. We see people go through this transition with less (2M, 5M). It kind of depends on how much their day job pays them.
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What would you do, bj?
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Some version of C, at least until the kids are launched. I’ve thought of eventually becoming a CPA, but I’m still thinking about it. No rush.
With $20 million, I’d:
1. not have to worry about either kids’ college or retirement
2. buy a house
3. hire an occasional sitter (haven’t done so for over a year), hire regular yard help (currently a yearly or biyearly event), find a Russian tutor and regularly go out on actual date nights
4. travel a lot more (more time on the west coast with family, go on the big family ski trip regularly, to Russia every few years, take the kids to DC and Europe regularly, particularly Eastern Europe, tag along to some of my husband’s conferences with the kids)
5. be able to fund scholarships at my kids’ school
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Sorry, some version of D, but I was planning on C eventually.
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My husband would definitely quit his job and spend more time on photography. The big question would be whether we’d move back to Long Island, I think.
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For me, it would only take 2 million to choose A. I’d still farm, bake, cook, and do some odd jobs, but wouldn’t need to focus on making enough to pay for gas and health insurance and a mortgage.
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BJ, Belize is about the same population as Pittsburgh, but much more poorly armed. And technically, I would be striking a blow against the British, which is kind of a family tradition. Really, the trickiest part would be denouncing ‘Yankee Imperialism’ with a straight face in order to keep Chavez or the Sandinistas from gunning for me.
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I’d do C for $50,000 and 2 years of COBRA payments.
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A variation of B and C I think: I’d try to redefine my role as editor-at-large and go off into the world to cover the stories I want to cover & write what I want to write.
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I think with $20M I’d quit my current job, enjoy some time off, travel a bit and build a dream house with the wife. Make sure the kids are set-up to go to any college they want and then work on my MA. After that I’d like to try and start some iniatives here in KY. I’m very interested in education reform and I think I’d like to try and create some kind of state-level think tank to create new programs for the school systems.
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Well, since I quit without the 20M, you know what my answer is. But the money would definitely help. We’d put the addition on that we want to. We’d take the kids to Europe. We’d stock away enough to put both kids through a college as expensive as Harvard. I’d donate more money to worthy causes.
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I’d quit my current job so some other deserving history Ph.D. could get the position (this is one job that I’m very sure the administration would refill).
I’d work on my writing and editing pretty much full-time so C sounds closest.
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B. I like my job, but it would be great to have more time to cook, take long walks, read more books and hang out with the kids.
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“What would you do, bj?”
I don’t think my life would change much. My husband might want to quit his job, but I think he’d have a tough time not being “important.” (with, important defined at least partly by people willing to pay you for your opinion/output). But, he might be willing to trade a money job for a job with power (but no money).
That’s the same problem I’ve seen my “lottery-winning” friends face (though, admittedly, selling your startup/lucking out on Microsoft stock is not the same as winning the lottery. Odds are they were in that position because they were pretty driven people). They work for money, but also for validation. And, one imagines that you could be freed by money to seek internal validation, they’re a pretty externally validated lot. And, to do important work requires doing stuff you don’t want to, in practically any endeavor.
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And, one imagines that you could be freed by money to seek internal validation, they’re a pretty externally validated lot.
Anybody who can help in ‘Project Belize’ could get external validation galore. There’d be generalships, ‘hero of the revolution’ medals, free parking in NYC jobs, etc.
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“Odds are they were in that position because they were pretty driven people). They work for money, but also for validation. And, one imagines that you could be freed by money to seek internal validation…”
One of my relatives who really burns the candle at both ends (corporate consulting plus a couple of unrelated side businesses) says that what he really wants is to make lots of money, retire early and just hang out on the beach, but I find it impossible to imagine that he’d be able to do it. He works as much as three normal guys (not necessarily in terms of hours but in terms of output–he’s not a watercooler type guy) and he’s just much too driven to spend the second half of his life just hanging out. But I don’t tell him that.
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Probably either B or D. Right now, I think I’d get bored and feel kind of pointless if I wasn’t working, but then, if I had all the money I needed to do (pretty much) anything I wanted, would this work still feel compelling? I really don’t think I can know how I’d feel about that until I’m in the situation (wihch is unlikely!). How much of my current attachment to working is b/c I really do think it’s important, and how much do I think it’s important because I have to do it anyway?
Maybe I’d ditch it all and volunteer full-time for animal rescue groups. And take a lot of music lessons. And learn how to decorate cakes. And how to knit properly. Probably how to refinish furniture.
I think for me the biggest thing (esp. since I don’t have kids to provide this) would be ensuring I still have some kind of place in a social network. Without working, I picture myself never doing much that entails talking to anyone besides my husband, which would be bad for both of us. But volunteering and taking classes and stuff might well create a social network for me.
Certainly, if I won $20M I’d be pretty PICKY about where I worked. I could afford to have very spiffy principles for that money.
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Apparently, some people can be bought very cheaply.
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D. But endow myself a chair so that I could buy myself out to a 2-0 or 2-1 load and fund my own research expenses.
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“But endow myself a chair so that I could buy myself out to a 2-0 or 2-1 load and fund my own research expenses. ”
I know someone who is in the position to do this. But, the someone doesn’t, because it avoids the external validation. Laura’s joking, some, but in fact, when you see people actually make these imaginary decisions, you see how they’re quite different than how you imagine.
There’s a book called “the number” out there, premised on the notion of what “number” you need to “retire early and just hang out on the beach.” One phenomenon the author reports (and it’s all anecdotal) is that among the hedge fund managers/investment bankers/CEO’s he knows, the number keep shifting up.
I also know people who have done it (i.e. retire early). A key is an unsatisfying job that somehow resulted in a nest egg, and a job that pays only a little bit more (or not at all more) than the nest egg can generate.
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I asked the question, because I suspected that it was actually a hard question that people would answer really differently. I was reading a some bad survey research on this question and couldn’t find a study that I thought really nailed it.
I would probably move back to Manhattan (to an apartment right next to Central Park), where I would have more opportunity to do work that I found interesting and so Steve could have a more equal share of parenting. Actually, Steve would probably quit his job that minute and do all of the parenting. He might be a tour guide at the Natural History Museum.
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I’ve thought about A, but I’m not sure I could stand the not-for-profit sector.
My fallback would be to set up retirement and college funds, and then use the remainder to start my own business in my current field.
Oh, and I’d buy the neighbor’s house and tear it down, to expand our yard.
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” was reading a some bad survey research on this question and couldn’t find a study that I thought really nailed it. ”
But, isn’t that because it’s often very difficult to say what you think you’d do in an imaginary circumstance. I think this most notably when people are asked questions like, about hypothetical children or hypothetical futures of real children.
Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness” is premised on this notion — that we are very bad at imagining what we will do in a future circumstance (even when that circumstance is one that we might experience rather than an unlikely one, like waking up with 20M in the bank). He then argues that our inability to predict our happiness based on the actual v imagined result is a reason for mismatches in evaluating happiness. Example: Would you like to have a spaghetti dinner. Decision making: imagine a potential spaghetti dinner, make decision based on that imaginary dinner. Concusion: Have a dinner, which doesn’t match the imagined one or don’t have a dinner, which doesn’t match the imagined one. Lack of a match = potential unhappiness.
Other examples he gives are the number of people who say they’d kill themselves, for example, if they went blind, or if they lost use of their legs, versus the number who actually do. The perception of happiness in circumstances we are not currently experiencing, and the decisions we’d make in those cases, is very badly predicted from our answers before we experience those situations.
I’d be intrigued by which kind of survey could actually answer this question (other than the one I’d believe, which is to give people 20M, and see what they would do).
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BJ: I volunteer for that study! 🙂
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This is horrible, but bj’s last comment reminded me of a goofy game we use to play around here, which was to say, would you rather lose an arm or a leg, two arms or one leg, etc. At first we’d answer seriously, thinking about which arm we’d rather lose, etc. But the point really was to realize that we didn’t get to choose these circumstances and that no matter what, we’d make the best of them.
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B. I love my job but rarely manage to balance that with this thing called “life.” I also need more time to write.
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“BJ: I volunteer for that study! :-)”
Yeah, after I wrote it, I imagined writing a grant proposal, you know, where you offer to give away 20M and study the outcomes afterwards. Sounds like a stimulus project to me.
But, I guess the study has been done in some form, w/ lottery winners (perhaps not yet with start up company founders).
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But, bj, I’m not really interested in whether people really do quit their job or not. The question is backdoor way of testing job satisfaction and attitude toward work.
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The question is backdoor way of testing job satisfaction and attitude toward work.
In that case, “I’d do C for $50,000 and 2 years of COBRA payments” is probably a bit of a tell.
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A, but then I’d negotiate with my grad school to let me finish my Ph.D. Then I’d start up a small press to publish unknown American women writers between 1930 and 1970.
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I thought there’d be more “A”s. I would do that in a flash – but modified in that I’d add jazz piano and art-making. And travel too.
No question.
The charity work (board appointments) would provide the intellectual/social/community challenge.
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I’m not sure what the political organizer version of “D. But endow myself a chair so that I could buy myself out to a 2-0 or 2-1 load and fund my own research expenses.” is, but I think I’d lean in that direction. I love my job (at least on balance), and I can’t imagine not working in the field I work in now. However, it would be good to relieve some of the financial pressure of my organization, and by doing so, allow me to focus even more on the things I’m interested in.
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B. I’d still teach courses one semester each year, and I’d spend the rest of the year traveling and writing. BUT I WOULD NEVER GO TO ANOTHER MEETING.
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I’m already unemployed, and I am starting to think I am never going to finish the damn dissertation, so it’s really, really easy for me to say A.
If I had $20million in the bank, I imagine that I wouldn’t feel like an unemployed housewife loser who betrayed feminism anymore. I’d feel like a member of the nouveau-riche leisure class whose full-time job is managing their money. Or that’s the fantasy anyway.
At least I’d have an automatic comeback to the “but you’re entirely dependent on your spouse and how can you do that to women” thing. (The “but what are you modeling for your children” accusation would be tougher.)
Yeah, I’m in a good place, profession-wise, this morning.
We’re ignoring the studies that show that almost all lottery winners have lost/spent all their money within a frighteningly short period of time, right?
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“We’re ignoring the studies that show that almost all lottery winners have lost/spent all their money within a frighteningly short period of time, right?”
Or NFL players or washed up movie stars (Nicolas Cage has two houses going into foreclosure, apparently). It’s hard to rationally deal with money that comes in big chunks. On the other hand, aren’t lottery players socioeconomically distinct? I’ve never bought a lottery ticket, and among my relatives, I can only think of one in-law who plays. I can’t even imagine mentioning to my family that I had purchased a lottery ticket. It’s just not done.
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The mind-blowing thing about Cage is that he works All The Time. How can cash-flow be a problem for that guy?
Then again, how many houses did he own at his peak? Talk about ridiculous consumption.
I know a reasonable number of people who buy a ticket when PowerBall hits a certain number, but probably they’re not the same cohort that actually wins. My grandmother use to give lottery tickets for holiday gifts, and aunts/uncles use to give them to young people at bar/restaurants, so there’s no cultural barrier there for us.
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The lottery only pays out something like 50% of what is wagered. Blackjack is much better.
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My family also views lottery ticket buying with suspicion. My mother refers to the lottery as a “stupid tax”. (Ouch.)
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I’ve also heard the lottery referred to (although not by relatives) as a “tax on people who can’t do math.”
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A
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“I’ve also heard the lottery referred to (although not by relatives) as a “tax on people who can’t do math.”
Your friends are nicer than mine (well, or at least mine were in college), Amy. Mine always refereed it to the “stupid people tax” (and, they went on to say they think that’s a pretty good thing, to have a stupid person tax).
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I’d do D. I was a volunteer at my place of employment for 5 years before I became an employee. It’s not that hard for me to imagine going back again. Only I’d stay in my job because it’s a lot more interesting than some of the ways I used to volunteer, I just wouldn’t get paid. Bert would volunteer for two or three things we think are important. I imagine we’d live a little higher, travel, help friends, pay off mortgages, send our kids and the kids of those we love to college. I’d tell my parents to retire.
Oh, and we have family who won $4M 10 years ago. They took their kids out of school, sailed around Mexico for a year on their own boat. Eventually they returned to real life, jobs and kids in school. They put a bunch of money in investments for early retirement, but I know they lost a lot of it last year.
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A + B
I wouldn’t stop teaching, but I’d do it as a volunteer while travelling around the world.
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A is a big bucket.. I’d pick A but no video games, would do volunteer work in my current field. There are a lot of open-source projects I could happily support; a lot of unpaid work that needs doing and is richly rewarded, only not with money.
“the lottery is a tax on people who don’t understand statistics” is what I used to believe (as an ex-mathematician, I disdain the confusion – also have the annoying habit of substituting “do the arithmetic” for “do the math”) but I digress. To the point: I think the lottery is properly understood as entertainment. Rich people don’t need the entertainment or the money, the inveterately middle class and the poor can use both.
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