Stupid Meme.

[ladysprite]

I always used to think that a million dollars was a lot of money. It still sounds like a lot, if you don't think about it, especially if you grew up with food stamps and free school lunches as a fact of life. I'm used to living on a rather severe budget; I could make that much money last for the rest of my life. Right?

But there's a meme going around right now - how would you spend a million dollars? Before taxes, so figure $500,000 after taxes. And everyone else can stretch it so far. So I thought, really thought, about how I would spend it. Let's see:

Pay off my student loans - $100,000.
Pay off husband's student loans - $100,000.
Buy car for husband - $15,000

Which leaves us with $285,000.

Which might buy us a house, if we're not too picky, and are willing to take something either in a rotten neighborhood or that has serious fixer-upper quality.

After that, we might be able to get lunch. At Wendy's, if we use the dollar menu.

Stupid higher education. Stupid me, not being able to stretch my funds longer than that. Stupid profession, not making enough for me to both go to a movie and pay the T fare there and back.

Stupid meme, leaving me all depressed and grumpy.

Comments

[braider.livejournal.com]

Don't pay off the loans immediately. Invest the money. Use the money to retire to some place less expensive than Boston. I have friends who bought a rather nice house in a very good neighborhood for something in the region of $128,000.

Really, if you got a million dollars, the first thing you should do is to hire on a financial wizard. ;-)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

There's a whole lot more to a place to live than how much the house costs. There's a price attached to any house not in the Boston area - that price is that it isn't in the Boston area!